In an ever-changing world, your dairy customers expect the best from your team. The tools you choose for the job should never fail, and one of the most powerful tools you can use is dairy service software!
Don’t fall behind the times and try to run your business like it’s the year 2000. We’ll reveal features that will propel your business to the 21st century.
Once you read this article, you’ll see how having the proper software in place can:
- Help you be more profitable
- Increase workflow efficiencies
- Streamline operations from the field to the office
ERP VS QuickBooks VS FieldEdge. What does it all mean?
Most dairy servicing businesses utilize some form of electronic program to help manage the business, whether it be accounting, or maybe just a shared calendar. The 3 popular options are:
ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning Software
ERP is commonly mistaken for accounting software, but it is typically a custom built program that combines all aspects of the business into one program. Companies will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to have an “ERP” system created and then will be responsible for the maintenance of the program.
QuickBooks: The industry standard accounting platform
QuickBooks allows you to manage the finances of your business from payroll, bills, taxes, profit/loss statements, and reporting. 70% of service contractor oriented businesses use QuickBooks for this purpose.
FieldEdge: Industry leading management software
FieldEdge is the industry leader in management software for dairy service dealers. By connecting your field techs to your office and your office to QuickBooks, FieldEdge gives you a seamless way to run your dairy business
FieldEdge dairy service software makes scheduling and organizing your technicians a breeze
Sometimes, the only thing keeping your business from a larger bottom line is not scheduling and dispatching the right technician for the right job.
The first step is hiring the best dispatchers and office staff. Though, it also helps to provide those professionals with the most advanced tools for the job.
Fortunately, the best software for managing dairy jobs is also the best software for dispatchers. This will provide an overview of your entire field team. Plus, it gives your dispatcher the tools necessary to send the most skilled and nearest technician to the right job.
With truly advanced dairy service software, everyone gets updated of any scheduling or dispatch changes in real-time!
Which means if an urgent job arises at any time of the day, your dispatcher can adjust schedules and assign the necessary field team members right away. So, your dairy management software can push any schedule revisions to the entire field team immediately.
Don’t rely on phone tag to notify your field team. Provide push notifications of updates, rush-jobs and changes directly to the field team’s mobile device.
With FieldEdge, you can decrease unapplied time by optimizing your field workforce’s schedule to increase the company’s time on the job. Plus, keep your field team focused on completing jobs, not navigating between them.
See how the best software for dairy dealers can drastically reduce your unapplied time within your business. Book your FREE personalized demo of FieldEdge today!
Get a better idea of your profitability on your longer jobs-instantly
“We are doing a much better job of seeing the true costs on projects. Creating a “Job” in FieldEdge makes projects run much smoother.” – FieldEdge Customer
No one likes bidding out a larger job to a dairy and losing money in the end due to excess travel or unforeseen changes.
With FieldEdge, not only can you send out a basic proposal for the job, but you can manage the job all within the same software.
Your team will have the ability to:
- Cost labor and travel time directly into the project using our jobs module
- Progressively bill against the proposal with a few clicks on the screen
- See live job costing updated daily as your technicians finish their work for the day or invoices are collected and applied
- Keep track of any equipment used on this job
Eliminate duplicate entry and paperwork by going all electronic
“An average of 4 weeks is lost each year waiting on misfiled, mislabeled, untracked, or lost documents.”
We all know the frustrations of hunting down the physical copy of an important document. The dread we feel after scouring through rows of filing cabinets – only to find the file folder empty – with no trace of the urgently-needed document.
Thankfully, cloud-based document storage is replacing paper document management. This is a true game-changer – you’ll never wonder if the information you’re viewing is accurate.
With cloud-based storage, everything is digital, available anywhere with a signal, and searchable right from your web-enabled devices.
This means your team can be confident in the information they pull up – confident in the information they jot down. Most importantly, your team can be confident that everyone has access to exactly the same information at all times
Aside from the stress savings, you’ll save time and money as well! With any business, paper and storage can get costly over the course of a year.
Plus, you might even be able to reclaim some office space in the process.
Keep better track of inventory and what is used on the job site
Combined with the powerful features of QuickBooks, FieldEdge will allow you to accurately see what was invoiced on each route or repair. Pre-made reports will help your team replenish trucks, minimizing the amount of return trips and lost money.
Dairy servicing companies have to carry a large inventory to satisfy the modern dairy and managing inventory can be almost impossible. In fact – many times, mismanagement of inventory can be a major factor in reducing profitability.
You can give technicians the option to add inventory items directly to the invoice. This also gives the office reporting to see what was used by the technicians, helping your business recoup thousands of dollars of misallocated or over-ordered inventory.
Streamline Communication between the office and the field
No one likes to be misheard – or worse – told one thing, then hear something completely different from someone else. Worse still, when a customer hears one thing, but your office team swears they said the complete opposite.
Without tools and processes to prevent it, communication breakdowns could become a near daily occurrence. Without appropriate data logging, a manager’s job becomes something of a detective following clues to determine who is telling the truth!
Luckily, FieldEdge dairy service software radically improves company communication between teams, departments and customers:
- Your team will have the ability to log notes during every customer interaction in that customer’s cloud-based profile.
- You’ll also have instantly updated information that everyone, even those in the field, will have immediate access to read.
- Your customers will love the fact they don’t need to repeat themselves as often as with competitors using older software, or worse, pen-and-paper.
- The best app for dairy servicing will afford your business the ability to capture every call between your customer service team and customers.
The dairies you service have innovated, your dairy servicing business needs to as well
The shift in our industry from hand milking, to machine, to robot has been dramatic. Is your dairy servicing business still using pen and paper or QuickBooks to invoice your customers? If so, you need an upgrade!
The shift to doing business electronically is the next step with your business. Dairy service software saves time, reduces clutter, and gives you a more professional image with your customers. Don’t wait to take your dairy management operations to the next level!
Explore how dairy service software has the power to transform your business into a success. Book a FREE personalized demo of FieldEdge today!
