Egan Company installed the MobileTech solution from KEY2ACT, slashing billing time and eliminating time-consuming paperwork. Jeff Hawthorne, Egan’s senior vice president, estimated that Egan will see its return on investment (ROI) within 18 months of implementing MobileTech, which connects field staff to the back office, providing instant access to information and enabling both sides to easily manage service calls and appointments.
Taming the Paper Demon
Egan belongs to a peer group of similarly sized companies located throughout the country whose members share best practices and help each other identify potential areas of improvement. An evaluation by that group a few years ago provided valuable insight. “The feedback we got back was ‘paper, paper, paper,’” said Hawthorne. “There’s just a lot of paper. We needed to help streamline our processes here and ultimately provide a better customer experience along with a better experience for our field staff. That’s what led us to start to look at mobile solutions.”
In addition to Egan’s problems with having too much paper, the company often had a disconnect with getting information back and forth to the service technicians, details like whom the tech needed to contact at the site and any extra equipment needed. The only way staffers could communicate with technicians in the past was to actually call techs and provide all the information necessary, which takes up time in a busy dispatch center.
When Egan decided to look into mobile solutions, company leaders knew that whatever they chose had to be able to fully integrate with their accounting system. “Our requirements were that we wanted a complete solution that’s going to tie right back in to our home office for all of our payroll services, all of our labor costing, all of our material. A place where all of our expenses can be captured,” Hawthorne said.
MobileTech “has streamlined things so much, it’s just incredible. It’s made all the difference in the world.”
—Tim Miller, Technical Support, Egan Company
MobileTech Fits the Bill
MobileTech enables a free flow of information from the office to field staff and, ultimately, to customers. Technicians can see a full description of work to be completed; access customer information, including service and equipment history; record and update details about a job; and enter and track expenses. Because technicians can enter their own time directly into payroll, dispatchers no longer have to do so for them back at the office. This feature alone is saving Egan at least two hours per day for each of the company’s four dispatchers.
“We have been on the product for less than a year. We are looking at eight hours a day, 40 hours a week that we’re saving on payroll entry,” Hawthorne said. “It will definitely have an ROI of less than a year-and-a-half.”
Not only is MobileTech saving time for the dispatchers, it has also helped Egan cut days off their average days-to-bill. The time savings provided by MobileTech extend to the field as well. Egan’s techs have found that completing all the steps necessary to close out a work order is now much faster.
“It takes 50 percent less time to fill out a report using MobileTech.”
—Dave Benkowski, Service Technician, Egan Company
“It takes 50 percent less time to fill out a report using MobileTech,” said Dave Benkowski, an Egan service technician. “Out in the field, it’s definitely quicker than manually writing or getting out the laptop and typing it up that way.”
Responding to Customer Needs
Service technicians can also create their own jobs on their devices while in the field. “If they’re on a planned maintenance service call, and there is an item that the customer needs to have repaired, they can automatically create their own service call,” Hawthorne said. “They don’t need to call back into the office to request another job number.”
Using MobileTech, technicians can also capture images of work done and attach those pictures both to the call summary report, which is e-mailed to the customer, and to the customer’s account within Egan’s KEY2ACT system. In addition, they can turn around proposals in record time.
“If there is a customer that has a request for a quote or needs an additional proposal, we can get that information to our inside account management staff to have a proposal turned around and back to the customer sometimes that same day,” Hawthorne said.
And the “too much paper” issue that first led Egan to MobileTech? “We don’t touch nearly as much paper as we used to,” said Tim Miller, Egan Company technical support.
“It has streamlined things so much, it’s just incredible,” Miller said. “It’s made all the difference in the world.”
For more information, visit www.key2act.com.
