What to look for in a Field Service Management Tool as a Hire Company

The hire market is more resilient than most. Despite tough market conditions, it grows at a steady rate of 3% annually, simply because customers don’t want to purchase their equipment. Facing significant capital costs and ongoing maintenance – on top of market uncertainty, like economic challenges and high inflation – means the safer, most cost-effective option is to hire the equipment they need, when they need it.

As a hire company, if you want to get ahead of your competitors, your business needs to operate like a well-oiled machine (pun intended!)  – the best way to achieve this is with field service management (FSM) software.

If you’ve not come across FSM software before, it is designed to help organisations manage the servicing of their equipment. For hire companies there are even more benefits. An FSM tool helps improve efficiency across the engineering team, reduces paperwork for office staff, decreases equipment breakdowns and makes invoicing customers faster and easier.

What should be front of mind for hire companies choosing a field service management tool?

Ultimately, an FSM tool has key features that will help you with work order management, inventory management, asset management, and customer management. But what many providers fail to account for are the additional needs of hire companies.

Many providers claim to have a hire module within their tool, but in reality, in many cases it’s just a contract module. While this works for maintenance agreements where a customer is paying a regular fee for a set period, it’s not fit for hire agreements because the terms are more varied.

Hire companies need a fully functioning hire module

As the name suggests, a hire module is specifically designed to meet the needs of hire companies for two key reasons:

Flexible billing

When you invoice a customer via a contract module, it pushes you down the route of billing based on a set timeframe. This is fine until your customer returns your equipment late or rings up to ask if they can keep the digger for an extra couple of hours. In this situation, a contract module will struggle to adapt, which means you risk missing out on revenue opportunities. However, with a hire module, billing is based on usage, which makes it very easy for you to ask for payment in full.

The onboarding and offboarding processes

When your processes aren’t guided by a tool, initial checks are more likely to be missed, and your equipment will sit waiting to be collected for longer – we’ve even heard horror stories of companies losing track of where their equipment is, because they can’t see who the last person was to hire it. The hire module keeps you covered because it triggers specific workflows. For example, during the onboarding process, the system will guide you to check all the necessary paperwork before you hand over the keys. And once that customer is finished, the offboarding process is triggered, which sends someone to immediately collect the machinery ready for the next hire.

In addition to a fully functioning hire module, there are several other functions that you should look out for in your field service management tool.

5-point field service management tool checklist for hire companies

1. Organise your engineers, jobs and assets

One of the primary functions of an FSM tool is to help you keep track of your jobs and assets, which aids communication and ultimately keeps your customers happy. For example, whenever a customer calls to make an enquiry, you want to be able to help them make a booking there and then. With a field service management tool, you can track the whereabouts of every asset along with the current hire status, so you can inform the customer of what’s available.

However, not every customer wants to book your equipment today. For those planning future jobs, it’s possible to reserve the equipment they’ll need, knowing that when they do come to collect it, you’ll have it ready to go.

2. View asset and customer history

FSM software is also going to help reduce your admin burden. Imagine a customer who calls wanting to hire a forklift again. Rather than manually search through your customer records, you can use the tool to quickly recall their previous orders to ensure they receive the right equipment.

But what if the customer doesn’t know what they want? Here, the tool is going to help you search your equipment based on your customer’s specification – for example, a forklift that can manage a weight of 1,200kg. By categorising assets, you can search for the right tool, rather than needing to remember the model name for each piece of equipment along with its specification.

3. Reporting that boosts profitability

When you can report on how each asset is performing, you can attribute the cost/value of that asset to your business. Now you can make informed decisions about how to manage your inventory, continue to meet customer demands, and boost your profitability. 

For example, if your report shows that the Counterbalance Truck is in high demand and you’ve had more enquiries than you’re able to make bookings, it’s an easy decision to invest in more units. But if your Compact LPG Forklift is breaking down every month and is the cause of multiple customer complaints, perhaps it’s time to look for an alternative.

Another important aspect of reporting is being able to prioritise equipment for maintenance. For example, if you know a Pallet Stacker only has one day where it can be serviced between jobs, or that it’s one of your most profitable assets, you can schedule that in ahead of equipment that is of a lower priority.

4. Schedule maintenance based on usage

Unnecessary breakdowns are a major headache. Thankfully, your field service management tool can help you keep on top of everything – even if you’re managing a fleet of forklifts. But rather than send reminders for an annual inspection, you can link servicing to usage. As well as keep your equipment operational, this is also going to help you forecast when parts need replacing or if a particular asset is nearing its end of life.

If a breakdown does occur during a hire period, the tool can even help you schedule an appropriate engineer to fix the fault. Once onsite, your engineer can access any information they need, including manuals, troubleshooting guides, and previous service history, which increases the likelihood of a ‘first time fix’, so your customer can be up and running again quickly.

5. Integrate with other systems

So, your customer’s happily enjoying the use of your equipment (which is running smoothly thanks to your excellent maintenance schedule!), now what? Well, surely you want to be paid?!

A good FSM tool will integrate with your other applications, such as your accounting system, so you have one process running end-to-end with the information flowing seamlessly. It’s through integrations that workflows are triggered – for example, once you reach the billing date,  the invoice is automatically raised, which is going to improve your cashflow.

And it’s not just your finance systems. Your FSM tool should integrate with your CRM system to provide a 360-degree view of your customers, your inventory system to manage your assets, and your HR system to help track where employees are, ensure they’re safe, and capture their working hours.

How to choose the right field service management tool provider

The last thing you want is to end up with field service management software that doesn’t fit your business needs. So before you even start searching for tools, think about how your business currently operates. You want to be clear on the functionality you need and why – you can even write a list of the ‘non-negotiables’ vs. ‘nice-to-have features’. There’s no point paying for functionality you don’t need – or worse, end up needing to invest in a second system to fill in the gaps.

Also, think about the future. Look at your organisation’s 3-5-year strategy, because what’s fit for today, might not be right for tomorrow. You want to feel confident that whatever tool you choose, it can evolve with your business to protect your investment.

And don’t forget to talk to your team. Moving from paper-based processes to cloud-based tools is a big change and they need to be on board if you want to avoid any resistance. Equally, your people are on the frontline every day, speaking to customers and maintaining equipment. They’ll likely have some useful insights into what parts of your current processes could be improved, and how an FSM tool could help.