Optimizing Technician Management At Your Organization

Oct 5, 2019 1:04:00 PM | 5 minute read

Strong partnerships with facility service providers improve operational quality. With an enhanced visibility and the potential for more efficient operations, you can make your partnership with service providers stronger by gathering and analyzing data that reflects technician performance. Through this analysis, your company gains valuable insight into the most efficient ways to assign work to technicians based on their abilities. From this, your organization can then make the best maintenance choices for its unique needs. 

Strengthening service provider partnerships  through a facilities management company can help your organization achieve benefits such as:

  • Improved first-time fix rates
  • Higher standards of technician accountability
  • Pre-established service priorities
  • Expert support from trade specialists

Streamlined facilities and equipment management, combined with the knowledge of experienced industry leaders, can help your organization grow successfully.

Considering the average maintenance technician spends 18% of the workday looking for parts and another 25% traveling to and from job sites, there is a significant amount of room for optimizing efficiency. Organizations can increase productivity by ensuring a proper diagnosis is made and the correct parts are available on time.

IMPROVE SERVICE QUALITY WITH PERFORMANCE ANALYTICS

Opportunity: Defining productivity goals and tracking them with KPIs empowers you and a trusted service provider to prioritize maintenance tasks that contribute value to the organization.

Challenge: You may lack the internal resources to effectively track equipment performance, warranty status and service level agreements.

Solution: Every organization defines productivity differently. Some facility managers may want to speed up maintenance task completion times, while others may focus more on reducing the amount of reactive work.

Performance analytics solutions put you in control by providing visibility into opportunities for improvement. 

For example, Vixxo can help you track equipment performance throughout your entire portfolio, showing you where you can improve your maintenance program. Using your definition of productivity, you can easily see where you’re falling short and identify opportunities for improvement. When you and your technicians have access to this data, you’ll be on the same page about what maintenance tasks to prioritize.

IMPROVE SERVICE RELIABILITY BY INCREASING VISIBILITY

Opportunity: Improved lines of communication can improve service provider accountability.

Challenge: Across distributed locations, you may lack real-time visibility into technician performance.

Solution: You can’t have eyes on every technician you work with. Or can you? Vixxo’s solutions help you track technician whereabouts in real time. For instance, you can see when technicians arrive on site and how long it takes them to complete each work order.

When you can see this information at a glance, it helps you to build stronger relationships with trustworthy service providers. You know you’re paying only for work that was actually done. 

Trust plays an important role in managing partnerships with technicians. If you don’t trust the people you work with, you’ll spend a lot of time checking in with technicians, monitoring their activity and double-checking their invoices.

Vixxo removes these administrative burdens. Automated, rules-based solutions ensure accurate reporting and billing so you can grow your technician relationships on a foundation of trust.

INCREASE FIRST-TIME FIX RATES WITH DATA ANALYTICS AND EXPERT ADVICE

Opportunity: Access to facility data and industry benchmarks empowers you to support technicians with actionable insights, ensuring maintenance tasks are successful the first time they are performed and reducing repeat service calls.

Challenge: You may not have an automated solution to track industry- and region-specific benchmarks for all maintenance tasks performed at your facilities.

Solution: The average first-time fix rate is approximately 77%, which means 23% of work orders require a follow-up visit. Each additional service call not only adds costs, but may also impact store operations. Bench-marking data from similar facilities within your region can help you determine an appropriate amount to spend on each work order. Likewise, Vixxo’s patented cost management solution ensures that you aren’t overcharged for services.

Vixxo can also support you with expert advice from trade specialists with decades of industry experience. For instance, rather than simply identifying a part that has broken, trade specialists can determine specifically how it broke and provide guidance on how best to solve the issue. This will improve your collaboration with technicians in addressing a unique problem. 

CREATE EFFICIENT MAINTENANCE SCHEDULES WITH ASSET TAGS

Opportunity: Asset tags  give you detailed insight into the maintenance history and part-level performance data of each piece of equipment. This data can inform your maintenance schedules.

Challenge: Tracking equipment history and optimal maintenance scheduling can be complicated without the necessary level of insight and dependable tools.

Solution: Asset tagging technology, which uses unique bar codes to track individual pieces of equipment, can provide the detailed information you need to fully optimize your maintenance schedules.

This technology enables Vixxo to identify, catalog and preserve maintenance protocols on each piece of equipment. Additionally, asset tagging allows you to easily leverage  equipment warranties and service-level agreements.

With quick access to this information, you can improve preventative maintenance schedules and reduce costly reactive maintenance performed at your facility.

GAIN COST SAVINGS THROUGH TRUSTED TECHNICIAN RELATIONSHIPS

Opportunity: Increasing transparency in maintenance spending allows technicians and your company to understand all of the cost involved. This allows your organization to avoid billing disputes that can complicate relationships with facility service providers.

Challenge: Without transparent relationships, billing errors such as overcharges become more prevalent. These can directly impact the bottom line.

Solution: Billing and cost management solutions create transparency in maintenance spending, putting your company and its technicians on the same page and reducing the chances of billing disputes.

You can build greater levels of trust with your technicians by:

  • Tracking performance KPIs
  • Monitoring technician whereabouts in real-time
  • Accessing industry benchmarks for parts pricing and labor costs
  • Tracking equipment warranties and service-level agreements automatically

Ultimately, optimized equipment management gives you peace of mind. To uncover opportunities for your organization's facilities and equipment management program, contact a trusted Vixxo consultant today.