But it’s also necessary to know how to choose the most suitable tool to keep your equipments, industrial installations and machine tools functional, while offering services combining speed and quality. In addition, how can you convince your technicians to turn to new technologies?

Maintenance Operations Managers are wondering about their ability to offer a quality service, while remaining competitive. How to assign a maintenance operation, while limiting operating costs? How to manage maintenance requests on the same day or when your routes have already started? Which solution to manage last-minute appointment cancellation requests? How to react to the absence of a customer or technician? That’s why route optimization specialists have developed solutions to simplify the management of maintenance operations. Here are top 8 reasons to acquire a planning and maintenance route optimization software to manage your technicians’ activities.

• Facilitate appointment and service operation scheduling ;
• Simplify the assignment of maintenance operations ;
• Stand by your contractual commitments ;
• Limit travel expenses ;
• Keep your customers updated during the process ;
• Monitor your field technicians ;
• Increase the productivity of your teams ;
• Make the data entry of maintenance operations easier.

#1 Facilitate appointment and service operation scheduling

What could be more exhausting for a customer than waiting on the phone for several minutes while you are trying to find a time slot to carry out a maintenance operation?

You can spend several hours trying to manually manage your requests for a maintenance on heating, air conditioning, appliances or computer equipment without ever being able to optimize your routes.

Start by automating the appointment scheduling process with a smart maintenance operation planning. With route optimization solutions, you can lead your customers with a few clicks to the least restrictive appointment dates and time slots in terms of travel costs and driving time.

#2 Simplify the assignment of maintenance operations

Some maintenance operations on machine-tools, industrial installations or telecommunications and energy distribution networks, such as water, gas or electricity, require specific skills. As Operations Managers, you must take into account your technicians’ skills when assigning maintenance operations. However, managing to integrate not only these skills, but also the constraints related to vehicles and customers is a real headache.

To make the assignment of your maintenance operations easier, route optimization solutions have been developed. These solutions help to assign field technicians according to their qualifications and skills. Furthermore, a smart planning makes it possible to integrate all the constraints related to customer opening hours, availability of technicians and duration of visit. As a Maintenance Operations Manager, you no longer need to spend a full day planning tasks. You make your activity easy and save time!

#3 Stand by your contractual commitments

Standing by contractual commitments in terms of deadlines and frequency is one of the main priorities of maintenance companies. To ensure a quality of service, Maintenance Managers must meet commitments to professionals and individuals.

What could be more exhausting for your customers than being forced to stop their production line or not being able to heat their premises due to a maintenance operation or an adjustment not carried out within the time initially planned?

Indeed, a maintenance route optimization software allows technicians to visit customers without any delay thanks to the assignment of feasible routes and limiting unexpected situations that could delay the operation.

#4 Limit travel expenses

Providing a quality of service without impacting operational costs is a real challenge for maintenance specialists. How can you offer maintenance services with a minimum number of vehicles and miles? While fuel costs are still increasing, the use of a maintenance route optimization software is probably one of the best options. These solutions help to limit miles travelled by your technicians and associated costs thanks to an optimal management of capacity and the optimization of vehicles’ occupancy rate.

#5 Keep your customers updated during the process

Are you operating in a competitive environment where providing quality service is essential to your business? Be aware that there are route optimization solutions. They are specially developed to make the management of your customer relationship easier and thus to improve your corporate image.

These tools help you to inform your customers at each step of the process. For example, sending of notifications by email or SMS to confirm a time slot, to remind the time the day before the visit. You can also inform your customer that a technician is on the way.

#6 Monitor your field technicians

With a maintenance route optimization software, managing your technicians has never been easier! A customer wants to cancel a maintenance operation one hour before the technician comes? Do you receive an emergency request because a machine is off? No need to spend energy trying to determine which agent should be assigned to this operation.

Become responsive and limit operational costs related to unexpected situations. Indeed, a few clicks are enough to smartly assign this operation. Your agents’ schedules are updated in real time and available directly on their smartphones. Finally, with a route optimization mobile app you will reconcile your agents or subcontractors with new technologies.

#7 Increase the productivity of your teams

Smart maintenance operation planning, optimization of occupancy rate, integration of traffic or real-time management of emergency requests make it possible to reduce travelled miles and time of technicians.

How does it work? Let’s take the example of the route optimization software AntsRoute. First, its efficient algorithms enable you to integrate all the constraints related to your human and material resources in order to plan optimal routes. This tool provides a navigational aid for your field technicians. They can follow each step of the route. After a first maintenance operation, your technician just needs to let himself be guided until his next operation.

Furthermore, our mobile app AntsDrive informs your technician in real time about the traffic situation to avoid traffic jams. Your technician’s route is automatically updated when a customer is absent, but also when you receive last-minute maintenance operation requests. Indeed, AntsRoute helps you to assign an emergency request to the right technician according to his location, estimated travel time, skills, equipment available or working hours. The objective is to limit travel time and operating costs.

By reducing driving time and the miles travelled by your technicians, you can increase the number of daily maintenance operations carried out by your teams.

#8 Make the data entry of maintenance operations easier

Many technicians continue to carry out their daily routes with a pen in hand. However, manual data collection requires Maintenance Operations Managers to enter all the information reported by technicians into a spreadsheet for hours after each tour.

What solutions to stop wasting hours in data collection and automate the process?

With a route optimization software, data is automatically recorded in the right place. A route optimization solution automates the sending of confirmation after each maintenance operation. Technicians can attach signatures, photos and comments on missing parts, replaced parts or detected failures. Managers can track data in real time and any loss of documents is avoided. You no longer need to spend time and energy to find and classify information about your agents and customers. A maintenance history is available to automate and facilitate the process.