5 Mistakes to Avoid While Buying a Scheduling Software for a Landscaping Business
Technology has electronically incorporated nearly every aspect of a landscaping business. With the help of a digital scheduling application, a landscape business can more efficiently deploy field crews or provide regular service visits, which would lead to better customer service. An incorrect scheduling software for landscaping business can destroy the process of the business.
They are also meant for the industry tools available on many sites, such as Planado, for example, with tools for landscapers or lawn care businesses, before any business takes a step back and realizes a few mistakes that are far too often made in choosing the right software.
1. Ignoring Industry-Specific Features
Many landscaping companies are guilty of dumping too much money into off-the-shelf generic scheduling software, not designed for field service companies. Landscaping companies want: unique features such as route optimization, scheduling repeat jobs, scheduling mobile workforces, and GPS tracking.
Lawn software must be able to help with dispatches, scheduling technicians, and notify of changes as required. The office scheduling system would not have been able to do that.
Choosing a scheduling program that does not include the landscaping functions in its program may result in scheduling inefficiencies, a schedule behind, and office or field communications inconsistencies.
A business should ask before purchasing the program whether or not the program will actually fulfill the needs of the field service industry.
2. Overlooking Mobile Accessibility
In most cases, the landscaping crews are on the job site, and many companies have yet to utilize the mobile access to their scheduling application.
Provision of a mobile application for landscape business scheduling applications that allow field technicians to view scheduling information, accept/decline jobs, report work status, and send or receive messages.
If there is no dependable mobile network, then the company could suffer communication problems, which would hinder the efficiency of the administration employees and overburden the technical employees. Technical employees would also have problems accessing routing, scheduling, and customer details.
Within our Planado lawn care solution, we will offer a mobile workforce application. This will allow field staff to communicate with the office managers.
3. Focusing Only on Price Instead of Functionality
Cost is a given when selecting software, but it is equally important not to choose a low-cost solution without having considered operational issues.
Economical scheduling systems may not have any of the functions listed above (GPS, customers, auto dispatch, recurring set up, etc.), and these are provided either as an add-on or through a workaround.
4. Failing to Check GPS and Route Optimization Features
For example, a landscape company with many job sites in various servicing areas. Poor routing can greatly affect gas and technician travel time.
You might also be wrong and buy software that does not have GPS tracking or route optimization. By implementing the Planado system, your company will be able to trace your employees wherever they are at any given time.
GPS-based scheduling is also very useful for dispatchers to identify the closest team to dispatch calls and to optimize the route for the day. It is advantageous to the efficiency and the customer response.
5. Neglecting Customer Management Features
The most important part of this industry is customer relations. Whenever you are doing design or maintenance work on a commercial account, you are establishing a relationship for future contracts. Too many companies do not have the CRM part of the program and only give scheduling.
A good scheduling system should be capable of saving data about the customers, so the technician can have more knowledge about the customer’s history and previous jobs, giving a more consistent service.
Conclusion
The selection of scheduling software for landscaping business is one of the most important decisions for any landscaping company. To avoid these errors by making the wrong decision, like not considering industry-specific features, overlooking the mobile capability, focusing solely on the price, disregarding GPS tracking, and not managing customers.
