Opening Letter from the Managing Director

Transcription

1 Opening Letter from the Managing Director Our first newsletter for 2014 is an ideal time to reflect on the year that was and look forward to the year that will be. We have been working for over a year now on the release of TSM Due for release by the end of March. This version concentrates on ease of use and performance improvements. Some changes include more detailed mapping functions, major screen changes to Maintenance contracts and equipment to make them easier to use and foreign currency support for MYOB users. We are also very excited on the imminent release of TSM 7 Lite. With over 15 person years of development behind it, TSM 7 represents the future with a fully cloud based or locally installed TSM that will handle the smallest to largest companies with ease. TSM 7 utilises the SQL database providing significant performance and stability improvements. It will also run as a standalone application or in a browser and can run on Windows, Linux, Mac and other platforms. Over the next year, we will add functionality to TSM 7 to match and exceed what is available in TSM 6. We are also excited about our new alliances with partners such as Navman and our soon to be released Xero accounting link with many more to follow throughout the year. See our Future Trends article if you would like to get involved with the Xero release. In preparation for the imminent release of TSM 7, we are revamping our logo, company colours and will have a new website. Stay tuned! We hope you like our new newsletter. I know we have been a bit quiet of late but you can expect to see a significant increase in communication between TSM and our customers moving forward. To Your Success, David Younger Managing Director The Service Manager (TSM) THE SERVICE MANAGER (TSM) Now you can find the hidden profits you don t even know you have

2 TSM Newsletter MARCH 2014 Page 2 WHAT S NEW IN TSM 6.85 Summary of Enhancements Jobs You can now select multiple jobs to print from the Job Centre Check Lists now have an All Default button to set the default value to all displayed questions. Scheduled jobs now display the original time allocation even if you have changed the estimated duration on the job. New Job Site Mapping options 1. Display Site Location 2. Display directions from office 3. Display directions from employee s home 4. Display directions from employee s current location Employees New Employee Map option to display all travel on a nominated date for the selected employee. This is only available with Navman, TomTom or TSM Remote. Purchase Orders New TSM Enterprise option to allow supplier invoices to be partially applied to a previously received PO items. This enables you to apply more than one supplier invoice to a PO receipt, especially if there was a back order or retention involved which will be billed on a separate supplier invoice. Products TSM now supports serialised items in assemblies. Stock Take now has the option to apply either the relative difference in the count to the current on-hand or the actual count. This is very useful if you continue to use stock while you are in the middle of a stock count. Maintenance Contracts Maintenance Contracts module screen layout has been significantly reorganised to make it much easier to manage equipment and schedules. Significant speed improvements in Maintenance Contract Module Invoicing Contract Job Invoices now calculate tax at the line item level, not on the total. This allows you to set different tax rates per line item. General TSM now supports foreign currency transactions (MYOB only) New date filters; Beginning / End of last financial year Across the board speed improvements TSM now supports Navman integration There are many other changes, improvements and additions, which are detailed in full in the readme.txt file. The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. - Bill Gates

3 TSM Newsletter MARCH 2014 Page 3 WHAT IS TSM REMOTE? TSM Remote is our tablet mobility solution giving your techs real time access to jobs, quotes, invoices and stock, time sheets and time planning via your phone / tablet internet connection. Up to date information can be accessed anytime and anywhere improving communications between your techs, back office and customers. Benefits of TSM Remote You and your staff will be more productive TSM Remote mobility solution allows you to focus on getting the job done rather than paperwork. Typical errors in the field are decreased or could be totally eliminated so there is no time wasted on going back and figuring out what went wrong. Professional Your customers expect you to use the latest technology. TSM Remote provides immediate information and you can print out your invoices / jobs in the field if required. Improved Customer Satisfaction When your whole team is connected, it makes it easier to keep your services on schedule, delivering an improved customer experience. Customers can feel confident that they have reviewed the work done and can sign off directly on your TSM Remote tablet. Reduced Communication cost Keep your operating expenses down by reducing the time spent relaying job information over the phone. You can also significantly reduce your back office time deciphering illegible handwriting or chasing the paperwork. Compliance TSM Remote utilises TSM checklists to significantly reduce the time required to cover OH&S and other compliance reporting requirements. Additionally, TSM supports the standard NECA NSW checklists and reports for the electrical industry right out of the box. Features of TSM Remote Electronic Signature and photo capture Real time Customer / price lookup Van Stock Immediate Invoicing and bill payment Real Time update of Information with TSM Office System Send / receive jobs from back office Create jobs in the field Real time job status updates Parts Used Time Sheets Equipment details TSM Remote in the field combined with TSM Field Service Software in your office provides a complete low cost end to end solution from customer phone call to job completion and invoicing and everything in between - It s indeed an essential part of every field worker s kit.

4 TSM Newsletter MARCH 2014 Page 4 RECORDING LABOUR COSTS Costs (to your business) for employee labour can be recorded in TSM to allow you to effectively report on profitability. TSM can then compare the sell price for the work done to the cost of labour to work out if a job was profitable. To set costs, bring up the Employee Maintenance card and fill out the below fields Hourly cost The hourly cost (to your business) for that employee. It is worth noting that if the time is recorded as an overtime labour type, this figure will be multiplied. i.e. double time will take the employee hourly cost and multiply it by two (assuming your labour code is set up correctly). Fixed overhead This is the total of everything else associated with the employee s hourly cost, which wouldn t increase with overtime. For example his vehicle allowance, tool allowance, insurance, etc. Some clients choose to also total up the cost of the rent on the workshop and admin staff salaries and divide this by the number of technicians / worked hours in a year. Fixed overhead is discarded when the employee is working overtime, and the Overtime Overhead is used instead. (It doesn t matter if the employee worked a 40 or a 60 hour week, the repayments on his vehicle for that week are the same) Keep in mind that these figures do not need to be exact. They have no bearing on your payroll. They are solely used to provide a cost figure against job card profitability reports. Without these figures set, reports will show that the technician worked for you for free and unfortunately we know that is not the case. A profitability report can be run through Reports > Job cards > Summary > Profitability Summary Part & Labour which shows the total (sell price to the customer) for labour and the cost (to your business) per job and an overall margin for the job. If you would like to go over any of the above with a TSM Consultant, please send your request to support@theservicemanager.com

5 TSM Newsletter MARCH 2014 Page 5 FUTURE TRENDS XERO ACCOUNTING TSM is excited to announce the imminent release of a Xero Accounting link for TSM 6. Although we have completed programming, and internal testing, we are looking for companies interested in testing out our new Xero accounting link in the real world. You will need to have a test Xero Accounting account that we can link to. We will assist you in setting up a test copy of your live TSM and integrate it with your Xero accounting account and would expect you to put the link through its paces using sample real world transactions and provide us with detailed feedback. Please contact support@theservicemanager. com if you are interested in participating. Photo from idashboards.com DIGITAL DASHBOARDS A digital dashboard is a screen that reads and consolidates TSM data in a single place. It provides in-depth business analysis, while providing a real-time snapshot of productivity, trends and activities and key performance indicators. Typically it includes graphical information in the form of graphs, dials etc and can be used to alert management to critical business metrics. We have been experimenting with a commercial dashboard product called idashboard from Take a moment to look over their web site and familiarise yourself with what a digital dashboard can do. We are considering developing a TSM module using this or similar products and would like to know how much interest there is within our client base for such a solution. We would not only like to know how many of you are interested, but it would help to get a list of the types of metrics you would like to see in the dashboard. Photo from farbox.com.au Please your interest to support@theservicemanager.com

6 TSM Newsletter MARCH 2014 Page 6 DOS AND DONT S OF TRAINING EMPLOYEES TO USE YOUR SOFTWARE Training employees to effectively use your TSM software could be a challenging task for many. There might be employees with certain skills that you re looking for but the only set back is that they don t have the experience in using Field Service Software or have only ever done things manually, handling a lot of paperwork and whiteboard scheduling. Or they might have been using TSM for a long time and have fallen into bad habits or only use a small part of TSM, missing out on the benefits TSM has to offer. Using Field Service Software is supposed to help you eliminate all the unnecessary work and streamline the process but what good would it do if your staff find it difficult to adapt to this software? There are a few tips that you can use to help your employees learn faster and avoid roadblocks and other type of bottlenecks that may affect your business. DOs Do maximise the use of manuals and other hand-outs provided by the software vendor. These are the ones that you might have received during the initial training. If you do not have these, you may ask us to send you another copy that can be downloaded online so it would be a lot easier for you to print multiple copies of the software manual. Or you could work with us to develop training material for you. Do call us and ask to schedule training days for your employees if needed. It s possible to set a training session either at your location or via remote access. You can request to have the agenda designed to suit your specific needs and make sure you don t miss anything so that your issues and concerns will all be covered during the training session(s). Look out for any group training events organised by TSM that you could send new or existing staff to. Appoint a TSM champion in the business. Make sure they are aware of new features in TSM and can guide your internal staff on the best way of using TSM for your business. Take advantage of our TSM Consultants who are available to come into your company, look at how you are using TSM and suggest improvements to how TSM can be used or other parts of TSM you might not be using. Then you can train your staff the right way rather than teaching them bad habits. DON Ts Don t ask your staff to train new employees. You might think that it s an option to have old employees train the new ones but you should also take into consideration that they have jobs to do aside from that and it s not a guarantee that they have a complete understanding on how the software works. It s not a good idea to rely on this because the way that the knowledge is passed might be a bit different from how it was acquired the first time. It s still best to schedule a training session with the software experts. Don t use your live data when you are in the process of training new staff. Have them practice on a test copy to play around with before you let them loose on the real thing. This allows them to experiment and make mistakes without the risk of messing up your live TSM data.

7 TSM Newsletter MARCH 2014 Page 7 TSM CAN SMS EMPLOYEES AND CUSTOMERS You can enable TSM to send out SMS messages to Employees and Customers that have a Mobile number assigned to them within TSM. Once enabled, an SMS button will appear on Job cards, employee and contact profile, and other screens in TSM. From there, you can SMS an Employee about an update to a Job site, or SMS a Customer alerting that a technician is on the way. SMS via TSM can be a quick way to keep you connected to your team no matter where they are. Contact support@theservicemanager.com for more information on setting up SMS in TSM. Take note that there are provider charges that apply.

8 TSM Newsletter MARCH 2014 Page 8 TSM WORD SEARCH Find and circle all the words that are hidden in the grid. The words may be hidden in any direction: horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and forwards and backwards. You will see the solution of this puzzle in our next issue. CONTACT TSM We are here to help you! For any technical support or assistance, please call: Sydney (02) Melbourne (03) Brisbane (07) Perth (08) Or send an to: support@theservicemanager.com For other inquiries or if you are interested to purchase TSM products or services, please call: Sydney (02) Or send an to: sales@theservicemanager.com Don t forget about the TSM User Forum! AUTOMATION BUSINESS EFFICIENCY FUNCTIONALITY INVESTMENT LEVERAGE MANAGEMENT MOBILITY OPTIMISATION PLATFORM PRODUCTIVITY PROFITABILITY SCHEDULING STRATEGIES STREAMLINE TECHNOLOGY With over 170 members, it is a great place to get support or tips on TSM from colleagues in your industry and others. If you have any features that you would like to see in TSM, please post your idea in New Features Suggestions section of the forum. index.php/forum TSM will be releasing a Customer Bulletin every month for you to be updated with the latest news, tips, future trends, promotions, and many others so stay tuned!