Scheduling is an important part of providing professional technical services in any area. As a firm owner or manager, you need to work with your clients, understand their priorities, and provide accurate timelines as you define and assign jobs. You have to know your own team’s availability so you can assign tasks to the right people and schedule resource use. Your team needs access to all the job details so they can do their work efficiently. And, to streamline operations, it’s important to track project status and dependencies and keep organized records of hours, project scope and details, completion dates, and so on.
Let’s take a look at how Teamup can assist different people in technical services with a system that’s streamlined, secure, and efficient.
- Managers and schedulers: Defining and assigning jobs
- Techs and engineers: Doing and documenting work
- Supervisors and operations staff: Managing projects and processes
Teamup for technical services scheduling
Defining and assigning jobs
When a client comes with a project, the first step is defining the jobs to be done. The operations manager or project manager will break down each project and determine who’s best suited to do each job. A big part of this process is knowing updated team availability. The manager needs easily visible and accurate information about which team members are available so they can match each job with a qualified tech. And they can’t pull techs away from jobs that are already on their schedules, or create bottlenecks that will cause delays or issues with other open projects.
Scheduling in this context needs to include all the information that defines each job:
- Who: The team member responsible for doing the job.
- When: The date/time scheduled for the job to be done.
- Where: The location where the work takes place.
- What and How: All other information pertaining to the job, including the scope of the work, equipment needed, specific requests, documents or forms needed, and contact information for others involved with the job.
How Teamup helps managers define jobs
As the manager breaks down a project and defines the jobs, they can easily view other current projects and see team and resource availability. They can switch between calendar views to see the calendar in different perspectives, which helps them make better scheduling decisions. For example, Timeline view or Multi-month view shows long-term timelines and major milestones or deadlines for other projects. Scheduler view shows side-by-side availability; managers can filter to view only qualified techs, then quickly find an available time to match with a job.
Managers can include all the needed information for each job, too, right on the calendar. Event fields are great for capturing the details that are pertinent to every job, such as project lead, site location, and job number. You can add clickable links to any text event field, for quickly opening an online form or spec sheet. The description field is a rich text editor, great for adding detailed notes, instructions, and steps to be done for each particular job. You can also upload files and inline images in the description field. The Attachments field can hold additional files, documents, and images.
Doing and documenting the work
The techs and other team members need all the information to do their job. If it’s already on the calendar, attached to each job on their schedule, they don’t have to go looking for it. Plus, if there’s an update to any part of the job, the manager can simply update the notes or files attached to any job. Everyone accessing the job from the calendar will get the updated version, whether they’re in the office or out in the field.
Documenting is an important part of service work. Techs need to capture notes or images if anything onsite is not as expected. And they need to track progress as they do the work.
How Teamup helps techs do their jobs
On the field or in the office, each tech can access all the information, with any updates, for any job that’s on the schedule.
All the files, forms, links, notes, and documents for any job are right there on the calendar. And, they know who to contact if there are issues or changes. So the techs don’t have to spend valuable time tracking down a contact number or job specification. And the office staff don’t have to waste their time looking up information that the techs should already have.
Techs can use the linked forms to capture information or use event comments to upload their own images and notes as they do the work. If the job site isn’t prepared, for example, they can take a photo and upload it to the time-stamped event comment. Being able to capture everything in the calendar makes it easier for techs to document their work and for others to find that information later, when it’s needed.
Streamlining project management and operations
When you have a well-organized scheduling system for defining jobs and doing the work, you also have a system for streamlined project management, better documentation, and improved client relationships. The benefits extend across multiple departments to improve overall business operations.
For example, the operations team can use the hours and other information tracked on the calendar to analyze efficiency, look for seasonal shifts, schedule maintenance more efficiently, and improve financial accuracy. They can also use completed jobs and projects to inform estimates and streamline planning for new projects.
How Teamup helps teams work together
- Track the status of ongoing projects by checking what’s been done on each job, how work is going compared to project estimates, and scheduling dependencies to prevent conflicts or bottlenecks.
- Attach forms to each job for techs to access and log costs related to a project (such as materials, hours, miles, resource use, etc.), for tracking budget-spend over time and improving estimated costs for future projects.
- Improve client communication with the latest updates and all the details, notes, and comments for any job, easy to find. If there’s a question about the services done, materials used, etc., you can reference the calendar data.
- Check and improve payroll accuracy by comparing logged hours and service notes with payroll data.
- Use prior job data and project details to improve estimates and streamline the bidding process.
- Enable collaboration across teams by allowing them to easily share key information, and improve operations in multiple departments: The sales team can use data from completed projects to schedule follow-ups and increase referrals. They can also set up their own separate calendar, customized with the event fields and information relevant for the sales process.
Teamup is flexible and scaleable, so you can fine-tune it for your business. Ready to streamline scheduling and improve operations? Get started with this guide.
