Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between ServiceAtWork and AssetsAtWork?

ServiceAtWork is designed for managing service warranty and repair Jobs to Technicians and Repair Agents.
AssetsAtWork is designed to manage the dry or wet hire of equipment, people, sub contractors and costs against Jobs. It also includes the tracking and location management of equipment.
We group these applications together under the umbrella of ServiceAtWork, as they share common software modules.

My Technicians use paper and Job cards, I wonder how they'll handle mobile computers?

In most cases, technicians by their very nature are accepting of technology. Particularly when it puts them in control of more information, and makes their job easier.
As company representatives they enjoy the professional image mobile computing portrays, indicating that not only are the products they repair are the best in the business, but the after sales service is the best as well. Whilst older employees can be initially cautious, once trained they quickly adapt and are usually vocal system supporters of the system within a couple of weeks.

We use a large whiteboard to schedule and allocate work, its cheap and everyone knows who to call to find out what's happening?

The whiteboard has long been a standard tool for organizing people and equipment. Whilst it's simple and looks cheap to run, it is easy to overlook the very significant labour cost and effort required to keep it current. Also, as there is usually only one central whiteboard a lot of effort (and phone calls) bottleneck around the board and the scheduler.
ServiceAtWork provides a distributed view of operations, providing information across the business, preventing the bottleneck. This requires less effort to maintain and more people are informed as to how work is progressing.

We allocate equipment and personnel together against a Job. How is this handled?

AssetsAtWork enables resources to be default assigned to a piece of Equipment, such as the driver to a crane. When the crane is scheduled the driver is automatically allocated to the Job as well.

We need to keep track of the work completed on equipment and provide detailed service histories to customers. Can this be done ?

ServiceAtWork comes standard with a broad base of standard reports including Customer and equipment service account histories.

We have our spare parts and equipment barcoded, can ServiceAtWork use these codes?

ServiceAtWork is fully compatible with barcode scanning equipment. Barcodes can be used for a range of identifying purposes from spare parts management through to identify assets.

Can we integrate ServiceAtWork with our existing systems?

ServiceAtWork can be run as standalone or integrated to existing financial, inventory or other systems. In most cases, we recommend clients "keep it simple" and run systems either as standalone prior or with minimal integration to begin with. This speeds implementation and enables the client to learn by doing, rather than hypothesizing about "what if" scenarios.

I understand greater efficiency will improve our business, but how do I build a business case to management?

Most service and operational managers are acutely aware of the information gap and time wastage between customers, internal support and field technicians, but consider this is part of the job. We have available a range of calculation tools which compare current procedures and workflows with "new" ServiceAtWork workflows. These calculations provide a payback period, comparing the current cost of work against the reduced operational costs using ServiceAtWork.

How long will it take to get up and running?

In most cases a system standalone can be up and running in a week or two. If integration components are required, this may take additional weeks. In other words, keep it simple and you'll be running before you can say "That was easy".