Whether you are a dedicated project manager or project management is one of the many roles you cover, there are some key areas of project management that field service businesses must address.
If you want to constantly improve efficiency in your business, effectively use your resources, and grow your customer base, smart project management is key.
Read on to discover four common pain points in project management as well as why and how to look for a solution.
1. Misunderstanding your workflow
When you don’t have a clear understanding of your workflow, miscommunication between teams or staff members is inevitable. To get a better understanding of how your workflow should operate, map out the key players in your business and their specific role and goals. Match each person or team to their dedicated part in a standard workflow, and you’ll start to get a better idea of how your operations should run or where you may be falling short. You’ll also be able to pinpoint where there may be gaps in communication.
2. Poor budgeting
If you haven’t budgeted your projects properly, you’re at a higher risk of losing track of your cash flow. Track your project budgets by estimating the flow of cash in and out of the business before, during, and after a project is complete. Once budgeting is complete, you’ll also want to make sure you have an established structure for receiving and processing payments to help increase your cash flow.
3. Misallocating labour
You can’t get the most out of the resources you have if you aren’t allocating your labour efficiently. To properly allocate labour, take a careful look at your budget and your talent to get a better understanding of which technicians should work on which projects and for how long. You also want to make sure you have an understanding of project dependencies - those tasks that can’t be started until other tasks are complete.
4. Lack of reporting
Reporting is a key part of project management. Why? When you don’t have reporting tools, you lose vital visibility into project and even business status. Don’t just look at reports as a way of viewing projects that are already complete. Reports are also a way of looking to the future and understanding how you can improve processes to be more efficient the next time around. Additionally, if you keep up with reporting during a project, you can catch potential gaps or errors before a project can fail.
These four project management components are where field service businesses often fall short. To go more in-depth on these pain points and to see a demo of how you can address these pain points in Simpro, watch our webinar - Project Management Solutions in Simpro.
Considering Simpro as the field service management software solution to help you tackle project management? Talk to a business development manager today to learn more.
