Mobile Field Service Solution Improves Technician Scheduling

HTS Engineering, headquartered in Toronto with offices throughout the United States, sells HVAC systems and components. In its Ontario operations, HTS employs 65 sales engineers and 20 service technicians who work outside the office, performing routine maintenance work and system start-ups for customers. These technicians process 35,000 work orders every year, and until recently, received those work orders via fax.

The service technicians not only experienced the pressure of performing maintenance correctly in a timely manner, but also felt pressure from HTS' sales engineers to return completed paperwork. "Our company does not have a traditional service department, where calls come in and a technician is dispatched to fix a problem," says Morgan Cowl, service manager at HTS. "Much of our business is starting up systems or performing work under a warranty. Because of this, there is a lot of paperwork and information regarding the project that must be conveyed between technicians and sales engineers. We were constantly hearing, ‘we need the report,' from the sales department." On a job, HTS' service technicians typically need to complete detailed work orders, including what was done and what parts were used. The technicians also fill in warranty parts request forms and system start-up forms. Until recently, all of these forms were filled in manually and faxed back to HTS' Toronto office in batches, based on when the technicians had a chance to complete the paperwork.