Field Automation Maximizes Technician Utilization

By Brian Albright, Field Technologies

Electronics retailer BrandsMart has nearly doubled the number of jobs its service technicians complete per day with automated scheduling and routing.

Consumer electronics retailers have struggled over the past decade, with many large, national chains shutting down or revamping their business models to survive. Florida-based BrandsMart is one of the success stories, thanks to the company’s high-energy, high-volume approach in the competitive discount appliance and electronics market. The company also operates a thriving service business, running roughly 6,500 service and installation jobs each month.

But while the retailer’s inventory is high-tech, its approach to managing service calls was decidedly manual and paper-based. The company used a customized CRM solution that did not provide any automated scheduling or routing. Technicians used paper forms to manage their work orders, which had to be returned at the end of each shift. Parts orders were also handled via paper and often took several days to complete. If the paperwork was lost, it could take several more days before a customer complaint alerted staff to the problem.