Field Service Management Software for Small Business Growth: Your Complete Starter Guide

Even if you’re a small business, field service management software will boost your earnings and market potential. We’ll show you why and how.

Field service management software for small business growth: Your complete starter guide 

When you’re at the head of a small business, there’s a point at which you feel the strain of handling everything yourself. We’re not talking about your service, necessarily — more like the admin, checkups and accounting that help you earn. Too many fledgling business owners are resigned to tackling these responsibilities with paper records or simple spreadsheets. If you’re a field service manager, you might even think this is the norm. But, it isn’t. Not anymore. Customers won’t settle for it. 

The basic truth is that your work and brand reputation will suffer — even in the early days — from manual guidance and updates. Consider every variable that decides whether field service work thrives or fails. Your scheduling must be on point. Work orders need to be created and communicated before questions cause delays. If client requests change or jobs creep in scope, you should be aware of them. And, throughout, you’re always looking to invoice sooner rather than later. Pens and paper just can’t ensure you’re staying on top of these duties quickly enough, with zero mistakes. The effort isn’t worth the stress. 

Conversely, digitization is the key in the ignition to wherever you want to be. It doesn’t matter how big you are; The Bipartisan Policy Center’s 2022 study on burgeoning businesses shows that companies “with a large number of digital tools were significantly more likely to report recent revenue growth” than those with barely any software or none at all. From the start, it makes sense to automate and accelerate tasks that sap attention from the work you love. As you grow, those digital benefits only become more useful.

So, how do you transition affordably? Can you consolidate everything that’s required from field service software (FSM) into one platform? How does the very best FSM software look, feel and function?

You’re about to find a whole new perspective on field service management. First, let’s consider what’s really wrong with the approach you might already be using — and why it’s deceptive.

Why you need the best field service management software

If you’re reading this, we’re guessing you’re already familiar with some of the frustrations that needle your operations every day. However, others may not seem like a problem until we explain why they’re avoidable. Consider, for instance: 

Scheduling Mistakes

Technicians should know where they’re going and how long they can expect to spend on site. Poor, misdirected scheduling may be leaving your employees searching for answers. 

Ideally, you want to give them a favorable route: a list of locations and priorities that can tell them where to be for an optimized workday. Yet, instead, they’re forced to visit head office in the morning — which already demands more travel — for columns of clients on a whiteboard. You might send them texts or emails for mobile updates, but these are unreliable. Can you be sure your workers are reading them? What if they can’t find that information or see it match up? 

Poor scheduling means that you’re wasting hours traveling between sites that could be many miles apart. Equally, your technicians might arrive late or miss an appointment. It costs fuel, time, patience and quality customer service. You can easily fall into bad habits and assume there’s no alternative.

False, unclear project and customer details

Whether they’re scattered, lost or have fallen prey to hieroglyphic handwriting, paper records often do more harm than good to your service business. Your technicians might leave crucial work order notes in the truck. Also, since people write them, they’re prone to error. 

On top of this, you might have to wait for a week or more to invoice the projects you can review and link to unique client billing rates. Then again, you’re relying on 100% certainty (and honesty) about the number of hours your contractors say they’ve been working for, as well as the materials and components they’ve used. Such unreliable, sluggish invoicing makes you less profitable. 

Initially, you might assume that the solution is to double down on administration, organization and training. Yet, even if you’re successful, you’re still spending more effort and cash on massaging the issue rather than preventing it.

Chasing for updates in the field

Whether you’re managing five, 25 or 500 technicians, you always need to know where they are, what they’re doing and if they have the perfect tools for the job. Calls, messages and emails aren’t sufficient. Why? Because you might miss an incoming request or run into trouble trying to reach them yourself. It’s incredibly difficult to focus on other areas of the business if you’re worrying about your contractors on site (i.e., the job is expanding, the customer isn’t happy or the work is unsafe). 

Out of the blue, you or your office staff have caused severe delays by being tied up elsewhere. A competitive field small business should be able to leap into action with real-time communication. Otherwise, more agile companies are going to leave you in the dust. You need to have a platform for dealing with urgent situations and approving changes. 

Each of these concerns circle back to tedious, error-ridden admin and directions. You’re scrambling to retrieve information or validate it. Leaving pen and paper behind is an essential step to operational efficiency, as well as a rapid earning model. 

Field service management software draws all of your data together for an accurate, evolving view of the work that’s due, the details that support it and how much revenue you’re set to bring in. Simultaneously, you’re offloading repetitive tasks to an automated system — a tool that optimizes your scheduling and priorities in seconds. Keen to learn more? 

How can Operix help your field service business grow?

Static pages

Static Content is all the content that is not CMS-based, which means that it is not dynamic (like a Blog Post, for example).

You can easily identify all this content because it's shown as grey in the left sidebar Navigator, and it shows a blue border when you click or hover over it.

If you want to edit this type of content, you can just double click it, and you will be able to directly type right there.

Dynamic Content (CMS)

Dynamic Content is all the content that is dynamic and will be auto-generated based on the content added in the CMS section in the left sidebar (just below Pages icon).

You can easily identify all of this because it's shown as purple in the left sidebar Navigator, and it shows a purple border when you click or hover it.

This content should be updated directly in the CMS section. This is meant to make it very easy for you to update it, as it's very likely it will need to be constantly updated (For example, adding a new blog post)

Also, if you want to edit a complete auto-generated CMS page (for example, a Blog Post), you will find this page available for editing in the bottom of all pages in the Pages section in the left sidebar.

Products (eCommerce)

Products or eCommerce content function in a similar way to the CMS dynamic content, however, this is focused exclusively for eCommerce products.

You can identify eCommerce content in a similar way to the CMS content, because it's also shown as purple in the left sidebar Navigator, as well as with a purple border when you click or hover it.

This content should be updated directly in the eCommerce tab in the left sidebar. This is meant to make it very easy for you to update it, as it's very likely it will need to be constantly updated (For example, changing a product price, or adding more stock)

Also, if you want to edit the autogenerated product eCommerce page, you will find this page available for editing almost at the bottom of all pages just above CMS collection pages.

Useful Notes

Also than the main basic explanation we shared above, here we share a few tips and how-to's which are from the most common questions we receive.

Interactions

If you would like to edit any template Interaction (i.e. removing a appear effect), you can easily identify elements that have interactions as these have a small Interactions icon (a small thunder) in the left sidebar Navigator.

If you click this little Interactions icon, you will open the right sidebar Interactions tab for this element, where you can edit the interaction.=

Mobile or Tablet View

Everytime you make a change (for example, you create a new section design), it's a good practice to go to your Viewport top navigation and see how it looks on Tablet and Mobile.

If you only edit a Template section with updated text or images and you don't erase any Template class, this should not be needed, however, if you customize the template more deeply, edit classes, or create new sections, it's always good to constantly edit your mobile and tablet views to ensure everything is looking perfect.

Editing Meta Title, Desc and Featured Image

If you would like to customize the Title, Description and Image that is shown when you share your website on any place (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc), you can easily go to the Pages section in the left Sidebar, click the little Settings icon of the page you would like to customize, and all these settings will appear.

Please note it's important to change this on page basis.

Backups

If something goes wrong, for example, if you are not liking where the website is going to, if you deleted some critical classes that were required to make the Template look nice, or if you just want to go to a previous version for any reason, you can always go to the Backups section.

You can find it in the Settings section in the left Sidebar, and then you can just see all the automatic or manual backups. Restoring to the old backup is just a click away.

Techbit X Webflow Template Support

As you could see above, Techbit X was built on Webflow using the best practices to make it very easy for you to edit the template and customize it to your needs.

However, if you ever find any issue, need help, or just want to say hi, feel free to send us at email at techbitx@brixtemplates.com — We will be happy to help you.

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On the other hand, if you are looking for help to build an unique and personalized version of Techbit X, or just an amazing website designed & developed from scratch on Webflow, feel free to get in touch with our Webflow Design & Development Agency. The amazing team behind Techbit X Webflow Template can help you.

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