In this three part series we ask you to consider, What are the top key performance indicators (KPI’s) for your industry? Are you using KPI’s to manage your business successfully? Do you track, report, and utilize this data regularly to improve your field services or construction business? In this segment, we’ll look at Field Services and Construction KPI’s you should consider.

You’re probably living the same current reality as a lot of field services or construction businesses in 2020. You’ve been impacted by a global pandemic; it might look like slowing down, frequent starts and stops, lay-offs, and shifts in the How and What that have long been a focus. You might be in a position to redefine or re-invent some aspects of your business. McKinsey and Co. recently noted redeploying talent, improving productivity, and shifting operations as three of five recommendations for reinventing your organization, post-Covid. We agree, and have taken on some of those things ourselves here at ZBrains.

If you’re reading, and you’ve already identified and are successfully using data to capture KPI data for business insight, we’d like to present you with a stretch goal as you read through the article. Consider the competitive advantage of your business, the thing that sets you apart from your competitors. 

• What differentiates you? 
• And are you able to measure it today? 
• How would your business change if you could measure and act on your differentiator? 

Perhaps this article can help trigger some ideas for you

If your KPI’s are unknown or underutilized, you might be losing out on opportunities to set you up for a better trajectory in an unstable environment. We recommend this article for examples of some Key Performance Indicators used in field services and construction industries. Firstly, while there are many, many more than listed here, the KPI’s we share are pretty universal for each segment where they’re listed. It may give you ideas about the other data you want to capture. (You may even want to bookmark this article for reference again later.)

Job Costing for both field services and construction is paramount. You definitely want to have visibility to profit margin per job. This is calculated as direct materials plus direct labor, plus applied overhead. (Overhead can include things like hotel, travel, per diem, vendors, subcontractors, etc.)

 

Keep reading for Field Services and Construction KPI’s, and some thoughts about how you can put them into action with Zoho.

 

Field Services Industry KPI’s

Field Services companies dispatching technicians or contractors to customer locations for repair, installation, or maintenance have a specific set of business needs that must match each step of their process. And ensuring excellent communication is a must to give your customers a great experience.

Based on your current systems you may or may not be able to capture much of the data around these daily interactions. Out of the box, Zoho CRM is a system waiting to be customized. With the proper implementation, you are able to capture the essential information you want for your organization.

Here are three KPI’s we believe are among the top to consider for your field services business. 

• Routing Efficiency

Are your techs getting to where they need to be on time? Are your crews wasting time with trips across town? Routing efficiency measurements using geolocation can help you see where lost time can be made up. This is just the start. Productivity gains are had here by matching the right technician to the job, and making sure they have the equipment and parts required. And training needs can be identified based on which of your techs require more time than allowed for specific jobs. 

• Service Level Agreement Compliance 

This KPI reflects the relationship between customer experience and technician efficiencies. Empower your techs while they’re on site with information about the customer account history or service history insights when you give them access via Zoho CRM’s mobile app. 

• Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is related directly to customer loyalty – it can be an indicator of repeat business likelihood, new customer referrals, and lifetime customer value. 

If you’re looking to get even more mileage with system integrations for field services or construction, we recommend taking a look at Field Tech. From quoting, scheduling, and job costing to invoice, expense, and equipment tracking — and more — Field Tech will connect your field service operation and optimize your workforce. 

 

Construction Industry KPI’s

Beyond standard financials, profit and productivity should be top of mind for most construction companies. When it comes to what other KPI’s you track in your organization, we recommend three primary areas to focus: quality, performance, and safety. There are multiple metrics that fall under each of these categories, and you should select those most relevant to your operations and business goals.

• Change Orders

Tracking change order metrics can show you schedule impacts, and give insight for root cause evaluation. Consequently affecting customer satisfaction rates, this metric can show you how too many changes negatively influences the project budget.

• Performance Overall  

Many performance metrics can relate to productivity as well, including: equipment downtime, resource capacity, on-time completion. Most any measurement of time will be an indicator of performance. How are you tracking performance for construction projects?

• Number of Accidents or Reportable Accidents

A rise in accidents is a reason for you to take immediate notice. Most importantly, safety metrics help you protect workers by knowing if/when additional training may be required. Secondly, you can stay on top of increased healthcare or litigation costs from lack of safety precautions.

Do you have more questions about making Construction KPI’s a bigger part of your operation? We’d love to assist.  Start a conversation with one of our Zoho Certified Consultants. 

 

Why should you care about using Field Services and Construction KPI’s to manage your business?

We’ll leave you with a quick summary of points to keep in mind when you are figuring out which KPI’s to use in your business. For example, which things are most important to you, and can you get your hands on the data for them? Here six key reasons we think you should consider using KPI’s to manage your field services or construction business: 

• KPI’s can offer early identification of issues (lead measures)
• You get visibility to overall company health without a great outlay of executive time
• Reference KPI’s and use them as guidance for decision making and strategy
• High level metrics make it easy to communicate business goals with your environment
• They will help you become familiar with patterns in your organization
• Finally, they can key you focus in on the areas to make performance improvements

 

Why is Zoho a great solution for helping you capture and report the data you need for your business?

This all boils down to financials and time tracking all the seemingly small areas of your business that add up to big results. Currently, you might be paying for a lot of systems, and a change to one can affect the others and require development expenses. Maybe you have to manage multiple vendors, or your teams are working from siloed data. You can more simply run reports and gain visibility to your organization with Zoho’s end-to-end solution. 

Quit struggling to track your KPI’s, and avoid the disparate systems of data that make global reporting cost-prohibitive and time consuming.

 

If you’re taking the next steps to learn more about achieving more by using KPI’s to manage your field services or construction business, contact us any time.

 

---

 

Looking for more about KPI’s? Read about Technology and SaaS or Manufacturing and Distribution.