Success Story:
Cedar Management
Cedar Management Improves Billing and Scheduling with GPS Insight.
Company:
Cedar Management
Industry:
Property Management
Location:
Minnesota, USA
Website:
www.cedarmanagement.com
“We needed a better internal system.”
“Scheduling is so much simpler.”
—Kris Knowles
Maintenance Manager
Cedar Management
Highlights
- 20% increase in billing productivity
Company
Cedar Management Inc. is a property management company in Minnesota. The company works with thousands of homeowners, tenants, home association boards, and investors to service townhomes, condominiums, cooperatives, and single-family communities. Currently, the company oversees more than 4,000 units at 75 association properties, 1,100 residential rental units, and 24,000 square feet of office space.
Challenge
Cedar Management needed a better reporting system for its maintenance and financial information. The service management solution it was using had limited capabilities. Managers needed to generate reports showing revenue and billing for the different property owners, as well as work orders that would include information such as location, service request, completion date, technician’s name, and billing amount.
The Solution
After extensive research, Cedar Management chose FieldAware by GPS Insight, a comprehensive cloud-based field service management solution. FieldAware uses modern web and mobile technologies that allow organizations to easily and efficiently manage service requests, scheduling, dispatching, invoicing, and reporting.
The Benefits
The first task was creating a status report to give to property owners on a monthly basis. “FieldAware developed a customized report that was exactly what we needed, with all the information we needed,” Knowles said.
Cedar Management also wanted to determine which of its thousands of units needed maintenance and which ones already had work completed. The data and reporting flexibility allowed them to create reports for each status. This is invaluable information for field technicians and helps Cedar Management keep track of the real-time schedules and maintenance needs for each of their customers.
“What I like about FieldAware is that I can use something in the standard format or make it specific to my needs,” Knowles said.
FieldAware also enabled Cedar Management to simplify its work order process. Previously, managers had to submit requests to the dispatcher, who then sent a work order to a technician. With FieldAware, managers can generate their own work orders that go directly to the technicians. When the job is complete, the technician sends a report back to the manager who can immediately generate an invoice, making for a much quicker, more seamless process. Since the technicians are mobile, they receive and develop work orders on their cell phones. Everything is paperless.
FieldAware is built to work on any platform (iOS, Android or Windows) and on any device, meaning Cedar Management didn’t have to invest in new hardware. The technician has all the data to complete the job on the first visit, and the business gets a signed, ready-to-invoice work order as soon as the task is completed.
“Scheduling is so much simpler,” Knowles said. Work requests come in and FieldAware instantly sends the request to the field.
Increased Productivity
FieldAware has streamlined billing as well. Cedar Management was using two reports for billing but FieldAware allowed them
to combine the reports into one form, with key fields such as job identification, location, technician, service request, work hours, and job revenue. Based on this information, Cedar Management can create detailed reports by job type and revenue, technician hours or other parameters they choose. The result is real-time visibility and more accurate data, which boosts overall efficiency.
“Our productivity has increased by more than 20 percent on billing alone,” Knowles says. “It used to take a couple of hours a day to bill; now it’s the click of a button. It’s very fast.”
One of the other features Knowles appreciates is that FieldAware can be tailored to the company. “Not everyone has the same challenges,” she said.
