Founded as a technical service company in 1989, Espresso Services works with the specialty coffee industry and commercial espresso equipment. They have factory-trained staff with an extensive parts inventory to serve the upper Midwest. With over 1,000 clients including nationally-recognized names such as Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, Caribou Coffee and McDonald’s, their customers rely on their service.

Challenge

Before implementing FieldAware, Espresso Services relied on in-house systems and paper-based processes, which led to challenges in tracking job history, managing work orders efficiently, and streamlining the billing process. The company wanted a solution that could seamlessly integrate with NetSuite and improve overall operational efficiency – including getting rid of carbon paper.

Espresso Services chose FieldAware, as the transition from manual, paper-based processes to FieldAware simplified operations and let the company adapt a more efficient workflow. The integration with NetSuite also allowed for seamless data management.

“We knew we could take advantage of the functionality of NetSuite and manage our service department through FieldAware,” said Matt Lichtfuss, Espresso Services IT director.

Though there are options in the field service area, they chose FieldAware for many reasons.

“We looked at quite a few different ones, but FieldAware seemed like the best fit for us, and it’s worked well,” said Paul Zibrowski, director of service at Espresso Services.

From paper to digital

FieldAware’s integration with NetSuite allowed Espresso Services to speed up the billing process, reducing the time they had to spend on invoicing, especially at month end. The transition made the entire process simpler for the company.

“We used to use carbon copy paper and do everything by hand,” said Josh Johnson, Espresso Services service manager.

With the introduction of digital, not only did they have to spend less time on processes, but they were also able to increase the amount of information they could share.

“We suddenly had the capability to record a lot more information and provide data to the techs in the field,” Matt said. “I’m also able to pass data back to the sales team to handle the customer scenarios. Unlike before, where we were pretty limited in what we could do and record on the carbon copy. FieldAware really unlocked a lot of possibilities for us to take advantage of relevant data.”

Time savings

Before implementing FieldAware, Espresso Services faced significant challenges with manual invoicing processes, often spending weekends going through paper copies. Since adopting FieldAware, particularly in conjunction with NetSuite, they experienced a positive transition. They were able to streamline the invoicing process, completing it within a day, and eliminating the need for extensive weekend work.

“We used to spend many weekends here going through paper copies and invoicing,” Paul said. “But since we went into FieldAware, it’s been a good transition, where with NetSuite we could just get the invoice up and get it done and complete it within a day. Other than that, we were spending all a lot of weekends here billing, invoicing – especially at the end of the month. It was a big step in the right direction.”

The benefits weren’t just for the office – they extended to the technicians and customers. The most significant advantage for service technicians with FieldAware was gaining instant access to comprehensive job histories. Before, technicians faced challenges onsite when customers referred to prior visits by other technicians, as they had no information about the previous work.

With FieldAware, technicians can now easily retrieve extensive job histories, providing valuable insights into equipment and location details dating back several years. This capability has proven to be highly beneficial for the technicians.

“From the service tech point of view, the biggest benefit was just having instant access to job history,” said Josh. “Before, you’re on site and the customer is like, well, someone was here tech weeks ago. You had no idea what the previous tech did. No idea whatsoever, but now all the techs can pull up a whole job history on equipment and location for going back years…so it’s very helpful.”

Return on investment

By using FieldAware, Espresso Services has seen a positive return on investment.

“It’s all those other hidden costs that come up that revolve around operating your business,” Matt said. “So, even though we look at it as an investment into implementing FieldAware, we’ve seen the return on that investment since implementing.”

FieldAware contributed to time efficiency and labor savings, with even small time reductions per service call resulting in significant overall savings.

“Say we do…800 calls a month and it’s two minutes faster to do that versus for five minutes faster. It does add up very fast in time, efficiency, and labor savings,” said Josh.

Customers, as well as the office and technicians, benefit from FieldAware. Customer satisfaction saw a notable increase due to faster turnaround time for paperwork, and staff satisfaction improved as they could access and record more information.

“With work orders and invoices,” Josh said, “They’re getting them in a faster time frame. There’s a quicker turn around on it. They’re getting a nice printed off report of what was done versus a scratched out, yellowed piece of paper…”

“…Where you can hope you can read the person’s handwriting.” Paul finished.

Visual documentation and communication

FieldAware allowed technicians to take pictures and share them, providing visual documentation of service issues. This improved communication, as well as transparency.

“We’re able to take pictures and send the customer pictures of issues we find when we’re there,” Paul said. “It helps us back up what we’re talking about, so we can show: This is what the issue was.”

FieldAware is also able to bring different people in the company together, so everyone has the same information.

“We’re able to connect the different departments here to be on the same page,” Matt said. “I’m thinking about that from the service and sales perspective. So the sales team for example – if there’s a follow up that’s required for a salesperson in the field, being able to connect to those two and have them talking off of the same information. We’re not trying to hope that the message gets passed along in the correct way. We actually have systems within FieldAware that help us to automate that.”

Even when they’re not performing a service, they use FieldAware to keep track of when people visited sites. This helps document interactions and quality checks, making sure all departments have access to the same information and improving collaboration.

“We have some quality folks that are on the…sales side of things, and they use FieldAware even though we’re not billing the customer, ultimately to keep track of site visits,” Matt said. “[They] use it to say, we showed up…even though they’re not doing a repair, they’re still technically stopping in, and there’s a site visit. Whereas then the service tech can then know there was someone that was just out there – maybe not for a service job, but for more of a sales perspective a quality check-in kind of perspective – so bringing all that on the same page is a big part.”

Keeping customers, staff, and technicians happy is a key priority for the company, and FieldAware has helped contribute to satisfaction and operational efficiency.

“Overall, the staff satisfaction and customer satisfaction…that is a huge component,” Matt said.

“That’s the biggest part…keeping the customers happy, keeping us happy, keeping the techs happy,” said Paul.

“…Not having to buy cases of carbon copy paper,” Josh said.

NetSuite integration

Espresso Services was able to integrate FieldAware with NetSuite, which for them was a definite benefit.

“It just integrates really well for NetSuite with us, and just the billing and invoicing process. That’s the number one reason I would recommend it and it works very well,” Josh said.

Additionally, they chose FieldAware due to its support. The team’s assistance, especially during the reimplementation of the connection with NetSuite, was particularly helpful.

“We’ve always felt like we’ve had support from the FieldAware team,” Matt said. “We’ve been working with you guys for a long time, so of course there’s an element of relationship building. I think that’s a huge part of it is that, you know, getting on the same page, working with the team that knows who we are. It’s just kind of nice to be able to have people that you work with, but you know have your best interest in mind and are trying to continue to improve our use of FieldAware.”

In the process of working with the connection with NetSuite, Espresso Services felt well-supported by the FieldAware team. Despite the significant changes, the transition did not feel overwhelming, thanks to the extensive support.

“I mean…about the reimplementation of the connection with NetSuite,” Matt said. “We felt really supported from the team from start to finish…This is how we’re going to migrate the data, and this is how we’re making those major changes to how we handle our dispatch and billing process. But it didn’t feel like a huge jump because we had a lot of support from the team at FieldAware. The team was awesome, so I just want to give them props for that.”