5 Reasons Why Service Tracking Software Is Essential for Your Business

As a business owner, you must know how hard it is to stay on top of all your products. Oftentimes, your duty to your customers doesn’t end at the point of sale. Some products, like those offered by big brand names, also come with their own warranties. You might also offer services attached to those products, like maintenance, repairs, or facilitating replacements. Beyond tracking the volume of product sales, it’s also your job to oversee warranty claims and to determine additional charges for services. Moreover, you are responsible for the staff implementing those services and making sure that they do the tasks in an accurate and timely fashion.

Warranty claims, product maintenance, and product repairs are all important extensions of the customer’s purchasing experience. If your customers aren’t satisfied with the way you and your staff are handling these services, you could lose their trust forever. That’s why it’s good to have a proper system for tracking these services: the system can help you make good on all your aftersales commitments. From product purchase, to warranty claim, to repair or replacement, your customer can still depend on you to fulfill their needs. Retain their trust by adding a service tracking module to your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software suite.

Much has already been said about the value of using ERP software for tracking product sales and inventory. But there are several advantages to service tracking using SAP Business One as well. Your ERP can give you the edge on handling warranty claims, tracking your services, and motivating your service personnel to do their jobs efficiently. Here are five reasons why you should consider investing in service tracking software of your own.

You Get Accurate Data on Warranties, Services, and Repairs Overseen by Your Company

One mistake small-to-medium business owners often make is to judge their situation based on surface-level impressions. That definitely applies to the issues of warranties, services, repairs, replacements, and the like. These business owners may have built an unhealthy reliance on their assumptions. They think that there’s no need for a big system upheaval if the current system for accommodating warranties, repairs, and replacements seems okay and functional.

But how would you be able to say this for your business if you didn’t have the data to back it up? This is where the data analytics capabilities of a service tracking software module will come into play. You’ll get exact, unambiguous data about how many warranties are being claimed, how many service calls are being accommodated, and how long each service takes. If there are problems in the supply chain, with your staff’s efficiency, or with fees, your service tracking software will help you diagnose them. The data generated by the software will be a more accurate gauge for your response, as opposed to guesswork or hearsay.

You Can Improve the Delivery of Your Services

Now that you have accurate data on how these services are doing, you can make the most informed decisions about how to improve them. The data you gather from your ERP’s service tracking software can show which jobs are completed in a satisfactory manner versus which need your attention. You’ll also arrive at a better understanding of which aspect needs the most improvement.

In tracking a service like replacement, you might realize that you and your staff are taking way too long to replace a product. Perhaps the month-long wait that it took the customer can be reduced to two weeks. The service tracking software will help you figure out your areas of improvement, and you can concentrate your efforts there.

You Can Make Your Staff More Efficient at Service Implementation

Another key selling point of service tracking software is how orderly and efficient it will make your staff in their service implementation. Your staff will have a dedicated system for managing service contracts and warranties, as well as their schedules for completing jobs related to these. The service tracking software can log each service call, which days of the week the calls were accommodated, and the corresponding fees. If you put this system into place, you can make your staff better at their work and more accountable to this side of the business. You’ll be rewarded with excellent work from them”and continued patronage from your customers.

You Can Improve Your Turnovers

It’s no secret that services related to warranty claims, maintenance, replacements, and repairs can cause a lot of backlog. You and your staff may be overwhelmed at how many calls you have to accommodate at the same time, without knowing how you can decrease your turnovers. But service tracking software can help you pinpoint how many calls you’re managing and what level of progress you’ve achieved for each. You may find out that you’re biting off more than you can chew, and that you need to prioritize completing certain service-related tasks before others. Your service tracking software may also help you arrive at a reasonable benchmark for completing a service. That, in turn, will keep you from spending too much time on one task and free up time for the next ones.

You Can Get a Better Handle on Your Service Fees

Just like product purchases, there’s money involved in enacting services like warranty claims and repairs. But just how much money are you making from the services, and do you have a good system in place for managing your fees? Every time you and your staff complete a service, you must know for sure how much it will cost and what merits additional fees. Your service tracking software will give you a better handle on how much you’re charging per service and how much you’re actually earning. You can also determine whether you’re charging the right amount for every completed task. Thus, the service tracking software module of your ERP is yet another aspect of it that can help you understand your business’s finances.

Conclusion: How to Leverage Service Tracking Software of Your Own

It’s a good idea to use service tracking software as just one part of a whole ERP suite. An all-in-one system like SAP Business One will allow you to add modules as you please. If you don’t already have a service tracking module on your SAP Business One ERP, you can ask your provider to add it on. Then, you can use it alongside other modules that manage your business’s sales, financials, CRM, inventory, banking, and project management. Your ERP contributes to the full purchasing experience of your customers, from when they buy the product to when they get it checked for warranty.

Data-driven, customer-focused, and highly responsive decision-making are what will keep your business afloat in the digital era. You can harness all three by investing in service tracking software. This is how you can keep your customers’ loyalties, both through your products and through your services.