Service Works
Simplifying Field Service Management

Over 1100 happy clients in 7 years.
Sounds like a dream?

Not many in the business landscape have achieved this feat. In fact, in the last decade alone, the business world has witnessed numerous startups and even set players rise to fame and collapse like stars at the end of their short lifecycles.

But Creve Coeur, MO-based Service Works --a company that has positioned itself to provide simplified and complete solutions for dispatch, inventory, point of sale, accounting, real-time tracking- -has done it with much ease, completing the lifecycle of winning customers to retaining customers through digital transformation.

What’s the secret sauce that got Service Works miles ahead of its competitors?

The goal to empower business owners in the service industry to operate their business smartly with modernization of the platform; a brilliant state of the art unified cloud-based platform; and a team with unwavering dedication to achieving the goal.

The Macrocosm of the Service Network

Service Works was conceptualized in 2013, at a time when business owners in the service industry were rummaging around for a modern platform to operate their businesses smartly. With companies getting their hands dirty by implementing multiple software for different objectives such as scheduling, dispatching, invoicing, and accounting, among others and eventually ending up spending several hours managing the data spread across those siloed systems, a breakthrough system was the quintessential need of the hour. Service Works fit the bill. And the company’s success speaks for itself.

Today, Service Works platform helps a myriad of industries to run complete business operations, such as appliance and HVAC, cleaning services, health and fitness, plumbing, and electrical services, among others. As a one-stop-shop for all, Missouri based Service Works provided and continues to offer a complete field management software that combines many functions into one unified solution. Leveraging Rackspace to create a cloud-based platform that helps field service companies communicate with technicians in the field, electronically manage work orders, order and balance warehouse inventory, and more did the trick. These features increase coordination between the home office, warehouse, and field technicians, saving a company time and money while improving the pace of transactions. These tools increase field service automation to take the manual work out of office tasks like scheduling, dispatching, and skills matching.

The company started as an appliance centric business that brought automation into scheduling, dispatch, and inventory management. Avichal Jain and Suparba Panda, co-founders of Service Works, realized that a similar mechanism was required for all field service operations, be it cleaning, pest control, plumbing, and handyman, and they diversified into different industries and automated many of the everyday chores in field service businesses.

Service Works is a full-fledged enterprise-level software, and it is an end-to-end platform that can suit SMBs to large enterprises

This endeavor of theirs led to the creation of a network of business owners where they can share ideas, strategies, and obstacles in the market. Today, ServiceWorks is the macrocosm of the service network.

Designed for businesses of all sizes, “Service Works is a full-fledged enterprise-level software and it is an end-to-end platform that can suit SMBs to large enterprises,” says Suparba Panda, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Service Works. However, different industries require much customization depending on their respective business operations which they fail to obtain from various software-as-a-service products in the market. Service Works modifies and customizes its software to meet the customers’ requirements. The company also guides clients through the features they need as “Service works is a huge platform, and not every client needs all of the features, and we do not want to overwhelm them,” adds Panda. Once a client has finalized the features according to his/ her requirements, the firm imports the client’s data from their legacy systems to its cloud-based platform, and typically the onboarding process takes from one day to two weeks depending on the size of the organization.

Additionally, Service Works provides exceptional customer service and has seven customer service teams who are all ears to the challenges and hurdles in clients’ businesses. “We offer excellent customer service that is available 24/7, and our representatives bond with the clients and map their businesses onto our software,” states Panda. Moreover, the company has developed its mobile application, which is available for android and iOS devices. The key differentiator is that the mobile app continues to function in offline mode, and it works in weak or spotty connections in the dead zone.

The Platform

Service Works provides seamless accounting capabilities. It also comes with the added advantage of integration with Quickbooks online and desktop to lend businesses that additional support or continuity to take care of complex accounting scenarios. In service works, users can maintain and track all the transactions to set their business in order by following the progress of each process from creation to completion. The values are reflected from the work orders or estimate users generate, and they can list out service items, associate their inventory which comprises of their product or items, allocate prices, additional charges, or their expenses/cost on the job.

Service Works’ inventory module is robust and extensive. It enables users to create multiple inventories in the system, and it could be serialized or non-serialized with ROP and EOQ.

Users can track them by model and serial number, and they can go ahead with barcode scanning. The system maintains and follows purchase orders, PO receipt, resolutions and return, inventory adjustments, inventory locations, manufacturers, brands and distributors, payments.

Service Works also incorporates a tracking tool to scan and update devices while working with firms located in remote areas. The communication module enables users to automate processes such as notifying clients about payments and orders. Additionally, it allows users to draft and send estimates from remote locations and share them with employees and clients. Moreover, it includes a GPS tracking solution to map employees’ locations and save routes for future reference.

The platform leverages AI for scheduling jobs to the technicians based on their skill set, proximity to the job location, weather, or traffic conditions. The automation helps to reshuffle jobs based on the availability of business owners on-site or overlapping of technicians’ timings. The dashboard feature reflects and tracks the health of a business by focusing on their jobs, estimates, techs, invoices, sales, and revenue. It includes listings of all customers, jobs, estimates, inventory, and invoices in their respective modules with statuses and filter and action points for a client’s needs. Service Works can create customized reports within 24hrs that clients wish to maintain in their business.

Service Works platform handles payments on and off the field. It supports payment methods by cash, credit, debit, cheque, on the account, and electronic transfer. It also facilitates credit card payments and is integrated with Sphere, Square & Authorized.net.

Experience and Expertise

Service Works has served more than 1100 clients since its foundation. For instance, an Airbnb cleaning company used to get bookings through various channels and tons of different websites. They were investing a lot of time collecting that data, and one employee manually collected it from all the sources in an Excel sheet. The employee further used to sync that data with his calendar and plot the jobs. After the inclusion of Service Works software into their workflow, they were able to easily import the data for all the customers and schedule the duties effectively.

In another scenario, a telecom device installation company was having a hard time performing their accounting as it had to consider different tax codes. They served in various cities, and the sales tax or labor tax varied depending on the point of sale and installation service. Service Works automatically handled the complicated job through its high-end accounting feature, saving a lot of manual work hours for the client.

Going Into the Future

Forging ahead, Service Works is focusing on exploring newer markets globally after having established itself in the US and Canada. The company’s immediate target is to lay its foundation in Australia and New Zealand. “Our main focus is to make all the industries aware of the fact of how Service Works software can simplify their life. We tap into our customer base to make them the face of Service Works as they are the true users of our software, and along with us, they can raise awareness amongst the people in the similar industries,” adds Panda. Service Works has recently upgraded its mobile application, and it is available for download. Additionally, the company regularly takes inputs and feedbacks from customers, and it has already added 44 new features to support diverse industries.