Field Service (formerly known as Field Service Lightning) is a customizable, mobile-friendly field service hub in Salesforce. It provides tools to manage work orders, scheduling, and a mobile workforce.
Sage Estimating was initially created for the construction industry and many of its current users use it to estimate buildings, but it has adapted quite well for the oil and gas industry. If the user is willing to invest the time and energy to develop and maintain their database, I can see it working for any industry. It is very easy to adjust and adapt the database as estimating methods and project designs change. As an example, our accounting department sometimes changes the way projects are reporting in our accounting software. Because I can go through our 9000 line item database in a couple of days, I am always ahead of the curve and can report my estimates in the format they require.
We've demoed quite a few models, different companies. I know Salesforce has huge backing, but even so they're open to customization and solutions. Some of the competition, keep in mind for my industry, there's not a lot of options out there. We're not your typical Salesforce target market. I mean we're not really selling a lot. I mean, quite honestly, I don't even have a sales department because can't do all of the work that my current customers need me to do. So I don't need to go drum up new business. I just needed it for more of tracking and a work management solution. And in the construction, specifically utility construction, industry, there's not a lot of options, but it definitely was the best option for us.
Real Time Communication with back-office team When our nurses need anything by using mobile app they can reach out to our back office team to resolve their issues
Utilization of resources We can see the all the appointments view with the assigned representative in a single page so We can assign more appointments if any resources has any free slot it is just a drag and drop
It helps us to automate the process like delay or reach notification we can also route the appointments based on representative skill set, location and urgency of task
The program has a fairly antiquated user interface such that someone working in it may not feel like they are working with advanced software.
Sage Estimating has absolutely no remote access capability outside running it in a Citrix/RDP environment so users have to be using a fat/full client vs. any hopes of access on a mobile device.
Our biggest complaint is the optimizer removes jobs from the schedule at times and they are hard to track down and if missed we may not have a tech show up at all for the customer.
Reporting off of Service Appointment history is challenging
Without having a developer adjust your views the amount of available fields can be overwhelming.
As of right now there is not a alternative that seems to offer all of the functionality with a vision of what is needed in the future. It is my belief that ClickSoftware will remain a leader in Mobile Workforce Management for a long time.
Within a week a scheduler can confidently navigate the program and from there they learn more niche tools but from the beginning they can hit the ground running. With different user views available the developers can narrow down what is needed based on your job role which has been invaluable.
Sage's support of Estimating is adequate though frankly we rarely need it. Outside of more complex operations such as upgrades and installation problems the program itself is so straightforward that we do not usually have any "issues" and questions that are more about usability can easily be answered in online forums. We trust Sage's capability to answer these questions if needed but rarely use it.
Having a program that gives sales leaders a real time view was game changing. Time was always an issue because there wasn't always a sales leader available for closing sales. This has allowed for any sales leader to jump in and help make the sale without the need to do a warm transfer.
Overall the training was quite informative but did lack detail in some areas. It had all of the necessary content for an experience product user but didn't offer enough information for a new user to complete the training and then feel comfortable in real-world situations running or managing the software. I would recommend this course for anyone with at least 1 year of full-time exposure to the ClickSchedule product.
I have added a few of the many Salesforce products we use. We also use HubSpot but they all have different functions so not really comparable as they are used for different things/ teams.
