ServiceChannel provides facilities managers with a single platform to source, procure, manage, and pay for repair and maintenance services from commercial contractors across their enterprise. The company aims to deliver transparency and data-driven analytics of service quality, across all trades, locations, and contractors, allowing facilities managers drive significant brand equity and ROI for their organizations without outsourcing or investing in new infrastructure. …
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WorkMarket by ADP
Score 8.0 out of 10
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WorkMarket was founded in 2010 and in 2018, was acquired by ADP, a global provider of HR technology and services. With ADP resources, WorkMarket continues to be focused on providing enterprise technology to help companies unlock the power of their extended workforce. WorkMarket is freelance management system (FMS) for hiring, onboarding and managing the extended workforce, including freelancers, contractors and contingent workforces.
ServiceChannel is well suited for companies that have multiple locations or a few very large buildings. In my experience the system allows one person to manage 150 to 200 small retail locations but when you add restaurants and buildings with lots of equipment then it gets more complex and the number of locations that one person can effectively manage is greatly reduced. You can effectively manager 50 or 30,000+ locations with this system if you have the personal. There are several free or cost-effective programs available if you are only looking to manage a dozen or so locations.
If you have an emergency that requires a tech, and you don't have the resources in-house, then it's good to be able to call on these guys. I would never use my affiliation with them as a reason to say "we provide nationwide onsite services" because the techs, in the end, don't answer to you and may not work to your standards. It's definitely a band-aid last-resort, and you should let your clients know if you intend to use them.
ServiceChannel listens to me the user more than any other product I have ever been involved with. It seems like every few months there are some upgrades and improvements to an already great system.
They have some great folks employed who are very accessible and very knowledgeable in this system, they are eager to help out and jump in, and they are never trying to up-sell me during these times.
I believe they have some of the best practices around for helping out new vendors, who have never been exposed to any CMMS system, they help to ease the fear that contractors/vendors have from the onboarding process thru system training.
Offers technicians from a large geographical area (most major cities, many smaller cities, a limited international selection).
Creating competition - Mixed bag with this one depends on your outlook. Are you in favor of finding the person who will work for bottom dollar? I'll leave that aspect for your personal view.
Project Tracking: While I should likely have listed this first and I will say they do a better job than most at this it could use some key upgrades.
1099 filings and fiscal tracking -- They got this much down pat gotta admit.
Sometimes the functionality of the software is slow.
Example...I insert a WO# into the home search box and it comes up with "nothing found". I return to the home screen and repeat the exact same process and it takes me to my WO. This happens at least 50% of the time.
They just finished up with a system upgrade (I think), and during the 3 week period I could not pull mass approved invoices for my AP department. That was a real hindrance.
I am not particularly fond of the new dashboard format. It's not as easy to move around in. However it's new and I'm sure I will get used to it quick enough.
Their mobile platform is not that great. Truthfully, there are some jobs viewable on the mobile under WorkFeed that I cannot apply to because it requires viewing the job from the full website.
If a job has requirements such as uploading GL insurance, background check, or drug test in order to apply for the job, then it should not be viewable at all for the technician who doesn't qualify.
Recently it keeps providing available jobs that are hours away which makes it difficult because when I have to counter, I usually don't get the job because I have to cover the 2-4 hours of driving each way. In short, they need to only list jobs that you are truly qualified to do within the proper distance.
If I could drag that slider to a negative number it would be more accurate. There are several canned responses that all resources receive when contacting WM support that you are assured will leave you feeling crushed, disheartened and even as if you are dealing with a Bot. The responses to posts in the support forum were so egregious that unrelated parties would read the posts and feel compelled to chide the WM support rep for inhuman indifference that sickened them. The support by management to its users is comical at best and nearly criminal at worst. This is justified by their very upfront belief that WM is only software and nothing more. Its some misguided attempt to take a company to a purely 1 and 0 mentality that is backfiring on a massive scale. This will likely become the story of legend in business schools worldwide as its a thinking I have seen no other corporation embody so single mindedly that they refuse to view its carnage in its wake.
It is very easy to set up ServiceChannel but the one thing I believe they could make easier is the vendor portion of ServiceChannel. We get a lot of complaints on how difficult it is for them when trying to get set up.
Service Channel bridged the gap for us to issue work orders directly to vendors. Maximo Asset Management did not have a user-friendly way for us to do what Service Channel does on the vendor side. Also, at the time of our selection, Maximo was missing the site portal but has since developed a solution of their own.
It increased visibility on how much we were spending on HVAC repairs/replacements and allowed us to make changes to reduce costs
Before we were using paper invoices from the vendors, which creates a scenario of losing/missing invoices into AP. Then we start using the Service Channel invoicing and reduce errors to below 1%.
Gives you the capability to add trades and adjust to your needs, so you can get better tracking of specific items.
Positively, we can respond to out of state client emergencies with this service.
We actually don't make that much money on a call, it's negligible, so the ability to call them is really the selling point. It can help get contracts and footholds elsewhere, but it won't by itself generate much income if any.
