There is already a second version of ESC Mobile for Windows Phone 7 with many off the promised new features.

The new features of the Windows Phone 7 app include signature capture, the ability to add and modify equipment, and the ability to modify status change times, and a quick way to bring up directions or change status.

The signature capture is now part of the summary screen. There is a line in the summary that reminds the technician when the customer’s signature has not been captured. The screen shots below show where you enter the signature for capture and the screen you can show to customers to sign.

Signature Capture:

You are also now able to add new equipment from the Equipment screen. The equipment will be added to the ESC database when the dispatch is completed and marked as “Finished.” The screen shots below show the equipment the customer has and the screen you would use to add new equipment.

Add\Download Equipment:

You are also now able to modify the status change time before the status change is sent back to ESC. When you select a new status code you are given the option to edit the time. However, once the status has been changed and sent to ESC, you are not able to change the status. The screen shots below show where and how you can choose to edit the status change time.

Modify Status Change Time:

You also now have the ability to bring up Bing Maps by long tapping on the customer’s address on the dispatch screen. You can also change the status by long tapping on the current status code. These functions also work by using the icons at the bottom of the Dispatch screen, but this provides another easy way to do it.

If you haven’t tried the ESC Mobile app for the Windows Phone 7, you can download it in the Windows Phone 7 app store or through Zune.

Also, if you are of the iPhone or Android persuasion, you can download the ESC Mobile app for those devices in their respective app stores. Get the iPhone app here or the Android app here.

All the apps are free to download and come with a connection to a sample database, so even if you are not an ESC Mobile or even an ESC customer, you can try the apps and see how they will work for you, your technicians, and your business.

Capital budgeting is the process where a business decides if a long-term investment is worth pursuing based on its long-term benefits. These types of capital investments could be in vehicles, buildings, tools, or technological improvements.

Usually, businesses will look at the lifetime cash flows (both in and out) that will be associated with the investments to determine if the returns make sense. For instance, when purchasing a new truck for your business, you may also have to hire a technician to drive it and to go to job sites in it.

The cost of many larger capital investments can be spread out over time through financing. However, for some investments there will be a larger investment up front, but then benefits that continue indefinitely.

Capital budgeting decisions can become a key factor in the long-term profitability of a company. Therefore, owners and managers need to compare the benefits and costs of the various capital investments they can make in their companies. There are many techniques companies can use to determine the long-term value of an investment.

I won’t go into them in too much detail here, but I will list and link to places to learn more:

• Accounting rate of return
• Net present value
• Profitability index
• Internal rate of return
• Modified internal rate of return
• Equivalent annuity

Most of the methods take into account the incremental cash flows or cash savings from the potential investment or project. Using these methods can help you determine if investing in new vehicles, new equipment, new warehouses, or new technology will be a wise investment.

The most important factors to consider are the total costs that will be present, including purchase price, maintenance costs, operational costs, etc. Vehicles for your service company, for instance, are good investments, but there is also the cost of running another vehicle (including maintenance, fuel, and manpower) to consider.

The process you use to budget for your equipment or technology improvements will vary based on what you are thinking of purchasing or accomplishing. However, one of the most important parts of budgeting is determining what you need and how it will help you.

Determine what the capital improvement project will accomplish or what time-consuming task it will replace. Look at the opportunity costs that not having the equipment or technology is costing both in the short and long-term. Then look at the cost of doing nothing both in the short and long-term compared to the total cost of the investment.

Finally, remind yourself why you were considering this capital investment in the first place. What are you trying to accomplish? What pain do you expect it to ease? With the costs and benefits in mind, estimate what kind of return on investment you can expect. Are you assumptions realistic? Will the benefits outweigh the costs by enough?

Thinking through all the costs and benefits of any capital improvement project will let you make the smartest decision for your company. Sometimes inaction is more expensive in the long-term than the investment in the new equipment you’re considering. Keep that cost in mind too when doing capital budgeting.

How do you go about deciding what investments are right for your company?

If you’re a current ESC customer, we would like to invite you to join our other customers on our customer wall. We will feature your company’s logo (linked to your website of course) on our customer wall.

To have your company’s logo and web site link added to our customer wall, email jonathanf [at] desco-soft [dot] com. To help me out, please include “Customer Wall” in the subject line.

Click here if you want to see the customer wall.

Also, if you’d like to have your company featured on our blog, email me at jonathanf [at] desco-soft [dot] com, and put featured company in the subject line.

You can also get the “Powered by ESC” badge to show your customers that you’re serious about customer service and have the business tools to back up your promises. To get the badge go to desco-soft.com/badge and follow the easy steps. You can also get there by clicking on the powered by ESC badge on the left.

More and more field service companies are turning to GPS vehicle tracking to lower vehicle fuel and maintenance costs, protect their assets, and provide better service to their customers.

However, companies thinking using this technology to build their business need to get a grasp on what kind of return on their investment to expect. As with any capital improvement project, you need to know what kind of return on your investment you should expect before investing.

The math for calculating ROI is simple, but determining the realized benefit and total investment cost to getting there is challenging. SageQuest’s ROI guide will help you know where to start, show you what numbers you need to know, and share stories of businesses that have benefited by using GPS vehicle tracking. You can download the guide at sage-quest.com/roiguide or by clicking the link below.

Download the 4 Steps to Understanding ROI for GPS Vehicle Tracking

SageQuest’s guide takes away the guessing game that comes along with deciding if a GPS vehicle tracking system is right for your service business. The guide offers the key information that demonstrates both the potential savings and added values a vehicle GPS system can produce.

The guide includes:

• The 4 easy steps to understanding ROI
• Key ways you can save
• A complete example with real numbers
• A fill-in worksheet to calculate your own ROI
• Examples of customer savings

Download the 4 Steps to Understanding ROI for GPS Vehicle Tracking

SageQuest, an ESC integration partner, provides GPS fleet tracking and management solutions that improve the efficiency and productivity of mobile workforces. Unlike other providers, SageQuest focuses on delivering true business insight and the personal service you need to maximize your potential return. The award-winning product, Mobile Control, provides a comprehensive set of tools and the flexibility to fit the needs of virtually any mobile workforce.

Peer reviews are one of the most sought after pieces of content that people look for when seeking out service software. Honest product reviews are more useful to buyers than any marketing materials, advertisement, or even testimonials.

You can see what other ESC users have written about ESC service software on Capterra. We are proud of what our customers have to say about their experiences with ESC service software.

For those of you that use ESC every day, you know how the software works for your business better than anyone. That’s why we’re inviting you to rate ESC and share your personal experience.

If you are an ESC user, you can submit a review on Capterra to share your personal experience with the service software. It only takes a few minutes to complete, and your feed back will help and educate other service companies as they evaluate the software for their use.

Submit a review on Capterra

Your review will be displayed on dESCO’s Capterra Profile and will help other businesses make good software decisions.

Click Here to Rate ESC or go to http://www.capterra.com/review_new?vendor_id=2000681

Capterra is an organization that helps companies choose the right software for their needs by presenting them with all of their options and making it easy for them to compare solutions.

See the details of each service dispatch.

With ESC Mobile, you get instant access to your ESC service dispatches in the field. ESC Mobile dispatching works with the ESC desktop software to give you instant access to your service dispatches on your Windows Phone 7.

With this app, you have the ability to track and modify the jobs you’re working on, giving office personnel real-time updates. You can try this app with your Window’s Phone 7 even if you do not currently have the ESC desktop software.

With the ESC Mobile, service technicians in the field are able to see all the information pertaining to the dispatches they have been assigned to complete.

ESC Mobile for the Windows Phone 7 works with the latest Version 11 release of ESC Service Software.

Install the Windows Phone 7 app today!

Why get the ESC Mobile on your Windows Phone 7:

• Instantly access critical dispatch and work-order information in the field
• Spend less time calling the office to give and get updates on jobs
• Add dispatch notes, send status updates, and send text message to the instantly back in ESC
• Quickly get detailed customer location information, equipment details, and service agreement information before arriving on site
• See complete service history of all the work previously preformed for the customer, including who did it, when it happened, and how much was charged
• Create new dispatches and customers
• Use the phone’s built in GPS and Bing Maps to get detailed driving directions and maps to the customer’s location
• Captures GPS data and sends it back to ESC so it can be viewed on the dispatch board (MapPoint integration required)
• Use real-time status updates to track time spent traveling to and working on each job
• Attach photos from the phone’s camera to dispatches to create a record of work completed
• View files that are attached to the customer or dispatch (Word, Excel, PDF, text, images)
• Use the phone’s camera to take pictures of completed work and attach them to dispatches
• Build invoices and email them to customers in the field
• Process cash and check payments as well as credit card payments with QuickBooks Merchant Services
• The ability to call or email a customer contact by touching the hyperlink

The ESC Mobile dispatching is a simple and affordable way to outfit your field technicians with real-time job information and time tracking. ESC Mobile is designed to work with ESC Service Software, used by over 5,000 HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Equipment, and other service contractors in the United States and Canada.

Below are several screen shots of the new app:

See the list of upcoming service dispatches

Get maps and driving directions to your customer's locations

Create invoices in the field

Log cash, check, and credit card payments

Process credit cards with Intuit Merchant Services

Get a detailed summary of each dispatch

Install the Windows Phone 7 app today!

Many service business owners know and understand that their business would be more profitable if their technicians were more productive. The problem they run into is that many times they end it there. To increase technician productivity and profit from it, you first have to define what that means before you can go about trying to improve it.

Productivity is the act of producing.

What is it that you want your technicians to produce? What are the top priorities for them to produce? What is the secondary product? What should be left to the end or left out completely? You can only improve the productivity of your service technicians when you know what a productive technician looks like.

Productivity is a measurement.

It measures how much output comes from a given amount of input. For a technicians’ labor, it is usually measured as a ratio of output per labor-hour. More specifically, it could be the number of service calls per working day or the total invoice dollars per working day.

A technicians’ productivity can be measured in any number of ways. It is important to pick one and benchmark it so you can measure your attempts to improve productivity. However, there are weaknesses to various forms of measuring tech productivity.

Know what to measure.

You could measure your technicians’ productivity by the number of service calls they complete in a day. The more service calls a tech finishes in a day could mean more revenue and profit, but it could also mean they are just busy, running from one place to the next. They may not be doing the best job if they’re hurrying to fit the most jobs into a day.

You could also measure it by total invoice amount. But this could lead to techs trying to squeeze extra items onto invoices that may or may not help the customer and may have a very narrow margin. Just because they are able to bring in a lot of money with many large invoices does not mean they are productive. It could be that the revenue is not contributing to the bottom line.

These measures of productivity and others like them can be important, but they are not the primary goal, they are not the end game. Profit is. By making that the measure of productivity, technicians have an objective goal to strive after, one that is clear in its contribution to the company’s well being. The primary measure of a technician’s productivity should be the gross profit they bring into your company. The truly productive technician does good work at all stages and brings in the most profit for the work he performs.

Focus on what’s important.

Making techs more productive means identifying and optimizing the way they perform their core functions. It also means moving or eliminating non-core tasks like filling out paperwork, calling the office to give and get updates, and filing reports. It is important to focus on the key performance indicators but it is most important to only measure the things that are crucial to their performance. Eliminate all the tasks that are not crucial and move the rest so your technicians can focus on contributing to your bottom line by applying their unique knowledge and skills. If they’re spending time on things that are not essential to the job, you end up paying both the cost for them to do the work and the cost of the jobs they don’t have time to complete.

You may not be able to measure the productivity of all your technicians by the same metrics. Different rolls may require different standards of measurement. Also, these measures may change over time as your business strategy evolves.

How do you measure your technician’s productivity?