Mobile Technology Offers Efficiency Opportunities in HVAC Inspections and Checklists
Using recent innovations in mobile to keep HVAC field professionals even more connected
Speed, accuracy, and efficiency are crucial assets in the field. In recent years, the HVAC service industry has been introduced to new technologies that enable field staff to better deliver on these critical performance benchmarks.
“The industry has a history of relying on paper-based processes,” said Jonathan Taub, president of Rimrock Corporation. “HVAC professionals are starting to recognizing the benefits of using mobile apps and back-office platforms to digitize those processes and get the job done faster and more effectively than they've been used to. "
Advantages of mobile apps and advanced CRM platforms include:
Robust data collection: There is a large amount of flexibility on what can be put on digital mobile checklists and inspection forms. Data types on Resco's Mobile CRM platform, for example, range from text boxes to checkboxes, single and multiple-choice questions, lookups, option sets, decimal numbers, whole numbers, numeric ranges, email addresses, URLs, date and time, and HTML strings.
Evidence collection: Mobile apps can enable field technicians to upload images, sounds, or videos to support their inspection issues. Moreover, these photos can be tagged, and artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition can be incorporated to identify parts.
Dynamic Checklists: Mobile apps can be pre-loaded with “smart” checklists that include the data, resources, and information to make data entry easier, more accurate, and more efficient for HVAC technicians.
Prioritized Questions & Automated Answers: It can get busy in the field. To save time, mobile HVAC inspection app forms contain pre-filled answers that can be reused as default answers in future forms to speed up tasks. If a technician needs to go back to a previous version of the form or checklist, they can create versions of the same form and track all their changes.
Questions can also be weighted by assigning a score. This helps HVAC technicians expose irregularities faster and, as a result, obtain a quicker overview of issues that matter to them on their particular job.
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Adaptability: Digital solutions enable checklists and forms to be created in different languages for geographically diverse workforces. As well, users can create and configure their digital forms and reports to suit their specific circumstances with a drag-and-drop designer.
“That's another benefit to going paperless,” said Taub. “Being able to adapt your mobile platform helps staff become more self-sufficient and take ownership of the mobile solutions.”
Benchmarking: Another benefit of using mobile app technologies is that they can collect and analyze on-the-job performance to give users and their employers an idea of the time it takes to complete various forms. This information helps identify how long it takes to perform a job and schedule the daily tasks more efficiently.
Content provided by Fieldboss.
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