Written by Chris Brooks – VistaVu
These are just a few of the reasons why you might be losing critical dollars in business revenue. Field service businesses stand to lose thousands or even millions of dollars a year in some cases due to a lack of communication between their systems and processes. Asset Tracking is the answer.
Through asset tracking, field service businesses can view all of their critical assets in one place. By connecting each asset to your ERP system via IoT sensors, you can automate your processes, enable data-driven decisions and improve your profitability. It’s a no-brainer for businesses who want to continue to scale.
5 Ways Asset Tracking Improves Profitability
1. Improved Asset Maintenance
Equipment is expensive, regardless of the industry you’re in. Whether it’s factory equipment or vehicle rentals, these assets can cost thousands of dollars to replace. Proper and timely maintenance can help protect your assets from disrepair, which can lead to productivity loss, unsafe working conditions and a ding to your cash flow.
Asset tracking enables you to keep track of detailed maintenance requirements. It also assists you with planning, so you can ensure you have the right assets available to keep business moving forward even with a rigorous maintenance schedule.
Through IoT, asset tracking tools can also provide you with maintenance predictions. And through predictive analytics, you’ll receive alerts when your equipment requires maintenance before too much overwork results in a costly repair.
2. Process Automation
Many field service businesses attribute lost revenue to a lack of integrated systems and processes. For example, you may be trying to operate with a siloed back office and field staff, resulting in costly asset data entry errors.
Through asset tracking, your entire asset management process can be automated from dispatch to maintenance, eliminating repetitive work to reduce errors. Plus, automation results in additional time for you and your team to complete higher-value tasks.
3. Asset Loss Prevention
You can’t afford to lose any of your critical assets, whether that’s from theft or simply “misplacing” an asset inside a disparate system. Your profitability depends on it. Losing assets has its consequences:
- Lost sales: Missing assets hinder your ability to serve your customers. For example, it’s possible to lose a project due to not having the right assets for the job. Also, when your team’s time is spent tracking down assets, you don’t have near as much bandwidth to take on additional projects.
- Costly downtime: Lost assets often result in serious downtime that can cost your business. According to an estimate by Aberdeen, downtime costs $260,000 per hour on average. Every minute you spend searching for an asset is profitability lost.
- Underutilization: Not tracking your assets can also lead to you having too many assets that don’t produce revenue for your business. Those assets could be sold to purchase more of the equipment you do need or used to improve productivity.
Asset tracking enables you to track your assets, no matter where they’re located. This means you can see which assets are in use, which ones are still located on-site and even those who have been driven or taken off course.
4. Reduced Employee Safety Concerns
Your employees are the most important assets your company possesses. They must be able to safely carry out their responsibilities, so your business can remain productive and profitable. Asset tracking can help improve their safety as they complete their work in many ways.
For example, asset tracking improves maintenance, which ensures your equipment is kept in safe working condition. Proper maintenance can prevent serious injury and even death. Plus, depending on the type of IIoT, you may be able to run the equipment remotely, eliminating the need to put your workers in hazardous situations.
5. Improved Strategic Decision-Making
Asset tracking can also help you scale your business by improving strategic decision-making. For example, it’s easy to see which assets are being used most often to then determine what you need to invest in next.
Do you have assets going back and forth between different branches or offices? Asset tracking can also help you manage which branches need certain assets at specific times. As a result, you can make the most of their use.
Real-time data resulting from asset tracking can help you reduce the assets required for a project, improving efficiency and reducing overhead costs. Asset tracking simplifies labor force management and asset utilization to increase the profitability of each job and your company as a whole.
