As the saying goes, look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves. There’s some truth in that if you’re in the game of making a profit. That means a lot of the processes will be geared towards maximising that potential. When it comes to procurement, that might mean choosing approved providers for materials, buying in bulk and so on. Everything to make the gap between cost and revenue as wide as possible.
When SOPs costs more than it saves
However, life doesn’t always cooperate and sometimes following the Standard Operating Procedure for a part a technician might need will cost you more. This blog looks at Shepherd’s solution for those unexpected turns, allowing your technician to follow the path of least expense, and all the while, keeping a track of where the money goes for those all-important quarterly financial reports.
Your technician goes to site: could be at a client’s location or one of your own field offices. During the course of the job, they reach for a simple yet crucial O-ring. It’s the last one, and it’s split. O-rings cost cents. Despite this, there’s no doubt a wholesaler your company uses that sells them cheaper if you buy in batches of a thousand. But is driving all the way back to the depot to get a warehouse O-ring a few cents cheaper really the best, most cost-effective, way to solve the situation? Common sense says no.
Common sense says go buy one in the closest place possible, potentially at twice the wholesale price because the time and fuel waste driving there and back again will be many times more. And it is this that Shepherd makes possible with its Mobile App Expense Reporting functionality.
Logging expenses on the go
Using this, a technician can buy the part or parts needed at the local hardware store, using the company card, or their own. They can log the expense, be it on the company buck or their own, and even photograph the receipt, then send it all to Shepherd and NetSuite, where it will be processed in relation to the Service Order they are tending to.
From there, the cost of that O-ring can be passed on to the customer, absorbed by your company, or reimbursed to the technician, depending on how it was bought and how these expenses are handled. But the point is, the expense has knowledge of the machine, the service order, the project, meaning that NetSuite’s GL will know where every cent went. And you, the Shepherd user, will know many more didn’t follow due to a lengthy and wasteful round trip back to the parts department in head office, potentially upsetting a customer in the process with an unexpected, avoidable delay.
Real-world solutions
It’s these, seemingly small, yet practical real-world conveniences that set Shepherd apart, and remind its customers that the services it offers are borne from customer needs, not imagined by developers that don’t need to service machinery in the field, yard, shop, dock or plant. If that sounds like something for you, call for a demo and see for yourself.
