A trait often seen amongst mechanically-minded employees is that their professional world is almost entirely through the lens of working with something tangible and physical—their hands effect a change in the machine they are working on through the use of a tool they can feel.
No surprise, then, that working in the virtual often feels lacking: a good chunk of the information pathways they are used to: muted by the absence of input. This translates to applications on electronic devices not being particularly enticing in the same way a programmer might not be thrilled about having to fiddle with a radial runout gauge.
Lost time and frayed nerves avoided
For Shepherd to achieve its goal of simplifying processes, increasing efficiency, and reducing errors, this meant two things. The first was creating a user interface and experience that was functional and intuitive. Not something that is going to rile up a field technician eager to get to work, but rather something effortless and straightforward.
The second is equally beneficial to that worker, as well as their manager: the fact that the Shepherd application does work that would otherwise require several apps. For the technician, this means only having to deal with one piece of software. For the manager, it means only financing one piece of software. The lack of integration hurdles and updates out of sync is a boon to them both.
Multiple challenges, one solution
This is probably one of the easiest scenarios with which to illustrate the benefits of full EAM capability. This one application is able, as the title points out, to cover the needs of operations in the field, in the workshop, on the plant floor, and in the rental yard. Meanwhile, many more limited services require the subscriber to source their calendar, timesheet, or health and safety from other providers. Not to mention the operational sectors of field service, CMMS, and rental that Shepherd caters to—a principle of Shepherd’s design that has been there since its first client.
That is also only one implementation. That also means one training session to cover all those aspects. It will depend on a company’s size to determine quite the benefit that this translates to, but implementations can be costly, so one will be cheaper than three. And trainings mean the staff are not out earning money on service orders, so again, one session to train a team of 15 is 30 hours of potential working hours. Compare that to 90 hours if there are three independent apps to get online. Not to mention reaching the go-live date sooner, which hastens the time when a company can start to reap the benefits of choosing Shepherd in the first place.
Configuration: a key step
Just the fact that payroll and calendar are now rolled into one piece of software already makes opting for Shepherd a win for simplicity. Further streamlining is also possible to remove the most distractions and hurdles when using the app. All this is configured in the system permissions.
Here, the experience of the Shepherd implementation team shines particularly brightly. For the newly onboarded customer, the scope of possibilities is still a gray area. Using a business requirements document and their past experiences as inspiration, the Shepherd team can consider similarities in set-up and requirements that they can draw on.
This means they are well-placed to advise on which permissions and roles might be best given, or withdrawn, even if why is not immediately obvious to the customer. The tweaking and tuning of dozens of prior implementations will have highlighted combinations that work particularly well. This is especially true since the more the implementation team sets up ideally before go-live, the less additional work is needed after it.
Better service, lower running costs
With the working principles of faster, less complex configuration, implementation, and training as described above applied, this translates to a lower cost to the customer to get the same outcome sooner. In addition, once live, this also typically means less need for customer support, seeing as more if not all of the set-up process was nailed the first time around.
And the existence of one app in the place of several also results in fewer licencing or subscription fees. In a world where companies seek new and novel ways of adding costs for additional services to a captive audience, Shepherd is actively doing the opposite: the service required is the one implemented and billed, without hidden add-ons once all is up and running.
EAM for NetSuite—a deal-maker
For the SME or specialist outfit looking for a more robust ERP and a class-leading EAM, there really is no other choice than Shepherd for NetSuite. Indeed, the sheer scope of solutions and the near-limitless variations the Shepherd configuration system allows means many new clients chose NetSuite because it makes using Shepherd possible. Whatever your motivation, if this level of service sounds like what you need to grow your business and meet client needs, book a demo and discover what is possible.
