Table of contents

Webinar

Watch the Spring 2024 Product Release webinar now to learn more and see demos of all the highlights below!

Highlights

Make smarter spending decisions to get more from your budget

Balancing a tight budget with unpredictable expenses is a major challenge. One large bill can break your budget — and if you don’t use it, you may lose it. With Budget Insights you’ll be able to make confident decisions and avoid overspending by seeing at-a-glance how potential expenses fit into your budget.

• Keep your budget on track: Decide to start work now or wait until later based on how much budget you have left.

• Monitor your spend in real-time: See what’s already incurred and what’s forecasted based on work in progress.

• Take action from anywhere: Quickly review work orders and proposals on mobile to make the right call — and keep your finance team happy.

Try it free for 30 days! Talk to your Account Manager to take advantage of this limited-time offer for subscribers by May 31, 2024. Available in April 2024.

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Make smarter spending decisions to get more from your budget with Budget Insights

See which providers could deliver on your biggest opportunities for better service and lower costs

When you spend as much as 80% of your budget on external providers, the potential to save up to 30% with better vendors is a game-changer. Now in Provider Search, you’ll see a ranking of your cost-saving opportunities along with the best providers available to strengthen your network.*

• Find your weak spots: See exactly how much you could save and improve with upgraded providers, based on unprecedented performance and pricing data from more than 70,000 providers and 180 million work orders on ServiceChannel.

• Identify the best providers: See how much each provider could impact your performance and cost, then view their profile to see how their capabilities and metrics fit your needs.

• Test new providers quickly: Effortlessly invite providers, ensure compliance, assign work, and monitor progress all in one place. With new opportunities every month, you can continuously improve performance.

* Provider Search and network opportunities are available in the U.S. only and will be visible if the Provider Search feature is enabled in your account. Talk to your Customer Success Manager for more information.

Plan your capital investments based on validated asset data

Make proactive decisions about maintaining and replacing your big-ticket equipment with accurate records for total cost of ownership (TCO). With Asset Validation, you can capture any missing information and regularly verify the quality of your asset data across all your locations — and now you can enable your providers to help.

• Maintain an accurate asset register: Capture the service history, condition, and cost insights you need for capital planning to maximize your ROI.

• Get help from your providers: Get asset condition validated in the field with every work order to avoid stagnant data or repeated audits.

• Justify your investments: Proactively replace assets at the end of their useful life to reduce downtime, revenue loss, and unnecessary expenses.

Talk to your Account Manager or Customer Success Manager to learn more about this add-on.

Work order management

Act quickly with the redesigned landing page

Stay on top of your follow-up, with more actionable pointers for what to do next. The new landing page design keeps all existing info, while adding five more issues for you to monitor:

• Work orders with unresolved action required notes

• Unsatisfactory work orders

• Completed pending confirmation work orders

• Rejected invoices

• On hold, rejected, or approved proposals

See how many work orders have unresolved action required notes, and follow up where action is needed. And save three of your favorite QuickView filters, so you can quickly jump to what’s most important to you.

Flag work orders for action required and ensure resolution

Your work orders often need some follow up action from your team or providers. Now when you add notes to work orders and check Action Required, you can track whether those actions are getting resolved. You can filter for unresolved action required notes in the Work Orders list, and you can see how many are unresolved on the redesigned landing page, to quickly identify where your attention is needed.

See just the work order notes added by users

You no longer need to sort through a long list of system-generated notes to see the notes added by users. Now you can filter for user notes on the Work Order Details page to quickly find updates and stay on top of progress.

Keep additional approval codes when changing categories

When editing a work order, proposal, or invoice, you no longer need to manually re-enter additional approval codes when changing the category, because the values are retained.

Filter for invoices faster

The filters on the Invoices page now behave like those on the Work Orders page. You can add multiple filters before clicking Apply, so you can find the invoice you’re looking for faster.

Edit existing RFPs and notify providers of changes

You can now edit requests for proposals (RFPs) after they have been created and submitted. Providers will be notified if changes are made or attachments are added, so that they can generate an updated proposal. You can also see a history of any changes made, including date and time stamps, providing you with an audit trail. With this increased flexibility, you can keep providers updated and avoid miscommunication.

Search and filter by GL codes and additional approval codes

You can now search and filter work orders, proposals, and invoices by a list of additional approval codes and GL codes. With faster searching, you can save time and remain compliant with your budgets, audits, and financial reporting.

See history of invoices related to a work order

You and your providers can now review the history of all invoices associated with a work order. See a list and count of related invoices, the history of all actions taken on them, and detailed information about each. This audit trail increases transparency, saves time, and helps quickly identify any discrepancies.

Reuse invoice numbers from rejected invoices

Administrator-level users can now configure whether invoice numbers from rejected invoices can be reused. When enabled, an invoice number can be reused if it’s not already used on another invoice with a different status. Invoice searches will return all invoices with the same number, showing you the complete history for that number.

Act on multiple proposals for a work order in one place

The ability to review and action multiple proposals related to a single work order in one place, which was introduced in 2023, will now be enabled for all customers.

Get the right parts on order to your providers quickly

When a provider places a work order into Parts on Order status, you can now track whether they have ordered parts in Inventory Manager and see details on the parts to be ordered. Providers can be required to indicate a part number, description, quantity, or image, like a photo of the part or the receipt. You can see this information in Inventory Manager, and you also have the option to take over and order the part for the provider. Ultimately, you can reduce the time spent waiting for parts and resolve work orders faster.

Talk to your Customer Success or Account Manager for more information.

Site Planning for audits and condition assessments

Enforce your brand standards with a new Analytics dashboard for your site audit data

Data from your Site Planning audits is now available in Analytics for easy reporting, condition monitoring, and compliance tracking. Use the new Site Planning standard dashboard in Analytics to access new data and insights across these four tabs: Audit Summary, Audit Details, Report by Checklist Item, and Audit Trends. Now it’s easier to monitor trends, compare the details, and enforce your brand standards.

Speed up site audits with save and edit across web and mobile

Site Planning Audits are now more flexible than ever. You can save an audit without completing all items on the checklist. Additionally, you can now create, edit, and save audits on either desktop or mobile. This way, you can create the audit on mobile while on location, and then return to it on web to add more detail later. You can also search and filter audits on web or mobile by their status: Open, In Progress, or Completed.

Asset management

Track your asset data quality in the asset summary dashboard

The new asset summary dashboard in Asset Manager gives you an overview of your asset portfolio, and a deep dive view into assets at each location. Set corporate standards for asset data validation, track your progress, and identify locations needing updates all in one place, so you can efficiently maintain your asset register over time.

The asset summary dashboard is coming soon to all customers.

Get help from your providers with asset photos and meter readings

With your permission, providers can now view, add, and remove attached photos of assets in the ServiceChannel Provider app, giving you remote visibility into the condition and identity of your assets and helping maintain the accuracy your asset registry.

You can also enable providers to capture asset meter readings on mobile. While servicing an asset on a work order, the provider can view and update the meter reading, so you can adjust your planned maintenance program based on actual usage.

Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Support to enable provider meter readings. 

Standardize your data on asset types and brands

Align your asset types and brands with industry standards, so you can leverage insights and benchmarking on costs and lifetime across your asset portfolio. Standardization also helps with integrating data across systems, like ERP and IoT. Then filter by brand in the assets list to quickly identify all the equipment from a given supplier.

Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Support to enable this feature. 

Streamline uploads with the improved asset template

We’ve streamlined the asset upload process so that it is more efficient and less prone to error. With its improved error handling, the new asset template enables you to spend less time fixing errors and formatting large spreadsheets while improving upload efficiency and data integrity. With an improved asset data upload process, you can spend less time maintaining your asset data while simultaneously building confidence in its quality.

Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Support to enable this feature.

Location dashboards

Show planned maintenance schedules to your location staff

You can now enable location staff to see planned maintenance schedules with description, trade, frequency, and provider information on location dashboards, plus a link to the work order page. This reduces surprises and escalations to corporate FM teams, while helping staff prepare for upcoming maintenance more effectively.

Automatically defer work orders based on your criteria

For new work orders that meet your conditions, now you can automatically override the work order status and add a canned note. For example, you can change the status to deferred and note that work will be assigned later. This gives you more control over spend and speed, while automating the previous manual process.

Limit which work orders are shown for reviews required

To help location staff focus where feedback is needed most, you now have more ways to filter the work orders that appear in the Reviews Required tab on location dashboards. You can exclude work orders based on trade, category, and priority, and status by going to Edit Dashboard Settings. 

Provider experience

Save time for providers completing client profiles

Providers can now spend less time filling out client profiles. Rather than re-entering client details manually, client information is automatically filled for the Dispatch Preferences, Client Contacts, Client Rates, and Banking sections based on the previous entry.

Improved cross-environment work order search for providers

If a technician performs work in both the US and EU ServiceChannel environments, they can now be prompted to switch between these environments when a work order is not found in their current environment using the ServiceChannel Provider app.

Talk to your Customer Success Manager for more information.

Localization

Customizable decimal separators

You and your providers can now choose between the decimal point or decimal comma for displaying numbers, allowing you to work in the format that matches your region.

Recent updates

Check out some recent updates you may have missed, and see all the weekly release notes here.

• Unsubscribe from email alerts. You can click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of email notifications to stop following specific alerts.Top of Form

• Assign providers when action is required. If you select the Action Required checkbox when adding a note to a work order, the assigned provider email address is automatically added as a recipient for the note. Contact your Customer Success Manager to enable this feature.Bottom of Form

• Overall score in site audit reports. The Overall Score column is included in the XLS file when you download audit data from Site Planning.

• Create linked requests in location dashboard. You can click on Create Linked Request to create a linked work order in the View Open Work Orders tab of Dashboard 2.0.