Field service management (FSM) is software that sends the right technician to the right address with the right spare part, plans each technician's daily route, and closes each job with a report and an invoice on the technician's phone. Its buyers are companies whose staff work on the road. They include appliance brands, lift companies, telecom tower companies, machine makers and repair firms.
Every job starts as a work order. A work order is the record of one job: the customer, the address, the machine, the fault and the time promised. Later it also records the work done and the parts used. The request may come from a customer's call, logged in customer relationship management (CRM) software. It may also come from the machine itself. A smart home appliance or a lift can report its own fault over the internet.
Take, for example, a water purifier company in Chennai with 40 technicians. On Tuesday morning, it has 260 open jobs: installations, filter changes and repairs. The FSM software assigns each job. It checks four things: whether the technician is trained for that model, whether he is free, how far away he is, and whether the needed part is in his van. Then it puts each technician's jobs in the order that wastes the least time in traffic. One technician gets eight jobs in Velachery and Adyar, in a fixed order.
At the customer's door, the technician opens the job in the FSM app on his phone. The app shows the purifier's service history and the repair steps. Those steps often come from knowledge management for customer service. He replaces a filter membrane, takes a photo and records the part he used. The customer confirms the visit with an OTP. The app creates an invoice for ₹2,350 and sends a payment link. The customer pays through a payment gateway, by UPI or by card.
The data matters after the visit too. The software reports how many jobs were fixed on the first visit. A second visit for the same fault costs the company money and annoys the customer. The part used is deducted from the van's stock, and service parts management plans the refill.
FSM is different from a home-services app. A company uses FSM to plan its own technicians. A home-services app connects customers with independent professionals. Some FSM software also uses data from asset performance management (APM), which predicts when a machine will fail. Then the technician can visit before the machine breaks down.