Effective subcontractor management involves efficiently handling everything from choosing and onboarding subcontractors to assigning tasks and monitoring their work until the task is complete.
There are various reasons you may use subcontractors in your business.
It could be that they bring specialised skills that help your businesses handle more complex jobs; allowing you to take on a more diverse range of work and still deliver high-quality results, without extensive in-house resources.
Or maybe your business model does not lend itself to having an in-house service and maintenance team, so you outsource all your customer’s asset and property maintenance requirements to focus on what you do best.
By carefully assessing where subcontractors can fill skill gaps or enhance current capabilities, and considering how you will manage their work, maintain high standards and control costs, you should be able to take on larger projects and boost growth.
A key part of successful subcontractor management is building strong, respectful relationships, supported by open communication and mutual understanding. They will, after all, be representing you while they are working at your customer sites. Your customers expect a seamless experience whether a subcontractor or your own engineers are completing the work.
But how do you gain this vital visibility to manage subcontractors, and what happens if you get it wrong.
When choosing a cloud-based service management solution for your business, consider how effectively it will enable you to manage your subcontractors.
Many off-the-shelf service management software products offer some form of subcontractor management, but it is worth taking the time to fully understand if the software can scale with your operation or give you the peace of mind you need.
Subcontractor management software should save you time and money, so you do not want a system that makes back-office administration harder and less efficient or reduces customer satisfaction and loses you valuable business.
When you allocate a job to a subcontractor, the job is received via their dedicated portal, where they review the job – including all relevant information such as the customer's SLA, full asset history and job details.
Ensuring your subcontractors have visibility of details such as the asset history and SLAs sets them up for success and increases the likelihood of improving your first-time fix rate within the customer’s agreed timeframe.
If the subcontractor cannot meet the customer SLA, for example, they can reject the job, and the system can automatically allocate to the next subcontractor on your preferred supplier list.
Once the job is accepted the subcontractor schedules the work and the customer receives a notification to confirm the visit. The SMS and email notification system enables the customer to rearrange the appointment if it is inconvenient, which is also visible to your back-office team.
The solution will keep the subcontractor, the customer and your back-office team up to date with the job status. It also records the time spent on site to ensure accurate billing according to your subcontractor’s contract.
Once the work is finished, the subcontractor marks the job complete and updates the asset record, along with details of any parts used, via the subcontractor portal. Depending on whether the parts are in warranty or not, customer billing is automatically updated, and your customer is sent the invoice for sign off.
At the end of the month the subcontractor management software will collate all jobs completed per subcontractor and issue a payment certificate for the subcontractor to invoice against. This eliminates a lot of back and forth, cuts down billing administrative errors, and improves your cashflow.
Without a solution that offers a seamless customer experience (CX) as well as a user-friendly subcontractor portal, managing your subcontractors could end up costing you time, money and customers.
To find out more about how the Aeromark cloud-based service and asset management (SAM) solution will enable you manage subcontractors and grow your business, book your demo today.