Our clients face myriad challenges stabilizing real property and putting it back to productive reuse. Managing field services is not one of them. From maintenance to security, to unique work orders, field services are easily managed using ePropertyPlus and the ePropertyPlus Mobile App. Here is a common use case.

Our client owns 10 vacant lots. The service manager needs to have the grass cut every 3 weeks during a 20-week growing season. She uses ePropertyPlus Services to create, assign, and track these services. First, she sets up a recurring “Grass Cut Service” and assigns the it to her maintenance vendor. The service is set to repeat every 3 weeks. With a recurring service, ePropertyPlus queues up the next service in a cycle until the end of the season or the recurring service is turned off. We call this a “set it and forget it” process.

Here is what happens next:

• The vendor gets an email asking him to start performing the services on the start date.
• The vendor logs into his unique vendor portal with the ePropertyPlus Mobile App and accepts the assignment.
• ePropertyPlus updates the service status from “assigned” to “accepted” and sends the service manager an email letting her know the vendor has accepted the service.

On the appointed start date, the vendor’s team starts cutting grass on the first lot in the queue. The team documents before and after photos with their phones and adds the photos to the service record using the app. As they finish at the first property, they report that property as complete using the Mobile App and move on to the next property. The team does this on each property until all 10 are finished.

As this is happening, the service manager logs in to ePropertyPlus and sees the results being updated on an ongoing basis. She can also use the Mobile App on her mobile device to check the status of the services. This comes in handy when the city manager asks in a meeting “what is going on with the grass cuts on your lots?”

When the vendor finishes all 10 properties, he reports the service as “completed”. The service manager is notified and reviews results at the individual property record, by opening photos uploaded to the service record by the vendor’s team. If the vendor missed something, the service manager can reject the results and send the vendor back out for more work. She can also reassign a service to another vendor or to an internal Staff User. If everything looks good, the Service Manager can accept the Service as completed and close it out.

Now let’s say the organization sells or purchases a property and wants to amend the Service. With the recurring Services feature, the Service Manager can add or remove a property from an active Service during the cycle. When he does, ePropertyPlus will notify the vendor and let her know a new property has been added or an assigned property has been pulled out. Since our Service Manager has assigned 10 properties to the same Service, this is really helpful to make adjustments on the fly.

A Service Provider can also use the ePropertyPlus Mobile App to request permission to perform a service from the field. This is helpful if a vendor is out at a property to perform a service and notices an unrelated problem on the property. The Service Provider can request authorization to address the problem using the mobile app. Since the new service was not part of the original Service, the new service needs to be authorized. The Service Manager can decide to approve the service or, if the service is already under contract to someone else, can decline to authorize, but assign the service to someone else.

As with other aspects of ePropertyPlus, ePropertyPlus Mobile App maximizes the efficient use of time, flexibility in terms of how the organization assigns services and distributed control across the business process. Each person can play their own role while helping the others do their jobs more efficiently and effectively and with transparency and accountability across the whole process. The Services component also shares data to other ePropertyPlus components, such as Property and Analytics. This allows our client to see what is happening with each Property or to create a custom dashboard or report to report on the progress of service activity on a rolling basis.

There is no cost to use ePropertyPlus App and it is available for download from the app store to any authorized ePropertyPlus user. It’s just an example of how we deliver value for our ePropertyPlus subscribers and help them improve their communities efficiently.

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