What is HVAC Asset Management System? (2023 Guide)

Do you struggle to keep track of an asset’s life cycle? Do you know how many times you have serviced or repaired a unit, asset or piece of equipment? Do you know what the last repair or activity on the asset was or what the next service/maintenance activity is due? Do you visit a customer site and find after you have left you have missed 1, 2 or more assets.

With asset management software, you can create a system in your business that ensures you have all the tools needed for an optimal asset management workflow. Bring together what the Technician needs to do on the job, the office in compiling reports and the customer with peace of mind through regular communication/reports, photo’s or quotes/invoices. With an asset management system you can create a business strategy to increase efficiency in your business.

Imagine if you could track your assets from the ease of a mobile app to look up serial numbers or asset history as you need it. Reduce the amount of wasted time in travelling back and forth to the office (or making endless phone calls interrupting the office). When technicians can manage assets from the field you can save time, increase efficiency on the site and deliver a quality service and meet customer SLA agreements.

A big frustration in asset management is organising asset information and data. Having a system that is mostly paper or spreadsheet based may be helpful for some, but with these types of systems comes risks; it is easy to lose or damage paper copies and these systems tend to make it harder to search for information, making it a lot slower than a digital or cloud based system.

When you choose to have a centralised digital system to store your customer and asset information, you gain efficiencies in searching by site, customer address or job.

Asset management reflects positively in other aspects of your business, in having a super organised inventory system you gain clarity over your workflow and costs for major activities you do relating to asset management. Leveraging and up to date inventory system you can keep your costs under control and ensure the customer has transparency on costs along the way.

The greatest benefit to a systemised and automated asset management process if the hours of admin saved and being able to send customers outcomes of testing, defects identified and completed checklists. Your customers can see the audit trail and receive information such as photos, checklists, signatures and work orders to remove any “he said”, “she said” conflict when questioning whether a job has been completed.

When you can keep track of assets and view them against the backdrop of each job, you can ward off chaos in your business, and keep each job on the right path. Success managing this process can mean repeat work, reduced admin, less conflict and increased revenue.

Just imagine how easy it would be, if you could access all your asset data on the one, easy to use platform.

Top 5 Reasons Why HVAC Companies Need an Asset Management System

Without an asset management system, you can lose track of information, miss vital maintenance schedules, have defects go unnoticed or have underperforming assets costing the customer. With a successful asset management system in place across your workflow it becomes much easier.

If asset management is a key part of your HVAC business plan, you want to ensure you have high levels of systemisation to ensure:

• efficient technician utilisation,
• optimise a site visit by the assets and work to be done
• manage costs
• complete checklists
• fast report generation and submission

1. Stop losing valuable asset information down a black hole

Wherever it is that lost paperwork goes when it magically disappears from your desk or the roof of your van, it is no consolation to you if you had all your asset history written on that page. However, with a digital asset management system you can prevent loss through simple mistakes such as lost paperwork.

When you have large amounts of asset data needed on site such as service history, serial numbers, checklists, SWMS and work orders, you can end up carrying a briefcase worth of documents around. With a cloud based system, all your data can be accessible from a tablet or mobile app in the field without the stress that your information will be left on site or damaged.

With an asset management system you reduce the need for a paper based system and hence reduce the chance you will lose vital data/documents.

2. Keep an eye on budget

With asset management systems you have more control over budget. When you have higher visibility of asset history you can ensure each job is within budget and make necessary adjustments before it’s too late.
With access to real time information you can avoid incurring unnecessary trips or delays to keep the job on target and the customer budget maintained.

2. Prevent errors with preventative maintenance

With asset management software you can schedule more efficiently, especially if you have a preventative maintenance contract to manage for a customer. One of the main benefits of an asset tracking system is to monitor the performance of a unit and collect data that is accurate and relevant to your SLAs and reports milestones. When you have a software that can schedule your preventative maintenance and send SMS or email reminders to your customers for planned appointments there is no miscommunication resulting in unnecessary site visits.

Missing a maintenance service can be catastrophic to not only the asset, but also your business. If an unfortunate short out or breakdown of an asset occurs that you haven’t serviced, you may be held liable for the costs and responsible if anyone was to get hurt. A situation like this is avoidable by conducting a regular service maintenance schedule.

In the event an asset does fail, you can show a regular service history as proof that you have done the work you were required to do via signed work orders or photos, so you can’t be held liable for mistakes that weren’t yours and can assist with follow-up with the manufacturer.

When you have technicians complete a service or preventative maintenance check and they discover a fault/defect it can be raised straight away and submit an incident report. Identifying faults quickly means quote for repairs can be raised and approved on the spot and the follow-up job can be booked when parts are available – you have a full view of past, present and future actions for the site and the asset.

When performing preventative maintenance it can be a great time to update your records with service history and part numbers. Hours can easily be wasted down the track when you need a serial number to order a part and you have to drive back to site to find out which model it is, this can be avoided if you have this information captured the last time you were attending to the asset.

3. Keep customers happy

Keep your customers happy and display sone killer customer service skills. In your field service business, you want to train technicians on your procedures so a standard practice of customer engagement is always adhered to; ie greet the customer, announce what you are there to do, how long will you be there and what you may need from them. If these small gestures become part of the job workflow then there is no discrepancies between sites/jobs and the team know exactly how to act. When your team is punctual, informed and have all the tools they need (especially their mobile phone or tablet), your customers will be impressed and feel like they are in great hands.

When a customer calls with an issue about their asset, you don’t want to stumble and hesitate as you can’t remember who they are or what state their asset was in last time it was serviced. By having asset information at the touch of your fingertips you will sound informed about their specific requirements and they will feel confident in your care.
Customers will also love the speed and quality of reporting with an asset management system. When you can closely monitor the life cycle of an asset and deliver reporting in more detail your customers are going to be more informed. Building professionalism and trust in your customer relationships goes hand in hand with generating more work for the business.

When you can expertly deliver on your customer commitments and ensure their equipment is accurately maintained, profitability is right around the corner.

4. Know when assets need to be replaced, before it’s too late…

A HVAC management system can be one of the best tools for knowing when an asset needs to be replaced. Even when you have ninja maintenance skills, an asset will eventually come to the end of its life cycle. The key here is knowing when that asset does need to be sent off to a “better place” and a replacement is due.

Keeping an asset after it should be replaced can cause additional costs for the customer due to loss of efficiency and breakdowns happen more often. Without knowing it, a customer can incur significant costs for breakdown and repairs for many years.

Not only will it cause a hefty bill for your customer, it can also be unsafe to neglect to replace an asset. As with any work done on a customer’s site, there are certain compliance standards for the life of an asset and safety precautions that need to be adhered to. Breaking these agreements and standards can again cause your business to be liable if anything unfortunate were to happen.

When you demonstrate to a customers good visibility about the history of the asset and have data to back up your reasoning for replacement it can make it easier to justify installing a new asset.
When you successfully install new assets you generate more work for yourself and more revenue from your customer over a longer period of time.

5. Assists with managing defects

A problem technicians may face in the field is finding a defect but not having somewhere sensible to track and handle it. A common occurrence in this scenario, is the defect will get lost in paperwork or the technician will forget and it and it never gets resolved. Without an asset management system you are putting yourself at risk and can be liable if the machine has a short fire or breaks down.

When you dispatch technicians to the job site you need to ensure they are equipped with the right tools to address issues like defects so they can report and track it. Asset management software can be the best tool for this job by capturing dates, photos or failed test results so you can report the defect to your customer and seek approval to proceed with repairs.

With the ability to turn a defect into a quote with minimal admin effort, you can ensure defects are addressed immediately and not pushed to the back of your technician’s mind. When you have an audit trail of finding and addressing the defect, you can ensure that on the assets next service, the technician will know exactly what happened with the defect.

Contact FieldInsight Today

With an End-to-end software like FieldInsight, asset management can be a breeze for the office and the technicians in the field. For the best management solution in its class, FieldInsight can provide you with the right tools to succeed in your HVAC or field service business.