How to streamline operations by consolidating your vendors

Are you using multiple staffing companies and service vendors to manage your field service delivery? If so, you could be overspending on labor resources and underperforming with clients. 

But there’s good news. Consolidating your field service labor vendors from many providers down to a few can yield significant benefits. Procurement consulting firm The Hackett Group found that top-performing organizations have consolidated their spending with 78 percent fewer suppliers than their peers.

For example, BullsEye Telecom, a managed telecom services provider, previously worked with 13 service vendors. After consolidating their field service work with Field Nation, they not only reduced costs but also improved customer service.

Here are three ways vendor consolidation can benefit your business. 

1. Reduce labor costs

Using a single service source like Field Nation gives visibility into the actual cost of each work order, as well as the efficiency of the technician on each job. In addition, you can use Field Nation’s MarketSmart™ Insights to access real-time, on-demand, marketplace-wide coverage, and pricing data, as well as historical averages. This gives you the data you need to avoid overpaying for labor.

Most managed service providers can’t offer complete coverage on their own. Instead, they fill gaps in their own staffing by using other third-party vendors. Sometimes the third-party vendors even reach out to additional regional or local resources. All of these parties mark up labor costs, which can eat into your profits. By working with Field Nation, you can connect directly with technicians and avoid “margin stacking.”

According to Jim Bain, National Field Operations Manager at BullsEye Telecom, “Using Field Nation, we’ve reduced our capital that we’d be spending working with these master service companies. And, we improved quality and timeliness for our clients at the same time.” 

2. Reduce management costs

Cutting down on a lengthy list of vendors streamlines the process of selecting which technicians you’ll send on a job. It also helps reduce the amount of time you spend managing your technician resources.

Spreading out your technician resources across several companies costs you time because it’s inefficient. A single platform helps you find the right technicians faster and create lists of trusted technicians that you can count on (we call them Talent Pools.)

“The profiles help us find technicians, then the Talent Pools we use help us bundle skill sets,” Bain added. “Then we do a vetting process before anyone goes out to the site. We do this to get a better feel for the work they do and their experience.”

Forming partnerships that can integrate with your systems and processes will also help save time and money. For example, you can integrate your field service management, accounting, or other systems with the Field Nation platform. This cuts down on data entry and errors, shaves minutes from each work order, and makes it easier for your dispatchers to manage the work.

3. Increase transparency and control

Having a long list of vendor firms is not only time-consuming to manage, but it keeps you from having a clear picture of your field service operations.

Knowing exactly what is going on with your techs is crucial to customer satisfaction. With most vendor companies, you have little control over who is sent on-site and little visibility into what’s happening with that technician when they get there. 

When you consolidate with a single platform and marketplace, you have more clarity into who is going out in the field for you. With Field Nation, you have a direct line to the technician from start to finish so you can communicate with them efficiently and effectively. This helps your business increase quality while also reducing inefficiencies so you can make the best decisions for your on-site workforce. 

“In today’s world of high-speed internet where things change pretty quickly, it benefits us to have interaction with the techs who are going to the site in advance,” Bain said.

Within the Field Nation platform, companies gain real-time insight into what’s happening on a work order. They can view photos, negotiate, and work directly with technicians to solve issues if they arise rather than communicating through a third party. This visibility gives companies more control over their on-site work while building relationships with a roster of trusted technicians they can count on to provide quality service.

Boost your profits with vendor consolidation

Finding new ways to improve your cost structure isn’t easy, but streamlining your vendors is a good place to start. 

If you want a better idea of how much you could save by consolidating vendors, contact our team, or use our free calculator that provides insight into how much your business could save.