The Story of the Property Manager, HVAC Contractor and fieldsflow

We all know that harried property manager who has to keep the wheels turning at all costs.  They may have an older facility, a pain-in-the-butt owner who’s scared to spend some money, or they are struggling with setting up new contractor accounts and don’t have the resources to have all the bases covered.
A little of all three confronted F.D. earlier this year.
Tasked with handling an aging facility on the east side of Atlanta, F. found himself in hot water – or rather – hot air a few months ago.  As a result of sloppy PM from the previous manager, the HVAC handling 5,000 square feet of his office space went out.
Dead.
And since the owner had been slow in paying several of his previous HVAC contractors, nobody wanted to come fix it.
F. was up that proverbial creek.
Even worse, the owner was out of the country.
F. had been working the phones for about two hours – in the summer heat – and finally got ahold of an HVAC contractor that would take the job.  Fearing the worst, F. figured he was going to be sacrificing at least part of his Saturday – plus having to pay overtime that was going to really drive the owner crazy.
The contractor had put F. on hold and came back on the line after two minutes.  He had a guy finishing up a residential job and would be there within the hour.
F. was more than a little confused.  “How’d you figure that out?”
“Well, it was simple, I just pulled up where my guys were with fieldsflow and could see right where they were in real time.  Once my team is done, they’ll be over there.  They can take all you info right there on site and handle all the billing.”
When it was all said and done, F. left work that day about 45 minutes later than he normally did.  The problem had simply been a minor electrical issue and the new contractor actually had all the billing information ready to go with the fieldsflow unit right there.
While he was driving home, he reflected that the weekend was going to be a lot more enjoyable that he thought when his morning had started.  Technology was really amazing when it could let managers know exactly what staff was doing no matter where they were in an area.  He wasn’t sure how far reaching management programs like fieldsflow was, but he knew it had saved his butt that day.