"Field Operations Manager (FOM) is a Material Handling dealership software product designed to help streamline the way materials handling dealers do business, and in particular to help elevate customer service levels to the highest possible standards.

Field Operations Manager includes quick client search, scheduling, job allocation, the ability to differentiate between urgent and standard jobs and powerful reporting functions."

The process for using ADV: FOM has been based around the paper-based systems used in most material handlers workshops today. The system is best simplified into a two step process:

Step 1: Repair Order (RO) Entry
RO's are initially entered into FOM via the add job screen. Here, useful data is collected about the RO, and stored in the main system database. RO's can be entered as either standard workshop jobs or urgent jobs.



Figure 1: Entering RO information into Field Operations Manager
Please note that some information has been edited for privacy reasons.

Workshop Controllers, or other nominated personnel, can then allocate jobs to technicians, enter the repair orders attached to the job, allocate RO's and add any other information that may be required. The job status and any updated information is changed in the add/change job screen.

Jobs can be added days, weeks, months or even years in advance eliminating the need to manually diarise service jobs. At any time the user is able to view future dates which enables better utilisation of time and technicians.

Step 2: Ongoing Field Operations Management
As the workday progresses, Workshop Controllers can start, stop, reallocate and reschedule jobs as required. All urgent jobs are displayed in red at the top of the screen for easy visual access. If a job is In Progress it will display the repair order in green. Once jobs are completed they are marked In Office and the line appears black and drops to the bottom of the screen.

Figure 2: Ongoing Field Operations Management

Please note that some information has been edited for privacy reasons.

Field Operations Manager has reporting options as well as quick client search, RO search, rego search, the ability to filter jobs via technicians, controllers, job status or client and a quick sort order function on all columns.

Please contact us for more detailed information or on on-site demo.

AutoDealerVision ® : Field Operations Manager has been written in Microsoft Visual C Sharp .NET, utilizing the latest in Visual Studio capabilities. It has been designed to run on Windows XP, and Vista, as well as server technologies (Windows 2003 Server) for Terminal Services applications. Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 is required.

For data storage, FOM uses Microsoft SQL Server 2005. FOM offers DMS integration to several packages including CFS/DealerPro (via MySQL), Reynolds & Reynolds ERA2 and EBS. DMS integration is not a requirement, however, and the system can function normally without any interaction with a DMS system. This also gives FOM the ability to perform in full capacity when connectivity to the DMS is unavailable.

FOM employs a client/server model, and it is possible to configure FOM to view information in remote locations simultaneously, if suitable network connectivity and means of authentication is provided.