Why being a smaller field service business is now your distinct advantage

There has long been a number of reasons why smaller field service businesses have an advantage over larger businesses, but these have been countered by some disadvantages. Here in 2022, there is however one major disadvantage that has been removed (we’ll come to that at the end).

Let’s start by discussing the advantages…

1. Customer-focus can lead to sustainable customer loyalty.
2. Responsive and quick to change to market needs.
3. Lean structure and cost base delivers competitive advantage.
4. Family-like environment for staff creates better service levels.

These are very much still there and many advantages that larger enterprise seek to re-create for themselves (and mostly fail to do).

There was always one disadvantage however, applicable to smaller companies (not necessarily with field operations) and that is the use of advanced information technology.

Software vendors (and here at Solarvista we were no different) targeted software at mid-size and larger enterprise only because the cost per head of revenue generating employee was simply too high for smaller businesses to afford. The reason for this was that the cost of the infrastructure and the manpower/expertise to implement it and keep it running, when spread across a smaller number of users, is quite high. It’s not so much the software itself, but the cost of the databases, operating systems, network hardware, anti-malware systems, etc.

Now, the advent of cloud computing has brought the “unit” cost of computing power down to levels that are actually less than the unit cost for on-premises solutions in larger enterprise. Yes, the cost is actually lower. What’s more, with many cloud solutions (including Solarvista’s own cloud solutions) they are multi-tenanted which means that it’s possible to access a complete system with a low level of user count AND get all the features of a systems usually only available to companies with 50+ users.

With cloud computing, you don’t need to be concerned with any purchase or maintenance of servers, operating systems, databases, malware protection, back-up systems or procure the services of expensive IT engineers. All you need is a PC, laptop and smartphone devices with connections to the internet. Usually, this means a very simply equation to figure out costs:

USERS X SUBSCRIPTION FEE

So, if you have eight employees, and your software-as-a-service fee is £29, the cost is 8 x £29 per month, and for that you get a fully working solution and you haven’t had to buy anything else (except for the devices you use to connect to the internet). In practice, you’ll need some additional services perhaps but often, training is included.

Larger companies could afford many “man days” for implementation (indeed they need it to ensure compliance with their many policies and rules). They could afford dedicated IT departments to setup, operate and maintain the hardware and software. But what we have found they can’t always do (even with all the “extra” resource) is respond quickly. So often, we see turnaround times for IT dept. services as “several weeks” and sometimes “months”.