Industries26 chapters5 h 51 min read
Field Operations
Pest control, lawn care, HVAC, cleaning and delivery look like different businesses, and underneath they run on the same machinery: recurring agreements, territories, schedules with windows, routes optimized against drive time, technicians working offline, regulated materials and licenses, and billing that starts when the work does. This volume is about that machinery and the rules around it, and what each means for the platform that runs it.
It reads in seven parts. How the Work Flows: the business, its customers and properties, and the agreements they sign. Scheduling and Routing: recurring schedules, territories and capacity, booking, route optimization and dispatch. In the Field: the technician's app, proof of service, and fleet and safety. The Rules: regulated materials, licenses and permits, and consumer protection. Selling: door to door, pricing, signing the agreement, and the sales teams behind it. Customers and Billing: communications, self-service, billing recurring service, and collections and retention. Running the Platform: its architecture, the metrics that run the business, and migrating off a legacy system. Reference: a glossary of every term.
How the Work Flows
- 01The Field Operations BusinessHow field businesses make money: four models, route density, branches and regions, a customer's life end to end, and the domains a platform splits into.14 min
- 02Customers, Accounts & PropertiesModeling who a field business serves: accounts, people and properties, household roles, unique primary contacts, validated addresses, merges, alerts and notes.12 min
- 03Service Agreements & PlansWhat a field customer buys: products, plans and add-ons, initial and recurring prices, terms and renewal, service phases, subscription states, and upgrades.12 min
Scheduling and Routing
- 04Recurring SchedulesTurning a service cadence into dated visits: recurrence rules, seasonal intervals, anchors, tolerance windows, the backlog, missed cycles and batch scheduling.14 min
- 05Territories & CapacityWhere work can happen and who can do it: territory polygons, effective-dated zones, shifts, skills, licenses, capacity, and availability rules as data.13 min
- 06Booking AppointmentsBooking a visit across channels: arrival windows, slot search, expiring holds, async requests, self-service limits, reschedules, cancellations and concurrency.13 min
- 07Route OptimizationTurning a day of stops into routes: the VRP with time windows, solvers and routing engines, modeling shifts and skills, pins, locks, stale plans and diagnosis.16 min
- 08Dispatch & the Day of ServiceRunning the day: the dispatcher's role, the dispatch board, locks, same-day changes, weather stand-downs, telematics and ETAs, a live board, and field handoffs.13 min
In the Field
- 09The Technician AppThe app a technician works from all day: offline first, a command queue, conflicts, shift clocks, timers, trainees, printing, devices and online-only flows.15 min
- 10Proof of ServiceWhat a completed visit has to prove and to whom: checkout rules, material records, the service slip, signatures, location, missed visits and timing.13 min
- 11Fleet, Inventory & SafetyThe truck as a workplace: when it's a commercial vehicle, inspections, telematics, hazardous materials on board, truck stock, PPE, SDS and injury reporting.14 min
The Rules
- 12Regulated MaterialsPesticides and other regulated materials: FIFRA and the label, restricted use, application records, snapshots, rates, buffers, sensitivity registries and SDS.17 min
- 13Licenses & PermitsWho may do what, where: business, applicator and solicitor licenses, overlapping jurisdictions, computed compliance, capabilities, supervision and renewals.13 min
- 14Consumer ProtectionConsumer law for home-service agreements: the Cooling-Off Rule, automatic renewal laws, calling hours and consent, CAN-SPAM, and debt collection.13 min
Selling
- 15Door-to-Door SalesSelling field service at the door: seasons, territories split into canvass areas, pins and their signals, knocks and dispositions, passes, do-not-knock lists.15 min
- 16Pricing & Sales RulesPricing recurring service: initial and recurring prices, brochure and floor, rep discounts, rules as data with scopes, guardrails, pilots and contract value.12 min
- 17Signing the AgreementClosing a sale in the field: agreement and contract states, templates by state, e-signature, the rescission date, set and close, payment at the door, handoff.13 min
- 18Sales Teams & CommissionsThe people behind field sales: org hierarchy, seasons and rosters, dealers, recruiting, onboarding, worker classification, housing, commissions and clawbacks.13 min
Customers and Billing
- 19Customer CommunicationsTexts, email and calls to customers: consent by purpose and channel, opt-out keywords, quiet hours, 10DLC and short codes, and reminders you can take back.16 min
- 20Customer Self-ServiceThe customer portal and contact center: one-time-code sign-in, households and roles, staff impersonation, self-scheduling, payment methods and handoffs.12 min
- 21Billing Recurring ServiceBilling visits, not access: billing that starts at the first service, per-visit versus monthly plans, billing days, tax on services, and applying payments.13 min
- 22Collections & RetentionKeeping recurring customers: failed payments, freezing service, bad debt and outside agencies, cancellations, saves, win-back and churn metrics.12 min
Running the Platform
- 23Platform ArchitectureStructuring a field operations platform: domains that own their data, events and projections, shared vocabulary, roles and scopes, audit, addresses and time.15 min
- 24Operating MetricsThe numbers a field operations business runs on: completion, in-window compliance, backlog, route efficiency, sales, retention, revenue and commissions.13 min
- 25Migrating Off a Legacy SystemReplacing a field service system in place: regional cutovers, account states, deterministic IDs, payment token imports, silent data and fix-forward patches.15 min