When embarking on digitizing your field operations, why partner with Fieldmaster.ai for this critical journey? When you're evaluating options, you'll find yourself asking these three main questions:
Usually you get SaaS products covering disjoint features but not for your entire business case. Stringing together different products leads to more manual effort and cost leakage.
If you're a bigger firm you could build a development team to take care of the digitization. But this takes months or years of effort, more money than what we charge, and you lose focus from your core business.
Plenty of ERP/ CRM solutions exist that can provide additional customizations on top. This too, is a high cost process with upfront investments and lock-in periods.
COMPARISON TABLE
How closely the system matches your business logic and unique processes
A proven and battle tested platform forms the backbone, with fully tailored interfaces and business logic. We have managed to tailor to nearly 100% of the business needs.
Not at all tailored. You may have to chain together multiple SaaS solutions and still fail to meet your exact requirements.
Fully tailored to your initial specifications.
An existing codebase, on which some level of customizations can be done. In most cases this matches your needs 70-80%, and the remaining are managed through external processes.
Application Components
A full-fledged suite containing mutliple web applications, desktop applications and mobile applications that all work together to meet your exact needs.
Usually only web applications and in some cases, mobile applications. None are tailored to your exact needs.
You have to maintain separate development teams for each type of app component that you need to use.
Usually only desktop software. Although in recent times, some have started offering mobile solutions.
Pricing Model
No one-time setup costs. Monthly payments - only for the modules you need and use. Modules can be removed or added granularly at any time.
No one-time setup costs. Monthly payments. Different tiers may be available with preconfigured features that can't be changed.
Very huge initial costs and high ongoing costs for managing the development team yourself.
Huge initial costs, then a lower amount that's paid annually on ongoing basis.
Contract Period
Flexible. It can be as low as one month, regardless of the amount of customization you need. The reason is that we guarantee results. If the results are lacklustre, there's no reason for you to continue with us.
Can be monthly or annual.
You need to have a larger team of developers initially during the building stage, and then keep a smaller team permanently to maintain the software, manage security patches, etc.
Usually ranging from 1 to 3 years.
Time Taken for Initial Deployment
2 to 8 business days
Immediate sign-up. Time taken for initial configurations can depend on the complexity. It might take just a few days if trained personnel are available.
6-9 months to initial launch. Then it takes 1-2 years to stabilize the software and iron out issues.
A few weeks if there are no customizations. With customizations it could take a further 2-6 months.
Time Taken for Customizations
Add2 hours to a week, depending on complexity-on
Changes are not possible.
The code changes may take anything from 1-6 months. However, the biggest challenge is translating the business requirement specifications into IT specs. Since developers don't know anything about your business, it takes several iterations and significantly longer to arrive to an acceptable stage.
Change requests can take 3-6 months.
Pricing for Customizations
No additional charges. Because of our platform advantage, changes are not as difficult as other options.
Changes are not possible.
Depends on the hours of work. We have seen changes costing anything from thousands to millions of dollars.
A certain number of hours of changes may be included. Anything beyond that is chargeable. We have seen costs ranging from thousands to millions of dollars.
Support Model
Dedicated Project Consultant as a single point of contact available on phone, email and chat during business hours throughout the contract.
No human support in lower tiers. In higher tiers, you can get hold of a human on chat.
You manage your own support.
AMC model.
Other Investments Required
None. We manage our own distributed cloud infrastructure.
In complex enterprise SaaS, you may need to hire and maintain staff who can configure and manage the product.
You have to buy or hire and maintain your own infrastructure.
You have to buy or hire and maintain your infrastructure. You need to have skilled staff to manage both the hardware, software and data.
Data Ownership
Your data is completely owned by you. It can be exported any time, or purged from our servers. You also have the flexibility to host the data at your premises.
Depends on the privacy policy. Several SaaS companies have been caught red-handed using customer data to train their AI models which could lead to leakage of private information given the right prompts. The worst cases have seen SaaS companies outright selling customer data.
Owned by you.
Owned by you.
Your involvement in the setup
We customize, configure and deploy it in a fully Done-For-You mode. Since we started as field service contractors ourselves, we're familiar with most of your base requirements. There's going to be a few consultative sessions where we understand the specifics.
You have to configure and set up everything yourself. This includes figuring out external or manual processes for those parts of the business needs that are not covered by the SaaS product.
You have to develop, configure and set up everything yourself. There are long back-and-forths between the Business and IT teams.
Heavy involvement in finalizing configurations and setup.
Speed & Performance
Extremely fast, because it is built on cloud infrastructure from the best providers in the world. Server capacities scale based on your usage and you have dedicated resources.
Extremely fast, but with non-dedicated resources.
Depends on the infrastructure you use. Using on-premise solutions are usually orders of magnitude slower than cloud ones.
Depends on the infrastructure you use. Using on-premise solutions are usually a magnitude slower than cloud ones.
Offline Capability
Fieldwork applications are capable of working fully offline.
Usually no offline capabilities.
Building offline capabilities significantly adds to your development costs.
Usually no offline capabilities.
Risk of downtime and loss to business
Very low.
Very low.
High risk. A simple hard disk crash could cause several days of work loss. Any data loss can impact your operations and customer service significantly.
High risk. A simple hard disk crash could cause several days of work loss. Any data loss can impact your operations and customer service significantly.
Consultative Approach
We advise on fieldwork processes and best practices that come with 9+ years of experience. This is provided on ongoing basis throughout your contract.
Not available.
Not available.
You can get some level of expert advice in the beginning, but not on ongoing basis.
What else do you need to consider?
Security, updates, and backups are automatically handled by us.
Security and updates are covered. In most cases you may need to manage backups yourself.
Security, updates, and backups have to be managed by you.
Security, updates, and backups have to be managed by you.
