How a Bandung Maintenance Company Routed Technicians Better with Odoo Field Service

An equipment-maintenance company in Bandung — servicing and repairing commercial kitchen and refrigeration equipment, eight technicians covering Bandung and surrounding areas — was busy but inefficient in ways that were costing real money. Technicians spent too much of the day in traffic, jobs occasionally got double-booked or forgotten, and the billing never quite matched the parts actually used. The owner knew the operation was leaky but could not see exactly where.

Coordination by phone and paper

Each morning, the operations coordinator assigned jobs by phone and a whiteboard, handing technicians paper job sheets. Technicians drove to jobs, did the work, scribbled notes and parts used on the sheet, and handed the sheets back at the end of the day (or the next day, or whenever). Billing was then reconstructed from these sheets by someone in the office.

The problems compounded. Jobs were assigned without much thought to location, so a technician might do a job in north Bandung, then one in the south, then back north — hours lost to traffic. Paper sheets got lost or were illegible, so some parts used never made it onto an invoice. And the office had no idea, during the day, where technicians were or whether jobs were done — so customer calls asking “when will someone arrive?” were answered with guesses.

What changed

They implemented Odoo Field Service.

Geographic scheduling. Jobs were now scheduled on a calendar with location in mind, batching jobs in the same area so technicians worked a sensible route instead of criss-crossing the city. This alone recovered a meaningful chunk of each day from traffic.

Mobile work orders. Technicians received their day’s jobs on their phones, with details and locations, and recorded time, parts, and notes on-site as they worked. The paper job sheets — and the lost ones — were gone.

Parts drawn from stock. When a technician recorded using a part, it drew from inventory, so stock stayed accurate and, crucially, every part used was now captured against the job and the invoice.

Real-time visibility. The office could see which jobs were in progress, done, or pending, so they could answer customer timing questions accurately and spot a slipping day early.

The result

The company fit more jobs into each day — not by rushing technicians, but by cutting the wasted travel between poorly-sequenced jobs. That extra capacity was real: more billable work from the same eight technicians.

The billing leak closed too. Because parts were recorded on-site and drawn from stock, the forgotten-part problem ended, and invoices finally matched what was actually used. The owner was mildly horrified to learn how many small parts had been quietly going unbilled under the paper system — and pleased to stop the leak.

And the daily visibility removed a layer of stress: the office could finally answer “where is the technician?” with a real answer rather than a phone call and a guess.

Why it worked

The company did not have lazy technicians or a demand problem; it had a coordination-and-recording problem. Travel time was wasted because jobs were not routed thoughtfully, and revenue leaked because work was recorded on paper after the fact. Field Service fixed both by making scheduling location-aware and moving recording onto the device at the point of work.

It is worth noting the technician adoption took a little effort — moving people from familiar paper sheets to recording on a phone needed some training and patience. But once the technicians saw it meant less end-of-day paperwork and clearer schedules, they came around.

If you run field technicians and suspect you are losing time to travel and money to unrecorded parts, those are exactly the leaks field service software closes. We are happy to look at how your field operation runs and show you where the time and money go, in a free one-hour conversation.