5 Top ServiceMax Alternatives for Field Service Businesses

ServiceMax is an asset-centric field service management software (FSM) that’s built on top of Salesforce CRM. It’s used by a wide variety of industrial trade services from medical device manufacturing, to oil and gas, to mining and aviation, and many others. 

For industrial service businesses, the software offers a robust set of cloud-based features including scheduling and dispatching, a field service mobile app, reporting and analytics dashboards, inventory and asset management, workforce management, and more. 

Yet there are certain contexts in which ServiceMax may not be the best software solution for a field service business. For example:

1. Residential Service Businesses: Home service businesses (or hybrid shops with residential and commercial business segments) have different needs than industrial service businesses such as oil and gas or high-tech manufacturing (two of ServiceMax’s stated primary industries). If you run a residential or hybrid shop, you’ll likely benefit more from choosing one of the numerous software options available that have robust, tailored functionality for serving residential customers. 

2. Service Businesses with Trade-Specific Solutions Available: Similarly, there are field service management solutions on the market (including our product, ServiceTitan) that are made specifically for serving a select few trades. For example, our entire platform is built to serve primarily HVAC, electrical, and plumbing businesses (along with a handful of others). If you’re in such an industry, you’re likely to benefit far more from software that’s purpose-built for your type of business—rather than a solution that’s built to cater to a very wide range of service businesses.

Whether you’re looking for a field service software for the first time, or you’re a current ServiceMax user exploring other software solutions, this post will share 5 ServiceMax alternatives to consider.

Top ServiceMax Alternatives

1. ServiceTitan

2. Housecall Pro

3. Jobber

4. FieldEdge

5. Kickserv

First, we’ll discuss some key differences between ServiceMax and our product, ServiceTitan. Then, we’ll share links to in-depth comparison posts that we’ve written on the other 4 ServiceMax competitors.

Want to see how ServiceTitan helps to streamline workflows for field service companies? We specialize in helping HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other trade service businesses grow revenue, work smarter, and keep their businesses on track. Schedule a call to get a free, live, one-on-one walk-through of how our field service management system works.

1. ServiceTitan

Like ServiceMax, ServiceTitan offers a comprehensive set of features for field service companies to run their businesses. This includes essential SaaS features such as:

• Scheduling and Dispatching

• Customer experience

• Customer relationship management (CRM)

• Mobile app (compatible with Android and iOS devices)

• Work orders and Estimates

• Invoicing

• Payment processing 

• QuickBooks accounting integration

• Time tracking

• And more

However, ServiceTitan has robust features for serving both residential and commercial customer segments, and it’s purpose-built to serve HVAC businesses, plumbing businesses, and electrical businesses (among a select few other industries). 

As a result, if your business is a residential or hybrid shop, or you’re in one of the trades we specialize in, we’ll be able to offer you a more tailored solution for your business compared to ServiceMax.

Now, let’s look at some examples of unique features we offer that aren’t available in the same capacity in ServiceMax, as well as some of the ways in which we can better serve these select trade industries and business types. 

Below, we cover:

• Advanced scheduling features that improve efficiency and maximize profitability

• Native Pricebook functionality with unique automations and direct access to top industry supplier catalogs

• Enhanced estimate presentation format designed to increase sales

• Integration with Google Local Services Ads for seamless online booking

• Accounting integrations with Sage Intacct and Viewpoint Vista

• Accessing property data to facilitate sales and business growth

• Easy access to customer call recordings

Advanced Scheduling Features That Improve Efficiency and Maximize Profitability

Virtually every FSM on the market, including ServiceMax, offers some type of scheduling system. But the intuitiveness and efficiency of scheduling varies widely from product to product.

ServiceTitan has a number of unique scheduling features that make it more powerful and intuitive than our competitors. Here we’ll look at two of them: Schedule Assistant and Adjustable Capacity Planning. 

Schedule Assistant

With most FSMs, scheduling a job with a customer requires a tedious back and forth—asking customers for availability, jumping through different screens to view technician schedules and openings, all while trying to account for various factors such as technician skills and route efficiency. This can be a challenging process for even the most experienced CSRs, and let’s face it—CSRs are typically the most junior employees in a service operation. 

ServiceTitan’s Schedule Assistant helps to solve these issues and improve margins by suggesting a date, time, and technician for a given job that minimizes drive time. It can be used directly from the call booking screen, showing CSRs the optimal day and time to schedule jobs based on drive time efficiency, and reducing the amount of time it takes to search for the optimal technician.

You can also use Schedule Assistant from the Dispatch Board, job record, and on recurring service events. Technician skills, zones, and non-job events are factored into Schedule Assistant’s recommendations—so you can have peace of mind that the right technicians will be sent to the right jobs.

Adjustable Capacity Planning

In addition, ServiceTitan has unique functionality called Adjustable Capacity Planning that allows service contractors to define, automate, and implement a capacity planning strategy, which optimizes their schedules for profitability.

Depending on the time of year, many businesses in the service industry choose to increase or decrease their capacity for certain job types. For example, they may increase capacity for maintenance agreement visits during shoulder seasons, or decrease capacity for maintenance visits during peak seasons, reserving more tech availability for emergency service and repair, system replacements, etc. However, while many service business owners want their CSRs to schedule jobs based on these sorts of factors, it’s often difficult for CSRs to execute in practice. 

With ServiceTitan, businesses can set rules within their scheduling settings that allow them to automate the implementation of these strategies—i.e., when CSRs select a certain job type during the booking process, they’ll only see availability based on the strategy you’ve defined. This can have an immense impact on profitability.

Native Pricebook Functionality with Unique Automations and Direct Access to Top Industry Supplier Catalogs

Pricebooks are the backbone of most service businesses. The extent to which your FSM enables you to take control of your pricebook, keep it up-to-date, and have its contents accurately reflected on outgoing estimates and invoices in real time has a massive effect on your ability to stay profitable.

While ServiceMax offers pricebook functionality, it’s unlikely that they offer pricebook features as robust and intuitive as what we offer through ServiceTitan. 

Here is a quick look at some of our pricebook features:

• Pricebook Categories: The ability to organize pricebooks into categories by services, equipment, business units, etc. 

• Granular and Bulk Editing Features: The ability to update individual pricebook items, groups of items, or make pricebook-wide updates as needed.

• Dynamic Pricing: With Dynamic Pricing, you can set rules that automatically update your pricing when material costs or labor rates change.

• Customer-Specific Pricing: The ability to set up rate sheets tailored to individual customers. For example, if you’ve landed a service contract with a chain of restaurants or big-box stores, you can easily create custom rules for pricing and markups for that specific customer. (ServiceMax appears to have something similar to this called Contract Negotiated Pricing.) 

• Pricebook Connect: Pricebook Connect provides the ability to access top industry supplier catalogs and link them directly to your pricebook. For example, as soon as an integrated supplier makes any changes to their prices, product descriptions, and images, you can either be notified, or have the pricebook changes automatically implemented.

In addition, we offer our Pricebook Pro add-on, a series of flat-rate pricebooks built for the top industries we serve (HVAC, electrical, plumbing, etc.). These pricebooks are designed to maximize profitability and are updated on an ongoing basis by industry experts on our team.

Enhanced Estimate Presentation Format Designed to Increase Sales

While ServiceMax offers estimate and pricebook functionality through their mobile app, their estimate features may not be as strategically designed to increase average ticket prices when compared to ServiceTitan. 

For example, ServiceTitan presentation view displays a number of unique features that inform customers and aid in increasing sales, including:

• Product Visuals: Images that show customers the equipment they’re purchasing (pulled directly from their pricebook). 

• Savings Details: Info boxes that display data such as expected energy savings, rebate savings, and membership savings. These are a part of our HVAC pack, which includes a SEER Energy Savings Calculator, a rebates field to incorporate any relevant rebates happening in your area, and an HVAC load calculator. These features demonstrate the type of nuanced feature details that businesses can benefit from by choosing a solution that’s specifically tailored to their trade. 

• Financing Options: The ability to show customers financing options that can be approved instantly by our financing partners.

Based on our analysis of ServiceTitan customer data, our integrated financing has helped users achieve 11% increases in average ticket prices, 17% increases in revenue, and 19% increases in technicians offering financing to customers.

Integration with Google Local Services Ads for Seamless Online Booking

Out of all the marketing channels available to service businesses, Google Local Services Ads is the most useful for two key reasons:

1. It allows you to reach the right people at the right time. Local Services Ads show up only for people in the geographic area that you service, just as they’re experiencing an issue and searching for a service provider.

2. You only pay for actual leads—calls or scheduled appointments. Unlike other online advertising such as Search and Display Ads where you pay for views or clicks, with Local Services Ads, you only pay when a prospective customer actually calls or schedules an appointment with your business. 

With that said, within Local Services Ads, the default option for customers to contact your business is to call you. In today’s market, many customers want the option to book an appointment online without the need to call and speak with a CSR.

With ServiceTitan’s Local Services Ads integration, prospects see another icon that allows them to view your schedule and book an appointment on the spot. 

This functions to satisfy the booking preferences of a wider range of customers and free up CSRs to attend to other important customer support matters.

At present, ServiceMax does not appear to offer this integration, so you won’t be able to offer prospective customers this booking option through Local Services Ads.

Note: ServiceTitan also offers a Web Scheduler that you can install on your website. This provides yet another channel for customers to book appointments online, providing greater customer satisfaction while leveraging automation to reduce call demands on your CSRs. 

Accounting Integration with Sage Intacct and Viewpoint Vista

While ServiceMax offers a QuickBooks accounting integration, they do not appear to offer users the ability to integrate with Sage Intacct or Viewpoint Vista. So, if your business is already using Intacct or Viewpoint Vista for your accounting, you won’t be able to seamlessly integrate with ServiceMax.

In contrast, ServiceTitan offers integrations with both of these accounting services. You can seamlessly sync all of your invoices, payments, and bills directly into your accounting system, keeping your entire enterprise up to date—with no need to switch accounting platforms or suffer from workflow inefficiencies.

In addition, if you use a different accounting system, you can use our CSV export feature to easily keep your data in sync with whichever accounting software you use. 

Accessing Property Data to Facilitate Sales and Business Growth

ServiceMax does not appear to offer their users access to customer property data.

With ServiceTitan, when calls come in, our call booking feature displays relevant property data such as property type, property age, square footage, and more. This allows CSRs to spot upsell opportunities, provide better context to field technicians, and provide better customer support.

Easily Access Customer Call Recordings

From our mobile app, technicians can access customer call recordings and chat histories, allowing them to be fully informed about the issues customers are experiencing, and able to provide the best possible service.

With ServiceTitan, this functionality is included in our base product, whereas ServiceMax does not appear to offer this feature.

Want a Live Walk-Through of ServiceTitan’s All-In-One Platform?

The features we’ve discussed throughout this section are just some of the areas where ServiceTitan offers more to service businesses than ServiceMax.

To see why our software is trusted by 100,000+ service professionals, schedule a call to get a free, live, one-on-one walk-through of how our user-friendly field management platform can help you grow revenue, work smarter, and keep your business operations on track. 

2. Housecall Pro

Housecall Pro is a mobile field service management software solution for home service businesses. Similar to ServiceTitan, it offers a wide range of features outside of invoicing, such as scheduling and dispatching, estimates, QuickBooks integration, and more. 

However, when compared to Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan offers:

• Greater native pricebook functionality

• Ability to drill down further into reporting metrics (and trust your numbers)

• Automated tagging features that help increase revenue

• Gated work sequences and customizable forms to facilitate accountability across the organization

• Offline functionality that allows techs to use our mobile app when out of cell service zones

3. Jobber

Jobber is a field service scheduling software that also offers a wide range of other features for field service business management. Like ServiceTitan, it offers functionality for estimating, quotes, scheduling, invoicing, and more.

However, when compared to Jobber, ServiceTitan offers:

• More robust, native pricebook functionality

• In-app access to top industry supplier equipment catalogs

• Extensive marketing functionality that reduces the need for third-party marketing hires

• More flexibility and customization for membership plans and recurring services

• Offline functionality for our mobile app that allows techs to work seamlessly (even when they’re out of a cell service zone)

• Deeper reporting capabilities that allow business owners to drill down into the sources of their data

4. FieldEdge

FieldEdge offers a wide range of features like ServiceTitan, including functionality for quotes and invoicing, scheduling and dispatching, service agreements, and more. 

However, when compared to FieldEdge, ServiceTitan offers:

• For residential service businesses

  • Integration with Google Local Services Ads

  • Seamless access to membership information during call booking

  • Adjustable capacity planning to optimize schedules for max profitability

  • Real-time technician tracking

  • Greater customization and drill-down capabilities for reports

• For commercial service businesses

  • Ability to create customer-specific pricing

  • Built-in customer portal with base subscription

  • A suite of project management and project tracking tools for longer-term projects

  • Dynamic form capabilities that ensure staff follow best practices and improve data quality

  • Native equipment tracking and inventory management

5. Kickserv

Kickserv is another field service management software offering a variety of tools for large and small businesses. Like other FSM software, they provide a mobile app as well as desktop features for job management, scheduling, managing your workforce, and more. 

However, when compared to Kickserv, ServiceTitan offers:

• Mobile app with customer convenience features with stable offline functionality

• Customizable forms and pricing tools in the field

• Two-way SMS text messaging for customer inquiries and scheduling changes

• Pre-appointment GPS Tech Tracking for accurate arrival times

• End-to-End presentation mode: A visual pricing tool and estimate builder with good, better, best options

Note: To view additional comparisons between our product and others (such as FieldAware, SmartService, ServiceTrade, and more), visit our comparison hub.