🚀 Introducing FieldForce — Built for Your Crews

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes, founder and CEO at Copilot CRM. And today I have two massive announcements, things that we've been working on behind the scenes for many months now. The first one you've heard about, that's the Fieldforce mobile app. In the past we have the Copilot CRM app and we will still continue to maintain that. And you can use it, it's web based, which means you have to have an Internet connection in order to be able to see your job notes, attach photos, be able to do anything inside the app. The nice thing is it has full access to the dispatch board and automations. Just about everything inside the software is on that app. But what we wanted to create was the Field Force mobile app. It's an offline mode compatible where even if someone goes into a spot where there's bad service, they can still add job notes, clock in and out, add photos and videos, and when they hit back into service, it'll sync up with the cloud. This allows your field crew to be able to very quickly navigate and the design is optimized for them out in the field. Now this is on iOS and Android and as of today is available to all members of Copilot CRM. Again, keep in mind, it is designed for your team out in the field. So from the design perspective, it doesn't have all the, all the different options and different pages. It's very customized for them to be able to see their jobs for them of the day, see their notes attach before and after pictures and be able to leave dispatcher notes. The clock in and out feature is super awesome for them to go see their budget hours versus their actual hours and see that as a timer as they're working on their job. Now the offline mode is a big step, but there's one thing that we haven't told anyone about and it's also released today and that is now inside of Copilot, the ability to have video. Now, video is a whole beast and the infrastructure, the back end of the software has to be very solid because we're handling much, much larger file sizes. And so as of today, Copilot CRM allows for up to 50 megabyte files inside of the software. Now that's a lot bigger than what we used to have, which is eight or 15 megabytes for you to attach large quality images. Now I'm going to talk about the use cases for video because it can completely change the way you do sales or operations and admin. But first I want to talk about the technical part and how it's built inside the software. Because 50 megabytes, if you're using an iPhone, is not very big. You might take on your camera like a 4K or 1080p high definition video that's three or four minutes long and it's 300 megabytes or 500 megabytes. Well, what we built now inside the fieldforce mobile app is automatic compression to under 50 megabytes. So if I take a three minute video and I'm taking a video of an estimate or a project for my crew, I can now from the fieldforce mobile app, attach it directly from my iPhone to fieldforce. It will automatically compress it to under 50 megabytes and attach it inside of copilot. This can be picked up from the dispatch board from someone at the office and it can be seen on future visits. This is a huge breakthrough. Now I want to be clear how this can change your business. First off, estimate videos. In my opinion, there's no reason for an estimator to go back to the property after the initial visit with the customer. After I talk to the customer, do a property walkthrough, understand the scope of work, I'm going to make a video of every single part of that job. I am going to attach it through my field force mobile app. It's going to be compressed and it's going to be attached to that visit. And in the future, maybe if it's in five or six weeks from then, that video can then just be attached to the job for the crew to see. And I as the estimator, don't have to go back. This is in my opinion, system failure. If I have to as an estimate or go back to the job site between the estimate notes inside of copilot along with the estimate video inside of copilot, your crew should have all the details they need. So you're not hopping from project to project in the morning, simply walking your crew around the job. And by the way, you did the actual initial walkthrough, the customer like six weeks ago, from the time that from then to when it was accepted and you're on the job site and you've forgotten things. So making an estimate video, super useful. A lot of people have been using a workaround which is like send it in WhatsApp and then you have to find it in WhatsApp because it compresses it, it's very good. Or you upload it to like YouTube or Google Drive, but that could take 10 or 15 minutes for a really large file. So this automatic compression inside of Field Force makes this extremely useful. Another reason you can use this is for upsells in the past. You might do an instant quote or over the phone estimate and send your crew out to the job for the very first visit. I want them to now make a video of the entire property, send it back to me from the Field Force mobile app so I can upsell the customer on four or five other services in addition to the recurring maintenance that they might be scheduled for. Another thing that is possible when your crew is on the job site, they can make a video. Instead of just pictures, instead of just texting you, they can make a video of the areas of the property that they think could be upsold. So if they're doing mowing and they see a bunch of weeds in the flower beds, instead of sending a picture to and you're kind of guessing, a quick video can now quickly be attached and compressed from the Field Force mobile app and then seen immediately inside of Copilot CRM from the office and from the estimator. This is going to be a game changer for upsells for project management. If you're on a large project that's two or three weeks long, instead of just doing a picture now, your crew manager, your foreman could absolutely make a video at the end of each day to recap where they're at in the project. This is going to help the customer if they're out of town. This is going to help the owner or the estimator know where the job is at in terms of in relation to the schedule. There's so many use cases and I can't wait to see how video is going to be unlocked inside of the Fieldforce mobile app and inside of Copilot CRM. I want to give a quick shout out to the team over the past year and a half that's rebuilt the infrastructure of COPA on the back end to be more dependable and more reliable. Without that, we would not be able to handle these file sizes and the amount of database and the load that this puts on the system. And I'm confident that with this team and with the infrastructure we have in the backend, we can now roll this video feature out. Now, there are other video softwares out there that charge 20, 30, $40 per user and I've wanted to use them in the past, but it was going to cost like one of my locations, like 7 or 800 DOL for this video part. And so now all members of Copilot can use this, use the Field Force mobile app, use video and completely change their business. I look forward to seeing all the use cases that members of Copilot are going to have for this video and the Field Force mobile app. We look forward to getting your feedback and we will absolutely do iterations and add to the Field Force mobile app as time goes on.