Founder/CEO Mike Andes describes Copilot CRM’s map-based dispatch board and argues it’s essential for scaling field-service businesses. He emphasizes map visualization, route optimization, floating map view, in-place job details (notes, upsell flags, crew comments), and claims up to ~15–20% of daily time can be saved by optimizing routes; the board is designed to handle hundreds or thousands of daily jobs.
Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes, founder and CEO of Copilot CRM. And I am. One of the things I love most about Copilot is the dispatch board. Now, I have seen some dispatch boards I really like and others that I really did not like. One of the things that I liked the most was having a map based dispatch board that wasn't just a grid on a calendar and it wasn't just a list of a whole bunch of jobs. The easiest way, especially if you're doing routes and you have maintenance type jobs where you're having 5, 6, 7, 10, 15, 20, 30 jobs for one employer, one crew in a day, you want to be able to look at a map because it gives so much more clarity as to which crews should go where. It also makes sure that you can optimize those routes and make sure that you're saving time on drive time. Because if you're not optimizing your routes, there's a good chance you're saving 15 to 20% of your employees day just by optimizing the route. Because they'll go the wrong, take the wrong turn, and all of a sudden they spent 10, 15 minutes incorrectly or they go out to the gas station, then the road is closed, they got to come back. These are things that you can absolutely save time on using a dispatch board. Now, the dispatch board is built for having hundreds, if not thousands of jobs on every single day. We've made it to where it is really optimized for a massive company. And at Augusta Lawn Care, where I come from, we have to have literally hundreds of stops every single day for mowing and fertilization and other types of treatments. And so in order to facilitate that, I want to make sure my dispatch board is somewhere where my office people can quickly manage all of the jobs very efficiently. From the dispatch board, they're able to see all the relevant information. They're able to see which customers need an upsell. They can see job notes, they can see job comments from the crew very, very easily from one spot without ever having to go to a different screen. And furthermore, they're also able to float the map. So as they're scrolling down hundreds of jobs, the map can actually float above it. So they can see the jobs below, but also have the map with context of where all these jobs are at geographically on the map. So the dispatch board, in my opinion, is probably the most powerful tool once you start really growing the business. When you, when you have one, two employees, one or two routes, you kind of have all the jobs in your head. It's not so bad when you have dozens of trucks, dozens of team members, and if you're planning to grow your business to that size, you absolutely need a map based dispatch board. The ability to be able to just select a bunch of jobs on a map and immediately click one button to optimize the route between them is extremely powerful. The ability to look at a map and say, okay, well, if I give that section of town to that crew, how many budget hours will that add to their route? You can do that in 10, 2 seconds. Inside a copilot, draw a circle around them, show stats, and see exactly how many budget hours and how much revenue is going to be produced from those jobs. These are the type of things that having a map based dispatch board will absolutely change your business. It'll allow you to grow and scale without keeping everything your head on a grid or on a calendar. Like a calendar is fine, it's okay. But if I was going to use a calendar, I would rather just use my phone where everything else is. I need a map based dispatch where I can see everything geographically as well as a list format and without having to go to different pages. I can see the status of jobs, whether or not the crew has been above or below budgeted time, and if they are way behind or if they're way ahead. These are the type of things that you can see on one page with a live map and it's absolutely invaluable. I can't wait for you to see the dispatch board inside of copilot.
