What a CMMS is
A computerised maintenance management system keeps a register of your own assets (machines, lifts, chillers, vehicles), plans preventive maintenance by date or meter reading, opens a work order when something breaks, and keeps count of spare parts. It suits a factory, a hospital, a hotel or a facilities team looking after its own buildings.
What field service software is
It runs paid jobs at your customers' sites. The customer calls or writes, the office quotes and books, the dispatcher sends the right technician, the technician records the visit on a phone, and the customer pays and rates. The equipment is the customer's; the job is what you sell.
Side by side
| CMMS | Field service software | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose equipment | Yours | Your customers' |
| Where work comes from | Your own staff and a maintenance calendar | Customers, by phone, WhatsApp or your website |
| The main record | The asset and its work orders | The customer and the booking |
| What success looks like | Uptime and cost per asset | Jobs done on time, customer ratings, revenue |
| The money | What you spend on parts and labour | What you quote and collect |
Which one a maintenance company needs
If you sell AC servicing, electrical, plumbing or pest control to homes and businesses, your work starts with a customer's call, not an asset's schedule. That's field service software. A CMMS would have you register every customer's unit as if it were yours, and it still wouldn't quote, dispatch, message the customer or collect the rating. If you're the in-house team for a hospital or a factory, you need a CMMS. Some companies need both.
Pest control is field service too
Each treatment is a job at a customer's site: the technician with the right skill, the spraying steps, a photo, the customer's rating. Nothing in it is an asset you own.
Where Rabtan fits
Rabtan is field service software, not a CMMS: a field operations system for Saudi maintenance, pest control, cleaning, moving and logistics companies.
- The customer's record. Search by mobile and see every booking they've made.
- The right technician by skill. Free technicians and vehicles on one screen, and no one double-booked by mistake.
- Accept on the phone. The job arrives as a notification, the technician accepts, and the dispatcher sees it.
- Steps and photos per service. Spraying isn't AC servicing: each service has its own steps and the photo it needs.
- Visits that don't go to plan. "Continue tomorrow" keeps the job open, and every postponement carries its reason.
- The customer on WhatsApp. They drop their own location pin, get a message when the technician arrives, and rate the visit, credited to the technician.
- Quote and collection. A quote with VAT, and accounting records what was collected next to it.
- An app in four languages. Arabic, English, Urdu and Bengali, and it works offline.
What Rabtan doesn't do
No register of your customers' equipment, no preventive-maintenance calendar or meter readings, no spare-parts stock, and no invoicing. A maintenance contract is booked visit by visit; automatic re-booking reminders are coming soon. For your own vehicles, Rabtan keeps a hold ticket for each workshop visit (the reason, the workshop, the cost and the days off the road), which covers a fleet, not a building.