Maintenance dispatch software for vendor and contractor work

Maintenance dispatch software assigns each job to a technician or outside vendor, tells them about it, and tracks the job until it is done. For in-house techs, most CMMS tools cover this. Outside vendors and contractors are where dispatch falls back to phone calls, texts and email threads.

Contractor dispatch software made for service companies assumes the vendor works inside your tool. Most of your vendors will not. Automation meets them where they already are, by email, text or their own portal, and brings their answers back into your records.

I build dispatch around the rules your coordinators already use, so the right vendor gets the job and silence gets noticed in hours, not days.

1. Pick the vendor by your rules. Trade, building, contract coverage, after-hours availability and past response time decide who gets the job. Your preferred vendor list is written down once and used every time.
2. Send the job and ask for a yes. The vendor gets the job details by email or text with a simple accept or decline. No login needed.
3. Chase silence automatically. If there is no answer within your window, for example two hours on urgent work, the job is re-sent or offered to the next vendor on the list, and the coordinator is told.
4. Track arrival and completion. Arrival, completion notes and photos come back by reply or a short form and update the work order.
5. Score vendors on real data. Response time, first-visit fixes and missed windows are logged per vendor, so contract reviews use numbers instead of memory.

• Which vendor gets the job lives in one coordinator's head.
• Nobody notices a vendor has not responded until the tenant complains.
• Arrival and completion updates are buried in email threads.

• Assign vendors by trade, location, coverage and response history.
• Re-send or reassign jobs that get no answer in time.
• Log vendor response and completion data for contract reviews.

CMMS, email, text messages, vendor portals, spreadsheets, dashboards.

Asking every plumber, electrician and HVAC contractor to log in to a portal rarely works. The automation sends plain emails and texts with one-tap replies, and it reads their normal replies too. Your records stay current without changing how vendors work.

• Vendor SLA tracking and dispatch for facilities teams: How to track vendor response and repair times against the contract.
• Work order automation: Get complete work orders in before dispatch starts.
• Work order automation from email: Turn request emails into work orders automatically.

If nearly all your work is done by in-house techs who already work in your CMMS, use its built-in dispatch. This pays off when outside vendors handle a real share of jobs and coordinators spend hours a week chasing them.