Pardon the update, but the links to ServiceBridge and ServiceMax led me down some very fruitful paths.

First of all, thanks for the link to ServiceBridge, as it looked like a great product. Unfortunately it also looks like it's very expensive. Once you get to their pricing page, you start to notice all the small print around the page, with two important ones:

1- $500 setup fee
2- It's actually something that sits on top of the required "ServiceCEO*" service they offer, which costs $95/month/user


The important thing is, looking over these sites that CanuckInOR brought up led me to some strong possibilities. I eventually learned that this type of thing is frequently referred to as "Field Service Management" software. I ended up finding about a dozen companies that offer these services, and have been slowly trying to weed out the wheat from the chaff. I've gotten down to these two:

RazorSync - Not to say that visual appeal is the most important element of the decision, but it doesn't hurt that this was the best designed software of the bunch, both in attractiveness and in UI layout (you may not think it's appealing, but I assure you there are some dogs out there in this category). They also seem to hit everything that my colleague needs from such a service, and it integrates with Quickbooks.

Intuit Field Service Management - speaking of integrating with Quickbooks! That would be a good advantage, plus you get the confidence that Intuit could be around a little longer than some of these companies I've never heard of.

I'm calling these guys and going over some of the more company-specific needs, but they seem like good candidates. Neither of them appear to use platform-specific apps, instead opting for browser-based applications, which has positives and negatives.

Thanks again to CanuckInOR for the suggestions that got me on my way!



*completely irrelevant, but ServiceCEO's website uses oddly low-res graphics for their main page...