See how eLogii’s route optimization integrates with SimPro to improve scheduling, reduce costs, and boost field service efficiency.
SimPro is a field service management software solution for trade and field service businesses that automates and streamlines operational workflows.
Right now, it helps businesses manage jobs from start to finish, including:
But what if it could do even more for you?
That’s where route optimization software comes in.
Using SimPro integration to add eLogii to your toolkit and give you access to a purpose-built optimization engine that’s ideal for planning routes in complex field service environments.
These two solutions can help you to unlock next-level field service efficiency. And in this guide, we’ll show you exactly how you can do it.
So if you’re a SimPro user, solutions engineer, or SimPro representative, you’ll find everything you need in this guide.
Let’s get started.
There's a conversation happening in boardrooms across three continents right now.
Operations directors are staring at dashboards showing field service teams working harder than ever while margins continue compressing. They're asking increasingly urgent questions:
If you're running a field service business on SimPro, you've chosen a comprehensive ERP platform. One that has transformed how trade contractors and service companies operate across Australia, the UK, and North America.
SimPro excels at managing your entire business operation. From quote to cash, customer relationships, inventory tracking, compliance documentation, and the financial visibility that modern service businesses require.
It's why SimPro has become the operational backbone for tens of thousands of field service operations globally.
But here's something important to understand: ERP platforms weren't designed to solve the computational complexity of optimal route planning at scale.
This isn't a limitation, far from it, - it's simply about specialization.
The mathematics of route optimization involves processing thousands of variables simultaneously, weighing competing constraints, and finding optimal field service solutions from millions of possible combinations.
This requires dedicated algorithms that have been refined over years specifically for this singular purpose. That's where specialized route optimization becomes essential.
eLogii integrates with SimPro, providing an intelligent routing and dynamic scheduling layer that determines the most efficient way to execute the work managed in your ERP system.
When ERP excellence combines with specialized optimization, the result is a truly intelligent field service operation.
When your field service operation grows beyond 25 or 30 field service technicians, something fundamental changes.
The scheduling approach that worked adequately with a smaller team suddenly becomes a significant operational constraint. The human brain, regardless of how experienced your planners are, simply cannot process the exponential complexity that comes with scale.
Consider the mathematics:
Scheduling 30 technicians across 150 jobs with various time windows, skill requirements, and geographic constraints involves evaluating billions of possible combinations.
Your planners are making educated guesses based on experience, intuition, and whatever they can see on their screens at that moment. They're doing remarkable work given the constraints, but they're fighting against mathematical impossibility.
The impact reveals itself in ways that directly hit your bottom line.
A property solutions company operating across the country with around 400 engineers recently analyzed their routing efficiency. They discovered something staggering:
Through intelligent route optimization, they were able to reduce their total mileage by 50%.
Not 5%.
Not 15%.
Fifty percent.
At that scale, with 400 engineers driving what had been averaging 150 miles per day each, they were collectively driving 60,000 miles daily - or approximately 15 million miles annually. Cutting that in half eliminated 7.5 million unnecessary miles per year.
The financial impact was extraordinary.
Beyond the immediately obvious fuel savings running into hundreds of thousands annually, they saw:
Those engineers were suddenly spending 3-4 fewer hours weekly behind the wheel and spending that time productively at customer sites instead.
For a sense of scale across different industries, a major pest control company implementing eLogii’s sophisticated route optimization achieved seven-figure annual savings.
The composition of those savings tells the story of what optimization actually delivers:
But the most significant component:
Roughly 25% of their savings - came from capacity gains.
With optimized routing, they could serve substantially more customers without adding technicians or vehicles. This capacity expansion didn't just save costs; it generated additional revenue.
The final element of their seven-figure impact came from improved customer retention and reduced penalties for missed service windows, as optimization ensured they consistently met their contractual commitments.
These results represent the typical pattern when field service operations at scale implement proper route optimization:
The hidden tragedy is how many companies are operating with this inefficiency without realizing its magnitude.
When routing inefficiency is diffused across dozens or hundreds of technicians, it's hard to see.
Each individual route might look reasonable. But aggregate those small inefficiencies across your entire operation.
Multiply that by 250 working days annually, and you're looking at substantial sums - often enough to fund significant growth initiatives or dramatically improve profitability.
Route optimization in field service automation goes far beyond simply mapping the shortest path between points.
That's routing, and it's relatively straightforward.
True optimization for service businesses involves balancing dozens of competing variables to find solutions that serve your actual business objectives.
Your morning might start with:
200 scheduled preventative maintenance visits.
30 reactive service calls that came in overnight.
15 quote follow-ups that sales wants done this week.
And 8 emergency calls that will arrive throughout the day.
Those jobs need to be assigned across 45 technicians who have different skill sets.
Start from different locations.
Work different hours.
Carry different equipment.
And are scattered across a metro area spanning hundreds of square miles.
Some jobs must happen within 2-hour windows. Others need to be completed by end of business to meet contractual service level agreements.
Certain customers can only be visited during specific hours. Some jobs require two technicians, others need specialized equipment.
Several technicians are in training and can only do certain work types. Three people called in sick this morning. One technician's vehicle broke down and they're sharing with a colleague.
This is the reality that purpose-built optimization platforms are designed to handle.
These systems process all constraints simultaneously, evaluate millions of potential schedule combinations, and identify solutions that optimize for whatever objectives matter most to your business:
The key word there is "simultaneously."
Manual scheduling handles these constraints sequentially:
Advanced optimization algorithms handle everything at once, finding solutions that satisfy all constraints while maximizing your chosen objectives.
What makes this particularly powerful is the ability to re-optimize continuously throughout the day.
When emergency jobs arrive at 10 AM, when a technician calls in sick at 7 AM, when a job that was supposed to take 60 minutes takes 120 minutes - sophisticated platforms can re-calculate optimal schedules in seconds.
(Not the 30-45 minutes of frantic phone calls and manual rescheduling that most operations experience today.)
For SimPro users, the integration architecture matters significantly. eLogii has built its connection specifically for SimPro's data structures and workflows.
The integration architecture works elegantly:
SimPro remains your single source of truth and operational command center.
When jobs are created in SimPro - whether from maintenance planners, quote conversions, or customer service calls - that information flows automatically to eLogii through real-time webhooks.
The moment a job is created or modified in SimPro, eLogii receives that update.
eLogii's optimization engine then calculates ideal schedules considering all relevant constraints pulled directly from SimPro:
The optimization happens in seconds, not hours.
Those optimized schedules then push back to SimPro automatically, where they appear as proper SimPro schedules in the system your team already uses daily.
There's no duplicate entry, no schedule reconciliation between systems, no wondering which platform has the "real" schedule. SimPro has it, because eLogii put it there through the integration.
Technicians continue using SimPro's field service app in the field exactly as they do today.
They see their optimized schedules, navigate to jobs, complete work, capture photos and signatures, update job statuses - all within the familiar SimPro interface they already know.
When they mark a job complete in SimPro mobile, that status flows back through the integration to eLogii in real-time, allowing the system to re-optimize remaining schedules if needed.
This seamless bi-directional flow means your team isn't learning a completely new system or switching between multiple platforms throughout the day.
SimPro handles what it does well - job management, customer records, inventory, invoicing, reporting.
eLogii handles route optimization.
While your team experiences it as a cohesive system.
The technical implementation reflects refinement based on real-world deployments.
eLogii's development team has solved common integration challenges, mapped the relevant SimPro fields, handled edge cases, and refined the data flow based on implementations across SimPro customers.
When you implement eLogii with SimPro, you're benefiting from an integration that's been tested and refined across numerous deployments.
The practical benefit of this established integration becomes clear during implementation.
Where building custom integrations might take 6-9 months, the eLogii integration with SimPro typically deploys in 90-120 days from contract signing to full operation.
The data mapping is already understood, the field structures are already defined, the field service mobile app integration is already built. You're implementing a tested solution rather than pioneering a custom integration.
If you're evaluating SimPro alongside other platforms, or considering whether to add specialized optimization to your existing SimPro installation, understanding different architectural approaches helps inform your decision.
Some platforms take an all-in-one approach, attempting to provide ERP, field service management, CRM, scheduling, dispatch, inventory, accounting, and route optimization within a single system.
This approach offers the appeal of simplicity - one vendor, one contract, one system to learn.
Others take a specialized approach. Where different systems excel at specific functions and integrate together.
SimPro provides comprehensive ERP and field service management. Specialized optimization platforms like eLogii focus exclusively on routing and last-mile logistics. Each system invests its development resources into its specific domain.
The practical differences become apparent at scale.
All-in-one platforms typically offer routing functionality that considers basic factors like distance and perhaps time windows.
Specialized optimization platforms offer algorithms that simultaneously consider dozens of constraints:
When you need to optimize 50+ technicians across 300+ daily jobs with complex constraints, the difference between basic routing and advanced optimization often represents the difference between 10% improvement and 50% improvement in operational efficiency.
The integration approach also differs.
Purpose-built integrations like eLogii's connection to SimPro maintain data in standard formats with documented APIs.
If your needs evolve or you need to integrate additional specialized tools, you have flexibility. Different components can be upgraded or replaced independently based on your changing requirements.
Cost structures vary as well.
Some platforms have attractive initial pricing that increases as you add users and functionality.
Total cost of ownership over 3-5 years often differs significantly from initial impressions. Particularly when you factor in the efficiency gains from superior specialized capabilities vs adequate general-purpose tools.
Support depth matters when you encounter issues or need guidance.
Specialized vendors focusing on specific domains often provide deeper expertise in their area compared to generalist support teams handling questions across many functional areas.
When you have a complex routing challenge, speaking with teams who focus exclusively on optimization tends to produce better outcomes than speaking with generalists who handle all aspects of a platform.
The choice ultimately depends on your specific situation.
For smaller operations or those with simpler scheduling requirements, simpler approaches may suffice.
For operations at scale with complex constraints - multiple skill requirements, strict time windows, geographic spread, capacity constraints - specialized optimization typically delivers substantially better outcomes than general-purpose tools.
Field service businesses span an enormous range of industries, each with unique operational characteristics.
Effective optimization platforms adapt to these differences rather than forcing every business into the same template.
Here's how:
HVAC and mechanical services operations juggle preventative maintenance contracts with emergency breakdowns.
A commercial building's critical system failing during peak season isn't just an inconvenience - it's a crisis demanding response within hours. Yet that emergency call needs to be intelligently inserted into a schedule that already includes numerous planned maintenance visits.
Real-time re-optimization handles this automatically, identifying the nearest qualified technician, calculating the impact of redirecting them from planned work, and presenting dispatchers with options in seconds.
Electrical contracting businesses face the challenge of mixing routine testing and inspection work with project-based installations and emergency call-outs.
Testing might involve multi-hour blocks that can only happen during specific windows. Projects could run multiple days with the same crew returning to the same site. Emergency work demands rapid response.
Constraint-based optimization balances these different work types while respecting certification requirements - not every electrician can do every job.
Plumbing and drainage businesses operate with high urgency requirements. When critical systems fail, customers need help immediately.
These businesses need optimization that can instantly identify the nearest qualified technician while considering their current schedule, then intelligently determine whether planned work should be reassigned or rescheduled.
Fire and life safety services operate under compliance deadlines and life-safety responsibility.
Missing quarterly fire alarm inspections creates liability exposure and regulatory issues.
These companies often service thousands of sites across wide geographic areas - a national retail chain might have hundreds of locations requiring quarterly inspections, all with specific access requirements and time constraints.
Sophisticated platforms handle complex time window requirements, plan months ahead while remaining flexible for reactive work, and ensure compliance deadlines don't slip through automated priority escalation as deadlines approach.
Security and access control businesses share similar characteristics - regular service schedules combined with emergency call-outs, compliance requirements, and the complexity of serving dispersed client sites.
When building security systems fail, immediate response is critical. Priority-based optimization understands which calls genuinely require disruption to planned schedules versus those that can wait.
Pest control operations run on recurring service schedules with treatment protocols that sometimes span multiple visits over specific timeframes.
Initial treatments might require follow-ups within particular windows. Seasonal variations dramatically affect demand. Some treatments are weather-dependent or time-sensitive.
The major pest control company mentioned earlier - the one achieving seven-figure savings - operates in exactly this environment where the complexity of managing recurring schedules, multi-visit treatments, seasonal demand swings, and geographic coverage was overwhelming their manual processes.
Commercial cleaning and facilities maintenance companies often service dozens or hundreds of sites on regular schedules - nightly cleaning for office buildings, weekly maintenance for retail stores, monthly deep cleans for industrial facilities.
The routing challenge involves time-of-day constraints - office cleaning must happen after business hours, retail maintenance during non-peak times. Some sites require specific team members who have security clearances.
Water treatment, delivery, and bottled water services face unique volumetric challenges.
Routes involve vehicle capacity constraints, delivery quantities, service duration for equipment maintenance, and sometimes depot reloads for longer routes.
These operations require optimization that considers not just location and time, but also weight, volume, and capacity across the entire route.
Telecommunications and utility field services coordinate installations, maintenance, and repair work across vast service territories.
Appointment windows are critical - customers arranged time off work to be home for that installation, and missing the window damages reputation and creates expensive rescheduling.
First-time-fix rates are crucial metrics, requiring skills-and-equipment matching to ensure the right technician with the right equipment is dispatched initially.
Property maintenance and facilities management operations serve diverse client portfolios with varying service agreements. Some properties need weekly visits, others monthly or quarterly.
Work types range from basic inspections to complex repairs requiring specialized skills.
The property solutions company mentioned earlier - the one that cut their mileage by 50% with 400 engineers - operates in exactly this space, where the complexity of managing hundreds of engineers across thousands of properties with different service requirements was overwhelming their manual scheduling processes.
Across all these industries, common patterns emerge:
Effective platforms provide the flexibility to accommodate industry-specific variations while maintaining the optimization power that drives dramatic efficiency improvements.
Understanding what route optimization can do is valuable. Knowing how to implement it successfully is where transformation happens.
The gap between potential and reality is where many technology initiatives stumble, which makes the implementation approach critical.
Rather than starting with generic demonstrations, many businesses benefit from seeing their specific data analyzed.
Providing a sample of actual scheduling data - typically 2-4 weeks of historical jobs, technician assignments, and results - allows optimization platforms to show precisely what different approaches would have produced with your actual operation.
This analysis approach removes ambiguity.
You see side-by-side comparisons: here's what actually happened, here's what optimization would have produced, here's the measurable difference.
This provides concrete baseline understanding rather than relying on industry averages or theoretical projections.
Route optimization quality depends on the information feeding it:
Experienced planners may feel concerned about automated scheduling, wondering how their role changes.
The reality is that optimization elevates planners from tactically creating schedules to strategically managing exceptions and continuously improving the system.
The property solutions company with 400 engineers found that their planners, initially skeptical, became strong advocates once they experienced spending their days managing by exception rather than manually creating routes from scratch each morning.
When routes suddenly look different - even when they're objectively better with less drive time - people naturally question changes.
A proactive communication approach works well:
Most technicians embrace optimized routing quickly once they experience the benefits, but the first few weeks require active change management.
Rather than switching your entire operation overnight, most successful deployments start with one region, service line, or team.
This creates a controlled environment for learning, allows refinement of rules and constraints based on real-world results, and builds internal advocates who can speak to benefits when expansion happens.
The property solutions company started with a single region representing about 80 engineers. Within three weeks, the results were clear enough that other regions were actively requesting earlier access than originally planned.
This involves configuring API connections for bidirectional data flow:
Integration specialists typically complete this technical work in 4-6 weeks depending on specific configuration complexity.
And that's the case from contract signing to full operation across your business. But it could be a lot quicker depending on your operational setup.
This includes:
But if desired, it can also include:
Route optimization implementations should be driven by clear metrics established upfront. This focuses on understanding your specific baseline and measuring improvement against it.
Drive time and mileage are the most obvious and immediately measurable metrics.
Calculate total daily miles and hours driving across your entire fleet before implementation. Track the same metrics after optimization.
The property solutions company saw 50% reduction - from 60,000 miles daily down to 30,000 miles daily. Even smaller improvements translate to significant savings at scale.
A 50-person field service business with technicians driving 150 miles per person daily represents 7,500 miles daily, or approximately 1.9 million miles annually.
A 20% reduction saves 380,000 miles per year, representing significant savings in fuel alone, before considering vehicle maintenance and depreciation.
Jobs completed per technician reveals capacity gains.
If your average technician was completing 4.5 jobs daily and optimization raises that to 5.4 jobs, you've gained 20% capacity without adding headcount.
For a business generating revenue per job, that capacity gain directly translates to additional revenue potential with your existing workforce.
Planner productivity shows time savings in scheduling activities.
Track how many hours weekly your planning team spends on schedule creation and adjustment before implementation. Compare that to post-implementation time.
Most organizations see 60-75% reductions in manual scheduling time.
Those hours don't disappear - planners shift focus from tactical schedule creation to strategic exception management, continuous improvement of optimization rules, capacity planning for business growth, and proactive analysis of operational patterns.
Service level agreement compliance matters enormously in contract-based businesses.
If you're committed to specific response times or appointment windows but consistently missing them, you're disappointing customers and potentially triggering financial penalties.
Priority handling and real-time re-optimization capabilities typically raise SLA compliance to 95%+ levels, protecting revenue and reputation while eliminating constant firefighting around missed commitments.
Technician utilization indicates efficiency.
What percentage of paid time are your technicians spending on productive, revenue-generating work versus driving between jobs?
Manual scheduling often results in 50-60% productive time, with the rest spent driving. Optimization typically raises productive time to 70-80%.
The property solutions company's 50% mileage reduction essentially meant their 400 engineers gained back 3-4 hours weekly each - that's 1,200-1,600 productive hours added weekly across the organization without hiring anyone.
Customer satisfaction metrics take longer to reflect improvement but are crucial.
Track survey scores, complaint rates, appointment adherence, and retention percentages.
Better scheduling leads to more reliable appointment times, faster response to emergencies, and more consistent service delivery - all of which improve customer experience.
Financial impact ultimately determines success.
Calculate comprehensive ROI including:
The pest control company's seven-figure annual savings breakdown illustrates how these elements combine:
Most field service operations implementing sophisticated route optimization see 3-5x return on investment within the first year, with payback periods of 3-6 months.
The exact numbers depend on current efficiency level, business size, and operational complexity, but the pattern holds:
Dramatic efficiency improvements that show up in both cost reductions and revenue-enabling capacity gains.
If you're running a field service operation with 30 or more technicians and recognizing your business in these challenges, the most valuable next step is understanding your specific opportunity through data analysis.
Rather than generic product demonstrations, consider providing a sample of your actual scheduling data. (eLogii is happy to sign NDAs of course ahead of this.)
Analysis of 2-4 weeks of real jobs, assignments, and results can reveal specific opportunities:
What actually happened versus what optimization would have produced, with measurable differences in miles, hours, capacity, and financial impact.
This removes guesswork from ROI projections and provides concrete evidence of potential improvement.
When evaluating optimization solutions, consider asking:
For companies evaluating SimPro against other ERP options, integration with specialized optimization should factor into your decision.
The combination of comprehensive ERP functionality plus specialized optimization often delivers results that general-purpose platforms find difficult to match on routing efficiency.
Field service businesses face mounting pressure from multiple directions:
Technology provides one of the few paths to dramatically improved efficiency without proportional cost increases.
Companies that implement sophisticated route optimization gain compounding advantages:
The property solutions company with 400 engineers didn't just save fuel costs with their 50% mileage reduction. They fundamentally changed their business model.
The pest control company's seven-figure savings similarly wasn't just about cost reduction.
Those savings funded expansion into new markets, technology investments that further improved operations, and competitive positioning.
The efficiency gains created opportunities for continued improvement.
For SimPro users specifically, the opportunity is immediate.
You've invested in a comprehensive ERP platform that provides strong operational foundation. Complementing that foundation with specialized route optimization creates capabilities that deliver significant results.
SimPro handles business operations. Specialized optimization handles the complex mathematics of efficient routing. Together, they create an intelligent field service operation.
The question isn't whether to implement route optimization at scale. The mathematics and economics are compelling, and competitive pressure is real.
The question is timing - and which approach you'll take.
Your operation has untapped potential. The combination of comprehensive ERP functionality and specialized optimization intelligence can help unlock it.
The questions are how much potential exists in your specific operation - and when you'll discover the answer.
So how about right now?
Book a demo and request a confidential analysis of your specific operation. Most businesses discover opportunities they didn't realize existed, often representing substantial value.
Disclaimer: SimPro is a registered trademark of SimPro Software Pty Ltd. eLogii is an independent technology partner listed on the SimPro Marketplace. The results and case studies mentioned in this article reflect eLogii customer experiences and do not represent claims made by or attributable to SimPro Software.
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