Fieldstone cut vendor confirmation time from three days to under an hour across a 40-vendor network.
Fieldstone's two maintenance coordinators worked a shared vendor list by memory, calling around until someone picked up. A work order regularly sat two or three days before a vendor was even confirmed.
The bottleneck
Coordinators worked through a mental list of "who's usually free" rather than a system, so the same two or three vendors got called first regardless of who was actually the best fit or fastest available.
A typical work order took two to three days to go from opened to a vendor confirmed on-site, most of it lost to phone tag and unanswered calls.
Nobody tracked which vendors actually showed up on time or came in under estimate, so a chronically slow or expensive vendor kept getting called simply because they were top of mind.
The workflow
We deployed the Vendor Dispatch Agent against Fieldstone's roster of 40 vendors, matched by trade, coverage area, and licensing, so the agent could route a work order to whoever was actually the best fit, not just the first name that came to mind.
The agent sends job details directly to the vendor by text, unit, access notes, urgency, photos, and confirms the appointment with both the vendor and the tenant before marking the work order scheduled.
Costs above Fieldstone's per-job approval threshold route to the assigned coordinator automatically, with the vendor's quote and job history attached, so approvals take seconds instead of a callback.
“I used to have five vendors' numbers memorized and call them in the same order every time. Now the job goes to whoever's actually right for it.”
Maintenance Coordinator, Fieldstone Residential
Lessons learned
A vendor list isn't a vendor system until it's scored
Fieldstone had vendor relationships, not vendor data. Tracking response time and cost per job automatically, instead of relying on a coordinator's memory, is what let the agent route work intelligently instead of just quickly.
Dispatch is where the hours actually go
The bottleneck was never deciding what needed fixing, it was the phone tag getting someone scheduled. Automating the calling and confirming step, not the diagnosis, is what moved the time-to-dispatch number.
A dollar threshold made the owners comfortable fast
Institutional owners wanted assurance nothing got approved without oversight. A clear per-job dollar line, below which the agent proceeds and above which a person signs off, made the handoff an easy yes instead of a long negotiation.
Start with one trade before the whole roster
Fieldstone piloted the agent on plumbing and HVAC vendors first, the two trades with the most volume and the clearest urgency signals, before expanding it across the full 40-vendor network.
“Our institutional owners ask for vendor performance data every quarter. We used to guess. Now we just pull the report.”
Director of Operations, Fieldstone Residential