It has been around last September that Servicelink introduced AssetShield: the new vendor portal for its contractors, and since then, their vendors have been getting orders in both the old and the new portal, with the work volume in AssetShield slowly increasing. In April 1st though, which is just around the corner, Servicelink will be discarding its old portal entirely and shift its total platform to the new site. This will be a monumental shift for a national company as not only has it changed its vendor portal to an entirely new platform but also has shifted from accepting Repairbase as cost estimator to XactPRM. In this regards, ASL is proud to say that we have fully trained our work order processing department and integrated our staff to use both platforms; Assetshield and XactPRM. So, lets do a short review about the Assetshield to better understand the changes that comes with the new vendor portal.
Property Condition Report
The Property Condition Report is no longer a one page long questionnaire, that includes questions about what work was completed in the property. Instead it now has eight segments that asks questions from Occupancy and Neighbourhood Information to Pools and Utility and Interior and Exterior Damage. One of the good things with Assetshield is that it mostly saves the information in this section that has been put on the first work order that was assigned for a particular property to a vendor, to all the later work orders assigned for that property to the vendor as well. This means that from one work order to the next, there is little to no chances that your processor may give conflicting information about the property.
Order Results Page
The billing for work completed will have to be completed from the Order results page. All orders have a few product line items pre-approved in this section in conjunction with what Servicelink instructs the contractor to do in the particular order. The Processor will have to either give "yes" or "no" to "work performed" for all the product line items present, then proceed to add line items for each product line to invoice for work done. Additional product line items can be added also if needed. One thing that I noticed is that other than giving a "No" to work performed there is also another option that says "will provide results later" I highly advise not to ever choose this option unless absolutely necessary as that will cause the order to be partially submitted; the order will stay unnoticed in queue with the particular product line item and not get noticed much later when it is very late.
Providing Bid
One of the most noticeable changes in Assetshield is providing bids. For the old vendor portal, the bid pricing needed to be validated using Repairbase and then simply be added to the bid section. In Assetshield this has dramatically changed. Now, there is actually two methods to submit bids and the one that you will choose will depend the order. If the Order Result Section has Adjuster Scope, the bids needs to be provided in XactPRM which is a cost estimator, similar to Repairbase. The bids will have to be submitted in XactPRM only and Servicelink will receive them. On all other orders where Adjuster scope is not present, there will be a tab for Verification Condition in Assetshield, in which case, the bids will have to be submitted in that tab instead. It is to be noted that orders in Assetshield can be submitted prior to be giving bids in XactPRM, however, delay in bid submission in the cost estimator can result in rejection to occur.
Rejections
Another noticeable change in Assetshield is how the rejections are handled in the new vendor portal. Previously, in Servicelink, when a rejection occurred, there was no option to edit the work order except for the photos section and additional information and bids had to be emailed. Now, however, rejections let you edit the work order, enabling the processor to correct the order themselves. Moreover, rejections now come in two forms. "Pre-scope bid validation" are rejections where bid pricing are overpriced or does not match. Assetshield will reduce the price in XactPRM themselves and notify the vendor through Assetshield. The vendor then can accept the change that Assetshield made or respond back. The other type of rejections are "Vendor QC Response" where Servicelink asks for additional information or requests changes to order result in Assetshield. Vendors then will have to make the appropriate changes to the order and resubmit the order.
Hope this sheds some new light and clears all confusion for vendors who are still getting used to working in Assetshield. I will cover the differences between XactPRM and Repairbase on one of my next upcoming blogs, so watch out for that also. Until then, feel free to knock me or comment if you have any additional queries on Assetshield or XactPRM.
Zayed Ahmed, Founder and CEO of ASL BPO.