⚙️ Field Service ERP 📅 Built 2004 · Still Evolving 🇺🇸 United States

Clients served — 7-Eleven Walmart + Goodwill Network & others

One Scheduler, 6,000 Work Orders:
20 Years of Field Service Excellence.

In 2004, Infomaze built SystemTask — a field service ERP that dispatched technicians to 7-Eleven and Walmart locations across the US. Automated scheduling, real-time dispatch boards, skill-matching, asset management, partner portals, and billing. Now, two decades later, it's being reborn as ElementIQ — 10× more powerful.

SYSTEMTASK · DISPATCH BOARD · ALL TIME ZONES

● Live

OPEN W/O TODAY

247

Across all zones

PENDING ACCEPT

Awaiting technician

DELAYED

Alert active

LIVE WORK ORDER BOARD — COLOUR STATUS

WO-4821 · 7-Eleven #3042 · Dallas TX — Pending acceptance

Pending

WO-4819 · Walmart #1188 · Chicago IL — Tech accepted 08:14

Accepted

WO-4815 · 7-Eleven #1887 · Los Angeles CA — ETA exceeded

Delayed

WO-4823 · 7-Eleven #5501 · Seattle WA — Tech in transit

In Transit

TECHNICIAN MATCH — WO-4821 · SKILL REQUIREMENTS

Network switch install · Certified ✓ · Score 94/100

Match

POS system config · Tool provided by company ✓

Match

Nearest available: Mike R. · 12.4 miles · Free at 09:00

Auto

✦

BROADCAST SENT · EMAIL + DASHBOARD ALERT WO-4821 broadcast to Mike R. at 08:52 EST. Dashboard flagged yellow. Awaiting technician acceptance — auto-escalate if no response in 15 min.

6,000+

Work orders auto-created for a single 7-Eleven rollout via scheduler

20yr

Platform lifespan — built in 2004, still running, now reborn as ElementIQ

4 TZ

Time zones managed on one real-time dispatch board — EST/CST/MST/PST

10×

More powerful — ElementIQ v3.0 is a complete rebuild with modern APIs

— Platform Evolution

From MS Access to the cloud. Twenty years, three versions.

→

2002–2004 · Origin

v1 — SystemTask

🗄️ MS Access Desktop

Client operated entirely on Microsoft Access. Data entry was manual — one record at a time, or copy-pasting from Excel. Work orders created individually. No automation, no scheduling, no cross-location visibility. Technician assignments made by phone. The starting point for everything that followed.

→

2004–2022 · Evolution

v2 — SystemTask Web

🌐 Web Platform · Full ERP

Infomaze rebuilt SystemTask as a full web-based ERP. Bulk site import, automated scheduler, skill-matched dispatch, real-time colour-coded board, asset management, partner portals, pre-flight forms, billing module, form builder. Served 7-Eleven, Walmart, and Goodwill Network across all four US time zones. Ran for nearly two decades.

2023–Present · Rebirth

v3 — ElementIQ

✦ Next Generation · In Build

ElementIQ is not an upgrade — it is a complete architectural rebuild. Modern API-first design, full automation, AI-assisted dispatch, mobile-native technician app, real-time GPS tracking, cloud-native infrastructure, and integration with every major enterprise tool. 10× the capability of v2, built on 20 years of domain knowledge.

— The Problem in 2004

Managing thousands of field technicians across a continent — on paper and phone calls.

The client provided field services to some of the largest retail chains in the United States. The scale of the operation made manual coordination not just inefficient — it made it impossible.

🏪

6,000 stores. One rollout. No automation.

When a client like 7-Eleven needed a software upgrade or hardware install across all US stores, work orders had to be created individually. A single national rollout meant thousands of manual entries — each one taking minutes, each one prone to error. With no bulk creation tool, large projects were simply not operationally feasible.

📞

Technician dispatch by phone and email

Assigning a technician to a work order meant calling or emailing to check availability. No visibility into who was free, who had the right skills, who was nearest to the site. Dispatchers held this knowledge in their heads. When a dispatcher was absent, the knowledge was absent too.

🎓

Skill, certification, and tooling invisible to dispatch

Each work order required specific skills, certifications with minimum scores, and particular tools — some company-provided, some the technician's own. There was no system to match requirements to available technicians. The wrong technician was sent to jobs regularly, arriving without the right certification or equipment.

🗺️

No real-time visibility across time zones

With technicians and sites across EST, CST, MST, and PST, the dispatch team had no consolidated view. A delayed technician in California was invisible to the operations manager in the eastern office. Problems surfaced through phone calls — always after the client had already noticed.

📦

Asset tracking by spreadsheet, warranties by memory

When installed equipment needed service, nobody could quickly find its serial number, installation date, or warranty status. This information was scattered across spreadsheets and emails. Sending the right technician — with the right parts and the right warranty knowledge — required significant manual research before each dispatch.

🤝

Partners and resellers invisible to the system

The client had resellers who managed work on behalf of their own end customers. These partners needed visibility into their jobs without seeing the entire operation. There was no portal. Partners communicated by email, and the operations team manually relayed information — creating delays, errors, and a constant overhead of coordination calls.

— Field Service Platform Builders

20 years of domain knowledge. Still building.

SystemTask → ElementIQ. If you need a field service platform, talk to the team that's been doing this since 2004.

— Platform Architecture

Everything field service operations needed — built module by module.

SystemTask v2 was a complete field service ERP. Not a point solution — the entire operational platform, from customer record to technician invoice.

🏢

CRM — Customers & Sites

Customer records with one-to-many site relationships. Bulk site import via CSV — eliminating manual entry entirely. Sites linked to projects for mass work order generation.

📋

Work Order Engine

Work orders created individually or by scheduler — 6,000 at a time for a national rollout. Each WO carries required skills, tools, certifications, and priority. Linked to site, asset, project, and client.

🤖

Auto-Dispatch & Skill Match

System identifies the nearest available technician matching all requirements — skills, certifications with minimum scores, required tools. Broadcasts to dashboard and email simultaneously. No dispatcher decision required.

🖥️

Real-Time Dispatch Board

Colour-coded live board: yellow = pending acceptance, green = accepted, red = delayed, purple = in transit. Displayed on a large office screen. Four time zones visible simultaneously. Every status change reflected instantly.

📦

Asset Management

Full asset register with serial numbers, installation records, warranty dates, and service history. Assets linked to sites and work orders. Right asset information to the right technician before every dispatch.

✅

Pre-Flight Form

Technicians complete a mandatory checklist before leaving for site — toolkit verified, work order details reviewed, certifications confirmed. Prevented on-site failures caused by missing equipment or missing information.

🧩

Form Builder

Configurable forms for any operational need — site surveys, completion reports, compliance checklists, quality sign-offs. Built without code. Forms attached to work order types and triggered automatically at the right stage.

💰

Financial & Billing Module

Invoice generation from completed work orders. Technician timesheet and expense submission. Billing summaries per client, per project, per period. Built before QuickBooks integrations existed — a self-contained financial layer.

🤝

Partner & Reseller Portal

Partners log in and see only their clients and work orders. No access to other accounts. Resellers manage their end-customer operations within a controlled view — reducing coordination overhead to near zero.

👷

Technician Portal

Technicians log in, see only their assigned work orders, update status in real time, submit invoices, and access work order details and asset information. Clean, role-appropriate interface built for field workers.

🎟️

Ticketing System

Support and issue tickets linked to work orders, assets, and clients. Full audit trail from initial report to resolution. Ticket history attached to asset records — enabling pattern detection on recurring equipment failures.

👥

Role-Based User Access

Granular user roles: internal dispatcher, external technician, partner, client, admin. Each role sees exactly what they need — no more. Configuration per client where necessary. The access model that made multi-tenancy possible.

— Deepdive: The Dispatch Engine

The system that replaced 200 phone calls a day.

The automated dispatch engine was the centrepiece of SystemTask. Before it existed, every work order assignment was a phone call or email. After it, the entire process ran without a dispatcher.

SYSTEMTASK · NATIONAL OPERATIONS BOARD · ALL ZONES · REAL-TIME

EST 09:14 CST 08:14 MST 07:14 PST 06:14

EST — EAST COAST WORK ORDERS

WO-4819 · 7-Eleven #1188

Chicago, IL · Network Switch

EST

Accepted 08:14

WO-4821 · 7-Eleven #3042

Dallas, TX · POS Config

CST

Pending 08:52

WO-4817 · Walmart #0881

Atlanta, GA · Hardware Install

EST

In Transit

PST / MST — WEST COAST & MOUNTAIN

WO-4815 · 7-Eleven #1887

Los Angeles, CA · Software Upgrade

PST

ETA Exceeded

WO-4823 · 7-Eleven #5501

Seattle, WA · Network Audit

PST

Accepted 06:08

WO-4826 · Walmart #3302

Denver, CO · POS Replace

MST

Broadcast Sent

TECHNICIAN MATCH ALGORITHM · WO-4821 · REQUIRED VS AVAILABLE

Network Config

94%

POS Systems

88%

Certification Score

91/100

Tool: Provided

✓

Proximity Score

12.4mi

— How Auto-Dispatch Works

On work order creation, the engine queries the technician database — internal and external — filtering by skill match, certification score threshold, required tools, and current availability. The nearest qualifying technician receives a simultaneous dashboard notification and email. The dispatch board changes colour to yellow. If no acceptance in 15 minutes, the next-nearest is broadcast.

— The Big Screen

The operations team mounted a large display on the office wall showing the national dispatch board in real time. Delayed work orders flashed red. Time zone stamps let the team instantly understand whether a PST delay was an early-morning issue or a genuine problem. Before this existed, the same visibility required constant phone rounds — each one eating 5–10 minutes of dispatcher time.

— The Bulk Work Order Scheduler

How 6,000 work orders got created without 6,000 manual entries.

Site import — from Excel to the platform in one step

Previously, every client site was entered manually — a form, field by field, one site at a time. When a client had hundreds or thousands of locations, this was a project in itself. The import feature allowed a CSV upload of all site data — address, coordinates, site type, contact details — which the system validated and created as structured site records in bulk. What previously took days of data entry took minutes. This was the first major step away from the MS Access era of one-at-a-time data management.

// What changed

Before: 1 site = 1 manual form = ~4 minutes. 6,000 sites = 400 hours of data entry. After: CSV upload with column mapping → validation → bulk create. 6,000 sites created in under 10 minutes. Duplicate detection and address validation built in.

Bulk ImportCSV MappingAddress ValidationDuplicate Detection

Project creation — linking the import to a work order template

During or after a site import, the operator could link that import batch to a project. The project defined the work order template — what type of work, what skills and certifications were required, what tools were needed, what the priority was, what the client SLA was. This connection between import and project was the bridge between "we have 6,000 sites in the system" and "we need a work order at each of those 6,000 sites for this specific job."

// Example: 7-Eleven POS Software Upgrade Rollout

Project: 7-Eleven National POS Upgrade Q2. Import: 6,000 US stores. Work order template: POS software install, Network Cert Level 2 required (min score 80), company-provided USB drive toolkit, 2-hour window, client SLA: completed within 30 days. Scheduler: generate 1 WO per imported site, stagger by time zone and date range.

Project ModuleWO TemplateSkill RequirementsSLA Config

Scheduler — 6,000 work orders created, time-zoned, and queued automatically

The scheduler ran the generation job. It created one work order per site, applied the project template to each, assigned the correct time zone based on site location, and staggered the dispatch queue according to the configured rollout schedule. Work orders weren't all broadcast at once — the scheduler released them in batches aligned to technician capacity and date windows. The operations team went from "we need to manually create 6,000 work orders" to "the scheduler created them overnight."

// What the scheduler did

Generated 6,000 WOs overnight. Each WO: correct site, correct template, correct time zone, correct priority. Staggered release: 200 WOs per day over 30 days, biased toward sites in time zones where technician availability was highest. Auto-dispatch triggered on release. Operations team reviewed exceptions only — not the bulk.

Bulk WO SchedulerTime Zone LogicCapacity PacingAuto-Dispatch

✓

A national 6,000-store rollout that would have required weeks of manual WO creation and dispatch was executed as a scheduled overnight job.

Pre-flight form — technician checklist before leaving for site

Before the pre-flight form existed, technicians occasionally arrived on site without the right equipment, without reviewing the work order details, or without the required certification documentation. Each instance cost the client a callout fee, damaged the relationship, and required a costly rescheduled visit. The pre-flight form was a mandatory checklist the technician completed in the system before their status could move from "accepted" to "in transit." It confirmed toolkit packed, work order reviewed, certification documents with them, and site contact confirmed.

// Pre-flight checklist items

Work order details reviewed ✓ · Required tools packed (listed per WO type) ✓ · Certification documentation with technician ✓ · Site address and contact confirmed ✓ · Company-provided equipment collected from depot ✓. Until all items checked, WO status cannot advance. Submission logged with timestamp for audit trail.

Form BuilderStatus GateAudit TrailWO-Linked

✦ Now Building · ElementIQ v3.0

SystemTask taught us
everything. ElementIQ
does it all.

After 20 years running SystemTask in production — through national rollouts, thousands of technicians, and millions of work orders — we are rebuilding the platform from scratch. ElementIQ is not an upgrade. It is a next-generation field service platform built with everything we learned, and everything that technology can now do that it couldn't in 2004.

API-First Architecture AI-Assisted Dispatch Mobile-Native Tech App Real-Time GPS Tracking Cloud-Native Infrastructure QuickBooks / Xero / SAP Integration IoT Asset Monitoring Customer Self-Service Portal Advanced Analytics & BI Marketplace Integrations

SystemTask v2

ElementIQ v3

Dispatch

Rule-based nearest available

→

Dispatch

AI-optimised multi-factor routing

Technician

Dashboard + email notification

→

Technician

Native mobile app · Push · GPS

Asset Tracking

Manual serial entry + records

→

Asset Tracking

IoT-connected · Auto lifecycle alerts

Billing

Internal module, no integration

→

Billing

QuickBooks · Xero · SAP live sync

Visibility

Office screen · manual status checks

→

Visibility

Real-time GPS map · Live BI dashboard

Architecture

Monolithic web app · 2004 stack

→

Architecture

API-first · Cloud-native · Microservices

— Business Impact

What SystemTask delivered for its clients — and what ElementIQ will exceed.

Two decades of proven outcomes

6,000

Work orders auto-created for a single national 7-Eleven rollout — overnight, via scheduler

Phone calls needed to dispatch a technician after auto-dispatch was live — previously 200+ per day

US time zones managed simultaneously on one real-time board — no separate system per region

20yr

Platform lifespan — the mark of a system that was built right, not just built fast

✓

Client satisfaction rose as phone calls fell

Before the dispatch board and auto-dispatch, clients called the operations team to check WO status. After, they had portal visibility. Fewer calls, faster responses, higher satisfaction — all measured through reduced escalations and improved client retention.

✓

On-site failure rate fell after pre-flight forms

Technicians arriving at a site without the right tools or certification was a significant source of client complaints and reputational risk. The mandatory pre-flight checklist made it structurally impossible to begin transit without confirming readiness.

✓

Partners operated independently — without calls to the main team

Resellers and partners logging into their own portal and managing their own work orders reduced the coordination overhead on the internal team significantly. A partner with 50 active jobs no longer generated 50 status-check calls.

✓

The domain knowledge is now in ElementIQ

Twenty years of real-world field service edge cases, failure modes, client requirements, and operational patterns are now encoded in ElementIQ's design. No new customer has to discover what went wrong in 2009 — because it's already been handled.

— FAQ

Questions about SystemTask and ElementIQ

Is ElementIQ available now or still in development?

ElementIQ v3.0 is currently in active development. Core modules — work order management, dispatch, technician app, and asset management — are in build. If you are a field service business interested in early access or want to influence the product roadmap, we are speaking with prospects now. Contact us and we'll set up a dedicated conversation with the ElementIQ product team.

Can you build a custom field service platform for our specific operation?

Yes — and this is one of our strongest capabilities. SystemTask itself was a custom build for a specific client. We have 20 years of field service ERP domain knowledge and can scope, design, and build a custom platform for your operation. Whether that means a full build, a custom version of ElementIQ, or a targeted module (dispatch only, asset management only, partner portal only) — we can scope any of these in the free assessment.

What industries does this apply to beyond retail services?

The field service ERP model — sites, work orders, technician dispatch, asset management, partner portals — applies to any organisation that deploys skilled workers to client locations. This includes telecommunications (we also built the TSN telecom BOM platform), facilities management, HVAC and building services, IT field services, utilities, medical equipment servicing, and logistics. If you dispatch technicians, this architecture applies.

Why build ElementIQ from scratch rather than extending SystemTask?

SystemTask v2 was built on a 2004-era architecture that, while solid, is structurally incompatible with modern API integration, mobile-native apps, real-time GPS, cloud infrastructure, and AI-assisted features. Extending it would mean bolting modern requirements onto foundations not designed for them. The decision to rebuild — retaining all domain knowledge but starting fresh architecturally — produces a platform that will last another 20 years, not five.

One Scheduler, 6,000 Work Orders: 20 Years of Field Service Excellence.