Dispatch software assigns work to people, shows everybody the same picture of the day, and updates that picture when it changes. That is the whole definition. Everything else in the category, from maps to automation to customer messaging, exists to make one of those three faster. Knowing that makes it much easier to tell a feature from a decoration.
Assign, show, update
Assignment gives one job one owner. Showing means the office and the field see the same thing without asking each other. Updating means a change reaches everyone within seconds. A product that does all three well and nothing else is a good dispatch product; one that does many other things and any of these three badly is not.
What a digital system replaced
Before it, dispatch was a whiteboard, a telephone and a person who held the day in their head. Those work, and they scale to about one dispatcher and a dozen jobs at a time. What digital dispatching systems changed is not the decisions, which are the same decisions, but who has to be rung in order to act on them.
What it is not
It is not route optimisation, which orders a fixed set of stops. It is not a CRM, which is organised around the customer relationship. It is not field service management, which is a system of record for the whole business. Products blur these lines because it helps them sell, and the blurring is where buyers end up with the wrong thing.
What it is worth
On the worked example this site publishes, 14% of 655 calls a month get moved at eleven minutes of dispatcher time each, which is 16.5 hours and $528. The 6% that never happen is 39.3 jobs and $11,200 of invoicing. Those two numbers are the honest value proposition, and any pitch that needs bigger ones is guessing.
Questions people ask about what is dispatch software
Do we need dispatch software or scheduling software?
Scheduling plans tomorrow, dispatching handles today going wrong. Most businesses need the second and go shopping for the first.
Is a shared calendar dispatch software?
It does the showing and not the assigning or the updating, which is why calendars are abandoned at about the second technician.
How much should it cost?
Compare it to your own churn figure rather than to a competitor price list. Dispatchzo Pro is $69 a month for the whole team.