Rebecca Santiago has a lot of people she has to move.
As the operations systems manager at Bill Howe Plumbing — one of San Diego's largest trades companies — she's Bill Howe's ServiceTitan Certified Administrator, which means she's the trainer, the troubleshooter and, on most days, the cheerleader.
She'll tell you she had doubts before she started moving anyone.
Santiago isn't an early adopter by nature — not anymore. She used to enroll Bill Howe in every beta, wanting to be first. She's learned that's not always the right call when a rollout touches 160 technicians.
She's part of several online groups where ServiceTitan users trade notes, and some of the earlier reaction to the Field Mobile App gave her pause. She'd also learned from experience — Bill Howe is big enough that a rocky rollout doesn't just affect a handful of people. It affects 160 technicians and every customer they see that day.
So she dug in. She tested features. She ran one-on-ones. And she started finding the things that were just plainly better.
"I just didn't want to be in a position where we have to change overnight and we're not prepared," Santiago said.
If you're still on the legacy app, you know the transition is coming, she says. Her advice: start now, and start slow.
What's different — and why it matters
The new Field Mobile App wasn't patched together from the old one. It was rebuilt from the ground up, for iOS and Android, with technicians in mind.
Here's what Santiago's team noticed first:
No more pricebook downloads. The old app required technicians to manually download their pricebook every morning, a time suck that was sometimes forgotten. The new app syncs automatically and in real time. "They're very happy about that," Santiago said.
More efficient photo upload. For years, Bill Howe techs had to take pictures on their device and upload them separately. Now they shoot multiple photos inside the app and attach them directly to the job.
Rating plate scanning. Technicians can photograph a piece of equipment's rating plate and the app captures the model number, serial number and installation date automatically — no typing required. "Remember how you had to type in the serial number and the model number and all of that?" Santiago tells her techs. "All you have to do is take a picture of it."
AI job summaries. The app can draft a job summary that technicians review and edit before sending. Santiago said some of her techs had already been copying summaries from ChatGPT into the old app. Now it's built in.
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How to roll it out without losing anyone
Santiago's approach at Bill Howe: one-on-ones first, then small groups, then follow-ups.
"Do your one-on-ones, then do small groups, do follow-ups," she said. "Space it out — maybe one week do these ones, the next week do these ones — and just be patient."
A few things she learned along the way:
Check your device compatibility early. Some older devices don't support the new app. Better to find out in training than in the field.
Check your global settings. Features like TI summaries may not be enabled by default. Santiago discovered this mid-training when a tech called her out in front of a group.
Use your early adopters. Technicians who get comfortable first become the proof of concept for everyone else. "If this guy can do it, you can do it," Santiago tells her groups.
Don't wait for perfect. "However you see the Field Mobile App right now, it's going to continuously get better," she tells her technicians. The goal is getting people comfortable before the legacy app goes away — not waiting until every feature is flawless.
"People don't normally like change," Santiago said. "But once they get used to it, they're like, 'Oh yeah, it's easy.'"
She's at 60 to 70% adoption now. The rest will come.
The legacy app isn't going anywhere tomorrow. But Santiago's been in this long enough — nearly 20 years at Bill Howe, three software systems deep — to know that tomorrow has a way of arriving faster than you expect.
"Why not get a better, more modern app that is only going to grow and get better," she said, "when you're still stuck in the other one?"
