Is your field service unit as efficient as you think?

Dec 21, 2015 • Features • management • IFS • scheduling • Software and Apps

As we enter the final few working days days of 2015 it's a good time to reflect on what we did well this year and of course what we can do better next year...

However whilst the world is certainly a better place financially than it was a few years ago we still live in an age of austerity. More and more companies have quite rightly moved their service departments to their own P&L as the shift from cost centre to profit centre becomes more common for a service division.

However, whether your field service operation is a necessary cost or a profitable division of your business, the ability to achieve more next year than you did this year with the same level of resource is one that can push your organisation to a better market share, greater profits and of courser internally will do your career as a field service management professional no harm at all either!

Fortunately many of the arguments for adopting certain technologies within field service industries are based on a robust return on investment (R.o.I) basis that will ultimately pay for itself and deliver ongoing savings in efficiency - often within a 12 month timeframe.

Then of course there is optimised scheduling where not only will you see reduced fuel costs but also achieve higher job completion across a day so potentially not only reducing costs but simulataneously improving customer service also.

Driver behaviour apps offer reduced maintenance costs of your fleet vehicles for example, rugged devices are regularly bought because whilst they may be more expensive in the short term over the course of their lifetime the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is in fact much lower than that of alternative consumer devices.

However, as with many things in life which sound a bit too good to be true, such claims of operational improvements and cost savings can sometimes be met with cynicism. Indeed, optimised scheduling may not deliver huge benefits for all companies, those with a relatively simple work process or a small team for example may not see the same benefits as those with larger workforces or a more complex set of jobs being allocated.

The simple truth is there is no simple answer as to the type of company that will get the best gains from optimised scheduling.

However, what is well documented is that most companies will see some performance gains and many of those who implement optimised scheduling will see highly significant gains such as PHS who saved £2M in a year in fuel savings alone.

So in order to help our readers identify whether optimised scheduling would benefit their organisation, Field Service News has teamed up with specialist service management provider IFS to offer a free, no obligation Field Service Healthcheck that will identify exactly what efficiencies your business could make through adopting an optimised scheduler.

Simply click the link below to access the registration page.

Once there complete the brief form and instructions will be sent to you on how to undertake your free field service health-check and a scheduling expert from IFS will analyse your current workload and identify exactly how and where you could make improvements within three days of receiving your completed form.

So why sit in the dark about how much optimised scheduling could benefit your company. Find out for free right now...