mplsystems has announced a new, integrated field service management solution that directly address what they perceive as the three main barriers to field service efficiency: combining disparate IT systems; enabling the scheduling of reactive jobs alongside planned tasks; and solving ongoing issues relating to lack of visibility of activities in the field.

The systems key functionality includes a unified service desk portal, automatic and dynamic planning and scheduling of service activities, as well as mobile communications for field personnel through dedicated apps for all leading smart phones and tablets.

The solution is particularly easy-to-use, supporting a unique combination of automated scheduling with dynamic drag-and-drop capabilities to enable planners to optimise schedules and manage their reactive tasks in real-time. When integrated with a comprehensive service desk portal and updates via mobile apps, organisations will be able to unlock significant productivity and efficiency savings with a true, real-time view of all current maintenance activities across the business.

Bridging the disconnect

“Until now field service management systems have always suffered from a disconnect between the service desk, planning and what’s actually going on in the field. The result is that it has proved virtually impossible for service management firms to react quickly to customer emergency jobs and change requests as the planning function is burdened by overly complex scheduling tools that make it difficult to schedule such reactive jobs in real-time. Our new service management solution directly address this challenge,” commented Paul White, CEO at mplsystems.

“And despite the great advances in smart phone technology, the reality for most service organisations is still that their field workforce is largely invisible. That’s a real concern given that the top complaint from service maintenance customers is that technicians, when on site, can’t resolve issues. By integrating our service desk portal with both automated scheduling and field updates via mobile apps, we can make sure that field service organisations have both the real-time information dynamic planning tools they need to solve this problem.”

The new solution differs with traditional service scheduling tools that are often over-complex with endless menus, options, parameters and screens.

Instead the mplsystems solution features a simplified interface with three core drag-and-drop presentation options that enable schedule optimisation: a dynamic map view that streamlines the scheduling and allocation of tasks, a field service engineer’s calendar view showing all jobs and locations, and a complete list of jobs that can be filtered using a range of parameters.

These three views can be toggled separately or displayed concurrently on a single screen. When the service desk receives a call, all service desk staff need to do is just drag and drop the task onto the appropriate field engineer’s schedule. This action updates diaries and transfers all relevant task information to the engineer’s mobile Android, iOS or Windows Mobile device.

mplsystems vs maximo?

Statutory Support Services, a specialist building services maintenance group, chose the new mplsystems solution to gain a single view of all its field activities.

“With mplsystems we’ve been able to automate around 50 percent of the manual scheduling tasks that we had to do with our previous system, and we’re already seeing improvements in terms of our KPIs and SLAs. Our schedulers are no longer overloaded with endless menus, options, parameters and screens. Instead they get to look at just three simple views – a dynamic map that streamlines the drag-and-drop scheduling and allocation of tasks, a field service engineer’s calendar view, and a complete list of jobs that can be filtered using a range of parameters,” explained Adam Clarke, Statutory Support Services UK Limited’s Managing Director.

“The sheer simplicity of the system means that our staff simply need to drag-and-drop a task onto the appropriate field engineer’s schedule. This action updates diaries and transfers all relevant task information to the engineer’s mobile device. With the time saved, we can focus our helpdesk staff on the kind of added value tasks that other service companies simply don’t have the time to do.

“Thanks to increased SLA adherence and the ability of our new mplsystems implementation to respond effectively to reactive jobs and dynamic schedule optimisation, we’re expecting the mplsystems field service management solution to pay for itself within just six months,” he added. “When you factor in costs such as licencing and hardware costs for field mobile systems, we’re estimating that our cloud-based mplsystems technology solution will work out at around five times less expensive than our legacy enterprise Maximo-based scheduling system.”

mplsystems’ new end-to-end solution can be delivered either on premise or in the cloud, and provides field service organisations with a true real-time view of all their current maintenance and support activities across their entire operation. A full suite of field service management software allows businesses to create and customise exactly the level of functionality they need around their existing IT investments.