ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘features’ CATEGORY

Several recent research studies have shown that technology and mobility solutions in particular are growing in importance as businesses seek ways to improve productivity, increase efficiency and reduce costs of delivering services.  Gerard O'Keefe, CEO and Founder of GeoPal takes a look at some common trends and what that means for mobile workforce management...

Managing a mobile workforce cost-effectively can be difficult. A lack of visibility of employee locations outside the office, printing and distributing job packs, and lost or incomplete paperwork can lead to delays in issuing invoices and reports. Mobile Workforce Management solutions create significant cost reductions for businesses, and increase productivity and cashflow by eliminating paper and increasing visibility and control of business operations. Mobility solutions for workforce management, data capture and service management are becoming important tools for businesses as they strive to be more competitive.

What do business executives want from IT?

According to the McKinsey Global IT Survey, completed in 2013, more and more executives are acknowledging the strategic value of IT to their businesses beyond merely cutting costs. They are focusing on and invest in the function’s ability to enable productivity, business efficiency, and product and service innovation. 61% of executives prioritised the ability of IT solutions to improve the effectiveness of business processes, compared to 31%, who prioritised reduction of costs.

Is mobility important to business executives?

Over 1475 senior executives were surveyed between Dec 2013 and Jan 2014 by Accenture, to explore how companies are applying digital technologies to help improve various aspects of their business. 77% of participants considered mobility among their top five priorities for 2014. 43 % said that mobility was in their top two priorities. 39% will allocate budget to mobility to improve field service / customer service delivery. In addition to Mobility, Cloud solutions were also identified by 62% of respondents as being in their top 5 priorities for 2014. Combining mobility and cloud computing for even greater success. IBM also conducted a survey of CEO’s and CIO’s in 2014, and asked them to identify the key technologies they intended to invest in over the next few years. Mobility solutions (84%) and cloud computing (64%) were identified as being of key investment areas. 62% of respondents in the Accenture study identified Cloud technology as being in their top five priorities for 2014. Cloud-based technologies provide businesses with a low-cost way to implement new systems, including mobile workforce management. Cloud-based management systems are: 

• Low-cost – op-ex instead of cap-ex – more affordable for SMEs
• Faster to Deploy – can be deployed in days, rather than months
• Mobile – Can be accessed anywhere, anytime via a web browser

Why choose mobility solutions for your business?

In 2010, a study asked over 2,200 decision-makers were asked what benefits their firms have experienced as a result of deploying mobile applications. Organizations that have deployed mobile applications report increases in worker productivity and efficiency, faster internal and customer-facing issue resolution, and improvements in customer satisfaction with services delivered. In the Global State of Enterprise Mobility 2014 Survey, the Enterprise Mobility Exchange asked businesses to identify the key benefits of mobility solutions. 72% of practitioners identified increased productivity as the key benefit for their business. 32% identified reduced costs as being a key benefit for their business.

What is Mobile Workforce Management?

There are usually two parts to a mobile workforce management system. A management system which can be cloud-based or locally installed on a server and a mobile application. Work is scheduled and assigned to employees from the management system, and details of jobs are sent to the employee via an app on their smartphone. The employee then completes the job, using the app to record completion of each step in a workflow or capture any data required for the job, such as photos, barcode/RFID scans, or electronic signatures. Status updates and job reports are sent back to the management system as the employee works through the job in the field. Mobile workforce management solutions facilitate faster, more accurate transfer of information between workers in the field and staff in the office. This enables faster production of professional reports and issuing of invoices, increasing cash flow and giving businesses a competitive edge over companies relying on paperwork.

 

 

 

Whilst improving productivity, efficiency and most importantly customer satisfaction should be at the top of every field service company's agenda, unless you have properly addressed how you can monitor and manage your processes you're going to have an uphill struggle. Aviram Hinenzon, Vice President with ViryaNet explains why...

When implementing your mobile workforce management system, you may not be thinking about performance management.

You’re so focused on the implementation that you may postpone your performance management initiative. And keep postponing. Until you’ve moved onto something else. So your performance management initiative never gets started.

Now your new mobile workforce management system is generating data. Awesome! You have all this data, but you still don’t know what you should fix. Dang it. Should have started that performance management initiative when you had the chance.

It’s too easy to focus on “what needs to get done now”. To continuously improve, you must move the focus from the “things that you do” to the “things you can do better”. You also need to understand what “better” means to you.

Taking the First Step

The first step in determining the things you can do better is to define your business goals.

Mobile workforce management is a complex process that includes workforce planning, assignment decisions, and plan execution. So it’s important to align this complex process with your business goals.

You must start with the business goals that are most important to you. Service organisation goals are usually related to:

• business processes
• compliance
•  customer satisfaction
• financials
• productivity utilisation

After defining your goals, you must identify the business questions that need to be asked to address your business goals. For example:

• Are we following our optimised routes?
• Are we meeting our service level agreements (SLAs)?
• Are we using overtime? If so, are we using overtime effectively?
• How can we improve our planning and scheduling to increase our efficiency?

 

You can plan better for your future by analysing your history and addressing your planning and operational analysis.

To address your business goals and to continuously improve, you must identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that must be measured. Keep in mind that you must combine several KPIs together to understand any issues related to your business goals.

Measuring and Visualising Data

Then, you must develop your KPIs by collecting your data in a database that’s best suited for reporting. For example, you could use a Star Schema database which already contains your KPIs calculated and structured for performance management. To measure and visualise your KPIs in different dimensions and different timeframes, you need to develop a query package to retrieve your KPIs from the database.

When selecting your data visualisation tool, you must consider your specific needs. Some data visualisation tools are “heavy” business intelligence platforms that have many capabilities, but require IT involvement. Other “lighter” tools with data visualisation and dash-boarding capabilities are more suitable for business users. You should select the tool that meets your needs and helps you achieve your results quickly and efficiently.

Now you must combine your KPIs into charts and combine these charts into dashboards. To help you make informed decisions and translate those decisions into calls-to-action, your dashboards should have a balanced view of several aspects of your business (e.g., financials, productivity). Monitoring and analysing your metrics with the use of a mobile workforce management solution allows you to generate Balanced Scorecards and dashboards that can help your organisation make business decisions and take action.

When creating your dashboards, you must identify your dashboard users and their roles in your organisation. These users may require different dashboards with different data. For example, typically, executives and customers will need only a high-level summary of data. However, your supervisors and operational managers will require more detailed dashboards.

Maintaining a Performance Management Practice

After creating and customising your dashboards, you must train your team to maintain a continuous Performance Management Practice. For example:

• What are you going to measure?
•  How often are you going to measure?
• How will you adjust your dashboards over time (e.g., when your business goals change)?
• How will you adjust your baselines and target lines after your business goals have been achieved?

As you collect and analyse your performance data, you need to confirm the accuracy of your data. Using data accuracy dashboards, you must define the ranges of what’s acceptable as reliable data for your field service organisation. Also, we recommend that you measure the improvement of data accuracy over time. Your data accuracy is an indicator of your employees’ compliance in reporting.

When you discover any service inefficiencies, identify the root causes of these problems by asking yourself, “Why did this happen?”

Then, transform your goals and KPI measurements into decisions and calls-to-action for operational changes. These calls-to-action may include adjusting your mobile workforce management software or making other changes, such as:

• policies (e.g., overtime)
• processes (e.g., communicating with the customer)
• behaviours (e.g., mentoring worst performers)

After you’ve applied corrective actions to the issues you identified, you need to measure again. With these measurements, you must determine if the actions you applied have truly helped your organisation to improve towards your goals. Then, in order to attain or retain your best-in-class status, you need to benchmark your organisation against others in your industry.

Remember that your goals will change over time. So, periodically, you should review the implementation of your Performance Management Practice. And once you have achieved your goals, you must adjust your baselines and target lines for new goals.

Performance management is a continuous effort that has a direct impact on your people, processes and systems. As a service organisation, you need to define your goals, build your business processes, and measure your performance against business objectives. When you’re thinking about implementing your mobile workforce management system, you need to think about performance management or you can’t improve your field service.

Glyn Dodd, Managing Director of Centrex Services returns to Field Service News with a new two part feature that outlines his battle plan for the service industry. In the first part of this feature Glyn looked at how the battle for the service supply chain had become based in the industry middle ground. In this concluding part of the feature he outlines why if changes are not made the battle may be lost... 

Reskilling engineers is vital

With technical couriers and middle ground technicians dealing with the majority of incidents, the role of field service engineers has to change in line with the service supply chain. The skilled engineers remain vital; focused at the top of the skill pyramid, providing services within the data centre and other complex technology areas such as multi-functional devices and networks. However, they will need to be deployed in a different way to provide the most cost-effective model possible and employed in far less quantities than they are today.

The level of expertise skilled engineers have should never be overlooked. When technology stops working, businesses stop working and it is often this vital part of the service which enables companies to get back up and running again, within the service level agreement.  We simply need to readdress the economics of demand, aligning skill to activity to service revenue model.

If we don’t change the approach, the battlefield will intensify, providers will lose money and customers will lose faith in the service. This would be disastrous. The industry and the associated channel will continue to be viewed as non-strategic, causing confusion between customers, those in the field and the so called specialists providing the service.

Modernising technical support

As well as rejuvenating the service, remodelling the cost and ensuring the workforce is effectively deployed, the service supply chain must be connected in an intelligent way - centralised around astute contact centre services.  Each process can be challenged and streamlined, culminating in a chain that is valuable, capable, available, adequate and flexible.

Modernisation is vital to the future stability of after sales support. It’s clear that the current technology support model is not fit for purpose and is actively harming the industry. We all talk and think about putting the customer first, but taking a holistic view of this industry, it seems no one is designing these services with customer satisfaction in mind.

The delivery infrastructure needs a complete overhaul, moving away from the fragmented supply chain currently plaguing technology support towards a more streamlined, connected approach. Redesigning the interaction between each element of the supply chain, from control centre to repair, will breed high-quality service.

We must redesign the battlefield as by changing the thinking, creating greater intelligence and deploying with full traceability, the middle ground break-fix will cease to be the daily battle-zone. Instead, technology support will profit from a lean, customer first service supply chain, once again adding true value for the customer.

 

 

Aly Pinder, research analyst and mobile workforce specialist with the Aberdeen Group joins Field Service News with a new monthly column. In this first feature he looks at how companies can stand out in 'the age of the customer'

How would you rate your organisation’s ability to deliver great service?

Now, how would your customers rate your service?

I think both questions can lead to valuable insights into how the service organisation needs to evolve in 2014. But the customer’s take on your service is becoming more important than ever. Aberdeen’s recent research on the State of Service Management: Roadmap to a Profitable 2014 (March 2014) highlighted the top pressure facing organisations is increased competition both in products and services (52% of respondents, n = 170). No longer can service and manufacturing organisations rest on their laurels that the customer will not find someone else who can provide similar if not more value. For this reason, it is imperative that organisations re-train their focus on improving the service experience and providing value to the customer relationship.

In order to achieve this heightened level of service to the customer, a few lessons should be learned from top performers recently sampled from Aberdeen’s research. These best practices are just a starting point, but should be followed to ensure competition doesn’t eat away at your profits or customer base -

Craft a culture of service.

Exceptional service can only be achieved if the entire organisation is on board to deliver value to the customer. Often times we view service as a “problem” for field service or the contact centre. This is not a winning approach. The field service team is often the function which is in closest proximity to the customer, but each team within the organisation can have a positive impact on the relationship. For example, engineering has the opportunity to make products that are easier for customers to use and doesn’t break as frequently, marketing has the ability to highlight products or services that most align with customer needs, and operations can make service delivery more efficient by removing clutter from the service chain.

Learn from your customers.

Customers are more than just a means to more revenue. Customers show a window into the future of innovation and viability for the organisation. Top performers in Aberdeen’s research were 50% more likely than peers to proactively capture customer feedback in regard to product and service performance (66% vs. 44%, respectively). Organisations that do not listen to customers’ needs will miss out on finding that next great product or service. Furthermore, customers have more clout than ever, so neglecting them will not only impact one sale it may also negatively influence their connected ecosystem of current and future sales.

Design products for improved service.

Continuous improvement is a topic often denoted to manufacturing or operations. However, I propose that all organisations and functional areas should strive to continuously improve the offerings for their customers. The best performing organisations in Aberdeen’s sample were twice as likely to design products for improved serviceability (56% vs. 28%, respectively). These firms relayed customer and usage data from the field to engineering and design teams to enhance future products. An emerging concept for service organisations is “ease of doing business” for the customer, designing products for serviceability is the next frontier of this concept.

Find out what motivates your great service team.

Does your organisation know what motivates its field service teams? Not many organisations do. We just assume that an hourly wage is all it takes to have a technician who is excited to provide exceptional service. And this may be true at times, but organisations need to provide customers with even more valuable experiences. Thus firms must take a look at the employee’s motivation to create a link. Organisations are missing opportunities to identify gaps in service because technicians are not engaged to go beyond just turning the wrench to see the customer’s true needs.

Field service excellence is no longer a simple proposition of meeting a schedule. Top performers are looking to the service organisation to provide enhanced value to customers and become a willing partner for innovation.

 

In the same way that you wouldn’t just buy a car without test driving it, you also shouldn’t buy field service management software before trying it out. Leah Merrill, Software Analyst with Capterra  gives advice on how to get the best out of a field service software 'road test' ...

Just like you test a car to see if there are any issues, discomfort, how easy it is for you to drive, and how much it costs, you also need to test out software to see if there are any potential glitches, how easy it is to use, and how efficient customer service will be. Here are some other incredibly vital reasons for trying out the system beforehand:

You can more accurately compare the systems you’ve looked at.

In most cases, vendors will give you the option of taking a free trial, or a free demo, which is often very hands on and could be considered a free trial. If they don’t, go ahead and just ask them for one—you need to have a trial run before you make such a big purchase decision, and most vendors will be willing to accommodate you.

As you go through the trial, take your time. Take note of how intuitive the software is, whether or not it seems complicated in certain areas, and if you see any potential problems with any parts of it. This will help you to differentiate between the other solutions that you’ve looked at, and compare ease of use and your other requirements to the other vendors you’ve spoken with. Take detailed notes during each trial and make sure you save them to review later!

You can test out customer service.

Before your trial is over, call customer service. Test out how long the response time is, or how long you wait on the phone before you get through to a representative. Do you speak with a person immediately? Are you on hold for a long time beforehand? Is it an automated help system that just has you select answers without sending you to an actual human being? Make sure you’re aware of how easy and efficient customer support is (or isn’t), as this will be (or should be) an important part of your purchase decision.

You can measure the time saving benefits.

If you’re viewing a demo, you would have to ask the sales rep to demonstrate doing a time consuming task so that you can get an idea of how much time the software will actually save you. When you’re using a trial of the software, you can measure how long it takes you to do the task yourself, but you can also take into consideration the fact that over time and with more practice you will become more efficient. A trial version gives you the opportunity to practice and evaluate the time it takes to do all the tasks that you do on a daily basis.

Here are some tips for when you’re evaluating a trial version:

 

•  Spend a sufficient amount of time on one product before going on to another, as there is often a time limit on how long each one will last.
• Make notes of what you like and dislike about the software, as you’ll be evaluating several different systems and it may be difficult to remember what each program was like if you don’t take detailed notes.
• Test out the most important feature that you need and make sure that it works smoothly and in the way that you need it to.
• Make sure you ask each vendor all the questions that you need so that there are no surprises when you purchase a system.

But: remember that you’re running trials—not the real thing.

Keep in mind that while running the trial and testing out customer service are good ways to determine how the software will be if you purchase it, the support with a trial may not show you exactly what support would be like after purchasing, and the trial is not completely “real” either—it will only give you a good idea of what the software will be like.

Have any more good reasons for taking a free trial? Add them in the comments below!

 

 

Motion Computing's Ian Davies looks at the true value of rugged computing and why going for the cheaper option is a false economy...

Every IT director and line of business manager looking at a tablet PC deployment will, at some point face the question “why invest in a ruggedised solution when we can get two or three consumer units for the price of one ruggedised tablet and just swap them out if they go down?”  Even allowing for the restrictions of consumer devices in terms of software, operating systems and processing power, the initial numbers can - at first - be attractive.

But, speak to any manager or director who has then faced the issues of deploying and managing non ruggedised hardware and those numbers soon evaporate.  In fact, research shows that the total cost of ownership for non-ruggedised tablets is three times greater than ruggedised alternatives over a three year period.

A recent survey from VDC highlights the causes of this expense in using consumer grade units.  As part of a research project among IT decision makers at 215 companies managing a mobile device deployment, VDC discovered that the leading cause of device failure was that the tablet had been dropped.  The second cause was software issues but this was only marginally ahead of exposure to water and liquid (and just over 1 in 4 tablet PCs will face such exposure). Other leading causes of failure include excessive heat / cold, dust exposure and vibration.

Summarising these factors, when respondents were asked to rank their satisfaction with various tablet features, the level of hardware ruggedisation around dust and water was ranked lowest.  By comparison, satisfaction around issues such as operating system was far greater.  Simply put, we now have the level of tablet deployment that means customers are facing the issues of fragile, non-ruggedised tablets as they fail in the field and that those issues have become the dominant concern, especially for those applications involving wet environments.

  do such factors around device failure matter?  Because each device failure can cost an organisation upwards of 200 minutes in lost labour - a little under three and half hours.  This can be seen in a loss of productivity, the time spent to redeploy a new unit and the time spent in between with diagnosis and any necessary repair. And it is worth noting that these costs are per device failure - in a fleet of hundreds of units, this can soon amount to weeks of downtime.

 

Even without incidences of failure, it is worth noting that these softer costs make up a substantial amount of the TCO of a unit.  Initial and ongoing user training, system maintenance, technical support, upgrades and application management all contribute to TCO and for a consumer unit, these can be substantially more than a dedicated enterprise tablet.

However, factoring in the incidences of failure, the research found that IT costs and loss of productivity accounts for 89% of the TCO of consumer grade tablet PCs. To put that into hard figures, on an annual basis, a ruggedised tablet will have a TCO of around €2000.  By comparison a non-ruggedised tablet costs in excess of €4000.  That is despite the fact that the initial hardware cost of a ruggedised tablet will likely be double that of a consumer unit.

Figures such as these show the increasing importance for strong metrics such as ROI and TCO to not only validate investments but to track and measure use of mobile solutions within the enterprise throughout deployment. Furthermore it is clear that, because line of business mobile solutions are often mission critical, organisations need robust and reliable solutions to support them.

It is critical to align the right mobile solution with the users and application environment. But amidst the flood of consumer technologies in the enterprise that has driven a spike in failure rates, it is important to remember that consumerisation of IT all about introducing consumer experiences – NOT technology – into the enterprise.

Recognising this, many businesses now see that the cost of supporting and managing a device post deployment is just as - if not more - important that the upfront device investment.   There is much more to consider than the initial set up costs of the mobile solution. Organisations demand that IT investments deliver tangible benefits and incur predictable costs.  From platform consistency and sustainability, to the impact of device failure in various use scenarios – it is critical to understand the actual cost and impact of your mobile device deployment against the choices available and the increased interest in low cost consumer grade tablets.

 

Want to know more? Ian will be discussing this topic in further depth at this year's Service Management Expo on June 17th - 19th in London's ExCel. To get your complimentary pass click this link

 

 

 

Find out more about Motion Computing in the Field Service News Directory. Click here to visit their page

 

 

Glyn Dodd, Managing Director of Centrex Services returns to Field Service News with a new two part feature that outlines his battle plan for the service industry...

“The secret of great battles consists in knowing how to deploy and concentrate at the right time.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

Some of the most significant changes that technology has delivered over the past few years have changed the approach to most markets, but for the break-fix market, it has come to a point in its evolution that has placed it on the brink of turmoil. At the heart of the technology support industry, field engineering and the associated service supply chain is emerging as the new battlefield.

The advancement of the industry is emerging as an issue now because technology products have been simplified, the need for traditional, high-end engineering skills required in the field is diminishing - almost to the point of extinction. The result is that continued market pressures are pushing the legacy fragmented technology support - the service supply chains - into a non-competitive position.

This has come to a head as customers no longer require high-end expertise to repair retail, hospitality or print technology; the priority is to replace the unit in the shortest time possible, ensuring an immediate return to productivity at the lowest possible cost.

When compared to wider innovative technology development, the break fix market remains fragmented and stagnant, having progressed over the years into silos which have operated in ivory towers. Evidence of this is seen in major contracts where the supply chain for a single IT hardware call involved one service provider sub-contracting to three different repairers, three individual logistics loops, two technical couriers and three parts providers.  These businesses are refusing to modernise the outdated service supply chain model currently plaguing the industry.

Where’s the battle?

This reluctance to change the way businesses operate and think is harming the technology support industry, and I'm afraid to say that I believe the worst is yet to come.

Hardware technology is always evolving yet the support business is stuck using an antiquated supply chain which hasn’t offered true value or innovation to the customer for years.

There is a distinctive, yet variable change in the approach and structure to the service supply chain.  The level of skilled expertise required to service complex technology is still necessary, while the traditional ‘swap’ services can continue to be handled by a technical courier. Between these two skill sets is where he I see the true battle – the middle ground.

The middle ground’s effect on service

So what is shaping this battle and what are the components that have put this service provision into a state of flux?

Well, the first major component of the battle lies in the price structure of hardware maintenance support.  We’ve seen hardware technology commoditise, which has changed the perceived value of product hardware and the way that it is serviced. This has increased the price pressure within the middle ground.

The second component (and possibly a result of the price pressure) is the accelerated silos of multiple suppliers throughout the supply chain, increasing the number of ivory towers and the chasms that exist between them. The number of suppliers and subcontractors involved in a single IT hardware support has culminated in fragmented, confused and complex supply chains.

The third and probably one of the most key constituents of the middle ground is the price of engineers, as service suppliers can no longer afford skilled field service engineers to respond to low level incidents.

As the nature of field service is changing, it’s rendering the current field service model outdated and expensive. Using technical couriers is the favoured method of replacement rather than a traditional engineer; however, using the full potential of field service engineers within the emerging middle ground activity is now becoming a waste of skilled resources and fails to offer true value to the customer.

As highlighted, end-user pricing associated with field services is decreasing, but price-pressure in the legacy model, including the deployment of engineers isn’t. The average engineer’s salary is currently reaching £34,000, substantially higher than the emerging middle ground technician who earns £20/25,000. The industry simply can’t afford to support field service engineers working at this level, despite their vast expertise. As price-pressure rates continue to fall, this issue is only going to get worse.

 

 

Running on the 17th, 18th & 19th of June this year The Service Management Expo (SME) is Europe’s largest exhibition catering for the field service industry and with a thirty year history has been a long established central event for field service professionals both in the UK and beyond.

This year the event moves to a new home in London’s ExCel centre and as part of UBM’s wider Protection and Management (P&M) Series benefits from sitting alongside sister events Facilities Show, Safety and Health Expo, FIREX international and Energy & Environment Expo. Having been integrated into the P&M series last year, attendees of Service Management Expo were able to take advantage of the wider range of companies exhibiting across the series as a whole.

However, Service Management Expo also firmly remains an important event in its own right. As the largest exhibition dedicated to the field service industry in Europe, Service Management Expo offers service professionals a unique opportunity to meet with a number of providers of field service software, specialised rugged hardware, fleet management technologies and more.

Service Management Expo also offers an excellent programme of free industry education in the Field Service Solutions Theatre, which this year is hosted by Field Service News editor, Kris Oldland.

The programme of this year’s Field Service Solutions Theatre, which is sponsored by Cognito, is available here and contains some fantastic sessions and speakers.

A few of the key sessions at this years Service Management Expo not to be missed include:

Day One: 12pm Transforming Service Delivery: Insights from the Report

Join Trimble Field Service Management for an in-depth look at some of the key trends and issues highlighted in our recent publication, ‘Transforming Service Delivery: An Insight Report’. The report investigates the most pressing issues affecting field service organisations today and provides expert insight into how to transform your operations, from measuring service performance and mobile worker productivity to delivering customer service excellence and utilising data from the field effectively.

Day One: 14:15 Panel Discussion- The Future of Field Service: A discussion on the emerging technologies that could change field service, as we know it.

A panel discussion hosted by Kris Oldland, Editor, Field Service News exploring the technologies that are likely to shape the very near future of field service, including Big Data, Internet of Things, 3D printing, U.A.V's. Panellists include Phillipe Emenger CEO Core Systems, Trevor Milsom Global Strategic Marketing Manager Trimble, Ian Mapp, Director Wyser Stewart, Cathal McGloin, CEO Feed Henry

Day Two: 11:00 The Manager’s role in creating performance improvement from training…

SGSA’s Isobel Van der Vegt explains why training is essential, training dollars are limited and the expenditure must be justified. Some training fails to deliver the expected performance improvement and therefore the essential Return on Investment. This presentation will highlight the role of managers in achieving three things: evaluating the effectiveness of training, calculating the Return on Investment and ensuring that training results in performance improvement. Securing budget and booking the class are only the first steps of the process but, by themselves, will not drive the changes in behaviour that we need.

Day Two: 11:30 Service Management Software Survey 2014 – The results

Field Service News Editor Kris Oldland, reveals the findings from an exclusive research project undertaken by Field Service News in partnership with mplsystems exploring what software systems are being used Service Managers today and whether they are meeting the needs of the industry.

Day Three: 10:45 Top tips for greening your fleet

Roddy Graham, Chairman of the Institute of Car Fleet Management will provide top tips for greening your fleet. He will consider what needs to be done to achieve substantial savings while boosting corporate social responsibility credentials. ICFM tips include gaining stakeholder buy-in, running a technologically neutral fleet, establishing CO2 targets and influencing driver behaviour.

Day Three: 12:30 Live Interview with Tim Jones, European Service Director, Waters Corporation

Kris Oldland, Editor of Field Service News will interview Tim Jones, European Service Director, Waters Corporation about his recent move to decentralise the dispatch responsibilities of his field service operations, how he approached it, why he made the move and whether it has proved successful.

 

 

Field Service News is currently working in partnership with software provider mplsystems on a research project which looks to establish a clear picture of what software is being used in the field service industry, what is working well and what needs are not being met by the providers in the industry...

The survey itself looks at four key areas of field service software; scheduling, integration & interaction, reporting and looking forward. Already we are seeing some interesting trends appearing five of which we explore below…

1. A large amount of companies are still using some manual processes:

In fact just under half (49%) of the companies that have responded to date are still using manual systems to manage the dispatch of their field service engineers. With the benefits of using some form of scheduling automation well documented this number is perhaps surprisingly large.

However, when we look at the biggest concerns around implementing a new technology at least one reason is clear. Cost of implementation is the highest barrier for companies looking to develop their service management solution with 46% of companies citing this as a predominant concern when implementing a new technology.

When we consider that just over half  (51%) of respondent companies identified optimised scheduling as one of the three most critical areas for investment it would certainly appear that it is a case of when not if these companies will be moving away from manual scheduling solutions.

2.Ratio levels of technicians to dispatchers remain relatively low:

Not surprisingly given the amount of companies that are still using manual systems the ratios of dispatchers to engineers is generally quite low with 77% of companies having a maximum of 15 engineers per dispatcher.

With dynamic/optimised scheduling being claimed by some vendors to be able to handle more than 40 engineers per dispatcher it would appear that there is quite a dramatic opportunity for improving the overall productivity of service divisions.

This is further evidenced when we look at the ratios of those companies using an optimised scheduling system. 44% of these companies operate with a minimum of 16 field service staff per dispatcher with 22% working with between 26 and 40 field service staff per dispatcher.

These figures could be important for companies looking to move their business towards a profit centre, particularly when we consider that in many instances labour costs are greater than any other in a business, so having more of your workforce placed within positions that can directly impact upon revenues could be an essential step to making the transition.

3. Most companies though are pleased with the current systems

Despite the failings listed above it appears that most companies are currently satisfied with their existing scheduling solution with 45% of companies ranking their system as either Good or Excellent compared to 20% who identified their current solution was either poor or very poor.

Of the issues that were cited when we asked “What is you biggest issue with your current scheduling system?” interestingly ‘a lack of visibility’ was one of the most often highlighted problems for many companies. Again have a clear transparent visibility into the location and activities of a mobile workforce is absolutely key to being able to improve the efficiency of the field service unit.

Other common responses included incorrect estimations on time allocated to jobs, lack of flexibility and also integration problems with wider systems.

4. Companies still have to work with multiple systems to accommodate the full customer life cycle

In fact integration issues are magnified by the fact that the vast majority of companies have to work with more than one system to provide them with a full solution to cover the entire life cycle of their customers. 81% of the companies responding to our survey so far are working with multiple systems, with 20% of companies using 4 or more systems as part of their solution.

With visibility and transparency being key issues field service companies need to tackle to improve their efficiencies, it is a simple premise that the fewer different systems they can utilise will be beneficial.

Based on the current findings, it would appear that companies either need to look towards consolidating their existing systems by migrating to one of the many new generation systems such as that offered by mplsystems, which can offer an end to end solution or look to establish better integration with their existing systems via development of or investment in API’s etc.

5. Over a third of companies find integrating systems a problem

This issue is further highlighted when we asked, “Would you say you have an integrated end-to-end service management technology solution?”  With 38% of the companies responding stating “They have a number of different systems across different divisions making communication between departments tricky.”

With this figure rising to 44% of companies when we look at those without any form of automated scheduling, it would seem that many companies in the industry face a decision in how they can enhance their current field service operations, and serious considerations need to be made, with a forward looking approach that ensures the investment in technology compliments any planned changes to business culture and strategy.