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When building, developing or establishing a service business there are numerous factors that need to be considered. However, the most fundamental strategy to ensure service excellence is delivered remains one of the simplest. The customer needs to be at the heart of all your endeavours. This fact was at the top of the agenda during a recent webinar that was hosted by the Aberdeen group and Trimble FSM.

During the session some very interesting points were made by Aberdeen Analyst Aly Pinder during a Q&A session. Indeed Pinder asserts that best-in-class businesses are united in putting the customer at the centre of their field service operations.

Whilst field service has always been an undertaking with the customer at its centre, across the industry globally we are currently seeing a renewed focus on improving the customer experience. Simultaneously field service technologies become more and more refined enabling vast improvements in managing and monitoring how service is delivered.

Furthermore communicating these improvements to the customer base is another factor in building a reputation for such service excellence.

In PInders words  “Providing better customer reporting is essential and it is important to relay the data that you’re collecting back to the customer, allowing them to effectively be an advocate and partner of your business.”

In fact Pinder provided a neat example of this highlighting those companies that are now applying predictive or preventative maintenance. Such companies have a fantastic story of delivering such advanced customer service through adopting such a proactive approach, and the customer really should be made aware of it. A satisfied customer, who feels reassured that they are in competent hands with their service organisation is fantastic ambassador with the potential to help drive higher levels of engagement between the two parties moving forward.

Another interesting point that Pinder makes is that within the mobile workforce there are different skill sets, beyond those that we would consider essential to the field engineer’s role, that are exploitable. For example some of your field engineers may be particularly effective salesmen with a natural gregarious demeanour, an obvious asset. Yet not all field engineers may be so comfortable to don a salesman’s hat. However, there are other opportunities beyond direct selling. Field technicians are in touch with the customer and those less suited to sales can add value bringing in customer data from the field.

Some companies have moved towards incentivising their field staff, although Pinder advises stepping carefully down this path.

Pinder comments: “This is not necessarily the right thing to do for every company as you need to understand the skill set of your technicians and understand which technicians could be good sellers and which aren’t…” 

However he also identifies the benefits of this route also adding:

“For those organisations that understand the skill sets of their technicians, incentivise technicians that are really good at selling and incentivise those that aren’t good at selling at bringing that data back in and passing that along to the sales and marketing team.”

Perhaps the biggest issue in the shift from cost centre to profit centre that Pinder identified was the devaluing of the service experience.

There are many different elements of a field service organisation that can deeply affect the customer experience and both sales and marketing can have a major impact. Often, sales representatives will bundle service in for free as part of the overall sale. Pinder believes this is a dangerous path to follow.

“When a sale is given away for free your ability to deliver that ‘exceptional service experience’ is greatly devalued. Therefore, ensuring your sales organisation understands the value of service internally and that they can communicate that to your end customers is important.”  Pinder commented.

One additional area that perhaps doesn’t get the credit that it deserves for its impact on the final impact on customer experience is engineering and design. Pinder also identified this as a two way street.

“Best-in-class organisations pull in data from technicians, give that back to engineering and design and have those teams create products that fulfil customer needs. The technician incorporates the insight provided by customers to create a product or new service that is tailored to customer needs.”

Whilst best-in-class companies push the boundaries of service excellence, at the other end of the scale there are three common issues that Aberdeen have identified that field service companies are not meeting which result in dissatisfied customers. These were:

The technician did not resolve the issue first time, The wait for the appointment was too long, The technician didn’t show up for the appointment at all

Companies can address these fundamental problems and improve the customer experience they deliver simply by making sure the technician to be sent to the appointment has the correct skills set and tools for the job and ensuring communication with the customer around appointment times is accurate and reliable.

Discussing this Mark Forrest, general manager of Trimble Field Service Management commented:

“Achieving customer satisfaction in today’s marketplace is tough. On-time performance is the Holy Grail – problems must be solved the first time, and solved effectively. As a result, more and more organisations are beginning to realise the value of ‘intelligent scheduling’ - incorporating technician knowledge, parts availability, and capacity into their scheduling processes to ensure that the technician arriving on site is actually the person who can resolve the customer’s issue first time.”

He continued: “Businesses can address the challenge of making better in-day decisions by utilising a work management self-learning tool. To avoid large data set-up exercises of skill sets and work areas, a self-learning tool supports the assignment of work orders to the field technicians by remembering who has the right skills and their usual work areas. The user also has the ability to enquire what has been learnt by the system and correct it.”

A full recording of the webinar can be downloaded here 

Find out more about Trimble including video, news and features in our directory listing here.

To download the full report please visit www.trimble.com/fsm  

 

Nick Frank, a specialist service management consultant with Noventum Service Management continues his series of case studies outlining best practices in field service...

Previous case studies showed some of the steps companies can take to understand the value of service to their business. Companies have deep dived into their customer’s journey, gained insight into what the customer’s perceive as value, as well as determined what their own corporate strategy is to make money. Secure in this understanding they are ready to implement their GO To market strategy. And the first step is to develop and deploy service propositions that speak to the customer.

What is he talking about you may be asking yourself?  Go look at your website or those of your competitors and see how the services propositions are described. I looked at a company I used to work for and found what is typical for many. Descriptions of what they do!

If you are an engineer or product guy, it kind of makes sense, because its what we do! But think from the customer’s perspective. Managers are interested in outcomes. In most commercial organisations this is how they are paid and what they do.

So if you are really a customer led organisation should you not also focus on the outcomes? This is what Yokogawa did. In our previous blog we talked about how they developed a clear view of the value their customer’s perceived they could offer. Well they took this view and designed their propositions around it.

They literally tried to design service propositions that would speak to their customers.

So if you look at their vigiplant (http://www.yokogawa.com/vps/vps-index-en.htm) service offering, you will notice that the language they use to describe their portfolio has a very marked customer orientation. They group their services in terms of outcomes:

• Opportunity Identification Services
• Solution Implementation Services
• Lifecycle Effectiveness Services[/unordered_list]

They try to use a language that describes the value. In other words they talk of ‘Production Excellence’, rather than how it is might be delivered through ’Software Products’.

Now this is quite a different approach and one that took me a long time to really appreciate. That the words we use are a reflection of our own values. So if we look at how companies describe their services, what we see is their true culture and attitudes towards their customers and clients.

At Noventum we call this ‘Service Thinking’. To learn more about this and how to successfully deliver service propositions that really speak to your customers, why not look at this case study on Service Thinking (http://www.noventum.eu/cases/believe-in-service-thinking)

Nick Frank is a service specialist with Noventum Service Management

Read part one of Nick's series here

Read part two of Nick's series here

Read part three of Nick's series here

 

Welcome to the second edition of our Field Service News podcast. This month we are joined by ServiceMax's Vice President of Global Customer Transformation, Dave Hart who has an incredible background in the field service industry having worked his way up from field service engineer through to European Vice President of Service before joining ServiceMax where he is able to give his clients the benefit of 30 years worth of experience.

Tapping into that experience we talk to Dave about some of the key challenges he faced throughout his career as well as taking the opportunity to get some excellent advice from a man who has 'been there and done it' when it comes to developing successful field service teams.

Download the full podcast now for free to hear Dave's advice on:

 

• How best to approach choosing a new service management solution
• Deciding whether optimised scheduling is the right move for your company
• Getting the buy-in from your mobile workforce after implementing a new system.
• What challenges need to be addressed when moving from cost centre to profit centre
• What technologies you should be looking to as the future of field service

 

To hear the full interview and see how Dave responds to these questions plus many more click the link below and complete the very brief registration to download the podcast for free!

 

 

Note: this is a joint promotion between Field Service News and Service Max Europe. By downloading this podcast you are consenting to the T&C's of our privacy policy available here. 

 

 

We are currently conducting a research project in partnership with Tesseract, which aims to establish exactly what you think about SaaS field service solutions. Having now reached the half waypoint of this project there are some interesting results already becoming prominent…

SaaS field service solutions still in the minority

Of the total respondents so far the overwhelming majority (83%) are currently still using an on premise solution as opposed to a SaaS field service solutions. However, of those still using an on-premise solution 62% have stated they were considering moving to a SaaS platform when they next upgrade their field service management software.

The key driver in this shift towards the cloud is the added mobility cloud solutions offer, with 66% of companies citing most easy remote access as a factor in why they are considering SaaS. Other common reasons were the scalability of SaaS solutions and the more affordable pricing structure of SaaS, which 59% and 51% of companies cited respectively.

Mythbuster – security is not an issue for SaaS field service solutions

The biggest fear around moving to a SaaS field service solution was security which 52% cited as a reason they would not choose SaaS. This is largely to be expected due to the often-high profile doubts raised about cloud security.

However, it would seem it is not substantiated by the facts. Of those companies operating a SaaS field service solution none cited security as an issue they had faced.

The biggest issues surrounding cloud based systems were in fact connectivity and communication with existing legacy systems. Exactly half of companies with a cloud solution had suffered from one or both of these issues. However, only 36% of companies cited either of these as a reason why they wouldn’t choose SaaS.

Of those who have chosen SaaS all have identified easy remote access as the key reason why they opted for SaaS. Scalability was the second most popular reason for opting for a SaaS solution which was cited by 75% of companies. A more affordable pricing model and built-in disaster recovery being the joint third popular reasons that 57% of companies listed.

Additional benefits of SaaS provided by respondents included increased functionality and availability, cost, flexibility, ease of upgrades and infrastructure and all countries being moved to the same platform.

It is interesting that for both companies either already on a SaaS field service solution or considering a SaaS field service solution that less reliance on the IT department was the least common factor in choosing the cloud.

Only 28% of companies already using a SaaS field service solution identified this as a reason for choosing SaaS whilst only 10% of companies considering a SaaS field service solution cited it as a reason for consideration.

Who’s in the DMU

Whilst it is certainly true that SaaS will reduce the strain on the IT department, it is clearly not a factor that most field service managers take into consideration.

However, what is clear is that when the CIO/IT Director etc is involved within the decision making process there is more likelihood of the company opting for a SaaS field service solution.

In fact the CIO or equivalent was involved in the decision making process in 71% of companies who had opted for SaaS field service solution and was the most common figure within the decision making unit (DMU) of such companies.

However, for companies who were still operating on an on premise solution the CIO or equivalent was only involved in 46% of cases with the CFO/FD being more prominent and being involved in the DMU in 56% of cases.

As you would expect in both instances the Field Service Manager was a prominent figure in the DMU being the second most common member in companies with SaaS and most common within those companies still operating an on premise solution.

Bringing in the mobile workforce

However it appears that there are two groups that are largely being omitted from the DMU yet who strategically could have a massive impact on the success of the implementation of any new platform whether it be on-premise or a SaaS field service solution.

One of the biggest obstacles often highlighted to a successful implementation of the technology is getting the buy–in of the mobile workforce.

It is a topic we have discussed on field service news a number of times and one regular suggestion by industry experts is to get representatives of the field staff to be part of the DMU for the latest field service solution you intend to deploy. However, in both groups (SaaS or on premise) less than 15% of companies sought to include representatives of their field staff in the process.

Also with the trend to move service departments away from being cost centres and towards profit centres it would surely be sensible to include a senior figure from the sales division into the conversation also. However, again the inclusion of a sales director or equivalent was a rare occurrence with no more than 7% of companies bringing the sales director into the process.

How does this shape up to your own situation? Is your company operating a SaaS field service solution? Are you considering a move to the cloud  or do you think that you would always rather a platform that remains on premise instead of a SaaS field service solution?

If you haven’t taken part in the survey as yet then please do and help us build up a complete picture of the industry today.

As a thank you all respondents who complete the survey will be entered into a prize draw to win one of three £50 Amazon vouchers!

The survey is designed to only take about 2 to 3 minutes to complete and will be no more than 12 questions maximum. Enter the survey now by clicking here.

In the first part of this feature we looked at why a successful customer interaction strategy should be at the heart of every field service organisation as well as why companies shouldn’t be afraid of failure.

Now in the concluding part we see why you should think of bringing your customer service department and all other business divisions of the service supply chain, under one roof and why putting the customer first always is the key to ongoing customer satisfaction.  

 

Applying intelligence: the control centre & the service supply chain

Bringing your customer support service under the same roof as the other divisions of your business including field service dispatch, logistics and operations and other elements of the after service supply chain, is essential and needs to become the regular way of working across all industries if companies are to drive brand loyalty forward. This is the belief of Carolyn Wilson, services director of technology support specialist Centrex Services.

Carolyn comments:

“The current approach to after sales is a siloed one, contact centres often pass the customer onto the next silo if they are unable to resolve the problem themselves; washing their hands of the problem at the first opportunity.

“A control centre provides true added value to the customer, utilising a legitimate knowledge-base to not only resolve a high quantity of issues during triage, but controlling each step of the process from opening the call to booking the correct engineer, with the right part or loan product. The result; the SLA failure is eradicated.”

A good example of such a 'controlled service supply chain' approach in action is in the repair centre that Centrex Services provide for Fellowes, a manufacturer and marketer of business machines, shredders and office accessories, with a global presence. The business aim for Fellowes is to enhance the quality, efficiency and productivity of the workplace. Therefore it is key that their own after sales service meets the very highest standards and there service supply chain needs to be efficient and effective.

The Centrex representative responsible for the Fellowes service supply chain oversees calls from clients whose devices are both in and out of warranty. He is responsible from the outset in determining the type of call and then controlling the entire process. From the very beginning of the process he liaises directly with the client, confirming of the level and type of support required, identifying the correct engineer is allocated to the request and ensuring either a new machine (if the client is in warranty) or a loan machine (if the machine is out of warranty) is then available for the next day.

He will then personally telephone the customer to confirm the engineer’s call time and has responsibility for ensuring the engineer is on site at the agreed time. The whole process is only considered complete after a replacement or loan machine has been installed on the customer site and the customer has indicated that the issue has been resolved satisfactorily.

By adopting this type of approach where the customer is at the front of the solution, the entire way that after sales service calls are resolved is completely changed. Fellowes are certainly seeing the benefits of such an approach already, as EU after sales manager, Neil Cosgrove attests:

“Our partnership with Centrex Services ensures our consumers receive a seamless experience from the second a Fellowes shredder is purchased, and offers them total peace of mind through industry leading support service in the unlikely event they should require hassle free in and out of warranty support,” he says.

“On the occasions when it is not possible to source a replacement part the next day, Centrex has implemented a system which enables loan equipment to be made available the next day.”

 

The customer must truly come first in the service supply chain

By thinking out of the box and offering a loan service that is combined with dedicated control centre representative, Centrex and Fellowes are together treading a new path and it is this new way of thinking and approach to the service supply chain and service delivery that is yielding such positive results. By asking the right questions, the control centre is able to give  clients realistic expectations, while guaranteeing that whatever the problem is, the consumer will not be left stranded without an important piece of hardware overnight which could impact their business continuity.

Carolyn adds:

 “The loan service we offer shows the importance of listening to the needs of our customers. After an issue has been resolved following the deployment of a field engineer, the control centre sends a short questionnaire to gain an insight into how service can be improved.

“We found that supplying loan machinery during those periods where the malfunctioning machine is in need of in-depth maintenance was a highly sought after service. We have improved our after sales service due to the intelligence of the control centre and there is no reason why other businesses can not follow suit.”

 

Creating ongoing customer satisfaction

By creating a system where the customer’s needs are viewed as the most important factor of after sales support, it is clear that control centres can continue to offer high customer service levels on an on-going basis.

Ensuring triage is effective and efficient allows for the issue to be resolved as swiftly as possible, and by offering short-term hardware loans where required, a supply chain is created in which the customer’s satisfaction is assured and as a result both brand loyalty and reputation continue to be enhanced.

 

 

Setting out the aim to make your company more environmentally friendly is not only healthy for the planet but also very healthy for a logistics and transportation business as well

Reducing your fuel costs for example obviously makes great financial sense and it also has the benefit of helping to differentiate you from other field based companies in what are becoming increasingly competitive markets across the board. For example, image conscious high street retailers are much more likely to partner with an e-commerce deliver partner that shares their (often very public) environmental values, and in fact this is a trend that is mirrored by consumer behaviour also.

According to a recent Eurobarometer survey 55% of consumers said they take time to understand the environmental impact of the products they buy. Further to that over three quarters of consumers said they would pay a premium for greener goods. It is natural that this powerful sentiment would flow through the supply chain and impact on a retailer’s choice of transportation provider for their ecommerce offerings.

Whilst environmental issues have been a large part of the conversation for many years, it is only in today’s world with the advancement of tablets, smart phones, white boards, the cloud, including facilities such as dropbox and skydrive, which are all able to communicate openly with each other, that a truly sustainable approach can now be grasped.

Adopting transport technology and with innovations in the mobile world, greener credentials are more attainable than ever; with the ability of SatNav, job scheduling, signature capture working on new devices with NFC and RFID capabilities encased in a more consumerist look and feel than previous rugged enterprise products means greater user adoption, think Honeywell Dolphin Black to Motorola TC55.

So moving towards greener working i is now an obvious progression for the transport and logistics industry to take under serious consideration.

As well as improving productivity and cost savings, using an electronic proof of delivery system, mobile field service management or a real-time job scheduling and route optimisation system for instance, has been shown to deliver a significant improvement when reducing physical costs i.e. of consumables and labour costs. It also has a significant impact on reducing CO² emissions and the carbon footprint of logistics operators.

The following results demonstrate the savings achieved by a medium sized logistics company, “XYZ Courier Services Ltd” using actual data.

“XYZ” operates a cloud based technology system to manage its fleet of 2,000 full time drivers. Before introducing mobile data to its fleet of drivers, the company had to provide each driver with a 15 page printed manifest showing their daily workload and schedule.

Over the course of a year, this amounted to 7,800,000 individual pages, or 15,600 reams of paper. The cost of purchasing paper equates to £55,000, print toner costs amounted to £110,000, which means that over a three year period the company spent half a million just on paper and toner alone.

Although financial savings are a factor in the decision to adopt mobile data that improves greener credentials, there are also carbon costs to appreciate, due to the energy and environmental impact of the printing process. Taking into account the amount of paper produced over a three year period for the paper manifests equated to 648 tonnes of CO² emissions, which has now been saved.

The transportation of raw materials and finished products are a significant source of carbon emissions in the supply chain. For some companies, logistics can be the primary component of supply chain carbon emissions. The Department of Transport found road transport accounts for 21.7 percent of the UK’s carbon emissions; of that, 19.8 percent is attributable to heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) and 15.2 percent to vans. The government is aiming to position the UK at the global forefront of ultra-low emission vehicle (ULEV) development, manufacture and use, and has a vision for ‘almost every car and van’ to be zero-emission by 2050. Furthermore, by implementing effective route optimisation that ensures the most optimal route is taken by a driver will result in less driven miles and fuel reduction.

What this analysis highlights is that for a mid-sized logistics or delivery company, introducing mobile data technology such as ePOD to the drivers has had a significant impact not just by reducing costs, but also by improving the company’s overall carbon footprint. And these cost savings are relevant to smaller and larger organisations alike.

Not only will changing to transportation and logistics partners with greener credentials help meet a company’s corporate social responsibility and environmental policies, by utilising transport technology allows a company to get a clearer picture of deliveries, scheduling, managing peak times; reviewing carbon emissions, driver behaviour - in readable, legible reports based on date and time driven events. This means more power through real-time knowledge transference, without having to sift through volumes of paperwork.

A business can never entirely eliminate its environmental impact, but that should not be a reason to not take advantage of the technology available to reduce it. Especially when having a green approach to your transport fleet helps to achieve positive environmental and financial goals.

 

 

Delivering high quality service is clearly essential for any successful Field Service Management provider. That’s why it’s so important for service-based organisations across the facilities management, property management, maintenance and cleaning sectors to avoid the common pitfalls that can lead field service operations to fail in delivering service excellence.

Typical issues here can include a lack of integration between service desks, planning/dispatch operations and field staff; poor visibility of customer data, updates, stock and asset information; the breakdown of customer feedback and audit trails in the field; as well as the introduction of vulnerable manual processes and unnecessary administration costs. It’s this inability to join the dots that can make it increasingly difficult for service providers to achieve efficiency savings and remain competitive.

Recent mplsystems research identified mobile field service team visibility as a critical element for helping to address these issues. At a time when increasing field workforce productivity is proving a key challenge, we found that almost 40 percent of service management operations admitted to having no visibility of their mobile workforce at all. For larger field service teams, gaining insight over field service teams is even more difficult, with the dispatch function becoming critical – and a potential bottleneck to performance.

What’s needed is an approach that works to resolve this service disconnect – one where messages are always shared with field-based staff, where updates are accessible across end-to-end processes, where performance monitoring extends across all activities, and where interactions aren’t lost as they pass through multiple departments and systems.

That’s why at mplsystems we have built an end-to-end field service management solution that can provide organisations with a true real-time of all their current maintenance and support activities across their entire operation. Key functionality includes a unified service desk portal; the automatic and dynamic planning and scheduling of service activities within defined SLA adherence guidelines; supporting mobile personnel through dedicated apps for in-field data collection and route optimisation; as well as comprehensive analytics and SLA reporting.

By directly linking service desk and field operations, organisations of any size can effectively automate key processes such as parts and asset management, optimise their scheduling and even deploy customer self-service portals so that clients can carry out their own bookings and changes. And because this service is now available on a Cloud-enabled pay-per-usage basis, it can prove particularly cost effective for all workforce sizes, from just 15 to over 500 mobile staff.

When Balfour Beatty Workplace combined its multiple UK service centres into a single major mplsystems-powered National Operations Centre it deployed just this type of flexible helpdesk solution, helping the TFM operator to manage bookings and plan jobs across its multiple accounts. For Balfour Beatty Workplace the results have been impressive; initial savings of over £500,000 in terms of efficiency savings and penalty reductions have been realised. In addition there has been an 18 percent improvement in response rates, non value-added calls have been cut by 2,000 a month and the company has seen a 28 percent improvement in planned maintenance performance SLAs.

Before deploying its mplsystems field service management solution, Gamestec – the UK’s largest gaming and amusement machine operator – needed separate contact centre technology, CRM and handheld devices to maintain communications with its engineers. By implementing an mplsystems solution, Gamestec has seen an 88% reduction in ongoing IT costs, with increased efficiency across the organisation in terms of how service and field staff are deployed.

Metric Group, the leading provider of car park payment terminals, also uses an mplsystems solution to support its field service engineers. The solution gives Metric Group a single view of all its engineering resources, allowing the company to optimise service schedules, increase field service productivity, improve response times for customer and dramatically simplify reporting.

 

In part one this two part feature we looked at the how tablets are coming to the fore as sales of rugged laptops decline in the consumer markets and whether this trend is mirrored in field service industries as well. In part two we explore the impact of the BYOD trend on companies purchasing rugged laptops, why tablets are perfect for ruggedistation and the solution for those field service technicians that require high data input levels.

 

Is BYOD a threat to rugged laptops?

A major factor to consider in the decline of rugged laptops is the BYOD trend that is becoming more common in industry.

Being led by the growth in high powerful, accessible mobile consumer devices, BYOD takes advantage of the power of personal devices such as smartphones and the way almost all applications are now delivered via the internet. The combination of improved processing power in smaller devices, web based systems and user familiarity have seen a huge amount of companies move towards using device agnostic applications that can be placed on field workers own devices.

This again has given yet another reason for companies with mobile workers to shy away from purchasing laptops for their field staff – why bother when the workers themselves are able to provide the hardware necessary to fulfil their duties themselves?

 

But there are some tough environments out there

But what about more extreme environments where fully rugged devices are required?

Well the fact that tablets (and indeed smart phones) are a single unit does make them that much more robust and of course this also lends them to ruggedisation more naturally also. Whether it is simply buying rugged protective cases for more standard devices such as the apple iPad or purpose built rugged tablets from makers such as Motion, Getac or Handheld, powerful, portable devices are available that are designed to withstand a wide range of environmental conditions.

Whilst most specialist manufactures do still produce both rugged laptops and rugged tablets there does seem to be a case for field service companies following the consumer trend.

Cawsey’s Handheld are one such manufacturer seeing the trend mirrored in their own sales.

“We are certainly seeing a move from keyboard based devices like traditional laptop form factors to non-keyboard/touchscreen input devices across the board, particularly in Field Service projects.”

Adding further insight Cawsey continued

“Data collected in the field, as opposed to the data sent to the field tech, is less therefore there is no need for a bulky data input intensive device and field service data can be added through photos, barcode or RFID scans along with data input via pull down menus”

However, there is still one area in which the laptop outshines both smartphones and tablets. That is when large amounts of data input is required. Reflecting on this Cawsey adds

“Bottom line is that if you have a data input hungry workflow or application then you can’t beat a keyboard for efficient mass input of data”

So whilst tablets may be becoming the optimal choice for many field service companies there are still going to be some companies who will need their field technicians to have the functionality of a laptop.

 

Making the conversion

In this instance the perfect solution is the hybrid/convertible device.

Such devices have a tablet top-half with a (sometimes detachable) keyboard bottom-half. Whilst heavier than standard tablets they have the major benefit of keyboard input.

However, they do often have a common weakness. Typically, the base of a convertible attaches to the display at a single joint called a swivel hinge or rotating hinge. This common design element creates a physical point of weakness which is of course unacceptable in tougher field environments.

However, as with laptops and tablets there are specialist solutions available. The Panasonic Toughbook 19, for example, is advertised as a more durable convertible notebook. The HP EliteBook 2760p convertible notebook uses a reinforced hinge that protrudes slightly from the rear of the unit.

Whilst it is seemingly inevitable that smartphones and tablets will continue to become the primary sources of mobile computing in the field service industry it is these convertible devices that will ultimately see traditional laptops become a thing of the past.

 

 

“Transforming Field Service - Key trends and common pitfalls: how can new technology combat your field service issues?” is a brand new white paper published by mplsystems which provides an excellent review of the key considerations Field Service Managers should be aware of when assessing their own operational systems and processes.

Written from a refreshingly impartial viewpoint this detailed white paper provides a clear picture of the issues currently facing Field Service Managers in todays service industries whilst giving solid, intelligent guidance on the technologies that are currently available to circumvent those issues as well as advice on what questions you should be asking of potential providers when reviewing possible solutions.

Drawing on research from a number of different sources including Aberdeen, The Service Council, Gartner as well as exclusive research commissioned by mplsystems themselves the white paper presents a considered and balanced viewpoint on the industry today.

The white paper begins with perhaps the most important question any Field Service Manager should be asking – Why do some organisations fail to deliver? As the white paper explains the picture of the European service standards are not quite as rosy as one may expect.

Indeed although field service technology has moved forward in giant leaps across the last decade, the stark reality is that still the vast majority of organisations are failing to dramatically improve their service standards.

According to mplsystems there are three key underlying factors that are preventing improvement; these are disparate systems, reliance on overly complex scheduling and large ERP systems and finally a lack of visibility in the field. However, there is a huge array of technology based solutions to overcome these problems and this white paper explores many of these systems, whilst providing honest commentary on why the technology may or may not be the right fit for your own company.

The technology trends covered within the white paper are:

 

• Mobile field service
• Scheduling and optimisation
• Parts locator and boot stock management
• Analytics
• Real-time monitoring
• Sales and marketing in field service
• Off the shelf versus customised
• Self service and web portals
• End to end KPI’s
• The rise of cloud

Each of the above sections of the white paper contains an overview of the relative trends which combines a strong understanding of the technology, yet manages to present the information in clear, jargon-free language. Making this 8 page document simultaneously meaningful, yet easily read. The content is logical, well thought out and certainly provides the reader with valuable insight that is required when facing a combination of constantly emerging technologies and numerous suppliers offering what on the surface at least can appear to be very similar products.

I am pleased to recommend this white paper as a highly valuable resource and would strongly suggest downloading it.

To register for your copy of this excellent white paper, simply click here to complete the 10 second registration form.

Find out more about mplsystems in our online directory. Click here to go to the mplsystems directory page.