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There is a delicate balance between leveraging the trusted advisor status of field service engineers to generate revenue and going too far so that the trust they rightfully earn with your customers eventually is broken. But that doesn’t have to be the case writes Jim Baston...

With an eye to the future and a desire to push today’s technologies to their limit, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to creep into a variety of service technologies. On its surface, AI might still seem like science fiction, but the number of practical use cases will only increase over time. Are you ready to use AI to its fullest potential?

In this series, run in partnership with IFS, we will be looking to see exactly what impact AI will have on the field service sector and how your organisation can harness it. In part one of this series we looked at some of the AI basics and in part two we explored how tomorrow's advancements in AI can guide us through today's digital transformation. Now in the final part in this series we take a look to the future... 

Whilst there has been a lot of hyperbole around the impact Artificial Intelligence will have on field service operations, Nick Frank points out that it is not the answer to life, the universe and everything and we should understand our own potential use cases before rushing to implement such solutions...

As a recent guest on the Field Service Podcast, Varlink’s Founder and CEO Mike Pullon reflected philosophically on his thirty plus years in the sector identifying the key milestones in the evolution of rugged devices. Field Service News’ Deputy Editor and host of that podcast explains more...

In an industry that moves as rapidly as field service often does, it is important to have a firm grasp on the nuanced skill of change management. However, getting to the heart of what makes change work lies in an all too familiar acronym writes Martin Summerhayes...

Augmented Reality (AR) has been long been predicted to become an important, even crucial aspect of field service operations in the future, yet in it’s first iteration it has failed to come close to reaching its potential as a radical force for evolution within our sector. However, as we begin to see a second iteration of AR in field service it is becoming an important part of a wider technology stack alongside the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence. It is time to join the dots and bring AR tools to the fore within the field service sector writes Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News...

In the Big Discussion we bring together a panel of industry experts and focus on one key topic within the field service sector.
In the third of a four part series on dynamic scheduling our panellists, FieldAware's Mark Tatarsky and Fast Lean Smart's Chris Welsh identify the biggest mistakes companies make when implementing a scheduling system.

What is the biggest mistake field service companies make when implementing scheduling solutions?

Marc Tatarsky, SVP Marketing, FieldAware
Companies often expect a ‘silver bullet.’ They aren’t prepared for the challenges that come with a successful implementation. One problem is capturing the implicit decision-making processes used by dispatchers today. Another is looking at how those processes can be enhanced to take advantage of new optimisation capabilities.

These tasks can seem daunting but are essential to define the rules and objectives of the optimisation engine and give valuable results. However, by phasing the implementation initially with manual or semi-automated scheduling, service organizations can achieve faster adoption while simultaneously creating a positive environment.

The company can define what it wants to accomplish by implementing schedule optimization so that it can give appropriate weighting to seeminglyconflicting objectives. FSM vendors have a parallel role to play here. To minimize friction during adoption, vendors should create intuitive workflows.

These workflows include setting up rules, objectives, working time, etc. Vendors can also help instil confidence in the solution by providing feedback and visualisation of optimization results. These metrics allow dispatchers to compare manual and optimized schedules.

Chris Welsh, Director, FLS – FAST LEAN SMART
The biggest mistake is not managing the ‘rate of change’. A company decides it’s objectives for performance improvement, chooses a new technology to enable automation and new processes. However, it is important to understand and manage the perception, challenges and priorities of all the stakeholders: the customer, the management team, the back office and the field force.

Introducing a scheduling solution is best considered as a journey with continuous improvement, ensuring the entire service team are engaged and ‘bought in’ along the way and change taken in steps that the business can consume. It is also important to have a system with transparent visibility of how scheduling decisions were made so users will understand and have confidence in the results.

With system design, focus on the fundamentals with a pilot area to begin with and then listen and learn from feedback. At FLS we offer this stage ‘precontract’ so there is no doubt in the technology, the business case, and what is required for deployment.

Next you refine/improve based on these learnings, show you take feedback onboard, and expand the use. Sometimes company improvements are not obvious for individuals who only see their own workload. Measuring and reporting overall statistics is therefore important not only for ROI calculation but also for positivity across the service team.

The final part of the big discussion will be published next week, when the panel are asked if SMEs can also benefit from optimised scheduling. You can read the first part of the discussion here and the second part here. 

With an eye to the future and a desire to push today’s technologies to their limit, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to creep into a variety of service technologies. On its surface, AI might still seem like science fiction, but the number of practical use cases will only increase over time. Are you ready to use AI to its fullest potential?

In this series, run in partnership with IFS, we will be looking to see exactly what impact AI will have on the field service sector and how your organisation can harness it. In part one of this series we looked at some of the AI basics and now we look at how tomorrow's advancements in AI can guide us through today's digital transformation