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In this third part of this series looking at the findings of our exclusive research report into field service software we focus on the future of field service software. You can read the first part of this series which looked at scheduling and integration and interaction here and the second part looking at management reporting here 

If you want to read the full 10 page benchmarking report then you are able to download it by clicking this link.

Looking forward:

In the final section of the survey we asked respondents to identify what they thought were the most important technologies likely to appear in service management software, where they believe their organisation should focus their investment and finally what the barriers were to implementing new technologies.

Perhaps the most revealing result of the entire survey was in this final section, specifically surrounding “the biggest concern when implementing a new technology” Surprisingly  “Cost of implementation” is now only the second most common concern with “Legacy issues with former systems” becoming the industries greatest concern in 2014. The amount of companies that now cite this as their biggest concern when implementing a new technology has increased from just 22% in 2013 to 38% today.

This represents a potentially significant shift in the industry. In the last few years we have seen rapid developments in service management software, with key trends, such as the requirement for system wide integration as discussed earlier in this report, starting to emerge. The impact that the Software as a Service model has had on costs offers many companies the ability to invest in service management software, when in the not too distant past such an investment may have been beyond their reach.

Earlier this year in another research project conducted by Field Service News we saw that number increase to 38% of companies with a further 48% of companies stating they could possibly do so in the near future. However, the same report also highlighted that currently only 23% of companies have made the shift to a Cloud based environment for their service management software.

This would indicate that there is indeed a trend for companies to be migrating their service management software to Cloud based systems and it is an on-going process. If this is indeed the case then it would also explain why cost has become less of a concern whilst integration with existing legacy systems becomes a greater worry.

We also asked which emerging technologies would be likely to have an impact on field service software in the near future. The results whilst not surprising indicated how many in the industry seeing field service software evolve once again in the very near future. Over 45% of companies felt that Big Data, The Internet of Things and Connected Vehicles will all start appearing as options within field service management solutions within the next three years.

If each and all of these concepts live up to the massive hyperbole that surrounds them then it the way our industry operates will be fundamentally changed. At the same time 37% of companies also think that they wearable devices will become commonplace within the next three years also.

Whether this comes true is likely dependent on the success of Google's Glass product which offer the greatest promise, although the development of smart watches could potentially offer another wearable device that could be put to use in field service. Interestingly perhaps one of the technologies most established that could offer great benefits to certain field service verticals, namely 3D printing was only cited by 19% of companies as being likely to make an impact in field service.

However, this could be a reflection of the wide ranging industry verticals field service incorporates as much as a lack of faith in the technology. 3D printing will certainly be of more of a benefit to some industries (e.g. manufacturing) rather than others (e.g. retail). That said anecdotally there are are certainly those who have (an unfounded in most instances) lack of faith in 3D printing, we are reminded of echoes of the exaggerated fear of the security of the Cloud somewhat with 3D printing. It many ways the technology simply seems to much like science fiction to be fully trusted.

When we looked at the more immediate needs of the industry we saw some familiar patterns. Despite the questions we raised earlier in this report about the suitability of optimised scheduling for all companies, such systems appear to remain in demand amongst field service organisations.

Our final question in the survey was “In terms of investment, which of the following areas of technology do you think it the most critical for your company to remain competitive?” and we gave respondents 8 choices asking them to rank them in order of priority. The options were Route optimisation, optimised scheduling, integrated CRM, contact centre/help desk, mobile hardware, mobile software, logistics/spare parts management, and reporting/analytics tools.

Optimised Scheduling was ranked as the number one priority by 29% of companies, this was followed by Integrated CRM and contact centre/help desk software, which were the number one priority for 27% and 17% of companies respectively.With nearly three quarters (73%) of companies identifying one of these three areas as their key focus for investment it seems that these are clearly the biggest needs for the industry at large.

 

It is also interesting to note that whilst relatively few companies (7%) identified logistics/spare parts management systems as there number one priority, many companies identified it as either their second (27% of companies) or third (23% of companies) priority. This would indicate that whilst most companies do not see logistics/spare parts systems  as the most burning issue, they do acknowledge that it is an area that they should invest in should funds become available.

The one technology that has perhaps now had its day is route optimisation. This scored as the lowest priority for 56% of companies. There are many reasons route optimisation is now no longer a significant area for investment, whether this is because it is included in many service management software packages or that the technology has been around long enough to reach to near market saturation - the fact is that most companies will now have some sort of route/navigation software already even if it is simply Google Maps and a BYOD.

If you want to read the full 10 page benchmarking report featuring additional exclusive analysis then you are able to download it by clicking this link.

By registering for this white paper you agree to the fascinating terms and conditions which you can read right here.

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been much heralded as a software delivery method that is set to revolutionise the way businesses operate. Often it is seen as being at the heart of business technology in the future.  In the field service industry SaaS is already making a sizeable impression in the dynamics of the industry itself, moving the base of power away from enterprise level organisations who traditionally held the upper hand by utilising service technologies, which due to the often prohibitive costs aligned to on-premise solutions, were out of reach for their smaller competitors.

In this feature, we explore the rise of SaaS, why it is so suited to field service, the particular benefits for smaller companies and what its impact on the Field Service industry will be.

What is Software as a Service?

As a concept SaaS can actually trace it’s origins right back to the 1960’s when IBM and other mainframe providers established a service bureau business, sometimes referred to time-sharing or utility computing.

These services, which were designed for large organisations such as banks, would often include both database storage and computing power from worldwide data centres.

As we leap forward to the 1990’s when we saw the first real commercialisation and expansion of the Internet, we see the next precursor to SaaS, which was Application Service Providers (ASP’s). With the goal of reducing costs through central administration, ASPs began providing businesses with the service of hosting and managing specialised business applications.

SaaS is essentially extended from the concept of ASPs, but importantly harnesses the power of cloud infrastructure.

Indeed a common misconception is that SaaS and the Cloud are in fact one and the same however, this is not strictly correct.

SaaS is very simply, any software application that you operate which is not located on your premises. Whereas the cloud is the virtual infrastructure that the SaaS runs within, which in turn is housed on the vendor’s own data centres, or in many cases a data centre the vendor themselves ‘rents’ from an organisation such as Amazon Web Services.

Why field service is so suited to SaaS:

Whilst early applications of SaaS were predominantly either CRM or highly specific business niche products, it was only a matter of time before we saw a number of providers offering up SaaS solutions to the field service industry.

As SaaS systems are Internet based the ability to operate and access the software from various locations is a key fundamental inclusion of the system. Similarly as web protocols are becoming standardised, with the rise in device agnostic languages such as HTML 5 for example, SaaS solutions essentially allow users to access the entire application from any device - including smart phones and tablets.

It is this flexibility and mobility that SaaS solutions offer that make them such a perfect match for the field service industries and ideal for an organisation that operates a BYOD policy for it’s mobile workforce.

As such we have seen a number of vendors establish SaaS field service solutions. Including Tesseract Software, Connect2Field, Astea, ServiceMax, IFS and Click Software who all offer a variety of SaaS solutions to help field service companies improve the efficiency of their mobile workforces.

The benefits of SaaS to SMB’s

As well as the obvious benefits of having a central software solution that is accessible across numerous remote devices, that are specifically relevant to field service companies, SaaS solutions have more generic benefits also which are particularly beneficial to Smaller and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

Perhaps the most obvious of these is the cost.

Whilst in the long term (i.e. across a three to five year period) a subscription model may actually prove to be more expensive, the ability to spread the costs (usually in either annual or monthly payments) is a particularly attractive route for smaller or even medium sized companies for whom cash flow remains an important factor.

Similarly the benefit of not having to have your IT team dedicate large amounts of their potentially limited resources on implementing, monitoring and maintaining a system is also particularly important for smaller sized companies.

With SaaS the software is maintained and updated by the provider reducing the burden on a companies IT significantly.

Another often cited benefit that is of particular importance to SMB’s is the lack of fixed term contract.

Often the service is provided on a rolling monthly basis or even a freemium model (where the basic functionality is provided for free and additional services are offered at a premium), which allows greater flexibility for a company to walk away.

Not being tied to a long contract for software that they may not necessarily need in a year or so’s time when their business needs change, is another attractive benefit for SMBs that SaaS offers.

What this means to the field service industry.

It has been suggested that the access to sophisticated service management solutions that were previously out of reach to non-enterprise level organisations, which SaaS delivers is potentially going to have a major impact on the dynamics of the industry.

For the first time, many smaller companies are now able to take advantage of the benefits of such systems including improving the efficiency of their mobile workforce, gaining visibility across their entire field service operation and reducing fuel costs.

Previously the cost of both implementing and maintaining an on premise field service management solution was simply too prohibitive for most smaller organisations, giving their larger competitors a clear advantage in terms of the level of service they could deliver and therefore the level of customer satisfaction they could achieve.

However, the introduction of SaaS solutions has levelled the playing field and perhaps even shifted the balance in favour of the smaller companies.

SMBs often have smaller overheads and can therefore gain greater profit margins for similar revenue levels . A result of this has led to reducing costs often being the traditional primary sales strategy adopted by  SMBs when competing with larger companies , who are able to deliver superior service.

Today however, with companies of all sizes being able to offer similar levels of service through automating elements of their field service operation, smaller companies can take advantage of this ability to compete more fiercely on price whilst offering the same customer satisfaction levels as their bigger competitors. For perhaps the first time the power lies with smaller more agile companies.

The tables have turned slightly and it is largely down to the SaaS revolution.

One of the biggest success stories to come from the London Mayor's office was the introduction of Barclay's London Cycle Hire  (locally known as Boris Bike's after London's affable Mayor Boris Johnson who introduced the scheme) an ambitious project which has brought easy access bicycle hire and the environmental and health benefits of such a scheme to the busy streets of central London.

Of course the task of managing such a project and the mobile workforce that keep it operating, is a major undertaking, one which fall to international service company Serco. In this case study we look at how the worked with Leadent Solutions to establish an automated work scheduling system to make the project work.

Background:

Barclays London Cycle Hire (LCH) – run by international service company Serco – is a public bicycle sharing scheme that was launched in London and is now in its third year. The scheme's bicycles operate throughout 17 square miles in the city across a coverage area which approximately matches Zone 1 of the London Underground.

Since its introduction, the scheme has grown in scale from 5,700 to 9,000 bikes and from 315 to 570 docking stations, with over 20 million journeys made to date.

Users can pick up and drop off bikes at any of the docking stations, therefore ensuring there is an adequate supply of not only bikes, but also empty racks for returning customers, is vital to the success of the scheme. Therefore during high load hours, the bikes are moved from the busiest stations to the emptiest by vehicle by a dedicated mobile workforce.

The Challenge:

Maintaining the network requires a dedicated team to keep the bikes and the docking stations they are hired from in good repair, and to ensure that the supply of bikes is regulated to meet customer demand and KPIs agreed with Transport for London (TfL) in a 24 x 7 x 365 period. In meeting these KPIs, LCH ensures good service for customers, making hiring, using and returning bikes as easy as possible.

In anticipation of an extension of the cycle hire scheme into East London, almost doubling the number of bikes and docking stations, LCH needed a way of helping to optimise and dispatch field operatives to make sure that the supply of bikes to the right locations was accurately managed. It also needed to achieve this with the same size dispatch team, despite the extension of the scheme meaning that the number of docking stations was to be increased to 570 and the number of bikes to 9,000.

It was the significant increase in the scale of the project that meant a new and more efficient approach was needed, but crucially, without the need for large numbers of additional field staff being added to the mobile workforce.

Previous work practices involved significant ‘phone time’ – this essentially displayed the state of the docking stations on a big screen, from which control room staff used the visual overview to raise jobs by the expedient of calling the on-street team to tell them what needed doing. Once a job had been communicated, there was no feedback, status update etc., other than the change to the main display – and changes could have just as easily been driven by a large group of tourists arriving at a docking station as by the redistribution driver.

To compound the challenge, managing the bike supply requires dispatchers to manage a constantly changing work list where jobs are frequently raised, re-prioritised, and withdrawn as customers hire and return bikes, and to be able to do this in a consistent manner. One of the KPIs which Serco must meet is to make sure that docking stations have spare spaces for bikes to be returned, but also bikes available for hire, with points accumulated as the clock ticks when stations are full or empty, and a financial penalty resulting if the agreed timeframe is exceeded.

The scheduling system must be intricate enough to account for a sudden change in the status of a docking station. For example, a full docking station will cause a job to be created to remove some of the bikes, allowing for returns. However, a group of tourists could empty rack before the operatives arrive, changing the job from removing to delivering bikes, which need to be sourced from another location. This ebb and flow of bicycle hiring demands a near real-time automated system to ensure that the system runs smoothly.

In addition, maintenance work, although more predictable, still required the implementation of automated processes to arrange collection of bikes for workshop repair.

LCH had also identified the need to capture the level of use bikes were receiving as maintenance work was carried out, and to record histories of work carried out on the bikes and the docking stations, requirements that were, at best, only partially supported by the existing solution.

The Solution:

LCH chose mobile workforce optimisation specialist Leadent Solutions to design and implement a better way of supporting these requirements. Leadent Solutions is a company which specialises in workforce optimisation, applying its expertise to clients such as Thames Water, British Gas and Vodafone to help manage their workforces more effectively and thereby provide improved customer service to customers.

Leadent in turn then utilised ClickSoftware to deliver the core schedule automation and controls together with a mobile technology application to process work.

The solution centres on an integrated data feed from each of the 14,000 docking points which updates every three minutes. This live data is fed automatically into ClickSchedule software which compares the data to defined agreed targets. When it finds a docking station that has passed its limits for hiring or returning availability, a job is created in near real-time, based on priority, skills and geography. Jobs are withdrawn if the station naturally falls back within tolerance and the system also prioritises jobs according to pre-defined rules.

The system uses a dynamic prioritisation engine, which considers a station’s grading, the time it has been in breach of availability targets and other factors, to ensure urgent work is prioritised over less critical or a routine maintenance task.

With all of these actions being automated and the on-street operatives being updated by bespoke mobile devices, there is no need for the frequent phone calls which the control centre team previously had to make to field operatives to give instructions and receive updates. This mitigates the risk of missing stations which the manual system allowed for, threatening KPI compliance.

The mobile solution also allows operatives to record task activity and report inventory consumed, thereby building a history of asset maintenance.

Leadent Solutions has been involved from the early design stages; and has been supporting LCH in rolling out the solution during 2012, ensuring the implementation runs smoothly.

Results:

Using Leadent Solutions’ rapid deployment methodology, and working collaboratively with LCH, the new solution has:

• Provided near real-time visibility of the state of the LCH network at any point in time, allowing managers to get a clear overview of what the status quo is for current work and work in progress and enabling easier management of field operatives
• Provided near real-time task creation, prioritisation and dispatch to help LCH proactively manage KPIs agreed with TfL
• Provided a clearer picture of which bikes and locations are being used the most, providing customers with the best possible service and availability.
• Provided the systems to deliver streamlined, automated business operations through automated scheduling and mobile solutions
• Provided a more efficient way to manage employee breaks and to standardise working practices through automated processes
• Demonstrated the value of automated scheduling in delivering more efficient use of resources, better management of work, and, in turn, improved responses on KPIs

In business terms, this has contributed to:

• A 40% expansion of the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme with minimal additional control centre staff costs
• Helping Serco achieve agreed KPIs
• Near elimination of voice interchanges between field and control, saving both time and money
• Delivering a marked improvement in resource utilisation and field engineer productivity through efficient and effective scheduling, dispatch and reporting of work
• Improving the quality of operational performance data, by being able to capture real world actual performance at a higher level of detail than previously possible
• Allowing a sustained improvement in operational performance and efficiency, allowing the Scheme to grow, but managed by the same control team that had previously managed a much smaller operation.

The cycle hire operation now delivers:

• • Circa 180,000 registered members
  • 570 docking stations & 14,000 docking points
  • Circa 9000 cycles available for hire
  • Maintaining 250 bikes every day  and on street triage of 400 bikes a day
  • Up to 27 vehicles move on average 4,000 bikes per day
  • Over 23 million hires to date

DA Systems, a UK provider of mobile data and transport management solutions for the transport, retail, healthcare and field service sectors, is pleased to announce that north-west courier company City Connect Couriers, (CCC) has purchased its sameday courier software, ACI (Advanced Courier Interface).

As competition within the sameday courier market increases, CCC differentiates itself from competitors by providing a superb customer service to local businesses, which now includes end-to-end, real-time traceability of all consignments through to delivery.

By implementing ACI, the solution will oversee every single stage of the process of delivering a package, from the moment it is booked and marked for despatch, to its arrival at the front door of a recipient. In addition, the solution is set to improve productivity levels amongst controllers and drivers by 30 per cent, which will result in significant operational benefits for CCC. The solution is due to go live on 1 November 2013.

Once the delivery is in operation and a vehicle has left the depot, ACI allows controllers and drivers to access real-time information regarding the progress made, with an updated estimated time of arrival. This can be passed onto CCC’s customers in some cases, helping to keep them fully up-to-date with the delivery process. Another key feature of interest to CCC was electronic proof of delivery (ePOD), which is used to record the exact time and location of all completed drops. Finally, the ability to track vehicles will provide CCC with complete visibility of their fleet and drivers at all times.

Paula Hancock, Director at CCC says: “ACI is one of the most advanced technology solutions for couriers and in a short space of time we will gain a lot of benefits from our investment in it. Advantages we are looking to achieve include maintaining better control over deliveries, enhancing customer service, improving response times and reducing errors from processes.”

David Upton, Managing Director at DA Systems added: “With ACI, delivery specialists are able to build a competitive advantage thanks to the software’s ability to calculate the best routes for drivers to take and allocate certain drops to particular vans. Combined, all of this makes the process as smooth as possible and allows each driver to maximise the number of deliveries made per shift.”

Biotage offers solutions, knowledge and experience in the areas of analytical chemistry, medicinal chemistry, peptide synthesis, separation and purification. In this video we here from Chris Lacey, Field Service Manager, about how he worked with Service Max to improve the efficiency of the Biotage mobile workforce.

In the first of this two-part series, learn how the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) deployed the Intermec CN50 and Intermec CK71 rugged mobile computers with the help of Scan Read Technologies to boost data capture capabilities at high stakes tournaments. As a result, they expect an excess of $3 million in savings by 2016.

In the second of this two-part series, the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) discusses their volunteer program, data capture using the Intermec CN50 and CK71, the services of Scan Read Technologies, and what it takes to pull off PGA events.

Trimble Field Service Management's Aubrey Fox discusses the changing role of field service.