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Software company Kirona and its client Carpetright have been selected as finalists in  Retail Week's Customer Experience Initiative of the Year award.  

Kirona is committed to providing retailers with the technology to enable optimised customer service through software applications that span the complete field-service lifecycle from planning & scheduling through to mobilising the field worker and monitoring the service performance in real-time.

The company's software has enabled Carpetright to optimise their Home Consultant service for their employees and to provide a better service to their customers.

Steve Johnson, Head of Central Operations at Carpetright commented, “Being selected as a finalist for the Retail Week Customer Experience Initiative of the Year award is a testament to the hard work of both the Carpetright and Kirona teams to get this project implemented, meeting both deadlines and with minimal disruption to our workforce. Just as importantly it also highlights that by picking the right partner both technology and retail can merge to create systems and functionality which supports the in store sales process and most of all benefit our customer.”

Neil Harvey, CTO, Kirona said “We are delighted Carpetright and Kirona have been selected as finalists for the Retail Week award and being selected acknowledges Carpetright’s innovative approach to delivering improved customer service whilst also increasing profitability.”

The Retail Week Awards, are celebrating their 21st Anniversary have experience the highest number of entries on record, making it an even greater achievement to be shortlisted this year. The winners will be determined by an independent judging panel and announced at the Retail Week Awards Dinner on 17th March 2016 at the prestigious Grosvenor House Hotel, London.

 

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Kirona enable Riverside Housing Association to improve customer service.

One of the UK's leading registered social housing providers, Riverside Housing Association, has implemented Kirona's  Job Manager and Xmbrace DRS software to manage the work of responsive repairs teams across the north of England enabling the Customer Service Centre to deliver improved customer service.

Riverside provides affordable housing and support to people of all ages and circumstances. Michael McGowan, Projects Manager at Riverside explains: “Customer service excellence is key for Riverside, and as an organisation we continually measure how we are performing and address what improvements we can make. Customer feedback from our Star Surveys highlighted to us that improvements were needed regarding how repairs were reported, scheduled and managed. Riverside prides itself in transforming lives by providing well maintained, good quality affordable housing, so ensuring the repairs and maintenance of our properties is optimised is another key area for us.”

McGowan continues, “We have successfully rolled out Kirona’s dynamic scheduling software Xmbrace DRS and the mobile worker application Job Manager to approximately 70% of our housing stock. The software is used by our Customer Service Centres and to our contracting repairs partners across Merseyside, Manchester, Yorkshire, Humberside and Cumbria. We have seen an immediate positive effect since using it, with reductions in the time it takes to process a repairs request from a customer, with the customer no longer having to contact us multiple times to get their request scheduled, and the Customer Service team are delighted too as they are able to book and change appointments with clear real-time visibility of availability and jobs can be booked in the same area on the same day, reducing travel time.”

Ryan King, Mersey North Planning Team Leader commented “I find that DRS is very effective when it comes to the daily planning as it’s a clear system which offers benefits such as being able to batch the areas by post code per operative, it is also a helpful tool as we can use it as a database for repair information i.e. special instructions which reach the operative’s PDA device such as avoiding school run times.”

Neil Harvey, Kirona CTO, added “Riverside approached Kirona with a vision of how they wanted their services to improve, and we worked with their teams in an open and transparent way to deliver their workforce management solution to enable them to improve their customer service.”

 

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Are UK field service companies keeping pace with the rest of the world?  In  Parts  One, Two and Three, of this exclusive four-part benchmarking report for Field Service News, Bill Pollock, President & Principal Consulting Analyst, Strategies for Growth SM, revealed the comparative performances of US and UK/European field service organisations, the key drivers influencing strategy for UK/Europe companies and KPI focus.  

Here, in Part Four, he reports on attitudes and trends regarding Cloud and On-Premise solutions. The publication of this research was sponsored by Kirona.

 

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By providing customers with the right mix of Web-enabled self-help capabilities, the leading UK/Europe organisations have essentially been able to run their respective services operations more effectively, while also increasing existing levels of satisfaction by allowing customers to become part of their own “support team”.

Self-help support capabilities, such as the ability to order parts, or view current work order status, saves customers – and FSOs – significant time in that an entire series of potential two-way vendor-customer status update calls can be avoided.

In addition, customers can create their own service tickets online, gain direct access to self-service resolution scenarios, receive real-time status update alerts, and track the shipping status of outstanding service parts orders themselves. Basically, the more power the customer has to perform any of these activities itself, the quicker service orders can be created, the quicker potential time-related problems can be identified and resolved, and the happier the customers will be with the services they are receiving from the provider.

By making the customer an integral part of the service delivery team, UK/Europe service organisations can continue to benefit from reduced time- and cost-related factors – while increasing existing levels of customer satisfaction. Customer access to online service order data and information is clearly a “win-win” scenario for all parties.

 

Growth in Cloud solutions

However, the greatest impact on the future of Field Service Management is most likely to come as a result of the growing acceptance of Cloud-based technology, as reflected in one particular series of questions included in SFG℠’s 2015 FSM survey questionnaire. Respondents were first divided into three (3) categories: those with existing FSM solutions already in place, those planning to implement in the next 12 months, and those considering an FSM implementation or upgrade in more than one year.

The results strongly suggest that we are currently in the midst of a fast-paced global sea change in the way FSM solutions are being marketed, sold and deployed.

Among those UK/Europe organisations currently planning an FSM implementation in the next 12 months (or considering doing so in the next 24 months), a Cloud-based solution is preferred by 29% of respondents, compared to only 14% citing a preference for Premise-based – a roughly 2:1 ratio in favour of Cloud.

However, more than half (57%) still remain undecided at this time (compared to only 26% for the general survey population). Still, Cloud-based FSM solutions appear to be the dominant preference. In less than three years since SFG℠’s previous FSM Benchmark Survey was conducted, this represents a sea-change from a market that has historically gone Premise-based for a majority of its FSM software solution needs.

However, the availability of Cloud-based FSM and SLM solutions now allows smaller UK/Europe FSOs to acquire the same types of functionality previously only available to larger organisations, thereby allowing them – in many cases for the first time – to compete directly against the historical market leaders.

 

Key Survey Takeaways

Based on the UK/Europe results of SFG℠’s 2015 Field Service Management Benchmark Survey, the key takeaways are: [ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. UK/Europe Field Services Organisations (FSOs) are driven to meet customer demands for quicker response; improve workforce utilisation, productivity and efficiencies; meet customer demand for improved asset availability, and increase service revenues
2.  A majority of UK/Europe FSOs are adding, expanding and/or refining the metrics, or KPIs, they use to measure service performance.
3. Over the next 12 months, more than three-quarters (79%) of UK/Europe FSOs will have invested in mobile tools to support their field technicians, and more than 53% will have integrated new technologies into existing field service operations.
4. UK/Europe Field Technicians are increasingly being provided with enhanced access to real-time data and information to support them in the field.
5. UK/Europe FSOs are providing customers with expanded Web-enabled self-help capabilities (i.e., to order parts, track the status of open calls, and create service tickets, etc.).
6. More than half of UK/Europe FSOs are not currently attaining their customer satisfaction or SLA compliance goals; and one-in-four are not achieving at least 20% services profitability (although services profitability, as a whole, appears to be improving).
7. Existing UK/Europe FSM platforms are reported as reflecting a more than 2:1 Premise-based over Cloud-based ratio; however, planned FSM implementations in the next 12 to 24 months are reported as more than 2:1 Cloud-based, or SaaS.

Historically, the primary factors cited as driving the UK/Europe – and global - services community to improve its operational efficiencies and service delivery performance have essentially been customer-driven; that is, with a focus primarily on meeting – and, even, exceeding – customer expectations for response time, first-time fix rate, mean-time-to-repair and the like.

However, the economic downturn of the past decade changed the way services organisations think by shifting their focus to ongoing rounds of cost cutting and downsizing (i.e., the denominator of the bottom line). However, this was quickly followed by a shift to the numerator, best represented by an all-out effort to increase service revenues, or turnover.

In 2016 and beyond, the focus will likely be even stronger on the customer in terms of striving to meet (and exceed) their demands, preferences and expectations – or “back to the basics”. UK/Europe FSOs will continue to plan to accomplish this mainly by developing and/or improving the KPIs they use to monitor their improved performance over time, investing in new tools to support both field technicians and customers, and integrating new technologies into their existing FSM or Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) systems.

 

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At 49%, the cited  current investments in mobile tools to support field technicians by UK/Europe services organisations is much higher than the overall survey base (44%),  yet current plans for integrating new technologies are still reported as significantly lower (i.e., only 20% in the UK/ Europe, compared with 34% for the global survey base).

However, plans for new technology integration over the next 12 months are significantly high at 33%, suggesting that the adoption of new services technologies in the UK/Europe may be roughly only one year behind that reflected by the general survey population (which is comprised of roughly 75% of respondents from the Americas).

Planned strategic actions by UK/Europe services organisations over the next 12-month period reflect a more dynamic, rather than static, approach to the field services marketplace.

For example, 51% of respondents plan to develop and/or improve their use of field service KPIs, or metrics, in the next 12 months; and nearly as many plan to improve planning and forecasting activities with respect to field operations (46%).

 

Automating existing manual field service processes and activities (40%) is also cited as a top planned strategic action.

Additional top planned strategic actions, cited by at least one-quarter (25%) of UK/ Europe respondents, include integrating new technologies into existing field service operations (33%), investing in mobile tools to support field technicians (30%) and providing enterprise-wide access to important field-collected data (26%).

Other key planned actions will be taken in areas relating to increasing customer involvement in Web-based service processes (23%); providing additional training to field technicians and dispatchers (19%); outsourcing some, or all, field service activities to partners and vendors (14%); and hiring additional field service technicians and/or dispatchers (11%).

What these data primarily show is that the UK/ Europe field services community recognises the need to take specific strategic actions to enhance and improve existing service operations, and that these actions begin first and foremost with the need to develop and/or improve the use of service metrics and KPIs in measuring and monitoring their service delivery performance.

In addition, it shows that UK/Europe FSOs also recognize the need to invest in the right mobile tools and technologies to empower their resources both in the field, and in the back office, to improve existing processes, meet the growing needs of customers, and make greater contributions to the bottom line.

Use of KPIs

The survey findings reveal that there are basically seven service performance metrics, or KPIs, presently being used by a majority of UK/Europe FSOs. They include:

• 78%  Customer Satisfaction
• 75%  Total Service Revenue
• 68%  Total Service Cost
• 53%  Field Technician Utilisation
• 53%  Percent of Total Revenue under SLA/ Contract
• 51%  Service Revenue, as a Percent of Total Company Revenues
• 51%  Service Revenue, per Field Technician

However, there are also an additional seven KPIs that are used by just under one-half of UK/ Europe FSOs to help them measure performance, including On-Site Response Time (49%), First Time Fix Rate (49%), Service Level Agreement (SLA) Compliance (49%), Field Technician Productivity (47%), Mean-Time-to-Repair (MTTR) (47%), Service Contract Attach Rate (47%) and Service Contract Renewal Rate (47%).

The fact that ±50% of all UK/Europe services organisations presently use up to 14 KPIs to measure service performance reflects a significantly high level of importance placed on the use of KPIs in the overall UK/Europe services community.

 

The survey findings also show that UK/Europe services organisations aspiring to attain Best Practices do not merely look at specific outcomes, such as improving the bottom line, or increasing customer satisfaction; they also look at ways in which to identify the root causes of major problems and leverage process improvement opportunities through the implementation of effective tools and technologies to support their resources both in the field and in the front and back offices that support them.

For example, a majority of UK/Europe FSOs currently support their field technicians with a variety of online capabilities, including the ability to initiate service orders (83%), ability to track and update the current status of work orders (77%), access to product schematics/ documentation (57%) and ability to provide customers with an Estimated Time for Arrival (ETA) (55%).

Other capabilities planned in the next 12 months by at least one-third (33%) of UK/Europe services organisations in support of their field technicians include: [unordered_list style="bullet"]

• 38% Access to problem resolution scenarios
• 35%  Access to customer/asset service history

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Whether it is access to data and information that represents the past (i.e., customer/ asset history), the present (i.e., current status of work orders), or the future (i.e., providing customers with an ETA), the leading UK/Europe FSOs clearly appear to recognize the importance of real-time data and information access.

However, the key to success for many services organisations is that they are also providing their customers with a comparable set of online tools to make both their – and their field technician’s – lives much easier.

 

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Do UK/Europe FSOs prefer Cloud or On-Premise solutions? Find out in Part 4 coming soon...

 

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Are UK field service companies keeping pace with the rest of the world? In Part One of this exclusive four-part benchmarking report for Field Service News, Bill Pollock, President & Principal Consulting Analyst, Strategies for Growth SM, revealed comparative performances and some of the differences between US and UK/European field service organisations.  Here, in Part Two,  he reports what  UK and European service companies say are the key drivers influencing strategy. The publication of this research is sponsored by Kirona.

 

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The key drivers that most influence UK/Europe organisations to improve the overall performance of their field service operations are similar to those cited by the overall respondent base, although, with a higher degree of intensity, and in a slightly different order – i.e., one that places somewhat more emphasis on customer demand and workforce utilisation, productivity and efficiency.

Nonetheless, the UK/Europe respondents have clearly identified the specific drivers that are pushing them to aspire to the attainment of higher levels of performance. For example, customer demand for quicker response time is cited by more than half of the respondent base (i.e., 56%) as the top driver their organisation currently focuses on with respect to optimising field service performance.

The need to improve workforce utilisation and productivity, and need to improve service process efficiencies are the next most highly cited at 47% of respondents, respectively.

From such data, it is clear that the main focus of UK/Europe services organisations remains squarely on the customer.

 

They have already recognised that a focus on the customer must be first and foremost with respect to driving their service operations, and that they could neither attain – nor maintain – a strong competitive status in the services community without having focused first on their customer’s needs and requirements; and, next, on improving the internal services operations necessary to meet their expectations.

As such, the common threads that tie all of these drivers together among UK/Europe services organisations may be best categorised into three groupings essentially comprising:

1. Customer demand for quicker response and improved asset availability;
2. Field technician utilisation, productivity and efficiency improvement; and
3. An internal mandate to drive service revenues – and profits.

We also believe that it is a mistake to dwell only on the “top” factors that are driving the market – and the organisation.

In fact, there are several other factors that respondents also cite as just “bubbling under the surface” with respect to their potential impact on the overall well-being of the organisation. These include:

 

• 22% Competitive pressures / need for market differentiation
• 14% Customer demand for more accurate service call scheduling
• 12% Escalating field service operations costs
• 8% Need to reduce dispatch-related errors

It is noted that UK/Europe organisations are far less likely to be driven by competitive pressures/ need for differentiation than the overall survey universe (i.e., only 22% for the UK/Europe, compared to 33% for the overall respondent base).

Also, while only 8% (i.e., or roughly 1-in-12) UK/ Europe respondents cite the need to reduce dispatch-related problems as a key factor, this driver is apparently still an important consideration to a significant number of organisations.

Another key influencing factor revealed through the analysis is that only 62% of the UK/Europe services organisations surveyed have experienced some improvement in year-over-year field technician productivity (i.e., measured in terms of average calls completed per day), compared to 67% among the overall respondents). Nearly as many (i.e., 61%) have experienced improvements in service revenue, per field technician during the same period.

A similar percentage (i.e., 60%) have also experienced improvements in their year-over-year service profitability.

In fact, these year-over-year increases have helped UK/Europe services organisations to attain a mean average of 35% service profitability in the most recent reporting period, only slightly lower than the 38% attained among the overall respondent base.

Customer satisfaction

At a mean average of 82%, UK services organisations are also currently falling somewhat below the global survey population with respect to attaining desired levels of customer satisfaction (i.e., 85%).

However, each of these respective levels of performance assure that most UK/Europe services organisations will likely retain their high standings in the global services community: first, through sheer momentum; and finally, by the fact that they also reflect among the survey universe’s highest levels of strategic actions – both current and planned – targeted to improve these key areas of performance over the next 12 months and beyond.

 

Based both on the survey findings and SFGSM’s ongoing follow-up research, it is not surprising that the UK/Europe field services community recognises that it will need to increase its investments in mobile tools and new technologies to compete effectively in an expanding global marketplace.

In addition, it also recognises the importance of building an effective Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), or metrics, program to measure the impact that its strategic actions, technology investments and resource acquisitions will actually have on the organisation’s performance moving forward.

Perhaps one of the most encouraging signs for the future success of UK/Europe services organisations is that nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents cite the development/improvement of the KPIs and metrics they use to measure, monitor and track their field service performance over time as their top strategic priority.

This figure is substantially higher than the 52% cited by the overall survey population – and even higher than the 52% cited by Best Practices organisations.

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Watch out for Part 3 , where Bill Pollock reports on KPI performance and what technologies companies plan to invest in from 2016 onwards.

 

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Are UK field service companies keeping pace with the rest of the world? In this exclusive four-part report for Field Service News,  Bill Pollock, President & Principal Consulting Analyst, Strategies for Growth SM, explores how UK companies compare with their global counterparts.  

 

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Each year, Strategies For Growth  (SFGSM) conducts a series of Benchmark Surveys among its global outreach community.  The content of this report is derived exclusively from the UK/Europe responses to our 2015 Field Service Management (FSM) Benchmark Survey and, thereby, represents a geographically-specific universe base from which to identify key FSM usage patterns and trends. The research coverage was sponsored by Kirona.

For example UK/Europe survey respondents identify the following as the top factors, or challenges, currently driving their desire to optimise field service performance (compared to the overall global results):

• 56% Customer demand for quicker response time (up from 52% overall)
• 47% Need to improve workforce utilisation & productivity (up from 43% overall)
• 47% Need to improve service process efficiencies (up from 40% overall)
• 41% Customer demand for improved asset availability (up from 35% overall)

Thus, the data clearly reflects that UK/Europe Field Service Organisations (FSOs) appear to place somewhat more emphasis on each of these key market drivers, focusing on customer demand and workforce utilisation, productivity and efficiency, than their worldwide respondent counterparts.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that they are also planning to invest more in mobile tools in support of their respective field forces than other global geographies represented in the overall survey universe.

However, in order to effectively address these key challenges – and strive to attain Best Practices status – UK/Europe respondents then cite the following as the top strategic actions they are currently taking:

• 64% Develop / improve metrics, or KPIs, used to measure field service performance (up from 52% overall)
• 49% Invest in mobile tools to provide field technicians with real-time access to required data and information in the field (up from 42% overall)
• 35% Integrate new technologies into existing field service operations (i.e., iPads, Tablets or other devices, etc. (up from 34% overall)

The big difference reflected in the UK/Europe survey results is in the percentage of services organisations that are currently developing and/ or improving the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) they use to measure performance -  cited as a top strategic action by 64% of UK/ Europe respondents, compared to only 52% overall.

 

In fact, the percentage of UK/Europe FSOs currently developing/improving their respective KPIs, at 64%, is higher than the 62% cited by the survey’s Best Practices respondents (i.e., those attaining at least 90% Customer Satisfaction and 30% Services Profitability).

The remainder of this report provides insight into each of these and other related areas that may be influencing your organisation’s quest to attain Best Practices, as well as highlighting those resources that the leading UK/Europe organisations already have in place – or are planning to implement in the next 12 months.

Field service as profit centres

The survey results reveal that 65% of UK/Europe respondent organisations currently operate service as an independent profit centre (or as a pure, third-party service company), similar to the 66% reflected among the overall survey respondents, but far fewer than the 81% cited among Best Practices organisations.

Even so, there are still more than a third (35%) that operate as cost centres in support of product sales.

While there appears to be some consistency or continuity in these percentages from other surveys conducted by SFG℠ over the past few years, this nearly 2:1 ratio strongly validates the fact that profit centres now represent the dominant business model within the UK/Europe services community and, based on responses from other questions in the survey, this trend is likely to grow even stronger over time.

It is noted, however, that the percentage of organisations running service as an independent profit centre varies – sometimes significantly – by size of organisation (based on annual revenue or turnover).

The overall survey findings indicate that US$1 billion-plus organisations come in at 74%, while SMBs (i.e., Small and Medium-sized Businesses) report only 55%.

 

Not surprisingly, organisations reporting total annual service profits of greater than 30% come in at 76% – one of the highest levels charted among all of the segments covered in the survey.

As such, they are not only operating service as a profit centre – they’re actually making a significant profit by doing so!

Bespoke or out-of-the-box

More importantly, the UK/Europe respondent base clearly confirms that the predominant mode of Field Service Management (FSM) solutions currently being deployed is mainly off-the-shelf, either with some customisation (53%; compared with only 37% overall), or basically right out-of-the-box with no customisation (2%; compared with 6% overall), comprising more than half (55%) of the respondent base in total.

This figure is 9% higher than that cited by global Best Practices organisations (i.e., 46%)

Roughly one-quarter of UK/Europe respondents are either using home-grown, or internally-developed automated systems (15%), or bespoke solutions developed by a systems integrator (9%).

As such, UK/Europe organisations are far less likely to deploy a bespoke solution either internally, or by a systems integrator, compared with the overall survey respondents, but are far more likely to deploy an off-the-shelf solution and, then, have the specific types of customisation they require built-in to tailor it to their organisation’s requirements.

However, the most perplexing statistic may be the fact that nearly one-in-four UK/Europe organisations (22%) are still running their field service operations basically via a series of manual processes (and spreadsheets) – higher than the 18% attributable to the overall respondent base!

 

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Watch out for Part 2 , where Bill Pollock reveals the key drivers for European and UK field service organisations.

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Kirona
Title: Driving Productivity in Field Service
Download: Click here to download the white paper

By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here

Synopsis

This white paper from Kirona highlights the benefits of integrating automated scheduling with a mobile working solution.

Overview

Leveraging the power of an integrated scheduling and mobile working solution that reduces travel and idle time, streamlines processes and ultimately increases the number of jobs/deliveries/visits completed per day per field worker can deliver average productivity improvements of 20% and sometimes even higher.

Rostering vs scheduling

Rostering ensures that you have enough people to fulfil the demand at any point in time. Scheduling ensures those people are doing the right things at the right time.

Real productivity gains only come when making the step change from rostering to scheduling. Best-in-class service organisation achieve 81% performance in worker utilisation Scheduling enables you to take into account when allocating work such a location and skill set.

 

The order in which work is schedule can have a significant impacto productivity. If you have a team of 100 workers doing 5 jobs a day, there are 1 billio possible combinations of how those jobs could be allocated

Minimise travel time

Travel time can be the greatest source of productivity leakage. Reducing the travel time of field workers by just 10% per day can, on average, increase productivity by as much as one additional average job per day.

Kirona strongly recommends that journey planning needs to be fully integrated into the scheduling process and that it takes into account the actual route between jobs and incorporates traffic information.

Addressing no access

An efficient schedule drives productivity improvements, but only if customers keep appointments and field workers are able to gain access. Integrating scheduling with customer communication can increase the number of appointments kept and update customers on arrival times.

Streamlining Workflow Paperwork, rekeying data, manual workflows and not having access to key information are all factors that are detrimental to the productivity of your field workforce. The benefits of having a seamless mobile working solution far outweighs the investment required.

Access to the right information empowers a results-driven workforce. According to Aberdeen Group’s Field Service 2014 report, best-in-class service organisations achieved an 88% first time fix performance

Handling the emerging day

The daily challenge for field service organisations is how deal with the unexpected without compromising productivity or letting customers down. According to the McKinsey Improving Workforce Productivity, an average 5-10% of jobs are cancelled each day an 10-20% or tasks run shorter or longer than expected.

Managing this requires real-time visibility of your engineers and a dynamic scheduling app that allows you to move work allocation one job at a time.

 

Leveraging Actionable Insight

Comprehensive insight, acting on it and measuring the impact is the key to driving continuous productivity improvement. Benchmarking individual performance and task times, analysis of capacity vs demand and understanding geographic coverage all are key productivity drivers.

Conclusions

Field workforce automation software is key to driving productivity. The technology is proven, deployment does not have to be complex and there are significant gains to be made.

We have seen time after time that by leveraging Dynamic Resource Scheduling combined with Mobile Working, organisations on average see an uplift in productivity of 20%.

Yet the value does not stop there. These organisations also see an improvement in first time fix, a reduction in no-access, reduced administration overhead and measurable improvements in customer satisfaction. The field service activities become far more predictable and so too does performance.

Every aspect of work can be measured, analysed and lessons learned to drive continuous performance.  According to Aberdeen Group, a best in class service organisation is defined by its ability to achieve 81% or greater workforce utilisation, 88% or better first time fix and a 90% or better customer satisfaction.

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Kirona
Title: Six steps to being a leader - the field service checklist
Download: Click here to access the white paper
By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here

Synopsis:

Field workforce management software enables organisations with a mobile workforce to significantly improve their operational performance. The State of Service Management 2015: Connect To Your Customers report by Aberdeen's Aly Pinder found that best-in-class field service organisations achieve on average a 14.4% year-on-year improvement in workforce productivity compared to a 4.1% industry average.

This white paper looks at six key steps that field service companies must take in order to reach these heights themselves and establish their organisations as leaders amongst their competitors.

Overview:

Topics within the white paper include: 

• Optimising resource planning: Field resource planning is complex. If you have 100 workers carrying out 5 jobs a day, then that are 10,000,000,000 (1 billion) possible combinations of how those jobs could be allocated. There may also be a myriad of additional scheduling criteria such as worker skills/trade, certification required (and the validity dates), languages spoken, job time frame (appointment slot/site access), the region/ geography, the worker’s experience, parts, materials, equipment required, and the list goes on.  No human planner can possibly consider all these scenarios and determine which is financially the best option with the highest chance of customer satisfaction. It is therefore, not surprising that over two-thirds of Best-In-Class service organisations leverage software for Optimised Resource Planning.
•  Making and keeping appointments: Compliance to your work schedule is critical for two reasons, first it ensures you are working in the planned most optimum way, but second and more importantly, it means you are delivering against commitments to customers. For work types that require a customer appointment, the complexity of scheduling increases. Now an organisation needs to schedule work by considering two diaries; that of the workforce and the customer. Appointments are also disruptive to the customers, so keeping them is essential to achieving high customer satisfaction
• Connecting with the mobile workforce: Equipping field workers with mobile devices is a well-trodden path, however, whether through limitation in mobile working applications or lack of integration, we tend to find that most field service organisations are not maximising the full potential of connecting the field workforce.
• Real time tracking and dynamic scheduling: One of the biggest challenges for any organisation is how to track and monitor field-based activity and to manage the emerging day. Exceptions will always arise, whether through an overrun, no-access or emergency work, the skill is being able to take this in your stride and be able to dynamically reschedule work to take into account the unexpected while ensuring you continue to work to the most optimum schedule.
• Analysis & Continuous improvement: Standing still is not an option for field service organisations. We see continual change from our clients’ including customer demands, executive level priorities and changes in the workforce – all of which requires them to analyse and continually improve their operation. Knowledge is key. Understanding every aspect of your field service operation, gaining insight into not only what is happening, but why this is happening, and then being able to take action on this insight.
• Integration leads to automation: The more staff ‘touch points’ that are required in a service process, the greater its inefficiency. Not only do manual processes create a drain on labour and therefore an increased cost, they are error prone and they create timescale lags. Workforce management software provides an opportunity to avoid this by automating key activities in the service management chain of processes. The more 3rd party systems that are integrated into automated workflows, the greater the benefit to the organisation.

 

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Kirona Contact information:

Key Contact: Laraine Geddes
Phone: +44 (0)1625 585511
Email: Laraine.geddes@kirona.com
Web: www.kirona.com

 

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Services Provided by Kirona:

 

• Dynamic Resource Scheduling
• Scheduling and Planning Optimisation
• Workforce Management and Optimisation
• Field Service Management
• Mobile Workforce Management
• U.K based support[/unordered_list]

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All about Kirona:

Kirona’s innovative field service technology enables organisations with a mobile workforce to improve productivity, customer service, field based worker visibility and reporting, whilst reducing costs.

Kirona’s suite of solutions includes Xmbrace DRS.

This leading dynamic resource scheduling tool is currently used by over 350 organisations to efficiently plan and dynamically schedule their field based work force.

Kirona’s Job Manager mobile application connects centralised teams with their field-based workforce in real time and is currently trusted by over 350,000 field based workers.

Kirona’s InfoSuite software enables smarter decisions with real-time actionable insight.

It provides a holistic view of operations, visibility of key performance indicators and the ability to quickly drill down on the underlying detail.

Kirona’s leading edge, innovative technology individually delivers significant value to field service organisations and when combined, they deliver a unique advantage.

 

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Videos from Kirona...

Kirona Overiew

Resources from Kirona...

Case Study: Clearwater implements Kirona's Job Manager

Clearwater’s continued success meant that it soon began to outgrow its existing working processes and needed to adopt a strategy for managing its workload more efficiently.

In an average month Clearwater was carrying out around 11,000 jobs, leading to 30,000 written reports created in the field, using around 50,000 pieces of paper.

Click the link above to find out how they improved their service delivery with Kirona'...

 

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Case Study: Carpetright introduce field management software

In recent years the company has faced the challenge of simplifying the Carpetright sales journey for both customers and staff. For 25 years, Carpetright’s home consultants used a paper-based diary system to schedule home visits.

Customers often needed to wait days for a home consultant to manage an increasingly demanding workload through outdated management systems.

Click the link above to find out how they improved their service delivery through implementation of Kirona's solution...

 

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Intelligent Field Service: The complete solution for field-based organisations

Kirona helps organisations to deliver exceptional field-based services in the most cost-effective way possible. We do this by providing our clients with a suite of applications that enables them to manage their end-to-end service processes and to seamlessly link field-based workers with central functions.

Click the link above to find out more....

 

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