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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Trimble
Title: A Quick to Field Service Metrics

 

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Synopsis:

Field Service Managers face a big challenge balancing customer service with operational efficiency. It can be often hard to know how each important aspect is performing; and making changes in one area can affect the other. A successful Service Manager will leverage KPIs to gain visibility into their operations; helping them to manage both aspects of their business.

This White Paper published by Trimble Pulse takes a look at the some of the key considerations as to what metrics field service managers should be focussing on.

The white paper includes sections on:

• The importance of KPIs
• The top 5 field service KPIs
• A guide to benchmarking your own KPIs against best in-class field service organisations.

Overview:

Historically, field service organisations measured their success based upon the cost of service delivery and revenue generation. However, as competition in the industry heats up and customer expectations reach an all-time high, measuring additional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) has become critical to success.

Field service companies need to know what is working and what isn’t in their operations in order to make improvements. This is easier said than done.

With so much data flowing in from multiple sources, in various formats and through an array of tools, determining what is useful can be a minefield for service organisations. Nearly 30 per cent of field service managers believe their organisation is ineffective at using the data they collect and just 1 in 5 believe they get the information they need from field service data to help do their job.

 

Field Service Managers need to extract data from their operations in two ways.

Firstly, they need instant, accurate information on which they can make on-the-spot decisions and secondly, performance management analytics should also be gathered so they can benchmark performance trends and learn from  experiences.

Ultimately, you cannot improve on what is not already being measured.

Identifying KPIs, measuring them and setting goals for improving them will reap rewards for any service operation.

Importance of KPIs

In order for field service organisations to obtain and retain customers, they must have a solid understanding of how their field operations are performing at all times. When utilised well, KPIs keep the service team focused and, most importantly, identify where improvements in the business are needed.

The business dynamics of delivering field service have changed, and customers are demanding higher levels of service. Field service organisations need to adapt accordingly which often means empowering their technicians with the tools and knowledge to fix things the first time – every time.

KPIs can help measure how well an organisation is meeting this objective as well as provide data that will help improve the effectiveness of each technician in completing their job.

Top 5 field service KPIs

The white paper takes an in-depth look at the following KPIs

• Customer Satisfaction
• SLA compliance
• Technician Productivity
• Technician Utilisation
• First-time-fix rate

How do you compare

The white paper explores research by Trimble Pulse which highlights that there is a lot of room for field service organisations to improve upon when it comes to using field service data. The research surveyed field service managers to find how their organisations use KPIs and whether they are successful at leveraging KPIs to improve business productivity and efficiency.

Trimble asked a range of questions looking to establish what field service organisations perceive to be the top most important KPIs to how they use KPIs to inform business decision making, that’s if they use KPIs at all. Without this insight, how can you make decisions which enhance business productivity, cost efficiency and create loyal customers? Essentially, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

 

The final section of this white paper explores the findings of this research and outlines best-practice approaches to field service metrics.

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Oneserve
Title: The metrics that matter: How actionable analytics can transform field service management performance­
Download:Click here to download this white paper
By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here
Synopsis:

The top strategic action for two-thirds of service organisations is to develop or improve the metrics or KPIs used to measure field service performance. And yet only 18 percent of companies believe they have the skills necessary to gather and use insights effectively.

These two statistics represent the predicament of many field service organisations today - they know actionable analytics are vital for business success, but fully utilising the information they gather is a daunting and difficult task. This white paper aims to disentangle the vast quantity of data available in the field service management industry by highlighting the metrics that really matter and demonstrating how analytics can be used to improve business performance.  

Overview:

This white paper covers the following areas:

Customer Centric and Servitisation

Many organisations have data at their fingertips but are paralysed by the complexity and number of data sources available to them. They rely on anecdotal evidence or intuition to make decisions rather than informed business intelligence in order to drive competitive advantage.

Research shows that service organisations that fully interrogate data outperform their rivals. A like-for-like comparison between organisations which use advanced analytics and those that don’t, reveals that adopters of analytics are seeing a 60% higher increase in year-on-year revenue.

Analytics for Field Service Management (FSM)

Analytics for FSM should be based around assets in the field, the resources (time, money and people) it takes to install, maintain and repair those assets and the customer experience. Initially an organisation may just want to understand the numbers around these key activities, then in time improve processes. Ultimately the goal should be to deliver forecast and predictive analytics that achieve optimisation across service delivery.

For field service this goal can be delivered at both strategic and operational levels, for example a director might want to understand how a shift in approach can create gains for the organisation, whereas a manager might want to understand how exactly that shift can be made.

 

Incorporate the metrics that matter

To ensure analytics are able to deliver valuable insight, the right KPIs must be identified. Every service organisation must identify their own metrics based on what success looks like for them. There are however some common measures in the service industry which should be tracked by any service organisation regardless of which sector they operate within.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for field service management should include:

• Business process
• Service delivery
• Customer service
• Operational efficiency

This is by no means an exhaustive list - each metric should unlock more in-depth measures which require analysis. Clear actionable insights will be revealed as part of the analysis from which the organisation can take evidence based decisions and improve the process associated with that measure.

This should be a constant cyclical review process. 

The analytics journey

Assuming a set of KPIs has been defined, there is a hierarchy of analytics that can be applied, dependent upon the richness of the data and the analytics resource available. The advanced analytics journey demonstrated in chart 1 articulates a staged approach, which starts by examining the data and finishes by optimising the intelligence which has been discovered. Evidently each step in the journey becomes more complicated and arguably more useful as the capability and complexity of the analytics increases.

Additional benefits of analytics

Increased customer retention Research by Aberdeen Group shows organisations that embrace analytics outperform their industry average figures for customer satisfaction, customer retention and service improvement. These organisations use analytics to gain a deep understanding of customer behaviour to preempt customer needs and desires without explicit interaction.

Higher levels of motivation in the workforce The mobile workforce is the shop window of any service organisation. In fact some organisations are even combining the role of technician and salesperson. The technician is highly qualified in product knowledge and often in the customer space; this puts them in a unique position of knowledge and trust to be able to sell to the customer.

Improved bottom line Organisations which reap the greatest rewards from business intelligence see a significantly improved bottom line.

Competitive advantage By continuously analysing in-house performance figures these companies can use this insight to monitor their competitors and ensure they stay at the top of their game. The best performing service organisations are twice as likely as all others to consistently benchmark service performance against peers and top performers in other industries.

Click here to download this white paper

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