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Fast Lean Smart (FLS) is working with Royal Mail Property & Facilities Solutions (RMPFS) to implement a new scheduling software system to increase productivity and establish a site ownership model.

RMPFS wanted to upgrade its current scheduling and route planning software to achieve new levels of efficiency and productivity from its service operations. The company’s existing system is over 10 years old and no longer meets its needs.

“We looked at several scheduling and route planning systems providers, FLS being one of them,” says Scott Maddocks, Project Manager for RMPFS.

“After the initial demonstration, we carried out a number of FLS customer site visits to see the software in action. We engaged our management teams, our engineers and our unions because we wanted them all to be happy that the software would work.”

After the initial demonstration, we carried out a number of FLS customer site visits to see the software in action. We engaged our management teams, our engineers and our unions because we wanted them all to be happy that the software would work.In the end, FLS came out on top. “We chose FLS for a number of reasons,” says Scott. “The user front end was better than the other products we looked at, and FLS gave us confidence that their software could be integrated with our existing service management system. We also thought that FLS would be good to work with, more agile and better able to deliver what we wanted than the other suppliers.”

One of RMPFS’s goals was to plan jobs more efficiently. FLS’s ability to plan optimised routes in real time will help it do this. FLS software takes into account specific business priorities, traffic-based driving times and countless other variables for both planned and reactive work. RMPFS also wants to reduce the number of return visits its engineers have to do. FLS will give them a portal where they can see four weeks of planned work in advance and allocate the necessary resources to each job. Engineers will be able to request job assists and equipment hire in advance of the job using the new portal.

Another key requirement for RMPFS was the establishment of a site ownership model, i.e. the allocation of tasks to preferred engineers according to a set of criteria to ensure that the right skills are in the right place at the right time. “We wanted software that could navigate several tiers of engineer choices, to allow them to build their site knowledge and relationships and reduce their travel time,” says Scott. “FLS proved that its system was up to the challenge and could enable our engineers to work at preferred sites in preferred regions based on an extensive and complex series of rules.”

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FLS, Fast Lean Smart, a leader in field force appointment, schedule and route optimisation solutions, has recently announced the results of its annual customer satisfaction survey in the UK.

Jeremy Squire, FLS UK Managing Director comments “Outstanding customer satisfaction is what our customers strive to achieve from their field service operations and I believe we should be setting the right example”.

FLS customers include leaders in equipment maintenance, utilities/telecoms, healthcare, financial services/insurance claims, facilities management/property maintenance, engineering compliance inspections, retail home deliveries and more. In December 2017, FLS UK surveyed every live customer it supports directly with two key questions.

The first question was very direct “How do you rate the service you receive from FLS support? (1 - 10)”. The result was an average score of 9.3.The first question was very direct “How do you rate the service you receive from FLS support? (1 - 10)”. The result was an average score of 9.3.

The second was a Net Promotor Score (NPS) styled question “How likely is it that you would recommend FLS VISITOUR to a friend who has a similar scheduling requirement? (0 - 10)”

Using the standard formula for detractors (range 0-6), passives (7-8), promoters (9-10), there was no need for a complex calculation because every customer was a promoter for FLS VISITOUR scheduling solution, the NPS score was the maximum 100!

Best in class

Jeremy Squire reflects “I feel very proud of my team for the satisfaction they are delivering and the fact every customer would recommend us is possibly unique in this market. Our strategy will continue to focus on innovation and our customer on-going success using FLS scheduling software, and to build our business through recommendations.”

Jeremy concludes “This proves real-time scheduling and route optimisation solutions really can work well for a wide range of field service businesses, you’ve just got to choose the right technology and partner to work with”.

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Tesseract’s Sales Director Kevin McNally, with over 15 year’s experience in the industry, explores the key elements with Kris Oldland Editor of Field Service News...

 

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[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ield Service Management technology has become essential to service delivery excellence. Service excellence is no longer a USP but a baseline requirement. However, whilst technologies such as IoT and Augmented Reality are grabbing the headlines their potential is greatly diminished unless you have a fundamental layer of technology in place already.

This two part article explores what to expect from a FSM system and offers best-practice tips to help you get the most from your investment...

Contract Management:

[quote]“The starting piece for everything is the contract and the control of the contract. Without that in place it is very difficult to bring everything else on top of that.”  Kevin McNally, Tesseract.

 

Contract management is often viewed as the starting point of almost everything within field service management operations. Without a view of your service contracts you cannot have to hand the answers for critical questions such as:

• What is the SLA on any given contract?
• Is a client under warranty or do they have an enhanced level of service contract
• Does a contract include spare parts and/or consumables?
• Is the service contract due for renewal?[/unordered_list]

You could be at risk of potentially not meeting your client’s expectations and so putting the potential of renewing or upselling service to that client in danger in the future – or on the other side of the coin, you could be giving valuable service away for free.

From the point of view of understanding the assets and also the entitlement that the customer is due as we go through a process of raising a service call or indeed, raising a sales order, we need to fundamentally understand what we should be doing with the entitlement for each specific client.

Scheduling:  

[quote]Optimised Scheduling in our world tends to be more geared to the planned maintenance aspects of service calls – i.e. for those companies who are looking to do things in advance and are looking for the best possible route to achieve this – Kevin McNally, Tesseract

 

Scheduling comes in a number of different guises and the various different names given to types of scheduling options can be a somewhat confusing but broadly scheduling will come in three flavours:

• Assisted Scheduling: Assisted Schedulers are essentially a manual tool, that as the name denotes offer a layer of assistance to the dispatcher making their job that little bit easier and thus increasing efficiency.
• Optimised Scheduling: With an optimised scheduling tool most of the work is done by the system. It will search through the scheduled service jobs and the available engineers and pull together an optimised work schedule for the day taking into account things like travel times and distances, priority jobs and field engineer skillsets etc. However, when things fall outside of established parameters, it is down to the dispatcher to make necessary adjustments to the schedule to make sure SLAs are met etc.
• Dynamic Scheduling: Dynamic scheduling is a further evolution of optimised scheduling that draws in data from mobile applications and telematics data etc to continuously revise the schedule throughout the day, reacting to situations such as a delayed engineer and reallocating jobs to ensure that the days schedule is continuously optimised.[/unordered_list]

Ultimately, when it comes to scheduling, it really is a case of horses for courses and establishing what is the best fit for your organisation.

Whilst not all companies will see a need for a dynamic scheduler, all but the smallest of organisations can benefit from at least some form of optimisation within their scheduling solution and the efficiencies that can be delivered are significant so it is an area of your FSM solution that you should get to understand and know fully.

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Want to know more? A white paper on this topic is available for Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you the white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!

 

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to Jeremy Squire of Fast Lean Smart about when a best-of-breed scheduling solution can be the right option over a broader, more generic Field Service Management platform as well as what types of field service companies will benefit from optimised scheduling.

Leading mobile workforce management company ServicePower Technologies Plc has launched Nexus FS, an enterprise-class  cloud-based field service management solution for any sized service business that incorporates comprehensive mobile dispatch functionality.

NEXUS FS (Field Service) is designed to provide service businesses of any size an enterprise-quality cloud-based field service management solution with a comprehensive mobile application. It incorporates work order management, mobile dispatching to field based resources, real-time schedule monitoring through an interactive Gantt, timesheet reporting, location monitoring and reporting, asset and parts capabilities, and user configurable maintenance, all in the cloud, with fast and easy data set-up and a modern and easy user interface.

The NEXUS FS mobile dispatch component has new features such as rules-based, user configurable forms delivered on a job-by-job basis, allowing organisations and technicians to quickly adapt to job conditions, improving both efficiency and productivity, while enhancing the customer experience.  It also incorporates the latest release of ServicePower's  ServiceMobility providing job and activity management, scheduling, inventory management, parts information, schematic diagrams, note-taking, timesheets, signature capture, photograph capture, collaboration with office-based resources, navigation, estimates and payments, and customer surveys.

For those requiring real-time optimisation, Nexus FS can be integrated with ServicePower’s ServiceScheduling module, and later this year it will also be available with the company’s patented field service optimisation algorithm Optimisation on Demand.

NEXUS FS also will offer connected global third party contractors the ability to manage their own business while receiving work from our ServiceOperations global client base, aggregating all jobs into one software platform, reducing costs and improving operational efficiencies.

Marne Martin, CEO, ServicePower, commented "ServicePower are investing in rapid development of our mobile workforce management platform adding in new features and new products that further connect the service supply chain, provide improved efficiencies and productivity, and enhance the customer experience.  NEXUS FS changes the field service market. It's not simply another disparate mobile dispatching solution. It provides small, medium and even large enterprise organisations with an economical, cloud-based solution to manage their business and fully mobilise their field operations with access to real algorithm-based optimisation, connectivity to multiple job sources and the ability to file claims for work performed, through our connected platform and offerings, providing an unmatched, single vendor solution to any business."

 

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For any field service organisation there is often one simple key objective, to deliver excellent customer service whilst working as effectively as possible.

However, we are working in a market place where both economic pressures and customer demands have risen to greater levels than possibly ever before and sometimes it may seem like this ‘simple’ objective is becoming increasingly unachievable. Yet at the same time we are seeing technology at our disposal moving forward in quantum leaps, as we witness technologies emerge that can and will literally change the shape of the field service industry as we know it.

Multi-person video conferencing enabled by increasing mobile internet speeds is now a common place reality when not so long ago it was the domain of science fiction. The field engineer facing on site who doesn’t have the requisite knowledge to deliver a first time is now able to access a wealth of information and advice direct from his handset, he can see where the nearest parts he requires are and if their not readily available he can order them and schedule the appointment with Mr. Bloggs there and then. (First of course checking that Mr. Bloggs account has the correct privileges and if he doesn’t than the engineer can is perfectly placed to up-sell!!)

Then there is the Cloud… Many of the initial fears around cloud based computing, a large number of companies were hesitant to move business functions into the cloud with security worries at the top of the list of peoples reasons for hesitancy, are now being allayed and the reality is that cloud technologies offer an incredible opportunity for the service industry.

If having fast mobile devices is the key, then having knowledge bases, communications platforms and even central systems in the cloud, is the door that opens the way into a whole new world of service excellence.

Even better, unlike the majority of technologies, which are prohibitively expensive when they first emerge, the cloud is in fact the opposite. Suddenly expensive and complex service management systems that were once the exclusive domain of the enterprise organization are now available as Software as a Service, bringing the cost per person down in some cases to under $100 a head.

In a period of continuing economic uncertainty, where Service is a major battle field in all manner of industries, the combination of ever improving mobile data speeds and cloud computing is a clear example of how technology is changing the shape of the industry today.

Of course, not every company is able to or indeed should invest in every new piece of technology and software that comes along. Indeed what is cutting edge today could well be obsolete within a few short years, and no matter where we see similarities in service departments, and we see them in wide and diverse industries, the simple truth is no one service story can ever be the same. Companies, like individuals require a solution that is geared just for them.

However, having an understanding of the technologies available and the advantages they may bring to your service department is a core responsibility of every field service manager.

It’s vital that field service managers understand what the options available to them are, whilst taking the time to understand their own needs and weaknesses and then find the system or systems that are fit for purpose

There is plenty of good information out there (including of course this very website!) and another source of good and refreshingly impartial advice is Service Max’s new ebook “A Definitive Guide to Modern Field Service Management”. Which we are very pleased to be able to offer to you for free when you subscribe to our fortnightly newsletter.

Drawing on research from Gartner, Aberdeen, The Service Council and Forrester as well as a real life case study this ebook gives insightful and concise advice on how technologies such as cloud, SaaS, big data and analytics, smart phones and tablets and optimised scheduling engines can be brought together to empower organisations to adopt a fully 360° view of the service they deliver.

To download a copy of this excellent book please just click the link here and then complete the very brief (less than a minute) registration form.