Improving productivity is the cornerstone of establishing a framework for delivering field service excellence. Laurent Othacéhé, CEO, Cognito iQ outlines why and how you should approach improving your field service productivity...
ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘productivity’ CATEGORY
Dec 11, 2017 • Features • Management • Cognito • KPIs • Laurent Othacéhé • Productivity
Improving productivity is the cornerstone of establishing a framework for delivering field service excellence. Laurent Othacéhé, CEO, Cognito iQ outlines why and how you should approach improving your field service productivity...
Want to know more? A white paper on this topic is available to Field Service News subscribers - if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription - apply now and we will send you a copy of this white paper whilst we process your application!
Expectations of field service have never been higher
Customers are used to the speed of delivery and quality of service that they get from consumer companies such as Amazon; this has raised the bar for all service companies. Customers want a service appointment quickly, they want smaller appointment windows and they expect your field worker to have the right information as well as the skills, knowledge and parts to resolve their issue first time.
Against this backdrop is the growing need for the service department to both reduce costs and contribute to revenues. Uncertain economic conditions have led many companies to strive to be more efficient and field service departments are facing significant pressure to cut costs and “do more with less.”
How do field service organisations provide a better service to their customers, with fewer resources? Our customers tell us they are focused on efficiency and productivity gains, and this is borne out by the market:
- 56% of field service professionals say that their customers are demanding faster response times
- 47% of field service professionals say they need to improve service process efficiencies
- 49% of field service professionals say that the primary objective for their field mobility investment in the coming year will be maximising productivity [/unordered_list]
So how do you improve productivity?
To answer that question, you have to know what productivity means to your business. All businesses will have a different definition and an individual approach. For example, would you be happy to drive up the number of visits per day your field workers attend if that meant fewer first time fixes, or reduced customer satisfaction scores?
The old adage is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure but, these days, companies know that it is a bit more complicated than that – measurement for its own sake or using the wrong metrics to set targets can be counter-productive. It is vital to know how to measure success: which metrics are useful and which aren’t, which can be accurately determined and which can’t, how metrics interact and how setting goals and targets will affect how employees go about their jobs.
At the operational level, field service leaders need accurate, timely data about field operations and the analytic capabilities to look for bottlenecks and opportunities to improve.
In 2016, Field Service News reported that improving the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used to measure performance was the top strategic action for the year ahead for 64% of field service organisations in the UK and Europe.
Field Technologies Online reported that 75% of field service organisations do not effectively measure their KPIs and 27% of those do not use KPIs at all.
Our customers tell us that the biggest challenges in improving productivity come not only from a need to define and measure it, but also from knowing how to influence workers to behave in the most productive way. This is a challenge that plays out at an operational level and an employee level.
At the operational level, field service leaders need accurate, timely data about field operations and the analytic capabilities to look for bottlenecks and opportunities to improve. At the employee level, leaders need to know how each field worker is performing, how to solve performance problems and how to motivate, train and support each worker effectively.
Simply, through continual improvement
This is not a new idea. Continual improvement is a well-established practice that seeks to increase customer value, reduce waste and optimise resources via incremental change, feedback and analysis. These techniques originated in manufacturing; on a production line, it is relatively simple to measure variables such as number of defects, as you can easily see how the work is being done and you can observe the impact when you make changes to the process. But as continual improvement methodologies have developed, they have been profitably applied in many other industries, so why not field service operations?
There are challenges: field service workers aren’t widgets that can be counted and checked. They work remotely, often independently, and may only come back to base on rare occasions.
Field service workers aren’t widgets that can be counted and checked. They work remotely, often independently, and may only come back to base on rare occasions.
Adopting a continual improvement approach means that first you plan and do: Planning data has historically been focused on task, time and location: telling workers what to do, where to go and when. But if you want to improve the plan for tomorrow, you will need to study how efficiently the plan worked today and act to make changes.
For example, were job durations as you expected? If tasks took longer than planned you may have unhappy customers and a big overtime bill. If they took less time, are you paying workers who have gone home early? Detailed data on durations enables you to act, adjusting task durations to feed back into the plan for tomorrow. It is the combination of many small changes, and the continual feedback loop of measurement, analysis and change that will gradually and incrementally improve productivity.
Want to know more? A white paper on this topic is available to Field Service News subscribers - if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription - apply now and we will send you a copy of this white paper whilst we process your application!
Please note that by applying for subscription via the above links you consent to our Terms and Conditions as listed here.
Not one for a load of legalese? Neither are we - that's why we put together a jargon-free version of our T&Cs on our subscription page which you'll find here
Be social and share
Nov 29, 2017 • Features • Cognito • Cognito iQ • Productivity • resources • White Paper • White Papers & eBooks • Employee Engagement • Software and Apps • Customer Satisfaction and Expectations
Resource Type: Written Guide Published by: Cognito iQ Title: Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity
Resource Type: Written Guide
Published by: Cognito iQ
Title: Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
Synopsis:
Outside of the field service industry, the growth of big data and analytics is old news. The most advanced organisations have already gone beyond the hype and have developed strategies that are delivering exciting performance-enhancing results. For example, Leicester City’s surprise Premier League win was based on the club’s expert use of football data analytics. Stories such as this are why Gartner say “Data and analytics are taking centre stage as the single most powerful catalyst for change in the enterprise”.
However, field service companies have been slower to achieve similar levels of success from the use of advanced analytics. Whilst in many organisations there is plenty of data available, it can be hard to use effectively: the data may not be sufficiently accurate or timely, and service professionals may lack the skills and tools they need. But this is changing. Field service organisations are getting smarter with both the data they collect and how they use it.
Over this series of three special guides, Cognito iQ demonstrate how simple analytics can make a significant difference to three key components of field service excellence:
- Customer Satisfaction
- Employee Engagement
- Productivity (the subject of this first instalment)
Overview:
Topics covered and addressed in this white paper include:
Expectations of field service have never been higher
Customers are used to the speed of delivery and quality of service that they get from consumer companies such as Amazon; this has raised the bar for all service companies. Customers want a service appointment quickly, they want smaller appointment windows and they expect your field worker to have the right information as well as the skills, knowledge and parts to resolve their issue first time.
So how do field service organisations provide a better service to their customers, with fewer resources?
So how do you improve productivity?
To answer that question, you have to know what productivity means to your business. All businesses will have a different definition and an individual approach. For example, would you be happy to drive up the number of visits per day your field workers attend if that meant fewer first time fixes, or reduced customer satisfaction scores?
The old adage is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure but, these days, companies know that it is a bit more complicated than that – measurement for its own sake or using the wrong metrics to set targets can be counter-productive.
It is vital to know how to measure success: which metrics are useful and which aren’t, which can be accurately determined and which can’t, how metrics interact and how setting goals and targets will affect how employees go about their jobs.
Perfecting productivity
Continual improvement is a well-established practice that seeks to increase customer value, reduce waste and optimise resources via incremental change, feedback and analysis. These techniques originated in manufacturing; on a production line, it is relatively simple to measure variables such as number of defects, as you can easily see how the work is being done and you can observe the impact when you make changes to the process.
But as continual improvement methodologies have developed, they have been profitably applied in many other industries, so why not field service operations?
With the right data, it is possible to adopt a proactive, systematic approach, breaking down the processes within the operation.
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
Please note that by applying for subscription via the above links you consent to our Terms and Conditions as listed here.
Not one for a load of legalese? Neither are we - that's why we put together a jargon-free version of our T&Cs on our subscription page which you'll find here
Be social and share
Field Service News is published by 1927 Media Ltd, an independent publisher whose sole focus is on the field service sector. As such our entire resources are focused on helping drive the field service sector forwards and aiming to best serve our industry through honest, incisive and innovative media coverage of the global field service sector.
Leave a Reply