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Welcome to the latest edition of the Field Service Podcast.

This month Field Service News Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland and Tim Faulkner of ClickSoftware discuss the findings of the latest Field Service News research which assessed the use of the Cloud in field service management 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 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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In this final part of our series exploring the findings of our research into field service and the potential impact of IoT we look at the key reasons driving adoption of IoT forwards….

If you missed out on the earlier features in this series you can find them at part one, part two and part three respectively

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Actual implementations

In fact we can look further within our data to help us better identify when we will see field service companies embracing IoT on a widespread level by looking at how many companies have indeed already implemented an IoT strategy and how many are currently planning to do so.

Indeed over two thirds (67%) of companies are at the very least ‘actively planning an IoT strategy’, with 15% of companies actually ‘having an IoT based system in place’ and 14% currently in ‘the process of implementing an IoT strategy or solution.’

 

This would indicate that whilst those who stated that they felt IoT was already becoming widespread may be slightly optimistic, in reality we are perhaps three to five years away from IoT becoming a truly common place tool within field service management with only just under a third of companies (32%) not currently planning to use an IoT strategy or solution as part of their field service operations.

Main reasons for adopting IoT

So what are the key drivers for what is seemingly a large appetite amongst field service companies to adopt and develop their own IoT strategies?

In fact there were three key reasons that were cited by our respondents that stood out in our findings. The largest of these was to ‘Improve customer loyalty by improving the service levels we deliver to our customers’ which 68% of our respondents identified as being a major reason for adopting an IoT strategy.

This was closely followed by ‘increasing the efficiency of a field service division’ and ‘reducing costs by moving to a more preventative service model’ which were cited by 62% and 59% respectively. Indeed these three options could be identified as the holy trinity of drivers for investment in field service technology and are quite rightly identified as key drivers regardless of the technology.

 

However, the next group of responses which again were all identified by similar amounts of respondents are perhaps much more   specific to IoT. These were ‘increasing market share by delivering proactive service before the competition’ (43%),’IoT enabling companies to change our business strategy to a servitized, outcome based solutions model’ (42%) and ‘Increasing profits by moving to a more service oriented business model.’

With a high proportion of our respondents backing each of these statements we are also seeing perhaps further evidence of the growing movement towards servitization which is of course often heavily reliant on remote monitoring that comes via the Internet of Things.

Barriers to adoption

Of course we must also explore the barriers to adopting IoT as well and here it seems clear that there are again three major concerns for field service companies looking to develop an IoT strategy.

The first is the perennial fear of twenty first century technology, security. Much like the Cloud there is a worry about being so heavily reliant on the internet especially as it becomes fully ingrained within business critical tools and 46% of respondents stated this was a major barrier to implementing an IoT strategy.

 

Tied heavily to this of course is connectivity.

Whilst for some companies fears around the security of connected devices is a worry, for many others, especially those operating in rural areas actually connecting devices to the Internet in the first place is also a significant challenge and this was flagged up by 56% of respondents.

Finally there is of course the question of the customer. Again security worries remain and 55% of companies believe that their ‘customers would be reluctant to have their devices connected sharing data.’

Conclusion

However, as mobile broadband continues to improve at a rapid pace, connectivity issues will surely subside and whilst the perception of the IoT being a security threat remains, online security is also continuously improving with the likes of Amazon Web Services and recent PTC acquisition Axeda continuing to reinforce online security.

So given that these major fears are likely to fade with time and that there is already a significant groundswell of approval for the use of IoT in field service it seems that it is now perhaps a matter of time before we stop talking about IoT as the future of field service and start seeing it as an integral element within field service operations.

Indeed, the big question for most field service companies is no longer if you will move to IoT but when and what will happen to those who get left behind?

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The latest headline findings from our exclusive research sponsored by ClickSoftware looking at the appetite for the Cloud as a platform for field service management solutions put together in one handy infographic....

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As we continue our series discussing our recent research into IoT and Field Service sponsored by ServiceMax and PTC we look at why there is such a strong undercurrent in favour of IoT…

Missed the earlier parts of this series? Find part one here and part two here

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Belief in the power of IoT

Given then the fact that the majority of our respondents believe that IoT will be the most important technology to impact the way field service companies operate within the next five years, just how critical do companies feel that IoT will be?

Again our respondents showed a significantly positive approach to the importance of IoT when we asked them “What are your thoughts of the Internet of Things and how it can be implemented in Field Service?”

Over half (55%) of our respondents stated they thought “IoT will become a fundamental part of field service operations in the future” whilst a further 21% went further stating that “IoT is critical to any field service organisation’s strategy”.

 

The same amount of respondents (21%) stated that they felt that whilst ‘IoT is an interesting technology and I can see potential applications for it I don’t think it is ready yet.”

This means that 97% of respondents felt that they could at the very least see the potential of the Internet of Things in a field service environment compared to just 3% who stated ‘I don’t see it playing a part in our field service operations’.

Such figures indicate a truly overwhelming belief that IoT is indeed set to lie at the heart of field service as our industry continues to evolve.

Does size matter?

Of course one of the biggest challenges any emerging technology faces in terms of gaining traction and widespread adoption is whether it is accessible for companies of all sizes.

Often it is the case that when a significant new technology arrives it is cost prohibitive for those smaller companies (and often even mid-sized companies as well) to adopt. In field service this has often been negated by the fact that as well as delivering the opportunity to deliver better service for customers, very often technology in field service management can yield significant cost savings as well.

It has long been a key argument for the implementation of dynamic scheduling, tablets and smart phones and telematics for example that x implementation will have paid for itself within y months.

Of course similar arguments can be put forward for the introduction of IoT but for companies that would be looking to retrofit their assets in the field, such an implementation could have a potentially large initial outlay. So has this impacted on whether field service companies believe that IoT is a technology that could work for companies of all sizes?

We asked our respondents “do you think that IoT is more suited to larger companies or accessible to companies of all sizes?” And it seems that on the whole such challenges are not considered sizeable enough to be prohibitive for smaller companies with almost three quarters of respondents stating they ‘don’t think size matters when implementing IoT’.

 

What is particularly interesting is that when we drill down further into the data to look at responses from those representing companies with 50 engineers or less, this figure remains high at almost two thirds (65%) and in fact the number of respondents from this group who state IoT is ‘more suited to larger companies’ remains almost the same as the group as a whole (15% of respondents when looking just at smaller companies vs. 16% of the group as a whole) with a larger percentage of respondents stating they ‘don’t know’.

So it would appear that even amongst those companies with smaller field service teams, the majority believe that IoT could be suited to their business, again further reinforcing the belief that IoT will be part of the field service landscape across companies of all sizes.

When will IoT be common place?

So it seems that there is a general agreement amongst field service companies that the Internet of Things will become a staple part of field service operations. However, where opinions remain somewhat divided is when we will start to see this happen on a pervasive scale.

 

We asked our respondents “when do you think IoT will become common place within field service operations?” And the results were both varied and relatively evenly spread.

The most popular response was that in fact ‘it is already beginning to happen’ which just under a third (30%) of respondents stated. However, the second most common answer was within the next five years which just under a quarter of respondents (24%) stated. “Within the next three years” and “within the next two years” were the next highest answers with 19% and 18% opting for these responses respectively, whilst 5% felt it would happen within the next twelve months.

Of course varying factors such as industry verticals, company sizes and more will impact when we actually see a widespread adoption of IoT so perhaps such differing opinions may be expected here but what is clear is that again the majority do expect to see IoT become common place in field service. In fact just 3% of our respondents stated they ‘don’t think it will happen at all’.

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In the first part of this series exploring our research into IoT in Field Service sponsored by ServiceMax and PTC we explored the growing number of companies moving away from the traditional break-fix approach towards a preventative approach.

However, our findings indicated that whilst this attitude is widespread, achieving a move away from break fix models is harder to achieve than simply updating policies.In fact responses to our research would certainly strengthen the case for Internet of Things being rapidly accepted and adopted amongst field service companies who can see the benefits of proactive maintenance but are unable to deliver it.

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The tech being used today

So as we begin to form a picture of our respondent companies we can see that on the main they have moved towards a proactive

approach that IoT could quite certainly improve and on the whole they are either regularly investing in technology to improve their field service operations or are open to doing so.

I mentioned in the beginning of this report that technologies such as Big Data, Enterprise Mobility and Cloud Computing have evolved together at a similar time to become highly complimentary and the core of what many modern field service management solutions are today.

 

Our next question was included to see what types of technology our industry has already adopted and once again, as has been seen in previous Field Service News research projects there seems to be two clear and distinct groups within field service - the Haves and Have-Nots.

For while over half of all companies (51%) are now utilising Field Service Management Software, with nearly a third (31%) utilising Dynamic Scheduling tools, and just over a fifth (21%) using telematics to manage their field engineers, still almost two fifths (37%) are using paper based systems.

However, the one clear area where companies have made investments in is within mobile computing devices with over two thirds (67%) of companies already utilising some form of mobile computing device for their engineers whether it is a PDA, Smart Phone, Tablet or Laptop.

 

So returning to a perspective of whether as a whole field service companies are ready to turn to a new technology such as the Internet of Things, then it would seem that for many the bedrock of technology required to allow them to truly capitalise on such an implementation is in place.

However there is still a large section of the industry that could be viewed as technologically immature, so whilst the implementation of IoT isn’t necessarily dependant on other technologies, one would imagine that the likelihood of a company investing in an IoT strategy without having already implemented a field service management solution is probably relatively slim.

Yet as the technology continues to evolve, as partnerships such as that of ServiceMax and PTC working together continue to evolve and as disparate platforms become ever more integrated then we will certainly start to see field service management platforms that are built to incorporate IoT become more prevalent, which may give those companies that are currently viewed as laggards a potential quantum leap forward in the way they are utilising technology to deliver service.

Sensor based monitoring

Of course perhaps the most important question when assessing whether field service companies are ready for undertaking an IoT strategy is whether or not they believe they have a product line and install base that opens themselves to sensor based monitoring.

The majority of respondents which was just over two fifths (42%) believe that they do have a product line which would be suitable for sensor based monitoring. This would suggest that there is indeed already a large potential market for IoT amongst field service companies.

However it is also interesting to note that of those companies that didn’t feel they had products that opened themselves up to sensor based monitoring, there were more companies who were not sure if their install base was suitable (26%) as opposed to those who simply stated their product line didn’t open itself up to sensor based monitoring (23%).

[quote float ="left"]The majority of respondents which was just over two fifths (42%) believe that they do have a product line which would be suitable for sensor based monitoring

This opens up an interesting question as to whether there is still a requirement for further education of what is required for Internet of Things to be successfully implemented. How much is possible via retrofitting for example or is IoT wholly reliant on new product development?

 

Such questions certainly provide opportunities for vendors and consultants to help educate those companies who are uncertain about whether the Internet of Things could be of value to them. However, if we bring together the results of the above questions, the opportunity for IoT to become an integral part in the way many field service companies operate is certainly apparent.

So having established that there are a sizeable number of field service companies that could potentially be suited to implementing an IoT strategy, the next big question is of course what is the general perception of IoT amongst these companies – do they see the potential match themselves or will IoT fail to live up to the significant hype surrounding it today?

To help us understand how big the appetite for IoT was amongst field service companies we asked our respondents “which of the following technologies do you think will have the biggest impact on field service operations within the next five years?”Giving them the options of ‘IoT’, ‘Big Data’, ‘Smart Glasses’, ‘Augmented Reality’, ‘Connected Vehicles’ or ‘Other’.

Here there was a clear winner and it was indeed IoT which 45% of our respondents stated would have the biggest impact. In fact this was more than double the second most popular option which was Big Data (19%) closely followed by Connected Vehicles (cited by 15%). Interestingly Augmented Reality, which like IoT could also have a significant impact on field service beyond simply improving efficiencies was only cited by 10% of our respondents as being the technology most likely to have the largest impact on field service, perhaps due to the relative immaturity of the technology on display to date.

It was also interesting to see that despite some very interesting potential applications being produced that again could lead to huge potential savings for field service companies, that smart glasses registered with only 3% of our respondents. A large factor here being the perceived failure of Google Glass perhaps?

 

Interestingly of those respondents that added additional comments within the ‘other’ section there were a number of respondents who admitted that they remain unsure as to what technology will have the most impact with one respondent commenting “I’m not convinced that the industry yet knows what the next big thing will be. Our industry is still coming to terms with the improvements in smart phones and understanding the tangible benefits that can be gleaned from modern apps and lowering data costs.”

This adds some interesting further insight into the fact that whilst for some field service and technology are becoming increasingly entwined, for many companies in the market there is still a cautious approach to allowing technology to redefine the way we do business.

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In this the first part of a new series Kris Oldland, Field Service News Editor-in-Chief explores our exclusive research into IoT and Field Service undertaken by Field Service News and sponsored by ServiceMax and PTC...

 

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We are seemingly blessed to be living in a time of such incredible advancement. Technological trends such as Big Data, Enterprise Mobility and Cloud Computing have all pushed businesses forward and often we see these three coming together in the latest field service management systems, where data is easily collected, interpreted and distributed across a business eco-system.

Such systems give engineers instant access to knowledge bases, managers continuous overviews of the performance of their teams and most importantly of all, customers an ever improving customer experience. However whilst the opportunity for improving business processes these technologies present is clear, when it comes to potential for real, genuine industrial revolution, there is another emergent technology that promises to be king and that is the Internet of Things.

Whilst the massive hype that surrounded Big Data meant that the early projects we are seeing today are perhaps a slight anti-climax, (BI on steroids - which is undeniably useful in business but just not quite the life changing scenarios that were being bandied about back in 2013) with IoT almost the opposite is true.

There seems to be less confusion around IoT, which given it’s much more tangible nature makes sense, but have we grasped the magnitude of how big an impact it could truly have on field service industries? To try and understand a little more about the general attitude to and application of IoT amongst field service companies, Field Service News has partnered with ServiceMax and PTC on this research project looking to ascertain just how ready we are in field service for IoT.

About the research

The research was conducted across a period of 6 weeks during August and September this year. Over 100 field service professionals contributed to the research with respondents from both the operational side of business (field service directors/managers etc) as well as senior IT representatives (CIO/CTO etc.) participating alongside business leaders (MD,CEO etc.)

We had a variety of company sizes ranging from those with less than 10 field workers through to those with over 800 field workers, with a fairly even split across these groups so there was fair representation of opinions from companies of differing sizes.

Also whilst there was a slight UK bias in respondents, there were also respondents from India, Ireland, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Germany and the USA so there was a mix of nationalities amongst the respondents as well. Before we began looking at the appetite for IoT amongst our respondents we first wanted to see if companies were actually well placed to benefit from adopting an IoT strategy.

 

To do this we needed to assess where the companies in our group were in terms of their approach to technology in general as well as how they approached their own service delivery.

Of course with the introduction of any new technology there will always be laggards and there will always be bleeding edge adopters and if there was a bias amongst our respondent group either way this should be taken into account when exploring other responses and trends identified within the research. Therefore the first question we asked our respondents was “How regularly does your company invest in new technology initiatives to improve field service operations and performance” and we gave our respondents the choices of every year, every two years, every three years, every five years or other.

It would seem our group was on average representing a slightly forward looking set of companies with 35% stating they would invest in new technology an annual basis. Meanwhile 13% stated they did so every two years, 17% every three years and 16% five years. A number of respondents also commented that their company’s investment in technology was slightly less strategic and on more of an ad-hoc basis although members of this group also stated ‘recently the investment in new technology is being increased’

Predictive or reactive?

The next question we asked in this initial section was whether our respondents were working for a company that is either adopting a pro-active or reactive model in terms of their field service planning.

Again this will be a good indicator of how ready field service companies are to adopt IoT as one of the significant factors in why IoT is predicted to be such have such a major impact, particularly in field service, is that it can be the key for companies moving away from the traditional break-fix delivery of service to a more efficient preventative maintenance approach to delivering field service.

 

Indeed it seems that the majority of field service companies do see the benefits of moving towards delivering service in a proactive rather than reactive manner, in theory at least. Whilst the same amount of companies (6%) stated they were either “Fully pro-active with a mix of predictive and preventive maintenance, enabled by remote monitoring and M2M diagnostics” or “We are mostly pro-active using both predictive and preventive maintenance strategies but still have a small percentage of reactive calls.” The largest group of respondents by a long way (44%) stated they “operate a proactive strategy where possible but are still mostly reactive.”

Meanwhile almost a third of companies (31%) state that their “service is half proactive and half reactive” whilst only a small fraction of companies (4%) were operating on a wholly reactive strategy. This would suggest that the perceived wisdom that field service companies should be moving away from the traditional break-fix reactive approach to a more proactive approach, which is better for service providers and their customers alike, is being adopted by the industry at large.

It also indicates that whilst this attitude is widespread, achieving a move away from break-fix models is harder to achieve than simply updating policies. In fact responses to this question would certainly strengthen the case for Internet of Things being rapidly accepted and adopted amongst field service companies who can see the benefits of proactive maintenance but are unable to deliver it.  

 

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Welcome to this fourth and final instalment in our series that has explored a research project run in partnership with ClickSoftware that was focussed on the usage and appetite for Cloud based computing as a platform for field service management systems. 

In this final section we take a look at opinions towards Cloud and Mobility and draw some conclusion to the research on the whole...

 

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Missed the other features in this series?  Find Part One here and Part Two here and Part Three

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MOBILITY AND THE CLOUD

Of course when it comes to field service whilst the Cloud is in many ways an enabler, another modern technology development has had an even bigger impact – namely the emergence of modern mobile computing systems be it laptop, tablet or smartphone.

So how important is it for mobile apps for field service to be on the Cloud?

We asked our respondents “Do you think it is important that the mobility applications used by your field engineers are Cloud based?”

Again the move towards the Cloud was apparent with 56% stating that it is preferred for their mobile apps to be Cloud based, with 40% stating that it doesn’t really matter and just 4% stating that they don’t want their mobile apps on the Cloud.

 

When we consider that 43% of companies were now on at least their second iteration of a field service app and that 47% of companies state that they will update their mobile apps at least once every three years (14% state they will update every 18 months) this would seem to add further incentive for field service companies to eventually move at least part of their field service solution to the Cloud.

With this in mind it could certainly be argued that there is further incentive for the continuing shift from on premise to the Cloud, as in this age of Big Data where integration is key, it is important to have a smooth flow of data from office to the field and back - which would be easier to achieve if both sides of the solution are feeding into one database simultaneously.

CONCLUSIONS?

It seems that the Cloud is definitely gaining momentum.

Nearly two thirds (63%) of field service organisations are more open to the idea of the cloud today than in 2014. Add this to the almost one quarter (24%) who always thought the Cloud was a good thing, and we can see that nearly 90% of organisations feel open or positive about Cloud-based Field Service Management solutions. In addition, over half (56%) cite Cloud as their preferred option.

As suggested earlier it is perhaps expected for the largest companies to be, as a group, slower in moving from one system to another due to the larger size of such a project.

 

However it is amongst the smaller companies that there is perhaps the biggest surprise of this research.

It is here we see greater reluctance for the Cloud which appears to sit in direct contrast to the fact that for many smaller companies the Cloud could offer a much more manageable cost via a SaaS model alongside other benefits such as less reliance on IT, and built in disaster recovery – again something that would presumably be appealing to smaller companies.

Yet despite the fact that smaller companies are not taking to the Cloud as much as would have perhaps have been expected, the research also reveals that whilst the biggest concern around moving to the Cloud remains security (closely followed by connectivity issues) other concerns such as integration with legacy systems and a lack of Cloud offerings do seem to be lessening.

And with the admission by 63% of respondents that they have become more open to the idea of the Cloud being used in business, plus the increase in both mid-size and enterprise sized companies that are now using a Cloud based field service management solution, there remain strong indications that the Cloud will continue to grow in stature as a platform for field service management solutions in the next few years as more companies move from their existing legacy systems to newer solutions.

Whilst the headline statistics of Cloud vs. On-Premise may be taking time to reflect the trend, the Cloud is definitely gaining momentum and this is sure to continue as more and more as more and more companies upgrade their field service management systems.

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