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B2M Solutions, the enterprise mobile device analytics company that delivers actionable insights, have recently released a return on investment (ROI) calculator that enterprises can use to quickly determine the savings that can be made by optimising their mobile device populations.

Mobile device analytics helps to identify issues affecting device performance that can have a costly impact on the bottom line as they can cause decreased productivity, failure to meet service level agreements, poor customer experience and damaged brand reputation. The issues preventing a device from working optimally can include everything from poor network coverage and connectivity issues to increased battery discharge rates and applications that are causing devices to crash.

IT and operations and executives involved in the management of mobile devices can now use the free online calculator to learn how much downtime and associated costs could be prevented with mobile device analytics, depending on the type of devices the enterprise uses and other variables specific to its work processes.

The calculator determines ROI based on failure rates, lost time due to device failure and lost productivity that are based on benchmarks B2M has developed after aggregating and analysing actual performance data from its experience in helping customers manage hundreds of thousands of mobile devices over time.

B2M is a pioneer in enterprise mobile device analytics and its solutions have supported mobile deployments around the world for enterprise and OEM customers including Barcode Warehouse, BT, easyJet, Ferguson, Hermes, Johnson Controls, Lynx Express, Motorola, Panasonic, RBS, Royal Mail, TRG, Volkswagen and Zebra Technologies.

The workers who use mobile devices are often the face of the company to its customers. Their devices need to perform efficiently so the business can run reliably and deliver an excellent customer experience,” said B2M Founder and CEO Julie Purves. “It is no longer enough to simply manage mobile devices, they need to be monitored and optimised. Mobile device analytics are essential for improving the performance of mobile devices and the business processes that depend on them, so we are very excited to introduce this tool to help users understand the value of mobile device analytics.”

 

Mobile device management (MDM) systems typically focus on device configuration and status, whilst mobile device analytics provides insight into device performance and how it can be improved.

B2M’s Elemez mobile device analytics solutions can be used on their own or fully integrated with MDM systems. Elemez is B2M's cloud-based enterprise mobile analytics solution for businesses looking to optimise mobile devices. A standard user interface means it's quick and easy to set up and provides real-time actionable insights on the most common metrics via an interactive dashboard. Elemez brings this data to life, visualising it via graphs and charts so it is easy to see trends affecting device performance and to spot potential problems before they have a serious effect on a business.

 

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In 2015, Espresso Service Ltd woke up and smelled ‘connected’ coffee. By implementing Tesseract’s cloud-based service management software, it entered the realm of the smart coffeemaker and the Internet of Things, bolstering its USPs and improving its service to customers.

Backed by over 25 years in the coffee industry, Espresso Service manages and maintains all types and brands of coffee machines. It does this via a nationwide network of engineers who really know their beans.

Before Tesseract, the company’s service management system was based around a less flexible, server-based, non-specialised bolt-on to an accountancy package. This was no longer up to task, so Espresso Service looked to the cloud.

Head in the cloud

Espresso Service opted for a software-as-a-service system, aka SaaS. In other words, a system that is hosted in the cloud and accessible via the internet. The company wanted to avoid the hefty capital costs involved with installing software on its servers, and instead pay an ongoing subscription fee. It also wanted access to software that was maintained by the provider and always kept up to date. This led it to Tesseract.

Daniel Sewell, Chief Operating Officer for Espresso Service, explains, “In the end, the choice was down to two companies. Tesseract came out on top for three main reasons. Firstly, the system is web-based, which means our engineers can access it anywhere. Secondly, we get free upgrades and any platform developments for one customer are shared to all. The third reason is Kevin McNally, one of Tesseract’s managers. As opposed to a typical salesman just interested in a deal, Kevin was thoroughly genuine and showed a real and keen interest in our business. He still does.”

 

The Internet of (Coffee) Things

The Tesseract system is able to communicate directly with some of the coffee machines Espresso Service is contracted to maintain. These machines contain a modem with a SIM card, feeding data to the Tesseract system by means of the internet. This could be asset history or maintenance alerts, i.e. the machine has run out of milk or coffee, or needs a repair.

This telemetry prompts Espresso Service to take action and, if necessary, schedule a maintenance visit — without its customers having to do anything. Daniel Sewell says, “On average 5,000 pieces of information a day are transmitted to the Tesseract system. This ability to monitor equipment remotely through Tesseract has not just revolutionised the way Espresso Service operates; it’s also improved the performance of our customers. Their need to keep coffee flowing and minimise equipment downtime is served by us providing them with a more responsive service.”

The perfect blend

Espresso Service utilises the full suite of services offered by Tesseract’s flagship product, Service Centre 5.1 (SC5.1), including Call Control, Customer Assets, Parts Centre, Remote Engineer Access and Remote Customer Access.

While SC5.1 is an out-of-the-box platform, Tesseract does its best to tailor and adapt it. In this case, it has created an interface with Espresso Service’s accounting software, as well as between Parts Centre and the company’s stock partner. This enables Espresso Service to have full visibility and control of the movement of stock even though a separate company manages it.

Tesseract and Espresso Service also worked together to enhance SC5.1’s stock-take functionality, streamlining what used to be a manual process. In due course, Espresso Service will incorporate Tesseract’s Diary Assist, an automated scheduling service capable of saving companies 3-4 hours a day of manual manipulation by assigning calls to engineers.

 

What’s clear is that Tesseract and Espresso Service represent a strong, thriving partnership, one that has continued to flourish in the short time since implementation. Daniel Sewell explains, “Tesseract has given us a new USP. When we approach sales prospects, we proclaim the virtues of the Tesseract system, and how much it will make their lives easier and service better. We also recommend the platform to other companies in our industry. In particular, we partnered with an ROI firm to found a company called Espresso Service Ireland Technical Ltd, and got them set up on the Tesseract system. That’s how much we believe in it.”

 

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Manitowoc Foodservice UK have been relying on the service management software supplied by Tesseract for 20 years. Now they have decided to further automate their systems with one of Tesseract’s most useful tools – Diary Assist.

With customers like Debenhams, Wetherspoons and the Ministry of Defence, Manitowoc are the world leaders in manufacturing, supplying and maintaining cutting edge kitchen equipment, as well as designing and refitting kitchens.

From ovens, grills, fryers and steamers, to ice machines, refrigerators and beer coolers, Manitowoc produce equipment for numerous renowned and award-winning catering industry brands. These include Garland, Frymaster, Convotherm and Merrychef – the world’s number one designer and supplier of pioneering accelerated cooking systems.

More than 80,000 Merrychef ovens are in use around the world. Frymaster, another of Manitowoc’s leading brands, is a familiar name in catering establishments worldwide, with sales and service capabilities in over 100 countries. Manitowoc employ a consistent commitment to research and development and innovation-led strategies and boast highly advanced manufacturing facilities.

 

With keen eyes for revolutionary technology and efficiency and smooth operation in even the busiest kitchens, Manitowoc are not only concerned with food facilities, but with food itself. Their global team of development chefs can help venues compile creative, innovative menus to suit their customer base and achieve greater success, drawing on their immeasurable experience of the catering industry.

It’s this desire to make their customers’ establishments better and more efficient that sets Manitowoc apart from other food service companies.

No room for error

Manitowoc’s high status and market-leading position mean they cannot afford to let any of their customers down. This is why, 20 years ago, they turned to Tesseract for help in the revolution and modernisation of their service management.

For all of their kitchen installations, Manitowoc have a committed team of engineers who carry out planned and reactive maintenance. Manitowoc use Tesseract to log calls from customers when a piece of equipment incurs a fault, as well as assigning jobs to the engineers, invoicing, parts ordering and reporting. Service requests are transmitted to engineers’ tablet devices using Tesseract’s Remote Engineer Access technology.

Engineers close down jobs on their tablets, at which point the information is transmitted back to Manitowoc instantaneously. Finally, all of Manitowoc’s service activities can be monitored using Tesseract’s fully customisable Crystal Reports, which allow Manitowoc to design and schedule any report they want at any time of day or night. This makes for much better ownership of data.

 

However, choosing which engineers to deploy for both planned maintenance work and reactive tasks was always done manually. Now, in order to further automate their systems, improve efficiency and save huge amounts of time, Manitowoc have integrated Tesseract’s Diary Assist software for both planned and reactive maintenance tasks.

Before the integration of Diary Assist

Manitowoc used to rely totally on a manual system for scheduling engineers for reactive jobs and diarising them for planned maintenance tasks. They used mapping software such as AA Route Planner and the now discontinued Microsoft MapPoint and would assign particular engineers based on location, skill set and fair division of work.

Manitowoc’s manual process for deployment not only took a lot of time, much more than an automated process would, but it also introduced a human element to the decision-making that wasn’t always consistent.

“Before Diary Assist, the deployment of our engineers relied on human intervention and scheduling typically consumed 3 – 4 hours a day,” says Manitowoc. “We had staff trying to ensure that the division of work was fair according to engineers’ skill set and geographical location. A side effect of this was that sometimes it would be unfair and inconsistent.”

How has Diary Assist changed things for Manitowoc?

Diary Assist is a dynamic, centrally hosted web service for call optimisation. It’s designed to handle both planned appointments and reactive service calls and is capable of scheduling 200 hundred calls in just 20 minutes.

The software allocates jobs to engineers based on their skill sets, availability, travel time, work time and shift patterns, as well as call response time and customer site cover times. Manitowoc used to have staff making evaluative decisions about which engineers were most appropriate to allocate; now an automated program does it for them.

Manitowoc says, “We are already seeing the long-term benefits of using Diary Assist. The service provides consistent logic to our scheduling process and saves us 3 – 4 hours a day of manual manipulation, whilst eliminating the potential for human error.”

 

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Stephen Wilson, CMO, eBecs provides some key advice on making sure you select the right software provide to meet your needs when making the important decision to invest in Field Service Management software...

Choosing the right field service software is an important decision, as it has real, long-term effects on your business’ profitability and customer retention. So taking the initial time invest to understand your options and how they will improve efficiency, information, and communication sets you up for long-term success. You’re investing time and money into a product and so, in turn it should also save you time and money. There are questions you should ask and key issues you want to investigate as you compare vendors.

Development Costs

Oftentimes vendors will have a base product that provides your business with the basic tools to automate and store information. It’s the additional add-ons and customisation that starts to increase the initial set-up fee or monthly subscription fee. These costs are not always apparent when simply looking at a list of features.

It’s important to understand what features will incur additional costs, and whether or not you need them. While certain features may appear to increase productivity, reduce frustrations, etc. you need to know if the ROI is going to justify the cost.

Implementation Time

How soon can the system be up and running? If you’re working with a vendor who is building your application from the ground up, while being white-labelled and built to fit exactly your needs, development time can be up to a year. Meaning your ROI is a long way out and you may find that your business needs will change during that time.

A system built using a plug-and-play model tends to have shorter implementation time, and allows for those initial building blocks to be built upon, adding customised features as needed.

Mobile Applications

When building enterprise grade mobile applications there are some very key differences between the coding of a web application and a mobile application. What works on a desktop, doesn’t necessary translate to a mobile device. Performance, security, and features can all be affected.

Ask vendors what they use to build mobile apps;, if they say HTML5 they’re not going to be the right solution for you. Native apps provide a stronger, more dependable solution, especially for field service techs who are consistently on the road and rely on the app to manage client calls.

Third-Party Integrations

The ability to integrate with third-party applications is key. There is no solution that does absolutely everything a business needs. From a customer facing website, to a CRM, to payment processing. There are applications that will need to be integrated with your field service solution. Find out how the vendor handles third-party integrations. Are there limitations on what can be integrated?

Security

Consider all the different employees in your business. Do they have different access to different information? Does the vendor’s solution handle multiple roles and access permissions? You may need this on both a group and individual level and so the system needs to be flexible. Make sure you know what types of permission levels you need and what is possible.

Automated Routing

A key feature of many field service software solutions is the ability to automatically generate routes for techs, scheduling their service calls in the most efficient manner (to save time wasted between calls and the distance a technician has to drive). Automation can have big benefits, freeing up employees to do other tasks, but you want to ensure that the automation is creating the most efficient solution, and that it’s easy for a human to step in and make adjustments to the schedule board when necessary.

Also, take a look at the scalability of the solution. As your business grows and you add more technicians or additional jobs into the system you want to ensure that it runs as quickly as it did before. The ability for the system to update in seconds as opposed to minutes is important in ensuring that techs have the most up-to-date information.

Start making strategic lists

Before speaking to vendors, build a checklist of features: the needs and nice to haves.

Create a long list of vendors to ensure you are properly evaluating all your options. Then address your needs first so that you can eliminate any vendor that isn’t going to be able to provide you with a solution that will make your business run smoother and more efficiently.

The nice to haves can help you compare overall cost of working with one particular vendor over the other. When you’ve narrowed you’re your long list to 3-5 potential vendors, then use your checklist to compare each individual feature/benefit.

Your field service management vendor is going to be a long term investment, so you want a partner that will grow with you and provide you with the best possible solution for your needs.

If you would you like to learn how the right vendor and field service solution can help you grow your business, by better managing your customer’s changing expectations and still deliver high customer satisfaction, sign up for the January 31 live webinar here

Tesseract’s service management software is about to be put to extremely good use. BCAS Biomedical Services Ltd (BCAS Biomed) will use it to more effectively manage thousands of life-critical devices for hospitals, healthcare professionals and the emergency services.

BCAS Biomed is a leading UK provider of Managed Equipment Services for the medical sector, maintaining everything from ventilators to defibrillators to ultrasound machines. Its current medical-sector-specific management software tells BCAS Biomed what assets need servicing and when, and also manages the scheduling. However, BCAS Biomed’s recent growth has highlighted some limitations, as well as the need for a mobile working solution for the field service engineering team.

“With some of our hospital contracts, we’re literally managing thousands of assets,” says Steve Dampier, Operations Director for BCAS Biomed. “Because these are life-critical devices, compliance is of the utmost importance. We chose Tesseract because their asset management software will help us track the history of the equipment more efficiently. They also offer local support, which is really useful for us.”

 

BCAS Biomed will be incorporating Tesseract’s Diary Assist and Remote Engineer Access (REA) modules in an effort to cut out delays, improve visibility and go paperless. Diary Assist will be used to schedule planned maintenance, replacing the company’s manual diary. REA will allow engineers to create and submit digital worksheets in real-time, rather than having to handwrite service reports and post them in.

Steve says, “Tesseract has much more functionality and longevity than the sector-specific system we have now. There are so many layers to the Tesseract system, so much scope for flexibility. It’s basically future-proof.”

 

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rapidBizApps has announced the launch of SunSight, a new field service management software for Solar energy providers. The software was built for solar installers to gather field data digitally, streamline business workflows and do more installations.

With SunSight, Solar installer companies can now maximise productivity of field workers, maximise their vendor time utilisation, save time and convert overhead costs into profits.

“While the potential for green energy is immense in the United States, many Solar companies are faced with challenges of overhead costs that does not allow them to fully tap into the potential of Solar growth.”

“With SunSight, solar companies can shorten the time it takes to get data from the field and quicken business operations. This translates to faster project delivery, more installations per month and more profit per project,” said Satish Penmetsa, CEO of rapidBizApps.

Designed for ground staff, operations managers, project managers and members in the field service management organisation, SunSight features project portfolio management, digital field data collection and a one-tap approval system to make time consuming tasks faster than ever before. Managers can also create their own custom forms to collect data of their choice. More importantly, Solar projects can be managed even when on the move.

 

Project and Business stakeholders can get an instant snapshot of all business activity to stay updated whenever any activity is made on a project. SunSight can be connected to an analytics platform of choice to receive actionable insights that can help transform the way projects and field services are managed.

“Solar companies now have the power to deliver projects faster and bring in the Solar revolution. SunSight is designed to handle the hassles of field service management, data collection and project management while industry professionals can focus on field service innovation and delivering value to customers,” adds Satish.

SunSight is built for a workforce using the Android, iPhone or iPad devices. SunSight is also fully cloud-based which means the software can be accessed on any computer with an internet connection and a modern internet browser.

All data is safely and securely stored on the cloud with cutting-edge technology to protect information and customer privacy. SunSight also adds integration with CRM and ERP systems making it a fully integrated solution for Solar Providers. Since the software is cloud-based, it is constantly updated with newer features that are instantly available to anyone using it.

 

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Late last year Retriever Communications celebrated a 20-Year Anniversary of providing mobile strategies to industrial enterprise with the mobile-first company looking back at two decades of sustainable growth and innovation and putting forward the argument that experience trumps transient fashion...

Retriever Communications, a global provider of mobile automation solutions for enterprises in the industrial space, celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. Born from the mobile-first vision of its founder and CEO, Mary Brittain-White, Retriever helped bring field service management into the 21st century with its robust and intuitive mobile applications, while continuing to innovate based on the latest technologies and end-user research.

"In some tech hubs of the world, the pursuit of youth and unicorns has overshadowed understanding of what enterprises actually need. We built Retriever on the basis of experience, sustainability and understanding of our own and our customers' environments. Retriever's 20th anniversary celebration is a testament that this model works and it is here to stay. There's something to be said for validation and experience," said Mary Brittain-White.

 

Retriever Communications has been featured by Gartner in its Magic Quadrant, Field Service Management, for the past four years in a row. This year, Retriever was the only vendor in the Quadrant not to lose a single customer over the past year and had the highest customer satisfaction results.

In fact, Retriever's average customer relationship spans more than 10 years. "Our experience and research show that customers want industrial-strength apps that are responsive and robust, not gimmicky. And in addition to developing apps that work well regardless of the connectivity environment, we also take a hands-on approach to service, so our customers know we are always there for them," Mary Brittain-White added.

Retriever serves enterprises in a variety of industries across 3 continents, helping companies streamline their field operations, witnessing increases in productivity of 20-35 percent, improving customer service and cutting IT costs.

 

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Field Service News talk to Conor O’Neill from Red Hat Mobile about how they’ve seen the light - and it’s modular...

It’s been some 18 months since Red Hat purchased exciting Irish mobile platform developer Feed Henry. About a year earlier still Feed Henry had just released their first ever fully dedicated Field Workforce Management mobile solution.

Then for a while things seemed to go a bit quiet from the former Feed Henry team as they transitioned from exciting small start-up to part of one of giants of enterprise computing, at the forefront of the open source movement that is such a hot bed of innovation.

Indeed, we were just beginning to approach the point in time where were fearing that the original Feed Henry team’s focus on field service - which had yielded some impressive early customer success stories including a major European rail infrastructure provider, had either been swallowed up by Red Hat’s focus on the bigger pie of generic Enterprise Mobility, or that the team themselves had got lost somewhere in the belly of the enterprise beast never to be seen again - as sadly happens all too often in the technology space.

As such it was with much interest and anticipation that Field Service News headed out to meet up again with Conor O’Neill, former Director of Product Management with Feed Henry and now Product Manager with RedHat Mobile to discuss their latest offering for field service.

And whilst the job title may be different, O’Neill’s relaxed manner, coupled with an infectious enthusiasm for his work remained unchanged from the last time we had the pleasure of his company.

What has changed however, is the approach that O’Neill and his team have taken to developing tools for field service management.

 

“We’re not building an app. That’s whats very interesting about this.” he asserts as we begin discussing the new Red Hat Workforce Management (WFM) modules.

“Two and a half years ago we built what we hoped would be a solution that would somehow address all of the requirements of all of the customers everywhere and would just take a little bit of tweaking depending on each individual requirement – we were completely wrong and so we took a step back and started looking at all of the consulting projects we’d been doing, building very custom apps for customers who needed this type of field workforce application.”

“What we saw was yes every app is unique and every customer’s requirements were unique, but the individual things that they needed often had lots of commonalities.”

“So we started last June and said lets not build an app, lets not build a solution, lets build a set of modules where each module addresses each of these points and then build out from there.” he added

“The Red Hat platform gives us tons of stuff out of the box – working offline, forms for drag and drop development, actual app development itself , app building, app distribution. The platform already gives us those, which allowed us to focus on what companies in field service need.”

“Things like work orders, workflows, users, user groups, messaging alerts, location based information and so on. We have built modules for all of these areas with a common framework.”

 

“So we now have this set of modules, and we are in no way saying this is a complete set of modules - this is our first set and they are open source so if the customer doesn’t like them they can change them, they can improve them they can push improvements back to us - they can create new ones and share them with the community.”

Of course, as mentioned in the introduction one of the key things about RedHat is their commitment to open architecture. O’Neill explains that the wider open source community, including partners and customers, is likely to be a strong generator of new features and functionality found in the commercialised product.

Such an approach also will inevitably lead easier integration into other systems and this is a major USP of the Red Hat mobile WFM modules.

“What we don’t expect people to do is change what they have, which is unlike a lot of traditional mobile platforms and point solutions out there. We work with you and with your existing tools.” O’Neill explains.

“We are NodeJS based which is our integration layer and it is supremely good at connecting to disparate systems, we can take the data no matter what format it is, no matter how old it is, no matter how slow it is, and turn it into something a mobile device can actually consume easily and then fire that over the air to lots of different devices.”

As well as easier implementation,an additional benefit of such easy integration is the reduction of pressure on legacy systems as once integrated you can reduce them one component at a time, taking advantage of strangler application pattern - something which also sits well with the modular approach RedHat believe is the key to WFM in the future.

But is the modular approach proving to be successful in the real world?

“We had a great example of one of our customers who have taken our modules and within two months have built their own MVP [minimum viable product] for exactly what they want to do,” O’Neill revealed.

“They’ve done this by using our WFM modules but it is not a case of saying there is this app that I have to customise - they’ve actually assembled it in a way that suits their particular needs.”

 

So are the Red Hat WFM modules capable of delivering solutions truly tailored to individual organisations?

“It’s unique to everybody” O’Neill explains “but if you want something that works really well for your organisation the work has to be put in to put it together exactly the way that you want it,” he warns.

“We’ll never claim that in a week you can somehow magic up an app. Lets work out your business requirements and then lets pull together what you need,” he adds.

Sounds good, however, it also seems like an approach that may be reliant upon having a crack team of savvy developers on board which many be prohibitive for some smaller field service organisations.

So are the Red Hat WFM modules aimed specifically at enterprise level field service organisations?

“I don’t think so,” O’Neill replies “the customer that I mentioned earlier on are a hundred thousand employee organisation, but actually the group that was involved in creating the app for that was just four people.”

 

“Similarly, we worked with one of the largest insurance companies in the world but again a local division trying to create a very specific mobile app for a very specific slice of their workforce, again a tiny group in a much larger organisation and it delivered a massive result for them, 100% paper replacement, they had an entire flow that was all paper based and every single person in that division is now using this digital  workflow.”

“Because it’s open source anyone, even a one-man band can come along and take those modules and go off and build their own solution,” he added.

 

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Manuel Grenacher, CEO, Coresystems outlines a clear plan for smooth software implementation...

Software implementations fail across various industries and markets, but mostly for human reasons rather than software catastrophes.

According to research firm, Gartner, 55% to 75% of all ERP projects fail to meet objectives.

Panorama Consulting worked with independent research company Mint Jutras, and found that more companies in 2015, 21% to be exact, are defining software implementations as failures, up from 16% in previous years. Field service businesses bring their own challenges in levels of complexity, remote access, and skills, but these are manageable with the right planning and partners. Here are my five tips for successful implementation of field service software.

1. Setting Objectives Is Key

It’s easy to get fixated on features when choosing a new software solution. However, there’s more to implementing a new system than that. Features and functions are obviously important, but you should choose software and a delivery partner that understands your field service business and what you’re trying to achieve. While choosing a software solution, think of the end-to-end process and the people that will have to use the software to do their jobs and how information will be accessed and used throughout that process.

Data entered by the admin team needs to be in the right format and accessible to technicians remotely.

 

Set objectives before starting to compare systems so you know what you’re trying to achieve. What ROI is the Finance Director looking for? How will you measure the degree of success or failure?

Think holistically about the whole field service business, including the people. Take a baseline measurement before you start for comparison purposes, e.g. average number of site visits per day, time taken per visit, call backs, technician upsells, direct online access by customers, cost per visit.

2. Getting Acceptance and Trust From Your Staff

A new software solution can succeed or fail depending on how your staff reacts to it. They after all are the most important part of the business and the software is only there to make them more productive, so take care of them before everything else. Identify everyone affected by the roll out: sales, admin, technicians, accountants, line management, etc. Plan ahead and maybe even get their input during software selection. Plan in detail how the software will accomplish the business processes, especially the interaction between the new system and humans.

Offering training pre- and post-implementation is vital, plus having ongoing support.

3. Ensure Security of Data 

Just because a new software system is based in the cloud, that doesn’t make it immune to problems. The implementation should be treated the same way as it would be for a traditional IT system. It’s very important to be just as rigorous with project management, objectives, data migration, phased rollout, testing, etc. A cloud implementation will bring many benefits and cost savings, but it also has its own challenges around access, compliance, and security.

The main servers and networking infrastructure will be looked after in a secure data centre, but technicians need remote access on-site. Their tools, such as mobile devices, should be tested and given as many means of data connectivity as possible at fast speeds with significant amounts of storage for downloading manuals, catalogs, video, etc.

 

The new system shouldn’t bypass your company’s compliance rules, or the industry rules in regulated regimes such as some utilities. When it comes to security, it is still your responsibility to ensure personal and confidential data is kept secure so be responsible when specifying requirements for data connectivity, VPN tunneling, encryption (including on mobile devices), rewalls, etc.

4. Pick A Project Management Team

Strong project management skills are vital during this phase, which will mean choosing a supplier and delivery partner that understands your business. Plan out the whole end-to-end field service deployment with them and keep staff and customers in the loop. Still, you should stay flexible enough to take on unexpected changes without risking derailing the whole project.

Don’t expect staff to be able to do their day jobs and run the implementation, too. You’ll need to assign dedicated people to set up the product information, customer site details, report structures, etc. These people may come from the delivery partner, but you’ll still need to assign time for internal experts to pass on information and perform testing.

Don’t be afraid to make carefully considered changes to the plan. For instance, if a big new customer comes on board half way through with new service requirements, decide whether to delay working with the customer or delay the whole project. Either decision can be right, but you should have a process ready to help you make the decision, understand the consequences, and communicate your decision.

 

Getting the features right is one thing, but installing the new system will take time, and it will probably be disruptive to ongoing operations and cause anxiety among a affected staff. All of these disruptions have to be planned for and managed properly so they don’t spin out of control and take the project down.

5. Implement Step by Step

It’s usually much better to adopt a phased approach to implementing a new software system rather than expecting to do it all in one big bang.

Keep the phases manageable by dividing the rollout into controllable chunks. These chunks could be based on regional teams, functional steps, the business model, or all of the above. A good way to start might be to choose a team that performs well and is fairly close to HQ. Spend time getting them up and running smoothly, iron out any wrinkles, and be sure to understand their worries and objections because you’ll see those worries again at every other site.

 

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