Manuel Grenacher, CEO of Coresystems, reflects on the benefits for mobile in field service...

Selfies. Games. Social media. We’re all familiar with the image; a co-worker’s face buried in a smartphone completely engrossed by what they’re seeing on the screen.

They’re far off in another digital world.

Previously, mobile devices were seen as an on-the-job distraction. Today, mobile devices enhance how field service technicians do their jobs, leaving satisfied customers in their wake.

Although consumers are using apps, smartphones, and tablets on a daily basis, many field service companies see barriers to implementing a mobile solution, such as the cost of technology or low ROI. According to the Aberdeen Group, 48% of field service organisations are resistant to change. (Source: The Mobile Technician: The Evolution of the Connection in 2015, Aberdeen Group, July 2015.)

Here are the reasons why you should overcome those barriers and make your technicians mobile:

Real-Time, Flexible Problem Solving

Today, everything is expected to be immediate.

When a customer’s machine breaks, they don’t want to wait days to schedule a service appointment. Service has to come on-demand and in real-time.

 

The so-called “On-Demand Economy” allows us to order pizza, a taxi, or someone to help us with our groceries with a tap on our smartphones.

Why should it be different for field service organisations?

Mobile devices equipped with field service software allow service techs to ask colleagues questions or seek out information and machine manuals so they can properly diagnose and service a product on the first try.

This becomes especially important when you have new technicians joining your organisation. It allows them to quickly get working and still be able to consult with more experienced employees.

And while many companies have begun to wisely focus on both preventive and predictive maintenance, it is “important that organisations remain vigilant and flexible enough to be able to adjust to unexpected events which could not be forecast,” says Aly Pinder, Jr., Senior Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group.

To put it more plainly, sometimes accidents happen and things break suddenly that were not--or could not be--predicted.

With that in mind, field service companies need to have the option to utilise mobile technology to handle these types of situations immediately.

When equipped with mobile devices, technicians are connected to the answers they need to solve problems wherever they may be. According to Aberdeen Research, 69% of Best-in-Class organisations “equip the field team with access to peers and remote experts through mobile devices.”

Better Customer Service

Great customer service is critical in today’s business climate. The tools you invest in for your business must improve service for your customers.

This is another reason why having mobile technicians is valuable. Well-performing companies have used mobile to encourage their techs to perform better, and to differentiate the field service they offer from the competition.

 

Hotelier Sepp Greil, who uses Cald’oro coffee machines in his hotels, was impressed by the company’s implementation of Coresystems' Field Service software.

“For me, seeing all the efforts listed on an iPad was new, but I could understand exactly what had been done,” Greil said. “The service was rendered much faster and more efficiently and I can only congratulate the company on implementing this solution.”

Today, technicians are expected to deliver great customer service on top of completing fixes and service calls.

Technicians are now salespeople and customer service agents, in addition to being engineers.

Now if, for example, a customer cannot be on-site while the field service tech is there fixing a broken machine, a mobile device can be used to confirm with the customer that the SLA has been met.

A Connected Team

Going mobile isn’t just for your technicians, and it doesn’t benefit only them either. Great field service companies work with their IT departments to create a mobility strategy that is inclusive and beneficial across the board, not just for technicians who use mobile in the field.

When implemented correctly, mobility will assist techs in being more productive, give customers better and faster service, and help executives and leaders of the company have a real-time perspective of how the field service company is operating.

 

Still, companies should invest in mobile wisely, not like a teenager looking to get the newest device because it’ll make him the most popular kid in school until every other kid gets one too.

Investing in mobility is an on-going, strategic business element. Aly Pinder Jr. of Aberdeen Research says: “The Best-in-Class leverage mobile to provide the field team with real-time information, the entire team with integrated data, and management with the insight into field performance and location of service resources.”

Happier Technicians

Utilising mobile field service software not only makes your customers happy, but it can also make your technicians happier at work. Now is the time to make the switch from paper-based systems to mobile to give your techs the ability to deliver better service.

 

And the Best-in-Class have a 76% employee satisfaction rate, which is higher than industry standards and laggards. Mobility also takes training out of the office and gets new technicians out in the field sooner. Thanks to mobile devices, new technicians will have all the training tools they need along with direct access to their peers and colleagues who can help them through more difficult fixes.

 

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Bytes Managed Solutions is transforming its service management operations in South Africa and Africa with Astea International Inc.'s Alliance mobile workforce optimisation platform. 

Bytes Managed Solutions (Bytes MS), a subsidiary of Altron Group, supports and maintains enterprise-wide end-to-end technology solutions and related services for medium to large enterprises in South Africa and Africa.  It is the exclusive distributor for NCR products in South Africa and partners with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Alcatel, Burroughs, Unity, Postec, Unisys, Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco, in the financial, retail, petroleum and infrastructure sectors.  

The company supports more than 1.2 million devices in over 46,500 locations throughout South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.  With the Astea Alliance mobility platform  it wanted to gain additional efficiencies, support its green initiatives by reducing paper, emissions and fuel costs, and reinforce its commitment to superior customer service. 

Additional benefits resulting from the implementation include the introduction of standardised operating procedures, accelerated billing cycles, and providing employees and partners with real-time access to information, with the expectation of ultimately increasing revenues and boosting customer satisfaction. 

The Astea Alliance mobility platform provides a comprehensive mix of capabilities such as mobile workforce management, real-time scheduling optimisation, field service, contact centre, depot repair, customer self-service, sales order processing, logistics and parts management, third party vendor management, professional services automation, and performance management. The end-to-end solution will further drive and improve efficiencies and reduce the cost of service delivery supporting the organizations strategic growth and acquisition strategy.

 “We are focused on providing innovative, value-added products, services and solutions to our customers. Our success is based on our customers’ success. We are constantly looking at ways to drive positive outcomes for our customers that will support their service solutions and business objectives,” said Fourie van der Merwe, Chief Operations Officer.  “With Astea Alliance, we have gained a leading-edge, unified, robust, and user-friendly solution that will support our initiatives and grow with our business. The solution, which is rated by Gartner in their Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, is based around service excellence disciplines and best practice experiences drawn from Astea’s long and established history in the service marketplace and is uniquely positioned to meet our needs. The system will enable us to provide a shared service management system platform for the group,” he added.

 “Bytes is a leader in its field as a result of its commitment to delivering superior service to its customers, a commitment which is made possible by the company’s continuous improvement of their internal processes,” said Zack Bergreen, CEO of Astea International. “Bytes MS truly understands the strategic value that quality of service can have on overall profitability, customer satisfaction and retention as well as providing a distinct competitive advantage in the marketplace. We are extremely proud that Bytes and Altron has selected to partner with us to further automate and optimize their service operations.” 

 

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Optimised scheduling remains an absolutely crucial tool for many field service companies and one that could improve many other companies’ efficiency and productivity levels if they were to adopt such a system. On a recent Field Service News webinar based on this topic, Kris Oldland interviewed scheduling expert Daryl Dudey from IFS to find out more…

KO: What is a typical timeframe from modelling a scheduling solution through to actual implementation?

DD: There are several things that affect that.

Firstly how driven a company is but also how large the organisation is. If we are dealing with smaller teams we can roll out a bit quicker, so we could even be talking weeks moving from pilot to live, if we are talking about a larger organisation with a couple of thousand people out in the field generally speaking we’d like to take a little longer with that to make sure we are considering all the factors.

Really we try to go for a timescale of six months from start of project through to live, that’s the goal if possible. Also the nature of the business the more the senior management is driving the project the more likely it is we are going to get to live quicker, that’d very important.

A lot of the time these implementations can be viewed as IT projects but they’re not they’re business projects and businesses need to understand there is a lot of change involved in this, employees are involved, customers are involved and everybody really needs to be concentrating on it and focussing on it to get the result everybody wants.

KO: In your experience is it a case that those companies that have the full management buy in get more from these types of implementation?

DD: Absolutely. The ones that have that buy-in, that have that drive, they’re the ones that see the significant improvements to their business. They’re the ones that see the big numbers in improvement in terms of cost of travel and increasing jobs per day. They’re the ones that see the most success.

[quote float="left"]A lot of the time these implementations can be viewed as IT projects but they’re not they’re business projects and businesses need to understand there is a lot of change involved

Also in a company that decides they’re not over ride the system manually they’re not diluting the benefits. By the management setting those sorts of rules down the project works just that much better. From experience I’ve also seen that those companies that drive an implementation better, those people out in the field and in the dispatch office end up liking the system more anyway. Because they get the benefits out of it that they were expecting.

 

KO: So as well as there being a need to be driven by the top level, is there also a strong case for involving the end users, the field engineers and dispatchers throughout the implementation process?

DD: Involving the technicians, their team leaders and the dispatchers is absolutely key. At the end of the day this could be seen as a bit of an invasive system, coming in and changing working practices and taking responsibilities away from people. So we need to manage it in the right way to keep those people on-board.

[quote float="right"]Involving the technicians, their team leaders and the dispatchers is absolutely key. At the end of the day this could be seen as a bit of an invasive system, coming in and changing working practices and taking responsibilities away from people.

However, in the end people end up doing what they are better at. So with dispatchers for example, instead of having to decide which job to do in which order, they have more time to do what they are better at which is contact customers and dealing with the technicians and making sure everything is running smoothly.

 

It’s the same with the technicians. They are able to do what they are best at, which is being on-site, fixing equipment, interacting with customers etc. Basically not deciding which route is the optimum etc. So in my opinion, everyone benefits.

KO: What is the typical R.o.I following an implementation?

DD: It can vary but scheduling as a project is very much a return on investment project.

Most companies can expect to see five to fifteen per cent increase in productivity in SLA hit rates so that will hit the bottom line. Every organisation of course has different priorities so they tend to tune things in a different way.

Fuel savings are a particularly direct way of measuring cost savings. PHS in the UK for example made fuel savings of around 7 or 8% a year, which for them equates to around £2 million. So they made some significant savings – quite a lot more than they paid for the solution I might add, so the solution paid for itself pretty quickly.

We are currently running a free field service health check, which is a great way of getting a picture of this, and a great way of putting the business case together. We can take customer data if they are unsure and we can run that through and we can give you some predictive numbers which is a great way of seeing what that R.o.I specifically in line with your business.

KO: All too often we hear that service doesn’t perhaps get the voice it should in the boardroom, what do you recommend a service director should do when building the case for investment in a scheduling solution?

DD: To be honest the numbers make a pretty good case for themselves. Increasing jobs per day, reducing fuel costs etc there are all pretty big numbers and there aren’t many projects you can implement that are going to get you big savings like that.

But there are some more intangible benefits as well such as customer satisfaction. A lot of organisation using manual systems can end up sending the wrong technician out, or maybe a technician is missing parts and that just causes frustration at the customer end really.

[quote float="left"]There are some more intangible benefits as well such as customer satisfaction. A lot of organisation using manual systems can end up sending the wrong technician out, or maybe a technician is missing parts and that just causes frustration at the customer end really.

So sending the right engineer, with the right skills and the right parts, in the agreed allotted time window is pretty important when it comes to customer satisfaction.

 

Also a possibility given the increased efficiency is maybe offering shorter time windows, which can be a big competitive benefit. If you customers are all offering AM or PM slots and you can offer one hour or two hour slots that’s another pretty compelling case for scheduling optimisation I think.

The reality is from my experience is that companies may have these SLAs in place but they may not necessarily be meeting them and it’s interesting that when we do the initial phase and we take some historical data we discover some often huge discrepancies between what a company thinks they are delivering and what they are actually doing.

The reason being is that when you are using a manual system or a semi-manual system then it’s pretty hard to consider all these variables.

You’ve got to consider where the technicians are, what jobs are nearby, what parts and skills are required on those jobs, when you need to get there etc. It’s just to much for a person to deal with in reality. So sometimes things slip.

Whereas in an organisation not only are they to hit the SLAs they’ve already guaranteed to their customers, they also have the opportunity to offer shorter SLAs. If your peers and competitors are using manual systems and offering a four hour delay you could offer a two SLA and they simply wouldn’t be able to achieve that.

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Want to know more? Click here to download the full webinar now!

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Service scheduling specialist FieldAware is teaming up with communications company Mitel to offer integrated real-time solutions for field service organisations.

FieldAware’s web-based back office functions are built on a flexible, cloud-based architecture with unlimited configurable fields that can accommodate virtually any business process.  Mitel's  Accelerator initiative has been developed especially for the field service industry. It embeds Mitel's real-time, enterprise-class communications and contact centre capabilities into Field Aware's mobile field service-scheduling software. The integration of location-based technology, CRM tools and real-time communications turn multiple service calls into one,  enhancing the customer experience, creating operational efficiencies and providing valuable business intelligence.

“Mitel’s real-time communications technology combined with our field service automation solutions bring service businesses an entirely new way to easily communicate across the organisation and with customers, creating a richer customer experience,” said Charles Jackson, CEO of FieldAware.

“FieldAware has revolutionised how service companies leverage their workforce to better serve customers,” said Joshua Haslett, Vice President and General Manager, Mitel Embedded Communications. “Together, we’re now able to enhance the customer experience through real-time communications, enabling the workflow from the customer service personnel to the field technician delivering first-call resolution which improves overall service.”

By adding the new real-time functionality to the FieldAware solution, customers can:

Manage Work Orders End-to-End: With the estimated-time-of-arrival (ETA) feature, throughout the entire process—from service request to job completion—real-time communications and location technologies are automated to inform the customer of service trigger events (enroute to job, delays, at site, etc.). Service workers simply use their mobile device and tap to connect with staff in the back office to inform them of decisions and speed service delivery. Communications are also automatically entered in contact centre and CRM systems.

Respond Better to Urgent Customer Requests: When an urgent service request is received, the intelligent dispatch capability leverages real-time communications, combined with presence and location functionality, to enable the service business to locate the right service worker, respond to the request quickly and ultimately resolve the issue faster. Communications between the back office, the service worker and the customer provide real-time status updates and all communications automatically become part of the customer record.

Upsell During Service Calls: The find-an-expert feature leverages real-time communications, including voice, messaging and video-calling with presence to enable service workers to communicate with remote sales agents or connect with experts. A sales agent can help the customer make informed purchase decisions on the spot while the expert ensures problems get resolved during the first visit. All communications are documented and captured in the customer’s service record.

The new functionality will be available in the FieldAware solution in Q2 2016.

 

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Cognito iQ, a leading provider of cloud-based management solutions for the mobile workforce, has been selected by Argos to power the delivery intelligence for its Fast Track service, the first same day UK wide delivery service from a high street retailer. The Cognito iQ platform gives Argos the agility, flexibility and traceability to fulfil the same day service, which offers nationwide same-day home delivery, seven days a week, 364 days a year for a flat rate of £3.95.

Upon collection of delivery manifests, the Cognito iQ Mobile platform guides the drivers via their handsets enabling both customer home deliveries and delivery to other stores. With GPS integration, Argos drivers are guided through their delivery route, obtain electronic proof of delivery and receive real-time updates via messaging to inform them of any last minute changes.

From a customer perspective the service is fast, with four delivery windows throughout the day, and seamless with SMS updates informing them of accurate delivery times and any delays.

 

The information flow is real-time via the cloud and visible to Argos Call Centre via the Cognito iQ portal. With up to the minute information on deliveries, agents can provide customers with accurate information on where their parcels are, if they’ve been delivered, where the parcels have been left and who signed for them.

Andy Brown, Central Operations Director at Argos, said: “We are the only retailer able to offer same-day delivery nationwide and we’ve been delighted with the fantastic reception customers have given our new Fast Track services. Our selection of Cognito iQ to make Fast Track happen is a validation of the power of its platform and the faith we have in it to enable such a complex, mission critical service for our business.”

Cognito iQs cloud-based platform works across any mobile device and offers the flexibility Argos requires to  evolve and rapidly scale the service when required. It is currently used by 650 delivery drivers and offers the potential to increase this number significantly to support busier periods.

 

“Fulfilment is the next big retail battleground, but it’s incredibly difficult to bring to life new delivery services for multi-channel businesses with such a broad product range as Argos,” comments Laurent Othacéhé, CEO of Cognito iQ. “We’re delighted that Argos is taking full advantage of our unrivalled technology expertise, understanding of the market and consumer needs, and ability to deliver. We look forward to continue helping Argos unleash

 

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In Part One of this Industry Leader interview, Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax, spoke about the company's rapid growth and the technology underpinning that rise to prominence. In Part Two, he talks to Marc Ambasna-Jones about the the changing world of field service and  the 4Ps he considers essential to success.

Service is not just considered a cost centre any longer, Yarnold points out. "Service people are getting involved in growth discussions. So you will have to know what is going with your customers and all these products will have to be calibrated and serviced and this means a field service tech is needed to go do it.

More of service will be on manufacturers now and they will want it because it’s an opportunity to evolve selling product into a service business model. Instead of just selling licenses and products up front, you now have powerful long term relationships because you offer upgrades and so on. There is more tie-in. It also gives manufacturers longer, recession-proof, financial models and you will see more field techs as a result.

The reality of course is that no one knows for sure how service will develop. All you can do is support the service teams with a set of tools that make them more central to the ongoing success of a business."

People, Products, Processes and Promise

FSN: While this sounds great, surely there are gaps in the ServiceMax arsenal?

DY: “All this stuff is deep. When you dive into the four Ps - People, Products, Processes and Promise - (ServiceMax’s key message), there’s just an incredible amount of depth that you can add into the platform. We built it with the 4 Ps in mind, so we can expand. I don’t see any huge gaps but the more we get into it, the more we peel back the onion and discover more about our customers’ needs, the more we can develop new features and pump out capabilities.”

FSN: Is Product IQ is an example of that?

DY: Yes, Product IQ enables companies to uncover, track and interact with their installed base and make it come alive.

How many companies have a handle on their installed base and their system of record for all their customer assets? Very few. It’s a big gap – all these companies growing through acquisitions with all these different sets of data in different systems. It’s not one of the first things that gets harmonised so we are hoping we can help.[quote float="left"]How many companies have a handle on their installed base and their system of record for all their customer assets? Very few.

 

Selling on Salesforce

FSN: Looking back, how important has Salesforce been to ServiceMax and what is the relationship now? They must look at you and think, ‘I wish we’d done that?’

“Well, yes, they have the platform on which to build but we have spent a lot of money and time to build ServiceMax. It’s taken years to understand the needs of a market, which is one of the reasons why it’s not been disrupted previously. From a system perspective it has all the complexities of an ERP system, multiple functions having to work together, multiple data sources, a lot of integration points.

Plus it has all the complexities of a CRM system in that you have to deliver a customer-facing app to enable customer-facing folks to do their jobs. So, it’s got to be simple, easy to use, easy to interact with and on top of that it has to be disconnected and mobile.

That of course means solving the problem of data synchronisation – you are talking about one of the most complex enterprise application domains ever – so it’s not trivial to go and build one of these.

“In terms of Salesforce, it has been an awesome enabling technology because we go into service organisations that are tasked with taking care of massive customer bases and they are not going to put that at risk. It’s reputation and a significant revenue stream, so organisations must be super conservative.

We are riding in on one of the best, well established cloud platforms and in many cases already tried and tested and used for sales and marketing, so building on the Salesforce platform has given us a tremendous head start. It’s allowed us to get over a lot of hurdles that we would have otherwise had to face in a very conservative target market.”[quote float="right"]Service people are in front of customers every day. They are generating revenue and performing this incredibly vital function. Why does nobody think about those guys?

 

FSN: ServiceMax growth has been impressive. Does it reflect the growing importance of the service industry?

“When we were a 40-50 person company I was having meetings with CIOs of $25bn Fortune 500 companies.
There were times when I was looking around thinking this is unbelievable. When we started the company we looked at the competitive landscape and realised nothing has really happened since the late 90s. No one had really cared about this market and that surprised me. Considering how much revenue comes out of service operations, it’s shocking.

I won’t share the logo but, when I spoke to the CIO and head of service one of the biggest companies in the world, I asked ‘why is it the case that when a new mobile device comes out everyone says, your sales people need these?’
Service people are in front of customers every day. They are generating revenue and performing this incredibly vital function. Why does nobody think about those guys? He shook his head and said, “I’m not sure.”

FSN: Do you see yourself as championing their cause? Is that what drives you and the business?

“It’s one of the drivers. Certainly for a long time service has been an afterthought. It goes back to the business model. If you generate a sale and from that sale, everything after cuts into that profit, so businesses want to minimise costs. Service has traditionally been viewed as a cost but times are changing fast and we believe we are a big part of that change.”

Yarnold talks a great game. He has enthusiasm and determination in abundance and that can only be applauded.
He has come a long way since his days with Clarify and there is a sense that he really does want to fly the flag for field service but it is the company’s land grab that is intriguing and also telling.

Offices in Europe and the Far East have been added to the roster. Although Salesforce may not be jockeying for position, the giants of Oracle and SAP are players yet to fully wake to the potential of the market. By the time they do ServiceMax could be an attractive acquisition target anyway. Certainly ServiceMax is not short on investors.

“There are a lot of service companies out there, millions of field technicians around the world who are trying to do their job but still don’t have great tools. They have clipboards, old Lotus Notes, applications that are simple and do not do a great job in terms of helping them do their job. There is a huge opportunity for us here. And as a place to invest technology dollars, that sentiment is starting to build.”

 

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Miss Part One of this interview? Find it here

 

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Work-at-height and scaffolding solutions company Turner Access is improving operational management and increasing productivity of its mobile workforce with IFS Applications 9 ERP software. 

Turner Access is a  division of family-owned, Turner & Co (Glasgow) Ltd and was founded over 30 years ago. It  designs, manufactures and supplies access equipment for safe working at height. In response to the current skills shortage facing the UK construction sector, the industry is under constant pressure to ensure employees are as efficient with their time as possible.

As part of this drive for efficiency, Turner Access was looking to refresh its legacy IT infrastructure, which was running a number of disparate systems working together inefficiently. As a result, staff have been spending unnecessary time inputting data into multiple systems and were struggling to access important documents on the move.

In addition, the company wanted to grow net margin and improve factory productivity through increased visibility of employee performance by centralising systems and providing an easy-to-view summary of key business data via the IFS Lobby, a key feature of IFS Applications 9.

Turner Access is also looking to increase turnover through tighter internal control and better cost visibility leading to increased competitiveness. Through the standardisation of processes users will be expected to save time and be more efficient and productive through communication improvements and better visibility of real time information and analysis.

Ian Wilson, Managing Director, said, “The needs of Turner Access are specific to manufacturing, sales, rental, training and contracting across multiple industry sectors and International territories and IFS demonstrated its specialism in this area with IFS Applications 9. The system will ensure we can improve efficiency across the board and we also have the option in the future to scale the solution across a number of specialist areas in both hemispheres.”

Paul Massey, Managing Director of IFS Europe West, said, “It’s always great to see manufacturing and contracting companies taking technology seriously, especially in the current climate where we are facing a serious skills shortage - technology can help. Introducing IFS Applications 9 will ensure that Turner Access stays one step ahead of its competitors and is in an excellent position to improve efficiency throughout its business over the coming years.”

 

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Mobile app design has come a long way. Paul Adams, Marketing & Development Director at Solarvista Software, talks about the change in conceptual approach.

At Solarvista, we launched our first mobile app way back in 2002, called Mobile Worker.  It was designed to operate as field service mobile application with our existing field service management back office ERP suite. It did it very well.

But… that’s all it did. Yes, you could receive jobs. Yes, you could order parts. Yes, you could capture signatures, take pictures etc. And it worked offline as well as online. In fact it did all of the things that we could think that service technicians wanted to do.

It was (and still is) a great application. In fact, it’s used to this day for thousands of users. But times change. And architectural practices have improved beyond all recognition in the last decade.

Whilst our Mobile Worker app is flexible, it’s flexible within constraints. The reason for this is that the application was specifically designed to do specific functions in a specific way. It was designed to work with existing Solarvista ERP back office applications and, practically speaking, only those applications.

For our next generation of mobile apps, we didn’t want ANY constraints… at all. We didn’t want specificity in any shape or form. The days of “hard-coding” were over.

Our conclusion?

We wanted to build a PLATFORM, not an application, which we then applied to business problems to deliver elegant solutions.

These apps could do anything at all, and be driven by configuration, not hard coding. Simple text files that defined what they did, how they did it and when they did it.

 

Oh… and in 2015, we need to support “Bring Your Own Device” too, so it needs to work on ALL platforms… Android, iOS and Windows. And we mustn’t forget offline working too.

It was quite an ambition. Especially when we consider the need to build for three different environments.  Of course, we would use the platform to create apps for field service personnel operating in organisations that ran Solarvista ERP suites. But we also wanted an app that would work with everything else too.

We had lots of prototypes that we ended up throwing away. Each one took a different architectural approach but there was always a snag. Eventually, after three years development, we produced Solarvista LIVE Mobile… a PLATFORM not just an app.

It’s not a platform in the sense of development environments from the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Google… no one is going to compete with those guys. But it is a platform in the sense of building mobile apps for people who have work to do in the field.

In the old days, we would create a function by “hard coding” programs and providing another version. Now, we just create a text file that defines what the app should do, when and how. Workflow, texts, labels, logic, validation etc...
All done in a file updated over the airwaves in seconds. In fact, our customers can soon create e-forms to do anything using a simple web-based tool.

So, yes it does all the things that the original did and to most users it just feels like a normal app. But underneath, it’s a platform… and that means it’s ready for the future.

Users can get started easily with standard features/ functions that just work. But when needs change… as they always do… the platform can adapt in flash.

 

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As we enter the final few working days days of 2015 it's a good time to reflect on what we did well this year and of course what we can do better next year...

However whilst the world is certainly a better place financially than it was a few years ago we still live in an age of austerity. More and more companies have quite rightly moved their service departments to their own P&L as the shift from cost centre to profit centre becomes more common for a service division.

However, whether your field service operation is a necessary cost or a profitable division of your business, the ability to achieve more next year than you did this year with the same level of resource is one that can push your organisation to a better market share, greater profits and of courser internally will do your career as a field service management professional no harm at all either!

Fortunately many of the arguments for adopting certain technologies within field service industries are based on a robust return on investment (R.o.I) basis that will ultimately pay for itself and deliver ongoing savings in efficiency - often within a 12 month timeframe.

Driver behaviour apps offer reduced maintenance costs of your fleet vehicles for example, rugged devices are regularly bought because whilst they may be more expensive in the short term over the course of their lifetime the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is in fact much lower than that of alternative consumer devices.

 

Then of course there is optimised scheduling where not only will you see reduced fuel costs but also achieve higher job completion across a day so potentially not only reducing costs but simulataneously improving customer service also.

However, as with many things in life which sound a bit too good to be true, such claims of operational improvements and cost savings can sometimes be met with cynicism. Indeed, optimised scheduling may not deliver huge benefits for all companies, those with a relatively simple work process or a small team for example may not see the same benefits as those with larger workforces or a more complex set of jobs being allocated.

The simple truth is there is no simple answer as to the type of company that will get the best gains from optimised scheduling.

However, what is well documented is that most companies will see some performance gains and many of those who implement optimised scheduling will see highly significant gains such as PHS who saved £2M in a year in fuel savings alone. 

So in order to help our readers identify whether optimised scheduling would benefit their organisation, Field Service News has teamed up with specialist service management provider IFS to offer a free, no obligation Field Service Healthcheck that will identify exactly what efficiencies your business could make through adopting an optimised scheduler.

Simply click the link below to access the registration page.

Once there complete the brief form and instructions will be sent to you on how to undertake your free field service health-check and a scheduling expert from IFS will analyse your current workload and identify exactly how and where you could make improvements within three days of receiving your completed form.

So why sit in the dark about how much optimised scheduling could benefit your company. Find out for free right now...

 

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Click here to access the free field service healthcheck now... 

 

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