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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Advanced Field Solutions
Title:  Which Solution is right for your business: End-to-end or best-of-breed
About: As part of our series exploring end to end field service we are pleased to be able to offer you this excellent white paper published by Advanced Field Service that questions whether an end to end service management solution or best-of –breed solution is the right move for your company.
Download: Download the white paper by clicking here

Overview: As the tough economic environment of recent years starts to recede and a measure of confidence returns to the industry, service organisations are increasingly looking to invest in systems that can help them to make the most of the upturn. Replacing your current service management system is never a decision to be undertaken lightly. However, whether you already have a software solution for service in place or have depended heavily on manual processes such as spreadsheets, making the transition to a more powerful, up-to-date solution with modern functionality such as mobile capabilities can impact your whole service process…for the better. Among the potential benefits to be realised with today’s technology are:

• Full traceability of every job and status change – from job creation through to completion

• Instant access to account information from any location – including order, call, equipment and site history

• Engineers arrive at a job equipped with the right documentation, parts and site history, aware of any customer issues

• Engineers can record time sheets and expenses, download technical documents and equipment lists, and securely capture photos and signatures on-site

• Efficiency increases as engineers can remotely view planned work and close jobs on site, send proactive alerts and deliver automatic status updates to the back office

• Control of stock is improved, with full visibility of parts availability and automatically re-orders

• You deliver great customer service as you offer specific appointment times, bill the customer promptly, maintain a full audit trail and complete work quickly and efficiently

In short, you’ll increase the likelihood of a first-time fix, with improved customer satisfaction while reducing your costs. It’s an attractive prospect. This whitepaper looks at some of the options available to field service organisations as they review the market. It also offers some guidance on selecting your new technology, and outlines a suggested eight-point process.

These eight points are prioritise, requirements, expertise, create a shortlist, integration, planning, support and supplier stability are all discussed in further detail in the white paper.

DA Systems' David Upton looks at how we must try to change the perception of technology costs from an expense to be justified to a necessary investment when approaching the board...

Recent research undertaken to understand attitudes towards investing in technology highlighted a generic problem within the transport and logistics industry. Companies all appreciate the benefits mobile technology can bring, yet they are not succeeding in securing the necessary investment required from business leadership. Why? Because technological investment is seen as an expense to be justified rather than an investment in reducing costs and generating more profits.

It was a problem for 80% of survey respondents, 88% of whom said that they wanted to introduce new mobile technology, but faced budget restrictions.

This suggests a further underlying issue because it means that they are not developing a compelling enough business case to address the return on investments to be expected. If they were, the funds would be flowing more freely. Most business cases centre on increasing revenue.

Obviously there is a revenue element to consider, but the primary advantage of mobile technology is that it increases the likelihood of a parcel being delivered first time around – which minimises some of the largest costs associated with business operations. This article explains how to develop a business case for technological investment and prioritises the benefits.

In the case of investing in mobile technology to provide customers with an estimated time of delivery to reduce the cost of failed deliveries, building a compelling business case should be relatively straightforward. The overall impetus should be cost reduction, with a focal point of preventing the cost of a missed first time delivery. This is estimated in the region of £23 per drop and causes a very significant erosion to profit margins when it isn’t achieved.

On average, 15% of deliveries fail on the first attempt because the customer was not aware of the delivery time, which could be managed by adopting mobile technology. Even absorbing the inefficiencies of a slightly empty delivery van because orders that have been pre-loaded get cancelled, is better than the cost of a missed delivery.

 

Optimising a delivery round to take the most economical route means saving on fuel, mileage time and being able to do more drops per vehicle. In turn this means a reduction in the number of drivers and vehicles, which again saves money. So taking all these factors into consideration, the emphasis in a business case should be on technology, which is self-financing, with payback achieved within the first year of investment at the latest.

Taking DPD as a good example of how costs can be reduced and revenues increased as a result of technological improvements, they have grown sales by over £100 million as a result of implementing ETA messaging. Of course enhancing customer interaction is an important factor, but the real benefit is derived from getting deliveries right first time and reducing the cost base.

If 15% of operational costs can be saved by getting deliveries right first time, achieving better optimisation of delivery routes and requiring fewer journeys means fewer drivers are required. And courier productivity levels can be further increased by using route optimisation software, which in turn can reduce the number of miles to be driven by 10%.

For a large delivery company with a £16 million fuel bill, this creates the potential to save up to £1.6 million on fuel costs. Given their profit margin is roughly 10%, this creates a net increase to the total bottom line of 10%, a huge bonus.

To quote another delivery company example, after it implemented route optimisation, fleet mileage was cut by 17% and overall fleet size was reduced by 7%. This is the type of rationale that needs to be used in a business case for technological investment, going beyond customer and branding benefits to deliver hard cost savings and potential for greater profits.

So far we have outlined just a few of the solid cost saving justifications to be included in a business case for investing in new technology and there are many more, ranging from improved communication with call centre staff and traffic management options, to reduced fuel consumption.

When developing a business case, delivery companies need to be clear about the tangible benefits and turn the way they approach investing in technology around. Think of it as less of ‘an expenditure to be justified’ and more as a way to make greater profits with immediate payback.

In this second part of this series looking at the findings of our exclusive research report into field service software we focus on management reporting. You can read the first part of this series which looked at scheduling and integration and interaction here.

If you want to read the full 10 page benchmarking report then you are able to download it by clicking here.

About the research:

Across April and May of this year (2014) Field Service News in partnership with mplsystems undertook a research project to assess the current usage of field service software.

The survey was split into four categories. Scheduling systems, integration and interaction, management reporting and future options. In total we spoke to over 120 field service companies of differing sizes and differing industries. These were predominantly UK based although there were respondents from all over the world including Europe, America, Africa and Asia.

Reporting:

It may be a cliché but the maxim “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” rings true in all industries and with technology now offering more measurement and analytics tools, with greater levels of sophistication than ever before management reporting is an important element of service management software.

In fact 78% of respondents stated that as a manger the ability to get clear and comprehensive management reports from their service management software was an important tool. Further to that, 63% of these went on to define management reporting as “Critical – I couldn’t do my job without it”

When we also factor in that a further 19% of respondents stated that management-reporting tools were “Helpful” it is clear that such tools are utilised by all but a very small minority  (less than 5%) of field service managers.

It may have been what we expected to find but the findings of the research absolutely confirm the fact beyond all doubt. Management reporting is an absolutely integral facet of Field Service Software.

However, whilst management reporting is clearly such vital piece of the field service management software whole, it appears that when it comes to functionality and performance, there remains plenty of room for improvement in the eyes of many field service managers responding to our survey.

In response to the question “Is the reporting functionality you get from your current system up to the task” almost two thirds of respondents stated that they found their current system merely “Acceptable”

So whilst the functionality of these tools is workable, they are still far from perfect. In fact whilst there are a reasonable amount of companies (21%) who identified their reporting functionality as “Excellent”” there is a similar amount of companies (20%) who state that the management reporting of their current system “Doesn’t meet their needs at all”

 There certainly a number of different considerations when purchasing a field service software solution , research is absolutely essential and taking the time to identify your own reporting needs both now but also in the future, before comparing this with the options available to you will potentially save both time and money for your organisation in the longer term.

 

Of course within field service perhaps one of the most important aspects of reporting is real time visibility into the actions of your mobile workforce.

In this area there is an interesting division between companies.

It seems that a large percentage of the companies in the industry (42%) are able to provide real time location and status of their field technicians to not only their dispatchers but also their help desk and customer service teams.

This is an improvement of 24% compared to 2012 figures. Such a dramatic rise is likely due to the fact that such a level of visibility is a powerful tool both in terms of managing efficiency as well as delivering excellent customer service and therefore a key area for investment.

Despite this fact, a surprisingly large number of companies (30%) still have no visibility at all into the activities of their mobile workforce. Whilst this figure has decreased by 9% since 2012 it remains a significant proportion of the industry.

Such a large number is somewhat worrying in that without any visibility there is little hope of these companies being able to improve the efficiency of their field service operations at all. It also means that the levels of customer service are potentially impacted as well.

This gap in implementation of technology could lead to a genuine division appearing in the industry. Those companies who are able to continue to deliver excellent service in today’s modern environment of demand twenty first century consumers, and those whose service standards remain stagnant and out-dated.

When it comes to competing on service, which has become a key battleground for businesses in recent years, there can only be one winner…

If you want to read the full 10 page benchmarking report then you are able to download it by clicking this link.

By registering for this white paper you agree to the fascinating terms and conditions which you can read right here.

You can also now find the third part of this series looking at the future of field service software here

FeedHenry, provider of the  open standards based mobile application platform for enterprise, has just announced the release of it's first ever fully dedicated Field Workforce Management mobile solution.

The solution provides 'out-of-the-box' field workforce management features which has a high level of customisation available through what seems to be a fairly intuitive drag and drop process.

As our own research here at FIeld Service News recently revealed with roughly a quarter of companies struggling to fit there work processes around their software solution such simple yet effective customisation is a big positive. The mobile workers apps can be easily configured to support company-specific field workflow processes, backend data integration, forms, and branding. The solution is also cross-platform supporting deployment to all major mobile devices, and as you would expect makes use of location, camera, signature capture and other device features.

Powered by FeedHenry’s flagship FeedHenry 3 platform, the new Workforce Management (WFM) solution gives businesses the option to implement as a standalone solution, or to securely integrate into existing work order, ERP or other systems. FeedHenry’s cloud-based platform architecture supports secure backend integration, data storage and caching, online/offline data syncing, user authentication, and app management that underpin secure, scalable and sustainable mobile innovation.

“In today’s era of mobility, it’s no longer enough to simply port legacy field workforce solutions onto a mobile device and expect high performance,” said Cathal McGloin, CEO of FeedHenry. “Mobile-first organisations are demanding a more flexible mobile experience that delivers a faster return on investment. For companies where field operations are critical to business results, we’ve created a ready to run cloud-based mobile solution that provides secure, real time updates to and from the field, all with a great user experience.”

Key features of FeedHenry’s Field Workforce Management solution include:

Cross-Platform Development and Deployment – Using the functionality of the FeedHenry 3 platform, the new WFM solution supports both development and deployment across multiple devices and platforms: iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Featuring built-in scalability and security, the solution’s backend connections are reusable, making subsequent app developments fast and cost-effective.

Ready-To-Use Functionality – A flexible off-the-shelf solution, major field force management features are already built out and ready to use, including scheduling, dispatch, data capture, forms, location, reporting and messaging. The WFM solution also helps organisations to take full advantage of native mobile device features, allowing for text, photo, signature and barcode capture with the ability to add GPS and timestamps for any work order type, with zero coding required.

Drag and Drop Forms - Flexible workflow configuration is supported with drag and drop forms which allows non-developers to define job order types, without the need to change business processes.

Real-time communication between back office and frontline staff – FeedHenry WFM provides a highly functional web portal that provides a range of administration tasks. Office supervisors can communicate with workers in the field by creating, managing and dispatching new work order information as well as sending in-app messages to the workforce. Real time reporting is available, complete with worker tracking, helping to increase collaboration across teams and improve response times.

Designed to provide high mobile ROI – FeedHenry’s cloud-based WFM solution includes cloud storage and caching to improve app performance and scalability. In addition cloud data sync functionality allows workers to continue using their apps while offline, with data automatically syncing when back online.

“Enterprise mobility has the power to improve employee productivity, transform business processes and drive new revenue streams. This has elevated mobility to a strategic level,” said Chris Marsh, principal analyst at Yankee Group. “Companies should look to cloud-based and agile mobile application strategies to support their growing mobile workforces, without which enterprise productivity and profitability improvements will suffer.”

 

Software provider Fast Lean Smart (FLS) have recently announced that they have secured a significant new customer win in the form of Mitie’s pest control division.

German owned FLS who operate their UK division for their Reading office are providers of specialist mobile workforce management and scheduling software and in Mitie they have won the business of the UK’s third largest provider of pest control services. Having seen consistent organic growth greater than their peers within the last decade Mitie were in the market to support yet further development and growth by implementing optimisation solutions for both routing and task scheduling as part of a drive to improve their service offering by responding quicker to customer call outs.

With a client base that encompasses both residential and commercial clients, Mitie offer a ‘one-stop-shop’ service offering that covers everything and anything to do with pest prevention and eradication. They maintain their high standards of service by undertaking all services in-house and as a business they employ a nationwide field force of pest technicians.

Commenting on the agreement with FLS, Peter Trotman, Mitie Pest Control Managing Director said ‘Our success has brought us many challenges, especially in organising resource to meet our objectives which include continuously improving customer service, but also to reduce operational costs. We already differentiate our services through advanced management information and customer portals and we are now embarking on a dynamic enterprise to interface a route planning and resource optimisation tool to further our leading edge technology”.

Trotman added “As part of a year long evaluation of potential vendors, we completed a successful pilot with FLS which proved FLS VISITOUR technology was flexible to meet our requirements and the ideal choice. We are now pleased to appoint FLS as supplier and implementation partner for this immensely exciting project from which we already know the opportunity for performance improvement is significant”.

Jeremy Squire, FLS UK Managing Director, also commented saying “FLS are pleased to welcome Mitie Pest Control to our growing family of UK customers, the mix of routine visits, booked appointments and requirement to quickly react to emergency callouts make excellent use of FLS VISITOUR real-time scheduling capability. We look forward to making this deployment a showcase for the dramatic efficiency gains achievable and the ease of configuring our technology to meet unique customer needs.”

 

Trimble Field Service Management's new Managing Director John Cameron joins Field Service Service News as a guest columnist and outlines the importance of managing mobile resources effectively...

Many companies managing a large field service workforce operate in industries which require highly skilled individuals, whose work is variable and complex in terms of location and task. Add in a high degree of compliance-focused work and that means that field service work has become increasingly mission-critical in terms of timing, skills and consequence. However, with market competition and customer expectations at an all-time high it is more important than ever that organisation’s ensure that their field service is not derailed by unpredictable dynamics of the working day. Understandably, the biggest area of concern for those in field service is workforce management[1] and 69 per cent of organisations are investing in technology to help manage jobs more effectively[2].

Expert Insight: Defining the challenges

Establishing what it takes to manage a large field service operation today, from managing the people and scheduling the work, to the technology that helps to drive efficiency, is essential and requires organisations to overcome a number of obstacles, including:

• Jobs overrunning if they are more complicated than first thought
•  Traffic congestion and vehicle breakdowns causing delays or even failure to meet an appointment
•  Workers potentially calling in sick, starting late or getting delayed can impact adversely on the productivity of the workforce.

The biggest and most repetitive challenge facing organisations managing a mobile workforce is cost and this is closely related to a secondary challenge - the role of the technician in the business.

The technician is often the only contact a customer has with the company and therefore exposure to the company’s service delivery and brand. With a proven link between customer satisfaction, retention and profitability, how the technician interacts with the customer can be significant in the customer experience. The challenge facing organisations is therefore around the role and responsibility of the technician.

An additional challenge is measuring service performance, suggesting that the old adage of you cannot manage what you cannot measure certainly rings true. Measuring what is happening in a hugely diverse workforce and identifying what the key metrics are to do that is essential. Ultimately you need to understand what has happened and you want to know that ‘now’ to use that data to enable real-time decision-making.

Finally, managing change and embedding best practice is core to a successful field service operation. Organisations often wrestle with this change on a regular basis from all sorts of areas, whether it is new technology, new people, new policy or new vans and equipment. In a remote workforce, managing change and making sure that it sticks is particularly difficult, due to their activities, but finding a way to embed change and making sure that best practice is shared across the workforce is a key success factor.

Putting workforce management technology into action

Reassuringly, developments in workforce management technologies have begun to offer a solution to these challenges, through intelligent scheduling tools and performance management analytics. This capability provides the stepping stones needed to help organisations measure, manage and improve their operations through optimising resources, offering real-time visibility and monitoring and giving warning of tasks at risk or showing the impact of work allocation decisions.

Traditionally, many organisations scheduled tasks based on a technician’s allocated territory but with today’s most common customer complaint being that a technician did not resolve the issue on a first visit, scheduling the most knowledgeable technician to a task or one who has the right tools or parts in their vehicle, is crucial. As a result, more and more organisations are beginning to realise the value of intelligent scheduling - incorporating technician knowledge, parts availability, and capacity into their scheduling processes to ensure that the technician arriving on site is actually the person who can resolve the customer’s issue the first time. Aberdeen Group[3] found that intelligence is at the heart of scheduling with over half of organisations using service performance data to evaluate the effectiveness of scheduling criteria.

Self-learner tools can also help considerably with intelligent scheduling. They incorporate an algorithm that quickly learns preferences for each mobile worker and will allocate tasks accordingly. This includes geography, such as which mobile workers normally service particular areas, and what skills mobile workers have and to what degree they are qualified to do certain types of work. Such capabilities help to improve customer service as tasks can be scheduled to best meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs), produce efficient routes to reduce travel time and ensures work is only given to those with the right skills, carrying the right assets and tools.

A case in point: Pacific Telemanagement Services (PTS)  

Justin Keane, Chief Operating Officer at PTS drove change in the organisation after recognising a need for additional effectiveness in its scheduling processes. Every morning the company would give a batch of tickets to its technicians for their assigned regions and would see what they could get done in a day. Technicians would print a list of their tasks and spend half an hour planning routes based on their own knowledge of the area. They tried using a map to sequence the stops, but that took about an hour a day for each of the eight regional hubs, which is eight hours a day just to build the routes. With these scheduling problems having a detrimental effect on the company’s productivity and growth, it sought a solution which would allow it to become more efficient and reduce or eliminate the time required for scheduling.

PTS deployed a field service management solution which allows dispatchers to view all their tasks and schedules in one place. This has reduced the time that dispatchers spend on routing from three hours a day to 45 minutes a day – an efficiency saving of 75 per cent or about 11 hours a week. Additionally, since the technicians no longer needed half an hour a day to plan their own routes, it has saved more than 200 hours per week of their time and job completion rates have increased by 10 per cent.

PTS has expanded its field service technology to all of its regions and this has made the company more productive, which means improved efficiency, happier customers and a more positive bottom line.

 

TCSJOHNHUXLEY is the world’s leading manufacturer and supplier of end-to-end live gaming solutions and services. The company offers the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of live gaming and electronic gaming products, from quality, handcrafted furniture through to cutting-edge technical equipment that enhances the overall gaming experience, profits and security.

The company prides itself on delivering the highest standards of service and support, with a comprehensive European Technical Support Centre based at Stoke-on-Trent, and a dedicated pan-European network of staff offering 24/7 technical support. Given the company’s continued growth, TCSJOHNHUXLEY was keen to update its service management technology infrastructure so that they had greater visibility across its Europe-wide service and support activities.

According to Rob Burgess, European Service Manager for TCSJOHNHUXLEY: “while we had evolved a fully functional scheduling system for our planned engineering activities - we knew we needed a more integrated solution, to give us visibility and the management information we needed to optimise our processes and really excel in customer service.

“It had become clear that adopting an end-to-end field service management encompassing customer contact, scheduling and mobile field service would give us the meaningful data that we needed to optimise performance. We were also keen to find a solution which would give us reports exactly as we required to allow us to optimise our business, rather than the standard reports that an off the shelf tool would provide”

After looking at a range of different solutions, TCSJOHNHUXLEY selected a cloud-based field service management solution from mplsystems that integrated all its customer contact, service management, parts management and engineer scheduling activities.

 

Available on a pay-per-use basis, mplsystems’ field service management solution directly addresses the three main barriers to field service efficiency: the need to combine disparate IT systems; the ability to schedule reactive engineering tasks alongside planned maintenance schedules; and efficiently highlighting ongoing issues in the field.

 

Combining off-the-shelf functionality with bespoke flexibility

“We selected an mplsystems field service management solution because it provided us with all the benefits and cost-effective performance of an off-the-shelf application, while also providing the ability for us to customise our new solution to match the specific requirements of the TCSJOHNHUXLEY business – particularly in the important area of reporting,” added Rob Burgess. “Combining the dynamic planning and scheduling of service activities with a dedicated application on our engineers’ tablet devices has allowed us to create our mplsystems-powered GEMS Global Engineers Management System that now gives us a true, real-time view of all maintenance activities and reactive calls across the business.”

According to Rob: “working with mplsystems is enabling us to bring our different customer contact, workflow, service management and field service operations together, providing TCSJOHNHUXLEY with the potential for driving efficiency and freeing us to deliver an even higher overall standard of service.”

Working with the mplsystems’ field service management allows the TCSJOHNHUXLEY service team to close the loop, improving efficiency all the way from the initial point of customer interaction through to fault resolution “With our previous more manual process, we wouldn’t necessarily have visibility of a repeat failure with a particular product or component. Now with our mplsystems field service solution we’re able to generate automatic alerts or analyse data to proactively replace components prior to failure or determine a manufacturing fix.”

For Rob Burgess and the TCSJOHNHUXLEY service team, the real benefits come through close analysis of the data unlocked through the mplsystems solution. “It’s all about the data, understanding what’s actually going on in the business and then sharing best practice behaviours and outcomes – both across our UK service team and also with our international operations.”

Business benefits:

• Achieving the best of both worlds – cost-effectiveness of an off-the-shelf field service management solution with the focused benefits of bespoke reporting
• Successful blending or both planned and reactive maintenance tasks – ability to optimise scheduling in real time
• Increased visibility of parts issues, enabling optimisation of overall stock levels and the ability to identify and routinely replace parts or components that fail more often – reducing overall callback rate
• Greater visibility and analysis of engineer schedules – more awareness of time required for fixes, travel time to customer sites,
• Escalation processes now in place, assigning technical specialists for repeat issues
• Better integration of field operations, with immediate service incident reporting via tablets

 

 

Several recent research studies have shown that technology and mobility solutions in particular are growing in importance as businesses seek ways to improve productivity, increase efficiency and reduce costs of delivering services.  Gerard O'Keefe, CEO and Founder of GeoPal takes a look at some common trends and what that means for mobile workforce management...

Managing a mobile workforce cost-effectively can be difficult. A lack of visibility of employee locations outside the office, printing and distributing job packs, and lost or incomplete paperwork can lead to delays in issuing invoices and reports. Mobile Workforce Management solutions create significant cost reductions for businesses, and increase productivity and cashflow by eliminating paper and increasing visibility and control of business operations. Mobility solutions for workforce management, data capture and service management are becoming important tools for businesses as they strive to be more competitive.

What do business executives want from IT?

According to the McKinsey Global IT Survey, completed in 2013, more and more executives are acknowledging the strategic value of IT to their businesses beyond merely cutting costs. They are focusing on and invest in the function’s ability to enable productivity, business efficiency, and product and service innovation. 61% of executives prioritised the ability of IT solutions to improve the effectiveness of business processes, compared to 31%, who prioritised reduction of costs.

Is mobility important to business executives?

Over 1475 senior executives were surveyed between Dec 2013 and Jan 2014 by Accenture, to explore how companies are applying digital technologies to help improve various aspects of their business. 77% of participants considered mobility among their top five priorities for 2014. 43 % said that mobility was in their top two priorities. 39% will allocate budget to mobility to improve field service / customer service delivery. In addition to Mobility, Cloud solutions were also identified by 62% of respondents as being in their top 5 priorities for 2014. Combining mobility and cloud computing for even greater success. IBM also conducted a survey of CEO’s and CIO’s in 2014, and asked them to identify the key technologies they intended to invest in over the next few years. Mobility solutions (84%) and cloud computing (64%) were identified as being of key investment areas. 62% of respondents in the Accenture study identified Cloud technology as being in their top five priorities for 2014. Cloud-based technologies provide businesses with a low-cost way to implement new systems, including mobile workforce management. Cloud-based management systems are: 

• Low-cost – op-ex instead of cap-ex – more affordable for SMEs
• Faster to Deploy – can be deployed in days, rather than months
• Mobile – Can be accessed anywhere, anytime via a web browser

Why choose mobility solutions for your business?

In 2010, a study asked over 2,200 decision-makers were asked what benefits their firms have experienced as a result of deploying mobile applications. Organizations that have deployed mobile applications report increases in worker productivity and efficiency, faster internal and customer-facing issue resolution, and improvements in customer satisfaction with services delivered. In the Global State of Enterprise Mobility 2014 Survey, the Enterprise Mobility Exchange asked businesses to identify the key benefits of mobility solutions. 72% of practitioners identified increased productivity as the key benefit for their business. 32% identified reduced costs as being a key benefit for their business.

What is Mobile Workforce Management?

There are usually two parts to a mobile workforce management system. A management system which can be cloud-based or locally installed on a server and a mobile application. Work is scheduled and assigned to employees from the management system, and details of jobs are sent to the employee via an app on their smartphone. The employee then completes the job, using the app to record completion of each step in a workflow or capture any data required for the job, such as photos, barcode/RFID scans, or electronic signatures. Status updates and job reports are sent back to the management system as the employee works through the job in the field. Mobile workforce management solutions facilitate faster, more accurate transfer of information between workers in the field and staff in the office. This enables faster production of professional reports and issuing of invoices, increasing cash flow and giving businesses a competitive edge over companies relying on paperwork.

 

 

 

In the same way that you wouldn’t just buy a car without test driving it, you also shouldn’t buy field service management software before trying it out. Leah Merrill, Software Analyst with Capterra  gives advice on how to get the best out of a field service software 'road test' ...

Just like you test a car to see if there are any issues, discomfort, how easy it is for you to drive, and how much it costs, you also need to test out software to see if there are any potential glitches, how easy it is to use, and how efficient customer service will be. Here are some other incredibly vital reasons for trying out the system beforehand:

You can more accurately compare the systems you’ve looked at.

In most cases, vendors will give you the option of taking a free trial, or a free demo, which is often very hands on and could be considered a free trial. If they don’t, go ahead and just ask them for one—you need to have a trial run before you make such a big purchase decision, and most vendors will be willing to accommodate you.

As you go through the trial, take your time. Take note of how intuitive the software is, whether or not it seems complicated in certain areas, and if you see any potential problems with any parts of it. This will help you to differentiate between the other solutions that you’ve looked at, and compare ease of use and your other requirements to the other vendors you’ve spoken with. Take detailed notes during each trial and make sure you save them to review later!

You can test out customer service.

Before your trial is over, call customer service. Test out how long the response time is, or how long you wait on the phone before you get through to a representative. Do you speak with a person immediately? Are you on hold for a long time beforehand? Is it an automated help system that just has you select answers without sending you to an actual human being? Make sure you’re aware of how easy and efficient customer support is (or isn’t), as this will be (or should be) an important part of your purchase decision.

You can measure the time saving benefits.

If you’re viewing a demo, you would have to ask the sales rep to demonstrate doing a time consuming task so that you can get an idea of how much time the software will actually save you. When you’re using a trial of the software, you can measure how long it takes you to do the task yourself, but you can also take into consideration the fact that over time and with more practice you will become more efficient. A trial version gives you the opportunity to practice and evaluate the time it takes to do all the tasks that you do on a daily basis.

Here are some tips for when you’re evaluating a trial version:

 

•  Spend a sufficient amount of time on one product before going on to another, as there is often a time limit on how long each one will last.
• Make notes of what you like and dislike about the software, as you’ll be evaluating several different systems and it may be difficult to remember what each program was like if you don’t take detailed notes.
• Test out the most important feature that you need and make sure that it works smoothly and in the way that you need it to.
• Make sure you ask each vendor all the questions that you need so that there are no surprises when you purchase a system.

But: remember that you’re running trials—not the real thing.

Keep in mind that while running the trial and testing out customer service are good ways to determine how the software will be if you purchase it, the support with a trial may not show you exactly what support would be like after purchasing, and the trial is not completely “real” either—it will only give you a good idea of what the software will be like.

Have any more good reasons for taking a free trial? Add them in the comments below!