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In this series we are tackling the topic of end to end field service and exploring the technology options across each stage of the service call lifecycle.

In part one we looked at taking that request, and in part two we focused on getting the right engineer to the right place at the right time.

Last time around we looked at selecting the right hardware for your field engineers and now in this the final feature in this series we look at what considerations should be put in place around the software we put on those devices.

There is also an accompanying white paper to this series which is available to download here

Tools to do the job  - Software

Having selected the device to empower your field engineers the next step is to select the right mobile software to make the most of that hardware.

Whilst there has been great strides forward with cross platform HTML5 applications a strong argument lies within a ‘native’ app approach where the application is specifically designed to work alongside your device’s operating system (OS).

A  strong argument lies within a ‘native’ app approach where the application is specifically designed to work alongside your device’s operating system (OS).Not only do native apps tend to be on the whole more aesthetically in line with the devices OS and therefore more intuitive for a user familiar with the OS but they are also able to take more advantage of the device’s capability – for example Near Field Communication.

 

There are of course numerous field service apps on the market, and as with office based systems the option to either sit within one platform or select a third party app is open to you. However, as with back office systems integration to your core ERP system is absolutely vital.

The whole point of moving your field workers onto a mobile device is to streamline processes and therefore communication between your office system and your team in the field must also be seamless.

As with all of the discussions so far again understanding your field engineers workflow is at the core of successfully selecting a mobile app that enhances your field service engineers productivity.

However, a few of the more common requirements for field engineers include:

Health and safety regulations:

Whilst your field engineers may undertake the appropriate steps to ensure they are working safely each and every time they tackle a job.

For example an electrician knows to turn off the main power to a house before he changes a light fitting – he certainly wouldn’t forget to do it more than once!

However, by locking an app until the ‘switch mains off’ box is checked not only prompts your field engineer but also ensures he and your company are confirming to health and safety regulations.

Similarly there are stringent regulations in place regarding loan workers, so many field service apps have necessary steps in place to ensure your loan working field engineers are both safe and complying with these regulations.

Knowledge Bases

Perhaps one of the most valuable tools you can arm your field service engineers with is access to a wider knowledge base.

This can range from information on the device they have been sent to repair – it’s previous fault history for example, through to knowledge bases with videos and articles that describe faults the engineer may never have come across before, through to video conferencing where the engineer on the job is able to discuss a problem he is unable to resolve with a more experienced engineer in real time – something that is particularly useful for organisations who are servicing devices in remote locations for example.

Access to parts ordering and contracts

Whilst in an ideal world the diagnosis of the issue would have been made in the initial stages of arranging a service call, in reality in many instances the field service engineer will find the right solution is something different upon arrival at the site.

In this instance it is absolutely essential that he has clear visibility into spare parts inventory and has the ability to order the parts needed if required.

Having to go back to the office and go through a separate chain to get these parts means further frustration for your customer and wasted time and resources for your company.

Similarly if they need to carry work that exceeds a normal maintenance contract – for example if the device he has been sent out to repair has been used beyond it’s normal working parameters, then it is vital he has an understanding of the level of cover the contract offers. Remember a field engineer’s main focus is making things work again and he will be under pressure from your customers when on site. The last thing he will be thinking of is ‘is this covered by there SLA’. Unless of course it is clearly highlighted in front of him.

This also leads us on to the next element, the ability to either communicate with the sales team or create sales directly from the field.

 

A customer falling out of warranty is perhaps the easiest sell a company can have when the engineer is on site – as long as the engineer can show clear evidence that the repair falls out of the agreed contract.

If the engineer can simply add the charge onto the clients account there and then so he can go about resolving the issue then the sales process becomes both simple and effective.

Similarly as a trusted adviser the field service engineer is in a great position to upsell.

“I’ve fixed the problem with your printer and noticed your running low on toner and will probably run out within a week – shall I order some more for you” is one simple example and 99 times out of 100 the customer will surely say yes.

Order approval:

A critical functionality of any field service mobile app is to approve the work as soon as it is done.

By giving your field engineers the ability to have customers acknowledge the work carried out and having this data instantly recorded in your back office system you are not only able to gather information on your field service engineers productivity but also have clear documentation of your work being approved should any dispute arise between you and your customers.

Communicating back to HQ:

Of course order approval is not the only metric you can assess your field engineers  productivity on. Every interaction the field engineer makes with the app provides the opportunity for further data collection on both the engineer themselves and the customer.

For example – is the engineer spending longer on each job than is average amongst his peers – in which case is training required? What about the travel between each job? Is he taking longer than expected? Or is regularly making journeys in less time than you would expect – perhaps indicating he is driving over the speed limit?

What insight does he have into your customers? Has there been a change in personnel since the last company visit? Can your engineer update the CRM system? Perhaps anecdotally he hears that your customers are thinking of expanding – can he arrange for a member of the sales team to come and speak with your customer about how you can ease that process?

 

What about the device he’s working on? Is he seeing common faults at each customer he visits?

Could this result in a design improvement if fed back into R&D?

Important data is everywhere and there are few better equipped to collect it than a field service engineer. Giving them the right tools to transmit that data to the place it has most value is a crucial part of the field service mobile app.

Conclusion: Understand your engineers workflow.

As we mentioned at the very beginning of this white paper the introduction of the concept of end-to-end field service is both emerging and ill defined as yet.

What we have tried to achieve in this white paper is take you as a field service professional whether it be on the side of IT, business leadership or operations, through an end to end journey of how at each stage technology can play a part in streamlining your field service operations.

 

However, not only is the topic itself vast but so to are the resulting options and it is far too easy to end up making costly mistakes in such an environment.

Therefore it is absolutely key to develop a road map that plots your path to developing an end to end service management solution and the only place to start that road map is by stepping outside of your existing framework and understanding two key concepts.

Firstly what do your customers require from you in terms of service, and secondly what is your field engineers daily workflow?

Once you have an understanding of both of these questions then you are in position to build up your solution to enhance and improve these two areas.

It may seem like the longer path in the early stages, however, ultimately such an approach will take you where you need to be far more effectively.

There is also an accompanying white paper to this series which is available to download here

This series is sponsored by:

 

 

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Tools to do the job – hardware

In this series we are tackling the topic of end to end field service and exploring the technology options across each stage of the service call lifecycle.

In part one we looked at taking that request, and in part two we focused on getting the right engineer to the right place at the right time.

There is also an accompanying white paper to this series which is available to download here

In the previous features in this series we have looked at the transition from identifying the need for a service call and gathering as much information as possible to allow us to understand the requirements of that specific call out.

Following that we have looked at the importance of being able to have a 360 degree view across internal systems to enable us to get the right engineer to the job, with all the required tools and parts needed to complete the fix and of course to ensure that the service we are delivering is covered by our customers contracts so we are not giving our valuable service away for free.

All good! So now lets focus on empowering our field service engineers when they are on the job.

Paper is just so 20th Century

Having just had a field engineer visit my own home who was still required to fulfil the documentation of his work in paper based format I was amazed at how cumbersome this approach was and the sheer waste of productivity his organisation (one of the UK’s largest glaziers) must be facing.

Seeing it there in front of me as I signed forms in triplicate it really dawned on me that moving to a digital means of working is no longer a nice to have but a must.

 

Not only is there the very simple business case that moving to a digital first medium will almost certainly pay for itself when you factor in the saved man hours in needless administration (not to mention sheer paper costs!) but also the perception.

Despite the engineer being polite, friendly and doing a great job, I still felt I was dealing with an organisation that weren’t as professional as they should be. In the consumer realm this has some impact on the level of brand trust. In a business to business environment – this could be the difference between choosing your company or your competitors.

So if the decision to go mobile and finally turn away from paper is a given – the question becomes no longer why but how – and this is where there are almost as many variables as answers.

Is BYOD the answer?

 

Perhaps the biggest of these  questions centres around BYOD. The BYOD trend has been much vaunted for many years but has yet to truly take off in the UK and Europe as it has done in the United States.

Whilst the benefits are clear – less cost, quicker adoption and happier staff using the device of their choice, a counter argument surrounding security, insurance and the murky hidden costs of such a set up is easily made.

The emerging CYOD (choose your own device) could well take prominence as a solution that takes the best aspects of BYOD and negates the biggest fears.

However, it is my view that this debate is best left to the wider realm of enterprise mobility.

When selecting devices for field service engineers it is far more important to understand the requirements of their daily activities and then find a device that best suits those needs rather than try to utilise a variety of differing devices.

Build a case of requirements based on your field engineers’ workflow

Lets take a look again at the field engineer who visited my own home today as an example.

One of the first things that was evident was that he required a device that was big enough to accommodate the documentation of his work, much of which was form based. Therefore a smartphone or mini tablet device would have been cumbersome and the form factor that would have been preferable would have been either a more standard sized 10” tablet device or a laptop.

Despite their being a number of fields in each form the engineer completed, the actual level of data input was fairly minimal with short answers to most fields. Therefore the need for a keyboard is not huge so the portability of a tablet over a laptop comes more to the fore.

As his job was to measure up the windows we were to have replaced simple drawings were required within the forms that outlined the shape and style of each window. Therefore a pen input should be included for the device for ease of use.

Across one window there was potential for damage to our property during installation if not handled in the correct manner and scaffolding woul need to be erected. Photographic evidence of this would have been valuable not only for his companies due process but also in explaining where exactly the issue was. Therefore a camera should also be part of the device.

The engineer was working mostly indoors in a non hazardous environment so ruggedisation needn’t be a major consideration beyond perhaps a secure case for accidental drops etc. Similarly as the engineer was visiting mostly commercial homes additional connectivity such as RFID and NFC don’t generally come into play either.

 

And there we have it by taking into consideration our field engineers requirements we are able to identify a mobile tool that is right for his workflow.

In this instance a consumer unit such as Samsung Note 10.1 or perhaps the Microsoft Surface with a semi-rugged cover would be sufficient. In more manufacturing based environment a specifically designed rugged device maybe required. If you’re field engineer is servicing connected devices then RFID or NFC can become hugely important. Or perhaps a barcode scanner is required?

Also consider periphery devices, does your customer require a printed receipt for work carried out? In which case a wireless printer in the back of  the engineers van could be essential.

Maybe the engineer has to input large amounts of data manually so a keyboard is essential – in which case a laptop or perhaps a convertible is the way to go.

The important part here is to take a step back and assess the needs of your field service engineers and then select your devices accordingly.

The technology certainly exists to meet most demands however; it is also easy to end up selecting a device on reputation and either missing functionality you need or paying for functionality that your engineers may never use.
 
There is also an accompanying white paper to this series which is available to download here

This series is sponsored by:

 

 

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End to end field service was one of the biggest buzz phrases heard across the past year and there is good reason for the movement as at each step of the field service cycle there is an opportunity to streamline your workflow...

In the first part of this series we looked at the technology that can be put in place to aid taking the request for service including web-chat, call centres and web based self-help solutions. Now in the second part of the series we focus on how technology can help us ensure we get the right engineer, to the right job at the right time...

There is also an accompanying white paper to this series which is available to download here

Whether it be via call centre agent notes or customer provided information on a self-help portal, the one key focus of all of the should be to collect enough information to allow the effective dispatch of a field service engineer (or engineers depending on the task) with the correct qualifications to the job whilst simultaneously ordering any required parts so the engineer has everything at his disposal required to resolve the issue on the first call out.

Therefore it is absolutely critical that you can move this information from a to b as seamlessly and painlessly as possible.

Your organisation may well operate an ERP system that was designed to achieve this and this will sit at the heart of your businesses systems including the service elements.

However, just as we were in the early nineties when the term ERP was first coined and in 2000 when Gartner declared ERP is dead – Long Live ERP II  we are transitioning from one generation of technology to the next and one of the major balancing acts we must undertake is ensuring compatibility with legacy systems as we upgrade certain programmes or modules.

 

Employing dedicated system integrators to tailor software to fit within your existing framework can be an expensive process. Indeed research by Field Service News showed that well over a third (38%) of companies faced issues with integrating software with their legacy systems.

The good news however is that more and more software providers are focussing on integration solutions as they roll out their next gen solutions.

Take for example Solarvista NET  a key component in the software providers latest suite of solutions and is a technology that's designed to enable connection both to  Solarvista 8 but also other systems in a manner that's flexible, reliable, secure.

And as integration issues are minimised it will become that much easier to configure a system that is tailored to your individual organisational needs. However for most service organisations there are generally three fundamental functions that need to be considered.

These are the ability to schedule your workforce to get the right engineer to the right appointments, the ability to manage your assets and order parts as required and the ability to manage and view your contracts.

Scheduling:

The most important aspect of your field service operation is of course your field engineers. They are almost certainly one of your biggest costs as well so managing them effectively is vital if you are going to operate a service division as a profit centre rather than a cost drain on the wider business.

Sending an under qualified engineer or an engineer without the tools required to complete the repair not only causes a delay in resolving your customer’s issue but also represents a days labour cost simply thrown away.

Also for any business it is important to have as many staff as possible in customer facing roles where they can potentially contribute to revenue streams. Regardless of how skilled your dispatchers are their role remains a lower tiered operational one where they can never directly impact revenue.

 

Therefore it makes good economic sense to have fewer resources dedicated to the back office dispatch and more allocated to the field.

This is where the inclusion of a modern scheduling engine is absolutely critical. Research by Field Service News identified that almost half (49%) of companies still using manual processes to dispatch their field engineers were able to manage just 5 field engineers per dispatcher. The same research showed that an average ratio of engineers to dispatchers in companies using any form of scheduling was 16:1.

Basically the introduction of scheduling engines resulted in an improvement in dispatch productivity of at least 300%.

There are a number of different types of scheduling available and the type that is right for your organisation is dependent on a number of factors, for large organisations with many hundreds if not thousands of engineers then an optimised solution maybe preferred.

For those companies with smaller mobile workforces then perhaps a simpler assisted scheduling solution may fit the bill.

Certainly there can be considerable differences in terms of costs and smaller organisations simply may never reap the rewards of the more costly option. Many specialist service management software providers will offer both an optimised and an assisted solution and recommend you the option that is best for your company.

 

For example Solarvista offer both solutions however at 80% more expensive they will only recommend their fully optimised solution to those companies who they believe will truly benefit from the solution.

Whichever level of optimisation you select however, your scheduling system should be able to collate data from both your workforce’s skill sets and your customers requirements and either make recommendations or optimise a day’s schedule accordingly.

What is certain though is that whiteboards, post-it notes and Exel spread sheets simply won’t cut the mustard anymore.

Asset Management/Parts Ordering:

Of course getting the right engineer to the right job is all well and good but it becomes a moot exercise if he doesn’t have the parts required to complete his task.

The next vital element within a service management solution is being able to both track your existing assets and also to easily order parts not in your existing inventory.

As well as being a key factor in helping achieve the field service nirvana of first time fix rates there is also another highly important reason such functionality is a crucial part of a service management solution.

From a business perspective tying up funds in unnecessary inventory either in a depot or worse in the back of your engineers’ vans places an unnecessary burden on cash flow also.

Contract management:

The third element that is essential for almost every field service organisation within a service management solution is contract management.

This again has a two-fold importance.

On the one hand clear understanding of your service agreement with each customer is absolutely critical to ensure that you are not giving away valuable service offerings outside of your agreed SLAs. The flip side of this of course the same insight also provides clear upsell opportunities.

There is also an accompanying white paper to this series which is available to download here

This series is sponsored by:

 

End to end field service was one of the biggest buzz phrases heard across the past year. At trade shows, in the industry press and not least from a considerable number of field service technology providers themselves we kept hearing that ‘end-to-end’ was a core consideration that field service organisations should be factoring on when exploring how they can modernise their current service management systems.

However, there was and still remains a number of inconsistencies around exactly what is end-to-end field service management. Is it a case of having all existing systems under one platform? Or perhaps just the need to have each of our various components within the field service chain talking to each other? Is it a software or hardware solution – or is it both?

As with any emerging concept it will take time to substantiate into clearly defined parameters (if ever). However, one thing is certain, taking in a comprehensive overview of each step in the lifecycle of a service call within your organisation is certainly an advisable route to take before even contemplating moving to a next generation solution be it hardware, software or both.

Whilst the service journey may differ from organisation to organisation, as in reality, no two companies are identical, yet there are key points within the service cycle that will likely exist within most organisations.

In this new series we will look across some of these points and explore some of the technology solutions that could help both you and your company in achieving higher first time fix rates and better field service productivity.

There is also an accompanying white paper to this series which is available to download here

Incoming – taking the service request

Of course in most instances the first part of the service call lifecycle starts with the initial call for a service request itself. However, in today’s age of apps and internet is that first communication necessarily over the telephone? Well according to research undertaken by Field Service News earlier this year the telephone certainly remains the dominant means of communication between service companies and their clients with over 80% of companies operating a call centre.

Whilst having a dedicated phone line for service calls is a tried and trusted method of allowing a service call and it certainly has it’s place within field service organisations (particularly if staffed by knowledgeable agents with a clear understanding of both your products and systems as well as a great customer centric nature) if your call centre performs under par for any given reason it can reflect incredibly poorly on your brand as a whole.

 

Be honest… how many times have you been sat at the end of the phone listening to muzak and being told your call is important for the umpteenth time and you’ve thought less than positive thoughts about the provider your trying to reach.

And if your trying to reach someone, just so you can the product you paid good money for back up and running as it is impacting on your ability to do business… well you can crank that frustration all the way up to 11.

Of course, in many cases especially in a business to business environment, Service Level Agreement’s can include quicker call response times etc, but the fact remains that phoning a call centre can potentially be both time consuming and frustrating. In today’s technologically rich environment a call centre should be one option you offer your customers not the only option.

So how else could we accept and log a service call?

Well a case could be made for email. Indeed the same research as above identified email as the second most common means of service companies accepting service request with 63% of companies also offering an email option. On the plus side, like the phone it is something that we all know and are familiar with. However, there are also a number of potential pitfalls that could cause problems with email.

Firstly it isn’t necessarily a system that conveys urgency particularly well. Unless you have someone who is monitoring an email account as their sole focus response times could vary from minutes to days.

 

Not particularly helpful if you want to offer consistency in your response times, yet ensuring a service request email account is monitored could be both complex to manage and poor use of available resources. Also with email communication it can be hard to get a clear grasp of the exact issue your customer is facing – they may not know the correct terminology for example.

Going through a series of preliminary questions during a phone conversation may take just a few minutes and can greatly help in identifying the issue, resulting in better diagnosis and higher likelihood of a first time fix.

Over email this could easily become a laborious, long winded process over a number of emails that could span days rather than minutes. Again not good if your product is business critical to your customer.

Why hasn’t web taken firmer foothold?

Given the potential limitations of both phone and email it is surprising that so few companies have explored alternatives such as self-help portals, web-chat and mobile apps, yet only 29% of companies had the functionality of booking appointments online, and only 5% had this functionality via an app.

One obvious issue around giving your customers the power to schedule appointments is of course once again the lack of opportunity to understand the issue which would likely result in a higher proportion of service visits being ‘diagnosis’ rather than fix. One solution around this is to build in some form of diagnosis ahead of the form submission.

This could take a number of formats. One that telecoms provider Sky use well for example is to guide the customer through a series of questions that either lead to the customer achieving a fix themselves or a diagnosis of the problem that is a lot more fine tuned. The process for example could be as follows. Your customer logs in to request call.

The web portal asks the customer a series of questions the answers to each prompt a suggested fix, if this is unsuccessful further questions, further refining the diagnosis and so on. Of course you don’t want the process to be too drawn out but the customer could quite easily try two or three common fixes before being granted access to a service request form. The information gleaned from the form could then be easily included within the pre-dispatch data.

For example we know the problem is not A, B or C so it is likely D or E.

 

Therefore your dispatch knows to send an engineer who is capable of dealing with and has the right tools to fix D or E. Another means of getting this insight is web-chat systems.

Web chat basically combines the benefits of phone in that it is possible to question the customer in real time to improve the diagnosis, yet is cheaper to operate and can offer a more convenient means of contact for the customer.

UK Blue Chip British Telecoms are one company that have heavily explored the potential of web-chat portals. Nicola Millard, Customer Experience Futurologist at BT Global Services commented:

“We found that web chat is considered to be an equivalent and often superior method of working compared to calls…. our research identifies a double bonus: both advisors and customers like using it and it leads to cost savings for contact centre operators. For these reasons, we expect web chat to continue to grow as a channel.”

With smart phones now pretty much ubiquitous across most developed nations it is also worth considering your customers journey in reaching you also.

 Studies have indicated that 50% of smart phone users prefer to use apps for contact than phone and many of the web tools mentioned (plus the option to move to a phone call if desired) can all be integrated into an app seamlessly.

 

Whilst each of the above may have their plusses and minuses what is important is to remember that logging a service request is the first step in an incredibly important process in terms of how your customers perceive your levels of service. Get it right and you can likely expect this customer to remain loyal, get it wrong and it is your competition that will benefit.

Therefore it is important to ensure you are providing your customer with the options that he prefers (some may prefer the phone, others online for example) but that also allows you to collect the right information to ensure you can correctly diagnose as many issues as possible to feed into the service request which will ultimately help keep your field service engineers productivity at a maximum.    

There is also an accompanying white paper to this series which is available to download here

This series is sponsored by:

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Field Service News podcast. This time we are pleased to bring you an exclusive guest podcast created by Paul Adams of specialist service management software providers Solarvista.

Paul takes a look at how the Cloud, Mobile and Enterprise Systems can be brought together in a modern Service Management system and takes time to look at various aspects of each of these elements whilst avoiding jargon and taking some complex discussions and explaining them in simple easy to understand ways. An excellent overview for the those working in service management that are trying to get their head around some of the core technologies that are driving service management forward into the twenty first century.
To download the full podcast just click here and complete the brief registration form!
PLease note that this is a joint promotion between Field Service News and Solarvista Ltd. By downloading the podcast you agree to our terms and conditions laid out in the privacy policy here

Want to know more about Solarvista? Check out their page in the Field Service News Directory here

The great BYOD debate is one that has been raging in field service for some time and it shows no sign of abating. Here Paul Adams of Solarvista takes a look at both sides of the discussion... 

The BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) debate is one that has received much coverage in recent months with some in the service sector as well as other industries arguing that BYOD is the only way forward for businesses looking to compete effectively and offer the most efficient customer service and increased employee satisfaction. But what is BYOD? What is the impact on the business, the workers, and the customers?

A complete move to BYOD is not going to be right for every business in every service sector, but a lot of businesses may already be partaking in some kind of BYOD scheme without even realising. For example, if employees have access to company emails on their personal mobile phone or tablet or another device then this is, in effect, BYOD. In fact research has found that globally 60% of full-time employees use BYOD to some extent. (Gabriel, 2013)

So what actually is BYOD?

Simply, “Bring Your Own Device” refers to employees having the ability to connect their own technical devices such as smart phones, laptops and tablets to the company’s network instead of using a device owned by the company. Recent years have seen an influx of workers bringing their own personal devices into their work environment and using them in their everyday jobs (Millard, 2011). In fact, 95% of employees have used their own device in work (Gens et al, 2013) and the majority already use their own personal device for a variety of work-related tasks, including communication, content creation and admin (Ellis et al, 2012).

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

There are a number of advantages to BYOD for both the user of the device and the company employing that user. However, the other side of the debate – the potential pitfalls that a company may face because of BYOD – tend to be less obvious. Below are some examples, but not an exhaustive list, both from the user and business perspective.

Advantages

• Personal choice
• Better work life balance
• Improved productivity
• No cost for equipment
• Decreased support and training costs

Disadvantages

• Financial responsibility
• “Always available”
• Loss, theft or damage
• Information and network security
• Increased support costs

[quote]58% of IT security and audit experts view employee-owned devices as a security risk to the enterprise.

 

Conclusion

BYOD represents the tipping point from corporate-led IT to consumer-driven IT; corporate IT now significantly lags behind the consumer market (Millard, 2011) and this has had a dramatic effect on the desire of employees to use their own devices at work. It is a trend that is set to continue throughout 2014 and beyond.

Over the last couple of years, these devices have become integrated into everyday life for most people as result of the ‘always on’ nature of social media and the 24/7 online world. With the lightning speed at which technology is progressing it is maybe neither cost-effective nor practical for businesses to update their employees’ technological devices as often as both the company and the employee might wish. Therefore, BYOD has become the natural solution to this problem.

However, there are a number of key considerations when implementing any kind of BYOD scheme in the workplace. Most notably these are around security; of your company’s data and networks, of access to your systems and around confidentiality. The use of industrial-strength security approaches, such as Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory, is important to deliver this with confidence.

[quote]One size increasingly doesn’t fit all in terms of tools and technologies for work. The challenge is for the IT department to ensure their business is secure.

 

Also, there are a number of functionality and cost implications worth noting. If you need particular functionality from your devices that is only available on expensive corporate hardware, then BYOD may not even be applicable at the moment. Here at Solarvista, our new line of cross-device mobile apps offers a good feature set but it will be mid-2015 before the sheer volume of functionality is available on all platforms. There are big challenges ahead in ensuring the business remains secure whilst also adopting working methods that are becoming ever more prevalent and popular. It is important to know that BYOD, according to the experts, isn’t going anywhere. Therefore there should be no rush to implement it without giving proper consideration to all the ways it will affect your business, your employees and ultimately your customers.

Resource Type: White Paper
Title: Resource: 21st Century Field Service: The impact of the Internet of Things on Field Service
About: In our latest white paper 21^st Century field service: The impact of the Internet of Things, we look at how once again technology will reshape the way field service operates. The following is compiled from extracts of that white paper
Download: Download the white paper by clicking here    

We are living in the most exciting of times:

In the first decade of the twenty first century we saw technology change the way that field service operates.

When GPS arrived in the mid nineties devices such as TomTom’s GO & Garmin’s Street Pilot Range soon became commonplace and today just 5% of companies see routing software as an urgent purchase simply because the market has reached saturation.

The options for mapping software come in a number of options from one of which being on yet another device that has had a huge impact on field service technology – the smart phone.

The purpose of this brief jog along memory lane?

Just try and think of how your field engineers could function without either of these technologies today? Sure they got by, but these tools, along with a number of other breakthroughs made field service that much more efficient.

Thinking of how we worked in the early nineties seems like stepping back into the dark ages. Yet, the technological advances of the twenty first century and are set to be completely eclipsed as the evolution of field service moves ever onward.

In many experts eyes the biggest of these advances is the Internet of Things (IoT)

The benefits of IoT are clearly defined and tangible to field service, and whilst the concepts may seem futuristic in reality in many of the elements of IoT can be harnessed already using existing technologies.

Internet of Things 101

The term Internet of Things was first coined some 15 years ago having been proposed by British technology pioneer Kevin Ashton and largely does what it says on the tin. In a famous article for RFID Journal Ashcroft outlined the concept explaining:

“If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things—using data they gathered without any help from us—we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost.”

 The idea itself is fairly simple. If we give the ordinary items that surround us the ability to essentially communicate with the world without the need for human input, the world would run just that much smoother.

 

With RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) essentially the ability has existed for a while for such data transfer although other tracking technologies such as NFC (near field communications) digital watermarking, low powered Bluetooth, QR codes and their humbler, older cousin the barcode can also provide the same solution.

The Internet of Things in the consumer realm

In the past it was often enterprise level technology that led to a consumer counterpart, in the twenty first century we are beginning to see something of a reversal of that trend and in the world of IoT we are once again seeing this to perhaps be the case.

Major consumer grade electronics developers have entered the race to conquer the emerging ‘smart-home’ market this year with Samsung, Apple and Google all being connected with the increasing M&A activities in the ‘smart-home technology’ sector across recent times.

So with a competitive market place opening up it seems the futuristic smart home, one of the most tangible elements of IoT, could be with us much sooner than we think.

Now this is all well and good but what does it mean for field service?

Internet of Things and Field Service

There are obvious benefits for field service in a world where all of our household devices and business appliances are smart and able to communicate when their own parts are beginning to deteriorate or faults are beginning to appear.

This leads to proactive preventative maintenance, which will in turn see first time fix rates soar. Such solutions could also see the lines between product sales and service sales potentially blurring, as service becomes an intrinsic, built in function of all devices in the future.

Rolls Royce’s Power by the Hour:

However, this isn’t a necessarily new concept. A great example of such an approach is the way in which Rolls Royce pioneered their ‘Power by the Hour’ service solution. The British firm actually first coined the phrase way back in the 1960’s and the concept is essentially a simple one.

Their customers pay for the engines that power their aircraft measured by the time that the planes are actually in flight.

In practice this is a complex and sophisticated blend of contract that incorporates service and product seamlessly and today uses the latest technology available including Big Data and Machine to Machine (M2M) diagnostics to allow Rolls Royce to proactively monitor the status of each and every engine they have in operation and to be able to undertake proactive maintenance when and where required.

Essentially achieving everything that IoT based field service solutions promise to deliver.

Costa Coffee: Saving twenty first century offices from mediocre coffee

Another British company that are using the tools of the twenty first century is Whitbread’s Costa Coffee Chain, the second largest in the world and who recently announced the launch of their digital baristas.

Vending machines with IoT capabilities that can collate and interpret data that can be utilised both in service and sales.

Such an intelligent machine again offers many field service benefits like being able to predict when it needs maintenance, what the likely faults are, even what type of priority level it should be attributed given its predicted sales revenue.

The revolution is upon us...

Preparing for the IoT revolution is not a question of why, but more a question of when and as our white paper reveals the early stages of IoT adoption in field service are already underway, so surely the when needs to be now.

Download the white paper to find out more by clicking this link and completing the brief registration form.

Paul Adams, Marketing and development manager at Solarvista looks at why no two field service companies are ever quite the same and what that means when choosing service management software...

 'At Solarvista, we have implemented hundreds of service management and workforce mobilisation systems over the years. And the biggest thing we have learned over that time is that everyone in service management does everything differently… even in the same industry sectors!

This issue became quite a big problem for us. We’d be approached by a prospective user in the same industry sector as current customers (they were often referred to us by them) and we’d think, “Great, we have a service management solution off the shelf for you”. Then, we’d find out that they did just about everything differently! Ouch.

We’d pitch modifications that required the use of developers going into the core product and making changes to meet those needs. In itself, quite a workable proposition and we’d done this successfully for many years. But as we grew, managing this code change became more costly to us, and sometimes to the customer. And it’s fair to say that developers don’t come cheap.

The ‘gaps’ that we normally address with specific modifications or code usually are categorised as:

1. Missing functionality
2. Integration to legacy systems
3. Logic or business logic modifications/additions

 

To our customers, these gaps needed to be filled to ensure a successful, efficient solution was implemented. But, deep down, it often felt risky to them… they couldn’t see what they were getting until the latter stages of the project, when maximum resource exposure occurred. It doesn’t matter how good we are as developers, it’s only natural to feel anxious about such risks.

We needed to do something that enabled us to address the (mostly) totally different needs of each customer without resorting to changing or modifying our product.

I’ve written in previous articles about our R&D effort in cloud based services and some of the answers came as a result of this research. In cloud systems, one of the key cost reduction drivers is “one version of software for all customers”. But we knew that this was contra to what service management systems need. After some deep thinking by our best developers, we managed to find a solution.

Firstly, we re-architected many parts of our software to offer, what we call, Extensibility. This means that we can add completely new client-side features, 100% integrated with the core product, without needing to modify a single line of the underlying product code. In other words, one version of software BUT with new functionality added specifically for the customer needs, which operates as if it’s part of the existing product (the user wouldn’t realise). Not only that, the feature can be added in (literally) hours or days (not weeks) and with no requirement to regression test the underlying product. This enabled us to address Missing Functionality and Business Logic Change issues.

This didn’t solve the problem of connecting to ever increasing legacy and partner systems however. Often we would need to read customer data from a corporate system, or update a third-party system of a partner company. In fact, we often built 30+ interfaces in one system! How could we do this without needing expensive development?

The answer came again from our R&D into cloud architecture. We thought about power supply adapters and how they could be “plugged” together to achieve a whole unit. From this we built something we call a Dynamic Adapter operating via our Service Bus system that allows us to connect as many systems together without needing to code a single line. Once again, one version of software, but implemented doing very (very) different things.

The results have been impressive. In fact, we have recently addressed the service management needs of a very famous coffee shop company using Extensibility and Bus/Adapter technology alone without needing any core changes to our products. Another, in the automotive sector, that had pulled out of a service management project with a competitor, has had 35 ‘gaps’ filled with this same technology.

Service management software is often standard. But this doesn’t mean you cannot have exactly what you want.

 

As the organisers of the Field Service Solutions Theatre at this year’s Service Management Expo, Field Service News was on hand to speak exclusively to a number of leading industry professionals straight as they stepped off the theatre podium. In this video series we are pleased to bring you the highlights from the Field Service Solutions Theatre.

Here we hear from Paul Adams, Marketing and Development Director with Solarvista. Adams discusses the journey Solarvista have gone through in re-developing their own very successful ERP solution to meet the demands of 21st Century service companies and how the benefits of improving technology are enabling smaller to mid sized companies to compete with those in enterprise.