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John Cameron outline some key areas of focus for organisations looking to improve the cash flow of their field service division...

 

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For equipment dealers and companies that manage large service operations, service-to-cash cycles can be a headache. Indeed, the gap between when a technician is assigned a job to when accounting receives payment and recognises the revenue, can turn out to be one of the most stressful tasks if it is prolonged. Why? Because it can put a squeeze on your cash flow and profits.

Aberdeen Group reports that the average service-to-cash cycle is 34 days, with the best performers able to reduce this to around 26 days.

 

What Causes Long Service to Cash Cycles? 

A recent Trimble study1 amongst equipment dealers and service organisations found that most payment delays will often lie in the service-to-invoice process.

The main reasons for this being:

1. Paper forms are still being used by technicians to capture job details

40 per cent of those surveyed either do not use mobile devices to capture data in the field or are still in the process of rolling it out. If technicians must wait until the end of the day to enter job information, or if back office staff must manually enter job data into a separate billing application, the closing of work orders will be delayed.

2. A lack of visibility into customer data 

When a work order is closed, not having instant access to view customer data, such as discounts, service contracts, warranty info and equipment data may delay the work order process in the back-office.

3. A lack of process automation

When an invoice is generated and sent to the customer, there is a lack of process automation that would otherwise enable invoice creation and email upon work completion. Automated workflows also lack when exceptions occur eg: if additional parts are needed during a repair. 39% of those surveyed admitted that it takes 14-30 days to get an invoice to a customer once the job has been completed.

4. A lack of visibility into job details for the customer

When a customer receives an invoice, there may be little or inconsistent job details added, so the customer disputes it. There may also be no process automation or easy-pay options causing the customer to be dissatisfied and payment is delayed. 48% of those surveyed had no process in place for their customers to pay online.

 

What is the Impact to the Business?

Long service-to-cash cycles tie up excessive amounts of cash for working capital, instead of using that money to grow the business. When the service workflow and cross-departments are not connected, there is no real-time view of what’s going on in the field. What’s more, if paper-based forms are being relied upon to inform billing departments, the service organisation can suffer from both delayed and missed revenue.

For example, all too often, a technician will arrive at a job to find out that there are multiple items that require a fix. He may perform these fixes, run over his allocated time for the job and forgets to jot his extra hours down as he urgently moves on to the next job. This may end up in customers not being billed for all relevant hours, resulting in missed service revenue.

 

How Can You Improve Your Service to Cash Cycles?

Turning service-to-cash starts with identifying obstructions that are holding you back from receiving payment quickly and accurately. These can be identified by mapping out your service workflow, from the back office, through schedule and dispatch, to those out in the field.

Since each customer has different service requirements and service delivery can be complex, connecting your entire service workflow with a flexible and automated solution and following a three-step “manage, mobilise, monitor” process, is vital to making sure that no money is left behind.

Manage

An advanced service workflow solution automates workflows and completely removes the unnecessary and error-prone task of having to manually enter the same information, multiple times, into different systems and duplicating work. Being able to pull up work orders, billing information, parts inventory, service contract information and customer data in real-time, from a single source, gives the customer a more tailored experience in a consistent, professional and timely manner.

It is important to ensure that the service workflow solution is fully integrated with other systems, such as ERP solutions, telematics devices and CRM platforms.

This should include a workflow that communicates in real-time with every other part of the business and allows for streamlined business processes that are repeatable, predictable and instantaneous. When done right, companies get service revenue into their business as quickly as possible.

Mobilise

Equipping technicians with a mobile device out in the field enables them to connect and share real-time information with the back office, customers and equipment. They can capture the exact parts used on a job and change work orders to accurately reflect what services were performed onsite, which means that no profit is left on the table. Additionally, if the technician was able to perform some preventative maintenance at the same time, they wouldn’t need to plan a return trip. Mobile service apps give the technician flexibility to pass this information back to the office at the push of a button.

Monitor

Adding GPS into the equation means that you can verify that technicians are at the job when they say they are. Tracking your technicians through their smart device or vehicle telematics allows you to accurately bill for the amount of time the technician was actually onsite. If a task overruns because its actual complexity wasn’t originally planned for, not only are you able to reschedule the following tasks, but you will also be able to recognise that additional time in the billing process.

The back office can be instantly alerted of job completion through both signature capture on the service app and geofencing to notify that the technician has left the area. This process enables invoice generation automatically, reducing the billing cycle.

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John Cameron, is General Manager, Trimble Field Service Management 

 

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Want to know more?! There is a detailed white paper on this topic which is available for fieldservicenews.com subscribers. Click the button below to get fully up to speed!

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Sponsored by:

 

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Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content.  

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Sergey Krasovski, Strategic Marketing Analyst, Trimble explores the opportunities that augmented reality can present for field service organisations... 

The mass and wide-scale adoption of augmented and mixed realities are gathering pace across a multitude of industries. To define, augmented reality refers to the process of superimposing a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world. Mixed reality is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations.

In the field service industry, this emerging technology can play a significant role in changing the way field technicians and the business collaborates to resolve technical issues, provide support and access documentation. Indeed, technologies such as AR smart glasses can overlay digital information (such as text, video or audio) onto the human field of view, interactively and in real-time. ABI Research sees a turning point for AR smart glasses, predicting that 21 million units of AR smart glasses will be shipped in 2020, with sales expected to reach $100 billion.

 

Optimizing Service Workflows

Mixed and AR technologies present strong use cases for the field service industry for optimizing service workflows. The ability to perform time-critical jobs thoroughly, quickly and first time around, by obtaining the right information from the correct source, is one.

Historically, service technicians had to sift through paper manuals or search their own memories to find a fix for complex equipment issues. This was an onerous process to go through and often resulted in a disgruntled customer. Today, however, Augmented Reality headsets provide technicians with the ability to communicate, collaborate and solve issues more efficiently. They could be dispatched to a job where they could see the service manual, real-time data and technical details about the product directly overlaid on it. There would be no need for a clunky laptop, phoning a colleague for assistance or contacting the back office for customer information; everything they need would be accessible with a flick of their head.

There is a big place for Augmented Reality in optimising service workflows. However, deploying new technology takes careful planning to realise the full benefits.

 

Empowering Less Skilled and Ageing Workforces

In mission-critical industries, such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture, ensuring that the service team captures knowledge and transfers it efficiently across the organization is a ‘must have’, not a ‘nice to have’. Asset downtime or system failure is not an option as it may result in entire projects grinding to a halt and monetary losses. Issue resolution needs to be quick and this is where collaborative video tools can best support a less skilled and ageing workforce.

 

"Video collaboration with augmented peer-to-peer help is being designed and implemented to connect less skilled technicians with more skilled ones remotely..."

 

Video collaboration with augmented peer-to-peer help is being designed and implemented to connect less skilled technicians with more skilled ones remotely. A technician with specific areas of expertise may reside in an office and virtually walk an apprentice through a service call, step-by-step. Markups can be made during a video call between an expert and field technician to visually show what needs doing and to be sure the field technician is clear about what to perform service on. The expert can draw a circle or arrow on a screen to highlight a specific area, eliminating costly mistakes.

There are parts of the world where you can’t get the right expertise for a job or flying out a specialist may prove too costly for a company. Augmented reality eradicates these concerns by allowing experts to take those of less skill through the entire process. Not with a manual and not on the phone, but they can actually see what they are doing.

Many technicians are performing this peer-to-peer help in ad hoc ways today; using tools like Facetime and Skype. This, however, has resulted in issues. For example, sending a facetime request to another technician can be very disruptive. It is also difficult for the technician requesting help to know who to contact and if they are available. Whilst the time spent by the expert is not often tracked. For organizations that want to successfully scale this technology, they need to consider how to integrate it more tightly into the service workflow.

 

"As technicians age and a new crop of workers join the business, it is imperative that the latter be able to leverage past knowledge. An ageing workforce is putting pressure on service organisations..."

 

As technicians age and a new crop of workers joins the business, it is imperative that the latter be able to leverage past knowledge. An ageing workforce is putting pressure on service organisations. The benefit of augmented or virtual reality is its potential as a highly detailed, highly visual training tool. Companies are recording repairs being performed on older pieces of equipment to be used as a reference by less experienced technicians. By utilising augmented reality to make markups pointing to specific equipment details, service companies can create a searchable library using descriptive metadata, and hashtags for quick access. This is a great way to offer on-the-job training and avoids the downtime and loss of productivity associated with having the entire team come into the office to learn new techniques.

Collaborative video tools not only provide the field team with the real-time assistance when solving complex issues, they also connect field service to the entire organization. Indeed, video content, such as markups and screenshots, can be captured by augmented reality tools and stored in a cloud. The stored data can then be tied with a work order and include valuable metadata such as geolocation, type of equipment, date of last service etc. If such data is centrally stored and can be easily accessed, it could be used for purposes like new technician training, proof of work and so on.

For more information on how you can look to roll out augmented reality across your field service operations, visit: www.trimblepulse.com

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Contact information for Trimble Pulse:

Key Contact: Brant Carter
Phone: 01473 696300
Email: fsm_enquiries@trimble.com
Web: www.trimble.com/fsm

Services Provided by Trimble Pulse:

• Scheduling & Workforce Optimisation
• Performance Management Analytics
• Driver Safety
• Audit Trail
• Business Intelligence
• Reporting Tools
• Fleet Management
• Vehicle Diagnostics

All about Trimble Pulse:

Trimble Field Service Management provides visibility into field and fleet operations so businesses can streamline efficiency and increase productivity.

The Field Service Management suite includes work management and scheduling, performance analytics, fleet management and mobility solutions that transform the effectiveness of work, workers and assets in the field. The cloud-based portfolio allows Trimble to offer customers industry-specific, enterprise-level solutions for exceptional performance and ease of use.

Trimble helps companies around the world transform their world of work. Through our intelligent solutions Trimble delivers critical value across multiple business areas, from Operations and Service to Fleet and HR, ultimately enabling the measurement and management needed to drive significant business improvements.

 

Demanding customers, the squeeze on the bottom line and keeping up with the technology curve are all issues in today’s field service organisations and the need to deliver customer service excellence while balancing costs is imperative to any business. Trimble can help you achieve this balance, creating the perfect workday for you and your customers.

Enabling business improvement

Our solutions have helped our customers’ achieve results including: [unordered_list style="bullet"]

• 11% Increase in service revenue
• 9% Improvement in workforce productivity
• 31% Reduction in daily mileage
• 22% Reduction in fuel consumption
• 32% Improvement in fleet utilisation
• 21% Reduction in vehicle and operating costs

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