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Trimble Field Service Management are bringing together a panel of field service leaders and industry exerts from around the globe to participate in a virtual summit which will be focusing on the shape of the industry today.

The summit, Transform Service Delivery: A Global Perspective will be held on Thursday 3^rd April and follows on from the launch of a new research paper from Trimble FSM entitled Transforming Service Delivery: An Insight Report, and addresses issues and challenges that are faced by field service organisations today.

There are five speakers scheduled to participate in the event whose presentations will cover topics including change management, emerging technologies, mobile resources, issue resolution, performance excellence and future trends.

The Aberdeen Group’s Aly Pinder, will lead the presentations discussing “Breaking through the roadblocks to deliver exceptional customer service.”

He will then be followed by:

• Anil Tiwari, solutions architect at Trimble Field Service Management, discussing Leveraging Data to Optimise Field Operations
• Barry White, CEO of G7 Consulting, discussing Effective Change Management: Strategies for Success
• Nate Vineyard, director of operations & performance for Multiband, discussing Managing the Mobile Workforce
• Sharon Clancy, editor of m.logistics, speaking on What the Future Holds for Field Service

• Sarah Nicastro, publisher and editor in chief of Field Technologies magazine, will moderate.

To register for the summit, or to obtain a recording of the event click here

 

When building, developing or establishing a service business there are numerous factors that need to be considered. However, the most fundamental strategy to ensure service excellence is delivered remains one of the simplest. The customer needs to be at the heart of all your endeavours. This fact was at the top of the agenda during a recent webinar that was hosted by the Aberdeen group and Trimble FSM.

During the session some very interesting points were made by Aberdeen Analyst Aly Pinder during a Q&A session. Indeed Pinder asserts that best-in-class businesses are united in putting the customer at the centre of their field service operations.

Whilst field service has always been an undertaking with the customer at its centre, across the industry globally we are currently seeing a renewed focus on improving the customer experience. Simultaneously field service technologies become more and more refined enabling vast improvements in managing and monitoring how service is delivered.

Furthermore communicating these improvements to the customer base is another factor in building a reputation for such service excellence.

In PInders words  “Providing better customer reporting is essential and it is important to relay the data that you’re collecting back to the customer, allowing them to effectively be an advocate and partner of your business.”

In fact Pinder provided a neat example of this highlighting those companies that are now applying predictive or preventative maintenance. Such companies have a fantastic story of delivering such advanced customer service through adopting such a proactive approach, and the customer really should be made aware of it. A satisfied customer, who feels reassured that they are in competent hands with their service organisation is fantastic ambassador with the potential to help drive higher levels of engagement between the two parties moving forward.

Another interesting point that Pinder makes is that within the mobile workforce there are different skill sets, beyond those that we would consider essential to the field engineer’s role, that are exploitable. For example some of your field engineers may be particularly effective salesmen with a natural gregarious demeanour, an obvious asset. Yet not all field engineers may be so comfortable to don a salesman’s hat. However, there are other opportunities beyond direct selling. Field technicians are in touch with the customer and those less suited to sales can add value bringing in customer data from the field.

Some companies have moved towards incentivising their field staff, although Pinder advises stepping carefully down this path.

Pinder comments: “This is not necessarily the right thing to do for every company as you need to understand the skill set of your technicians and understand which technicians could be good sellers and which aren’t…” 

However he also identifies the benefits of this route also adding:

“For those organisations that understand the skill sets of their technicians, incentivise technicians that are really good at selling and incentivise those that aren’t good at selling at bringing that data back in and passing that along to the sales and marketing team.”

Perhaps the biggest issue in the shift from cost centre to profit centre that Pinder identified was the devaluing of the service experience.

There are many different elements of a field service organisation that can deeply affect the customer experience and both sales and marketing can have a major impact. Often, sales representatives will bundle service in for free as part of the overall sale. Pinder believes this is a dangerous path to follow.

“When a sale is given away for free your ability to deliver that ‘exceptional service experience’ is greatly devalued. Therefore, ensuring your sales organisation understands the value of service internally and that they can communicate that to your end customers is important.”  Pinder commented.

One additional area that perhaps doesn’t get the credit that it deserves for its impact on the final impact on customer experience is engineering and design. Pinder also identified this as a two way street.

“Best-in-class organisations pull in data from technicians, give that back to engineering and design and have those teams create products that fulfil customer needs. The technician incorporates the insight provided by customers to create a product or new service that is tailored to customer needs.”

Whilst best-in-class companies push the boundaries of service excellence, at the other end of the scale there are three common issues that Aberdeen have identified that field service companies are not meeting which result in dissatisfied customers. These were:

The technician did not resolve the issue first time, The wait for the appointment was too long, The technician didn’t show up for the appointment at all

Companies can address these fundamental problems and improve the customer experience they deliver simply by making sure the technician to be sent to the appointment has the correct skills set and tools for the job and ensuring communication with the customer around appointment times is accurate and reliable.

Discussing this Mark Forrest, general manager of Trimble Field Service Management commented:

“Achieving customer satisfaction in today’s marketplace is tough. On-time performance is the Holy Grail – problems must be solved the first time, and solved effectively. 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 first time.”

He continued: “Businesses can address the challenge of making better in-day decisions by utilising a work management self-learning tool. To avoid large data set-up exercises of skill sets and work areas, a self-learning tool supports the assignment of work orders to the field technicians by remembering who has the right skills and their usual work areas. The user also has the ability to enquire what has been learnt by the system and correct it.”

A full recording of the webinar can be downloaded here 

Find out more about Trimble including video, news and features in our directory listing here.

To download the full report please visit www.trimble.com/fsm  

 

Trimble has recently announced that they will be providing both their GeoManager Fleet Management and their Driver Safety Solutions to one of the UK’s food industry’s leading service, maintenance and supply company Millers Vanguard. The technology has been implemented in order to help the business stream line its field service operations and improve customer service.

The GeoManager Fleet Management solution boasts real-time visibility into day-to-day fleet operations, which can potentially help Millers Vanguard see major improvements in their service performance and productivity, with faster and more accurate response times a major benefit. In addition, with the availability of real-time status information, communication with customers and drivers about service call timing can also be improved.

"We pride ourselves on offering the best support to our customers, delivered to the highest standard and Trimble's technology is integral in helping us to achieve this," said Mo Williams, operations manager at Millers Vanguard.

"The real-time location intelligence and trip management tools provided by Trimble Fleet Management will allow us to optimise route planning, reduce unscheduled stops and allocate tasks to a technician closest to a call out. This can help us to respond to customer requests as quickly and as efficiently as possible and will help us to improve productivity, with technicians being able to complete more jobs per day."

As well as implementing the Trimble Fleet Management solution, Millers Vanguard will also be using Trimble Driver Safety to monitor and review driving behavior across its fleet.

"We are delighted to be working with Millers Vanguard to help improve the safety of their employees," said Mark Forrest, general manager of Trimble's Field Service Management Division.

"Trimble Driver Safety allows aggressive maneuvers, such as hard acceleration, braking, turns and speed to be recorded, offering real-time feedback to the driver as well as a complete analysis for the back office. "This insight means that training can then be provided to individuals to improve their driving style which will not only help reduce accidents and vehicle downtime, but will also help reduce the fleet's fuel consumption and carbon footprint."

Finally Trimble vehicle diagnostics will be implemented across the fleet to assist with vehicle management.

The vehicle diagnostic solutions provide real-time data so information can be drawn directly from the vehicle. The information delivered includes alerts about engine problems before they become a major problem, fault codes and real-time insight into fuel consumption, including miles per gallon (mpg) and emissions per vehicle. All of these factors help the fleet management team identify where fuel is being wasted on poorly performing vehicles.

By efficiently managing its vehicles through vehicle diagnostics, Millers Vanguard are able to preserve their assets, extend vehicle life and increase productivity through lowering the risk of mechanical failure.

 

Find out more about Trimble, including, videos cases studies and news and features in our online directory here. 

Managing a field service operation in today’s marketplace is not an easy feat and there are many barriers that need to be overcome and steps that need to be taken in order to execute a perfect workday. Trimble FSM's Mark Forrest explains how this can be achieved. 

With customer expectations at an all-time high, the pressure to deliver the best service performance has never been higher and it is a clear objective for any field service company that wants to remain competitive. However, budget constraints have led businesses having to achieve service excellence with fewer resources, resulting in meeting SLA Commitments, providing short appointment windows and ensuring the ‘first time fix’ that much harder to achieve.

When it comes to managing a field operation and achieving the perfect workday, it is often supposed that knowing each vehicle’s position would be at the heart of the solution. However, it isn’t where the vehicles are that’s important, its where the engineer or field service worker is and what they are doing that is of paramount concern, as ultimately they are the ones providing the service to the end customer.

So executing  a ‘perfect’ mobile workday may be a rarity as field service workers are regularly faced with obstacles often out of their control. For example, jobs may overrun as they turn out to be more complicated than first thought, emergency work may come in which changes the day’s schedule or traffic congestion and vehicle breakdown can cause delays or failure to meet an appointment. Additionally, with workers calling in sick, starting late or getting lost; all these factors can impact adversely on the productivity of the workforce. With much field-based work becoming increasingly mission-critical in terms of timing, skills and consequence more importantly than ever companies need to ensure that their field service is not derailed by unpredictable dynamics of the working day.

Achieve your perfect work schedule

In a recent survey by The Service Council, nearly half of organisations highlighted their interest in broader investments in field service in the next 12-24 months[1]. Developments in Work Management technologies, for field services, have come to the fore as solutions able to transform the way in which work is performed, through intelligent scheduling tools and advanced performance 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.

Such capabilities helps to increase the profitability of service delivery as it allows the field service manager to schedule tasks to meet SLAs, produce efficient routes to reduce travel time, fuel costs and overtime and ensures work is only given to those with the right skills.

Many organisations schedule tasks based on a technician’s allocated territory, however selecting the most knowledgeable technician, or one who has the right tools or parts in their vehicle, is also crucial. 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 first time. AberdeenGroup[2] 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 help with intelligent scheduling. They incorporate an algorithm that quickly learns preferences for each mobile worker and will allocate tasks accordingly. This includes geography (which mobile workers normally service particular areas) and skill (learns what skills mobile workers have and to what degree they are qualified to do particular types of work).The first step to managing productivity requires field service managers to get the right people with the right skills with the right assets to the right place within a set time and the self-learner tool significantly helps in achieving this.

Optimise productivity to achieve quality of service through greater business intelligence

It is important to remember that technology is purely an enabler and measuring the effectiveness of technology is just as important as the initial install. It is the management information and performance management analysis and how this is used that is fundamental in meeting business targets. A survey by the Service Council confirmed that performance management and visibility was a major area of concern in field service. Reassuringly, developments in workforce management technology have begun to offer a solution to these concerns.

Performance Management Analytics (PMA) provides field service managers with the visibility to analyse the productivity of their fleet operations. For example, scheduling statistics for individual workers can be recorded from the start of the day and compared with the position at the end of the day. Based on actual location data, easily digestible performance reports can be generated and customised to showcase the key metrics of a field operation. These can range from if the quality of service has been met/failed, utilisation (total time vs. time spent on tasks), efficiency (actual vs. estimated task duration), total tasks completed, total fuel usage and total distance travelled.

By adopting PMA the field service manager is provided with the visibility to identify what is preventing the company from doing more jobs and able to identify gaps in the working day where mobile workers could be utilised elsewhere.

An additional capability of the technology is that it provides the field service manager with the ability to learn from day-to-day experiences. Data can be collected about the trends in the field, the type of jobs that overrun, the number of commitments met and the performance of individual and groups of service workers. If, for example, a service worker takes 40 minutes for a particular task whereas the average for others is two hours, then is that worker cutting corners or are they simply an outstanding employee? Conversely, if taking two hours as opposed to 40 minutes then do they need additional training?

Such integration not only ensures that all relevant stakeholders across different business units have the salient information they need to manage the daily performance of the organisation, but the performance analysis also helps feed into strategic business planning on targets, budgets and resourcing.

Ultimately, the capabilities provided by Work Management technologies overcomes the business challenges field service companies have been faced with for years. How do I know what is really happening in my field service operations? How do I know that what my workers say they are doing is true? How can I get more jobs done per day? What prevents me from doing more work? How good is the quality of service? How effectively are resources being met? Taking a holistic approach across field operations and obtaining visibility into the work in its entirety is essential and the business intelligence provided by Work Management technology achieves this, suggesting that the old adage of ‘you cannot manage what you cannot measure’ certainly rings true.

To find out how to achieve your perfect workday, demonstration videos are available, featuring Aubrey Fox, Work Management Product Manager for Trimble Field Service Management:

Performance Analytics - http://www.youtube.com/embed/bIjrXqG60KE

Scheduling and Optimisation - http://www.youtube.com/embed/cFO__9_IK-g

A recently published study from Aberdeen Group commissioned by Trimble FSM has found that the best-performing field service organisations are extremely focused on improving service, and to achieve that, they are leveraging performance analytics to launch new initiatives and enhance existing ones. As a result, they are reaching higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The report, Secrets to Optimize Field Service for Better Customer Experience, written by Aberdeen analyst Aly Pinder, revealed that top performers exceed customer expectations and SLA goals in their efforts to retain valuable customers, and that customer satisfaction is a leading contributor to their success.

Streamlining service in the field and improving efficiency are key objectives of today's executives, the report stated. Customer experience is a top priority, and organisations are leveraging analytics to drive quality and enhance customer interactions. More than 50 per cent of the organisations surveyed say they use performance data to evaluate the effectiveness of their service.

The field service organisation traditionally has been evaluated based on operational metrics such as workforce utilisation and overtime costs.

This model worked best when field service pursued a break/fix strategy but is no longer the only path to service differentiation and success, the report found. Customer experience must now be at the centre of the entire service operation's strategy.

Organisations meeting 80 per cent of their customer service requirements for issue resolution times on average are able to retain 12 per cent more customers than those that meet only half of their customer requirements, the report says. With service a key factor in customer loyalty and a leading indicator of field service success, it is critical that companies deliver on what they've promised, when they've promised it. For businesses with mobile workers in the field, it becomes even more important to achieve excellence in delivering services

 The report is available here (registration required) 

Manage the unexpected out of the mobile work day

With customer expectations at an all-time high in an increasingly competitive marketplace, the pressure for field service businesses to deliver best-in-class performance has never been higher. Providing excellent service delivery is a clear priority and for the mobile worker, their importance has shifted from one of operational necessity to strategic value.

With a number of obstacles to contend with out of the control of the technician, may it be traffic congestion or vehicle breakdown, there is never a ‘perfect’ mobile work day. But with work becoming increasingly mission-critical, companies need to ensure that their field service is not derailed by unpredictable dynamics of the working day. A technician is only as good as the tools he has to work with so the support of a solution to manage work efficiently and effectively is of the utmost importance to achieving service delivery excellence.

Trimble’s ‘Road Ahead’ report unveiled that customer satisfaction is ranked as the number one priority for field service businesses and 49 per cent of respondents agreed that the latest field-based technology would help them achieve their goals. Many operations directors see technology as an enabler with 41 per cent stating they will invest in workforce planning and investment and 44 per cent see planning and scheduling as the greatest opportunity for investment.

Investment in technology in the form of work management solutions provide far reaching benefits including:

• Increase productivity up to 30% with intelligent, in-day scheduling
• Improve dispatch efficiency by up to 60%
• Decrease drive time and mileage by up to20% per job
• Reduce overtime expenses by up to 70%

Take control of the unpredictable work day

Industries which run field service operations are often mission critical in what they do and require skilled staff to execute compliance focused work which is often variable and complex (location and task). The perfect mobile workday would start off with all employees reporting for work on time, there will be plenty of spare capacity for daily tasks, all vehicles will be operational, all recipients will be available and no drivers will come across any traffic delays or vehicle breakdowns. However this is rarely a reality and contending with these issues head on is the first step to maintaining a consistent and sustainable flow of productivity across field service operations.

The first step to managing productivity requires field service managers to get the right people with the right skills with the right assets to the right place within a set time. Performance management is vital and a modern work management solution can assist with this. It provides real-time job status of each mobile worker as well as alerts for proactively managing productivity. For example, if a job is in jeopardy of being missed due to such circumstances as a technician being caught in traffic, a vehicle breaks down or a customer emergency comes up, work management solutions automatically highlight this and can adjust schedules and reassign work to meet the new requirements.

Furthermore, managers must be able to look at the total number of jobs attended per day per technician as well as being able to view the utilisation of their technicians, ie: the amount of time spent on work as opposed to transit or idle time, to avoid falling into the trap of having more work than there are resources. Work management solutions provide the capabilities of comparing planned vs. actual work done per day/shift and communicate to mobile workers via a laptop or smart phone so they can view work details, provide current work status and receive work assignments without returning to the office.

Prioritise on-time performance and create a mission critical culture

The cost to businesses of missed or late appointments affect them more now than they used to, as customers increasingly expect more for less, happy to shop around for services and, with the growth of social media, are much more able and likely to share their experiences of poor customer service. This is largely down to global companies such as Amazon and Tesco having set new expectations for reliable, quick and cheap service delivery, such as providing one-hour delivery slots. This has lead many companies, especially those that need to carry out a more complex and skilled service, such as boiler installations or fixing electrical problems, struggling to seek new ways to keep up with demand whilst remaining profitable and competitive.

Achieving customer satisfaction in today’s marketplace is tough. On-time performance is the Holy Grail – problems must be solved the first time, and solved effectively. Research by Aberdeen group revealed 65% of incoming service requests require a field visit or a dispatch and nearly 26% of these dispatches fail to resolve the problem, requiring secondary or additional follow-up visits. AberdeenGroup also report that that 57 per cent of organisations say that their biggest customer complaint is that the technician does not resolve the issue first time. This may be due to not having the right part or tools, not having the right skills or not enough time to complete the job.[1]

Issues like this can be avoided if companies focus on ‘processing productivity’ by taking a bird’s eye view of the end-to-end process. They need to know what the problem is, who is qualified to solve it, notify them of the task, know where they are, when they will arrive and when the job is done. Taking these necessary steps to avoid a return visit, by making sure a qualified technician with the right tools and parts for the job is sent, will maintain productivity and ensure customer satisfaction. Aberdeen’s research found that Best-in-Class (the top 20%) performers had mean success ratios of 92% for meeting response or project completion deadlines, 88% for first-time fixes, and 83% for workforce utilisation.

The power of work management

Work Management solutions can greatly improve first time fix rates. Not only do they allocate the right worker, with the right skills, for the right job but back-end logistics like drive-time, route-booking, expected time of visit, and allotted time for the job are all analysed for efficiency, leaving staff with the information and time they need to do their jobs.

Furthermore, businesses can address the challenge of making better in-day decisions by utilising a work management self-learning tool. To avoid large data set-up exercises of skill sets and work areas, a self-learning tool supports the assignment of work orders to the field technicians by remembering who has the right skills and their usual work areas. The user also has the ability to enquire what has been learnt by the system and correct it.

The information managers can take from the analysed data that the solution can provide is significant. For example, they can analyse the time it takes a certain technician to do a job compared to another. If the time difference varies significantly they can determine if one is cutting corners to complete a job or if he/she has found a better way to do it more efficiently.   This analysis helps with the challenge all businesses face in how to balance service and cost.

More and more extreme weather events are occurring around the globe and the UK in particular has experienced a strengthening in the severity of extreme weather over the past few years. In recent days we have seen terrible and tragic after-effects of severer weather in The Philippines and Sardinia. Only a few weeks ago we saw southern England brought to a standstill as hurricane-force winds and torrential rain battered the region with gusts of almost 100mph ripping up trees, causing flash flooding and leaving at least 220,000 homes without power.

The severity of extreme weather events varies.  Sometimes the damage is limited but in some cases, and indeed following today’s events, there is widespread damage such as flooded basements, broken gas lines, impassable roads and interruptions in cable and phone service.

There is a lot of pressure on field service organisations to respond to these disasters. Road-clearing crews and utility workers, for instance, get dispatched as soon as the situation permits. Plumbers, electricians, construction workers and HVAC technicians are sent to the scene to reconnect services and rebuild damaged structures.

Telematics, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping, GPS and cellular communications have been playing an increasing role in guiding field service teams, tracking progress and assigning workers in the aftermath of extreme weather events where safety is a concern. As an increasing number of organisations take advantage of these technologies they are becoming more sophisticated, offering new ways to be efficient and responsive.

Field service technology for the unexpected

An increasing number of Field Service organisations are adopting next-generation workforce management solutions which leverage Fleet Management technology and GPS data to deliver real-time information about worker and vehicle locations and the progress of their work. It provides dynamic scheduling tools to optimise in-day and scheduled work, and performance analytics that help make on-the-spot resource deployment decisions as well as prepare for future events.

The technology provides dispatchers and managers full visibility into work in the field so they can better plan and track the work. Centralised consoles and dynamic GIS maps offer real-time visibility on crew locations. A dispatcher knows exactly when a worker(s) arrive at a job, how long they spend there, and when they leave. So when an assignment is completed, the dispatcher can send the crew to the next task in a smarter, more efficient way and, rather than sending a crew across town for the next assignment, the dispatcher looks on the digital map to see where the nearest job is. Shorter distances between jobs mean less time traveling and more time restoring service.

The technology also collects data on the experience and preferences of workers. If a field worker is more familiar than others with a certain area of town, it makes sense to send that worker to assignments there because the worker already knows back roads, shortcuts and the general lay of the land. In addition, next-generation workforce management solutions feature self-learning tools that “learn” workers’ preferences on geography and types of tasks, which helps fine-tune the assignment of workers to needed tasks. It also helps to reduce overtime costs, travel time and missed assignments.

As the workday progresses, managers and dispatchers receive a constant stream of information on GPS location coordinates and the amount of time spent on each assignment. If certain roads are impassable, dispatchers can plan alternative routes to avoid delays. Using fleet management, dispatchers can route drivers around roads shut by fallen trees or flooding. This helps optimise routing and worker productivity, while improving worker safety.

When workforce management is in use, an exception management tool takes note of when tasks are at risk of being missed and a customer may be in danger and not receiving critical service. Alerts are sent to dispatchers about such situations and other scheduling issues so that they can react and reassign field teams as needed.

Future planning

Beyond field situations, workforce management delivers analytics about the performance and responsiveness of each worker and team. Organisations compile the data into reports for review to spot trends and the need for improvements. For instance, if crews took too long to arrive, managers can better plan standby crews for future situations.

Use of analytical data helps improve productivity, making it possible to complete more jobs per day, and helps control costs. For field service organisations, squeezing more jobs into one day in the aftermath of a disaster accelerates the resumption of operations, which helps to minimise lost revenue and bring employees back to work more quickly. It also creates goodwill among customers, who often get frustrated when service restoration takes too long, especially after a storm or strong winds.

Workforce management increases accountability as well, by collecting accurate, reliable information on field operations and associated costs. Managers are better equipped to make the right decisions regarding resource deployment during emergencies and on a daily basis. Beyond that, organisations that base decisions on accurate, meaningful information that reveals historical patterns, trends and metrics can respond more effectively to not only day-to-day tasks but to the next storm, flood, heat wave or blizzard.

International examples

The municipal utility in Anderson, IN, USA has adopted Trimble Field Management, a GPS-based field services management technology. Before that, when ice storms, blizzards or thunderstorms pulled down power lines in Anderson, the utility department tracked its crews by making phone calls and writing their positions on a chalkboard. “When there were storms, the board looked like a chess game. Now, we know exactly where each vehicle is and can schedule repairs by a truck’s proximity to the outage,” says Jason Tuck, GIS consultant and former GIS Manager for Anderson Municipal Power & Light Division. “We can see our trucks real-time on a map and make faster and more confident decisions because we know their locations are more accurate.”

The public works department in Brookline, USA, can immediately respond to stranded crews by tracking their progress constantly. “Now if there’s a snowstorm and a truck breaks down, we know exactly where to find it and the driver,” says Mark Parece, the town’s fleet manager.

At White Mountain Oil & Propane, North Conway, NH, Trimble Fleet Management technology has proven invaluable in such cases. “Managers can receive off-hours service or emergency calls (when dispatch is closed), log in, and in a minute know exactly where the problem is and send help,” says Todd Miller, the company’s manager of administration. This can be lifesaving when power outages from an ice storm or blizzard leave the elderly or families stranded in freezing temperatures without heat.

Trimble Field Service Management's Aubrey Fox discusses the changing role of field service.