ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘white-papers-ebooks’ CATEGORY

Tom Devroy, Product Evangelist for IFS Service Management products outlines the various options available to field service organisations looking to improve their service management delivery...

Want to know more? Tom DeVroy has written a white paper on this project which is available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by IFS)

When Winston Churchill said, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail,” he wasn’t referring to field service businesses, but it still rings true. Field service organizations understand that efficient route planning is essential to being successful; smart routing is efficient and enables service technicians to become more productive by completing more jobs per day. However, they may be overlooking the added benefits of schedule optimization as an intrinsic part of the solution.

Any organization that needs to manage a mobile workforce—whether it’s for product delivery, service staff or service technicians—can benefit from planning software to simplify scheduling, manage workflows and improve the bottom line.

So what is it that businesses are trying to automate with scheduling and route planning? We ask this question frequently of field service organizations. There are a lot of products in the marketplace, and they all have a value proposition and price point, but each should also be expected to deliver a certain benefit for the cost.

The Essentials of Route Planning

Some businesses simply assign a certain number of jobs to a technician, usually based on geography, or customer visit frequency, and want software that will figure out a route for that technician to finish their assigned work.

This kind of routing software has been around for some time, and, in its simplest form, it’s something we all use frequently: it is navigation and turn-by-turn directions.

This kind of routing software has been around for some time, and, in its simplest form, it’s something we all use frequently: it is navigation and turn-by-turn directions.This basic form of simple route planning is built into almost every smart phone that has a global positioning system (GPS)-based navigation system.

More advanced navigation systems can interact with real-time traffic services to suggest the shortest journey from a time or mileage perspective. This is straightforward technology and quite inexpensive, as it’s usually included in your phone plan.

Service organizations don’t really have to invest much to receive the benefit of this type of simple route planning. However, this solution leaves a lot of decisions in the hands of the technician. This self-planning, self-scheduling method is very inefficient: who they choose to visit first and last can have a huge impact on productive time, drive time, overtime, fuel consumption, service level agreement (SLA) compliance, and customer satisfaction.

Ultimately, this solution will fail when jobs and SLAs are missed, or workloads become inefficient.

Optmizing Resources

Where field service organizations start to see a real payback is when they begin using scheduling software that includes travel calculations as part of the schedule.

The jobs assigned to the technician represent the demand, and the scheduling software manages the labor supply. The scheduling software determines the order and the resource, and considers workload balance, while the route planning software can create the best way to get from one location to the next.

This is a more intelligent, more encompassing planning method that produces a more reliable, scheduled plan. It also takes the subjectivity out of the hands of the technician and puts it back in the hands of management, but it only addresses productivity and cost saving at a cursory level.

Some planning software will take into consideration multiple variables to determine an optimized route.Some planning software will take into consideration multiple variables to determine an optimized route.

The trucking industry has used this kind of route planning software for some time. For instance, a trucker’s licensing and certifications could be considered for what type of equipment they can operate, how many hours they have driven on a given day, week, or month, and how much additional driving time they can be assigned. In this case, fuel consumption or total drive time can be factored into the optimum route as well. This can be fairly effective if the work that is planned throughout the day is static, or, in other words, is not subject to change.

Managing Complexity

In a service business, there can be a plethora of skill set considerations for each job. Perhaps a technician or subcontractor is not welcome at a particular customer site, or maybe the technician doesn’t have the right training on a given piece of equipment.

In simple terms, why send a journeyman to do the work of an apprentice? It is most advantageous for both the customer and the business to send the right resource for the job, based on all the available information at the time the job is assigned to the field, taking into consideration cost, location, capability, and customer expectations.

Many service businesses assign work based on a customer intimacy model; for instance, primary, secondary, tertiary technician (or subcontractor), but this model doesn’t always hold up. In other industries, particularly when the equipment is highly technical and often sold through distribution, the technician is the face of the company to the customer. Although this should be a consideration for who gets assigned to a job, it shouldn’t be the only one.

Dynamic Scheduling

The variability or dynamic nature of a service business manifests itself in other ways.

Besides calls sometimes taking longer than estimated, there are also unexpected traffic problems, emergency calls throughout the day, different prioritization of service work, other skills required to fix a given problem, customer commitments, unexpected fleet problems, and, finally, planned maintenance.

The variability or dynamic nature of a service business manifests itself in other ways.Whether guaranteed through a contract or mandated as an engineering change order, planned maintenance should be considered so that engineers are fully utilized. All of these variables should be balanced against optimum schedule efficiencies, like reduced total travel time, maximum productivity, minimized fuel expense, and least-cost resource assignment.

Having scheduling software that intelligently factors in the best way to assess these variables in a dynamic fashion is a differentiator to efficient service labor management.

Conclusion

The most important part of selecting a successful field service solution for your needs is to plan with your businesses goals in mind.

As you start to create a vision of where you want your service business to be, think about the long-term impact of all of the technology on your business from an operations standpoint. Lay out an implementation plan that will fold that technology into the organization as you are ready to absorb it. This paper just focused on planning and scheduling but other variables in the areas of technical support, contract administration, product management, service logistics and reverse logistics are equally important.

As it relates to moving your field people against customer demands, perhaps a simple route planning tool is where you want to start, but there may be a better way to significantly change and improve your service delivery by implementing solutions that allow you to get where you want to be. And that planning strategy is your best plan for success.

Want to know more? Tom DeVroy has written a white paper on this project which is available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by IFS)

Be social and share

Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief Editor, Kris Oldland's latest white paper, sponsored by eBECS, explores why field service organisations should be ensuring their field service technicians are collecting data from assets whilst on service calls even if they aren't ready to implement an IoT based approach to service delivery yet as by doing so they can reap some of the benefits and more importantly build the processes for a future world in which connectivity and data will be at the heart of customer service operations...

Want to know more? The bad news is the full white paper is only available exclusively for fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by eBECS

In today’s field service sector companies are facing an increasingly complex set of challenges and the collation and analysis of data paradoxically seem to often be found at both ends of the spectrum.

Data can be at the heart of many problems for a field service organisation as they struggle to find useful insight amongst ever-increasing banks of data locked away in differing business silos. Yet the rewards for breaking down those silos and also being able to identify where the insight is within your data can lead to better service levels than have ever been possible previously.

The vast amount of data that we have access to today can potentially give us a much more intimate understanding of our customer base than ever before, giving us the ability to understand and even predict their needs, far more accurately than we have ever been able to manage previously.

The vast amount of data that we have access to today can potentially give us a much more intimate understanding of our customer base than ever beforeHowever, the flip side of this benefit is that companies are now finding themselves drowning in data - which becomes meaningless without insight, a challenge which can be magnified further if data is locked away behind walls within an organisation.

It can be a daunting challenge to not only establish processes that allow the collection of data but also to ensure that when collected, data can move seamlessly across an organisation to fulfil its maximum potential. Yet in today’s business climate where service has become a core differentiator, there has perhaps never been a more urgent need to ensure you are harnessing every tool available to you in the most efficient manner in order to stay just one step ahead of the competition - and data certainly holds many of the keys to service excellence when it’s collected, processed and analysed correctly.

An interesting symptom of operating in a world of technological advancements, is that when we talk about data collection within a field service context the topic immediately turns to IoT - but in doing so are we overlooking one of the most important resource in a service organisation already at our disposal - the field service engineers themselves?

The importance of data collection in an increasingly connected world

The question of whether the Internet of Things will play a part in field service has been and gone. The answer was a resounding ‘yes it will.’

Research from Field Service News showed that 86% of companies were actively either developing plans to implement IoT or had already done so. Indeed, in terms of IoT and field service, the question for the overwhelming majority of companies has moved from why to how.

However, the impact of IoT in field service is set to be so revolutionary that it cannot just be viewed as a new technology to be rolled out, it is a decision which must be grounded with a firm understanding of your business strategies, your future goals and a rock solid foundation of both processes and technologies that can allow an organisation to fully reap the benefits of an IoT based service strategy.

But the revolution isn’t really an IoT revolution, it is a data revolution.

Asset performance data and even component performance data can open the doors towards moving towards both a more preventative maintenance focused approach as well as empowering your service engineers to be able to find a first-time-fix on a more regular basis.

Asset performance data and even component performance data can open the doors towards moving towards both a more preventative maintenance focused approach as well as empowering your service engineersYet, for many service organisations, the sheer volume of data that a fleet of connected assets will produce will cause a series of problems and pain points in and of itself.

With companies facing unprecedented levels of data coming into their service operation not only from IoT connected assets but also various digital customer touch points whether that be via contact agents, self-service portals or even sentiment analysis of relevant social media, finding meaning and value within such a deep data lakes can be a daunting task.

In addition to this, there is the further question of retrofitting assets that a discussion on IoT necessarily brings with it.

For organisations with a large install base there are a number of considerations that must be given thought including:

• Which assets are worth retrofitting with IoT connected sensors?
• Is it worth waiting for some assets in the field to reach their natural obsolescence and then replace them with newer connected models?
• Should you prioritise retrofitting assets for those clients that are the most profitable or will having multiple levels of service contract be a hindrance to service delivery?
• What data is it important to track from retro-fitted assets? What is essential and what is merely nice to have?
• What processes will you need to develop or adjust in order to facilitate this data within the workflow of your service delivery teams?

Want to know more? The bad news is the full white paper is only available exclusively for fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by eBECS

be social and share

Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Field Service News (commissioned by Tesseract)
Title: The Wind of Change: When and How to Implement your FSM System - A Guide to Change Management Best Practices

 

---

 

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Field Service Professional? Click here to apply for a complimentary industry subscription to Field Service News and get the resource "Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity" sent directly to your inbox now

---

 

Synopsis:

Within the last decade we have seen field service shift from being a necessary evil, to a core differentiator and even in some instances, to ultimately becoming the primary revenue stream.

Whilst this shift may not be as dramatic for all companies, you can be sure that almost every company with a field service operation – including you and your peers, will be at least some way along this path. What is also certain is that as you make your way along this path, at some point you will need to take a look at your current field service processes and the technology you are using to support them. Indeed, technology continues to play an increasingly important role in field service.

Your existing field service management (FSM) solution is likely to be well embedded within your workflow already - but as tools like the Internet of Things and Augmented Reality drive concepts such as ‘connected field service’ from futuristic vision to genuine process, an upgrade of your FSM system is going to be unavoidable. The problem is that a FSM solution is of course mission critical and therefore any disruption caused when changing such an important system must be managed and minimised.

With this in mind this white paper explores how to identify key signs that it is time to upgrade your FSM system as well as examining some best-practice thinking on implementation and change management methodologies.

 

---

 

Overview: 

The key topics discussed in this white paper include:

Knowing when to upgrade your FSM system:

Whilst knowing when it’s time to replace your FSM system is based on multiple factors unique to each organisation, there are a number of strong indicators you can monitor to help you make that call at the right time.

A selection of these include...

• Your Own Efficiency
• How does your tech investment compare to industry trends?
• Know your enemy
• Listen to your end-users
• Listen To Your Customers
• Regular reporting nightmares

Change Management Best Practice:

Let’s make no bones about it, a FSM system is mission critical. Whether you are implementing a system for the first time or switching from an older system to a modern equivalent, doing so is a significant change management project. If you are to minimise the negative impact of this program and reap the efficiency and productivity improvements (and see return on investment) as swiftly as possible, then getting that change management process right is very simply a must.

There will of course be different dynamics at play within every organisation, so a comprehensive and detailed plan, put together in a methodical and structured manner is imperative. However, there are certain factors that remain true in almost every change management scenario. Equally, there are widely adopted best practices that can be applied.

Also included in the white paper is a look some key considerations that sit at the heart of good change management:

Understand the task ahead

Change is hard, and without proper understanding of your goals and the challenges you face, successfully managing it can be at best a complicated and drawn out process and at worst an abject failure.

In fact, according to change management guru John Kotter, 70% of change management efforts fail and this is largely due to a lack of preparation, a lack of understanding of best practices or more often than not a combination of both. However, at the heart of every successful change management exercise there is one maxim that holds absolutely true. Change Management is always about people.

Engaging the Head and the Heart

For a change management program to be successful it is absolutely vital we acknowledge that change is about individuals, not organisations. Yes, change will be driven by organisational needs and requirements, but individuals will implement it - individuals will determine its success.

Given this notion, we must next consider how individuals will react to change. Successful change management is as much about feeling as it is about thinking. This is one of the key principals in the Kotter Change Management philosophy and is one that is widely accepted to be an important step on the change management journey.

Principals of Influence

Robert Cialdini’s six principals of influence are certainly also worth considering when planning your change management program and the white paper looks at each of these and how they relate to change management within a field service context. The Six Principals include:

• Reciprocity
• Commitment and consistency
• Social Proof
• Liking
• Authority
• Scarcity

The importance of the change agent:

The white paper explores what a ‘Change Agent’ is and why they are key to successful change management, is another important piece of the puzzle.

Gartner’s Elise Olding neatly sums up this approach stating, “Change resistance is a myth. Employees support enterprise goals when they understand what needs to be done. Change Agents put a face on change and leverage trusted informal leaders to create understanding among employees and influence organisational change”

Breaking down the barriers of resistance:

The goal of a successful change management program should not be to completely eradicate resistance to change - this is an impossible task that will take too much energy. Instead, focus on reducing the impact of resistance, and overcoming it as quickly as possible to move the change management project from concept to full adoption as swiftly as possible.

The true key to successful change management is minimising the impact of resistance in your workforce - and to achieve this we must understand the types of resistance we are likely to encounter.

Generally, these will come in three broad categories which hare explained within the white paper:

• I don’t get it
• I don’t trust you
• I don’t like it

Progressing through the adoption cycle:

Finally, the white paper explains why it is important to have an understanding of the various stages of adoption. In almost any organisation there are generally four groups of adopters that can be plotted on a standard Bell Curve.

Broadly speaking they should be categorised as follows:

• Early Adopters
• The Majority
• Laggards
• Naysayers

 

---

 

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Field Service Professional? Click here to apply for a complimentary industry subscription to Field Service News and get the resource "Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity" sent directly to your inbox now

---

 

Be social and share

Resource Type: Written Guide
Published by:  Cognito iQ
Title: Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity

 

---

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

 

Field Service Professional? Click here to apply for a complimentary industry subscription to Field Service News and get the resource "Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity" sent directly to your inbox now

---

 

Synopsis:

Outside of the field service industry, the growth of big data and analytics is old news. The most advanced organisations have already gone beyond the hype and have developed strategies that are delivering exciting performance-enhancing results. For example, Leicester City’s surprise Premier League win was based on the club’s expert use of football data analytics. Stories such as this are why Gartner say “Data and analytics are taking centre stage as the single most powerful catalyst for change in the enterprise”.

However, field service companies have been slower to achieve similar levels of success from the use of advanced analytics. Whilst in many organisations there is plenty of data available, it can be hard to use effectively: the data may not be sufficiently accurate or timely, and service professionals may lack the skills and tools they need. But this is changing. Field service organisations are getting smarter with both the data they collect and how they use it.

Over this series of three special guides, Cognito iQ demonstrate how simple analytics can make a significant difference to three key components of field service excellence:

• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Engagement
• Productivity (the subject of this first instalment)

 

Overview:

Topics covered and addressed in this white paper include:

Expectations of field service have never been higher

Customers are used to the speed of delivery and quality of service that they get from consumer companies such as Amazon; this has raised the bar for all service companies. Customers want a service appointment quickly, they want smaller appointment windows and they expect your field worker to have the right information as well as the skills, knowledge and parts to resolve their issue first time.

So how do field service organisations provide a better service to their customers, with fewer resources?

So how do you improve productivity?

To answer that question, you have to know what productivity means to your business. All businesses will have a different definition and an individual approach. For example, would you be happy to drive up the number of visits per day your field workers attend if that meant fewer first time fixes, or reduced customer satisfaction scores?

The old adage is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure but, these days, companies know that it is a bit more complicated than that – measurement for its own sake or using the wrong metrics to set targets can be counter-productive.

 

It is vital to know how to measure success: which metrics are useful and which aren’t, which can be accurately determined and which can’t, how metrics interact and how setting goals and targets will affect how employees go about their jobs.

Perfecting productivity

Continual improvement is a well-established practice that seeks to increase customer value, reduce waste and optimise resources via incremental change, feedback and analysis. These techniques originated in manufacturing; on a production line, it is relatively simple to measure variables such as number of defects, as you can easily see how the work is being done and you can observe the impact when you make changes to the process.

But as continual improvement methodologies have developed, they have been profitably applied in many other industries, so why not field service operations?

With the right data, it is possible to adopt a proactive, systematic approach, breaking down the processes within the operation.

 

---

 

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Field Service Professional? Click here to apply for a complimentary industry subscription to Field Service News and get the white paper "Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity" sent directly to your inbox now

 

---

 

Please note that by applying for subscription via the above links you consent to our Terms and Conditions as listed here.

Not one for a load of legalese? Neither are we - that's why we put together a jargon-free version of our T&Cs on our subscription page which you'll find here

 

---

 

Be social and share 

Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  IFS
Title: The IFS Digital Change Survey

 

---

 

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly.

(Please note that by applying for your subscription via this link you accept the terms and conditions here and a plain english version is available from our main subscriptions page here) 

 

---

 

Synopsis:

When a car leaves a factory, this no longer signifies the end of the relationship between manufacturer and vehicle. The car goes into the next stage of its lifecycle, where it must be maintained and serviced. Businesses are realising that this servicing offers a significant revenue stream. For example, automotive manufacturer margins on new vehicle sales range from eight to 14 per cent, whereas servicing a brake disc carries around a 65 per cent margin.

As businesses become service-oriented, digital transformation gives them the tools to change.

By enabling visibility of an asset using the Internet of Things (IoT), the provider can better understand its use in the real world and feed that back into its research and development (R&D) process. Any issues from the manufacturing process that affect usage and failure rates of equipment can be managed via the IoT feedback loop. Data analysis using business intelligence or big data and analytical tools can derive value from that data.

Historically, companies have seen service as a cost centre and a necessary evil. Now, Digital Transformation is enabling more organisations to realise the potential that service has as a profit centre. Yet there is considerable variation in maturity across the sector globally. This exclusive white paper by IFS offers key insights into their research of Digital Transformation and how it is being implemented.

Overview:

Service: Leading the Way

Across many industries, manufacturing and products have become commoditised; service is now the differentiator. The winners in the service sector are those able to stand apart through their ability to support a product across its lifecycle, or support a client whose services they manage.

When set against other sectors, service organisations are leading the field in innovation and transformation. It is the only sector in which respondents did not select ‘internal process efficiencies’ as being the key driver for digital transformation. The positive customer experience they offer is expected to allow them to increase margins and increase their customer base. Digital Transformation sits fully behind that growth, as it enables companies to innovate their offering, automate workload and build a picture of a customer’s world based on the data they receive.

 

The top five factors behind digital transformation reflect this potential, with four of the five being sales, innovation and customer relationship-driven. Chief among these is ‘growth opportunities in new markets’. In reality, these growth opportunities are not new but have been expanding for some 20+ years. What is changing is recognition of these opportunities. Many organisations have been slow to recognise service as being a key driver to their overall business success.

A  New Hope:

The service industry is reaching a critical point with its ageing workforce. An enormous level of knowledge, possessed by the veterans and gurus of the industry, is walking out of the door as these workers reach retirement, or are no longer effectively supported by the business. This can have more of an impact in service than anywhere else, as the level and quality of service on offer can be directly impacted by the individual that performs the service.

In developing and recruiting talent, DT has a significant role to play. Intelligent knowledge management systems can enable a six-month recruit to perform those maintenance or repair services that would have previously been the [quote float="right"]Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer

domain of a 10+ year veteran. Technologies such as augmented reality (in the form of Google Glass or Microsoft HoloLens), can be usedto virtually project onto the physical equipment an animated disassembly procedure for swapping out a part onto the physical equipment.

 

The greatest talent gaps reported by service providers are in the areas of business intelligence (BI) and cybersecurity, with the former particularly keenly felt in North America.

Big data/analytics and BI are crucial in supporting a quantifiable business, and unlike many other industries, service is very easy to measure. Metrics such as first-time fix rate, mean time to repair, mean time between services, and service level agreements are commonplace. It is crucial when marketing a service that the provider is able to cite a percentage level of service and agree that level with customers in their SLA.

Joining Forces:

The need for collaboration is higher in the services sector than in any other, based on the IFS cross-industry research. At a sector-wide level, the delta between desired levels of collaboration and actual levels of collaboration is 2.7 points on a ten-point scale, meaning there is a desire to increase levels of collaboration by 49 per cent.

 

Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer

 

The demand for close collaboration is not surprising – firms such as Dell have a fully outsourced service provision for their field technicians, which means a considerable source of potential revenue is in the hands of trusted third parties.

 

Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer, who is jointly judging the product and judging the service.

Given the delta, many firms are clearly still not optimised in their digital transformation and will need to achieve a stronger bond between their partners and their internal teams to realise the full value of servitization.

 

---

 

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly.

(Please note that by applying for your subscription via this link you accept the terms and conditions here and a plain english version is available from our main subscriptions page here) 

 

---

Be social and share

 

Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  ClickSoftware
Title: How the Internet of Things is Transforming Field Service

 

---

 

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Field Service Professional? Click here to apply for a complimentary industry subscription to Field Service News and get the white paper "Preparing for the Connected Customer" sent directly to your inbox now

---

Synopsis:

Gartner, Inc. forecasts that 6.4 billion connected “things” will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015, and will reach 20.8 billion by 20201. This interconnected world will provide a wealth of new opportunities for service organisations. It allows them to connect equipment with technicians’ mobile devices and the office in real time, enabling a rapid response to service requests and efficient remote diagnostics. Service is set to become increasingly proactive and cost-effective.

Field service lies at the heart of the Internet of Things (IoT) evolution. Advanced field service management (FSM) software can automatically receive messages from devices, and schedule and dispatch professionals, without any human interaction. But the opportunities for IoT go beyond inbound device signals over the internet.

The increase in intelligent service resources, such as drones and autonomous vehicles, offers benefits of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication that promise to transform the service industry.

Overview:

The Internet of Things

As the internet turns 25 years old, its impact continues to transform communications, industries, and lives. The original framework of point-to-point communication via a network of distributed hubs has evolved from email and dovetailed with advances in electrical and industrial engineering in a transformative way. The era of personal computers has evolved, through mobility and the smart phone revolution, to a point where connected devices take all manner of forms from biological implants to wearable fitness trackers.

Signals sent to and from connected devices are spiralling in volume. Big data management techniques, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud storage have come together to deliver insight from this abundance of data. This increases the opportunities for automating decisions and initiating actions without the need for human intervention. The benefits to organisations are numerous.

Remote monitoring applications already save billions in transport and human capital management costs. Add the potential positive impact on customer engagement and its associated business value, and the call to action becomes clear. A complete IoT strategy leads to better and faster decisions throughout the service delivery lifecycle.

Market Definitions

The Internet of Things is having major impact across both industrial and consumer sectors, and many bodies of research focus on these separately. We look at the two areas in this way:

• Industrial IoT (IIoT): IIoT refers to the application of the Internet of Things to the broad manufacturing industry. It’s often used interchangeably with the term “Industry 4.0,” which refers to the major transformational stages of the industrial economy. Examples of IIoT range from monitoring building management systems and power grids, to tracking manufactured goods as they are shipped
• Consumer IoT (CIoT): The Consumer Internet of Things (CIoT) consists of technologies that target the home market and consumer electronics. IDC reports3 that over 8 million US households already use some kind of home automation and control. Typified by remote monitoring capabilities for security, climate control, and remote control of household functions, CIoT also offers promise in areas such as networked home appliances with use cases such as refrigerators that automatically order more milk as needed.

IoT and Field Service

As the definitions around IIoT and CIoT show, there are ramifications for field service in both areas. Products that are being serviced are equally likely to be consumer goods or elements of a manufacturing eco-system in the context of business-to-business field service. The consumer and business areas are also intertwined as IoT adds a strong feedback loop that connects product usage and the associated service requirements to the manufacturing process itself. For example, wear and tear levels in real-world conditions can feed into product development through a network of sensors and influence the manufacturing process accordingly.

CIoT and IIoT are worthwhile segmentations to assess the market at a more granular level. But there are opportunities for innovation in IoT across the field service landscape. Furthermore, areas such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and ghost IT also create fuzzy lines between consumers individually and as part of an enterprise. The opportunity for field service is broad and not constrained to any sub-segment of the market.

Reactive vs Predictive

The increasing intelligence of devices and the hardware layer also impact the approach to service associated with the device. While unsophisticated devices can signal a need for service in the event of a system failure, the richer data from intelligent sensors enable a shift from reactive to proactive service. For example, indicators of failure enable long range service maintenance planning so devices can be kept running continuously and efficiently with an optimised cost profile.

From a resource optimisation perspective, this is of course preferable to responding, at high cost, to a sudden failure.

This point brings up a significant differentiator in IoT-based field service. In addition to developing machine learning models to learn more about the service chain, leading field service organisations excel at optimisation in the context of organisational business goals. This optimisation is important regardless of the sophistication of the information the sensors generate in the network. Even in a simple example, with a service requirement to address a non-functioning device, organisations with optimisation solutions can automatically schedule that service to ensure the appropriate balance of metrics, such as SLA compliance and field service professional overtime. And, with additional sophistication in the IoT sensor data to support more proactive use cases, this schedule optimisation is just as important to business success.

 

To unlock the potential of speed and automation, decision criteria must be determined and incorporated into a system flexible enough to handle the variety of data inputs and scenarios. Top field service software providers can offer a scheduling solution that incorporates countless data elements into the scheduling algorithm.

The full intelligence provided by the IoT network determines the appropriate service schedule for a device, including inspection, preventive maintenance, and repair. If required, it’s possible to incorporate a review of these IoT-generated telematics by a field service professional for additional human oversight.

 

---

 

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Field Service Professional? Click here to apply for a complimentary industry subscription to Field Service News and get the white paper "Preparing for the Connected Customer" sent directly to your inbox now

 

---

 

Be social and share

Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Field Service News (sponsored by Tesseract)
Title: Five fundamental elements to expect in a FSM system

---

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you this white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!

---

 

Synopsis:

Field Service Management technology has become essential to service delivery excellence. Service excellence is no longer a USP but a baseline requirement.

However, whilst technologies such as IoT and Augmented Reality are grabbing the headlines their potential is greatly diminished unless you have a fundamental layer of technology in place already.

This white paper explores what to expect from a FSM system and offers best-practice tips to help you get the most from your investment..

Overview

The white paper explores the following five key elements of a Field Service Management (FSM) System explaining the importance and offering best practice advice of how to get the most from your own system...

1. Contract Manager:

Contract management is often viewed as the starting point of almost everything within field service management operations. Without a view of your service contracts you cannot have to hand the answers for critical questions such as:

• What is the SLA on any given contract?
• Is a client under warranty or do they have an enhanced level of service contract?
• Does a contract include spare parts and/or consumables?
• Is the service contract due for renewal?[/unordered_list]

You could be at risk of potentially not meeting your clients expectations and so putting the potential of renewing or upselling service to that client in danger in the future – or on the other side of the coin, you could be giving valuable service away for free.

Therefore, Contract Management is perhaps the most important of the fundamental building blocks that you should expect to find within a modern field service management solution and perhaps the first area that you should make sure your team is fully versed in utilising.

2. Scheduling:

Scheduling comes in a number of different guises and the various different names given to types of scheduling options can be a somewhat confusing but broadly scheduling will come in three flavours:

• Assisted
• Optimised
• Dynamic

It is often assumed that a dynamic solution is required for a larger mobile workforce, but whilst the size of your workforce is certainly one consideration in which type of scheduling engine would best suit your service operation - this is not the only factor.

The complexity of the service work, as well as the variety of service jobs you undertake is another significant factor. For example an organisation that has a field workforce that services multiple different asset types – perhaps from multiple OEMs, and therefore has a number of different engineer requirements for differing jobs - would likely benefit far more from an optimised scheduling engine than an organisation that just fixes one or two types of assets for which all of their engineers are qualified to undertake repairs and maintenance.

3. Mobile tools and communications::

It is fair to say that the biggest revolution in field service has come from the rapid explosion in mobile computing power. Today’s smartphones are capable of greater computing tasks than even the laptops of just a few years back. For the field service organisation this is fantastic as it puts information at the field service engineers finger tips, empowers them to spend more time on maintenance and repair and less on activities such as paper work and enables them to deliver a far more effective and impressive service experience for the customer. Also, with the advent of smart phones, and then latterly tablets, has come greater communications tools than we could have ever expected ten years ago.

For example, engineer to engineer communications are seamless in today’s world, whether it be using dedicated built-for-purpose business tools or even free to use consumer solutions such as WhatsApp or Skype. From a FSM solution standpoint again whilst a mobile app was a USP, an add on or even a separate solution entirely just a few short years ago, now almost all FSM solutions will come with some mobile offering included.

 

However, whilst the mobile element in FSM technology is constantly evolving, essentially the most fundamental and core aspect that you want a mobile aspect of a FSM solution to do is to mirror your back-end solution and to do so in real-time.

4. Parts & Inventory Management::

Parts and Inventory management is perhaps an area that in the past has not received the focus and attention that it requires. It has often been the mantra of field service organisations that they are aiming to the get the right engineer to the right job, at the right time.

But that all becomes moot if the right engineer doesn’t have the right parts to hand as well. Consistently at industry conferences parts management remains a hot button and a common pain point for a huge amount of organisations. So whilst it is exciting to talk about emerging technologies such as IoT and Augmented Reality - a primary focus should be on ensuring our field service operation is as efficient as possible at a fundamental level, and that means getting a grip on parts management.

And whilst of course there are supply chain and logistics aspects to the conversation which can make things complicated – especially when you are using third party contractors – one of the most crucial aspects of good parts and inventory management is utilising a system that can keep track of where your inventory, including van inventory, is at any given point.

5. Integration:

We are living in a world of data lakes, data rivers, data mountains and all other types of data topography it seems! But all these vast swathes of data are meaningless unless you are able to draw insight from it, and quite often that means being able to let the data flow seamlessly from one set of business applications to another.

 

Of course, our vision of the future is that everything will be plug and play and all technologies will play well together nicely, but we aren’t quite there yet.

 

This is why integration is absolutely key in any modern business system – including FSM. Of course, our vision of the future is that everything will be plug and play and all technologies will play well together nicely, but we aren’t quite there yet.

 

Integration varies from provider to provider but often it is led by the integrations they have been asked to undertake, so if your current provider or a provider you have identified as being a good fit for your business don’t advertise integration with a specific system you are using – it is worth discussing the possibilities with them - especially if it is a common platform as making their product integrate may be useful for other future clients also.

 

---

 

This White Paper offers further details on each of the above elements and how to get the most from them.

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you this white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Resource Type: eBook
Published by:  Solarvista
Title: The top 10 “often forgotten” risks when selecting field service management software

---

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you this white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!

---

 

Synopsis:

Selecting the right solution to meet your field service software needs is crucial. This eBook explores 10 often overlooked risks that companies must consider when selecting a FSM solution that could save expense and time during and after implementation.

Overview

The eBook focusses on ten often overlooked considerations field service organisations should address when selecting a new field service management solution. As well as identifying pitfalls to be aware of the eBook also looks at means of overcoming them.

The areas of focus within the eBook include:

1. It won’t actually do what you need it to do:

This seems an obvious one and one that everyone is aware of, right? Well, not quite. Defining how any software works (and especially with field service software) is a difficult and abstract exercise and unless you work in IT as a professional (and even then you are likely to find it hard), it’s an almost impossible to be truly 100% sure that the software will do what you need it to do.

2. It’s hard to access on the devices that people really want to use:

Over the last few years, the march of new smartphone devices has exploded and of course everyone has a position about “which platform is best”.

In reality, they all have their pros and cons. Devices shouldn’t be the deciding factor. You should let people use the device they feel most comfortable with. Some might prefer iPhones, some might prefer Android etc., some Windows tablets etc.

3. It won’t connect well (or easily) to your existing systems:

Let’s face it, integration is the bug-bear of any project. Over the years, different approaches have surfaced, each one meant to “make it easy” and, whilst there has been some success, it’s mostly, by its nature, hard to get right.

It’s not so much the technology, as the process and its impact upon resulting products you may have.

4. You buy it against a fully “thought-through” RFP documents, demos and then you find out it cannot do a particular feature exactly as you need it:

This sounds like it shouldn’t happen; after all, you spent a lot of time asking every stakeholder what they needed. But so often in this scenario, we see a good 10-20% of functionality is forgotten about and it’s need is only encountered “in project”.

This causes significant scheduling, resources and budget issues. Where do you find the extra time or money to pay for such expansion of scope?

5. Once implemented, your processes and needs change, so the system becomes less relevant and/or effective:

In selecting a product and vendor, you need to make sure that the future is catered for. You are buying a future, not just for today. Your business will change and the software needs to change with it.

6. The system slows down once in heavy use and over time:

One of the key reasons for choosing a new system may be that you want a more responsive system than the current older one. The performance of software is hard to predict, especially on systems and networks used for other purposes too, such as in-house servers and networks.

To mitigate this risk, the best solution is the cloud. With cloud computing, you have virtually limitless CPU, database and network power at your disposal.

7. Your staff don’t embrace the tool enough or it doesn’t get used properly:

Let’s start by saying this isn’t a criticism. But it’s human nature (and proven dynamic) that products that are easy to use, get used the most. Field service management software falls into “complex ERP” and certainly some parts of all ERP software is complex. The users at greatest risk of this phenomenon are mobile users, such as field engineers & technicians.

8. Information isn’t connected together so getting business intelligence is difficult:

Any ERP solution will generate vast quantities of data. Getting real insight from all this data is, again, a tricky task. We see so many systems procured where the business intelligence (“BI”) is assumed to be something done AFTER the system is implemented.

9. The time it takes to implement is longer than envisaged:

We’ve already mentioned several reasons why predicting the duration of an implementation can be difficult. But by avoiding many of these mistakes, the risk to timeline can be reduced or even eliminated.

One good way we recommend to make sure you meet timelines desired (and perhaps more importantly, budget!) is to use “Agile Project” styles for both procurement and implementation.

10. You start well, but as staff leave and new people join, the use of the system degrades and it becomes less useful/relevant:

We often see this referred to as “death by a thousand cuts”. It’s more common than many think. And almost impossible to see happening unless you look closely. Slowly, over time, your people lose contact with the software, function by function, process by process.

 

---

 

This eBook offers further details on each of the above challenges and how to overcome them.

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you this white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Resource Type: eBook
Published by:  Trimble
Title: A Connected World: Field Service Insight Report

---

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you this white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!

---

 

Synopsis:

Having been amongst its earliest adopters, field service organisations are well aware of the role that connectivity has in their everyday operations.

By the nature of field service a wide range of elements come into play and the difference between what makes a great working day or a poor one, are all too often to do with how these components are connected.

Overview

The eBook focusses on four key areas in which the connected world is impacting field service delivery - Connected Operations, Connected Customers, Connected Workforce, and Connected Intelligence.

Connected Operations:

The success of a field service organisation hinges on getting all parts of the organisation – the back office, the mobile workforce, the fleet management and billing and finance – working together.

Field service technologies have a critical role to play in connecting the many elements involved in the operations across the organisation and the eBook explores how the connected operation could look, not in the future but today.

Connected Customers:

Customer service is widely recognised as being the number one business priority with a proven link between customer satisfaction, retention and profitability.

Aberdeen Group report that organisations that reached a 90 percent plus customer satisfaction rate achieved an annual 6.1 percent increase in service, 3.7 percent growth in overall revenue and an 89 percent level of customer retention

Connected Workforce:

Mobile technology isn’t just changing service; it’s changing the technician as well. No longer just someone who can install or make repairs, a field technician is also a knowledgeable and trusted advisor.

With so much information at their fingertips, technicians can do their jobs more efficiently, resulting in an enhanced customer experience Field service leaders report that implementing a mobile strategy provided an 18 percent increase in service visits per technician and a 40 percent increase in service revenue contribution per technician.

Connected Intelligence:

Field service organisations are characterised by complex workflows and interdependencies which call for a sophisticated approach to measuring the KPIs that go across all aspects of their operation.

Our research shows that nearly 30 percent of field service managers believe that their organisation is ineffective at using the data they collect and just 1 in 5 believes they get the information they need from field service data to help do their job.

This conflict is a major issue facing all too many field service organisations – there is a wealth of business intelligence available to them but making use of it is seen to be an overwhelming, almost impossible, task.

Processing the volume and speed at which ‘Big Data’ is gathered and turning it into useable information is a major challenge.

 

---

 

Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you this white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!

---

 

Be social and share this feature