Three quick NFC wins for field service organisations

Mar 06, 2015 • Features • Future of FIeld Service • future of field service • Near Field Communications • NFC

Near Field Communications (NFC) as a technology has been around for a fair while yet hasn’t quite got the traction that it could have. However, with Apple introducing NFC albeit in a restricted capacity into the latest iteration of the iPhone the technology could potentially come back in vogue.

This is a good thing as it has the potential to streamline workflow for field service engineers, and NFC tags are a low cost addition to field service technology toolkit.

Here are three quick ways NFC could speed up a field engineers workflow that could easily be written via an android smart device without any need for complex coding.

In the field engineers vehicle.

A tag placed into the dashboard of your field engineer’s vehicle could be written to activate a number of functions on their smart phone. For example it both log the journey start in your dedicated field service apps solution and simultaneously open a routing app.

Combining these two has a double benefit of saving time for the engineer plus by combing the start of your field engineer’s journey with a process that is required for him to make that journey (i.e. routing software), you can ensure logging in won’t be overlooked.

At your clients reception

If you have a regular maintenance contract at a specific client where you know your engineers will be making regular visits you could send that client a tag for them to place on their reception desk.

This way when your engineer arrives and is signing into your clients premises they can tap the NFC tag and automatically log their arrival on site within any dedicated field service management app you may have implemented.

On the device

When your engineer arrives at a device a well placed NFC tag could contain offer access to some key insight into the device he is there to fix.

This could be a link to the most recent maintenance notes and that devices specific history, a web page that holds manuals for the device or even opening up a parts ordering page specific to that device so the engineer can easily access the right parts for that specific device.