Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Oneserve
Title: The metrics that matter: How actionable analytics can transform field service management performance­
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Synopsis:

The top strategic action for two-thirds of service organisations is to develop or improve the metrics or KPIs used to measure field service performance. And yet only 18 percent of companies believe they have the skills necessary to gather and use insights effectively.

These two statistics represent the predicament of many field service organisations today - they know actionable analytics are vital for business success, but fully utilising the information they gather is a daunting and difficult task. This white paper aims to disentangle the vast quantity of data available in the field service management industry by highlighting the metrics that really matter and demonstrating how analytics can be used to improve business performance.  

Overview:

This white paper covers the following areas:

Customer Centric and Servitisation

Many organisations have data at their fingertips but are paralysed by the complexity and number of data sources available to them. They rely on anecdotal evidence or intuition to make decisions rather than informed business intelligence in order to drive competitive advantage.

Research shows that service organisations that fully interrogate data outperform their rivals. A like-for-like comparison between organisations which use advanced analytics and those that don’t, reveals that adopters of analytics are seeing a 60% higher increase in year-on-year revenue.

Analytics for Field Service Management (FSM)

Analytics for FSM should be based around assets in the field, the resources (time, money and people) it takes to install, maintain and repair those assets and the customer experience. Initially an organisation may just want to understand the numbers around these key activities, then in time improve processes. Ultimately the goal should be to deliver forecast and predictive analytics that achieve optimisation across service delivery.

Incorporate the metrics that matter

To ensure analytics are able to deliver valuable insight, the right KPIs must be identified. Every service organisation must identify their own metrics based on what success looks like for them. There are however some common measures in the service industry which should be tracked by any service organisation regardless of which sector they operate within.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for field service management should include:

• Business process
• Service delivery
• Customer service
• Operational efficiency

This is by no means an exhaustive list - each metric should unlock more in-depth measures which require analysis. Clear actionable insights will be revealed as part of the analysis from which the organisation can take evidence based decisions and improve the process associated with that measure.

This should be a constant cyclical review process. 

The analytics journey

Assuming a set of KPIs has been defined, there is a hierarchy of analytics that can be applied, dependent upon the richness of the data and the analytics resource available. The advanced analytics journey demonstrated in chart 1 articulates a staged approach, which starts by examining the data and finishes by optimising the intelligence which has been discovered. Evidently each step in the journey becomes more complicated and arguably more useful as the capability and complexity of the analytics increases.

Additional benefits of analytics

Increased customer retention Research by Aberdeen Group shows organisations that embrace analytics outperform their industry average figures for customer satisfaction, customer retention and service improvement. These organisations use analytics to gain a deep understanding of customer behaviour to preempt customer needs and desires without explicit interaction.

Higher levels of motivation in the workforce The mobile workforce is the shop window of any service organisation. In fact some organisations are even combining the role of technician and salesperson. The technician is highly qualified in product knowledge and often in the customer space; this puts them in a unique position of knowledge and trust to be able to sell to the customer.

Improved bottom line Organisations which reap the greatest rewards from business intelligence see a significantly improved bottom line.

Competitive advantage By continuously analysing in-house performance figures these companies can use this insight to monitor their competitors and ensure they stay at the top of their game. The best performing service organisations are twice as likely as all others to consistently benchmark service performance against peers and top performers in other industries.

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