White Paper overview - Poor Relations: why you maybe overlooking profit if you overlook your service CRM

Aug 24, 2015 • Features • resources • White Paper • White Papers & eBooks • Exel Computer Systems • Service CRM

Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Field Service News (sponsored by Exel Computer Systems)
Title: Poor Relations: why you maybe overlooking profit if you overlook your service CRM
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Synopsis:

It’s been written many times, but the further we enter into the twenty first century the closer the relationship between business and technology becomes. For the largest enterprise level companies technology is driving innovation and efficiency in equal measure across all verticals.

At the other end of the spectrum technology is empowering small and medium sized businesses to thrive, with developments such as vastly increased mobile connectivity and the power and prevalence of the devices utilising it, enabling them to be on a truly level playing field with larger more established companies for the first time in history.

And for those companies with a field service division that link between technology and operations is perhaps even closer still.

Yet one area that is overlooked is Service CRM, an often neglected cousin of the traditional CRM that is a tool primarily for the sales division.

In this white paper we will look at why overlooking Service CRM is such a potentially dangerous mistake and why it is vital your Service CRM is fully integrated into your wider system infrastructure.

Overview:

Looking at some of the key technologies being used in field service this white paper helps clarify the role of a Service SCRM in bringing sales and service closer together and opening the doors to potential missing revenue streams. Sections in this white paper, written by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Cheif, Field Service News include:

ERP: ERP forms the bedrock of most companies system infrastructure and will typically include a number of integrated applications that a company can use to store, manage and interpret data from a variety of differing business activities, such as production planning, manufacturing, marketing, sales, inventory management and payment processing.

It is this very ability to integrate such a breadth of organisational systems and tools that made ERP systems such a vital and important tool within the enterprise.

CRM: If an ERP system is what powers the back end operations of a company, allowing it to meet the demands of existing business with optimum efficiency, then it is CRM that allows the front facing, revenue generating salesforce to perform to their maximum potential.

As with ERP, the rise of CRM came to prominence in the nineties as companies began to fully embrace the importance of both collecting and utilising customer data, thanks in part to the technology emerging to be able to do so.

MOBILE: Without question the biggest single technology to push forward the efficiency productivity of field service engineers within the last decade, potentially ever, is the dramatic rise of the smart phone and mobile computing in general.

Without question the biggest single technology to push forward the efficiency productivity of field service engineers within the last decade, potentially ever, is the dramatic rise of the smart phone and mobile computing in general.

Within the last decade smartphones have become an ever present part of our lives.

In field service in particular they have revolutionised the way many companies work. Mobile apps can include a whole plethora of productivity tools, from job notifications, through to knowledge sharing and perhaps most importantly job completion tools that can dramatically reduce a field engineer’s time spent on administrative duties.

CLOUD & GREATER CONNECTIVITY: However the benefits of a modern field service solution in terms of improving efficiency and productivity of our mobile workforce are not solely the result of advances in mobile computing.

Another highly significant technology that has emerged as a key enabler within modern field service systems is that of Cloud computing.

Research by Field Service News revealed that whilst currently around a quarter of field service companies were using the Cloud for their field service operations, over half of those companies that were currently still using an on premise system indicated that their next iteration of field service software would indeed be Cloud based.

DATA, DATA EVERYWHERE: So, via mobile devices we are able to give engineers the ability to easily collect vast amounts of data that they have at their fingertips, data which otherwise may go no further than the engineer’s own heads.

Meanwhile, due to the aforementioned real-time data transfer to the back office we are able to take that data and instantly have access to it across the business for further interrogation leading to greater insight.

Whether it be data that helps Research & Development teams refine their product development by identifying common device faults, or data that helps sales teams easily identify new business opportunities, the data that our field engineers are able to capture when on site is absolutely vital to a companies ability to thrive in the modern business world.

THE SERVICE CRM: And it is when we look at systems that can play an instrumental part in the distribution of this data that the often overlooked and underused Service CRM can actually play a hugely significant role.

it is when we look at systems that can play an instrumental part in the distribution of this data that the often overlooked and underused Service CRM can actually play a hugely significant role.

One which in turn can be the difference between a moderately well run organisation to being best-in-class with the profit margins and revenue growth to show for it.

“It’s all about joining up the processes” explained Simon Spriggs, of Exel Computer Systems in a recent Field Service News podcast “Historically, many processes such as the manufacturing process and the service process were divorced.”

“If you think about a joined up process it’s all about getting these process not just as lean as possible but also as efficient as possible and that’s where a modern field service solution can really drive a business forwards” he added.

Indeed Spriggs is a man with a long history working with field service solutions and for him Service CRM is an absolutely vital tool that we should not be overlooking and in the latter half of this white paper we bring you more from Spriggs on why Service CRM is such a key tool to any field service company.