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Your Mobile Field Force
According to recent Aberdeen research, 88% of best-in-class firms view the vital connection between the field and back office as a top strategic priority.
Market Pressures Driving Mobile Field Service Initiatives
"The complexities associated with conducting business seamlessly from the field, coupled with the increasing strategic importance of post-sales service, are driving service organizations to consider more seriously mobile field service technology solutions. These solutions include mobile scheduling and dispatch, work order management, service contract management, and service parts inventory management. Companies Aberdeen recently surveyed identified the following market pressures as driving their focus on post-sales service in general, and mobile field service in particular:
| Cost cuts require higher worker productivity: Fully 84% of best-in-class companies said that they are striving to do more with less, due to recent costcutting and resource reduction initiatives. And more work with fewer field workers is only achievable through waste reduction and increased productivity per worker. |
| Customer service has become a competitive trump card: Fully 80% of best-in-class firms said they were aiming to leverage superior customer service to edge out competitors, according to recent Aberdeen research. This mindset reflects a strategic understanding that in some industries, customer acquisition costs exceed customer retention costs by 15% or more, so higher levels of retention lead directly to more profitable revenue streams. |
| Customers expect faster and more efficient work order resolution: Best-in-class and other firms are more closely aligned in their recognition of increasingly demanding customers as a driver of mobile field service. Faster response times and more first-call resolutions are building blocks of increased field technician productivity. |
Automating Mobile Field Service
Addressing these challenges effectively in a labour-intensive service environment and providing competitive service is nearly impossible without a mobile field service solution.
At their core, mobile field service solutions - often referred to as mobile workforce or resource management - allow service organizations to manage field technicians more productively and profitably and enable technicians to execute and transact work orders in the field.
Utilized effectively, mobile field service automation can have tremendous impact on worker productivity, customer satisfaction, overall profitability, and service revenues, according to Aberdeen's benchmark of 180 companies in high-tech, discrete and process manufacturing, utilities, and other industries."
But it's not always simple ...
Aberdeen says "While mobile technology holds - and in many cases has delivered on - the promise of seamless and zero-latency connectivity between the field and back office, a large percentage of mobile deployments end in failure. The reason: Few enterprises recognize the inherent differences between mobile and desktop computing.
Mobile field service problems are characterized by a lack of consistent bandwidth, constrained power supplies, small form-factor devices, and limited storage capacity. To make matters more challenging, field service is conducted by a combination of full time and contract workers with varying aptitudes for technology, in a highly disconnected and dynamic environment."
The challenge of connecting a transient and distributed workforce to your backend systems can be simplified. The move to on-demand web-enabled fieldforce work management systems, like TeamFrame, and the use of email, SMS and voice dispatch and update, coupled with smart devices, like the Destiny wireless pens (www.destinywireless.com.au) remove much of the risk.
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