Field Service Automation ROIs and Service Optimization, Part 1

Andy Wright, in a recent blog article wrote, "According to a recent study by the Aberdeen Group; organizations that adopt a scheduling solution see on average a 12 percent improvement in workforce utilization. While many field service organizations are slow to adopt a scheduling solution, those considered “Best-in-Class” are 50 percent more likely to adopt and implement resource planning tools that harmonize the execution capabilities of their scheduling applications."

From personal experience I would agree with the Aberdeen Group's findings.  When you consider all of the different areas where a service company can receive a positive ROI, not automating a field service organization seems simply irresponsible.

Here are some of the most basic areas to look for ROIs:

• Save the office staff's data entry time. Enter clean, valid data in the field using your smartphone and have it automatically synchronize with your office business software application.
• Dispatch service or work order information directly to your field worker's mobile device in real time. This improves work efficiency and customer care.
• Synchronize data from the field, so you don't have to drive into the office to deliver your paper work.
• Provide access to database information anywhere you go. This can mean customer history, product documentation, warranty information, inventory information, time sheets, work schedules and much more. This creates efficiencies both for the field worker and the office staff.
• Use bar code scanning on your mobile device to scan equipment, inventory, buildings, products, etc. Scan a bar code and have all the relevant information on your asset immediately available for your review on the screen of your smartphone.
• Immediate invoicing - complete work in the field and immediately print the invoice and hand it to the customer for collection. This improves cash flow and reduces collection issues.
• Create an immediate audit trail of work and locations by integrating GPS to your invoices and work orders. Detail work completed in that location.
• Take digital photos of before and after work to document tasks and the completion of work to reduce costly invoice disputes.

In part 2 of this article I will take a deeper look at ROIs available from mobilizing field services.  In the meantime, SAP mobility partner, Clicksoftware has a short video that describes how to mobilize various tasks in the field.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
Phone +1 208-991-4410

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Completing Field Force Automation - Extending Intelligent Mobility

I recently wrote an article for The Enterprise Mobility Foundation, The Next Step in Business Process Optimization: Mobility.  In this article I describe the enormous amount of work that has gone into designing and automating business processes and ERPs like SAP.  The conclusion of the article is that as sophisticated as ERPs are today, there remains significant feature gaps, especially in extending business processes out to the mobile workforce.

In this article, I want to highlight some areas where there is still much work to be done in field services.  In field services, a number of SAP mobility partners like Clicksoftware and Syclo have comprehensive field services and enterprise asset management solutions with mobile clients for use on smartphones and ruggedized handhelds.  However, there are still feature gaps in the integration of real time data, M2M integration, geotags, business intelligence, augmented reality and multi-media support.

Let me give you a not so futuristic field services scenario to consider.  A field services technician arrives at a customer's location.  Recognizing the location (based on geospatial data and scheduling data), the service tech's smartphone begins to both display and read, using an audio feed, the customer highlights including recent support issues, account status, warranties, contracts and possible upsell sales opportunities.  As the service technician unloads his/her tools and walks toward the worksite, they are getting educated on all the most recent events through their ear piece.

As the service technician passes near various pieces of equipment with a maintenance and repair history the information is both displayed and an audible voice reviews the history.  As the service technician enters a building, the blueprint of the building and a map of  the location of all equipment under service contracts appears on their screen.

Now let's pretend we are movie directors and insert a flashback - before the service technician was scheduled and dispatched, the field service automation system queried the maintenance and support status of all equipment on the customer's campus.  Equipment needing repair or maintenance was identified, parts required were pulled from inventory or ordered for delivery.  Required tools and equipment were pre-loaded into the service technician's vehicle and time was allocated to complete all the necessary work on the premises.  Consolidating all the work possible during a visit reduces fuel, travel and labor costs.

As the service technician arrives at each piece of equipment, he immediately snaps a digital picture of it.  A diagram, with step by step instructions overlays the digital photo and instructs the service technician on how to complete the service most efficiently.  The service technician speaks to the mobile application confirming each step until it is completed.  This audio file is immediately translated, interpreted and the work order is closed.

If any step in the process takes longer than expected, the mobile application will ask if a digital video file demonstrating the necessary steps would be useful.  If the service technician affirms, then the file automatically plays.

If advice from another expert is required, the service technician can request it and the mobile application can initiate a knowledge management process (see solutions from SAP mobility partner's Leapfactor, Open Text's Open Text Everywhere, or SAP's Streamworks) that queries experts and connects with them automatically.  If a connected expert requests a live video feed of the equipment or the work, the service technician simply aims the smartphone digital video camera at the equipment or activates the hat mounted video camera.

Before each peice of equipment is reached, an automatic M2M (machine-to-machine) communication is sent from the office asking the equipment to perform diagnostics on itself.  The diagnostic is completed and wirelessly sent to the service technician's smartphone.

All of the technology in the scenario above exists today.  It just has not been integrated all together into specific use cases like the one above.  Perhaps SAP partners are waiting for customers to request it or for SAP to document it or for you to suggest it.

*Read the Mobility News Weekly at http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/kevins-mobility-news-weekly.html.

*Read the M2M News Weekly at http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/m2m.html.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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http://www.clicksoftware.com/e86e075b-4fca-44c9-bfeb-4efcc978f416/knowledge-center-white-papers-delivery.htm

Advice for Mobile Start-Ups: Find Your Market Aggregation Points

Mobile start-ups often struggle with how to get their message, product and company brand in front of their target markets. They quickly realize that the expense of marketing their solutions directly to each end user is cost prohibitive. How then can they effectively market their solutions in a cost effective manner?

Mobile start-ups need to first identify their target market, and second identify the "market aggregation" points. In the image above, look at the red dots. Those are the market aggregation points. Those are the points where the mobile start-up needs to be marketing. Why? That is where their audience can be found. The eyes and ears of their target market are tuned to that location.

Mobile start-ups should focus all of their efforts and financial resources on the red dot - market aggregation points. Often it costs no more to invest resources in the red dots, than it does to target each end user - end point.

If you are targeting SAP Mobility, then you will want to look for locations that aggregate that market. Where can you find the eyes and ears of the SAP market? If you are focused on field service automation, where is that market aggregated? If your solutions are exclusively for SAP ERP for iPhones, then where is your market aggregated?

Where are the red dot market aggregation points for your market?

If you would like to discuss this topic in more detail please contact me.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: @krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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ClickSoftware Enters the MEAP (Mobile Enterprise Application Platform) Market

I have wondered for some time how companies like ClickSoftware deal with all the requests for customization from their clients. Inspections, asset management, custom database applications all require custom mobile applictions. This announcement last week from ClickSoftware seems to have answered that question.

ClickSoftware now has back-office and mobile field services software, an SAP partnership and a MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform). They are doing things right.

BURLINGTON, Massachusetts, November 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. (NasdaqGS: CKSW), the leading provider of workforce management and service optimization solutions, is today launching the ClickSoftware Mobility Suite that will allow companies to seamlessly extend the power of enterprise systems to employees via their mobile devices, whilst also sharing with back-end systems the critical information on activities that they complete in the field. The mobility suite is available as a standalone product but it can also be easily extended, if required, to include other parts of ClickSoftware's ServiceOptimization Suite.

ClickSoftware has combined years of mobile application experience with the latest functional and technical developments to create a step change in mobile enterprise applications. The Mobility Suite has been designed to enable system administrators to easily configure the system to comply with any business requirement without requiring expensive coding or programming skills. Visual configuration tools make it simple to turn business requirements into simple processes and mobile workflows. All can be deployed and maintained remotely, significantly reducing the total cost of ownership.

Paper can be eliminated, business processes shortened and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) tracked with electronic capture of data through forms, barcodes, RFID, and cameras. Real time location monitoring also provides visibility of mobile operations, allowing organizations to see where resources are, what they are doing, and spot and resolve connection problems.

All this information, in combination with the latest mobile technology, gives rise to some exciting possibilities across all business functions. Accurate expected time of arrival notifications (triggered as a result of real-time activities and location) can be automatically sent via SMS to customers. This means that the end client can plan their day around more important commitments, rather than waiting for hours at home for the engineer to arrive.

ClickSoftware's Mobility Suite totally breaks down the walls that have traditionally existed between the back-office, the field and the customers. This communication revolution is enabled through:

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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Peer-to-Peer Mobile Computing and Field Services Automation, Part 2

This is the second in a 2 part series on Peer-to-Peer Mobile Computing and Field Services Automation. Part 1 can be read here.

Field Service Technicians spend much of their time working at remote customer sites. Often the job expands or they get dispatched to a new job where they don't have the right equipment, expertise, tools or parts to complete the job in a timely manner. This can result in delays and inefficiencies that result in higher costs. Let's ponder some ideas on how a peer-to-peer mobile computing environment along with LBS (location based services) could improve these situations.

Location based services allow you to identify locations, objects and people with GPS coordinates. Based upon these GPS coordinates, various actions can be programmed or configured. Once you are within 1 mile of a shopping center, you begin to receive product sales and discount information as an example. In a field service context, you could activate a database query, or activate a series of automated business processes. Let's consider a scenario.

A field service technician carries an inventory of equipment, tools and parts in his van. It has only storage space for a limited inventory. Different field service technicians carry different tools, equipment and parts in their van's inventory. Perhaps if all of the vans had GPS tracking, and all of the van's had identified inventory, then a field service technician could view a complete mobile inventory from all 6 vans within a 5 mile radius.

Why would viewing the inventory from all 6 vans be useful? If a van with the right equipment, tools or parts was closer than the company's warehouse, then you could save time and money by meeting the van and exchanging inventory. The company van with the right equipment or parts may be only 1.3 miles away from your location, while the warehouse may be 25 miles away.

It is also good cash management to turn over your inventory. You don't want your field service technicians purchasing more of a particular part, when your warehouse or other vans already has that unsold part in inventory.

How does mobile peer-to-peer or P2P computing come into this scenario? Each mobile handheld computer can be configured to communicate directly with all the other company's mobile handheld computers so their locations and associated parts and equipment inventories can constantly be surveyd.

I have not yet seen a a work order management or field service automation system utilize these emerging LBS and P2P technologies, but I believe this is a very intrigueing new area. If you have seen examples of this kind of solution in action, please share in the comments section below.

If you would like to exchange ideas on this subject please comment on this article or contact me.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobile Strategy, Sales and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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