In many of our service projects, we encounter the challenge that service technicians generate expenses in the field that have little or no added value, and that the technicians thus only inadequately utilise their productivity potential. Examples are unnecessary travelling and waiting times, high administration costs for reports, know-how deficits, limited access to product and system data or imprecisely defined service procedures. The reasons are manifold.
Field Service Management solutions with stringently defined processes, geared towards increasing efficiency in order and technician control, offer the possibility of overcoming inefficiencies.
Field Service Management stands for the optimised deployment planning of a company's mobile resources for the processing of service or maintenance orders. A solution for deployment control for the technical field service enables better transparency of the service and maintenance processes. This concerns short-term operational planning and processing, as well as long-term capacity planning.
Furthermore, a large part of the scheduling knowledge / methodology is mapped and made available centrally in the solution. This enables the centralisation and standardisation of the scheduling process and creates a basis for increasing efficiency through higher utilisation of the field technicians. In addition to increased productivity, the use of field service management also leads to higher customer satisfaction through shorter time windows for service calls and higher adherence to schedules.
The leading field service management (FSML) solutions have achieved a high level of digitalisation to meet today's customer requirements. The following essential functions are essential for FSML, the following list serves as a guideline:
Capacity planning of service orders and technician resources for long-term assurance of resources, taking into account a high degree of utilisation.
Flexible, event-based planning of service orders, with automatic bundling functions of other orders to reduce the planning effort in the back office
Real-time data and live monitoring in conjunction with alert & event management systems to increase service speed
Integration with spare parts and tool management for optimal synchronisation with field technician resources.
Mobile application for technicians for job submission and monitoring for efficient control of field technicians
Digital checklist and service reports to reduce field technicians' administrative time
Connection to knowledge databases and installed base information for higher quality and speed of service delivery
Integration with CRM solutions for a 360 view of the customer to further exploit the after-sales potential.
All these features contribute to the fact that Field Service Management software can achieve cost savings of 20 percent or more through optimised processes. By improving field service processes, companies can also respond to customer needs more individually and quickly. This increases customer satisfaction and thus loyalty in the medium term.
In summary - what are the critical success factors when implementing field service management solutions?
Clearly defined E2E processes from service ticket creation to order placement in the field to final invoicing to the customer.
Complete integration with the core systems ERP (material management, financial accounting), CRM and HR. Any process or media discontinuity lowers user acceptance and opens the door to inefficient workarounds.
Consistent mobile story for field technicians. This means intuitive, user-friendly menu navigation, geared to the specific workflow in the field. Furthermore, hardware solutions should be designed for the application.
Intensive on-site training of staff in the use of the systems, both in the back office and in the field. New field service management system implementations usually imply process changes and these have to be accompanied stringently.
admoVa's senior experts have successfully implemented field management solutions for medium-sized companies with 200 technicians to large companies with over 8,000 technicians in various industries. From the design of the processes and the solution, to the implementation and the associated change management.
In recent years, admoVa has also been heavily involved in the transformation of the SAP-CS solution into new cloud solutions. If you also have questions about this special topic, please contact us.
