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3 Key Reasons Why Connecting Your Field and Office Teams Is Important
By Graham Heiner, European Delivery Manager, Asset Management
Field service operations have often faced the challenge of not having the right information at the right time to work effectively. It can be because the data is isolated in different departments on paper or in spreadsheets. The information could also have data entry errors or be out-of-date.
This lack of access to good information can slow down your productivity, and make your customers and stakeholders unimpressed with your service. You may also become uncompetitive in the market! These are some of the reasons why you need a well-connected field service team. Let’s take a look at how you can tackle this challenge…
Field Service Management Challenges
Have you thought about how many ways a service task could go wrong? And not everything is under your control, of course. There are ways to minimize the risk of a botched or inefficient service.
Some use case examples will help us identify possible problem areas if you don’t have a well-connected workforce serving customers:
- Amara is assigned a task to clear a pipe valve for a customer, but it is located in a sump which is a dangerous Confined Space. She should have been notified that she needs a Permit and safety measures. Now she has to re-organize the work correctly.
- George is assigned to install some equipment, but he needs help from the electricians, and they did not turn up at the same time. He has to report this and try again when the electrician is available.
- Julie, a customer, has made a service request and would really like to know the status of the request. Has it been assigned to someone? Are they scheduled to arrive? It is an important request, and she would like to know it is being actioned. She tried calling the service desk but they were not sure and said someone else will get back to her.
The Underlying Cause
What do these issues have in common? Lack of access to the right information, in many cases in real-time. It is difficult to share across departments or gain visibility into processes when using paper, spreadsheets and other disconnected systems.
Here are three reasons to effectively connect your mobile workforce back to the office and customer.
- To make it easier for our people to provide a great service by ensuring the right services are made available at the right time.
- To ensure we perform service work efficiently and reduce the amount of dead-time and rescheduling. Our fees to our customers will be seen as good value, whilst we ensure our business remains healthy and profitable.
- To get a competitive edge and provide further improvement innovations over time. Once you have the foundation of a well-connected workforce, incremental improvements become a lot easier.
How to Get Connected
Field service technology, such as SAP Field Service Management, helps you make the connection into all important aspects of operations by tracking service requests, resources and work status and work. With a mobile component, the office and field teams can collaborate even when personnel is physically dispersed or separated by time. The real-time visibility helps overcome some of the challenges presented.
By integrating front-office and back-office processes, tracking assets and personnel, and maintaining a complete order history, a dedicated field services solution can accelerate service execution, cut costs, and increase both revenue and customer satisfaction. Importantly, it also helps personnel navigate the new challenges of today by reducing errors and ensuring that all the information is up-to-date and available to whoever needs it.
Conclusion
It is more important than ever that field service technicians can work quickly and effectively, moving from one task to the next with the confidence that the work has been done correctly on the first try. This not only improves customer satisfaction, reducing churn, but keeps workers safer so that they remain ready, willing and able to perform their essential duties.
For more information about how Movilitas can help you improve field services safety and efficiency to keep your customers happy, visit our overview page here.