Field service and improved visibility

A manager is someone who has control over a company. They are given the responsibility of overseeing what the company does and making important decisions. The manager is the most important person in the empire and needs to be in the know at all times. Not what happened a day ago but in real-time and from any place.

Information is necessary for this to happen. It needs to be concise, brief and straightforward. Ideally, access to job status, location information, customer information, notifications and location information should be on the palms of their hands.

To sum it all up, there should be fluid communication among personnel in the field. Information should be accessed easily from one place as it flows to another to maintain steady two-way communication. This is possible with automation meaning that no amount of data will be left unseen or unused because of paperwork that was never handed over or looked into, reducing the chance of misinformation or missing information to a minimum.

Ways improved visibility will help your business through Field Service

Organisations using field services will agree that improved visibility has more business benefits and the real question is what aspect needs improving rather than discussing the benefits.

Real-time visibility

Managers need to be in the know from anywhere at any time. The manager needs information about the company. The need not to be physically present to have an idea of what’s going on. They should know everything at all times, from what was planned for the day to real-time events.

All this information should be easily accessed from one central point and should contain everything about the company and other relevant information.

Extending the back office into the field

This two-way communication is virtually irreplaceable. At any time, the information should flow among technicians in the field and those in the back office. This will help to have a better idea of how to manage the workload and come up with solutions to some work-related issues.

Everyone in the team should be informed and be up to speed about real-time events. Keeping everyone updated improves visibility because they can make updates and decisions based on the kind of information they get.

No more lost paperwork

Managing paper trail can be quite a hassle for organisations. With tons of workload, there can be many delays meaning that some information might be missed or forgotten. People might also choose not to turn up for work for days on end and can affect how much info is processed. Some work can be left undone, and work not invoiced.

When organisations use field service management services, information is fed only once and everything else is done automatically. Say goodbye to lags or relying on last month?s data. Work will move faster because people will have more time to focus on important things rather than chasing an endless paper trail.

Business intelligence

Field service management technology will let you know what is being done in the field and with such an abundance of data, will make sound decisions for the business.

Every decision is hinged on cold facts. Information needs to be easily accessed and filtered into the right categories so that sound business decisions are made from the collected data.

Growing revenue

The abundance of real-time information and improved visibility can determine whether a business will grow or not. Each piece of information can show trends that are critical for any business to improve. Trends show how each sector is doing and sheds more light into specific areas that need a total overhaul. This may include improving customer service, products on retail or hiring more technicians.

Without information, a company is one step closer to going out of business. Every action should be geared to increase the revenue and this starts by making the right choices.

Visibility when working offline

Working offline is an issue that can affect visibility. Sometimes agents will need to work in areas that have little network coverage or are deep down working in tunnels or are around heavy machines and turbines. Field service solutions are built for the mobile environment and for workers who may find themselves in non-connected areas so that they can still use their device while offline. This makes sure that there is no loss of information while working in-field

Time-saving

Certainly, business is constrained to its environments and if the demand changes it should prove to be flexible enough to adjust to changes as they happen. Field service solutions operations like schedule need to update instantly. Once activities start rolling, nothing should create lags in the schedule so that operations flow seamlessly at all time.

Field workers can then make updates and document changes easily on the job site directly on their device by using responsive site menus, drastically saving time while feeding data and complete orders.

Improved customer service

It is not a clich? to say that the customer is always right. With real-time information, both field service and back-office technicians can improve customer relations and satisfaction. With a unified system of sharing information like the ERPs and CRMs, the field officer can know more about specific clients, their history and other data to know more about what should be done in current and future orders. This means that better decisions will be made for each customer.

How improved visibility benefits different parts of the organisation

Improved visibility in all areas of the business makes information more accessible. Here are some of the benefits that various sects of a business can get from improved visibility.

? The business owner
The manager owns the company and can access all information with just a single tap. A lot of data can be used to analyse the health of the venture. This includes revenue, inventory, customer surveys, employee hours, invoices and customer data.
Profitability is increased by putting more emphasis on customer satisfaction and improving the quality of end products and services.

? The service manager
The service manager can see what is going on in the field in real-time, and look into measures that can improve the productivity of staff members in various departments.
And with workflow automation, time-saving is at the maximum because there is less paperwork consequently improving scheduling and job completion rates.

? Service administrator/ dispatcher
For the team in the office, they can assign tasks faster. Scheduling is automatically done and updated in real-time. It eliminates the need for paperwork and leaves more time to be productive on other errands.

? The field technician
Improved visibility for a field worker means that they can do their best in any task. They can share or get critical information about orders and customers. This drastically improves job completion rates and customer satisfaction.

? HR
Live information can be used to track certain orders, the time it takes to complete orders, and the number of staff required in the organisation. Such data can be used in HR to reduce payroll errors and erroneous overtime costs.

? Finance
Field service management software can also benefit the finance team by automation of invoices. A work order can be tracked from start to the end and invoiced immediately to retain faster payments. Relevant data can be used to track revenue and expenditures, and costs.

Real-time visibility gives a company many solutions to manage the workload. In the end, visibility is also useful in increasing revenue and a smooth transition of information for the company.

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Importance of Field Service Management Software for Mobile Working

Technology has been evolving at a fast pace. Changes are also happening simultaneously within different industries. Making a great difference in the business world right now is the trend of mobile working.

Thanks to platforms and tools, working while on the go is now easier and more streamlined. The field service industry also benefits from these technological advances.

Mobile technicians can now give excellent performance and do their job efficiently with no hands-on management needed.

Keep in mind that field service management is no joke. So, to achieve a smooth business and mobile worker management, you’ll need to invest in good mobile service management software.

But First, what is Mobile Working?

Mobile working is a method of working that is not tied to a single physical location.

It isn’t just about checking your emails on your phone or ringing your colleagues via Bluetooth while driving your car to the next appointment. It’s so much more intricate than that.

Effective mobile working means you’re mobilising your workers. Field technicians should have everything they need to complete their day to day work. You’re giving them their entire office in the form of a mobile device.

Mobile working, via a handheld device, allows field technicians to do the following:
● Access and input information about a work order
● Collaborate on projects
● Stay in touch with colleagues, clients and management
● Utilize effectively the different software features

Your field workers should have the support of a dynamic management tool that ensures they are sent to the job that utilises their skills effectively and efficiently.

That’s where a good field service management software shows its importance.

The Role of a Field Service Management Software

Your mobile workforce is scattered across various physical locations. You’ll need to connect with them and simultaneously manage your field service business.

Thanks to the increasing connectivity and improvement of technologies for this purpose, mobile workers can easily input and access any work order details via your chosen field service management software.

What Makes a Good Field Service Management Software?

There are 3 main points to consider when investing in a good mobile workforce management software:

1. It’s simple and familiar to use. Like we mentioned before, be sure to mobilise your field technicians – not the back-office system. Make sure your chosen app or software has a simple user interface so your workers can be on-the-go easily.

2. It works offline. Rural areas and highways can have poor connectivity. Sometimes agents will need to work in areas that have little to no network coverage or are deep down working in tunnels or around heavy machines and turbines. You don’t want your field technicians unable to complete work due to connectivity issues. Make sure to choose software that can function on their device while offline.

3. It’s flexible (and maintainable). Your field service management of choice should have real-time visibility. Flexible and improved visibility for a field worker means that they can do their best in any task. They can share or get critical information about orders and customers. This drastically improves job completion rates and customer satisfaction.

Importance of Field Service Management Software to Mobile Working

Utilize the technology that is available to you. Your mobile workforce should have the right tools so they can make sure to do their fieldwork efficiently without worrying about tedious administrative work. Any back-office task can be done quickly through a field service management software.

And that’s the most important role of a great mobile service management app — effective mobile worker efficiency.

Benefits of a Field Service Management Software to Mobile Working

● Additional revenue: By simplifying the administrative work, your field technician can even double the work order in their daily shift, meaning more profit for the business.

● Cost-cutting: The cloud-based nature of a field service management software means that your business can reduce the cost of on-site IT.
Your mobile workforce can operate from wherever they have an online connection, meaning less reliance on offices and building costs.

● Boosts overall efficiency: A mobile workforce management software allows you as a manager to monitor in real-time where they are and what they are doing. It means that problems can be identified and dealt with immediately.
Your field technician, in turn, becomes more efficient because the technology allows them a quicker response, instead of taking too long finishing administrative tasks.

Invest in a great field service management software. Check out FieldElite and see how they can help you with the following mobile working features:
• Accepts jobs in the field
• Automate appointment scheduling
• Manage scheduled jobs
• Get real-time visibility into all operations
• Have a clear and easy viewing of job locations
• Resolve field service calls faster
• Enable mobile workers to get the job done right
• Keep customers updated at every step
• Create quotations and accept payments
• Analyse efficient reports from field technicians

Total Quality Management

Total Quality Management (TQM) is another business management approach that focuses on the involvement of all members of the organisation to participate in improving processes, products, services, and the culture in which they work in. It is important that every team member realises how each individual and each activity affects, and in turn is affected by, others.

With the use of combined quality and management tools, TQM also aims to reduce losses brought about by wasteful practices, a common concern in most companies. Using the TQM strategy, business would also be able to identify the cause of a defect, thereby preventing it from entering the final product.

Deming’s 14 Points

At the core of the Total Quality Management concept and implementation is Deming’s 14 points, a set of guidelines on quality as conceptualised by W Edwards Deming, one of the pioneers of quality. Deming’s 14 points are as follows:

Create constancy of purpose for improving products and services.
Adopt the new philosophy.
Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
End the practice of awarding business on price alone; instead, minimise total cost by working with a single supplier.
Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service.
Institute training on the job.
Adopt and institute leadership.
Drive out fear.
Break down barriers between staff areas.
Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.
Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the annual rating or merit system.
Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
Put everybody in the company to work accomplishing the transformation.

But if you were to reduce to bare bones the TQM philosophy from Deming’s 14 points, it would all come down to two simple goals:

To make things right the first time; and
To work for continuous improvement.

As with all other quality management process, the end goal is to be able to offer products and services that meet and even exceed customer’s expectations.

Find out more about our Quality Assurance services in the following pages:

Outsourcing

Are you ready to outsource? Do you even need to outsource? We’ll help you answer those and other questions regarding outsourcing and your company.

Once we’ve determined that outsourcing will render your organisation more focused on your core competencies, more cost-effective, and more flexible, we’ll offer you the full spectrum of our services. Our specialists can assist you in every stage of the entire outsourcing life-cycle.

Starting from evaluating what can be outsourced, through finding the right outsourcing service provider, building the contract and agreements, getting everything in place, and managing the outsourcing relationship – we’ll be with you every step of the way.

Learn more about some of the outsourcing services we offer:

Outsourcing Contracts and Agreements

When an outsourcing project fails, both customer and service provider are quick to put the blame on the other party. But in most cases, the actual culprit was really just sitting there since day one – a poorly planned and implemented agreement.

We understand how costly and disruptive a failed outsourcing project can be for your business. That is why we put utmost attention to each contract and SLA (Service Level Agreement) that our customers enter into. This always reduces the likelihood of having unmet expectations, one of the major reasons why some outsourcing relationships fail.

We make sure that each agreement is fair, not only for our customers but also for the service providers themselves. Why? Because a disadvantaged provider will most likely end up delivering poor service as an offshoot of efforts to improve its profitability and ROI.

To accomplish this, we’ll thoroughly assess the infrastructure, resources, and expertise of your potential service provider to ensure they have the capability to meet your expectations. We’ll also make sure that their expectations are realistic and clear to you as well.

Here’s what you can expect from us when we start managing your outsourcing contracts and agreements:

A thorough assessment of your specific needs and the service provider’s profile to determine whether you have the right match before proceeding with any agreement.
Professional assistance when the time comes for you to discuss the scope of work, expected service levels, and when negotiating for appropriate pricing. We’ll also help you set up provisions for possible changes in the scope later on.
Expert counsel during drafting and finalisation of the contract and Service Level Agreements. Whenever applicable, we’ll help you propose penalties whenever service levels are not met and rewards when they are exceeded.
Regular reviews to determine whether everything agreed upon in the past, like pricing and service levels, are still realistic or competitive enough in view of current technological advancements and the prevailing social and economic environment.
Mediation expertise whenever the outsourcing project appears to be falling apart. We’ll work with you and the service provider to resolve conflicts and avoid the expensive exercise of having to terminate the contract. But if the best solution is to part ways, we’ll make sure you make an exit with the least disruption, missed opportunities and financial loss.

Application Outsourcing

I’m sure you’ve come to realise that to gain competitive advantage these days, you really need to invest in IT applications.

There are applications for enhancing your customer relationships, speeding up production, streamlining processes, advancing collaboration, protecting your systems from malware and many more. Selecting the right application, testing it, implementing it into your system, and then managing it can deviate resources which would have otherwise been used in other areas to build business value, increase profits, and enhance innovation.

Wouldn’t it be nice to unload yourself of the management processes which usually accompany IT applications? Actually, you can – through application outsourcing. Application outsourcing providers possess the expertise to either partially or fully assume responsibility of your IT applications.

Our job is to see to it that you link up with the provider who can best answer your needs. The overall proficiency of these providers spans both proprietary and opensource solutions, allowing them to cater to a wide range of preferences and budgetary limits. At the very least, they can provide professional support for well established applications.

If needed, they can develop applications for your organisation, taking charge of every step in the system development life-cycle: starting from system initiation, requirements analysis, through design, construction, acceptance and eventually to implementation.

Here are some of the benefits you can enjoy once we start managing your application outsourcing initiatives:

Freedom from time-consuming tasks such as installations, upgrades, configurations and repairs.
Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO).
24/7 support from well-trained personnel. This can substantially cut downtimes caused by inexperienced troubleshooting.
The option to have your applications housed in more secure and reliable environments with much higher availability and much lower planned/unplanned downtimes.
Dedicated specialists who can focus on providing better regulatory compliance and risk mitigation initiatives.

Infrastructure Outsourcing

Keeping up with the competition nowadays usually requires technological advancements as well as the capability to manage and maintain the infrastructure that has to support them. These undertakings can suck your resources dry.

If you’re looking to reduce costs even while improving the performance of your networks, servers, databases, firewalls, desktops and mobile devices, you might want to consider IT infrastructure outsourcing among your top options. Infrastructure outsourcing service providers have the resources dedicated to a stable, secure, scalable and always available IT infrastructure.

Typical service provider facilities include data centrers equipped with high-speed networks, reliable power, dependable security, as well as provisions for upgrades, consolidation, disaster recovery, or even business continuity.

These providers employ specialists and staff who can manage and maintain all of these for you. While your provider juggles your core IT-related tasks, you can keep your eye on the ball and refocus on your company’s business goals.

Here are some of the benefits you can enjoy out of infrastructure outsourcing:

Freedom from time-consuming tasks such as installations, upgrades, configurations and repairs.
Since service providers, who are expected to have better horizontal and vertical scalability, will deal with the technological intricacies, your company’s strategic development initiatives can proceed unhampered.
Greatly reduced electricity expenses as a result of consolidation.
Easier, faster, cheaper, and more reliable disaster-recovery solutions through virtualisation.
Lesser risks of disruptions caused by power outages, cyber attacks, or Internet connection downtimes.

Business Process Outsourcing

With the sheer number of business processes your company has to attend to, it wouldn’t be surprising if you rarely have room to innovate.

Through business process outsourcing, we can free a considerable part of your financial and manpower resources which are currently focused on routine activities. With more resources to drive innovative initiatives, you’ll be able to accelerate production, improve customer service, enhance overall business value, and arrive at a stronger bottom line.

Some of the business processes that may be outsourced include data entry, finance and accounting, form processing, procurement, and HR, among others. If you’re interested in finding answers to the what, how, who, and where of BPO, specific to your organisation, we’ll be happy to enlighten you.

Here are some of the benefits you can enjoy once we start managing your BPO initiatives:

Professional guidance to ensure that your BPO undertakings will really result in substantial savings and significant improvements to your organisation’s business value.
Careful monitoring of service levels to ensure faster turnaround, accurate data, and high quality outputs.
Expert evaluation of information handling processes to guarantee full confidentiality.
Professional and unbiased management dedicated to establishing a strong, reliable, and fruitful relationship between you and your provider.