Colliding Expectations Fuelling Adoption Of Field Service Automation

Decreasing product margins, servitisation, sluggish capital equipment sales, and the transformation of service departments from cost to profit centres are just some of the market forces driving mobile and cloud-based automation of field services, according to leading field service management specialist, ServiceMax.

Service businesses represent around seventy per cent of the world’s economy, yet to date, only about a third of the world’s large service businesses currently use field service management solutions. It’s a $15 billion market poised for growth, applicable to vertical service industries and businesses of any size.

“Historically, because of the difficulty in orchestrating the numerous variables and complex processes associated with people, parts and customer requirements, field service has not entered the information economy as quickly as other lines of business, nor has it moved at the same pace as the rest of the organisation,” said Spencer Earp, Vice President EMEA for ServiceMax. “With the arrival of cloud technology and automation solutions, 1980s style processes and systems are colliding with the expectations of a twenty first century, information-based, customer led economy, forcing a major re-think for many organisations.”

Field service technicians are those service representatives that typically travel onsite to repair and maintain equipment such as CT scanners in hospitals, lifts in buildings, or air conditioners in hotels. As an industry it is inherently mobile, social and time sensitive. By empowering and mobilising service technicians with cloud-based, real time tools in the field they can do work-orders, request parts, schedule and be scheduled, look up manuals, take payments, renew maintenance agreements, use social channels to communicate problems swiftly and effectively and upsell and cross sell products and solutions where appropriate.

All of this is done on a smartphone or tablet device. All the data is real-time. Technicians also have the option of working off-line and then synching up to reduce dead time administration at the end of a job. Customer relationship management systems pick up the information and ensure that the customer receives future communications, advice, updates and education, while the data delivers new customer and business insights.

About ServiceMax
There are more than twenty million field service technicians around the globe, yet today there’s no standard technology for managing the way companies of all types and stripes empower them to truly delight their customers in the field. ServiceMax is rethinking field service and delivering on the promise of cloud and mobile software, powering a new era of field service experiences for their customers’ customers. The impact of ServiceMax is simple: lower costs, greater efficiency, happier customers; all while increasing revenue. ServiceMax has helped customers on average increase productivity through mobile by 26 per cent, service revenue by 22 per cent, and customer satisfaction by 15 per cent. ServiceMax customers include large enterprises such as Tyco, Coca-Cola Enterprises, and Elekta, and smaller businesses like McKinley Equipment and Kinetico. Based in Pleasanton, California, they are a company of innovators, thinkers and doers who care passionately about changing the world of field service. To learn more, please visitwww.servicemax.com