Most people are familiar and comfortable with service operations in everyday life, like calling a plumber to fix a leaky sink, contacting an HVAC contractor to clean the heating system, and emailing a computer tech to trouble-shoot a hardware or software issue. However, service in the Health and Life Sciences (“HLS”) industry is rapidly evolving as companies strive to improve patient care in a highly regulated environment and...  Continue Reading..

Spring is near, and in baseball spring training is in full swing. Speaking of “swing”, I’m reminded of the old saying baseball saying “swing for the fences” which means to give it your all to hit a home run. I recall Warren Buffett using that quote after donating a large fortune to the Gates Foundation and wanting his charitable gift to go far. Buffett’s words were meant to encourage the Gates Foundation, but...  Continue Reading..

That $1,000 smartphone is key to technician engagement and forming effective daily habits. Your field service technicians’ job performance powers the achievement of the service business plan.From service delivery and safety compliance to customer relations and service sales, technicians must be engaged and coached to achieve their operating goals.The best way to engage and coach is to focus on daily habits, and field service technology...  Continue Reading..

For most businesses, rolling out new technology can not only be a daunting task, but one met with considerable resistance. One technology that often brings opposition is field service management (FSM) software. Specifically, FSM that uses global positioning systems (GPS) to confirm the location and activity of sales and other field representatives.  Continue Reading..

The days of striving to empower an organization’s field technicians to be “cool, calm, and collected” (i.e., able to physically collect data from multiple sources within the organization, most likely in an offline mode) have since been replaced by the empowerment of the “cool, calm, and connected” technician. Those organizations that have been able to bridge this critical gap will likely be the ones to dominate in...  Continue Reading..

Service organizations today are forever striving to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving operational effectiveness, and management generally believes the rewards of their efforts are the goal. While improving effectiveness is important, these organizations should also work to leverage service excellence as a hallmark of their corporate brand. When you effectively market service excellence to internal and external stakeholders...  Continue Reading..

Dede Haas, channel sales strategist and coach, and Peter Simoons, executive coach and alliance mentor, have known each other for quite some time. Both were members of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals and have talked many times about the differences between strategic alliances and channel sales. Dede and Peter recently took time to talk to The Business Solutions Network about strategic alliances and more in this exclusive...  Continue Reading..

Optimizing the user experience is critical to implementing technology and achieving business results.These are practical design elements to optimize the user experience.  Continue Reading..