AI Allows Field Service Organizations To Achieve More Sustainable Service Delivery

In 2021, one in five of the 2,000 largest publicly listed companies worldwide committed to a “net-zero” emissions plan by 2050 to help tackle global climate change. Collectively our planet needs to reduce annual emissions from the current 57 gigatons of CO2 to net zero, in just a few decades. Corporations are under heavy scrutiny for their contribution to carbon emissions and the pressure is now on field service organizations to get smarter and deliver more sustainable services.

Sarah Nicastro, VP of Customer Engagement at IFS and Creator of Future of Field Service, argues that the industry, often thought to be an unavoidably energy-intensive business, needs to continually improve with time—moving from the use of digital planning tools to optimize technician mileage and cut energy waste to more advanced AI that creates a unique service fingerprint for continual sustainable optimization.

The world produced a shocking 40.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2021 alone. The U.S. accounted for almost one-sixth of this total output. As the world’s second-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. has pledged to achieve net-zero targets no later than 2050. The Long-Term Strategy (LTS) for reaching this target states that cutting energy waste is one of the critical ways to achieve these ambitious but necessary goals for climate change.

This is how field service, by its very nature as a high mileage user, can make a difference.