Connected Intelligence: How To Gain Insights Into Your Business Operations

By Brant Carter, Trimble Field Service Management

The benefits of implementing a business analytics program are significant.  Our findings show that it can result in a significant profit growth (as much as 18%) as well as improved SLA performance.  A question many organizations have is where to start?

Field Service Metrics

It is very important that any data-based metrics have three key attributes - that they are relevant, accessible and actionable.  What this often means is that less is more.  The goal is not to overwhelm managers with too much information but instead to focus on data that will lead to insights on areas that need to be improved.

A good start is to focus on one or two metrics that are aligned with efficiency and customer service.  Aligning metrics with these aspects will ensure they are tied to the profitability of the organization.

We have run some surveys on which metrics service organizations are most interested and we see that First-Time-Fix rate is almost always at the top of the list.  A metric that might not come top of mind is service-to-cash cycle time.  Although it can be somewhat complicated to define and measure, it will provide a very good single indicator into the state of your service operations.