How To Prepare For The Next Big Disruption

Okay, yes, significant disruptions do happen. How did your organization respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? Hopefully, well — but because of the disruption in our normal business processes, we discovered weaknesses in our ability to service our customers. Aligning our business processes and technology is a good start toward fixing them. Here’s how to get it done.

The 2.8 billion dollar Field Service industry employs more than 20 million technicians worldwide, servicing customers in industries as fundamental as healthcare, telecommunications, HVAC, and more. Unfortunately, Field Service organizations (FSOs) all too often do not supply the needed technology to their field service technicians to effectively meet the needs and demands of their customers.

Implementing tools that will empower your technicians to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, both internally and in the field, will serve your customers better, yes – but it will also put your company in a position to be more agile when dealing with disruptions caused by unforeseen circumstances. We’ve just seen this play out for real. In the weeks following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many FSOs discovered that the changes that needed to occur to their longstanding processes could not conform to their technology to support how they engaged with their customers. That’s not to say that the field service industry didn’t rise to the occasion as numerous essential workers, including the skilled field technicians, put themselves in harm’s way to maintain and repair the equipment that let hospitals treat patients and kept electricity flowing and supermarkets open.