IKON's Field Service Triumph

By Sarah Howland, Integrated Solutions magazine

Today, it is increasingly common for mobile employees to work in the field for days or even weeks without actually coming into the office. If your field techs can accomplish the desired goals without making frequent trips into an office, this can be a great system — as long as you have measures in place that ensure they are operating in an efficient manner. The effectiveness of mobile work depends greatly on the method you use to dispatch your workers and the visibility you have into the activity of your field techs while they're on location (and not). Are they performing field service tasks in an efficient manner, or are they lackadaisically working through their jobs? Are they doing everything they can to be sure your customers are satisfied, or are they just doing the bare minimum? Do your techs have an effective manner for retrieving inventory for a job, or do they commonly make expensive return trips? If yours is a company with a small field service force, you can probably monitor your field techs pretty easily. However, if your company's field service force is large, maintaining visibility becomes much more of a challenge.