Mobile-Enabling Field Service Teams For Immediate Financial Impact

When we think about field service professionals, they are everywhere. They work in utilities (such as power generation), communications (including cable and satellite TV, internet, or mobile operators), construction, and a host of other industries. Field service teams are a key part of the business, responsible for the creation, maintenance and/or activation of your products and services. To a large degree, these professionals work at the mercy of paper-laden (pen, paper, clipboards, forms, etc.) and time-consuming processes to perform their duties – from delivery drop-offs to installation and on-boarding. Data quality problems are commonplace and processes take too long, impacting productivity, billing and budgets, bottom-line revenue, and compliance reporting. According to Motorola Solutions, field service teams lose up to 70 percent of potential daily revenue from poor record keeping and management.

The challenge lies in that processes built in ERP, FSM, and CRM systems are not accessible to workers in the field which therefore, incurs higher call center costs, admin time for data entry, and often, excess inventory spend due to lack of visibility. Today, most everyone has a smart- phone in their pocket. The opportunity lies in mobile-enabling key workflows that are quick, easy to use, and run securely on a mobile device. “We’re trying to capture PO approvals and confirmation of receivables of goods in the field. The administrators in the company are used to PeopleSoft. It’s not quick, or easy, and field workers won’t use it,” says Kent Lyon, VP of Finance for RPC, a leading oil and gas services company. “We need to make it as simple to use for field workers as shopping online.” While field teams are not the typical users of business applications, in today’s mobile era, companies have figured out how to extend the reach of their existing back office applications to those in the field in a cost-effective, expedient way to reap financial benefits. Few companies have already started to accelerate time to cash, save hard dollars, and enable accurate, real-time compliance reporting by mobile-enabling process- es for field teams.