Anthony Moffa is a Senior Director within PTC’s ThingWorx Product Management team. He has extensive experience, designing, manufacturing and implementing diagnostic systems in a variety of industries including aerospace, nuclear power and petrochemical. Prior to joining PTC he was responsible for the design and implementation of 2 IoT programs, one in life safety and the other in the life sciences arenas. He has been a long-time contributor to service research advisory councils managed by Aberdeen and The Service Council, holds a Mechanical Engineering Degree from Villanova University and has multiple Six Sigma certifications.
What is field service management?
Field Service Management (FSM), describes the process of scheduling, controlling and archiving the activities of a company's service personnel and operations. This would include activities such as installation and commissioning, scheduled maintenance and testing or calibration and break-fix repairs. Effective field service management involves the integration of all call center activity, all field-based service activity (planned and unplanned), dispatch management (scheduling and deploying field service technicians to specific jobs), inventory management (tracking and managing the tools, replacement equipment, and the spare parts needed to complete field service tasks), management of entitlements (warranty and service contract SLAs) as well as other key functions like customer management and analytics to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of field operations.
Field service management benefits
Visibility and accountability
There is a truth in the world of improvement—“you cannot improve what you do not measure.” While an FSM system will help manage the day-to-day activities of the service organization, it also gives the organization insights into whether they are performing well in the various parts of their business. For example, are you performing your planned activities on time (installations, PM’s and calibrations), are you meeting SLAs for break fix without overtime, how much warranty work are you doing and is spare parts consumption in check?
It's also important that this information is recorded and available in a system of record that would aid the service team in future issue resolutions. Likewise, it should also stand up to an inquiry from a customer, and auditor or in rare cases, a court of law. It’s unfortunate, but it is a litigious society we live in and “trust me” doesn’t hold a lot of credibility these days.
Increased uptime
One of the most significant benefits of field service management is increased asset uptime. This is the improvement the customer sees/experiences. Field service management software allows businesses to schedule and dispatch field technicians quickly and efficiently, reducing downtime and increasing the amount of time technicians spend on value added work. This results in higher productivity, faster response and resolutions times, and increased customer satisfaction. By integrating with IoT data, businesses can also use field service management to track and monitor equipment and assets, identify potential issues before they become problems, and perform preventative maintenance, further reducing downtime and increasing uptime.
Reduced mean time to repair and improved first-time fix rates
By reducing the mean time to Response, Repair, and/or Resolution (MTTR) and improving first-time fix rates (FTFR), field service management software helps businesses increase customer satisfaction (improved uptime), reduce costs associated with delivering service, and improve their bottom line. Service technicians can quickly access customer information, service history, knowledge bases, and product manuals with field service management software, which helps them resolve issues faster. Field service management software also lets technicians receive real-time updates about new service requests, schedule changes, and other critical information.
What is field service management strategy?
Field service management software has many features, but at the core you can say it functions as a service execution engine. With a good field service management application, businesses can reduce field service costs by optimizing their field service operations, efficiently scheduling and dispatching appropriately trained technicians, tracking their location and progress, and managing spare parts inventory and equipment. Businesses may also see reduced travel time and fuel costs (route optimization), as well as improved FTFR and reduced downtime.
One of the primary byproducts of field service management is that the improved performance it produces will often increase customer satisfaction and net promoter scores. By using field service management, businesses can provide faster, more efficient service to their customers. Real-time tracking of field staff helps businesses to quickly respond to customer needs and provide accurate ETAs for increased customer loyalty and positive reviews, which can potentially attract more business. Field service management can even improve communication between the field and office staff members, resulting in a more efficient and productive team.
Key considerations for developing a field service strategy
Digitize processes
One of the most important considerations for developing a field service management strategy is to digitize processes to automate tasks, streamline workflows, and make data more accessible. For example, a company might use a mobile app to dispatch field service technicians to job sites or a cloud-based platform to manage inventory and track work orders. Keep in mind, digitizing processes may require redefining your processes first. Digitizing your current process, which may be inefficient or poorly conceived, may result in you doing the wrong thing, just faster.
Focus on cost
Developing a cost-focused field service management strategy can help reduce expenses and increase profitability. Businesses can analyze the costs associated with service calls and identify areas where expenses can be reduced, such as optimizing routing and scheduling, improving spare parts inventory management, increasing first-time-fix rates and minimizing travel time. These metrics will ultimately serve as your program report card. It’s important to make sure they are accurate and balanced. Balanced metrics ensure improvements in one area are not detrimental in another (e.g., first-time-fix rates increase only because spare parts inventory was doubled or tripled).
Improve customer experience
A well-developed field service management strategy can improve the customer experience by ensuring timely and efficient services through management and optimization of various processes such as scheduling, dispatching, tracking, and reporting. Implementing a field service management strategy can ensure that field service technicians have the right training, tools and resources to provide high-quality services to customers, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. In general terms, the cost of a dispatch to service equipment is essentially “fixed” for the service organization, but for the customer, cost compounds as time elapses. While the service team may view this as fixing a piece of equipment, for the end user, you’re putting their system or process back online.
Future of field service management
Field service management has undergone a major transformation in recent years with the many advances in technology such as predictive analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), and more recently, artificial intelligence (AI). While the shift to digital has led to improvements in efficiency, productivity, ROI, customer and employee satisfaction scores; customers are now expecting even quicker response times, more accurate diagnoses, and full transparency from companies, including pricing information. Companies will need to invest in their field service management strategies to meet these evolving expectations and automate processes within their workflows.
IoT field service applications use data from connected IoT devices to monitor, diagnose and maintain equipment remotely, helping businesses to anticipate maintenance needs and address them before they become major issues. It also helps them spot trends within model types or classes of assets, often accelerating diagnosis and corrective actions, further optimizing their operations and improving overall efficiency.
Predictive maintenance based on data from IoT devices is becoming increasingly important to improve equipment reliability, reduce costs, and increase productivity. By analyzing data collected from sensors and other connected devices, companies can predict if and when maintenance is needed before equipment fails, preventing costly downtime and repairs, allowing for more efficient scheduling of maintenance, and reducing the need for unnecessary preventative maintenance, inspections and/or repairs.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming field service management by producing actionable insights from data and cutting-edge solutions to help companies stay competitive, improve efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction. AI-powered tools can automate routine tasks, analyze data, learn from it and provide field technicians with real-time insights to help them resolve issues quickly and accurately. Field service managers can optimize scheduling, route planning, and resource allocation with AI, resulting in reduced costs and improved performance. AI also helps in predicting potential problems so that proactive steps can be taken to prevent downtime and minimize disruptions.
Learn more about how your field service strategy can be enhanced with IoT data
Field service management can greatly benefit from the use of IoT data. By integrating IoT connected devices into the field service process and leveraging the real-time data collected from these machines, service teams can make informed decisions. This data can be scanned for error codes, analyzed to identify patterns, evaluated for usage cycles, predictive maintenance needs, and improve the overall efficiency of the equipment, as well as streamline field service operations. Service management teams can use IoT data to make informed diagnostic decisions, flag irregular behaviors, gain insight about customer usage patterns, optimize workflows, and reduce downtime, resulting in improved customer satisfaction and significantly increased profitability for both the end user and service organization. When combined with field service management, IoT data can produce more proactive, efficient, and effective service operations.
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