Solving issues through mobile workforce management

Make a list of the problems you believe exist. Then, starting from within the service organization, talk with supervisors and management and elicit their input. Gather information from the technicians and other employees who report to those supervisors, and listen to what they tell you. So many problems that exist are rooted in processes at the transactional level, and oftentimes those inefficiencies go undetected by an upward- facing management. Leading organizations keep the lines of communication open between management and labor, as this facilitates the ongoing detection of obstacles and barriers to superior performance, and allows for quicker resolutions.

Recent research conducted by The Service Council brings to light some of the most common challenges that service organizations deal with today. Nearly half of the respondents (49%) cite a need to improve workforce productivity and utilization in order to optimize their field service performance. Almost as many (42%) report a desire to increase service process efficiency as a means to improve their operations. Together, these drivers indicate that service organizations continue to seek ways to drive down costs as they relate to time rather than as they relate to parts or equipment. Similarly, 39% cite customer demands for quicker response times and 35% are driven by customer demands for improved asset availability.

Again, these service organizations are looking for ways to do their work more expediently, but surely without sacrificing quality or customer satisfaction. They know that decreasing Mean-time-to-Repair and increasing parts availability, for example, will simultaneously serve both to improve customer satisfaction and reduce operating costs.

The search for problems with the service organization extends outside of its boundaries, however. Some of the problems within the service organization are only visible from outside of it, and some inefficiencies created by the service organization manifest themselves only externally. It can be difficult to know even where to start looking for such underlying problems, so offered here is an idea of some of the top challenges reported by service organizations through recent research conducted.