Field Service in the Cloud:
Solving the 5 Biggest Challenges
of Field Service Delivery
The ServiceMax Whitepaper
Executive Summary
The time has come for field service organizations to also reap the benefits from
cloud computing or on-demand solutions. In fact, an on-demand field service
management solution can solve the top five challenges you face today—while
gaining ROI almost immediately. This paper looks at these challenges and
outlines how automating your field service processes enables you to minimize
warranty leakage, customize service offerings, streamline parts management,
and grow service revenue.
You will:
•
See how automating processes can help you solve your biggest field
service delivery challenges.
•
Discover from real-world case studies the cost reductions and revenue
increases you can expect.
•
Learn what options you have today to revolutionize your field
service organization.
Introduction
Delivering superior field service is more than just a way to keep loyal
customers. It’s your opportunity to create a strategic revenue-generating
center. And in a world of increasing competition, field service can be just the
edge you need to gain market share.
A top-performing field service organization must be able to manage complex
processes that span multiple disciplines. This means visibility into technical
support, technician scheduling, depot repair, installed base data, service
contracts and warranties, spare parts logistics, third-party service partners,
and business analytics. Field service teams need a system that accurately
controls, monitors, and tracks all the activities that each individual, group,
department, or partner in a service organization performs. Yet, only 10%
of field service teams have any sort of field service management software
in place today. Most of those are legacy, client-server systems are difficult
and costly to maintain. The remaining 90% have tried to make due with a
combination of home-grown systems and Excel spreadsheets. As a result, field
technicians rarely have all the information they need at their fingertips—and
service operations suffer.
The problem is field service has been long neglected by the software industry.
Sales, marketing, human resources, financial, customer service, and internal
support departments have all reaped the benefits of web-based cloud
computing solutions. Cloud computing or “on-demand” uses the Internet as
the mechanism, or the platform, to distribute applications making technology
advances much more accessible and cost-effective than ever before. This
delivery model means there is no hardware or software investment made up
front as well as no disruptions or additional costs for software updates and
upgrades. Customers often experience quick time to value, scalability to adapt
as needs change, increased productivity and performance, access to latest
technology innovations—and both short- and long-term savings.
Challenge #1: Giving Away “Free” Service
Knowing which products are covered under warranty or the details of service
contracts is critical to knowing what services customers are entitled to and
which customers should pay for service. Most warranty or SLA information is
buried within a proprietary order management system or you need to invent
Leading Supplier of
Transportation
Information Management
Solutions Drives More
Service Revenue with
On-Demand Field Service
Challenges:
Customer satisfaction and
loyalty was of concern due to
lack of a unified system, which
resulted in broken processes
manual processes to extract this information and put it into a spreadsheet;
meaning it’s slow and cumbersome. It’s inevitable that you end up giving away
“free” service on equipment that is no longer under warranty or you deliver
service to a non-paying customer who might actually not be entitled to it.
First, you need to make sure that when the work order is captured, critical
information about the product, warranty, and/or service agreement is available
to your field service team. If you maintain a complete record of every installed
product at every customer site you know exactly what level of service is needed
to repair or replace it. Product information can include:
•
What – product identification, serial number, lot number, and/or quantity
•
Who – customer, contact information, distributor
Needed a better solution for
inventory usage tracking to
meet customer demands
•
When – purchase, ship, and install date
•
Where – physical location and address
Did not have IT time,
resources or budget to build
infrastructure for an
on-premise solution
•
How – warranty coverage or service contract
Reverse logistics process was
inaccurate and complex
Solution:
The company deployed an ondemand field service solution
Results:
Increased service revenue
with a higher percentage of
installed base on maintenance
contracts
Reduced RMAs by 10% with
better information on
equipment returns
You can do this by either integrating with your back-office ERP systems
or simply entering it directly into an easy-to-use, on-demand field service
management solution. The solution should have complete integration to your
existing order management systems and be web-based so that your field
service team can enter data from anywhere, anytime.
Now that you have detailed product information, you also need to capture
warranty and service agreements. If your field service organization needs
to stay flexible to meet customer demands, you will need to make sure that
your on-demand field service solution enables you to define the various types
of basic warranty and how entitlement is calculated. For example, warranty
coverage can include parts, time, and/or labor. Warranties can also be driven
by purchase, shipment, or install date. You can configure your solution to
automatically apply the most relevant warranty for your organization.
When a service request comes in, the customer support user can identify the
customer and product to be supported with powerful search capabilities based
on keywords or specific attributes search capabilities. If the product is out of
warranty, an automatic notification prompts the user for automatic creation of
warranty or entitlement if required. Customer service users can easily create or
renew warranties or contracts to capture cross- or up-sell opportunities, saving
time and generating revenue. The solution then keeps track of a complete
history of service entitlements made to customers so management can easily
view and analyze trends in grouped products, regions, or customer segments.
Challenge #2: Inflexible and Out-of-Date Systems
Managing service operations across multiple legacy systems and spreadsheets
is cumbersome and complex. Your technicians in the field must login to VPN to
access on-premise, client-server systems and sometimes can’t even do that if
there is no network coverage in remote areas. The result is they’re often out
of the loop with out-of-date information. Additionally, offering more services
to customers gets tougher if it means major IT resources just to add another
option for customers. If you’re looking to win and keep customers based on
speed and accuracy, then you deal with major systems’ headaches every day.
Delivered by subscription, on-demand field service has major advantages over
on-premise, client-server systems: rapid implementation, dramatically lower
Biotech Tools Company
Gets Flexibility with an
On-Demand Field Service
Solution
A well-known biotech tools
company began its search for
a new field service solution.
Challenges:
Multiple software solutions
across the company that were
not integrated
Company has diverse product
lines so needed flexibility to
support multiple service
offerings
Tried to deploy on-premise
field service system but failed
because of autonomous nature
of the company
Solution:
The company went with an ondemand field service solution
Vendor was able to provide
enhancements in hours or
days unlike previous vendor
who would take weeks or
months
Results:
Lower total cost of ownership
with no hardware or software
investment upfront
Flexibility expedited the
implementation and rollout
Company was able to meet
changing FDA regulatory data
requirements
maintenance costs, and ease of use. No longer do you have to keep expensive
legacy or home-grown systems maintained by paying consulting fees. Anyone
in your field service organization, and your extended partner team can access
critical warranty, SLA, or customer history information anytime, using any
mobile device. And critical IT resources are spared with the cloud computing
model.
Challenge #3: Lost Revenue
When warranties or service contracts expire, you rarely take advantage of the
opportunity to offer extended service plans to customers because you aren’t
notified in a timely manner. In some cases, competing service providers may
swoop in and sell their services to your customers with expired warranties or
contracts. If you measure how many active units are under covered under
your service contracts or warranty, you would like to see that percentage
increase as much as possible.
Again, by ensuring that when customer orders are placed you collect
information about the product, warranty, and/or service agreement then you
can maintain a complete record of every installed product at every customer
site. With an on-demand field service solution, you configure the system to
provide proactive notifications when warranty periods expire. The can easily
be set up with a click when the order is taken. Using dashboards and/or
reports, you can pull up all products that will expire in a given amount of time
to actively target those customers and sell them extended coverage. Service
contracts can be worth anywhere up to fifteen percent of the original product
purchase value—this adds up to a lot of revenue. By retaining retain higher
percentages of customers on your service contracts or warranties, you can
capture additional service revenue.
Challenge #4: Costly Inventory Write Downs
Inventory is a huge investment, but necessary in order for you to run your
service organization. Individual spare parts can cost hundreds or thousands
of dollars each. Regulations may even require that you control individual
spare part numbers by unique serial number or lot number. Poor spare parts
inventory controls can mean inventory shrinkage or excess inventory buildup,
which both drive up your costs.
Automation is critical for effective inventory tracking and monitoring. By
maintaining an accurate, up-to-date inventory record of every part at every
stocking location, you know the exact value of your spare parts inventory.
Automatic audit trails track all movements or stock adjustments so you know
exactly when inventory value changes. You can also track by serial number or
by individual part numbers to meet government compliance and regulatory
requirements. Real-time inventory updates ensure that you know when
defective parts have been returned so you can minimize “leakage” and writedowns. You can even track parts activities across service partners including
parts usage, parts orders, and RMAs.
Challenge #5: No Visibility with Service Partners
Mostly likely, you rely on contractors or suppliers to help deliver your services.
You might work with third-party service providers who take care of customers
in remote areas, or assist during peak times or heavy vacation periods. You
may even outsource all depot repair work. No matter what the roles your
National Water Treatment
Company Empowers
Service Partners with
On-Demand Field Service
A national water treatment
company began replacing and
upgrading field service
functionality that resided in
an older ERP system.
Challenges:
Needed a solution that could
handle large volumes of
service requests and warranty
claims
Solution had to be accessible
by multiple contractors,
dealers, and suppliers
Company has diverse product
lines so needed flexibility to
support multiple service
offerings
Solution:
The company implemented
an on-demand field service
solution
Results:
Eliminated cost, maintenance,
upgrade and integration
concerns
Rapid implementation and
easy to use system
No need to back up data since
hosting from vendor takes
care of back ups
Effectively handles 2,000
warranty claims and 7,000
service calls per month
Better reporting and visibility
statistics
Enhanced communication with
contractors, dealers, and
suppliers
service partners play in your business, both you and your partners need
visibility into and control of the information that is vital to providing stellar
service to customers.
Getting timely and accurate customer and service information out to partner
teams is virtually impossible without an on-demand solution. Cloud computing
makes getting complete and detailed information into the hands of your
partners as easy as logging into the internet.
An on-demand field service solution lets your partners manage everything
from service requests, to contracts and warranties, to parts orders and RMAs,
so they can deliver outstanding service on your behalf. Make it easy for
partners across the globe to do business with you by using multi-currency and
multi-language capabilities. By pushing out key information to your customers
via a portal, you can enhance communication and mitigate potential channel
conflicts. You can also view partner performance and profitability to get the
most out of your partnerships.
On-Demand Field Service Transforms the Service
Organization
Today, you have the option of trying to make traditional, on-premise field
service solutions work. This means you may end up:
• With no communication between most of your back-office solutions and other
systems that contain critical data, like service contracts.
• Unable to get complete, real-time information to your technicians in the field
or to service partners.
• Attempting to build your own solution to handle tasks like parts inventories
or contract management.
• Extracting information into Excel spreadsheets, which are often out-of-date
by the time the information is compiled.
There’s a revolution occurring in the field service industry due to automation
and field service solutions moving toward a cloud computing model. Your IT
burdens and high costs that have prevented you from streamlining operations
are no longer an issue. You can implement and deploy an on-demand field
service solution in as little as one week. A complete on-demand field service
solution can tie systems together including warranty and service contracts,
parts inventory, depot repair status, service partner operations, and other
back-office systems into one field service solution—for a complete picture of
all service operations. It can automate processes to eliminate redundancy and
reduce costs, as well as increase customer service and satisfaction.
Why not explore your other option? ServiceMax delivers the first and only
complete On-Demand Field Service solution. Visit www.servicemax.com to
learn more.
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