Field Service Management explained
The Field Service industry can only benefit from using Field Service Management (FSM) technologies to optimise its processes. It offers many immediate and long-term benefits, such as an improved customer experience, quicker reaction time, and time and resource savings.
The Field Service industry faces many challenges that influence your company’s productivity. But nothing is impossible without the help of Field Service Management (FSM) tools. With a FSM solution you can avoid common pitfalls and make sure your company, including your entire service team, can excel in the field.
What is Field Service Management (FSM)?
Field Service Management (FSM) helps you to organise and optimise your company's field operations, in- and out-house, and enables you to balance all your activities.
Optimal Field Service Management is crucial to ensure your field service meets its quality standard, whether it's inspection, maintenance, installment, or another facet of the Field Service spectrum.
What are the benefits of Field Service Management?
- Access to real-time information at all times: FSM and the Internet of Things (IoT) sail in the same direction. Connectivity between these worlds composes a Big Bang of possibilities, from real-time access to data from the field to auto analysis and cleanly generated reports.
- Better customer experience: It's not always evident to be aware of, let alone meet your customer's specific needs. However, delivering with outstanding customer service has quickly become the norm and priority in the Field Service industry. Through technology you can optimise this by having plenty of customer data, giving you time and knowledge to maintain a proactive strategy when it comes to servicing your customers with whatever they need, whenever they need it.
- Automation: Field services used to imply a lot of time-consuming manual administrative work, but Field Service Management has significantly changed this. FSM solution is a true timesaver when it comes to a wide range of tasks, such as scheduling, invoicing, setting and sending reminders, as well as filing customer data and generating reports.
- More focus: Due to all its benefits, FSM solutions allow you to focus on what's important, serving your customers with the best service your company has to offer.
Key features for optimal Field Service Management
- Inventory management: with Field Service often comes the installation of equipment. However, keeping your inventory clean and correct, isn't always easy when everyone on your team comes and goes in and out of "the field". This makes it hard to keep track of your tools and supplies, eventually leading to severe problems such as shortages. A FSM solution makes sure you never lose sight of your equipment, even stating where in the field it's situated and who's working with it.
- Clear communication: One of the pitfalls in the Field Service industry is clear and open communication. Being able to communicate fast and consistently across all your processes and employees, ensures you can organise your entire team and equip them with the power of knowledge and information.
- Always on schedule: Managing an entire team comes with its own challenges. It's key to keep track of who’s doing what, were and how. FSM solutions just simply makes scheduling effortless and ensures that those challenges don't pose a problem for your day-to-day operations.
- Keeping track of time: Time tracking used to be a very manual process, one done with old-school pen and paper. In 2022, this is beyond a thing of the past thanks to the many solutions available. Doing things manually also implies errors, after all, we’re only human. For example, with FSM solution you can prevent early clock-ins and forgotten clock-outs, eliminate time theft, export timesheets for simple payroll processing, and so much more.
- Reporting: Data is almost equal to reporting, whereas reporting implies better decision-making. Hence the importance of FSM, ensuring and automating two of those. A FSM solution makes it easy to use the imputed data and output it into fully automated and interpretation-friendly reports for all of your departments.
- Task management: Using a FSM solution gives your planning staff one step ahead of busy days and complicated scheduling. Each service deliverer has its own qualities and certifications. Thanks to technology your planning team can easily see which service deliverer is certified for a certain job and is available at any given moment. This prevents potential mismatches and ensures efficient and correct scheduling.
- Compliance: Depending on which service you offer; you must comply with local or international government bodies and regulations. You might need to follow mandatory procedures or checklists. FSM solutions make sure you have everything you need to be compliant through standardised checklists and more.
Automation tools make your field service processes manageable, mobile, analysable and beyond.