Steve Downton, Downton Service Management Consultants Ltd, Noventum Group
The field service environment has been infamous for under-investment, mainly because investing in the field service operation has always been put at the bottom of the priority list and seen as a venture of last resort. The pressure from the boardroom has been to get on with what is already in place, and to take costs out through improved performance with fewer heads. Arguably this has proved successful in many cases, but there is a limit as to how many times you can go to the well. Inexorable pressures on margins, and growing recognition, at senior levels, of the importance of service operations to overall success, has forced a change of thinking within leading-edge businesses which in turn has led to a significant change in opinion on the need for investment.
One way this focus change has manifested itself is in the upsurge of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementations. Usually these have been seen as company-wide initiatives, and although service has benefited from the attention, it would be naïve to suggest that this was a pure service technology/software investment.
Discussion around CRM has also brought about long-awaited recognition that cost control in the field service environment will be achieved predominantly through improved management, facilitated by effective tools, the installation of which in many service operations is now significantly overdue, thereby increasing the incentive for investment.
Let us assume that the political will to invest is in place (a big assumption), what are the steps that need to be taken to capitalise on the support and have something in place? The first problem is to decide what areas would benefit most from the investment in tools, technology, software and solutions. Automation of tasks is just one of many forms that the investment may take, and there are a number of other technologies and solutions we can use. The areas providing the more obvious contenders for the shopping list of investments includes: mobile communications, satellite positioning or GPS, scheduling, planning and forecasting, and contact centres.
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