Key takeaways
So you want to manage your field services more effectively (doesn’t everyone?). Those field services aren’t going to manage themselves, after all, and what kind of business professionals would we be if we weren’t trying to optimize efficiency and boost KPIs?
LinkedIn buzzwords aside, you’re here either because you have a team of field service techs you’re trying to manage, or you need the support of third-party field services. Whatever the case, we’ll help you find some of the answers you’re looking for, and point you toward where you can look for the rest.
Defining Field Service Management
Similar to a painfully large number of terms in the corporate world, field services—and by extension, field service management (FSM)—have a few different meanings, most of which depend on context.
Field Service Management (FSM) software is a digital tool designed to manage and optimize the operations of field service teams. This software helps organizations schedule and dispatch technicians, track their locations and job statuses in real time, manage work orders, handle customer interactions, and maintain inventory and assets.
FSM software often includes features such as mobile access for field workers, integration with other business systems, reporting and analytics, and customer communication portals. The goal of FSM software is to improve efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and streamline the overall service delivery process.
Field services: The “what”
To start us off, field service is a term that refers to a number of distinct yet similar roles and disciplines. In nearly every case, these roles are concerned with the setup, maintenance, repair, and replacement of a specific category of non-human assets used by businesses. Where field service technicians and teams differ from more traditional maintenance, I&O, or engineering roles is this: field services are the pros that handle the “house calls.”
Let’s use IT as a convenient and very visible example. You’re likely already familiar with the critical staff that keeps the digital infrastructure of your entire organization up and running. But unless there are particular circumstances that require it, they are dedicated to running the show from headquarters. They don’t fly out to satellite offices to set up new server hardware, because they’re needed at home base.
That’s where field service techs come in. They do many (if not all) of the same things that their locally tethered counterparts do, but their “office” is wherever the next call is. They go where the technical needs are and do the work in person.
Field services: The “who”
Now, field services aren’t found solely in computer-related industries. Under the broadest definition, any technician who travels to a distant location and uses highly specialized technical knowledge to meet needs and solve problems falls under this umbrella. Depending on who you ask, that could include:
- The repair guy sent by corporate gets the ice cream machine back up and running for the burger shop.
- The engineer is responsible for helping the local team install the new manufacturing hardware in the factory.
- The mechanic rolls out to perform scheduled tune-ups for company vehicles to increase their longevity.
There’s also an important line to be drawn regarding whether field service teams are in-house or third-party outfits. Some B2B service providers specialize in just field services, to minimize the headache and logistics required for their clients. In other cases, large corporations may have their own internal crews, perhaps with a network of distributed, localized hubs to put them within striking distance of most of their destinations.
Field services: The “how”
Lastly, let’s talk about the “management” portion of the term (since that’s probably the main reason you’re here).
As you might expect, field service management deals with the coordination, logistics, training, and, well, management of field service professionals. This may be for an internal team (or as the internal manager of a third-party outfit), or as the liaison/POC that interfaces with an external service provider.
With all of that out of the way, there is at least one more definition, and the one that’s probably the real reason you’re paying attention to any of this gratuitous wordsmithing in the first place: Field service management can, and often does, refer specifically to the software applications and platforms used to perform these functions with greater ease and efficiency.
In the same way we refer to CRM, for example, as both a discipline and a software category, you may see little (if any) distinguishing language that separates FSM software from the professional category it’s designed to support.
Core functions and components of FSM
We just mentioned that the software and the profession are often referred to with the same moniker interchangeably, and we will be doing the same from this point forward. There’s a justifiable reason for this, though.
Like nearly every other B2B software category, digital FSM tools are simply a computerized version of the manual process, with all the automations and quality-of-life upgrades that entails. If you want to know how any of this applies to non-software FSM, just imagine the same thing, minus the screen and real-time updates. Oh, and plenty of sloppy handwriting.
The nuts and bolts of FSM
At the risk of being overly reductive, FSM is analogous to other forms of work and asset management.
- Like project management, it entails the coordination and planning of who will be doing what, and when.
- Like asset management, it requires tracking the location and status of “assets,”—i.e. the team members—so that they can be assigned, recalled, and reassigned for optimal efficiency.
- Like task and ticket management, it involves tracking upcoming jobs and assignments, planning or predicting what can be, and making room for more urgent or unexpected issues that might crop up.
Additionally, field service management has to contend with financial details, like accepting client payments and handling expense reimbursements for technicians. It has to address both human and inventory asset tracking, not to mention logistical issues like route navigation and driver logs. And it usually has to accommodate compliance measures.
Oh, and customers like having remote access to their accounts, so anything that’s not done on paper will probably need a client-facing portal to facilitate that.
FSM software trends, and leading characteristics
Those are the core functions (some of them at least) that any FSM suite will need to cover. But it doesn’t stop there. FSM providers are always looking for ways to increase the value they offer and stand out from their peers in the market. Over time, it resulted in a few noteworthy market trends.
First among these is mobile-friendly design. By its nature, field service work depends heavily on being able to access your tools when away from headquarters. And while a laptop with a reliable hardline connection would probably be ideal for many techs, more realistically, most will be expecting and depending on access via a companion mobile app.
That all points to cloud-based or hybrid systems, much of which is enabled these days by SaaS and PaaS model offerings. Where some software solutions lend themselves to local deployments and on-prem implementations, FSM is more challenging to facilitate this way because, well, the work itself isn’t done on-prem.
One last point of value to mention here: back-end system integrations. No service happens in a vacuum, and that’s doubly true for anything that’s connected to a digital system. The more interconnected and automated the transfer of information is, the lower the risk of human error and delays will be.
What’s more, any circumstance that involves external service techs will inevitably have to address issues of information privacy and access rights. Obviously, the less information the tech has to be given direct access to, the better, but the minimum threshold will vary by industry, service, and so forth. So, the more that the digital tools can integrate, the less the tech will have to handle directly, and the better the principle of least privilege (PLP) implementation will be.
Benefits of Field Service Management
Most of us have at least tacitly accepted by now that, with a few rare exceptions, electronic processes are a huge upgrade over anything administered via pen and paper. How much of an upgrade, though, is still up for debate. A debate, it should be noted, that directly influences decisions about if and when to migrate to a digital system.
We get it. There’s a lot of cost involved in going digital, or even in switching from one digital solution to another. But the gulf of difference in effectiveness and efficiency between manual FSM processes and digitally enabled ones is only getting wider, just like everything else in business. The broader business ecosystem is catching on rapidly, and there are some very compelling reasons to jump on this particular bandwagon.
Reducing overhead
Travel costs, overscheduling, underscheduling, delays, and more are common frustrations for anyone in charge of planning and managing workflows. But where field service differs is that it’s not just a matter of waiting for an email or report to be finished. There are legitimate physical limitations and constraints that have to be accounted for.
People can only travel so fast and be in one location at a time, so an error in this vein can have some pretty impactful, cascading consequences. Using software to more accurately predict, account for, and respond to the myriad of factors and circumstances can minimize costs, optimize travel efficiency, limit waste, and boost productivity.
Empowering service teams
In the simplest terms, “getting more done” requires either doing more work or making work easier to do. But while a factory might be able to speed up the lines or run the machines for longer if they need to temporarily boost production, field service doesn’t exactly work that way. So, rather than asking techs to “pedal faster” to reach their destination, FSM tools allow you to remove roadblocks and obstacles.
Logistics and coordination is part of it (as mentioned above), but there are other important factors—increasing record accuracy, facilitating access to troubleshooting info, and reducing communication delays, for example.
Improving client satisfaction
If things are happening faster, with fewer errors, and longer-lasting results, people tend to be happier with the work their techs do. It’s a lot like a visit to a doctor or mechanic; generally speaking, the less frequently it needs to happen, the better. Even when they do need to call in tech for a surprise visit, scheduling is easier (and more predictable), delays are easier to prepare for, and solutions are reached faster, so the tech can promptly exit stage left, and let the client get back to their work. Whether your service team is internal or external, favorable conclusions to service tickets are always a welcome sight.
Discovering and predicting patterns
No one can see the future. But if there’s any consensus for an acceptable use case for AI and other advanced algorithms, it’s this—parsing mountains of data to help us better predict and prepare for possible eventualities. You’ll hear a lot of big talk from major BI vendors about this, but there is at least a foundation of truth to these claims. What’s more, the adoption rate (either via native functions or integrations) for this kind of computational wizardry is better than basically any other.
In other words, the right field service tool can help you identify and understand what is happening, when it’s happening, why it’s happening, and which strategies have increased odds of leading to better outcomes.
How to implement field service management (FSM)
So, how do businesses adopt/migrate to/implement any new technology solution?
Start with research (you’re already a step ahead of us on that one; good job). Figure out your needs, how they relate to the market offerings, and which critical components are less commonly supported.
Then, start evaluating the solutions that claim to meet those needs. See how current and past customers fared in having those same needs met (bonus points for primary sources and direct recommendations). Build your shortlist, compare cost/benefit breakdowns, and get what hands-on testing done that you can. After that, if you’ve found a likely candidate, it might be time to make the call.
Honestly, it all sounds exhausting, despite being standard practice for this kind of thing. Then again, that’s the idea behind things like optimization and automation, isn’t it? You incur some additional expense in time, labor, etc. in the pursuit of reducing the strain and cost of ongoing daily processes. You know things can be better, and you know “doing nothing” doesn’t cost anything extra in comparison.
But without a hop or two over the relevant hurdles, work will continue to be as much of a grind as ever. And few groups of professionals deserve as much reprieve from the grind as the ones who keep things running smoothly for the rest of us.
