The changing face of field service: SMBs are changing the way their field service technicians connect with the office

Frontline Solutions, March, 2004 by Tom Kevan

Very often when you read about field service optimization, it's within the context of large companies, expensive software applications and complex integration projects. But what about the small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) that don't have the resources to take advantage of expensive hardware and software field service tools?

This problem involves more than a fringe element of the business community. "Within the almost 5 million SMBs in the United States, there are 20 million mobile workers. This is 52% of all mobile workers in the United States," says a Yankee Group report titled "SMBs Represent Big Opportunity in Wireless: A Look at the 2003 Wireless SMB Survey."

A Question of Connectivity and Efficiency

The core of many of the problems that arise in supply chain management in general, and field service in particular, often involve integration and connectivity. This is especially true for SMBs. "Traveling workers often feel disconnected from the business and may lack resources and information in real time when sitting in a customer situation," says Helen Chan, senior analyst for small and medium business strategies at the Yankee Group. "The need for them to be connected to their company's network and have access to business information in real time will only increase. But the high cost and complexity of traditional CRM [customer relationship management] packages has hampered the adoption of such applications in the SMB space. This impacts the ability of SMBs to have an efficient and effective system of handling their customer files, documents and interactions."

Add the increasing economic pressure on SMBs to improve productivity through automation, and you can see the challenge faced by both end users and vendors.

"We believe that to compete for customer retention, these companies will adopt technology solutions that improve communications and enable them to excel in customer service, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty," says Tom Allen, COO for @Road Inc., a field service vendor. "The need to improve business processes and operations efficiencies, and the speed at which this can be done, is another challenge."

"Organizations large and small must be able to optimally schedule and dispatch their field technicians, reduce windshield time, eliminate overtime and provide the technology infrastructure to get more out of each worker--more work orders, billing and customer-facing time," says Jack McAvoy, a vice president at Viryanet Inc., a mobile workforce vendor.

Among the major problems confronting SMBs is their inability to track technicians in the field and track and locate spare parts, says McAvoy.

Finding the Right Tools

Until recently, many of the hardware and software tools designed for field service applications have not been a good fit for SMBs. Cost and complexity have been the primary obstacles, but the very scale of some of these tools have all but excluded their use by smaller businesses.

"Custom corporate databases and applications become important only in firms with more than 50 employees. This requirement is intuitive because custom applications and legacy systems are a province of larger businesses," says the Yankee report. "Remote access to packaged sales force automation (SFA) and field force automation (FFA) applications is also more critical to the large business segment that has been the target for PC applications by software vendors."

This, however, is changing. Mobile devices are becoming less expensive, and field service applications are being scaled back so that they are easier to deploy and manage, says Sheryl Kingstone, program manager for customer relationship management strategies at the Yankee Group.

According to Viryanet's McAvoy, SMBs are now looking for field service software that provides basic functionality at reduced cost and integration requirements.

But basic functionality does not translate into narrowly focused features. Because SMB field service technicians wear multiple hats, they need more than service and repair solutions. Service applications must be more rounded and include a variety of productivity-enhancing functions. The software on the technician's mobile device must provide real-time access to the company's back-office systems, greatly improving the field service worker's ability to do his or her job.

"Increasingly, SMBs are looking for application integration so that business information will no longer be kept in departmental silos, which is not conducive to business decision-making," says Chan. "Unlocking information across departments and applications helps SMBs to uncover sales opportunities with customers by having a 360[degrees] view of the customer."

An example of this is Mobile Gas Service Corp. of Mobile, Ala. "In the next few years, we hope to equip all of our field technicians with phone/PDA devices that will provide Web access to the company's back-office systems," says Alan Hobbs, Mobile's director of customer service. "This will give the technicians real-time information on customer account histories, appliance specifications and parts availability. Through these changes, we hope to reduce our costs, achieve greater efficiency, meet rising customer expectations and take advantage of real-time information."