Without doubt, mobile working is now a standard among sales and senior business executives; however, many organisations are starting to recognise the benefits that can be gained from ‘mobilising’ more operational staff. These now include field service personnel or regionally based staff through using PDAs and smartphones with data links to communicate with the head office.
Consequently, the increased focus on mobility has translated to new products and applications that allow greater freedom and improved productivity.
Automation of the asset and maintenance management functions for field service technicians is proving to be a rapid growth area for businesses. Automation of these functions has many advantages in streamlining business processes resulting in significant bottom line savings in many areas of business, which translates into a rapid and compelling ROI.
Mobile workforce solutions for asset- and maintenance-related work processes are aimed at increasing productivity and reducing operational costs. Specifically, mobile workforce job tasks include managing service requests and work orders, and material and tool usage, for both predictive and preventative maintenance.
Handheld devices can include validations that allow or disallow data entry. They can also provide the user with historical information pertaining to previous service orders or particular pieces of equipment. Furthermore, barcodes, timestamps and scanners attached to handheld devices enable quick identification of devices and equipment, identify points of entry and exit, improve efficiency and minimise human errors.
Benefits
The application of mobility solutions in the asset management and maintenance markets provides many far-reaching benefits to all organisations who manage assets. Service providers too can reap the rewards of mobility by dramatically increasing service response times and reducing costs.
Some of the benefits that can be derived via the application of mobility solutions applied in the asset management and maintenance sectors include:
- Speed resolution with complete information access — enable agents to access and update complete customer, product and service request information.
- Respond quickly to last-minute schedule changes — provide agents with updated schedules while on the road. Enable agents to anticipate additional requests with complete information about all installed products.
- Replenish parts based on actual inventory levels — enable agents to view parts on hand, order new parts, and view order status to reduce costs associated with over- and under-stocking.
- Speed billing cycles — enable agents to record time, labour, materials and expenses upon job completion, so the billing process begins even before the agent returns to the office.
- Dispatch — work orders in real time.
- Support — provide better support information to your customers.
- Additional sales opportunities — additional revenue opportunities from turning your service people into in field salespeople.
- Improve — spare parts inventory management.
The return on investment (ROI) example
Even on a very conservative estimate, mobile asset management provides a compelling ROI, which is no doubt contributing to the rapid adoption of workforce mobilisation by businesses of all types.
Smartpath recently developed a model based on a customer’s live scenario and even reduced the amount of claimed business efficiencies to produce a conservative model. The results were that on a capital outlay of less than $100,000 for an asset management and maintenance system, savings of up to $1.9 million can be achieved with an ROI of 921% and a return on investment of just 2.4 months.
The bottom line
Mobility solutions for asset management and maintenance field service-related businesses will deliver a competitive advantage in your market, allowing your team to further differentiate your organisation from your competitors. The application of mobility workforce solutions to your asset management and maintenance field service operations will:
- reduce paperwork and improve data accuracy by receiving and documenting dispatched inspections and repairs
- lower costs by reducing time, expenses and errors associated with manual or paper-based processes
- allow access to location information, compliance history and specific details about customers
- allow you to modify remote worker processes in real time
- deliver rapid return on investment (ROI) through dramatically increasing operational efficiencies and reducing costs.
*David Hodges is Managing Director at Smartpath, a developer of asset management software.