SERVICE REVENUE GENERATION FIVE DRIVERS ENABLING THE FIELD SERVICE MOBILE REVOLUTION

Transcription

1 EXECUTIVE INSIGHT 333EXECUTIVE INSIGHT FIELD SERVICES SERVICE REVENUE GENERATION SUPPORT SERVICES FIVE DRIVERS ENABLING THE FIELD SERVICE MOBILE REVOLUTION Why 2012 Is the Year Field Service Organizations Are Pulling the Mobility Trigger April 23, 2012 A Joint Research Paper from ServiceMax and TSIA TSIA-EI

2 Five Drivers Enabling the Field Service Mobile Revolution TSIA-EI Table of Contents Executive Summary... 3 Field Service Mobility: Lessons Learned from Early Mobile Attempts... 3 Figure 1: Adoption of Mobile Field Service by TSIA Members... 4 Five Drivers Enabling the Field Service Mobile Revolution... 4 Device Cost and Availability... 5 User Adoption and Ease of Use... 6 Figure 2: ServiceMax Mobile ipad Screenshot Illustrating Ease of Use... 7 Improved Operational Metrics and Revenue Generation... 7 Figure 3: Close the Deal Using Signature Capture with ServiceMax Mobile for ipad... 8 Architecting the Customer Experience... 9 Figure 4: Average Satisfaction Scores for Field Service Visits... 9 Figure 5: Field Techs Receive Real-Time Route Instructions via ServiceMax Mobile for ipad Increased Employee Collaboration Figure 6: Using ServiceMax Mobile for ipad to access ServicePulse, which is powered by Chatter from Salesforce.com ServiceMax and TSIA Recommend ServiceMax Delivers Cutting-Edge Mobility Contact Information ServiceMax 3825 Hopyard Road Suite 230 Pleasanton, CA Tel.: info@servicemax.com Technology Services Industry Association Camino San Bernardo Suite 200 San Diego, CA U.S.A. Tel.: Fax: info@tsia.com Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 2

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Mobile tools and applications for field service can have a dramatic impact on your field technician productivity, operating expenses, customer satisfaction, and even revenue. Mobile CRM and field service tools were first introduced in the 1990s, but failed to find wide-range adoption or deliver the anticipated business value. Fast-forward to 2012, and a new mobile revolution is underway, with multiple factors making this round of mobility a guaranteed win for the organization. In this report, TSIA and ServiceMax will reveal the five drivers making mobility a top investment area for field service organizations in 2012 and beyond. Field service management should evaluate how adoption of next-generation mobile technology can streamline processes and information access for employees, with impacts to operational effectiveness and profit, and understand how the challenges facing previous mobility strategies have been overcome with new devices, new user interfaces, ubiquitous access, and a new generation of mobile-centric workers. FIELD SERVICE MOBILITY: LESSONS LEARNED FROM EARLY MOBILE ATTEMPTS Enterprise application vendors first began introducing mobile applications for field service in the late 1990s, but despite tremendous press from the vendor and analyst community, adoption and return on investment never materialized, for three key reasons: Poor usability. Early applications used wireless application protocol (WAP) interfaces, which were clunky, hard to navigate, and offered limited functionality. Only data and processes enabled by the application vendor were accessible via the mobile device, making the user experience incomplete at best. Devices were a moving target. Mobile operating systems and devices were quickly evolving in the late 1990s, and companies found that by the time they developed, tested, and rolled out an application, the device and operating system were no longer supported by the manufacturer. With newer versions so different, the custom application couldn t be upgraded to a newer platform. Lack of connectivity. Mobile phone network access was limited, rarely working inside building or equipment rooms. The ability to leverage the Internet on a mobile device was in the early stages, and Internet connectivity was far from ubiquitous or reliable, as it has become today. These obstacles are now a thing of the past. Today s rich user experiences make mobile applications easy and intuitive to use, devices are mature and readily available, and the ubiquity of mobile networks and Internet connections have expanded massively in the last decade. As a result, companies are making increased investments to field service mobility, as shown in Figure Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 3

4 Figure 1: Adoption of Mobile Field Service by TSIA Members Are you currently using a mobile field service solution? 50% 47% 45% 40% 38% 35% 30% 28% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Source: TSIA Services Technology Survey. The first year TSIA members were surveyed about mobile field service tools was in 2010, and 28% of respondents, all technology firms with field service operations, had some mobility tools or applications in place. The adoption of mobile field service rose to 38% last year, and the preliminary numbers from the 2012 survey show another sharp increase to 47%. This number will continue to rise as mobile spending grows: 40% of technology firms have budget for new or additional field service mobility in FIVE DRIVERS ENABLING THE FIELD SERVICE MOBILE REVOLUTION Why are so many companies making investments in mobile field service? TSIA and ServiceMax have identified five separate drivers behind the rapid adoption of mobility: Device cost and availability. User adoption and ease of use. Improved operational metrics and revenue generation. Architecting the customer experience. Increased employee collaboration. The following sections will provide details behind each of these drivers Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 4

5 Device Cost and Availability When the first push toward mobility happened in the 1990s, companies were limited to devices from Palm and RIM, or a special rugged device built for field service. Not only were the cost of the devices high, but availability was limited, and coverage for each provider was only offered in metropolitan areas. Today, smartphones have become must-have devices, and there are more Internet sessions via smartphone than by desktop and laptop computers. Device cost and availability have gone from a challenge to a driver. Mass adoption of smartphones. Though smartphone use began expanding with the introduction of Palm devices and RIM s BlackBerry, no one expected Apple s iphone to be such a game changer, with consumers standing in line overnight to buy new models. Today, with Apple seeing heavy competition from various Droid manufacturers, smartphones are now outselling regular mobile phones. Popularity of tablet devices. Once again, Apple kick-started a mobile movement with the release of the ipad, a tablet computer that offers all the functionality of a smartphone with a larger screen and keyboard that dramatically increase usability. Other manufacturers rushed to release their own tablet computers, with many industry analysts claiming that tablets are quickly replacing laptop and desktop computers for younger and more mobile consumers. Apple s ipad 3 sold out for pre-orders on the Internet in less than one week. SMARTPHONE ADOPTION RISES, PRICES DROP According to market research firm The NDP Group: The share of U.S. mobile handset sales that were smartphones rose to 68% in Q4 2011, up 18% from Q Prices continued to drop, with consumers paying an average price of $135 per smartphone, compared to $149 in Competitive pricing. Smartphone and tablet prices have been dropping due to increased competition both from device manufacturers and mobile carriers, allowing companies to purchase devices for field employees at a fraction of the cost of specialized ruggedized devices, which begin at $800 to $1,000 each. Easy availability. Unlike the first wave of mobile devices for field workers, today s smartphones and tablets are available from the local big box retailer as well as satellite offices of mobile carriers in every neighborhood across North America. If a field tech has problems with a device, he can stop at a retailer on his way to an appointment to replace the device, instead of submitting a request and waiting weeks for a replacement device to be provisioned by corporate and arrive from the manufacturer Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 5

6 User Adoption and Ease of Use Early mobile applications were usually built with a menu-driven WAP interface, and were difficult and slow to navigate. Also, early mobile devices had small screens and limited controls, further adding to the pain of application use. Employees often saw the new device as a nuisance rather than a benefit, and lack of adoption meant programs rarely lived up to expectations for business value or process improvement. Highly intuitive user interface. Today s mobile applications have all the usability of client/server or web applications, supporting all the user interface (UI) controls, and even allowing enhanced controls possible from the mobile devices, such as zooming in or out, hot links to open connected records or help files, support for landscape and portrait view, consistent use of menus and icons, etc. KEY FIELD SERVICE PERFORMANCE METRICS According to the 2012 TSIA Field Service Benchmark: The average field service visit now has a fully burdened cost of $1,011. The average on-site travel time to a customer appointment is 3.94 hours. Fast adoption. With most field employees already used to working with personal mobile devices, the learning curve is even faster to master mobile versions of enterprise applications. Add in the cool factor of using a smartphone or tablet device, and companies find that employees leverage the device and applications for every recommended usage and usually additional use cases the employees figure out on their own. With fast employee adoption, The average time for an on-site repair is 2.41 hours. The percent of field service issues solved on the first visit is 85.45%. business value for the mobile deployment is much faster than for other technology products. Consumer devices applicable for enterprise use. To further speed up mobile adoption, rolling out a consumer device, such as an Apple ipad, to field employees means the workers can master the applications on their very first day, as they do not have to learn a separate device and operating system. In fact, many employees will have had experience with the identical consumer device previously, making fast adoption a slam dunk Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 6

7 Figure 2: ServiceMax Mobile for ipad Screenshot Illustrating Ease of Use Source: ServiceMax. Improved Operational Metrics and Revenue Generation A large percentage of TSIA members report that 2012 is a year of tight budgets, with technology expenditures only approved when return on investment is clear and measurable. The tight budgets are also putting pressure on field organizations to more closely monitor and improve metrics across the board, including productivity, employee effectiveness, and incremental revenue. Investing in mobility passes this litmus test, with clear and measurable improvements to all areas of field service metrics: Mobility impacts to productivity. Mobile applications and devices have major impacts to field service productivity. Real-time scheduling, factoring in current location of field techs and available appointments, can cut travel time and increase the number of visits per shift. Field 2012 Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 7

8 techs arrive faster, reducing response times, and eliminating penalties for missing service level agreements. Mobility impacts to effectiveness. Having a mobile device to gain access to corporate knowledgebases, how-to guides, repair videos, and parts inventories, as well as having the means to collaborate with other field techs, reduces time on-site and repair time, and increases first-time fix averages. With a truck roll now costing over $1,000, eliminating additional visits is critical to reducing fleet costs. And, faster resolution and higher first-time fix rates are key influencers for high customer satisfaction. Mobility impacts to revenue. Field technicians can be very successful selling additional products and services while on-site with a customer, and having a mobile device eliminates previous challenges to successful on-site selling. Before mobility, field techs didn t know what offers to extend to a customer, and closing the deal was hard, usually requiring a follow-up call or letter to capture the customer s credit card number and/or signature. Mobility solves these challenges by prompting the field tech with offers to extend in context of the service visit as well as supporting credit-card swipes and signature capture with a mobile device. Figure 3: Close the Deal Using Signature Capture with ServiceMax Mobile for ipad Source: ServiceMax Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 8

9 Architecting the Customer Experience Today s technology firms understand the link between customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term customer value. YouTube videos showing cable installers asleep in a customer s home, or a delivery person throwing a computer over a fence, prove that having a field service employee on-site in a customer s home or office offers incredible potential to change the customer s perception of the company s brand and products. The average customer satisfaction scores for field service visits are shown in Figure 4. Figure 4: Average Satisfaction Scores for Field Service Visits Average Satisfaction, 10-Point Scale Overall satisfaction 9.21 Time to respond 9.11 Time to resolve 9.22 Completeness of solution 9.18 Technical knowledge 9.03 Customer service skills 9.05 Parts availability 8.95 Source: TSIA 2012 Benchmark With additional technology and training, companies hope to differentiate themselves from competitors by offering a stellar customer experience for all on-site visits. Increased mobility easily improves the customer experience in multiple ways: Better informed customers. Leveraging GPS and mobility, field techs can be scheduled for appointments based on current location, available spare parts, knowledge and certifications, etc. Instead of the dreaded four- or eight-hour window, customers can be given more specific and accurate appointment times, with an offer to place an automated call or text message to the customer with updates on arrival time Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 9

10 Better informed field technicians. As mentioned in the previous section, mobility has given field technicians 100% access to corporate content, making each field tech an expert on any subject. Using mobile devices, field techs know more about a customer problem before they arrive on-site, so they are better informed and ready to start repairs immediately. Not only can they easily access the repair history for a specific device or the repair history for a customer site, but with how-to guides and video tutorials available, field techs can research new problems while on-site and increase first-time fix rates, instead of scheduling another costly visit for another day. More professional demeanor. Customers want field employees who are polite, on time, are familiar with their customer history, and have all the skills needed to diagnose and solve the problem. Mobility makes all of this possible, by delivering more information about the customer and the problem in real-time to the technician, by allowing techs to research the problem while on-site so they are well informed and can answer technical questions for the customer, and by enabling them to use a mobile printer to leave behind a receipt detailing work performed, arrival and departure times, parts replaced, and even capture a customer signature using the mobile device to approve work or expenses. Figure 5: Field Techs Receive Real-Time Route Instructions via ServiceMax Mobile for ipad Source: ServiceMax Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 10

11 Increased Employee Collaboration As this report has illustrated, mobile technology is having a huge impact on service operations. Another major trend impacting service over the last few years has been the rapid adoption of online communities and other social media channels to improve employee and customer collaboration. Though early success stories have mostly focused on customers supporting other customers via discussion forums, clearly the rise of social media has major implications for field service as well. As employees particularly younger workers become accustomed to asking questions and sharing expertise with a community of peers, creating mechanisms to leverage this trend to improve field service operations is a logical next step. New mobile device technology is facilitating collaboration using web chat, video chat such as FaceTime, application-based collaboration such as salesforce.com s Chatter or ServicePulse from ServiceMax, or access to a discussion forum for field service workers, which allows field technicians to complete repairs more efficiently. Easy access to experts. Collaboration tools allow employees to seek the advice of experts from around the world when faced with a difficult problem or an unusual piece of equipment. With mobile collaboration, experts whether other field techs or developers, or even partners or expert customers can easily be pulled into a conversation to help diagnose and resolve a problem while on-site. Leveraging social media. TSIA members have reported multiple examples of leveraging social media to streamline field service problem resolution, from having a discussion forum for field techs to post questions and receive input from other workers, or leveraging social media channels to ask a question of a group of peers or experts, even those outside of the company. Application-based tools like ServicePulse from ServiceMax allow employees to post questions and respond to other employees from within regular application flows, so they don t have to remember to login and check a separate social networking platform. Improved communications with multimedia. Tablet devices such as the ipad offer large screens with high resolution, allowing video and sound to be leveraged for field support for the first time. Field technicians can access libraries of training videos from the field, or use a tool like FaceTime to access an expert face-to-face and discuss a problem, or use the camera on the mobile device to show the expert, or group of experts, a particular part or other image of the problem in real time Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 11

12 Figure 6: Using ServiceMax Mobile for ipad to access ServicePulse, which is powered by Chatter from Salesforce.com Source: ServiceMax. SERVICEMAX AND TSIA RECOMMEND Change is hard. Many companies have struggled with outdated and hard-to-use field service automation tools because the cost to update or replace the system was too high and the benefits unproven. The availability of cloud technology for field services has kick-started spending, with ondemand platforms, such as ServiceMax, offering the same or improved functional breadth and depth as legacy on-premise solutions, with much lower up-front costs, faster implementations, and little or no administrative costs for the organization. When shopping for field service automation, remember to: Join the mobile revolution. Look for a solution provider that has embraced mobility, offering rich mobile applications capable of running on off-the-shelf devices. If a vendor still has mobility on the road map, they have already missed a major market opportunity, which often means they are spending resources overhauling an outdated infrastructure, not expanding into innovative areas like mobility Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 12

13 Leverage social media. No amount of training or knowledgebase access can make a single employee as knowledgeable as the entire team. With more people participating in social media today, encourage employees to share expertise and make themselves available to respond to peers via a social channel when someone encounters a difficult problem while on-site. Think revenue. Instead of cutting costs to make up for budget shortfalls, how about generating incremental revenue? TSIA data shows that the intimacy of on-site service generates high accept rates for upsell and cross-sell offers, especially when coupled with a mobile solution for contextual offers and signature capture to close the deal. One of McKinley s key goals is to keep our customers and employees happy, and ServiceMax Mobile is helping us accomplish both. Moving away from a paper solution and equipping all of our technicians with an ipad is transforming the way we deliver service and positively impacting our brand every time a technician interacts with a customer. SERVICEMAX DELIVERS CUTTING-EDGE MOBILITY Kevin Rusin, CFO McKinley Equipment ServiceMax delivers the future of field service, today. The ServiceMax solution is the first and only complete suite of cloud-based, social and mobile field service applications. Companies of all sizes use ServiceMax to track what their customers own and what service they re entitled to, efficiently schedule and dispatch their technicians, track parts and inventory, streamline the management of their work orders, and much more. ServiceMax understands that field service technicians can t be tied to an office or even a network. They need to have critical service information and customer data at their fingertips, no matter where or when. With ServiceMax Mobile, field techs, service managers, and executives can access every piece of the ServiceMax Suite via a choice of mobile devices, such as an ipad, smartphone, or laptop, ensuring they are never without the information they need to do their job Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 13

14 ServiceMax Mobile helps organizations: Speed dispatching and increase tech utilization rates by keeping them informed in the field, not driving back to the office. Reduce errors and speed billing by capturing all service details on-site. Increase first-time fix rate by keeping techs connected to experts and each other while troubleshooting. Make each tech an expert by providing in-depth product documentation and schematics in the field. ipad ServiceMax Mobile for ipad is the only complete field service application available on the ipad. With its touch-screen capabilities, portability, and easy app installation, the ipad has taken field service to the next level. Smartphones Techs need to travel light, but that doesn t mean they don t need the power of the entire organization behind them. Whether iphone, Android, or BlackBerry, access to ServiceMax via a smartphone helps techs stay connected to each other and to headquarters, while management stays abreast of key customers and issues. Laptops A remote location or lack of connectivity should never keep techs in the dark. Whether you equip your techs with a standard Windows laptop or the toughest rugged device, make sure they can access every detail, whether online or offline. The bottom line is that no matter what device field technicians carry, ServiceMax Mobile has a solution that can make them more efficient and effective Technology Services Industry Association ServiceMax Page 14