During my time as an independent analyst covering field service, I had the opportunity to speak with countless service practitioners about their struggles and successes with service technologies. In doing so, it became increasingly clear that service done well contributes to revenue growth.
Proving that in practice was easy, at least in the abstract—I could look at Best-in-Class organizations, those with the highest performance and growth metrics, and review what types of systems they have in place, what their service approach looked like, and where they planned to make future investments. I could then benchmark that against case studies to crosscheck the average performance with specific examples.
Yet somehow that wasn’t very satisfying, as I thought about it, for two main reasons: firstly, the fundamental links between cause and effect could not always be as rigorous and absolute as I would like.
Secondly, even when legitimate and quantifiable benefits were recognized, such as improved time from ticket to invoice or reduced costs per truck roll, translating these to the total value created (beyond just a direct saving of cost) for the end-user and the company was also problematic.
This is part of what was so exciting about the IDC study that IFS commissioned. With a proven methodology and an independent voice, IDC conducted an extensive, truly worldwide, anonymized study, among five industries over a six-month period without intervention or any direction from IFS.
What was uncovered was a tangible, accessible, and measurable benchmark of the qualitative and quantitative benefits that IFS provides its customers.
The results for all businesses, service and otherwise, can be found here: https://www.ifsworld.com/corp/sitecore/media-library/Assets/2019/09/19/idc-ifs-business-value-white-paper
Footnote: IDC White Paper, sponsored by IFS, The Business Value of IFS Enterprise Solutions with Industry-Specific Use Cases, September 2019
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