Field service organizations face more challenges in 2011 than ever before in balancing customer demand for faster resolution times and rising operational costs. As a service leader, you need clear, actionable advice on how to make your mobile workforce more efficient in getting the right technician to the right place at the right time with…
This blog post is brought to you by IFS’s Vice President Research and Development, Tom Bowe. I recently finished a large-scale IFS Field Service Management implementation in the UK and have been asked multiple times how I was able to successfully manage this complex, demanding project without having a heart attack. Here’s a look at the high-level…
Recent studies by the Aberdeen Group show that service is more important than ever. 69% of service leaders have increased confidence in the direction of their business and 90% are forecasting growth within the next 12 months. Economic turmoil has, in fact, raised the importance of service as organizations look for their service businesses to…
This field service management blog post is brought to you by IFS’s Vice President of Research and Development, Tom Bowe. Most service companies track inventory in the field to some degree and most can report cost variances and usage trends each month. Occasionally I run across service businesses that expense all of their field inventory,…
I spent an hour today with the IFS person in charge of Quality Assurance for our products. It was a most pleasant, and interesting, conversation. I’ll share some of it with you. One of the basic points of understanding is: all software has bugs. Ours, Microsoft’s, SAP’s, the video game you picked up for your…
Ten years from now, will the equipment be contacting the engineers’ devices directly? In 1991 a national service manager with Du-Pont medical products approached us with a classic service problem. His service engineers were responsible for both break/fix service and for preventive maintenance service on their products. He was wrestling with this issue – if…
I’ve been around the service industry a long time, over 25 years. I have been able to see hundreds of service operations, servicing a wide, wide variety of products – blood analyzers, medical imaging equipment, overhead doors, coin counting machines, silicon wafer producing machines, copiers and many others. I am amazed and impressed at the…
Some of the problems in service are profound, some are trivial. Some can be attacked in a fun way. Several years ago, an IFS client that services hospital and lab equipment was looking for a way to grow revenues. Their U.S. Director of service came up with a clever idea that worked well and I’ll…
Having been in the business of providing software for service organizations for 25 years, I would say that all service organizations overlap business process for 50% to 70% of their activities. When the product doesn’t work, someone needs to do something: go there & fix it, or send the product back, or send a part…
