Field service tracker responds to wireless trend
12 Feb 2010
London – The percentage of technicians with wireless access to formal packaged field service management solutions will increase from 12% to 40% over the next two years, according to estimates from industry analysts at Gartner.
In repsonse to this predicted trend, FleetMatics, a company specialising in mobile asset software, has launched its field service management software, Field Service Manager into the UK market. The product is said to help engineering service departments to manage field-based engineers, by automating service call management, job dispatch, signature capture and invoicing through a single integrated system.
Using Field Service Manager, field service departments can increase visibility and productivity, reduce overheads, ensure faster receipt of payment, said Fleetmatics. Another benefit, it claims, increase customer satisfaction by enabling engineers to complete multiple (and often complex) forms relating to a specific job on a smartphone, PDA or other mobile device.
“Field service departments in many industries face a number of challenges in running an effective team of service engineers. Not least is the problem associated with paper-based job/work processes, such as accurate and timely invoicing. With Field Service Manager, we can cut the average time down from six weeks to a matter of hours,” according to Derek Bryan, sales director at FleetMatics.
Using the GPRS network, Field Service Manager allows multiple job forms to sit on the device itself, which means that even when an engineer is out of network range he can continue to complete the form and send it back to his service department once he is back online.
“Our product is unique, as it allows engineers to get on with the job and complete the necessary forms regardless of whether they are online or not, unlike most field service management software solutions, which offer web-based forms,” Bryan explains. “This is critical for companies where service engineers are down in basements, in lift shafts, or where network coverage is patchy – it means job processing does not stop even when the mobile network is down.”
Field Service Manager sits as a software application on any hand-held mobile device that runs on Windows Mobile 6 or Google Android. It operates by connecting to the service department’s back-office system via GPRS. This back office system appears as a dashboard to the service department, and is accessible through a web portal.
From the dashboard, customer jobs are logged and issued to the engineers. Once received and completed, the engineer then completes the relevant forms about the job via their mobile device and sends the information back to the service department so that it can be invoiced straight after the job has been completed.
The software package is designed and sold using cloud (on-demand) computing. Customers pay a monthly subscription and the service is completely flexible, putting the customer in control. This software as a service (SaaS) model now makes software solutions previously only available to large organisations available to businesses of all sizes.
