The Necessity to Automate Field Service Incidents

By CIO Applications| Monday, February 18, 2019

The Field Service Management (FSM) industry is designed to handle countless incidents that are usually for the end employees. But this industry is a bit complex as field technicians need a lot of time to resolve issues, use more parts than they need and are always bombarded with multiple products. All services related to FSM systems are workflow-driven, time-based and monitoring-based. Automation is one such solution for the FSM industry. Here are four reasons why field service solutions should be automated.

1. Complexities: As per a report by Field Service’s Future Trends Report, 81 percent of companies believe that smart products will be in the market in the next five to ten years. With the proliferation of robotics and innovation in the manufacturing sector, bringing digital equipment in the field is difficult. Formerly, technicians had to diagnose the problem and then make multiple visits until the task was not completed. However, with automation, identifying a problem will be much easier and the information collected will also be in detail and precise which enables the field technician to focus more on building his relationship with the customers.

2. Train the staff: Field service staffs are following the traditional systems, but there is an urgent need to train them so that they support the new policies.  Moreover, millennial recruits have no longer the touch-and-feel experience, and they don’t consider this job as a long-term career; therefore they need to be trained regularly. Also, an automatic problem and solution resolution can help the staff to focus on the customer rather than finding the problem.

However, if one plans to consider automating its field service operations, they can discuss these few tips:

•  The need for relevant and accurate data is a must before trying to fix an issue.
•  One has to understand the evolution of data within a corporate environment.
•  Stakeholders’ say is crucial; therefore one must get an agreement on the usage of automation from all their stakeholders.

Advancement in the field service organizations to escalate to a new level.