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Field Service Management

What is Field Service Management? (FSM)

Stephen Taylor February 2, 2024February 26th, 20248 min read

What is Field Service Management?

Field Service Management (FSM) is the process of coordinating a company’s resources, including staff and equipment, to streamline tasks and contracts conducted outside the company premises. It optimises operations in the field, covering services like installations, maintenance and repairs, customer support, sales and inspections.

Defining Field Service Management

Field service management (FSM) and field service management software has completely changed how companies deliver service and the customer experience. In practice, field service management (FSM) organises and optimises operations outside the office or ‘in the field’. It aligns off-site workers and allocates the resources they need to complete their jobs efficiently and on time.

Historically, FSM was entirely manual and offline. If field managers lifted needed to reach someone in the field, they lifted the phone. Data capture was physical, with paperwork exchanged among field service technicians, customers and office personnel. Interpreting that data required manual office admin for data entry, auditing and reporting purposes.

Today, field service management software can facilitate the information exchange described above. It provides a digital platform to manage all field service activities from end to end. 

What is field service management software?

Field service management software is typically cloud-based software designed to help service organisations automate all service management components. Functions of field service management often included:

  • informing stakeholders about service-level agreements
  • shift planning
  • work order scheduling
  • enterprise resource planning
  • route and schedule optimisation
  • overseeing warranties, invoicing and contracts

Modern field service solutions blend the service lifecycle tasks with automation, analytics, and intelligence. This provides real-time, accurate, and efficient data-driven insights. It’s pretty cool stuff.

Benefits of FSM Software

25%

improvement in service response times with real-time analytics.

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Why is field service management important?

Field service management is important, especially in the modern world. In our previous blog, we looked at the trends shaping modern field service. I highly recommend checking it out.

Modern FSM empowers mobile workers to do their jobs correctly and efficiently. Field service management software offers a scalable platform to make this exceptional. Every stakeholder responsible for field service delivery can be connected together, empowered with instant access to all task-relevant resources.

Seamless end-to-end service management can have many positive impacts on your company’s performance, including:

  • Standardising workflow processes: Having employees use a standardised workflow process has an immediate impact on efficiency and service.
  • Reducing paperwork: Physical paperwork will probably not completely disappear, but FSM software can help reduce it by digitising forms and records.
  • Seamless scheduling: Transparent and dynamic worker scheduling process will minimise conflicts, establish better customer service and reduce wasted time.

Features of Field Service Management Software

Using a field service management platform to plan the next evolution of your service model is where you truly get ahead. Using a fully integrated, cloud-based system, empowers you with all kinds of insights about your operation. You can see data on repair times, tech productivity, inventory management, even vehicle maintenance, all in one place.

What are the features that make this possible? Let’s dive in.

Field Service Solutions:

Mobile Working

Due to the nature of mobile work, looking for a mobile-first interface is the best place to start. Cloud-based field service management solutions provide mobile workers with a mobile app. This app allows access to all task-critical information at the point of service.

Using a mobile field app, your technicians can view their schedules and receive work updates/orders direct-to-device (D2D). Field technicians mark work orders as complete as soon as they finish the job. This is a useful feature of field operations managers. They gain visibility over real-time work completion, meaning they can track performance against business goals.

Dynamic Scheduling

Mastering scheduling is crucial for smooth operations. Complete solutions consider technician availability, skill, location, and resources. Dynamic scheduling suggests the right technicians for the right job at the right time seamlessly. Once scheduled, technicians are notified directly on their devices. Efficient route planning prioritises field technicians' time by considering factors like fuel consumption and travel distance. It uses real-time GPS tracking to create optimal routes and provide turn-by-turn navigation. This feature also recommends the nearest technicians during scheduling.

Workforce Rostering

A lesser-found capability, but a very powerful one, is integrated workforce rostering. The key to maximising productivity and efficiency is aligning your shift patterns, rotas and rosters to fluctuating demand and employee availability. A flexible and comprehensive rostering solution enables organisations to manage staff to meet specific and complex rostering requirements effectively. The right workforce rostering solution empowers organisations to take a modern and mixed approach to the make-up of their workforce. Digitised rostering processes ensure the right people with the right skills, are assigned to the right locations and shifts. SKill-match rostering ensures the delivery of high-quality services and compliments workforce scheduling greatly.

Work Order Management

Work order management streamlines the entire project lifecycle end to end. Cloud-based work order management provides a real-time, forward-looking view of the services delivered. As your field teams finish tasks, they can mark it as complete in real time. Centralising resources means your techs can capture photos, videos, notes, and signatures directly on their devices and synced to the cloud. Back office staff and other technicians can quickly access and use this information. The result? Everyone is on the same page, and all work order data is exportable, easily sortable, and auditable.

Lone Worker Protection

Cloud-based employee safety solutions protect your staff in the field. They empower you to create an efficient, high-performing service, prioritising staff welfare and compliance at every step. Hardware devices, SOS fobs or mobile apps can drive greater worker safety across your service operation. Some solutions offer beacon geofencing, enabling organisations to provide updates and alerts to staff based on their location. Often used in large, fixed-site locations such as factories or building sites. Staff can be made aware of when they enter a dangerous area or can be reminded of required safety equipment. This helps increase the visibility of staff movement and provides information that enhances auditability.

Operational Intelligence

Your business is constantly creating valuable data. Harnessing that data is the launchpad for an enormous operational advantage. Operational intelligence enables organisations to gain a full understanding of past, present and future service performance. It can highlight in real-time the current status of service including first-time fix-rates, jobs per technician, work order completion and more. Field service intelligence solutions convert that data into powerful visualisations and navigable dashboards. They easily contextualise patterns and trends within your service chain. These trends can positively or negatively affect performance. The key is that is in real-time. Armed with this information, your operations managers can make informed, data-driven decisions that optimise processes and save on overall costs. This is transformational.

Real-Time Communications

Centralised communications keep all your field service comms in one place. This makes it easier to track communications and allows for capabilities that texts or letters cannot. Technicians can use centralised communications to search the entire network for answers quickly and request support on-task. Suddenly back-office processes and front-line work are seamlessly connected, breaking siloes and unifying processes.

How Does Field Service Management Improve Customer Service?

Customer service is essential to field service organisations. Leading field service solutions, including offer a client portal. All features of service delivery are available to customers: form access, appointment services, technician communications, job progress updates and invoicing.

Clients can also provide a contact number to receive worker en route notifications with an accurate ETA of arrival. Empowered with these resources, your customer expectations are met. They feel valued, and your frontline teams can perform customer service to the highest quality.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, that is what field service management software can do, and why it’s important. It allows organisations to take a holistic approach to planning, delivering and analysing how they deliver field service to their customers. Beyond pure capabilities, organisations must also consider product breadth, innovation, integration, and dedication to customer success when reviewing suppliers.

Stephen Taylor

Stephen Taylor

Stephen Taylor, Head of Digital at Totalmobile, came on board in 2016 and brings over 20 years in digital marketing. Stephen is deeply versed in digital strategy and analytics. His SaaS and field service management expertise has made him a pivotal asset across Totalmobile sectors.

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