Business Intelligence: Helping Field Service Businesses Grow
While 2020 was one of the most challenging years for the field service industry, it also opened the door for business intelligence. While initially used only by large field service organizations, business intelligence is now becoming widely accepted by mid-sized and even smaller organizations looking to optimize their resources.
Customers are also becoming accustomed to the new business model, and those that don’t adopt it will face a disadvantage in the market.
Here is an overview of business intelligence and how it's enabling growth in the field service industry.
What is Business Intelligence in Field Service
Business intelligence takes data sets and transforms them into meaningful and actionable information to power business growth.
Business intelligence opens the door to a new business model for field service organizations. They can now charge on retainers for predictive maintenance rather than responding to reactive maintenance calls. Customers also prefer this experience as they experience fewer equipment malfunctions, which translates to less downtime and smoother business operations.
While business intelligence is still in its infancy for field service organizations, its early success suggests that it will soon become the norm.
How Business Intelligence Improves FSO Growth
As more and more field service organizations begin to adopt field service platforms that incorporate business intelligence capabilities, here is a look at how this cutting-edge resource can maximize the impact of a field service management solution.
Proactive Maintenance
Perhaps the most significant contribution business intelligence has made to the field service industry is that it now enables organizations to respond proactively instead of reactively. For example, technicians can remotely monitor equipment and replace a part or make an adjustment before it causes the equipment to malfunction.
With fewer reactive calls and more proactive maintenance, technicians can schedule their days more predictably, and field service organizations can charge on retainers (annual contracts that guarantee equipment uptime or “up-time-as-a-service” agreements), creating more predictable revenue streams.
Forecast Required Resources
An excellent first-time fix rate is essential to a field service organization's success, and without the right tools, equipment, or trained resources, it's almost impossible to have a first-time fix.
Therefore, business intelligence can also improve field service growth by enabling technicians to better forecast required resources. For example, a technician can gather data regarding the site and asset history through remote monitoring technologies and use that information to better triage the problems and anticipate what tools and parts they will need.
Upsell Opportunities
Business intelligence can also help field service organizations take advantage of upsell opportunities. For example, if a piece of the client’s equipment is old and likely to malfunction, the technician can offer to upsell them a new part or a new replacement model.
To make the sale, the technician can present the historical performance data from the business intelligence reporting to explain to the customer why it needs to be replaced.
Measure and Improve Performance
Without precise analytics and metrics, improving your field service organization's performance is a difficult task. However, business intelligence solutions enable you to harness this data and draw actionable insights from it.
For example, integrating with an ERP like NetSuite and leveraging broader operational data to create real-time dashboards, reporting, and analysis within FieldAware is an excellent way to better understand how your field service organization performs and critical opportunities to enhance performance.
The Way of The Future
While business intelligence software is a bonus and competitive advantage for field service organizations in 2021, it will soon become a mainstream practice across all field service organizations. Therefore, become an early adopter and don’t wait until you’re struggling to catch up with the competition.