05/08/2009 - Three steps to heaven: smoothing the road to mobility 

The rise of the mobile field worker
Mobility is becoming an essential part of field service business strategy. In the pursuit of competitive advantage organisations are passing more and more information between field technicians and the back office. In addition, with ever-growing legislative requirements in areas such as health and safety, efficiency and waste reduction, organisations are realising that mobility applications can meet their duty of care obligations.  As a demonstration of this trend, recent research from the Aberdeen Group shows that 95% of EMEA field service-led organisations see mobility as being “extremely” or “very” important to their business plans, while 74% expect to have a mobile device-equipped field workforce within the next year.

What does mobility deliver to the business?
The prime benefit from mobility is the increased business efficiency it brings, without compromising customer service.  DX group, as one example, has been able to massively streamline the way it captures information related to deliveries and to make it available directly to customers. This has both improved the timing and accuracy of delivery and therefore business performance, and subsequently the quality of customer service as now they have a much better view of the process. These efficiency gains help to combat increasing service-related costs and a limited pool of field service staff, both of which were cited as issues for mobility deployments by Aberdeen survey respondents.

Customer satisfaction is also a major driver towards mobility: on average, only 58% of service visits fix customer problems first time, whether fixing a boiler or delivering a package. However, workers connected to a real-time mobile network can be better prepared for a problem with up–to-the-minute information, correct spare parts, and access to better support while on the job. Aberdeen’s research reveals that best in class companies have a significantly higher first time fix rate as the result of their successful use of mobile field applications.

As well as improved efficiency, mobility allows organisations to implement tools and techniques that would be otherwise impossible. In the Aberdeen Group’s survey, diagnostic capabilities, on-site customer feedback, job management, and scheduling were all activities that organisations were either using or planned to use thanks to mobile networks. 

The big question: Is the recession stalling mobility?
Mobility is certainly moving ahead: 75% of Aberdeen Group respondents predicted that the recession would have either no impact on their plans or, at worst, cause a “minor delay”. Indeed, organisations such as Avery Weigh-Tronix, who have been using mobile solutions since 1993, continue to make significant investments in new mobile technologies to further improve their already industry-leading customer service levels.

As many vendors are realising, in the current climate value for money and reduction in capital expenditure are important factors in technology investment decisions. We have found that this is making solutions based on managed or outsourced services more attractive to organisations. Such solutions allow them to deploy mobility with a minimal impact on capital budgets and existing, paid-for head count.

Back-office integration: The keystone of the mobile network
Integration with back-office systems is probably the most important part of fulfilling any mobility solution’s potential. State-of-the-art devices count for nothing if field workers can’t actually make use of them. The major challenge for organisations attempting mobile integration is the lack of experience and expertise available: either from internal IT staff or “traditional” Systems Integrators (SIs). 

Integrators also fail to grasp that field service operations are built on specific, often unique business processes, that can’t simply be replicated between organisations. These processes definitely don’t exist as native features within traditional back office applications.  For example, when field workers use paper-based systems, there’s often a significant element of human judgement and experience applied when transfering information into a back office system. For a mobility solution to be cost effective, it must be able to successfully replace this workflow. Hence for integration to be truly effective, the approach of connecting field workers to back end systems needs to be matched by experience and expertise in areas such as developing mobile applications.

Where are the costs and when?
There are three main items forming the cost of a mobile solution: systems design and development, the sourcing of devices and communications infrastructure and finally training and support.

Design and development, as previously stated, require specialist skills for mobility applications that must either be identified internally or sourced externally.  Communications infrastructure is vital to the stability and availability of the mobile application.  A company that is making a major business bet on its ability to deliver superior customer service must be confident that both ends of its application will work, and that the connection between them is measurable and predictable in its performance.  Clearly there are limitations on the connectivity available from mobile operator networks such as coverage ‘black-spots’. However, there are many things that can be done to put layers of security and resilience on top of the standard operator offering that vastly improve the reliability of the total solution.

Mobility solutions are different from traditional applications because they are generally based on new hardware and software that operates outside the controlled environment of a company’s firewall. Careful consideration should be given to the costs of supporting both the hardware in the field, and the potential helpdesk burden from mobile workers.  Problems with mobile devices can be due to a range of new factors that are not normally encountered by IT help desk staff. Therefore education and helpdesk capacity concerns should be carefully considered before a system goes live.

When training workers, organisations should look to standardise their systems, instead of attempting to manage heterogeneous environments as mobile infrastructure has just not reached the maturity of its fixed-world counterpart. With standardisation, it becomes much easier and cheaper to train workers to the degree needed. The dominant Operating System for corporate mobile devices, according to Aberdeen Group’s research, is set to be Windows Mobile.

Maintenance Costs: Much lower than you might think
For field technicians, maintenance costs effectively cover two areas: the devices they use, and the network those run on. Most important is covering the risks involved in the network going down or workers losing or irreparably damaging their devices.

To reduce risks for devices, organisations should make sure that there is a repair and replacement service in place, so that any damages are quickly remedied and workers aren’t left device-less.

For network maintenance, it is always wiser to invest in a reliable network than to risk the losses caused by sudden failure. For example, in London on April 6th, contractors working on the Olympic site accidentally cut through a BT cable, cutting off several homes and businesses in the area and also damaging the networks of Transport for London and the emergency services. In events such as this, having a network that can survive the outage is invaluable. Again, organisations should use a specialist service provider that understands how the networks operate and can prevent, or at least swiftly fix, any outages.
 
Conclusion: Forging ahead
The constant search for improved efficiency in field services, whether justified in environmental, financial or even CSR terms, means that organisations will inevitably want to get even more from mobility. Even in a recession, the evidence of Aberdeen Group’s research and the experience of DX Group and Avery Weigh-Tronix shows that most businesses are looking to forge ahead. Integrated mobile networks don’t have to be some grand ideal: they should be a straightforward business tool that provides lasting and tangible results. As long as businesses consider how to overcome the potential obstacles on the way, they should be able to plough ahead and continue reaping the benefits.

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