Louise Robertson from Localz outlines some of the challenges the mobile workforce face during the pandemic and ways of negating its impact.

Covid-19 means we are living in an extraordinary time; we are hyper-aware of who we are interacting with on a day-to-day basis. This is further heightened by the need to reduce the number of people we connect within the real world. Human movement has been restricted to assist with #flattenthecurve.

Essential services must continue to function and mobile workers need to keep the infrastructure working. Roadside assistance, plumbers fixing broken heating and boilers, electricians restoring power, utility personnel performing essential maintenance, healthcare workers attending to in-home patients, and deliveries of everyday essentials.

Confinement is rapidly altering consumer expectations, activities, and motivations, this will impact the customer perception of different brands in different ways. (Day 3 and I am crawling the walls of my home office) Keep in mind you have an opportunity to excel (or fail) because customer expectations are high now with so much emotion and uncertainty.

The delivery of service and products has changed 

Everyone is brainstorming isolated customer scenarios to build a customer-centric approach in the face of Covid19. Consider:

Changes to customer needs and journeys

There is no longer ‘business as usual.’ Customer awareness, concern, and reaction to the virus is rapidly shifting expectations and needs. Growing government restrictions will impact customer demands.

Be proactive now with information for customers

Over-communicate with customers and employees who are concerned and demanding information. Use agile, personalised daily communications to keep teams updated, protected and positive.

Put the isolated customer at the centre of your plan. Address how you can help customers keep themselves safe in this pandemic and address their concerns and fears. Conveying what your brand is doing to ensure a safe service or shopping experience in physical locations can earn trust (and business).

• Advance identification of the mobile worker sent to the consumer: photo, name, vehicle registration number, relevant licence credentials, and even body temperature readings.
• Pre-arrival information, job details, accurate ETAs, and tracking maps that update in real-time. The customer can be prepared to socially distance themselves.
• Real-time two-way communications between the mobile worker and the consumer enabling contactless property access and sharing of last-minute details.
• The issuing of unique one-time PINs enables deliveries and service appointments to be authorised, approved and completed in a contactless manner as there is no need for any physical contact or signing on a device.
• For product deliveries ‘to the doorstep’, customers can advise a safe place, can track precise arrival, and can be notified of delivery completion - helping to reduce concerns about goods being left outdoors.

Communication in action

You can proactively collect feedback from customers in real-time to monitor how your field team is coping.

How your brand responds to questions like this will vary wildly based on your category. Reviewing the tone of your marketing and communications plans at this time is important. You have to pull planned communications which are out of sync with the crisis. (Cruise offers and restaurant experiences)

Gartner says, "Listen to your customers": CX and customer insight leaders are in a better position than others in the organization to understand how customer needs and expectations are swiftly changing.

Real-Time Feedback

Attitudes and perceptions will change very rapidly, so it will be essential to establish real-time feedback monitoring and reporting. People who were not taking the virus seriously a week ago are doing so today. Simply put, month-old data on customer attitudes and perceptions of your service may as well be decade-old data. Have full visibility of your mobile workers to keep abreast of changes that may occur day-to-day in the coming weeks and months.

Where your brand depends on real-world delivery of products and services plan...

• How you will serve customers if those are curtailed?
• Will you need to implement testing or provide masks to customers?
• How will you deal with customers who exhibit symptoms? Must your employees in every location understand and interact with local health officials?
• How can you use communications to support people who are quarantined?
• Can you shift to contactless digital delivery of field services?
  
  

Answers to these questions are not easy since they involve issues of product, logistics, inventory, supply chain, and operations. These questions are not only relevant for brands in the most immediately affected categories, like health products and travel. These questions can and will impact your customers and your brands in the coming months.

Resources are shifting as companies change their focus from solving broken touchpoints to addressing distinct and urgent customer needs and flexing to address severe operational, manufacturing, or logistics issues. Under normal conditions, CX leaders fight to secure and keep resources, but in the coming months, their ability to use customer insight to inform urgent decisions and support shifts in priorities will be more important than maintaining a steady course.

“In this extraordinary period of time, it has never been more important to address the fears of consumers who are literally locked in and worried about everyone they interact with. Reassuring them with frequent communication so they know exactly who to expect, the steps you’ve taken to keep them safe, precisely when you’ll arrive and enabling them to communicate their precise instructions for access is not just important, it’s vital. Without this, you may well find you’re locked out.”

(Tim Andrew, Co-Founder, CEO Localz)

NB This article was inspired by an article from Augie Ray of Gartner which you can read here. 

Take a look at these videos to see how Localz is helping during the pandemic in terms of communication, feedback and team visibility.

Gas Smart Heating Ltd has rolled out a high tech mobile workforce system as part of a paperless management system.

A specialist in domestic heating and plumbing, Gas Smart Heating has equipped its field engineers with tablets running jobWatch, a 5 in 1 app supplied by BigChange. Incorporating vehicle tracking with real time job reporting via the tablets, the system provides Gas Smart Heating with a complete end to end business solution.  

Headquartered in Brighton, Gas Smart Heating provides reactive gas and plumbing maintenance including boiler and appliance installation. Formed just 5 years ago the company wanted to introduce the latest technology to underpin further expansion. The BigChange system has replaced existing software and paper-based systems, eliminating paperwork throughout the business.

“As we began to grow and recruit more engineers, we realised we needed a much more professional system in order to match larger service providers such as British Gas,” says Steven Cahalane, Director, Gas Smart Heating.  “We really needed a single system that would do everything and it was clear from the outset that BigChange offered something that fitted the bill exactly.”       

Gas Smart Heating use JobWatch to log incoming calls, schedule work with jobs sent electronically to the assigned engineers’ tablet.  With real-time data from the job, the office is always kept in the picture and can quickly resolve any issues - with invoices generally raised on the day of job completion.

“In implementing the BigChange system we wanted to get in early with the latest technology and as state-of-the-art software it gives us a crucial competitive edge in the market.  With JobWatch we are probably 25 percent more efficient; without it we need more office staff and I would be overwhelmed with administration tasks and paperwork.  In fact, without it we simply wouldn’t be able to compete,” comments Cahalane.

BigChange matches the functionality of systems costing hundreds of thousands of pounds used by national utility firms. This allows new independent players like Gas Smart Heating to enter the market and match the levels of service provided by the traditional suppliers.”      

Operationally, JobWatch has been implemented to provide information on appliances and job history information so engineers have visibility of previous faults and work done.  The system also manages stocks and parts purchasing so engineers no longer face delays on jobs waiting on parts.  

As part of JobWatch vans are fitted with satellite tracking.  Previously engineers were being called to check on their whereabouts but the system has eliminated that by providing email or text ETA alerts to keep the customer informed on the day.  Customers are also able to track engineers progress via a link they receive by Gas Smart heating. 

Michael Blumberg reveals some of the key findings of the latest research into field service Scheduling and Dispatch to come out of Blumberg Associates...

A critical success factor in managing a Field Service Organization (FSO) is the ability to effectively schedule and dispatch field service engineers (FSEs).

It is about making sure that technicians arrive at the customers’ site at the right time with the proper tools, knowledge, and resources to resolve the problem during their initial visit.

First Time Fix is the name of the game in field service. FSOs run the risk of incurring additional costs and damaging their customer satisfaction any time their First Time Fix target is in jeopardy.

There’s a lot at stake for FSOs when it comes to effectively scheduling and dispatching FSEs. There are significant challenges for FSOs, particularly if many service visits are required each day, dispatching is made from a large pool of FSEs, and the FSO is financially penalized by the customer when response time commitments or Service Level Agreement (SLAs) are not met.

"First Time Fix is the name of the game in field service. FSOs run the risk of incurring additional costs and damaging their customer satisfaction any time their First Time Fix target is in jeopardy..."

 

Over the last 10-20 years, FSOs have turned to advanced tools and technology to automate the scheduling and dispatch process to improve this activity.

These tools range from appointment setting applications to dynamic scheduling software based on artificial intelligence and operations research algorithms.

To understand how these tools are deployed in the field as well their impact on service performance, Blumberg Advisory Group and Field Service Insights in conjunction with Timing Software conducted a benchmark study among 150 FSOs. In this article, we will examine the impact of automated appointment booking applications and dynamic scheduling functionality on performance.

Most FSOs had limited flexibility in their appointment booking process.

• 59% offered their customers the first available time slot while the remaining 40% provided their customer with alternative options
• Approximately half (49%) set appointments 5 days out or longer. This reflects that they have limited ability to handle emergency and/ or expedited requests.
• Less than one-third (30%) were capable of booking appointments 1 to 2 days in advance. However, nearly two-thirds (65.7%) utilized automation to help identify or locate available appointment times.
• Almost three-quarters relied on the automation supplied by their CRM/ERP software vendor.
• Less than 9% utilized a separate, best of breed scheduling solution for appointment booking, while the remaining depended on a customized system developed in-house.

FSOs who utilize automated appointment booking offer a better customer experience than those who do not.

There is a higher level of customer engagement because it provides the customer with options and a feeling of control when service is provided.

Companies that utilize this functionality are four times as likely to handle a 500 or more service requests per day and experience a higher FSE to Dispatcher ratio that those who do not.

The second step from booking an appointment is the actual scheduling of FSEs.

• One half assigned FSEs to customer sites based on their skill set, availability, and proximity.
• Remaining 50% either determined the schedule for their FSEs by dispatching the same FSE to the same site every time or assigned the same FSE to the same site having the FSE determine their own schedule.

Two-thirds of survey respondents utilized an automated process/system.

Approximately half (51%) used software that contains some type of algorithm which optimizes scheduling based on specific criteria (e.g., cost, travel time, etc.) or pre-defined factors. Less than one-third (31%) have a scheduling system on a rules-based engine. The remaining 17% have an AI based system that improves their scheduling process based on dynamic variables.

"FSEs who use automated scheduling software are 47% more likely to complete 5 or more service visits per day..."

The use of automated scheduling software has several benefits to FSOs. Our survey results indicate companies who utilize this type of software are 45% more likely to handle 100 or more service requests per day.

They are also 39% more likely to experience an SLA compliance rate of 90% or higher. In addition, they are twice as likely to have FSE rates of 85% or higher.

Furthermore, FSEs who use automated scheduling software are 47% more likely to complete 5 or more service visits per day.

Our findings suggest that appointment setting functionality plays a critical role in improving customer experience, increasing service productivity, and operating an efficient dispatch centre.

Automated scheduling software provides measurable improvements with respect to FSE productivity and efficiency. In the last year, 99% of FSOs surveyed incurred a financial penalty or were required to provide a customer rebate for missing SLA/response time targets. Almost half (45%) missed these targets more than 24 times last year.

The use of advanced tools and technology like automated booking and scheduling software will have a significant improvement in reducing or eliminating the frequency of these occurrences.

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Tieto announced recently that it is one the first Nordic companies to join the European AI Alliance, a newly-formed forum for artificial intelligence (AI) stakeholders to come together to push European competitiveness on AI research and development and its impacts on industry and society.

The AI Alliance, established by the European Commission, brings together a diverse set of leading AI actors, including companies, consumer organizations, trade unions and other representatives of civil society bodies across Europe to share best practices. The AI Alliance aims to directly contribute to the European debate on AI and impact the Commission’s AI policy-making.

To achieve that, the AI Alliance works in close collaboration with the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG), a group the Commission has also established, with 52 members from academia, business and civil society such as Bayer, BMW, Bosch, Fraunhofer Institute, Google, IBM, Nokia, Siemens, Telenor and University of Oxford. The AI HLEG advises the Commission on AI’s opportunities and challenges, and supports it in the implementation of the European strategy on AI. The AI HLEGwill also prepare AI ethics guidelines covering issues such as fairness, safety and transparency as well as the impact on our fundamental rights, including privacy, dignity and consumer protection.

The AI Alliance will complement and support the work of the AI HLEG in particular in preparing AI ethics guidelines and ensuring Europe’s competitiveness in AI. Tieto and other members of the AI Alliance can provide direct feedback on specific questions and draft documents prepared by the AI HLEG.

“As one of the first Nordic companies involved in the AI Alliance, this is a great opportunity for Tieto to facilitate the development of artificial intelligence in Europe. We are excited to join forces with other AI Alliance members to foster AI innovation while also ensuring the highest ethical and sustainability standards in the development of AI. We will work alongside other leading members to build strategies that accelerate AI research and industrial applications,” says Dr. Christian Guttmann, Vice President, Head of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at Tieto.

“As a Nordic leader in AI, we have already established a Tieto wide AI ethics certificate and are already recruiting new talent in this area, including AI ethics and transparency engineers and AI Trainers to teach our AI systems,” Guttmann continues.

AI and advanced data analytics are an integral part of Tieto’s vision for future growth and success, and Tieto has recently developed several innovative AI and data-driven projects, including the trial with the City of Espoo. Tieto will have six representatives in the AI Alliance, each with deep scientific and industrial experience in AI, including AI’s sub-categories such as machine learning, deep learning, multi-agent systems, knowledge representation, machine perception and AI ethics.

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Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief Editor, Kris Oldland's latest white paper, sponsored by eBECS, explores why field service organisations should be ensuring their field service technicians are collecting data from assets whilst on service calls even if they aren't ready to implement an IoT based approach to service delivery yet as by doing so they can reap some of the benefits and more importantly build the processes for a future world in which connectivity and data will be at the heart of customer service operations...

Want to know more? The bad news is the full white paper is only available exclusively for fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by eBECS

In today’s field service sector companies are facing an increasingly complex set of challenges and the collation and analysis of data paradoxically seem to often be found at both ends of the spectrum.

Data can be at the heart of many problems for a field service organisation as they struggle to find useful insight amongst ever-increasing banks of data locked away in differing business silos. Yet the rewards for breaking down those silos and also being able to identify where the insight is within your data can lead to better service levels than have ever been possible previously.

The vast amount of data that we have access to today can potentially give us a much more intimate understanding of our customer base than ever before, giving us the ability to understand and even predict their needs, far more accurately than we have ever been able to manage previously.

The vast amount of data that we have access to today can potentially give us a much more intimate understanding of our customer base than ever beforeHowever, the flip side of this benefit is that companies are now finding themselves drowning in data - which becomes meaningless without insight, a challenge which can be magnified further if data is locked away behind walls within an organisation.

It can be a daunting challenge to not only establish processes that allow the collection of data but also to ensure that when collected, data can move seamlessly across an organisation to fulfil its maximum potential. Yet in today’s business climate where service has become a core differentiator, there has perhaps never been a more urgent need to ensure you are harnessing every tool available to you in the most efficient manner in order to stay just one step ahead of the competition - and data certainly holds many of the keys to service excellence when it’s collected, processed and analysed correctly.

An interesting symptom of operating in a world of technological advancements, is that when we talk about data collection within a field service context the topic immediately turns to IoT - but in doing so are we overlooking one of the most important resource in a service organisation already at our disposal - the field service engineers themselves?

The importance of data collection in an increasingly connected world

The question of whether the Internet of Things will play a part in field service has been and gone. The answer was a resounding ‘yes it will.’

Research from Field Service News showed that 86% of companies were actively either developing plans to implement IoT or had already done so. Indeed, in terms of IoT and field service, the question for the overwhelming majority of companies has moved from why to how.

However, the impact of IoT in field service is set to be so revolutionary that it cannot just be viewed as a new technology to be rolled out, it is a decision which must be grounded with a firm understanding of your business strategies, your future goals and a rock solid foundation of both processes and technologies that can allow an organisation to fully reap the benefits of an IoT based service strategy.

But the revolution isn’t really an IoT revolution, it is a data revolution.

The number of connected devices globally is set to reach over 30BN by 2020 (data source: Berg Insight)

Asset performance data and even component performance data can open the doors towards moving towards both a more preventative maintenance focused approach as well as empowering your service engineers to be able to find a first-time-fix on a more regular basis.

Asset performance data and even component performance data can open the doors towards moving towards both a more preventative maintenance focused approach as well as empowering your service engineersYet, for many service organisations, the sheer volume of data that a fleet of connected assets will produce will cause a series of problems and pain points in and of itself.

With companies facing unprecedented levels of data coming into their service operation not only from IoT connected assets but also various digital customer touch points whether that be via contact agents, self-service portals or even sentiment analysis of relevant social media, finding meaning and value within such a deep data lakes can be a daunting task.

In addition to this, there is the further question of retrofitting assets that a discussion on IoT necessarily brings with it.

For organisations with a large install base there are a number of considerations that must be given thought including:

• Which assets are worth retrofitting with IoT connected sensors?
• Is it worth waiting for some assets in the field to reach their natural obsolescence and then replace them with newer connected models?
• Should you prioritise retrofitting assets for those clients that are the most profitable or will having multiple levels of service contract be a hindrance to service delivery?
• What data is it important to track from retro-fitted assets? What is essential and what is merely nice to have?
• What processes will you need to develop or adjust in order to facilitate this data within the workflow of your service delivery teams?

Want to know more? The bad news is the full white paper is only available exclusively for fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by eBECS

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It has long been known that field service organisations can utilise technology to reduce costs, boost efficiency and improve the productivity of their mobile workforce. But knowing exactly how to make the most of the technology and opportunities out there is not so black and white. Lucien Wynn, Managing Director of Oneserve discusses...

The last couple of years have brought mobile technology on in leaps and bounds, and as such there is now a plethora of options out there for utilising mobile technologies to improve workforce management. Organisations with a mobile workforce can, for example, use software installed on mobile devices to keep their technicians updated with all the information they need while in the field. Jobs can be updated, instant feedback on the progress of jobs can be provided and the technicians’ exact location can be tracked, all in real time. But implementing the right solution can be a challenge.

The importance of keeping up with the mobile revolution has not gone unnoticed; the 2013 Workforce Management Guide produced by the Aberdeen Group showed that 57% of organisations sampled viewed investing in mobile tools as a priority. Of course, investing in new gadgets alone is not enough, so what else should be considered when thinking about a new investment in technology?

Getting the mobile workforce to buy-in

The first step in making sure you achieve what you set out to when investing in new technology is to gain buy-in from those who will be using it. Without that, it will never be utilised properly and thus wasted. According to research from the Aberdeen Group, 67% of Best-in-Class field service organisations regarded gaining buy-in from their field service technicians as the most important aspect in ensuring the timely and effective deployment of a mobile solution. If your employees are involved in the decision-making process and know what they are getting when new technology is rolled out, they’ll be ready for it and much more likely to react positively to the change.

The impact on the organisation as a whole

The second step is to take a holistic approach to new investments in technology – consider the impact on your whole organisation, not just part of it. Even if new technology is only being deployed in a certain department, at some point it is likely to have an impact elsewhere. For example, consider a new piece of accounting software being used in the finance department – you’d be forgiven for assuming that it would never affect your field service technicians. But that may well not be true – imagine if it had an impact on the way expenses had to be submitted; everyone in the company who had to make expenses claims on a regular basis, including workers in the field, would be affected.

Short-term vs long-term

Another consideration should be the long-term impact of the new technology. Could it lead to an improvement in the way your business functions for many years to come? If so, don’t let worries about its impact in the short-term prevent you from adopting the technology. Most organisations, big and small, will experience some teething problems with new technology initially, but it often just takes a little time to bed in before it yields positive results. Of course, you will need to take into account both the potential long-term and short-term impacts on your business, but if the former outweigh the latter, then by all means you should do what you can to push the adoption of the new technology.

In summary, then, if you are to effectively utilise technology to increase the efficiency of your mobile workforce you’ll need to consider various factors. Of those mentioned above, perhaps the most important is gaining buy-in to the technology from your field workers. They’ve got to want to use the technology you supply them with, and are much more likely to do so if they know how it will help them in their daily jobs (they also, of course, need to know how to use it). Without that, you could be left with both an underutilised new technology and an underproductive workforce.

Of course, it’s also very important to consider how new technology will impact on your whole business, and not just those who it affects directly. If you’re making a big investment, it is inevitable that it will have an impact on the entire business so bear this in mind. At the same time, don’t let a big change put you off – if you think the move is right, go ahead with it.

Finally, remember to take a long-term view. Sometimes the cost of making a new investment in software or technology can seem high and lead you to question whether it is worth it. But consider what benefits the investment could bring over the next 1, 3 and 5 years and then take a fresh look – you may be surprised at the long term benefits it will bring.

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been much heralded as a software delivery method that is set to revolutionise the way businesses operate. Often it is seen as being at the heart of business technology in the future.  In the field service industry SaaS is already making a sizeable impression in the dynamics of the industry itself, moving the base of power away from enterprise level organisations who traditionally held the upper hand by utilising service technologies, which due to the often prohibitive costs aligned to on-premise solutions, were out of reach for their smaller competitors.

In this feature, we explore the rise of SaaS, why it is so suited to field service, the particular benefits for smaller companies and what its impact on the Field Service industry will be.

What is Software as a Service?

As a concept SaaS can actually trace it’s origins right back to the 1960’s when IBM and other mainframe providers established a service bureau business, sometimes referred to time-sharing or utility computing.

These services, which were designed for large organisations such as banks, would often include both database storage and computing power from worldwide data centres.

As we leap forward to the 1990’s when we saw the first real commercialisation and expansion of the Internet, we see the next precursor to SaaS, which was Application Service Providers (ASP’s). With the goal of reducing costs through central administration, ASPs began providing businesses with the service of hosting and managing specialised business applications.

SaaS is essentially extended from the concept of ASPs, but importantly harnesses the power of cloud infrastructure.

Indeed a common misconception is that SaaS and the Cloud are in fact one and the same however, this is not strictly correct.

SaaS is very simply, any software application that you operate which is not located on your premises. Whereas the cloud is the virtual infrastructure that the SaaS runs within, which in turn is housed on the vendor’s own data centres, or in many cases a data centre the vendor themselves ‘rents’ from an organisation such as Amazon Web Services.

Why field service is so suited to SaaS:

Whilst early applications of SaaS were predominantly either CRM or highly specific business niche products, it was only a matter of time before we saw a number of providers offering up SaaS solutions to the field service industry.

As SaaS systems are Internet based the ability to operate and access the software from various locations is a key fundamental inclusion of the system. Similarly as web protocols are becoming standardised, with the rise in device agnostic languages such as HTML 5 for example, SaaS solutions essentially allow users to access the entire application from any device - including smart phones and tablets.

It is this flexibility and mobility that SaaS solutions offer that make them such a perfect match for the field service industries and ideal for an organisation that operates a BYOD policy for it’s mobile workforce.

As such we have seen a number of vendors establish SaaS field service solutions. Including Tesseract Software, Connect2Field, Astea, ServiceMax, IFS and Click Software who all offer a variety of SaaS solutions to help field service companies improve the efficiency of their mobile workforces.

The benefits of SaaS to SMB’s

As well as the obvious benefits of having a central software solution that is accessible across numerous remote devices, that are specifically relevant to field service companies, SaaS solutions have more generic benefits also which are particularly beneficial to Smaller and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

Perhaps the most obvious of these is the cost.

Whilst in the long term (i.e. across a three to five year period) a subscription model may actually prove to be more expensive, the ability to spread the costs (usually in either annual or monthly payments) is a particularly attractive route for smaller or even medium sized companies for whom cash flow remains an important factor.

Similarly the benefit of not having to have your IT team dedicate large amounts of their potentially limited resources on implementing, monitoring and maintaining a system is also particularly important for smaller sized companies.

With SaaS the software is maintained and updated by the provider reducing the burden on a companies IT significantly.

Another often cited benefit that is of particular importance to SMB’s is the lack of fixed term contract.

Often the service is provided on a rolling monthly basis or even a freemium model (where the basic functionality is provided for free and additional services are offered at a premium), which allows greater flexibility for a company to walk away.

Not being tied to a long contract for software that they may not necessarily need in a year or so’s time when their business needs change, is another attractive benefit for SMBs that SaaS offers.

What this means to the field service industry.

It has been suggested that the access to sophisticated service management solutions that were previously out of reach to non-enterprise level organisations, which SaaS delivers is potentially going to have a major impact on the dynamics of the industry.

For the first time, many smaller companies are now able to take advantage of the benefits of such systems including improving the efficiency of their mobile workforce, gaining visibility across their entire field service operation and reducing fuel costs.

Previously the cost of both implementing and maintaining an on premise field service management solution was simply too prohibitive for most smaller organisations, giving their larger competitors a clear advantage in terms of the level of service they could deliver and therefore the level of customer satisfaction they could achieve.

However, the introduction of SaaS solutions has levelled the playing field and perhaps even shifted the balance in favour of the smaller companies.

SMBs often have smaller overheads and can therefore gain greater profit margins for similar revenue levels . A result of this has led to reducing costs often being the traditional primary sales strategy adopted by  SMBs when competing with larger companies , who are able to deliver superior service.

Today however, with companies of all sizes being able to offer similar levels of service through automating elements of their field service operation, smaller companies can take advantage of this ability to compete more fiercely on price whilst offering the same customer satisfaction levels as their bigger competitors. For perhaps the first time the power lies with smaller more agile companies.

The tables have turned slightly and it is largely down to the SaaS revolution.

One of the biggest success stories to come from the London Mayor's office was the introduction of Barclay's London Cycle Hire  (locally known as Boris Bike's after London's affable Mayor Boris Johnson who introduced the scheme) an ambitious project which has brought easy access bicycle hire and the environmental and health benefits of such a scheme to the busy streets of central London.

Of course the task of managing such a project and the mobile workforce that keep it operating, is a major undertaking, one which fall to international service company Serco. In this case study we look at how the worked with Leadent Solutions to establish an automated work scheduling system to make the project work.

Background:

Barclays London Cycle Hire (LCH) – run by international service company Serco – is a public bicycle sharing scheme that was launched in London and is now in its third year. The scheme's bicycles operate throughout 17 square miles in the city across a coverage area which approximately matches Zone 1 of the London Underground.

Since its introduction, the scheme has grown in scale from 5,700 to 9,000 bikes and from 315 to 570 docking stations, with over 20 million journeys made to date.

Users can pick up and drop off bikes at any of the docking stations, therefore ensuring there is an adequate supply of not only bikes, but also empty racks for returning customers, is vital to the success of the scheme. Therefore during high load hours, the bikes are moved from the busiest stations to the emptiest by vehicle by a dedicated mobile workforce.

The Challenge:

Maintaining the network requires a dedicated team to keep the bikes and the docking stations they are hired from in good repair, and to ensure that the supply of bikes is regulated to meet customer demand and KPIs agreed with Transport for London (TfL) in a 24 x 7 x 365 period. In meeting these KPIs, LCH ensures good service for customers, making hiring, using and returning bikes as easy as possible.

In anticipation of an extension of the cycle hire scheme into East London, almost doubling the number of bikes and docking stations, LCH needed a way of helping to optimise and dispatch field operatives to make sure that the supply of bikes to the right locations was accurately managed. It also needed to achieve this with the same size dispatch team, despite the extension of the scheme meaning that the number of docking stations was to be increased to 570 and the number of bikes to 9,000.

It was the significant increase in the scale of the project that meant a new and more efficient approach was needed, but crucially, without the need for large numbers of additional field staff being added to the mobile workforce.

Previous work practices involved significant ‘phone time’ – this essentially displayed the state of the docking stations on a big screen, from which control room staff used the visual overview to raise jobs by the expedient of calling the on-street team to tell them what needed doing. Once a job had been communicated, there was no feedback, status update etc., other than the change to the main display – and changes could have just as easily been driven by a large group of tourists arriving at a docking station as by the redistribution driver.

To compound the challenge, managing the bike supply requires dispatchers to manage a constantly changing work list where jobs are frequently raised, re-prioritised, and withdrawn as customers hire and return bikes, and to be able to do this in a consistent manner. One of the KPIs which Serco must meet is to make sure that docking stations have spare spaces for bikes to be returned, but also bikes available for hire, with points accumulated as the clock ticks when stations are full or empty, and a financial penalty resulting if the agreed timeframe is exceeded.

The scheduling system must be intricate enough to account for a sudden change in the status of a docking station. For example, a full docking station will cause a job to be created to remove some of the bikes, allowing for returns. However, a group of tourists could empty rack before the operatives arrive, changing the job from removing to delivering bikes, which need to be sourced from another location. This ebb and flow of bicycle hiring demands a near real-time automated system to ensure that the system runs smoothly.

In addition, maintenance work, although more predictable, still required the implementation of automated processes to arrange collection of bikes for workshop repair.

LCH had also identified the need to capture the level of use bikes were receiving as maintenance work was carried out, and to record histories of work carried out on the bikes and the docking stations, requirements that were, at best, only partially supported by the existing solution.

The Solution:

LCH chose mobile workforce optimisation specialist Leadent Solutions to design and implement a better way of supporting these requirements. Leadent Solutions is a company which specialises in workforce optimisation, applying its expertise to clients such as Thames Water, British Gas and Vodafone to help manage their workforces more effectively and thereby provide improved customer service to customers.

Leadent in turn then utilised ClickSoftware to deliver the core schedule automation and controls together with a mobile technology application to process work.

The solution centres on an integrated data feed from each of the 14,000 docking points which updates every three minutes. This live data is fed automatically into ClickSchedule software which compares the data to defined agreed targets. When it finds a docking station that has passed its limits for hiring or returning availability, a job is created in near real-time, based on priority, skills and geography. Jobs are withdrawn if the station naturally falls back within tolerance and the system also prioritises jobs according to pre-defined rules.

The system uses a dynamic prioritisation engine, which considers a station’s grading, the time it has been in breach of availability targets and other factors, to ensure urgent work is prioritised over less critical or a routine maintenance task.

With all of these actions being automated and the on-street operatives being updated by bespoke mobile devices, there is no need for the frequent phone calls which the control centre team previously had to make to field operatives to give instructions and receive updates. This mitigates the risk of missing stations which the manual system allowed for, threatening KPI compliance.

The mobile solution also allows operatives to record task activity and report inventory consumed, thereby building a history of asset maintenance.

Leadent Solutions has been involved from the early design stages; and has been supporting LCH in rolling out the solution during 2012, ensuring the implementation runs smoothly.

Results:

Using Leadent Solutions’ rapid deployment methodology, and working collaboratively with LCH, the new solution has:

• Provided near real-time visibility of the state of the LCH network at any point in time, allowing managers to get a clear overview of what the status quo is for current work and work in progress and enabling easier management of field operatives
• Provided near real-time task creation, prioritisation and dispatch to help LCH proactively manage KPIs agreed with TfL
• Provided a clearer picture of which bikes and locations are being used the most, providing customers with the best possible service and availability.
• Provided the systems to deliver streamlined, automated business operations through automated scheduling and mobile solutions
• Provided a more efficient way to manage employee breaks and to standardise working practices through automated processes
• Demonstrated the value of automated scheduling in delivering more efficient use of resources, better management of work, and, in turn, improved responses on KPIs

In business terms, this has contributed to:

• A 40% expansion of the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme with minimal additional control centre staff costs
• Helping Serco achieve agreed KPIs
• Near elimination of voice interchanges between field and control, saving both time and money
• Delivering a marked improvement in resource utilisation and field engineer productivity through efficient and effective scheduling, dispatch and reporting of work
• Improving the quality of operational performance data, by being able to capture real world actual performance at a higher level of detail than previously possible
• Allowing a sustained improvement in operational performance and efficiency, allowing the Scheme to grow, but managed by the same control team that had previously managed a much smaller operation.

The cycle hire operation now delivers:

• • Circa 180,000 registered members
  • 570 docking stations & 14,000 docking points
  • Circa 9000 cycles available for hire
  • Maintaining 250 bikes every day  and on street triage of 400 bikes a day
  • Up to 27 vehicles move on average 4,000 bikes per day
  • Over 23 million hires to date

Biotage offers solutions, knowledge and experience in the areas of analytical chemistry, medicinal chemistry, peptide synthesis, separation and purification. In this video we here from Chris Lacey, Field Service Manager, about how he worked with Service Max to improve the efficiency of the Biotage mobile workforce.