(Originally published on 12/06/2014)
There are very few people in the global field service management industry with the breadth of experience and depth of understanding of Bill Pollock.
With a career in the service industries spanning over twenty five years Bill has been commenting, advising and leading the industry as one of the most respected and highly thought of analysts working in field service.
He has worked as senior analyst for two of the worlds leading consultancies (Gartner and Aberdeen) as well as being Chief Research Officer and founder of The Service Council and is currently President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for Growth. He has also previously served as Chapter president for the Association for Service Management International, is a regular keynote speaker at leading services related events and has published more than 200 articles in numerous trade titles including Field Technologies, Reverse Logistics, and Healthcare Technology Management.
Suffice to say that Bill is in a fairly unique position to assess the current trends in the field service management industry and how these are evolving over time.
It is therefore with great pleasure that Field Service News is able to present exclusive UK access to Strategies for Growth’s 2013 Field Service Management Benchmarking report to readers of Field Service News written by Pollock himself.
This exceptional report is based on the findings of an exhaustive survey, which comprised of over 1,000 respondents and is perhaps the most comprehensive benchmarking exercise available, giving the truest indication of the mood and needs of the industry on a global scale.
With a range of respondents from right across the breadth of the service world, this research provides a true barometer of how service is moving on a multi-industry wide scale.
The sample of respondents also has true international representation with sizeable numbers from the North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific regions and with an almost even number of responses from small, medium and large companies the findings presented in this report present a clear picture of how service companies of all sizes are operating across the globe.
The headline findings of the research identify that the following three key factors are impacting on companies need to drive forward service efficiency:
- 52% Customer demand for improved asset availability
- 47% Need to improve workforce utilisation and productivity
- 43% Need to improve service process efficiencies and the current strategic actions being required to address these issues are cited as:
- 52% Develop / improve metrics, or KPIs, used to measure field service performance
- 44% Invest in mobile tools to provide field technicians with real-time access to required data and information in the field
- 35% Integrate new technologies into existing field service operations (i.e., iPads, Tablets or other devices, etc.)
The report then moves on to explore each of these areas in depth across 14 pages, providing insightful analysis on each, as well as exploring other related areas that may be impacting your organisation’s own drive to improve your field service management and attain service excellence.
