TIME WASTED IN

FIELD SERVICE
ORGANIZATIONS
WHITE PAPER

www.ServicePower.com
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Time Wasted in Field Service Organizations .......................................... 3

Wasted Time ............................................................................................................. 3

1. The Customer Isnt Home ....................................................................................................... 3

2. Wrong Address .......................................................................................................................... 4

3. Routing Through Known Traffic ........................................................................................... 4

4. Overlapping Routes ................................................................................................................. 4

5. Published Schedules ................................................................................................................ 5

6. Customer Education ................................................................................................................ 5

7. Incorrect tools or parts, no tools or parts ........................................................................ 5

8. Replacement Part DOA ........................................................................................................... 6

About ServicePower ............................................................................................. 7

TIME WASTED IN FIELD SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS 2

TIME WASTED IN FIELD
SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS

Piddling, according to Dictionary.com because piddling is neither one thing or

means to spend time in a wasteful, trifling
or ineffective way.
On a recent trip, browsing old magazines,
an article about wasting time caught our
attention.
In it, author Rick Bragg a Pulitzer Prize-
winning, self proclaimed southern author
discusses what it means to piddle. He
says It is hard to explain to begin with,
another, but something in between.. The
whole idea of piddling is to kill time.A
piddler does not fix a leaky washing
machine, or a slipping transmission, or a
hole in a roof.
Have you considered the way your field
resources might piddle away the hours
in their shifts, increasing your costs and
impacting your revenue?

WASTED TIME
There are numerous ways that field
resources can waste your time. Some
the tech causes directly, like driving a
different route than planned, or spending
excessive amounts of time prepping for
a job upon reaching the actual location.
However, many instances of wasted time
are generated by process or system
failures.

1 The Customer Isnt Home

Time can be wasted when a customer is not
home for a scheduled appointment. This happens
when an appointment was not confirmed before
arrival. Best practice in the field service industry
is to confirm the appointment the day before the
scheduled start time, and again when the tech is
on the way. Technology like IVR call ahead, emails,
text messages and even integration to social media
like Facebook are used to ensure that customers
dont forget scheduled appointments and are
there when the tech arrives. A great example is
a regional furniture chain that hosts a web portal
where customers can track the truck via GPS
location on the day of a scheduled delivery.

TIME WASTED IN FIELD SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS 3

 2 Wrong Address

When setting up a customer for field services,

its important to validate the accuracy of the
information in the crm. Wrong addresses send
techs tothe wrong location, wasting your time and
money. Incomplete addresses have the sameeffect.

Data validation services help ensure that

incorrect addresses are identified, corrected and
standardized such that native mobile navigation
services can route the technician efficiently
However, as stated previously, day before and day
of customer contact can also be used to ensure
the product or equipment being tended to is Routing Through Known
actually located in the same location as your data
indicates, rather than in a location in another city.
3 Traffic
Routing a technician through congestion extends
the travel time for a job, resulting in increased
costs (mostly seen in fuel and long-term vehicle
maintenance), missed customer commitments
and wasted time. Intelligent routing systems,
like ServiceScheduling, pre-calculate and store
travel time between locations in its memory, then
weighs it according to a travel profile that factors
in the effects of traffic congestion and time-of-
day variability. The result is an accurate estimate
of the travel time required to travel between two
locations.

New technologies like crowd-sourced traffic

data may also impact future mobile technology,
enabling field technicians to access whats
4 Overlapping Routes happening on a given route, as reported in real
time by other drivers.

In an optimized scheduling environment,

technicians should not cross each other
throughout the day. Criss crossing routes wastes
time and money. An intelligent scheduling
application should schedule incoming jobs for
techs already scheduled for other jobs. This
process fills the schedule for a tech in which the
FSO is already incurring fuel charges, before rolling
another truck with open slots in the shift. Further,
existing jobs should be considered continuously
throughout the process such that a techs
scheduled jobs are automatically considered,
booking new jobs in the same area to the same
tech. This eliminates unnecessary drive time and
fuel consumption.

TIME WASTED IN FIELD SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS 4

 5 Published Schedules

Some FSOs publish the entire schedule for

tomorrow in advance. The tendency of some
technicians is to ignore the predetermined route,
for instance. Others will perform the scheduled
work as quickly as possible, but clock out at the
normal end of day or at the time all work should
have been completed, as scheduled. In both
cases, the FSO has limited ability to send more
work to the tech as new jobs come in or changes
needs to be made to existing schedules. For
FSOs, especially those with well managed parts
processes, drip feeding jobs on the day of enables
the FSO to provide the first and second job of the
day, but feed in new jobs as required. This provides
the FSO the ability to dictate the order in which
jobs are completed, saving precious fuel, as well as
address emergency jobs or new jobs near where
6 Customer Education
a tech is currently performing work. Drip feeding
in real time provides the schedule flexibility Call center entitlement processes benefit from a
needed to improve field tech utilization as much as solid knowledge base application, that includes
possible. questions and answers for common complaints
and issues, constructed in a way that front end
call center personnel may eliminate unnecessary
Incorrect tools or parts, no truck rolls by performing soft fixes and consumer
7 tools or parts
education where possible. Otherwise, the FSO
incurs the cost of fuel, lost potential revenue
generated by other jobs and the techs time,
Truck stock forecasting is a no brainer when using which in the case of customer education, might be
business intelligences (BI) tools to plan demand longer than it should be if the tech wastes minutes
for forecasted jobs. Using BI, FSOs can predict explaining how to use a product, then devolves
the most frequently used parts and accessories, into a biggest catch discussion.
ensuring the highest percentage of first time
fixes. Incorrect ServicePower, Inc Proprietary and
Confidential September 2013 products or brands
affect the technicians ability to ensure that the
required parts are available on the truck to prevent
subsequent truck rolls.

Knowing truck inventory also increases on-site

product sales for items like HDMI cables, which
are often required, but not always included in new
television, blue ray or satellite boxes.

A good triage process, using knowledge base

tools, as well as optimized truck stock helps
decrease the occurrence of incorrect or missing
parts and accessories which decreases the need to
multiple truck rolls to resolve an issue.

TIME WASTED IN FIELD SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS 5

 8 Replacement Part DOA

Similarly, recurring DOA (dead on arrival)

replacement parts can be identified at the OEM,
product and model level with BI tools, ensuring the
field service organization isnt wasting time and
fuel for jobs it cant complete. Additionally, that
same BI information can be used by not only the
FSO, but by the part OEM to subrogate against
possible component manufacturers, recovering
costs and improving future price agreements.

In summary, some technicians are predisposed to

piddling time away; they likely waste their own
time just as well as the FSOs. However, using
technology to ensure processes dont contribute to
wasted time is a best practice within field service
organizations. Software solutions should enable
tight processes and facilitate oversight through
business intelligence that provides the lens
through which lost time is identified and corrected,
contributing to the control of costs and cycle time,
and ultimately improved customer satisfaction
through schedule compliance.

ServicePower offers a wide range of planning, forecasting and analysis tools, workforce
management, mobile dispatch and consulting services products.

Contact ServicePower to find out how our field management platform help you stop
wasted time. www.servicepower.com

TIME WASTED IN FIELD SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS 6

About ServicePower
ServicePower Technologies Plc (AIM: SVR), is the only company
that provides a complete global, mobile, field management
platform enabling clients to mix labor channels, utilizing
employed, contracted resources, and on demand resources
while controlling all elements of the field service lifecycle, from
planning, to execution to analysis. We offer a range of integrated
software products and services that are used by some of the
leading manufacturers, third party administration, insurance, and
telecommunications companies, world wide.

For more information, email us at info@servicepower.com

US Offices:
1650 Tysons Blvd., #925, McLean, VA 20190
Tel: 703.437.2610
2961 W. MacArthur Blvd., Suite 212, Santa Ana, CA 92704
Tel: 714.428.0010

EU Office:
Petersgate House, St Petersgate, Stockport. SK1 1HE
Tel: 011 44 161 476 2277

www.ServicePower.com