The Bottom Line Impact of Mobile Solutions
It’s not news that service organizations are feeling crushed between two critical opposing forces. On one hand, you have rising customer expectations, including demand for shorter response times and higher service level agreements. On the other, you have increasing fuel, labor and maintenance costs, along with management pressure to maintain or increase profitability.
To combat these pressures, leading companies are leveraging mobile technology to achieve high levels of productivity and efficiency in their field service delivery. They are seeing significant results in three major areas:
Real-time communication with technicians
Having a real-time connection to your field workforce allows you to modify and dispatch work orders instantly as variables changes, allowing you to be more responsive to SLA agreements and high-priority calls.
Technician access to customer information, knowledge management
Beyond viewing customer contact information and directions, mobile tools allow a technician to access service history, warranty information, service level agreements and other pertinent information. Mobile tools can even interface with knowledge management systems, giving technicians access to best practices information. Arming your field techs with this information facilitates faster resolution, and increases first-time fix rates.
Track parts and labor, close tickets
Mobile tools enable technicians to promptly and accurately log parts and labor, as well as capture an electronic signature to close out a ticket. Logging this information on-site ensures better accuracy, and eliminates paperwork and travel time to the office. The information can also instantaneously trigger an invoice for faster payment.
In addition, by tracking the parts in real-time, inventory levels are accurate, ensuring that a technician isn’t sent to a job without the appropriate part, and that their truck is adequately restocked.
The Bottom Line
The processes outlined above do more than streamline your operation – they have a real impact on your bottom line. According to an Aberdeen benchmark study, leading companies who have adopted mobile technologies have experienced the following performance metrics (download report):
| Companies NOT Using Mobile Technologies | Companies Using Mobile Technologies | |
| First-call resolution | 38% | 67% |
| Service level agreement compliance | 36% | 69% |
| Service profitability, as a percentage of service revenue | 6% | 18% |
| Average work orders completed per technician | 2 | 5 |
| Average mean time to repair (from call to fix) | 10 hours | 5 hours |
Let’s take a couple of these metrics and come up with a basic comparison. Say your organization has 30 technicians, and that your average profit per service call is $100.
| Companies NOT Using Mobile Technologies | Companies Using Mobile Technologies |
| Profit per service call = $100 | Profit per service call = $112 (12% increase) |
| Number of technicians = 30 | Number of technicians = 30 |
| Work orders completed per technician = 2 | Work orders completed per technician = 5 |
Daily profit: |
Daily profit: |
The difference is remarkable. When you couple those savings with intangibles such as increased customer satisfaction, it’s not surprising that industry-leading companies have implemented mobile field service solutions.
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