The goal of field service management is to equip your employees with the tools they need to provide excellent customer service in every interaction. What is referred to as “traditional” field service management is evolving. Understanding the current and future field service industry landscape can thus help your mobile workers succeed.
The aerospace and defense industry has high standards for asset serialization, traceability, and intensive maintenance, repair, and overhaul. The primary customers are the military, defense contractors, and commercial technology organizations. Each customer class needs highly reliable equipment for a significant number of mission-critical assets.
In response to these demands, A&D firms are increasingly turning to digital Field Service Management (FSM) solutions. These systems can help automate, streamline, and effectively execute the wide array of activities on their plate.
CSMI has a long history of success in the A&D industry with both commercial and military clients. Our Field Service Management solutions are intended to assist organizations in increasing the efficiency of their operations, improving shop floor maintenance processes, and avoiding costly downtimes.
What Exactly is Field Service Management?
Field service management (FSM) is a method of organizing mobile field service operations. In other words, it is all about optimizing the availability of on-site technicians and personnel. This process is typically undertaken by businesses that need to manage the installation, service, or repair of systems or equipment.
Field service practitioners who provide clients with professional, specialized, or unique services are managed by field service organizations like CSMI. Our team at CSMI is dedicated to providing quick response technical services to ensure maximum system effectiveness.
Activities in field service management include:
- Field service scheduling: is the process of planning employee schedules, service appointments, and work order completion timelines.
- Field service dispatch management: is the process of organizing the deployment of a field service technician or specialist to a work.
- Work order management: is the process of assigning and tracking service work orders from creation to completion and customer billing.
- Inventory management: is the process of tracking parts and supplies, including product transfer, consumption, adjustments, and other activities.
- Field service contract management: is the process of managing customer contracts and ensuring the fulfillment of service level agreements (SLAs).
FSM software should essentially optimize the flow of information from on-premise agents and workers to the backend office. Simply put, it is a cutting-edge hybrid of HR management software and a CRM.
Previously, much of this type of work had to be done manually. This was not only extremely time-consuming but also prone to human error. Needless to say, attempting to manage variables that hampered progress was challenging. This included critical factors such as incomplete data and communication breakdowns.
The Challenges of Field Service Management
Today’s maintenance technician leaders are facing many challenges. In light of a talent shortage, attracting and keeping talent is a crucial challenge. Factors to take into account include an underqualified workforce, rising operating costs, a lack of technology to handle complex assets, and growing service requirements.
Managing these challenges will be easier if you use software and FSM solutions that can automate specific operations. CSMI technical services can help relieve an organization’s workload, improve knowledge transfer, and provide direct support to field workers.
Mobile service technicians face a variety of challenges on a day-to-day basis. Among the most significant are scheduling conflicts, the inability to obtain critical data, miscommunication about job tasks, and the need to make return trips.
Finally, many businesses have implemented multiple but separate solutions over time. This has resulted in a large number of devices that are incompatible with one another. Field service management requires cohesive, integrated, end-to-end solutions that are simple for field teams to use and provide dashboards that provide enterprise-wide visibility of a company’s resources.
CSMI’s mission is to provide customers who rely on critical systems support with system integration, technical sustainment/maintenance/repair, training, and operational support.
The Benefits Of Field Service Management
Managing field service personnel involves the use of specific processes, tools, and considerations. However, the investment can be well worth it because your field workers—and overall business—will reap many benefits.
Let’s look at some of the advantages that CSMI’s field service management solutions can offer you.
- A boost in productivity: Replacing manual systems with modern field service management tools and procedures improves operational effectiveness and staff productivity.
- Increased visibility: Asset visibility software facilitates the collection, tracking, and analysis of critical data (such as job completion times, expenses, maintenance and repair activities and field notes), resulting in more informed business decisions.
- Optimum working environment: Field workers can now easily access essential resources, communicate effectively, receive schedules and updates in one centralized location, and spend more time focusing on what really matters: customers.
- Reduced overhead costs: Overhead costs are reduced as scheduling, dispatching, inventory management, and communication become more efficient. These cost savings are passed on to employees in the form of improved benefits, lower customer prices, and higher profit margins.
- Enhanced customer experience: Modern field service management ensures that the correct worker arrives on time at the correct location. FSM speeds up and streamlines billing cycles, allowing work to be completed faster and more efficiently.
For businesses that install, maintain, sell, or repair products in the field, field service software pays for itself in terms of efficiency, customer satisfaction, and employee retention.
What Is Field Service Management Software?
Field service management software helps businesses manage all resources related to field service management activities. It can help managers and technicians with a wide array of tasks including:
- job order processing
- scheduling and dispatch automation
- tracking of service and repair tasks
- customer service contract management
- payment collection
CSMI field service management solutions offer a wide range of capabilities to aerospace and defense companies. Here are a few to consider:
Software for mobile field service management
The cloud and mobile features of some field service management software enable real-time communications. Furthermore, they facilitate technicians’ access to critical information and support while on the job.
Field service technicians who are mobile access asset visibility software to register maintenance and repair activities, access remote inventories, and download the latest technical bulletins.
Software for enterprise asset management
Enterprise asset management (EAM) software helps companies maintain and manage their operational equipment both on and off-site. By centralizing asset information and implementing AI-powered remote monitoring and analytics, maintenance managers can maximize operating efficiency, increase productive uptime, and reduce operational costs.
Inventory management software
A maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) inventory management system (IMS) assists businesses in optimizing their MRO inventory. It can provide a detailed, granular view of MRO inventory performance, as well as recommend optimal inventory and reorder levels for each item in stock.
Management of Integrated Field Services
When it comes to running a field service business, there are numerous moving parts. As a result, those components should be integrated logically into the larger field service management system.
That is why integration with field service management team with total asset visibility software can be critical to the overall success of maintenance and sustainment operations. The ability to quickly invoice customers or inspect parts in real-time is made possible via connections with accounting, CRM, and ERP software.
These third-party systems manage the most critical backend data, such as customer names and addresses, employee information, and inventory.
In order to complete the end-to-end management cycle that field service management aims to develop, they must be connected to the field service software. This connection results in fewer data input errors, cheaper operating costs, and quicker processing times for work orders and invoices.
Field service management integration is commonly referred to as an end-to-end solution due to the nature of handling the entire management of field services from one end to the other. This includes bringing in critical information, providing field services, monitoring operational readiness and submitting timely technical and logistics data.
The Potential Of Field Service Management
Field service management is undergoing significant transformation. Mobile solutions have largely replaced paper log books and forms.
Although the digital transformation of field service has significantly increased efficiency, productivity, ROI, customer and employee satisfaction, and other benefits for service providers, it has not been without challenges: as technology advances, customers demand more.
Customers in the aerospace and defense fields today expect:
- Online scheduling via a portal
- Exact timetable.
- The option to choose a preferred technician.
- Job monitoring and status updates
For fully modern field service operations, field service managers need an all-in-one field service solution that can manage a mobile workforce, client preferences, scheduling, dispatching, and communication demands in a single simplified system.
Application
With consumers becoming pickier about the services and goods they pay for, the field service industry is becoming increasingly competitive. To maintain your position at the top of the service provider rankings, you must provide quick delivery, efficient solutions, and timely execution of quality services.
Thankfully, field service management solutions by CSMI have made it possible. It is now a necessary tool for aerospace and defense companies to stay competitive. Get in touch with CSMI today for more information.