Mobilizing your staff – Why do it?

Current challenges

• Less responsive or no optimal response to clients
• Limited access to critical information
• Low technology adoption – employees not effectively using in-house systems
• Redundant tasks of data coalition from fieldwork

Factors influencing mobilizing field staff

• Rapidly dispatch work orders to the mobile workforce thus improving response times and speeding problem resolution.
• Cut service costs through better logistics management (improved visibility into location and availability of mobile agents, parts inventory, etc.).
• Automate scheduling and routing (including real-time updates of traffic and weather conditions), enabling field service technicians to get to their destinations efficiently.
• Ensure that technicians arrive at the customer's site prepared to solve the problem quickly by having complete customer information and purchase/service history, field manuals, interactive diagnostic and testing procedures, etc.
• Provide real-time access (short message service, email, etc.) to assistance from senior technicians/help desk.
• Enable dynamic provisioning by providing handheld access to parts information (price, availability for shipping, tracking numbers, etc.) and letting technicians reserve specific parts, generate requisitions, and confirm delivery schedules.
• Automate parts tracking by using PDA’s equipped with barcode readers (and RF scanners) to record movement of parts from inventory to truck, from truck to customer site, etc. thus improving asset utilization and reduced loss and theft.
• Improve contract, warranty, and regulatory compliance by providing technicians with handheld prompts, guidelines, and automated reporting.
• Capture time and billing data at the customer site (or print invoices on the spot via IR ports between the PDA and the copier/fax device), improving billing accuracy, reducing costly reconciliation of errors, and accelerating cash flow.
• Increase revenue per account by providing field technicians with offers and discounts tailored to individual customers and information about new products and promotional campaigns.

PDA vs. Laptop