[Excerpted from the SFG℠ White Paper of the same name, sponsored by WorkMarket.]
Historically, Field Service Organizations (FSOs) within enterprises had a relatively easy time dealing with the staffing and management of their own field service workforce – basically, they recruited, hired, trained and placed their service technicians in strategic locations situated within a city, throughout the region, and across the country.
However, in the last several years, the field services market has grown ultra-competitive. Increasing customer expectations, pricing pressures and growing talent shortages mean enterprises are facing a perfect storm. They must find new ways to adapt in a rapidly evolving market or succumb to being left behind. And this is especially true for enterprises that are supporting a large installed base of equipment, comprised of a large variety of products, distributed in multiple geographic locations.
Historically, almost every major platform, device or piece of equipment had its own set of metrics, or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). It was by these KPIs that services organizations – and their field technicians – could track their performance over time to ensure that the customer’s equipment was always running as smoothly and efficiently as possible – and with as little downtime as possible.
Equipment performance was optimized, for the most part, by strict adherence to a periodic schedule of both routine and preventive maintenance. KPIs such as MTBF (i.e., Mean Time Between Failures) and MTTR (i.e., Mean Time To Repair) were the two most commonly used metrics in an age when equipment typically failed up to several times a year.
Fast forward to today. The field services landscape has changed quite dramatically – largely as a result of the introduction of new and improved technologies, an intensely demanding and volatile market economy, and an increased emphasis on technician skills, training and certifications. For these reasons, many enterprises and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) now find themselves either overwhelmed by the demands typically associated with the recruiting, training, on-boarding, managing – and paying for – their respective field service technicians. Others have decided to get out of the direct business of performing services themselves – even on their own equipment.
[Click here to read the entire white paper, compliments of WorkMarket, the company that provides an end-to-end Workforce Solution to help organizations manage their freelance workstream.]
