Service Smarts

With any mobile deployment strategy comes a fundamental decision: it is better to build or buy the mobile applications that your workforce will be using in the field? It may seem more economical to develop your app in-house, but there are a number of challenges you’ll need to address – from time and personnel requirements to ensuring the application is optimized and will continue to run effectively when technology upgrades occur.

Companies with extensive experience in mobile app development for the service management market can foresee these pitfalls and offer complete solutions in a way that no in-house deployment ever could — simply because they have experience with issues you probably have not even considered and have staff whose only responsibility is developing mobility software.

This white paper explores the considerations of ‘build versus buy’ to help your service organization achieve the most successful mobile deployments.

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Download this insightful Aberdeen report today

For service organizations, the field continues to be a major proving ground in the quest for improved customer satisfaction, higher customer retention and increased profitability.  On average, as revealed in a recent field service survey of 220 organizations, 65% of incoming service requests require a field visit or dispatch.  Nearly 26% of these dispatches require secondary or additional follow up visits, thereby making the effective management of field resources and the overall field service organization extremely vital in the pursuit of service excellence.  For the Best-in-Class, field service management encompasses excellence in scheduling, planning, and overall workforce management.

This document will focus on the steps taken to put the right technician in place and provide an in-depth look into processes, procedures, and methodologies leveraged by Best-in-Class service organizations to attain service excellence.

Download this insightful Aberdeen report today

Innovative Technology Has Dramatic Impact on Streamlining Operations

Over the last year, TSIA has sharpened its focus on field service operations, initiating additional benchmarking of key field service financial, quality, and operational metrics. The data is now becoming available, and it paints a worrisome picture of the current state of the industry: The average cost of an enterprise field service visit has now surpassed $1,000. With companies looking for ways to improve operational efficiency and lower costs, field service is poised to dramatically reinvent itself, leveraging innovative technology and approaches to change the way companies interact with customers in the field.

Not only can optimizing field service reduce costs, it also can enable a project to generate revenue. Field agents, with their face-to-face interactions with customers, have a major impact on customer satisfaction and incremental revenue. In this report, five critical areas of the end-to-end field service processes will be examined, with recommendations for short- and long-term optimization for each. Longer term options will include how innovative approaches such as cloud technology and mobile tools are helping companies make dramatic improvements to productivity and cost.

Check out this insightful white paper to learn more

Selected Astea’s Premier End-to-End Service Management Platform to Optimize Mobile Workforce; Reduce Service Costs; Increase Customer Satisfaction; and Drive Revenues

Astea International Inc. (NASDAQ:ATEA), the leader in service lifecycle management and mobility solutions, announces that Brains II, Inc., a leading provider of manufacturer-independent IT maintenance services, has selected the Astea Alliance solution suite to further streamline and strengthen their service business reinforcing their commitment to delivering superior service.

“Our ongoing success and competitive differentiation is built by delivering superior service at a lower cost,” stated Charles Hanna, President and CEO for Brains II. “We were looking for a robust and proven solution that could provide us with the integrated service delivery platform necessary to further improve our exemplary service capabilities. After an extensive and exhaustive search for a service management and mobile workforce management solution, we found that Astea’s deep domain expertise in conjunction with their robust solution offered the breadth and depth of functionality, on a single platform, that was the perfect fit for our organization’s needs.”

Brains II selected Astea for their extensive and proven experience, over 30 years, in developing and implementing global service management and mobility solutions to enterprise companies in the IT Services industry. Additionally, the Astea Alliance solution suite provides end-to-end service management & mobility functionality, incorporating industry best practices all on a single platform, with ease of integration to Microsoft Dynamics GP. Astea’s solution will provide Brains II with a comprehensive and robust mix of capabilities such as, mobile, field service, contact center, depot repair, customer self-service, sales order processing, marketing automation, logistics, third party vendor portal, professional services automation, knowledge management and performance management that will help to further drive and improve the efficiency and costs of service delivery as well as support their strategic growth and acquisition strategy.

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As cost cuts in response to the overall economy have taken their course, organizations are now down to their core value generating resources, and are therefore looking to these resources to generate sustainable and predictable revenue streams to help support margin initiatives. Increasing service revenues is imperative for companies today as we all know that a strong service business can help a company weather a downturn in product sales. To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must: increase visibility and insight into customer service history; increase sales and marketing support of service offerings; empower front-line agents to identify and capitalize on service revenue opportunities; and increase overall contract coverage. If you already have a service revenue initiative in place or planning on implementing one within the next year, you won’t want to miss this event.

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The attainment of revenue from service continues to be a major goal for service organizations in 2011.  A poll of Chief Service Officers (CSOs) in Aberdeen’s State of Service Management research (September 2010) found that 43% of service leaders identified revenue growth as the key goal for their businesses in 2011.  Subsequent function-specific polling in 2011 around field service, the contact center and service parts, as well industry-specific polling around high-tech and medical device organizations confirms the strategic focus on revenue from the service side of the business. 

This document highlights key trends in the pursuit of service revenue and document practices relied upon by leading service organizations to capitalize on the goodwill and loyalty of their customer base.

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The demand for mobile field service solutions is on the rise. Simultaneously, the number of mobile devices entering the market is also increasing at a rapid pace. As these factors increase so does the need for protecting your mission critical data. If you are in the process of selecting a mobile field service solution or already have one in place you will not want to miss this eye-opening event.

Join VDC Research, Astea International, and SOTI for an informative webinar on how the right combination of mobile technologies can bring vital back-office information to each and every field service worker in a secure and controlled environment regardless of the devices being used.

• Hear about the industry trends in the mobile field service enterprise market. Gain visibility into the areas of impact that mobile technologies are making on organizations, and understand the nuances that will be critical for enterprises rolling out mobile solutions.
• See a demonstration of Astea’s Alliance Mobile Universal solution that leverages the latest HTML5 technology to deliver a sleek and innovative user interface while still providing both connected and disconnected modes of operation. Able to now also operate with Android smartphones and tablets, iPhones, and iPads, organizations can choose the devices that work best for their environment.
• View a demonstration of SOTI’s MobiControl solution, the best-selling Enterprise Mobile Device Management solution, equipped with an array of features to enable Corporate IT departments to manage, support, secure and track enterprise and employee-owned Windows, Apple iOS and Google Android devices.

Register Today: http://www.astea.com/en/forms/request.aspx?t=webinar40b

If you have technicians providing service in the field, then this is a “Can’t Miss” webinar for you. Service-related costs continue to escalate and customers continue to demand faster response times, but just because the technician shows up on time does not mean your problems are solved, you need to really ask yourself:

Are my technicians as productive as they could be? Have I removed all of the redundant processes that are hampering their productivity? Are they using the right device for their environment?

Did I send the right technician with the appropriate skills? Does the technician have the necessary parts and tools necessary to fix it right the first time?

 Does the technician have instantaneous access to customer history; comprehensive technical manuals; service history; contract information? Can they easily capture customer signatures, add attachments (pictures, files, etc.) and accurately record parts used, diagnostics, time & expenses, and other service related information?

Aberdeen Group and Astea International provide an informative webinar on how the right combination of mobile technology and devices can bring the information contained within the back office to each and every field service worker.

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Leading organizations are taking significant steps to improve their ability to capture, assimilate and organize performance data across the entire service spectrum and beyond, and we are therefore enabling the pursuit of business transformation. To dig deeper into the performance management capabilities of service organizations, Aberdeen’s service management team conducted a specific research poll to evaluate how leading organizations are leveraging performance insight and information to drive service business change in order to boost customer-facing and internal operational or financial results. For the purpose of this study, the area of performance management wasn’t just confined to performance insight, but split into: performance capture – getting the right data; performance insight, organization and analysis – understanding what the data is implying; performance-based business decisions – acting on the data provided.

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When it comes to field service technologies one can feel overwhelmed with the different solutions that are in the market today. Deciding which one is the best fit for your organization can be a daunting challenge. But where do you turn? There are so many things that need to be considered how does a busy executive like yourself ensure that you are on the right path?

Even if you have implemented a service solution, is it providing you with everything you need for optimized efficiency and productivity not only for today but well into the future? What is happening in the field service market and how might it affect your organization? What are other companies doing to improve technician efficiency and drive service revenues? How does your organization compare?

Attend this webinar to learn more….