The Net Best Thing: In the Field and All Grown Up

[From iSource Business, June/July 2002] It's a scene that is as old as photocopy machines: Something breaks. The call goes out to the manufacturer's field service organization, which schedules a service call. The next day, a service rep shows up, only to realize that he has the wrong manual. The following day, on the second visit, phonebook-size manual by his side, the rep identifies the broken part, but he needs to go back to the shop to order a replacement. One more day and one more visit later, the machine is whole again, the factory is humming and the service rep is borrowing your phone to call in for his next assignment. Down time: four days.

Now imagine this: Something breaks. The call goes out to the manufacturer's field service organization, which pages a service rep to respond immediately to ensure compliance with the company's service-level agreement. Later that day, a service rep shows up, pulls out a wireless, Internet-enabled personal digital assistant (PDA) and logs onto a Web site that provides access to a manual for the broken machine. The rep identifies the broken part and is able to trade it out for a replacement that he has conveniently brought with him because an analysis of data from previous service calls on this type of machine indicated this part was a likely failure point. The rep uses his PDA to mark the job complete, log time and expenses associated with the repair, order a new spare for the part and download his next assignment. Down time: a few hours.

Fantasyland? Not in the least. In fact, all the technologies necessary to make the latter scenario a reality already exist, and a few early adopters are testing the waters with these new solutions. The next-generation service and support chain is almost ready for prime time.

The Redheaded Stepchild

The service and support chain, really an extension of customer-relationship management (CRM) activities, encompasses all the activities that occur after a product is delivered to the customer. That includes everything from preparing, distributing and updating technical information for maintenance personnel (see the sidebar, Let's Get Technical, at the end of this article) to managing warranty programs, field service personnel, and inventories of spare and replacement parts. 

This link in the supply chain has been something of a redheaded stepchild to CRM in recent years, despite the fact that companies have been providing solutions for service and support literally for decades. Revenue opportunities in field service may not appear to be as business savvy as, say, sales force automation or Web self service, says Karen Smith, a research director for CRM at Boston-based technology consultancy Aberdeen Group. In a recent survey of solutions for field service management, Aberdeen notes that this segment of CRM has been growing at 8 percent annually, a rate that Aberdeen called respectable, yet comparatively disappointing.

Smith and others cite a host of reasons for the slow development of solutions for the service and support chain. Companies typically have viewed their service organizations as cost centers, with little potential for profit, so executives have seen little need to invest in this function. Demographics could also play a role: Field service staff are frequently older workers, often unionized, and might offer more resistance to introducing efficiency-raising technologies that could threaten jobs. In addition, because field service is, by definition, done in the field, greater automation of service activities has been, to some extent, hostage to the slow development of more extensive, more reliable high-speed wireless Internet networks and to the high price tags on PDAs and other devices with which to equip service personnel.

Increasing Interest