When searching for ways to avoid service pitfalls, one question will always come up: are you utilizing technology?
Integrating technology into your business doesn’t have to mean buying the newest and most expensive solution or suffering for hours trying to learn a technology you’ll never actually use.
With each day that passes, technology is rapidly evolving. In today’s market, you’ll have to use some form of technology to keep customers and find success. Without it, you’ll be playing second fiddle to competitors who have online customer portals, automatic SMS messaging, or digital forms.
In this blog, we’ll go through three technologies – IoT, API, and field service management solutions and show how they can impact your service offerings. Keep in mind that these can be used or be added to your operations one at a time. However, the real magic happens when they combine to make a beautifully connected system – and better connection is a great goal for any service company.
Let’s start with something convenient: IoT sensors.
Internet of Things in Field Service
The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to technology like sensors, software, and other digital implements that are embedded into equipment or objects. By connecting enabled objects to a remote monitoring system, these inanimate objects can now “self-report” data in real time, as well as connect to digital monitoring solutions.
Remote Monitoring
Remote monitoring is a fantastic use of IoT and digital connectivity. By fitting equipment or objects with sensors or software, these objects can be tracked for metrics like temperature, moisture, location, output, and more.
Remote monitoring has extensive uses in a variety of industries. One more recent application is in the agriculture industry. Farmers can equip smart collars for livestock that, when connected digitally, track and report on animals in real time. This way, farmers can get instant updates on the health of their herd and act quickly to aid with sickness or find lost individuals. Beyond that, IoT-connected sensors can be placed within fields to help monitor crop moisture and soil temperature, ensuring both healthy herds and harvests with the help of technology.
The term ‘Smart Agriculture’ is used to talk about tech-integrated farming – find 7 ways modern companies can leverage technology.
Field Service and IoT-Assisted/Enabled Remote Monitoring
Remote monitoring technology and solutions are relatively new but are already creating a huge impact, especially in the field service industry.
For field service companies, adding IoT-enabled sensors to machines and equipment is huge. The ability to check in on equipment in real time saves a huge amount of time and energy. What would you do with those extra resources?
Connecting Devices to Service Operations
What does connecting your devices look like? Let’s consider how the addition of technology could change your service model.
Break-Fix Model
The typical break-fix service model, where a customer’s piece of equipment breaks and then the technician is called, is no longer the best practice. Since this model relies on breakage that could be fatal to the piece of equipment, operating this way comes with a much higher level of risk.
This model doesn’t necessarily require advanced technology to function, which can make it easier to get started. However, waiting for things to break and dealing with sudden large costs can strain customer relationships and leave gaps due to unreliable service jobs. Low number of clients = low jobs = an unreliable cycle of ROI.
Operating on the edge of stress and anxiety is something no service company wants. Fortunately, even adding in basic technology can help.
Preventative Service Model
Preventive service is the next step up. This service model prioritizes contracts and customer relationships. Along with offering 24/7 service, service companies can use historical data and regular checks to keep equipment from catastrophic breakage and reduce downtime. Customers are notably happier when they can maintain their daily functions, and PM contracts are a guaranteed source of ROI: a win-win for both customer and service company.
Predictive Service Model
Lastly, we have the predictive service model. By combining tech and equipment, this model utilizes field service solutions, IoT technology, and remote monitoring to predict problems before they happen on a much more informed scale than once-a-year checkups. With advanced data collection abilities and IoT-enabled devices, real-time and historical data is analyzed and used to visualize live changes and create plans of action. Problems can be diagnosed remotely, allowing techs to act with speed and efficiency. Staying with the flow of technology makes adoption of additional the easier, and it sure beats sitting around and waiting for an equipment failure call.
Not sure where your company fits? Learn more about service maturity and your level of tech adoption.
Field Service Connections with API
An API, or Application Programming Interface, is essentially a bridge. API software connects any two systems together, with respect to a set of rules that dictate how data can be requested, sent, and received. This allows the two systems to communicate with each other and share features, information, and functionality.
API for Field Service
Leveraging API in your service operations is simply building bridges from your current systems to additional technology. What can this look like?
In the case of remote monitoring, an API can be used to build a bridge between the remote monitoring system and your field service software solution. For example, let’s say a generator has an issue that alerts the remote monitoring system. The remote monitoring system will ping through the API to the service solution, notifying the service company in real time so they can take action and get it fixed.
Custom Call Triggers
Let’s say this service company took an extra step and set up custom triggers for when an alert like this comes through. In this case, they’ve selected a pop-up notification to the service manager. Now when the remote monitoring system picks up the alert, sends it through the API bridge, and triggers the notification, the service manager will get instantly notified about the problem, and can now enact the fastest and best solution. This is only one example of what API can help with.
API and Service Reporting
There are even more bridges you can build by connecting an API and your field service management solution.
If your field service solution has reporting capabilities like Service Pro’s Business Intelligence, you have a unique opportunity. By putting all the pieces together (IoT, API, remote monitoring, your field service solution, and reporting abilities), you’ll be able to not only gather the most accurate data, but report on it.
What can you see by digging deeper into your data?
- Analyze which pieces of equipment are creating the most alerts or triggers coming from it to determine if/when a replacement is needed
- Plan for future parts needs or unit replacements
- Identify sales opportunities for new parts or new units
- Increase technician efficiency by acting quickly, thanks to real-time updates
- Save your end client money and stress by solving problems early before they see the effects and fester into larger, more expensive, and complex problems
- Identify common failure codes to quickly troubleshoot the main issue
- Direct positive impacts on KPIs, including, but not limited to:
- Customer Satisfaction
- Average Response Time
- Customer Satisfaction
- Device Uptime & Performance
- Mean Time to Repair
- Resource Utilization
- Average Response Time
- Completed Orders
- Renew Expiring Warranties
Manage Your Entire Integrated Experience
Imagine…
- never having to explain unplanned downtime again
- bringing more than just answers, but data-informed strategies, to the table
- showing up each day knowing you have real-time windows into your customers’ equipment
Technology makes these dreams a reality. You can leverage the power of an integrated approach by combining a field service solution, API, and IoT for the best year in service you’ve ever had.
How do you find a field service solution that can handle all of this? Start with Service Pro® by MSI Data, equipped with seamless integration capabilities, our own API, and extensive Business intelligence reporting.
