© iconimage/Dollar Photo Club
Dannielle Furness
FIELD SERVICE SOFTWARE 2025 AND BEYOND Organisations around the globe are facing unprecedented change, thanks to converging digital forces. Now’s the time to rethink processes and adopt a more efficient business model, according to our roundtable participants.
W
hile it’s not uncommon
We wanted to look a decade down the
times — they want it fixed now. Secondly,
for smaller enterprises
track, so we spoke with a few of the
because optimised productivity is vital to
to still rely on inefficient
industry’s most knowledgeable, includ-
every business. It’s expensive to maintain
paper-based systems to
ing Jonathan Eastgate, Chief Technology
a mobile workforce, so you want to keep
facilitate field service pro-
Officer for simPRO Software, as well as
the billable hours up. It’s just not feasible
cesses, underestimating
David Younger and Ron Hayward from
any longer to have field staff coming into
The Service Manager.
the office to get job cards — they need
the significance of converging technologies threatens to leave some businesses behind. The rate of change we have seen
to be out on site. We’re in the middle of FSB: What's the 'next big thing'?
since the introduction of smartphones
12
the age of mobility and most customers have embraced this.
and subsequent mobile devices has been
Eastgate: For the field service industry,
rapid, to say the least, and while we may
the burning question for companies
The next big thing, however, is the Inter-
tire of hearing some buzzwords, such as
today is ‘how do you effectively mobilise
net of Things (IoT), which is simply the
IoT, the significance of these developments
the workforce?’ Why? Firstly, because
connection of any device with an on/off
shouldn’t be underestimated.
customers now expect faster turnaround
switch to either the internet or another
FSB MAY 2016
www.FieldServiceBusiness.com.au