Field Service Automation: the driving force of business productivity and operations

 The success of any business is majorly defined by its on-field sales representatives. In today’s competitive world, adapting to the new technology enhancements may be a must if you would like to remain within the marketplace. Therefore, a business needs to enrich its salesforce with a contemporary solution as it keeps the business in the competition. 

Earlier, manual and traditional techniques were utilized by the sales representatives. Nowadays, the supply of on-field assets assists sales reps in numerous ways because it aids in boosting their productiveness and performance. 

Corporations have already begun strengthening their field force with advanced field force software to monitor their sales team performance and activities. 

What is Field Force Automation? 

Field Force Automation is the bi-directional flow of data between the head office and field through mobile technology – mobile devices, wearables, IoT sensors, etc. The data is immediately recorded in the back-end, reducing the time spent on manual data entry and the chance of errors associated with it. 

Implementation of the software to manage certain aspects of frontline operations (e.g. inventory management, time tracking, etc.) doesn't necessarily compose field force automation. To reap the benefits of FFA, organizations need to implement a system that enables the frontline workforce to capture and share data in real-time and the head office to quickly process and provide feedback on that data in real-time. This is the difference between: 

An environmental officer performing an inspection at a manufacturing facility, registering the outcomes on an Excel sheet, and then need to transfer the data manually into another system of record 

While,the environmental officer employing a mobile application to record data, including images and videos, audio notes, etc, and send it to the top office in real-time where it can instantly be analyzed and became actionable feedback like a corrective action plan. 

Field force automation software has countless benefits which are consisting of: 

· Tracking sales rep’s live location 

· Efficient customer management 

· Improve productivity 

· Accurate sales forecast from past sales data analysis 

· Accurate report generation. 

With the evolving technology, the dynamics of the field force are changing. Till now, we are conscious of the limited functionalities of field force software like geo-fencing, report generation, sales forecast, customer satisfaction, etc. 

An effective field force automation software will work on both online and mobile devices seamlessly. The mobile application empowers your field staff to urge real activity updates from the leads, auto-capture leads from phone calls, geo-tracking, live meeting updates, and each day planner to name a few. 

However, changing trends will take field force management to a subsequent level to embrace modern-day technologies. These future trends of field force have been trying to deliver their best thus making it more manageable for businesses to manage their sales activities. Therefore, enhances the standard of their services. 

Let’s take a glimpse of it: 

1. AI and IoT: Ultimate drivers of Field Force Management: 

As discussed above, advanced technologies such as AI (artificial intelligence) and IoT (internet of things) are all set to transform field force management. With the assistance of AI and connected devices, businesses can easily plan their strategies and effectively improve their productivity. Also, this can be more useful for businesses in decision-making and sales forecasting. Hence, companies have already begun to shift their focus from manual tools and techniques that were time-consuming. 

Various studies have revealed that in an upcoming scenario almost 20 billion gadgets are going to be linked to the IoT and over 74% of providers will surely trust it for its hassle-free working thus it'll allow your field force to predict the customer’s need. From the customer’s query to how it is often solved, your field force will ready to manage both which can ultimately take the customer’s satisfaction to the upper level. 

Such transformation will give your businesses a boom and it'll also prevent the hectic schedule of sales reps hence providing a cheerful, healthy, and peaceful environment within the organization. 

2. Improved customer satisfaction: 

One of the foremost important things for a number one business is its customers. Customer satisfaction plays an important role in the company’s promotion. Hence, equipping your field force with the management software program helps in the addition of transparency to your business processes thus provides better visibility to the clients within the sales techniques. 

With the assistance of AI and IOT, businesses can notify their clients about supports and repair visits via text messages, phone calls, and emails thus allow customers to reschedule their visits with ease. 

In addition to the present, the mixing of AI and data analytics will let your field force management software predict the longer-term service requirements before the client’s complaint. 

3. Blockchain technology: 

Whenever we hear blockchain technology, the first concept moves to our mind is cryptocurrencies. However, it's not only a restraint thereto. 

According to the experts, blockchain technology is often used for various industries including field service management. Integration of blockchain technology with smart devices and IOT could also be wont to leverage and authenticate the payment systems. 

Through this, verification is often done by notifications, alerts thus improving customer’s experience. This will ultimately contribute to the replacement of conventional methods of collecting payments. 

4. Dealing with the prime data: 

According to this situation, the demand for personalized brand experience has been raised over the past few years. People always wanted to match your sales levels with giant brands. Nowadays, customer data are often easily accessed through multiple channels like social media, emails, then forth. 

Therefore, the corporation must create an all-encompassing evaluation of every customer’s information by making a complete perceptive of the client’s review across all the channels. At the point when the statistics are very well analyzed and decisions for advertising, marketing are based on it, customer services will see speedy growth. 

Experts have already predicted the continued technological revolutions and hence confirmed that the above features and trends to be applied very soon. Such integration will not only give details of your field reps but will also automate their day-to-day routine activities. Therefore, these trends will help to develop a trusted and outstanding customer experience which can eventually end in high customer retention. 

Challenges faced 

Many industries have an outsized deskless workforce, deployed across countries and even continents to perform various sets of tasks. This poses several challenges – how can organizations ensure that: 

• frontline workers, no matter their location, are following equivalent standards of operational execution and compliance; 

• data is accurately captured within the field and optimally employed by the top office tf continuously measure and improve standards; 

• workers within the field are given an enticing and rewarding employee experience? 

Let’s look at how Field Force Automation (FFA) can help organizations to resolve these challenges and ensure greater efficiency, compliance, productivity, and employee engagement in the field and improved communication between head office (HO) and the operational frontline. But first, 

In a nutshell, FFA establishes continuous feedback loops between the field and HO. This means that once an organization has these FFA foundations in place, many other optimizing capabilities can be layered on top. Here are some examples: 

Data-driven efficiency 

The essential questions that each worker within the field faces are: 

Where to go? 

What is the foremost time- and cost-efficient thanks to getting there? 

What are the required actions at each location? 

The abundance of knowledge captured within the field with the assistance of analytics can provide insight into the very best priority/ opportunity locations. Consumer goods companies, for instance, can use sell-in and sell-out data to direct field sales reps to the stores which represent the very best incremental turnover opportunities. 

Route optimization can help field workers to navigate their territory most efficiently, reducing the time and costs of traveling. This can enable field sales reps to do more store calls in less time and improve product presentation, or a field service engineer to visit more locations and resolve more issues within a day. 

At the top office, managers and operational directors gain greater visibility over performance within the field which helps to eliminate inefficiencies and reward top performance. By using geolocation, for instance, the manager of a field merchandising team can see that a merchandiser has only visited one of four scheduled locations for the day and spent twice the maximum amount of time as needed at it. The manager can then deep dive into the root cause and work with the merchandiser to resolve it. 

Now that field workers know what the highest priority locations are and what the optimal route to them is, how can FFA help guide them through the tasks and sustain the highest execution standards? 

Better informed decisions for improved operational performance and yielding 

By facilitating the capture and sharing of knowledge, FFA helps to enhance communication and collaboration between the top office and therefore the frontline. Operational leaders can use the info captured within the field to continuously review the effectiveness and efficiency of frontline operations and improve standard operating procedures and best practices. 

The Store Operations Director for a supermarket chain, for example, can update the food recall standard procedure and communicate it with store associates across all outlets by sharing a step-by-step video which they will access on their mobile devices for action. This helps to make sure that each worker within the field is following equivalent best practices and is conscious of the newest procedural updates, driving operational compliance. 

Improved knowledge preservation and easier onboarding 

Providing workers with mobile technology which enables the instant sharing of insight at the operational frontline also allows organizations to create a knowledge repository of field workers’ expertise. This can help to scale back onboarding times and supply relevant information for action. For example, a plumber working for a utility company can create and share a video on how to fix a common issue. Another plumber can then use the video when faced with an equivalent issue and directly implement the simplest practice. This way, when frontline workers leave the workforce, their expertise is preserved and may be employed by newcomers within the organization. 

Employee engagement and happiness 

As a recent study by The Economist shows, employees who use mobile and social technologies as part of their work are 16% more productive and 18% more creative than those who do not. Field force automation can help frontline workers in the execution of tasks, communicate and collaborate with greater effectiveness and efficiency, saving them time and providing them with a more frictionless and satisfying employee experience. 

  

As part of FFA, organizations can also gamify the execution of frontline operations to improve onboarding and engagement in the field. Introducing an interactive leaderboard and awarding workers points for taking the correct actions in the field can help incentivize best practices and create friendly competition among workers. 

  

A retailer, for example, can induce store associates to reduce out of stocks by paying the outlet with the highest OSA score with a team meal out. Store associates capture product availability and implemented fixes, the better their team’s chance of winning and they can track their progress in real-time on the leader board.  

Conclusion  

The objective of any salesperson is to close the deal faster. An automated field sales app helps in the creation of a bridge between the field and the office. With joint intelligence and a seamless combination between the web and mobile, it creates an ecosystem where information can be shared, absorbed, and acted upon.