What Does The Future Hold for the Field Service Management Industry?

As with any industry, innovation is essential to survival and long-term commercial viability. Companies that don’t stay ahead of the curve may be surpassed by their competition or, at worst, render themselves obsolete.

The field service management (FSM) industry is undergoing a significant transformation. With the introduction of state-of-the-art technologies, manual processes, paper-based documents, and antiquated legacy systems are becoming a thing of the past.

Despite ongoing disruption, the field service management industry continues to thrive. In fact, the sector is projected to surpass a global value of £2.9 billion by 2025.

In this article, we’ll explore what the future holds for FSM and how you can use workforce management technology to benefit your business.

The Future of the Field Service Management Industry

As the field service management industry continues to flourish, companies face increasing pressure to advance their ways of working. To help you prepare for the future, we’ve put together three predictions on how the industry will continue to evolve:

1. Customers Will Expect A Better Experience

Today’s customers know what they want, and they’re willing to be more loyal to companies that provide them with seamless transactions. According to research, 84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience enjoy a spike in revenue.

To thrive in the field service management industry, you must constantly adapt to account for evolving customer expectations. For example:

• Simplicity: With workforce management technology in place, you can provide your customers with an easy-to-use portal. Your customers will not only be able to view all the details of their booking, but they will also be able to cancel or reschedule at the touch of a button.
• Communication: Real time tracking has become highly popular thanks to the instant gratification models offered by online ecommerce sites. From parcels to pizza delivery, modern customers expect maximum levels of convenience across a range of services. Using workforce management technology, you can provide your customer with real-time updates on the location of their technician, arrival time, delays and job status.
• Speed: Workforce management technology allows you to provide a speedy service by optimising the entire process. Companies can enable their customers to pay with seamless checkout experiences. The most efficient operators distinguish themselves even in extremely competitive markets. In fact, 75% of field service businesses report increased customer satisfaction rates from using mobility tools. Competitors that still depend on paper-based documents, phone calls and legacy systems will only continue to fall further behind.

2. The Talent Pool Will Shrink

The talent pool is shrinking in field management services, with several factors exacerbating the problem. Firstly, as the market grows, demand for skilled workers is beginning to outnumber supply. Plus, when you consider that 7.25 million people are set to work in the gig economy by 2022, competition for the best contractors and permanent workers becomes even fiercer.

The ageing workforce presents another challenge for field service businesses to overcome. As the Baby Boomer generation (1956-1964) retires from the workforce, they leave behind a considerable knowledge gap. Subsequently, there will be a shortage of replacement workers within the Millennial (1981-1996) and Generation Z (1997-2012) groups.

Your business must prepare for the increasingly small and competitive talent pool. For example, you should consider ways to train new field service technicians and think about how you will attract and retain the best talent.

Field service companies that use workforce management technology have a competitive edge in recruitment, especially with younger workers. 80% of Gen Z say they want to work with cutting-edge technology, so businesses that digitise their processes will stand out from the competition as a more desirable workplace.

3. Automation Will Become Standard

49% of field service organisations are still using manual processes that are slow, error-prone and inconvenient for everyone involved.

However, automation is revolutionising outdated ways of working and turning them into rapid, reliable processes that boost productivity. Using workforce management technology like BigChange, you can schedule jobs, dispatch workers, active project statuses and complete a whole host of other administrative tasks at the touch of a button.

Field-based workers can complete forms, pre-populated with customer information, from their mobile devices and send them electronically to back-office staff. Less time spent completing manual paperwork means more time spent completing jobs and generating revenue.

With all the free time created by automated processes, your back-office staff will also be able to concentrate on other tasks that help provide your company with a solid competitive advantage.

Future-Proof Your Business with BigChange’s Workforce Management Technology

Save valuable time and stay connected to every aspect of your business with BigChange.

BigChange is the complete Job Management Platform that’s helping field service businesses across the UK to win more work, take control of their operations and deliver winning customer experiences.

Bringing together customer relationship management (CRM), job scheduling, live tracking, field resource management, financial management, business intelligence into one simple to use and easy to integrate platform your business can run on.

Want to find out more?

Discover how BigChange can make your business grow stronger here and arrange a free demo today.