In today’s competitive environment, companies are under constant pressure to improve customer service while reducing costs; in field operations this drives a necessity for businesses to optimize their business process. With the passing of each competition-charged day, the corporate IT mandate grows clearer. Successful companies know that a well-trained, highly motivated and efficiently connected field force is critical to their continued growth and success.
Mobile field workers can be found in different range of industries including product service and support, management and architecture, transportation and parcel delivery and utilities. They are in general field service employees from various industries who collect data and fleet safety accomplish tasks/jobs while moving from point to point within a city, district or region.
Communication can be a real challenge for organizations that have to keep contact with employees in the field. Traditional methods of recording work done or reporting faults rely on batch transfers or paperwork completed at the end of a shift, so are often slow, inefficient and prone to error. Field force workers are the lifeblood of many businesses; they can deliver enhanced services that go far beyond data collection and repair through new mobilized devices and applications. These enhanced service capabilities better serve clients’ needs and provide additional revenue opportunities for companies.
This White Paper will discuss how the benefits of mobile solutions, are empowering Enterprises and their employees to improve revenue, engage in industry best practices and offer the best practices possible with its new features, functions and capabilities.
Field Force Workers–A Largely Untouched Market
The market potential is tremendous for mobilized computing solutions. According to research from IDC, there are 99 million field and 145 million on-location workers in the world today. Currently, only a very small percentage of companies are using mobilized solutions to conduct business. There is a vast area of opportunity for companies and ISVs to transform the productivity and performance of these workers. Figure 1 depicts the size of the potential market for both field and on-location work forces.
Field Force Automation – Technology Enhancements and Innovations
New and innovative technologies can significantly improve field force efficiency. These approaches can:
- Reduce the overload of data
- Provide actionable information where and when needed
- Enable field force to receive and complete automated tasks while on the road
Mobile field workers – Early adopters of wireless technology
With field force automation solution, mobile field workers would be more effective in management as well as operation by connecting to their back-end systems via a wireless device.
Mobile field workers always have a need for receiving and transmitting information. This could not be handled by normal phone services. Making trips back to the service stations to get the needed information costs time and delays work process.
Field force automation provides complete access to all the activities conducted by a mobile field force worker.
Key Functions include
- Fleet management
- Inventory and asset management
- Warehouse automation
- Asset tracking
- Quality Control (tracking and counting articles)
- Packaging
- Security and access control
- Hazardous material management
- Advertising and promotion
- Delivery
- Smart-card-based payment systems