“My Field Workers Keep Losing Connectivity In Rural And Remote Locations”
Field service management involves the management of resources at, or en route to, a customer site. More often than not, field service work involves system installation, maintenance and repair. As you can imagine, to undertake such work, field service engineers are often taken to remote and rural locations where infrastructure is sparse and connectivity is unreliable or unpredictable. This is likely the reason why a whopping 45% of field technicians report current tools are not fast enough, and 38% say that they cannot access all the necessary information.
1. The Dangers Of Losing Connectivity
2. How To Ensure Connectivity For Workers
3. Deploying Solutions Cost-Effectively
Empowering engineers with ruggedized mobile devices has been a first step in the right direction for many service providers - even now, we continue to help organisations to go paperless - but mobile devices are only as good as the the software within them; And to ensure enterprise devices are being used in the most productive way, they need to ensure safe and seamless data handling, and speedy communication of information.
What's The Real Danger Of Losing Connectivity In The Field?
Poor connectivity can compromise field worker safety, hinder productivity, customer satisfaction and employee wellbeing. Below are a few specifics around how poor connectivity translates across different functions within a business:
- It compromises senior leadership's duty of care, making it difficult to maintain communication with field workers, preventing support teams from locating engineers and establishing their welfare, at any given time.
- It forces engineers to resort to laborious, manual processes.
- It causes workers to lose access to task-critical information.
- It can, in some cases, cause mobile applications to crash and work to be lost.
So, How Can I Ensure Complete Connectivity For Workers In The Field?
Data connectivity is a problem that is simple to address, the solution for which can add significant value to the operations of field service providers. The best connectivity solutions tend to involve:
- Every field service provider should be making use of best-in-class enterprise mobility devices (think ruggedized tablets and smartphones). Mobile devices enable businesses to move away from manual, paper-based processes while allowing service providers to automate customer reviews, improve communication between IT teams, support services and field workers, and empower engineers to do more with their time. Of course, these benfits assume you are pairing the right applications with the right devices.
- Deploy unsteered multi-network SIMs that stay connected to the best business-grade networks at all times.
- Virtual Private Network (VPN) software that enables devices to stay connected to critical applications, roam seamlessly between multiple wireless networks, and maintain applications even when moving in and out of wireless coverage areas.
How Can I Deploy Technologies Cost-Effectively?
You may wish to explore the benefits of all of the above solutions, without having to work out how they mesh together with your existing IT infrastructure. Fortunately, this is why solution providers like MiTEQ exist. We work with a framework of industry-leading technology solution providers that help us to supply the Field Service sector with comprehensive IT solutions. If you drop us an email or give us a call, we will gladly help you source and deploy the most effective cost-saving, efficiency-driving technologies to meet your needs and requirements.