BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - January 9, 2008) - Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (
NYSE:
HHS)
announced today that according to recent research, leading service and
manufacturing firms are looking to boost their service performance, as
measured via faster service response and improved serviceable asset uptime,
by leveraging the enhanced intelligence from location-enabling tools and
devices. Results from this research can be found in Aberdeen's latest
benchmark report titled "The Impact of Location on Field Service."
Aberdeen's survey investigating the pressures increasing the focus on
enhanced location data found that for the 330 survey respondents reporting,
service response levels across various industries still have significant
room for improvement. Inadequate visibility into service and customer asset
location for optimized scheduling and resource allocation is directly
attributable for these firms reporting an inadequate 65% success rate in
actually meeting pre-stated service response times.
"In the management of vital service resources such as people, vehicles and
parts, the enhanced visibiltiy provided by location-enabled tracking has
allowed firms to experience significant benefits related not only to
improved workforce productivty and efficiency but also in substantial cost
savings," said Sumair Dutta, Research Analyst at the Aberdeen Group. "For
example, optimized routing and scheduling enabled with location-specific
data from GPS-enabled devices has allowed service firms to shave nearly 15%
of fuel and overtime costs since the adoption of technology. The 15%
reduction in each of these metrics amounts to a near half million dollars
in savings, on average."
The report also finds that leading service firms are not only using
location data to monitor their service technicians, but also to improve
planning initiatives and to reposition their service resources. Leading
firms are also more than two times as likely as all others to use
location-specific service data to make service outsourcing decisions, so as
to better match customer needs in remote areas.
As such these firms are:
-- Outperforming their peers by 43% in terms of current workforce
utilization
-- Nearly two times as successful as all others in meeting service
response windows
-- Twice as successful in improving serviceable asset uptime and service
margins over the last two years.
Respondents to Aberdeen's survey include Honeywell, Thermo Fisher
Scientific, HP, Dell, Sears, Telstra, Xerox and Bombardier Aerospace.
Underwriters of the Impact of Location on Field Service Benchmark are
Navtrak, Inc., TeleNav, ClickSoftware and ESRI.
To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, please visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4266
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market
intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more
than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely
positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating
demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment
analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets,
corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in
context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's
analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of
Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement -
Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role
Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit
Aberdeen
http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more
about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to
http://www.harte-hanks.com.
© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
260 Franklin Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02110-3112
Telephone: (617) 723-7890
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Sumair Dutta
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
(617) 854-5298
sumair.dutta@aberdeen.com