BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - October 9, 2008) - In an extremely competitive service landscape,
Best-in-Class service firms are looking to empower their field technicians
and mobile workers with tools to ensure quick and efficient service. As
such, these firms are actively taking steps to map and automate
service-specific workflows to replace outdated and inefficient paper-based
systems, as indicated in "Mobility in Today's Service Organization,"
published by Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (
NYSE:
HHS). A
complimentary copy of the report is available at:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=5304.
Aberdeen's benchmark survey of over 250 companies identified that rising
cost pressures were top of mind for most service firms, and the need to
balance these pressures with rising customer expectations for service was
the major driver for these firms to evaluate mobile automation initiatives.
In an attempt to meet these pressures, leading firms were more than two
times as likely to track their mobile assets in real-time and almost two
times as likely to provide their field technicians with mobile tools to
manage service work orders and parts-related information.
"In our research, firms indicate that 59% of their field workforces are
currently equipped with mobile devices not including their personal cell
phones. This is up from 49% last year and is expected to rise to 77% next
year," said Sumair Dutta, Research Analyst at Aberdeen. "But Best-in-Class
Mobile Field Service is more than just handing a device to your field
workers, it's about providing and empowering your workers with access to
the right information in real-time so as to allow them to complete their
service work. Companies that are able to do this effectively are seeing a
near $10 drop in costs per dispatch and an overall 12% boost in service
profitability."
To support improved access, increased data capture and enhanced data
transfer capabilities needed for real-time field worker empowerment,
leading firms were nearly two times as likely to leverage mobile field
service applications for work order management and 42% more likely than
others to leverage mobile solutions for optimized scheduling and asset
tracking. As a result leading firms were experiencing:
-- An 18% decrease in mean time to repair over the last year
-- A 19% increase in technician productivity over the last year, compared
to a 9% increase for all other firms
-- A 93% level of SLA compliance, compared to a 77% performance for all
other firms
-- Service-based margins of 25% as compared to a 18% level for all other
firms
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the
following underwriters: Blackbay and WennSoft. To obtain a complimentary
copy of the report, visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=5304.
To access all of Aberdeen's complimentary research please visit
http://research.aberdeen.com.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
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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
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corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
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© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
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Contact Information: Media Contact:
Zack Westenhoefer
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
(617) 854-5354
zachary.westenhoefer@aberdeen.com