Driving profitability in field services

These platforms have the power to manage your field services with an unprecedented level of efficiency. They monitor assets continuously, so they can schedule maintenance before assets fail. They simultaneously feed a steady stream of information to the back, middle, and front office. They can run numerous “what if” scenarios, deploy and analyze resources, manage tickets, contact customers, and take complex, multi-part issues and graph them. Without this kind of digital assistance, companies may begin to see a decline in the value of their field assets.

Today’s digital platforms enable quicker, more efficient decisions. They replace outdated internal, customer, and supplier interactions with an end-to-end integrated model that synchronizes supply chain activities and reduces disruptions. The potential gains in productivity, transparency and customer loyalty aren’t linear; they’re exponential. The new platforms also ease the transition from transaction-based relationships to long-term contracts with recurring revenue. They take you from fragmented, inefficient operating models to scalable solutions optimized for hybrid delivery with standardized processes.

Remote assistance for field workers enables the completion of tasks by leveraging other resources, while AI-optimized scheduling allows workers to spend more time on-site and less time traveling. Many repairs can be made remotely, machine to machine, with no human interaction through IoT. With multiple sensors gathering data at every point, the platform’s sophisticated analyses lead to insights that can drive increased customer loyalty, adjacent market development, and improvements in internal efficiency.

Operations:

A digitally enabled platform reduces events during processing by monitoring the end-to-end process, enabling a seamless handover between disciplines, and reducing downtime. It simplifies operations—from order management to on-site deployment—through improved end-to-end integration across platforms and processes. You can direct efforts to your most profitable priorities; and track results with advanced data collection and analysis, greater automation, and intelligent forecasting.

Scheduling and maintenance

A digital platform automatically prioritizes and schedules work, optimizing routes to reduce travel time and increase productivity. And because the information is transmitted to and from the field in real-time, you can respond to field service incidents.

Inventory and logistics

Using demand sensing and predictive modeling in today’s field service solutions simplifies procurement from the field, reduce waiting time on parts, and provide superior tracking of equipment. The platform also offers warehouse and fleet management.

Environmental, Compliance, and Reporting (ESG)

As ESG continues to grow in importance, a digitally transformed field services platform will address the needs of all stakeholders by driving visibility into organizational performance, staying ahead of compliance requirements, and helping your mobile workforces collaborate for greater productivity.

Across the manufacturing sector, observers have noticed a growing number of companies focus not on new products but on the installation and service of those they already have. In fact, some companies have found that installation and service enjoy higher margins than their other activities. As more companies seek to replicate that success, we expect the field services business to become more competitive and the emphasis on speed, accuracy, and transparency to grow. These increased pressures are likely to be compounded by what we expect will be growing ESG compliance and reporting requirements. That’s why a modern digital platform with the capability to scale and expand should be a minimum requirement for any field services operation, and certainly, for yours.

At KPMG, our strategic alliance with Microsoft is central to our goal of helping clients achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Our deep knowledge of field services across the spectrum of industry sectors, combined with industry-leading Microsoft technology, allows us to design and build custom solutions that meet the needs of each enterprise stakeholder.

We can help you transform and standardize your field services operating model, boosting productivity and profitability.

Connected businesses allow people, data and technology to interact easily, creating new levels of productivity and value creation. KPMG Connected Enterprise is a customer-centric approach to digital transformation. It focuses every critical process, function and relationship of a business on meeting customer expectations, creating business value, and driving sustainable growth in a digital world.