[The following is the Executive Summary excerpted from SFG℠‘s Analysts Take paper on the topic of “The Case for Video Telematics in Support of Field Service Management / Fleet Management“, prepared for Lytx, a leading provider of video telematics, analytics, safety and productivity solutions for commercial and public sector fleets.
The full report will be released at the annual Lytx Users Conference, February 23 – 26, 2020 in San Diego, CA. Watch the Lytx Website immediately following the conference for a link to access a complimentary download of the paper. Until then, the Executive Summary should provide you with a taste of what’s yet to come!]
Video telematics is the new frontier for field services, and it is gaining significant traction among businesses looking to this new technology to gain an edge in their intensely competitive fields. Video telematics took the trucking and transportation business by storm this past decade, and now it is coming to field services. That’s because customers in both trucking and field services are seeing significant ROI from improvements in such metrics as routing efficiency, fuel consumption, service assurance, claims reductions, etc. As a result, more and more field service operations are looking into video telematics as their latest go-to tool for boosting their core KPIs in process improvements, productivity, customer service, and ROI / financial return.
To put things in perspective, there is currently a “perfect storm” occurring in the global services community that reflects a growing market demand – and need – for video as part of a Field Service / Fleet Management Telematics solution. The main components of this “storm” may be summarized as:
- Rapid growth for the Field Service Management (FSM), Fleet Management and Telematics segments;
- Increases in the value-add realized through the implementation and use of video-based telematics; and
- The FSM segment’s focus on increased technician productivity, utilization and process efficiencies.
Further, due to what appears to be an ongoing global technician shortage, it becomes even more critical for Field Services Organizations (FSOs) to gain as much productivity as possible from each of the technicians in their current mobile workforce in order to prevent any potential lapses in service delivery performance.
However, there is much more to Field Service Management, Fleet Management and Telematics than simply monitoring incidents, collecting data, and reporting the relevant findings back to services management. In fact, there are great differences in both the means by which the data are collected and the ways in which the collected data may be used – with one of the main differentiating factors being the added value brought to the table via the incorporation of video into the standard Field Service / Fleet Management solution.
While driver safety and liability protection are still acknowledged as highly important factors, field service managers must primarily focus on other key issues, such as technician productivity, utilization and the overall efficiencies of the systems they use to run their respective field service operations. These principal factors are clearly borne out in Strategies For Growth℠’s (SFG℠’s) annual Field Service Management (FSM) Benchmark Tracking Surveys, as follows.
The results of the 2019 FSM tracking survey update identify that the principal factors influencing the field services market today may be categorized as:
- First, process-focused (i.e., the need to improve workforce utilization and service process efficiencies);
- Second, customer-focused (i.e., meeting customer demand for quicker response time and improved asset availability); and
- Third, financials-focused (i.e., internal mandate to drive increased service profitability and revenues).
This represents a shift away from a customer focus (i.e., in previous years’ surveys), to one that hones in specifically on process improvement, which can then be used as a catalyst for creating a foundation from which services organizations can build stronger end-to-end engagement relationships with their customers. Accordingly, the results of the survey clearly reaffirm the relationships between and among these three groupings by linking internal process improvements directly to improved customer support, ultimately leading to reduced costs, increased revenues, more satisfied customers, and a healthier profit margin.
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