At Nintex xchange 2018, Jim Roberson presented a session with Blake Wolff, ServiceMax SVP of Services and Alliances, on how ServiceMax, together with Nintex, is automating, orchestrating, and optimizing critical field processes such as scheduling, dispatching and routing, field invoicing, signature capture, and technician enablement.
Digital transformation is coming for your processes – and you’ll be glad it did.
Digital transformation is the investment in new technology and processes to more effectively compete in an ever-changing tech economy. As always, some will fight the push for change: Forrester predicts 20 percent of CEOs will resist digital transformation and risk failure for their companies as a result. Change is never comfortable, but now more than ever, the digital transformation process will revolutionize entire industries.
Field service management isn’t excluded from this trend. ServiceMax, a major player in the space, is feeling the positive effects of automating its processes by partnering with Nintex. ServiceMax helps technicians streamline the whole service process – from servicing customers to managing equipment and operations.
A Deeper Look at Field Service Management
Field service management is the maintenance of a company’s off-property equipment – the tools that help the end customer get their final product. Examples include X-ray machines in a hospital or solar panels at a power plant. Field service management sees to the installation and repairs of the equipment. Without it, the process of serving the end customer couldn’t move forward and productivity would be nonexistent.
Good field service yields reliable equipment, efficient operations, and happy, loyal customers. The more time and steps that stand in the way of those objectives, the more money the customer and the field service function loses.
Committing to Digital Transformation
The key to approaching digital transformation is to think outcome-based, not object-based. Take an aircraft engine, for example. It stands for something bigger than just an airplane part – it has the potential to maximize a plane’s flight hours and how smooth the flight is.
Jet engines power by the hour. They’re paid for when they’re used. Keep the plane in the air and flying, and you stay productive. Field service is better at enabling that engine to run when time-consuming service processes (like work orders and equipment service reports) are automated.
Nintex helps the usability of the ServiceMax platform and supports the productivity of field service technicians. It lets them quickly assemble the document packages they need so customers can sign off on what work will be done – even without internet access.
Having offline access to an intelligent platform like ServiceMax is a must. In a medical setting, for example, techs are often working from X-ray rooms without Wi-Fi. Even in offline mode, field service technicians can complete essential tasks such as:
- Building summary reports of multiple work orders, letting them save time and avoid manual errors
- Creating rich service documents with dynamic and real-time images, and in multiple languages to support their global customers
- Ensuring that customer service records are up to date by letting them generate work orders and inspection reports
Process automation is the future of countless industries, and field service management is already clued in. The positive effects on productivity will be far-reaching now that technicians have the ability to make their data actionable and place tedious manual processes into the hands of intelligent tech.
