Field Service Management Trends to Expect in 2023

Field service management is expected to become more efficient and productive in the coming years due to several new cutting-edge technologies entering the market. Recent technological advancements are increasing field service management's effectiveness, scope, and capacity, allowing it to meet previously insurmountable challenges.

This article will discuss key upcoming trends for 2023 before introducing Tourmo AI and how it can help dramatically improve operational efficiency and outcomes for your mobile workforce. It can provide increased visibility into worker readiness, work tracking, task automation, and workflow management.

What is a Mobile Workforce?

A mobile workforce will spend a significant portion of their day—if not their entire day—outside of a centralized office. Consequently, these workers need specialized support as they conduct business outside traditional office spaces. Delivery drivers, field service technicians, sales representatives, and agricultural field laborers are a few examples of mobile workers.

Field service managers overseeing mobile workforces dispersed across several locations must use innovative technology solutions to speed up the exchange of information required to complete and manage work-related tasks and enable real-time communication between a company and its mobile workforce.

Field Service Management Trends: What to Expect

The growth rate for the global field service market is accelerating. The Global Field Service Management Market was worth USD 3.61 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow at a CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) of 12.7%, earning revenues of around USD 8.27 billion by the end of 2028. 

This industry is rapidly transitioning away from paper-based systems, manual processing, and disparate management systems. Technology is improving field service management by leveraging automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning leading to dramatic improvements in field service delivery. These technological trends will be discussed further below.

1. Automation: Managing, Scheduling, and Surveys

Field service managers are frequently overburdened and spread thin when it comes to overseeing and controlling mobile workers and critical customer service and scheduling tasks. Managing customer service issues, scheduling changes, invoicing, and last-minute cancellations and delays can become overwhelming in a sector where skilled workers are in short supply. Handling those issues with paper or phone calls is an extremely inefficient approach adding to the challenges.

This is where automated solutions can be implemented to optimize and streamline multiple time-consuming tasks, allowing more efficient and automated management eliminating the need for human involvement and additional disruptions. This technology can be expanded to improve the customer experience by delivering automated customer service surveys as soon as service is rendered or communication when service timing is unexpectedly impacted.

With Tourmo AI, you can automate all of your organization's processes for complete visibility, stay on schedule, stay on top of issues, and remain in control. Our mobile workforce solution will significantly improve operational efficiency and outcomes for your mobile workforce.

2. Digitizing Manual Paper Processes

Paper documents must be converted to digital format for businesses to operate more effectively and with less waste. It's also crucial in helping businesses create a digital database of important corporate data. Digitization enables the ability to search, retrieve, and manage information more easily, as documents are converted into soft form accessible and editable on computers, phones, and other devices.

This trend is expected to increase as companies switch from reactive to proactive compliance management processes. Companies will need to adopt technologies that can replace antiquated compliance processes and documentation with cutting-edge technology that can simplify compliance reporting as managing compliance becomes more complex and companies deal with a more demanding supervisory environment.

Tourmo AI can make it easier for administrators to automatically prepare regulatory reporting about a mobile workforce’s carbon footprint as stricter CO2 regulations continue to increase on both the state and federal levels, with:

• GHG protocol-compliant reporting
• On-demand and scheduled reporting

3. Integration of Siloed Systems

As a result of the digital transformation, businesses are becoming more technologically advanced with many disparate systems containing valuable information. The result is numerous point solutions like telematics, dispatching, and communication systems in different places. Unfortunately, the siloed, and disconnected, nature of these systems and the data they contain can have a negative impact on productivity, safety, and the satisfaction of both customers and employees.

It becomes necessary to continuously perform inefficient, and manual, review and analysis to glean useful insights from various disparate systems. Simply put, a lack of organization, incomplete and uncorrelated data, and numerous siloed point solutions can cause serious management and communication problems with clients and field service personnel. The inefficiency also results in a loss of valuable information from all of the available data.

Tourmo’s AI-powered solutions automates time-consuming processes associated with disparate and siloed point solutions. Tourmo can help companies optimize their technology investments and bring standard systems to higher performance levels. 

Tourmo AI's patented and automated workflows analyze large amounts of collected data and automatically communicate findings from  insights to make necessary and immediate changes in field service management operations or communicate to the right parties.

4. Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Analytics

Many businesses are investing significantly in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, and field service management will also gain several advantages from these technologies. Businesses use AI technology to gain a deeper understanding of their data, automatically adapt and communicate new plans, and create proactive strategies for mitigating and addressing service needs before they occur. 

When Automation and AI technologies work together, it becomes possible to transform insights from AI into actionable tasks. Tourmo allows companies to utilize automation technology to curb risky driver behavior, incorporate driver coaching and feedback, predict risk in their route plans, and help resolve service concerns before they turn into costly errors. Similarly, the AI provides all results, whether improvement is necessary or not, thus positively reinforcing high performance.

The AI-powered solutions from Tourmo can also have a significant impact on your overall sustainability goals. When identifying driving behaviors that increase fuel consumption, Tourmo's automated workflows can monitor fuel use and recommend the best course of action.

5. Optimize Real-Time Communication

With rising customer expectations, businesses must do everything possible to optimize their field services, including improving communication channels for service management, such as phone, chat, and online support.

When it comes to mobile workers, every minute of delay counts. Improving field services through mobile technology and real-time data enables businesses to connect with customers and employees to speed up communication and resolve service issues.

Tourmo’s Mobile Workforce Solution

Tourmo's AI-powered Workforce Operations solution can monitor and verify your workforce operations while providing total visibility to all managers and stakeholders. Tourmo enables you to automate your plan, monitor worker progress, and make necessary changes while continuously updating your mobile workforce and consumers to ensure compliance and satisfaction.

Field service managers and company stakeholders can use Tourmo AI to reduce their reliance on manual tasks and human data analysis. Tourmo's AI technology can transform massive amounts of data into actionable processes that can drive daily decisions and raise awareness in critical areas of the company's operations.

Our mobile workforce solution can track whether work is completed as planned, notify clients when something changes, and take action via automated workflows. Tourmo makes it easy to identify and manage issues like delays at client sites, unplanned stops, route deviations, and out-of-sequence deliveries, with features that include:

• Accurate event data, normalization, contextualization, and advanced route reasoning to remove inaccuracies
• Real-time monitoring of job progress and delivery estimates
• Real-time ETA
• Automated Progress Updates
• Activity/Inactivity Monitoring

Tourmo AI — Overcome Field Service Management Challenges

Digital transformation and the adoption of new technologies can greatly benefit field service management by helping to streamline service delivery, reduce reliance on human oversight and analysis, improve the customer and employee experience, and much more. Early adopters are discovering new opportunities to strengthen and improve their service model and overcome previously impossible challenges using manual processes alone.

If you need to improve your company's process structure, including new requirements for compliance reporting, Tourmo can help. Tourmo AI can help you get more value out of your existing technology investments and improve how you monitor, verify, and manage your workforce operations, resulting in dramatic increases in efficiency and productivity.