Field service management solutions in medical manufacturing

The percentage of organizations currently running service as an independent profit center varies – sometimes significantly – by individual “demographic” factors. For example, the nearly three-quarters (74%) of US$1 billion-plus services organizations are currently run as profit centers, compared to only 55% for SMBs (Small and Medium-sized Businesses).

Not surprisingly, organizations reporting total annual service profits of greater than 30% come in at 76% – one of the highest levels cited among any of the industry segments covered in the research. As such, they are not only operating service as a profit center – they are actually making a significant profit by doing so!

The greatest impact on the future of Field Service Management (FSM) solutions, though, is most likely to come as a result of the growing acceptance of cloud-based technology. The data clearly place the medical manufacturing segment at the forefront of cloud-based FSM solution adoption.

Currently, just over two-thirds (68%) of medical manufacturing FSOs are planning to implement, or consider implementing, a cloud-based FSM solution in the next 12 to 24 months. This compares with only 5% planning or considering a premise-based solution in the same period – a ratio of more than 13 times favoring cloud over premise FSM solutions.

In fact, at 68% of medical manufacturing organizations preferring cloud over premise, this industry segment is significantly more likely to prefer cloud than its total survey respondent counterparts (at only 54% preferring cloud and 20% preferring premise). Even among Best Practices organizations, a cloud-based solution is preferred by 56% of respondents compared to only 19% citing a preference for premise-based.

Overall, in the three years since the previous research was conducted, these results represent a sea change from a market that historically had gone premise-based for a majority of its FSM software solution needs.

As such, the cloud now allows some of the smaller, and mid-sized, medical manufacturing FSOs to compete directly against the historical market leaders in their quest to attain – and maintain – an elite Best Practices status.

However, despite the many favorable performance comparisons to the general services community (and, in some cases, even to Best Practices organizations), there is still much room for improvement that can only be fostered and expedited through the adoption and use of new technologies – particularly cloud-based technologies – and the integration of those technologies into the organization’s overall field service management operations.

Download our new medical device manufacturing White Paper to learn more.

Written by Julio Hartstein