Why your CFO now cares deeply about field service management

If you work in a bigger organization where field service is one component of everything that happens on a day-to-day basis, you’ve probably seen a bit of a sea change in the last half-decade or so.

Your CFO and other financial decision-makers probably are caring more about the field service side, and getting involved in it more than they used to.

If you’re wondering why, it’s fairly simple actually: the 2008 recession hurt a lot of businesses, and field service/product companies were no exception. In order to successfully navigate a path out of 2008, many companies had to rethink some of their core business models. Oftentimes, the idea of ‘selling product’ wasn’t enough anymore -- while machines in some field service industries can have multi-million dollar margins, those aren’t necessarily sustainable business lines when the economy tanks as a whole. While U.S. job growth is ticking upwards, there are still concerns about another recession. Morgan Stanley recently indicated there’s a 30% chance of global recession in 2016, as well.

When economic times are tougher and margins for organizations are tighter, they tend to buy less new products -- but they still have existing machines and devices that need to be kept up in order for their business to run. So while product-selling might take a hit, service will always be needed in some capacity.

This led to ‘servitization,’ which is the idea that adding ‘service’ as a revenue concept on top of whatever major product you sell is a good idea for your business.

When you combine the idea of ‘servitization’ with the increasing research that customer experience is very important to business development -- and then you realize that your field techs, doing your service work, are interacting with customers all day -- you start to understand why field service is getting more attention from CFOs these days.

What does that mean for you?

Well, because your work is probably being fiscally analyzed more, it means you need to be tighter about your processes and make sure everything is running smoothly. It also means that your CFO might be more inclined to spend money on service, understanding that it’s an area where the company can ultimately make money as well.

For service to be an effective revenue concept, the essential idea is about customer experience. You want your customers (clients) to go through a seamless, integrated service process -- this will lead to more referrals and repeat business.

At this point, here’s where we stand:

• Your CFO likely cares deeply about field service now.
• The key reason is ‘servitization,’ or the ability to make money on top of just selling product.
• For ‘servitization’ to remain effective as a business driver, the customer experience has to be elite.

So, how do we make the customer experience elite?

Within field service, one of the best approaches to seamless customer experience is to use a field service management solution. This type of management tool allows you to integrate all the key operational areas of your business, from customer (and machine) data to scheduling to dispatch to inventory to invoicing. You can do all these activities silo’ed and by hand, but it won’t be as effective or productive. Combining them all together in one system helps ensure the best experience for the eventual customer or client.

If you’d like to understand more about the role of field service management in customer experience, download our eBook. 

Written by Julio Hartstein