The value of reporting dashboards

Josh Bersin is a thought leader in the Human Resources industry. He is one of the main data analysts for Deloitte Consulting around HR and organizational trends. His company, Bersin by Deloitte, had their ninth annual conference for professionals in those fields in the spring of 2016 in Florida. Bersin himself wrote a recap of the event, and this part should stand out:

“We don’t need as many middle managers now, so the concept of ‘leadership by job title’ or ‘leadership by position’ has to go away. One of the senior execs I talked with the other day told me ‘I don’t have time for mid-level managers any more. I can get the information I need to run my business through our digital information systems. If our leaders aren’t hands-on experts in their business areas, I don’t really need them.’”

This quote has important implications for field service organizations.

We are not saying that you should go and fire all your middle management employees right now. Far from it. But a new business world has started to emerge, and it is important that FSOs realize that.

If you are using some type of field service management software tool, you likely have access to dashboards. Dashboards are simply different ways to look at, organize, and analyze information about your business. You can look at revenue per product, for example. You can look at first-time fix rate percentages. You can look at the amount of new leads your marketing and sales teams are driving. You can often look at two to three different areas of the business at the same time, and overlap the data to find patterns and trends.

You can also do all this in real-time.

Twenty years ago, the model was something like this: If you needed specific information, you asked the person in your office who was in charge of or collected that information. This person put it together and then presented it to you. You made a decision from that. The whole process could take a full work week between request, collection, and presentation.

With dashboards, the model is different. You can log into your FSM software tool and look at information yourself, in real-time, with the ability to sort and analyze. You can make a decision in 40 minutes that previously might have taken 40 work hours.

This is a major advantage for you.

However, to use dashboards properly, you need to be tracking the right elements as relate to business growth. We put together an eBook on eight real-time KPIs within FSOs that you should consider tracking, from first-time fix rate to completed vs. invoiced jobs. You can download the full eBook, which also has a short section on the importance of dashboards.

As always, if you have any questions about any aspect of field service management, do not hesitate to contact us.

Written by Jim Hare