Optimizing waste management field service with mobile workforce solutions

Waste management is big business. Numbers fluctuate by source, yes, but some estimates of different verticals include:

• Waste treatment and disposal services: A $19B industry with 2.3% growth
• Remediation and environmental cleanup: A $18B industry with 7,500 companies
• Medical waste disposal services: A $5B industry with increasing growth
• Industrial Laundry and Linen: A $14B industry employing 116,000 people

Those are huge numbers -- so the next logical question is, how exactly do you optimize to capture a slice of this potential revenue?

We’ll pause on that topic for one second and return to it. First, let’s briefly discuss the overarching landscape for these types of waste management firms:

• Regulatory: This is perhaps most true in the medical waste disposal area, but typically anything to do with the removal or management of waste is highly regulated. This has increased the cost of disposal.
• Transportation: While many successful companies have achieved economies of scale here, oftentimes waste disposal sites are in remote locations, so transport fleet and labor costs can be high.
• Population shifts: As the first-world population ages, the medical waste disposal vertical will grow at a rapid rate.

In May 2014, a survey asked cleaning operations managers in the U.S. “How do you plan to improve profits?” The results:

• 73% indicated “find ways to become more efficient”
• 19% indicated “raise prices”
• 8% indicated “don’t know”

If you take all of that together, here’s the picture you come to: a growing industry representing billions and billions of dollars where industry players are not sure exactly how to grow profits.

Now let’s return to our original question: how can you optimize and grab a share of this revenue?

One of the best ways is to invest more heavily in field service management software and tools. We’ve actually written a white paper on paths to more revenue through field service and we’ve also written an eBook on making the case for field service management software to your senior executives. Download both for help in this process -- and as always, let us know if you have questions.

One of our customers at FieldOne, from Microsoft, is Safety-Kleen, a large industrial waste and cleaning firm. They shifted to our CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, a year or so ago -- and the results were tangible.

One of the bigger transformation points for field service in the last decade has been mobile adoption, and one of the key things Safety-Kleen did with Dynamics was work on a new distributor portal that was mobile-optimized. As a result of the integration between Dynamics and the portal, there are now system-wide, consistent updates on order management and inventory. Customers always know where they stand, and techs always arrive prepared to job sites. This has been huge for customer satisfaction, which helps drive growth.

A good mobile solution in field service management should guarantee two aspects for your business:

• Flexibility
• Responsiveness

In fact, Carla Rolinc -- the VP of IT for Safety-Kleen -- has said of the Dynamics field service option, “The increased flexibility and responsiveness guarantee that we can deliver the necessary functionality quickly.”

That’s the entire goal with mobile adoption in field service: quick, flexible, responsive, and meeting customers where they’re at. It’s a strong value play in an industry with a lot of potential revenue and currently not a lot of clear paths to grab it.

For more on paths to revenue through field service, download our white paper. 

Written by Shloma Baum