Drones are known for their military service, not field service. But that might change.
A New Zealand-based electricity distributor, Counties Power, is reportedly looking into the use of drones, a.k.a. unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for emergency repairs. When power poles and  Continue reading

What do global business leaders list as a top-ranked technology investment priority for 2013? Field service software, according to a new survey from Forrester, which surveyed some 2,200 software decision-makers on their capital spending plans for 2013. Field service ranked  Continue reading

Editor’s Note: Scott Molinari, general manager of Adduco Digital e.K. in Zweibrücken, Germany, took issue with OnForce CEO Peter Cannone‘s analysis about contract-hiring trends in the field service sector. Molinari believes strongly that training and investing in full-time technicians, not contractors, is far  Continue reading

Research company Visiongain estimates the connected car market to be at nearly $22 billion in 2013, and ABI Research says that by 2017, nearly 50 million connected vehicles will be sold annually. “Some of the technologies featured in connected vehicles  Continue reading

How many field technicians does it take to service, say, a hospital CT scanner, or HVAC equipment in a high-rise? A surprisingly large number of field service organizations don’t really know. According to Aberdeen Group, 17 percent of service firms  Continue reading

In a recent survey by eyefortransport, 48% of companies found that improved fuel and route management was the most important result of adopting fleet tracking technologies. How do these technologies pull off these impressive improvements? By collecting, analyzing, and utilizing  Continue reading

Today’s field service technician must be adept at a variety of skills — sales included. But it’s not just the field techs who must adjust to their expanding roles. The rest of the organization, including traditional salespeople, must adjust to  Continue reading

Companies across industry lines are getting on board with wireless technology and mobile computing that enable their field crews to work more productively and accurately. One of the things they’ve learned as they transition to mobile-based solutions is that not  Continue reading

Forrester Research predicts that mobile payments are still several years away from mass-market adoption, but for many field techs in smaller organizations, there are some intriguing new payment options that can help slash costs and kill unnecessary paperwork and invoicing. Here’s a rundown of  Continue reading

How can fleet managers put new technologies to work to streamline their operations and slash fuel costs?  Todd Ewing, director of product marketing at Fleetmatics –  the Boston-based company that offers GPS fleet tracking technology — shares his insights with SmartVan.
With  Continue reading

How is the mobile and cloud revolution changing old-line industries like manufacturing and field service? Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax, writing in VentureBeat, calls out three compelling promises of mobile technology that are “completely transforming entire business functions in some amazing ways.” A few  Continue reading

The latest jobs report from the Department of Labor had some surprising news for the field service sector: while overall job growth was weak for the month, the demand for field service technicians surged. With 221,000 workers added last month  Continue reading

As David Krebs of VDC pointed earlier this week, rolling out mobile technology and BYOD solutions in field service is a bigger challenge than most think. Krebs’ findings, citing widespread lack of support for BYOD among surveyed companies, dovetails with  Continue reading

Picture 10 bytes of random letters flying by your screen right now. Now multiply that view by 12. And then an extra 2.5 quintillion. That is how much digital debris is flying through the Internet on a daily basis. Calling  Continue reading

In VDC Research’s latest report, Field Mobility 2013 Analyst Outlook, 73% of field service organizations say they don’t embrace BYOD and have no plans to change. As David Krebs, VDC’s VP of mobile and wireless explains, ”while BYOD continues to gain steam within  Continue reading

John Carroll knows better than most what’s on the minds of field service executives. As head of The Service Council, an advisory and research firm to the service community, he speaks regularly with service executives about the state of their  Continue reading

Consider it the holy grail of field service — a way of tapping into technology to bring customers and partners together in a single place where they can schedule or track a repair, review the service history of a piece  Continue reading

For many years, field service companies had limited hardware options for their mobile deployments. There were rugged handheld devices or larger (and more expensive) rugged tablets and notebooks. The latter were typically adopted in specific categories (like military use or  Continue reading

When it comes to marketing, companies too often focus on promoting their products but neglect to highlight their services. It’s a huge mistake. We spoke with Joe Crisara, a longtime service contractor and CEO of ContractorSelling, about why marketing must be the  Continue reading

Sometimes field service is like Rodney Dangerfield — it gets no respect. But if the latest job numbers show anything, it’s that field service not only deserves a lot more respect, but also a lot more attention from tech innovators.  Continue reading