Weekly Brief

A Modernization Of Field Service Management Is Necessary For Utilities

Utilities Tech Outlook | Friday, October 07, 2022

During the digital transformation of utilities, they must improve field service to improve employee and customer experiences.

FREMONT, CA: The notion of "digital transformation" is thrown around across all industries. Frequently, the vendors who make it possible also make it sound easy. But where does a utility organization with complicated systems begin? Utilities understand data stores are valuable, and systems and processes may require to be revised, but the idea of undertaking such an important change seems astonishing and expensive. Still, to keep pace with customers' and internal users' expectations, change is inevitable.

At the core of their digital transformation, utilities must first concentrate on evolving into digitally enabled, customer- and user-centric organizations. Progressive utilities are required to maintain, enhance, and streamline operations while enhancing the user experience.

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Rethink digital transformation

While digital transformation usually can feel overwhelming, utilities find the shift manageable by taking things one step at a time and addressing evolving customer needs, employee expectations, and asset management demands.

Organizations equipped with the tools to leverage freshly available details can address and manage long-, mid-, and short-cycle work more efficiently and effectively.

Normally, customer service was the purview of the customer contact center. Contact center agents were the company's voice, fielding customer calls, connecting requests to dispatch, turning on service, and managing billing concerns.

Rather, looking forward, each employee — from contact center to field operations — will push the utility's brand in the viewpoint of its customers and regulators and, thus, must be armed with the data and capabilities to resolve issues quickly.

This mindset can have a ripple impact on utility-wide operations. When field personnel is digitally enabled and empowered, the influence is felt in the front and back offices, throughout operations, and, certainly, by the customer. Organizations equipped with a consistent process and the tools to leverage newly available details can address and manage long-, mid-, and short-cycle work more effectively and efficiently.

Digitizing field service operations can be expedited by adopting an operational layer that relieves connectivity while ensuring operational agility and the inherent variability enforced by the wide range of field service needs within a utility.

An accessible platform that integrates the present landscape (comprising ERP, EAM, CIS, and OMS/ADMS) and supports seamless interaction across the business is needed. It should also hold all collected data, like services used, past maintenance issues, and relevant asset details (comprising billing history), so the entire organization can connect and collaborate.

By digitizing utility field service management, organizations will see numerous benefits:

More effective field service calls

A digital platform offers awareness of the people and resources available in the field, and the customer or asset needs to be addressed. Information like a technician's unique skills, tools or parts, and asset information ensures the right technician, crew, or contractor is dispatched to swiftly resolve the issue.

Agents, dispatchers, and coordinators can nowadays deliver relevant information to field personnel, whether tackling a possible gas leak, planning regulator-mandated examinations, or coordinating a huge capital project. With dynamic scheduling and access to real-time data on the mobile, field, and grid management, workers can adjust in real-time, coordinating smoothly as a situation develops.

According to the types of outages, the utility can have field personnel with the proper expertise and equipment waiting nearby to support as soon as conditions are safe.

For instance, suppose severe weather is predicted in a certain area. In that case, field teams can employ analytics to compare the weather forecast with the risk of outages to decide the best location to stage personnel and equipment.

Then, according to the types of outages and required repairs expected in each location, the utility can have field personnel with the correct expertise and equipment waiting nearby to assist as soon as conditions are safe.

In addition, agents can swiftly communicate appropriate information, like downed power lines and service restoration upgrades, from the field to consumers while at the same moment reporting information to help in restoration from the customer to the technicians.

Better insights from shared data

Field service operations are commonly derailed due to a lack of data. In spite of the mountains of customer and asset data collected, many utilities cannot manage and analyze the information promptly, making it useless. While data is one of a utility's extremely valuable assets, employees usually don't have the means to access, parse, and leverage it.

Analytics software can process asset mend data and recommend the necessary parts for replacing equipment when it makes more sense than repairing it.

By having all data accessible, field teams could access an asset's repair history at a job site. Through this info, they may see a pattern of repairs to a unit, indicating the successful approaches in the past. Similarly, they can access extra efforts for that asset or at that job site, allowing them to finish all the work needed, improving operational efficiency.

Field personnel can more efficiently manage equipment and assets with artificial intelligence (AI) and visibility into real-time analytics to enhance decision-making and predict potential issues. For instance, analytics software can process asset repair data and recommend the necessary parts for substituting equipment when it makes more sense than fixing it.

Furthermore, applying AI to better assign planned job durations can deliver a continual improvement process that increases the plan's precision, reducing errors and rework as execution diverges due to past imprecise assumptions of how long work efforts should take.

Additionally, a digital platform can connect a utility's employees to third-party partners, such as regulators, contractors, and municipalities, to streamline the data-sharing process and ensure the best outcome.

Finally, utility companies can change their operations over time by deploying a system that connects legacy applications and tools with data from the whole organization. With a project-based approach, digital transformation occurs at a pace that does not overcome the organization or its employees.

Proactive Utility Field Service Management, Streamlined Operations

The right digital tools support managers to better plan workflow by utilizing predictive analytics to compare service demand with obtainable resources. By equipping managers with asset & customer data like repair history and enrolled services, they alert the field workforce beforehand of the site, asset, and customer history.

As a result, the field personnel brings the proper equipment in anticipation of a similar issue, which would mean one truck roll instead of several — resulting in improved asset uptime and a satisfied customer. Moreover, a note can be added to the asset and customer's history, which a service agent can mention during their next interaction. This decreases truck rolls and maximizes available assets every time service is requested.

Field service turns into a proactive, value-added service with a seamless flow of details accessible across operations.

With a continuous flow of details across operations, inherently collaborating with internal and external stakeholders, field service turns into a proactive, value-added service that creates customer and employee satisfaction while streamlining operations. This positively influences the delivery of service and the utility's brand.

A Utility Organization Guideline For The Future

Transforming a whole utility doesn't happen overnight or with one initiative. Digital transformation begins with a single project, and its success offers the momentum to tackle various pain points. Offering an agile and contextual operational layer that seamlessly collaborates across the existing utility landscape and internal and external parties provides the user experience, innovation, and operational agility demanded by the fieldwork at utilities.

It enables the complexity of digital transformation to be addressed where it delivers on a utility's mandate of keeping the services flowing. With a digital platform, you can start new business processes that set off a transition to more forward-thinking energy and program offerings.

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