White Papers
Knowledge is Power

In today's fast-paced technology world, a little knowledge goes a long way. The more you know about the latest technologies available in your field, the better equipped you are to serve your customers.

  • Managing a Service Business in a Down Economy

    ClickSoftware and Computer Weekly have come together to produce an executive overview to help provide you with the information you need to turn your service business into a profit centre.

    In addition to an overview of ClickSoftware's ServiceOptimization Suite, read about Konica Minolta's journey to achieving service excellence. Brent Mayo, Customer Support Manager at Konica Minolta talks in detail about the drivers behind Konica Minolta's decision to select a solution that manages their mobile workforce, and the subsequent ROI they have recorded since implementation.

    The executive overview will outline the current landscape regarding customer service technology and will demonstrate how to:

    • Close the gap between field service teams and service centres
    • Drive operational improvement and tangible ROI
    • Improve service and drive business benefit
  • Moving Field Service to the Next Level

    Companies running teams of engineers and providing field service operations face a tricky dilemma made worse by the recession: how to meet increasing demand for improved customer service while at the same time streamlining their own costs and operational efficiency.

    Mobile phones and other mobile devices have revolutionised companies' ability to keep in touch with their service engineers, but running a slick operation involves a lot more - including having the right field force management applications back at base.

    This Insight Report, reviews the take-up of this technology, with original market research, together with case studies of existing users: Anglian Water and Konica Minolta. Expert advice from Professor Moshe BenBassat, chairman and CEO of ClickSoftware is also featured.

  • The A to Z of Mobile Workforce Scheduling Optimization

    The scheduling of field resources is an immensely varied and complex problem to solve. Within one company there can be many different types of field resources, work types, shifts and customers.

    For organizations that are considering a mobile workforce scheduling solution, there are a host of things to consider; cost versus benefit, change management concerns, personnel needed to implement the project and so on.

    This whitepaper delves deeper into how an optimized scheduling solution considers the variances within a service business and takes advantage of the optimization points to deliver service delivery improvement.

  • Trends in Mobile Field Service Empowering your Field Technicians to Deliver Better, Faster Service

    As service and manufacturing organization look to break free from the constraints of the current economy and drive service productivity, they are increasingly looking to equip their technicians with mobile devices to allow them to escape from the bounds and limitations of paper based processes. However, a majority of organizations continue to struggle with truly mobilizing and empowering their field workforces with the right capabilities needed dot facilitate effective service delivery. Those that are successful in extending the back office to the field with convenient well integrated workflows have experience significant 17% gains in the service profitability from the deployment of mobile solutions.

  • The Aging Workforce in India: Planning for the Skills Gap in Service Organizations

    Around the world, more and more of today's service organizations are under pressure to meet a constant and growing demand for better-quality service and an improved standard of service-level agreements. Despite the ongoing growth of the Indian economy in recent years, India is not immune from these pressures. The challenges presented by an aging workforce, and the subsequent decrease in skilled labor are already appearing.

    There is a compelling need for service organizations in India to plan their longer-term service strategies now, taking into account the gap between the demand for service and their capacity for meeting that demand with future in-house employees and subcontractors. This white paper is an essential read for anyone who is involved in running a service business in India.

  • Discover the Best-in-Class Vendors Who can Help You Achieve Success Mobile field service solutions form the backbone of effective service delivery, providing the link between the back-end of the service organization and the mobile worker-often times the only component of the organization that touches the customer. Aberdeen's data indicates that 96% of survey respondents claim that effective mobile field service-related process and solutions are paramount to the performance of their service organization, and these tools have become more important given the uncertain economic and rising cost pressures. In addition, more workforces are equip with mobile devices for work order management, scheduling and other capabilities, and as such the need for well-integrated mobile field service solutions is high. This report is intended to help facilitate an understanding of, and assist in the selection of mobile field service solutions for service and manufacturing firms.
  • Service Management for SMBs: Employing a Strategic Approach Small and midsized service organizations (or SMBs) continue in their transformation from cost centers to profit centers. This idea of strategic service management, where customer service is embraced as a key differentiator, thrives even among the smallest service organizations. Sixty percent (60%) of SMBs currently operate as profit centers and an additional 18% plan to manage as profit centers with financial and operational goals within the next 18 months. Therefore, operating as a profit center is not unique to the service organizations of large companies, but has indeed taken root even among the smallest firms. However, the size of the organization does play a role in market perspective, and this benchmark report seeks to uncover that which is unique to the small and midsize service organizations as they compete for market share.
  • Yield Control to Gain Control: Improving the Service Experience Through Collaboration In the current economic climate more than ever, it is critical for companies to have control of their business and make sure that every second is put to productive use. It is also important, and possible, to give more control of the service experience to the consumer. This white paper discusses how continuous communication between the customer and service organization leads to shared control, where the whole is more than the sum of the parts.
  • Service Parts Management In some companies, parts management is handled via an enterprise resource planning (ERP) or other such system. These systems, however, do not provide a complete solution for effective parts management. Most ERP systems do not have a way to effectively manage the need for information regarding the required parts for a work order, the need to support the parts-refill and pickup activities on the day of service, scheduling the work and the required equipment to the relevant field resources, and subsequently updating the parts usage in order to appropriately bill and track stock. To incorporate all these challenges at once, these work processes should be included in a service parts management solution.

    ClickSoftware has vast experience with different types of service organizations from various industries all over the world, and our experience has taught us a lot about effective parts management. This white paper summarizes various types of business challenges service organizations may encounter while dealing with service parts management and how these challenges are best addressed by different solutions.
  • To Bundle or NOT to Bundle? That Is the Question From our experience of working with a wide variety of service organizations, we have encountered several reasons for bundling tasks. Some of these reasons are straightforward, while others deserve a more intricate explanation.

    This whitepaper presents the concept of task bundling and examines when it is better to treat a large number of small tasks as a bundle that should be scheduled and performed as a cohesive group, and when there are exceptional reasons to separate the bundle into its constituent tasks and treat some of them individually.
  • Complex Service Work: Scheduling Technicians, Crews, and Physical Resources An Aberdeen survey of 125 service executives conducted in April 2008 found that the top pressure faced by companies engaged in complex work is the need to complete projects on time. However, 35% of these same companies did not know or did not measure compliance with stated deadlines. As well, many low performing companies reported significant financial penalties for project slippage - paying out over 30 times more in fees than leading companies. This report studies how leading firms are using technology and optimizing processes to better manage complex work.
  • Successfully Managing Your Service Levels Through Capacity Reservation Capacity reservation is a proactive approach whereby the scheduling system allocates a certain amount of the resources' capacity to attend to specific service types. Organizations that follow this approach will meet their service level policy while keeping high resource utilization and will be able to predict a preferably accurate schedule. Having said that, it can be a challenge to achieve the right levels of capacity reservation; if you allocate the wrong capacities, you may find yourself with underutilization and/or a low service level.
  • The Aging Workforce: Planning for the Skills Gap in Service Organizations Changes in availability and composition of skilled workforces over the next decade will require companies to enhance their service strategy plan and take into account the gap between the demand for service and their availability to provide it. Recent studies and surveys regarding aging workforce issues show that though companies are aware of the significant impact that the aging workforce will have on their daily operation and performance, very few have taken action. In order to address the inevitable change in the workforce structure, a set of short and long term activities need to be taken. Download this white paper now to learn more about action plans designed to help operational managers better prepare for this future challenge.
  • The Impact of Location on Field Service Demand from customers for improved service performance, in the form of faster service resolution and improved asset uptime is forcing service organizations to leverage location intelligence to appropriately allocate their field resources. Location data can be used to optimize the execution of service delivery while assisting firms in planning the allocation of their resources required for field service. Firms that have leveraged location intelligence have seen sizeable improvements to service response times, workforce utilization, and service profitability.
  • Delivering High Quality Service and Profitable, Sustained Growth: Achieving the Impossible Dream? Success in service is defined by delivering consistently, reliably and with high quality. Many midsized businesses* deliver the high quality but at a relatively high cost and therefore struggle to expand because of constrained margins and limited funds to invest in technology or processes designed to resolve these problems. Most businesses today desire controlled sustained growth, and finding specifically designed low-cost solutions that can be implemented quickly to fit the needs of midsized businesses and support them on a sustained growth path has been a requirement for these companies. Download this white paper now to read more!
  • Issues Affecting the Electricity Transmission and Distribution System in North America From a workforce perspective, few industries are as complex as electric utilities. Everyday tasks range from simple meter reading to long-term infrastructure work, unexpected emergencies are inevitable, and customers range from homeowners to municipalities with contracted minimum service guarantees. This white paper entitled examines how this century-old system is experiencing a period of transition unlike any that has been seen before. Improving the reliability of the system, while meeting the requirements for growth, all in an environment of enormous structural and technical change, is a great challenge for the future. Download this white paper now to read more!
  • Advanced Scheduling Methodologies in Australia White Paper In Australia, large field service organisations are at a crossroads when it comes to providing customers with required levels of service. While many of them have implemented scheduling solutions, they have found that some core concerns are still not being addressed. Specifically, most of the service management systems in use today are far too manual in nature, and rely on individuals to undertake most scheduling decisions - often with inadequate information. This, in turn, leads to a second overriding issue: the inability of these systems to assist the organisation in efficiently managing resource levels and meeting service level agreements. Download this white paper now to read more!
  • Smart Metering: A Technology Whose Time Has Come? This white paper takes as its cue two significant developments in the evolution of smart metering. One is the announcement of a series of government-supported smart- metering trials, which will begin across Britain in early 2007. The other is the successful completion of the rollout by energy company Enel of smart electricity meters across the whole of Italy. Download this white paper now to read more!
  • When the Boat Rocks: Sailing into Service Profitability Picture yourself on a boat on a river...
    It's a warm, sunny Sunday. You've dedicated this weekend to a well-deserved rest in your riverside home, and at this late morning hour you're catching up on your reading on your boat's deck. However, this weekend was not destined to be completely trouble-free: a shrill sound startles you. You quickly realize that this is an alert from the boat's bilge alarm, warning you that water level has begun rising in the bilge - the compartment at the bottom of the hull. Download this white paper now to read more!
  • Location. Location. Location. Does it Matter in Field Service? Field service forms an integral link in the overall service chain. Fully 66% of firms state that field service is either “very” or “extremely” important to their operational and financial performance with only 13% stating a similar level of satisfaction with their field service. As such, service organizations are scanning the horizon for technology solutions to assist them in increasing the efficiency of their field service organizations.
  • Burning the Mid-Shift Oil White Paper The cost of fuel has grown by 50 percent over the past two years, with no reprieve in sight. For a typical service organization, this could result in additional annual costs of $1,300 per vehicle: from around $2,700 in 2004 to $4,000 today. This has made service managers acutely aware of the need to control the service fleet's fuel costs, and many ideas on how to reduce fuel consumption, as well as get fuel at lower costs, have emerged. Download this white paper now to read more!
  • The Water Industry in Britain and Europe: Issues for 2006 and Beyond White Paper Europe's water industry is grappling with six major issues in 2006 that present often-conflicting interests and that may need new and different approaches to running a water business in order to meet regulatory and stakeholder expectations. This white paper explores these six key issues, covering the following: The Environment; Resources; Customers; Investment and Finance; Asset Management; and Structure.
  • Street-Level Routing: Where the Rubber Meets the Road White Paper This white paper illustrates how street-level routing (SLR) creates much better routes and schedules than any other method. Along the way, the paper will explore the impact of badly estimated travel times on operational efficiencies, customer satisfaction and productivity; examine some alternatives to SLR; explain why many vendors do not offer SLR; and present some quantitative, real-life evidence for the importance of SLR.
  • The Three Pillars of Energy Policy White Paper Successful energy policy is about trade-offs between different and divergent agendas that must somehow be reconciled. Energy policy, whether in the U.K., in Europe or globally, fundamentally rests on three pillars-the customers, requiring safe, affordable and available energy; the environment; and, in the case of investor-funded utilities, the investor. Each pillar is, to some extent, protected by a regulator and underpinned by a foundation, namely energy policy itself.
  • How to Change Like a Champ Change is generally not an easy thing for people to deal with, and often times it is met with significant resistance. This resistance, if unaddressed, can be enough to sink a project. But change does not necessarily have to be a time of turbulence and upheaval. If managed correctly, the change process can even be welcomed as a means for improving a situation. This white paper takes a look at some of the root causes of resistance and gives action steps to make your organization's next big change run smoothly.
  • The Service Optimization Challenge Which is a more important service goal, increasing customer loyalty or reducing operational costs? Of course the answer is both, but usually achieving one of these goals requires sacrificing the other. This is the inherent challenge of service optimization. Read on to find out about ClickSoftware's unique approach to facing this challenge head on.
  • Achieving the Correct Staffing Levels with Continually Fluctuating Demands Managing a high performing service operation in today's complex environment requires a complete rethink of the way the operation is managed. Accepting current capacity without a real understanding of the fluctuating demand will lead to inconsistent performance. This white paper looks at the applications and processes available to achieve a balanced demand capacity curve, which will deliver consistent high quality service, satisfied customers and good margins.
  • Managing the Telco Field Force in the 21st Century With all the changes and new demands on your field service operation, is it any wonder you have a hard time keeping up? One thing's for sure: if your field service operation is not efficient or can't keep up with the times, your company costs can go through the roof. Find out how companies like yours are effectively managing their field workforces with service optimization technology.
  • Measuring the Impact of Field Service Optimization There is always much talk about the benefits of service optimization, but service executives have yet to see an objective study that systematically measures how companies using optimization measure up to industry standards. Well, now they can. A new study, recently published by Downton Consulting, compares productivity and efficiency in companies using optimization to industry averages established by a similar study of member companies of the Association for Services Management International.
  • Optimizing Field Service to Achieve Profitability Goals Based on a series of interviews with field service organizations, Aberdeen Group analyst Mark Vigoroso provides practical advice for enabling service optimization to work more effectively toward your profitability goals.