Field Service Lightning

Manufacturing facilities rely heavily on skilled field service teams to maintain critical equipment, minimise downtime, and ensure smooth production. Traditional field service management is hampered by:

• Inefficient scheduling: Manual scheduling processes can result in technician overload, missed appointments, and delays.
• Limited visibility: The lack of real-time updates on technician location, job status, and inventory levels can hinder decision-making.
• Customer feedback gaps: Difficulty in capturing customer feedback creates knowledge gaps that impede improvement.
• Paper-based processes: Relying on manual paperwork for work orders, service reports, and parts inventory tracking creates inefficiencies and increases the risk of errors.

Manufacturing companies are increasingly recognising the value of service offerings alongside their core product lines. However, tracking and managing service revenue effectively presents a complex challenge.

Scheduling & Service Delivery

• Optimising technician schedules: Balancing workloads across geographically dispersed teams, while factoring in technician skillsets and job urgency.
• Ensuring real-time communication: Enabling clear and continuous communication between dispatchers, technicians, and production personnel.
• Improving first-time fix rates: Ensuring technicians have the right tools, parts, and information to resolve issues on-site, reducing the need for repeat visits.
• Maintaining accurate inventory levels: Efficiently tracking spare parts to prevent stockouts and avoid delays in maintenance.
• Limited visibility into customer needs: Traditional sales approaches may overlook opportunities to fully understand and address customer challenges.
• Reactive service model: Addressing customer issues only after they arise can lead to dissatisfaction and missed opportunities for proactive service offerings.
• Disconnected sales and service teams: Poor collaboration between sales and service teams hampers the development of comprehensive service packages tailored to customer needs.

Revenue Recognition

• Multiple revenue streams: Manufacturers often provide diverse services such as maintenance contracts, repairs, warranties, and parts sales. Differentiating and tracking revenue from each stream can be difficult.
• Complex billing: Service agreements may involve tiered pricing, recurring fees, usage-based billing, and one-off charges, which are difficult to handle manually.
• Inventory management: Tracking spare parts used during service calls is essential for accurate cost allocation and future inventory planning.
• Integration with existing systems: Ensuring service revenue tracking integrates seamlessly with ERP, CRM, and accounting systems is vital, though integration challenges may arise.

Salesforce Field Service Lightning Solution

Scheduling & Service Delivery

• Optimised scheduling: AI-powered tools allow for the scheduling of technicians based on location, real-time traffic, skillsets, and job requirements, leading to faster response times.
• Real-time visibility: Provides a holistic view of field operations, including technician locations, job progress, and inventory levels in real time.
• Mobile-first approach: Empowers technicians with a mobile app for accessing work orders, collaborating with experts via Slack, reporting services, and tracking parts, eliminating paper-based processes.
• Inventory management: Integrates with warehouse or inventory systems to ensure accurate stock levels and prevent delays due to missing parts.
• Enhanced collaboration: Salesforce 360 enables unified collaboration between sales and service teams, improving the customer experience.

Revenue Recognistion

• Service contract management: Automates the management of service agreements, tracks service entitlements, and supports recurring billing for consistent revenue recognition.
• Work order management: Links service calls to work orders, tracks parts used, and automates cost calculations for accurate revenue allocation.
• Revenue integration: Salesforce APIs or middleware tools facilitate the integration of service revenue tracking with existing systems, offering a unified business view.

AI Capabilities

• Auto service job creation: AI-powered tools monitor asset health and automatically create jobs when health parameters fall below threshold levels.
• Appointment summaries: AI-generated daily appointment summaries and Einstein briefings help increase technician productivity and efficiency.

Business Benefits

• Tailor Salesforce Field Service: We configure the solution based on asset types, maintenance schedules, optimisation rules, and technician skills.
• Improve first-time fix rates: Preventive maintenance plans and access to parts and service history ensure efficient repairs on-site.
• Boost uptime and productivity: Optimised scheduling, real-time communication, and efficient inventory management reduce equipment downtime.
• Align sales and service strategies: We bridge the gap between sales and service, fostering a unified customer journey that focuses on long-term success.
• Automate revenue recognition: Service revenue recognition is automated based on pre-defined rules, ensuring accuracy and timeliness.

With the correct implementation of Salesforce Field Service Lightning, manufacturers can adopt a service-led sales approach, driving customer loyalty, generating recurring revenue streams, and gaining a competitive advantage through superior customer service. This solution helps field service technicians complete jobs correctly the first time, ensuring a safer and faster return home for your workforce.