June/July 2007

Only one organisation in ten with a field service capability believes it is using this resource cost-effectively. Half of all such organisations feel they can't allocate field resources adequately, and only one in five currently takes advantage of real-time access to corporate data, despite the accepted benefits.

These are among findings of a survey conducted by Freeform Dynamics on behalf of Momote, the mobile application platform specialist, in which a hundred large field service organisations were questioned about their use of mobile technologies.

Another finding regarded as significant is that fewer than half of the organisations questioned (45 per cent) gave their field workers any degree of remote access into their service management system at all.

Around a quarter of the respondents were considered to be running 'legacy' (in other words outdated) field service applications that needed replacing.

 

Arguably the good news is that the majority of organisations feel that mobile applications hold the key to operational visibility and cost savings - two factors that Momote believes will be the main drivers of future market growth.

Nearly three quarters (72 per cent) of companies felt that it was important or desirable for mobile workers to have real-time access to service management systems. The more complex the operation, they more likely they were to hold this view.