The complexity of accurately aligning service demand — consisting of the backlog and pipeline of work orders — with service supply — consisting of technician skill set, availability, geography, and inventory — continues to plague many labor-intensive field service organizations. More often than not, this challenge is the result of not having adequate technology solutions in place to optimize field service scheduling and routing operations in real-time.

As OEMs and independent service organizations (ISOs) continue to vie for market share in a landscape of increasingly commoditized products, they have begun to search for revenue and profit margin within their aftermarket service operations. These leading firms have found that by optimizing the scheduling and routing of field service engineers to job sites, they can achieve higher productivity, reduced service costs, and increased performance and profitability. Scheduling and routing optimization solutions match technicians with work orders based on technicians’ aptitude, proximity to the job site, availability of service parts, and overall cost of service.

This report serves as a handbook for enterprises looking to invest in field service optimization technology, and provides companies with some of the quantifiable benefits they can expect from investing in a solution. In addition, it includes frameworks to help enterprises assess their scheduling and routing competence, scope solution requirements, and select the best-fit solution.