Salesforce Field Service Lightning Implementation Reduces Operational Cost by 21%

The Customer is a technology leader in 3D printing that combines software, hardware, and molecular science to deliver manufacturing solutions. They enable repeatable production of end-use parts with  industrial-grade materials and exceptional surface finish.

Challenges

• Field service operations for both installations and repairs managed manually using calls/spreadsheets rendering it cumbersome to operate and inflexible to scale
• Disparate disconnected data leading to a severe loss of productivity, especially for service managers to keep track of work orders, inventory – parts ordering/shipment, technicians – schedules/unavailability, escalations etc
• Monitoring field technicians in real-time and little control over their utilization/productivity was challenging
• Laborious paper-work for technicians to create service reports after each field visit; prone to errors and often incomplete
• Lack of actionable insights due to unorganized data & manual paperwork

Solution

All core Field Service processes for printer installations (including site preparation activities), repairs and preventive maintenance were implemented in Salesforce Field Service Lightning leveraging standard out-of-the-box features.

• Scheduling Policies along with service objectives for streamlined scheduling based on territories, skill sets, and preferred resources
• Inventory set-up including the ability to track shipments, products consumed, as a part of every work order
• Dispatcher Console set-up for service managers with Gantt views allowing for a holistic view on technicians, their availability, upcoming service appointments etc
• Connected Ecosystem with Integrations to
  • Logistics/Transportation system to provide real-time status of parts shipment
  • Oracle Fusion ERP for inventory management / parts ordering
  • Engineering escalation system (JIRA) for field escalations
• For Inter-Country Travel (involving multiple days), a plugin was developed to enable Service Managers to assign technicians based on geographic and their ability to reduce travel time to service the work order
• FSL mobile app for Service Technicians with an intuitive console to view/track service appointments, check-in asset(s) to work on, update products consumed, create service report with just a few clicks
• Comprehensive analytics using Tableau and leveraging data from CRM, ERP, JIRA and others to monitor Field Productivity, SLA adherence, Rescheduling Ratio & Aging analysis