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Drop your work order systems


We all felt pretty damn good about ourselves for the last couple of decades transferring our service companies to wireless work order management systems.  Think about it, what did we do? Did we simply evolve the paper ticket, from radio dispatch, to wireless distribution? How would you feel, after all of these years, that we exerted effort towards the wrong target!  Certainly these tools helped us gain efficiency and improve the perception of our customers that we were digitally savvy.  Aren't we really paid to preserve and make more energy efficient our customers assets (equipment)?  Our best intentions to streamline and create visibility was still dependent on highly subjective traffic cops (our dispatchers).  Did we move forward or just sideways and maybe even a bit back (especially when you think about the personal connections with our clients that is sometimes muted by technology).



The gap between work order and asset management systems has come to life as the result of objective points of input and the rising influence of IoT.   Somewhere in your future lies your ability to consume information from devices and assets and adjust your logic regarding if you will send a human or make a machine to machine correction. A mechanism will still need to exist to advise a fieldworker where to go and what to do, yet in a normal routine will come from an asset and not another human. Transitioning from a  work order centric environment to an asset centric environment, similar to healthcare and oil and gas, will be quite an undertaking. Start now so you can be prepared when you are ready to start consuming digital information from assets in the field. Let the asset, the one thing we are paid as service companies to protect, dictate when and where service will be required.



Best of luck



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Next post:  corrective actions help the service business?
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