How AI Helps Improve Field Service

Its seems that with the current rate of technological innovation that these is something new every single day.  Therefore, you’re always looking forward to a new technological innovation that’s going to help you make your business operations more efficient and automated.

One of the most fascinating milestones in the field of technology is the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in business. In one way or the other, AI gives a glimpse of machine supremacy that allows computers to perform tasks that were initially performed by humans. 

Are machines going to completely replace people in the workplace?

Of course, not.  Technologies like AI and Machine Learning are designed and meant to support employees in doing their tasks too boost their productivity.

AI is predominantly used to eliminate jobs and tasks that humans find boring, demotivating or monotonous. In some cases AI is also used to do jobs that are considered dangerous for humans to preform.

Previously the most common implementations for AI were all about gaming, entertainment, and advanced science,  now it’s spreading into a number of industries including the field service industry.

FieldElite – Field Service Software , can help you optimise the day-to-day operations of your business.

AI in field service management will enhance you business capabilities with:

  • Information Sharing
  • Real Time Updates
  • Automated Workflows
  • Digital Form Data Collection
  • Data Analysis

Improved Customer Service

For Service Based companies, customer retention is vital. Primarily because It can be 5-25 times more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing ones.

Therefore customer retention should be a primary focus.? The good news is that by making use of AI you can implement services It can be 5-25 times more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one.

Staying on top of and ensuring you satisfactorily address and meet you customer demands and expectations can be a daunting task.? It can also be an expensive one,? especially for small field service based businesses like :

  • Heating & Plumbing Engineers
  • Electrical Contractors
  • Fire Safety Inspectors
  • HVAC Engineers
  • Facility Management
  • Building, Construction & Trade

Implementing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to automate mundane and repetitive customer administration tasks will enable your staff to be free to provide additional value added tasks for your customers. Making your customers happier.

?Think about the active Chatbots. You can always get complaints directly from customers and address them right away.??

If at any point the customer is unhappy with your services, they can always raise the issue via the Chatbots. Since the bots contain necessary customer information, you can always get back to them and fix the issue at hand.?

With AI in field service, you can solve problems before they arise, or what is otherwise known as predictive maintenance,? In that way, you’ll have better customer relations because you’ll be able to address your customer concerns before they even become aware of them.

Improved Productivity

Scheduling tasks and managing the workforce isn’t a walk in the park. It goes beyond assigning tasks to your team members in the field and giving them deadlines to meet. Whether it’s a small firm or a big organisation, it’s quite difficult to organise the workforce.?

However, adopting Artificial Intelligence can iron out the difficulties most field organisations face in scheduling and managing tasks. Some years back, most firms relied on human intelligence to dispatch jobs to the right people based on given conditions. This was quite difficult, especially that it wasn’t always successful. But thanks to AI. With field service apps like FieldElite scheduling tasks and managing workforce is only a few clicks away.?

What’s more? There?s no room for error. Therefore, you’ll always match the right people for the job. Again, your team will always get tasks on time. That means, the job completion rate will go up, and hence the workforce becomes more productive.?

Predictive Maintenance

Usually, most business operations are based on ?solve the problem as it occurs?, which is just OK. However, it’s not always safe to wait until a problem occurs so that you solve it. Prevention is better than cure, and that’s why Artificial Intelligence comes handy in Field Service.

Using FieldElite Workforce Management Software , you don’t have to wait until something breaks.? Utilizing AI in field service enables you to proactively address field service needs and prevent unforeseen failures and interruptions.?

The ability to predict field service needs through field service apps like FieldElite enables you to make more accurate forecasts. In this way, resource planning is made easier, and as such, you’ll have smoothly running workflows. Again, by taking care of unforeseen circumstances in advance, you’re flexible enough to take care of the unexpected. And that means the overall productivity of your business will go up.

Job Management

Most field service jobs involve multiple stages that can take several days to complete. In addition to this, more often than not, you have to coordinate lots of equipment and contractors at the same time. All these can’t be achieved solely by human efforts. For more successful outcomes, it’s important to incorporate Artificial Intelligence in your field service operations.?

FieldElite is the field service solution that can help you manage sophisticated tasks. The app is packed with field service management tools that enable you to assign complicated tasks and keep track of your field techs. For long-cycle jobs, FieldElite app enables you to follow up on the activities going on the field to ensure they’re completed.?

With AI, there?s no room for error even when the jobs become more sophisticated.

Data Analysis

?

Field service industry involves lots of data. Some years back, organisations depended on human intelligence to analyse big data. Well, things still worked out, but as a human is to err, the outcome wasn’t always perfect. However, with Artificial Intelligence data analysis, 100% accuracy in data analysis is achievable. Field service solutions like FieldElite provide sophisticated data analytic tools that enable you to crack massive data and offer accurate solutions.?

FieldElite data analytics capabilities give you an insight into what’s not working and what needs to be improved. In that way, you can always address matters arising and take care of the loopholes.?

It’s time to go paperless with field management software like FieldElite if you?d like to make your business more profitable. Apart from improving the productivity of your workforce, incorporating AI in your business increases profitability. If you’re still doing your usual field rounds with a clipboard, it’s time to simplify your task with FieldElite app.?

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Data Leakage Prevention – Protecting Sensitive Information

When DuPont lost $400 million in intellectual property, it wasn’t because a hacker from the other side of the world infiltrated their system. The information was simply stolen by a former employee. Alarmingly, data loss incidents are not always caused by deliberate actions.

A file containing personal information accidentally attached to an email and sent to multiple recipients; financial data stored in a USB pen drive, accidentally left in a restaurant; or bank account data of colleagues, inadvertently posted on a company website – these are also some of the everyday causes of data loss.

A report done by research company Infowatch regarding global data leaks in 2010 showed that there were actually more accidental data leaks in that year compared to intentional ones. Accidental leaks comprised 53%, while intentional leaks comprised 42% (the rest were unidentified).

But even if they ?only? happened accidentally, breach incidents like these can still be very costly. The tens of thousands of dollars that you could sometimes end up paying in civil penalties (as in the case when you lose other people?s personal information) can just be the beginning. More costly than this is the loss of customer and investor confidence. Once you lose those, you could consequently lose a considerable portion of your business.

Confidential information that may already be leaking out right under your nose

With all the data you collect, process, exchange, and store electronically every day, your IT system has surely now become a storehouse of sensitive information. Some of them, you may be even taking for granted.

But imagine what would happen if any of the following trade secrets fell into the wrong hands: marketing plans, confidential customer information, pricing data, product development strategies, business plans, supplier information, source codes, and employee salaries.

These are not the only kind of data that you should be worried about. You could also get into trouble if your sloppy IT security fails to protect employee or client personal information such as their names; social security numbers; drivers license numbers; or bank account numbers and credit/debit card numbers along with their corresponding PINs.

In some countries, you could face onerous data breach notification requirements and heavy fines when these kind of data are involved.

There are now more holes to plug

It’s not just the different varieties of sensitive electronic information that you have to worry about. Because these data can take on different forms, i.e. data-at-rest, data-in-motion, and data-at-the-endpoints, you also need to take aim at different areas in your IT system.

Sensitive information can be found ?at rest? in each of your employees? hard disks, in your servers, storage disks, and in off-site backup disks. They can also be found ?in motion? in email, instant messaging, social networking messaging, P2P file sharing, ftp, http, and so on.

That’s not all. Your highly mobile workforce may have already introduced yet another high-risk area into your system: data-at-the-endpoints. This includes USB flash-disks, laptops, portable hard disks, CDs, and even smartphones.

The main challenge of data leak prevention

Having been made aware of the various aspects of data leakage, have you already come to grips with the extent of the task at hand?

There are two major things you need to do here to prevent data leakage.

One, you need to identify what data you have that can be considered as sensitive/confidential information. Of course you have financial information and employee salaries in your files. But do you also store personally identifiable information? Do you have trade secrets that are stored in electronic form?

Two, you need to pinpoint their locations. Are they only on your hard disks and laptops? Or have they made their way to flash drives, CDs/DVDs, or portable HDDs? Are they being transmitted through email or any other file transfer media?

The reason why you need to know what your sensitive data are as well as where they are is because you would like all efforts of securing them to be as efficient and unobtrusive as possible.

Let’s say, as a way of protecting your data, you decide to implement encryption. Since encryption can consume a lot of storage space and significantly reduce performance, it may be impractical to encrypt your entire database or all your files. For the same reason, you wouldn’t want to encrypt every single email that you send.

Thus, the best way would be to encrypt only the data that really need encryption. But again, you need to know what data needs to be encrypted and where those data can be found. That alone is no simple task.

Not only will you need to deal with the data you already have, you will also have to worry about the data that will go through your systems during the course of your day-to-day transactions.

Identifying sensitive data as it enters or leaves your system, goes through your network, or gets stored in your file system or database, and then applying the necessary security actions should be done automatically and intelligently. Otherwise, you could end up spending on a lot of man-hours or, worse, wasting them on a lot of false positives and negatives.

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Disruptions to business operations can be as catastrophic as a Hurricane Katrina or a 9/11 or as relatively trivial as a minor power outage or a planned shutdown. What ever the gravity, scope and duration the disruption has, your company should be able to handle each situation so that you can declare “business as usual” and really mean it. (more…)

What Energy Management Software did for CDC

Chrome Deposit Corporation ? that’s CDC for short ? reconditions giant rollers used to finish steel and aluminium sheets in Portage, Indiana by applying grinding, texturing and plating methods. While management was initially surprised when the University of Delaware singled their plant out for energy assessment, this took them on a journey to bring energy consumption down despite being in an expansion phase.

Metal finishing and refinishing is an energy-intensive business where machines mainly do the work while workforces as small as 50 individuals tend them. Environmental impacts also need countering within a challenging environment of burgeoning natural gas and electricity prices.

The Consultant’s Recommendations

The University of Delaware was fortunate that Chrome Deposit Corporation had consistently measured its energy consumption since inception in 1986. This enabled it to pinpoint six strategies as having potential for technological and process improvements.

  • Insulate condensate tanks and pipes
  • Analyse flue gas air-fuel ratios
  • Lower compressed air pressures
  • Install stack dampers on boilers
  • Replace belts with pulleys and cogs
  • Fit covers on plant exhaust fans

CDC implemented only four of the six recommendations. This was because the boiler manufacturer did not recommend stack dampers, and the company was unable to afford certain process automation and controls.

Natural Gas Savings

The project team began by analysing stack gases from boilers used to heat chrome tanks and evaporate wastewater. They found the boilers were burning rich and that several joints in gas lines were leaking. Correcting these issues achieved an instant gas saving of 12% despite increased production.

Reduced Water Consumption

The team established that city water was used to cool the rectifiers. It reduced this by an astonishing 85% by implementing a closed-loop system and adding two chillers. This also helped the water company spend less on chemicals, and energy to drive pumps, purifiers and fans.

Summary of Benefits

Electricity consumption reduced by 18% in real terms, and natural gas by 35%. When these two savings are merged they represent an overall 25% energy saving. These benefits were implemented across the company?s six other plants, resulting in benefits CDC management never dreamed of when the University of Delaware approached them.

ecoVaro offers a similar data analytics service that is available online worldwide. We have helped other companies slash their energy bills with similarly exciting results. We?ll be delighted to share ideas that only data analytics can reveal.

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