Elevating Field Service Operations: INRY's Strategic Initiative to Enhance Field Service Management for a Premier Convenience Store Chain

Mobile Functionality for Technicians

Field service technicians gained on-the-go access to information, allowing them to access the knowledge base and update tasks while on the move, enhancing efficiency.

Enhanced Customer Service

Improved task tracking and streamlined processes enabled the customer to deliver proactive and reliable field service, resulting in lesser downtimes and higher service availability for customers.

Reduced Operational Costs

By optimizing technician schedules, automating processes, and enhancing asset management, operational costs were reduced.

Centralized Data Repository

A repository for all field service-related information, enabling easier access, retrieval, and analysis of critical data for informed decision-making by technicians and dispatchers.

Returning to Elevate: A Leading Convenience Store Chain's Pursuit of Excellence

Having previously partnered with INRY to elevate their customer service operations, a leading convenience store chain renowned for its commitment to quality and exceptional service, sought INRY's partnership to streamline their field service operations. This decision was based on the INRY’s expertise and trust established through the previous successful collaboration.

Complexities in Field Service Operations

The customer faced challenges in managing its field service operations efficiently due to disparate systems and disconnected processes. With the need to expand the ServiceNow platform for their Field Technicians, they sought to implement Field Service Management (FSM) to address these issues. Their existing methods lacked consistency in work order tracking, making it difficult to monitor tasks efficiently. Additionally, they encountered difficulties in keeping track of staff certifications, managing warranty agreements, and automating preventive maintenance tasks.

Key challenges:

Managing Work Across Multiple Locations: With approximately 750 stores to oversee, the customer faced significant challenges in coordinating maintenance tasks efficiently across its expanding network, leading to operational complexities.
Handling High Volume Ship-Outs: The company grappled with managing around 1,300 monthly ship-outs/transfers of goods, creating operational bottlenecks and increasing the strain on the existing manual force.
Overreliance on Spreadsheets: Relying on spreadsheets for work management resulted in inefficiencies and made it challenging to track performance metrics accurately.
Absence of Aggregate Data for Analysis: Rigid data analytics tools for reporting restricted the customer's capacity to analyze and report on key performance indicators, such as mean of task completion times and resource costs.
Difficulty in Tracking Assignments: The organization struggled to track task assignments, re-assignments, and routing of tasks to specialized personnel across its network, leading to delays in undertaking field service in a timely manner.

INRY's Two-Phase Approach to Addressing Customer’s FSM Challenges:

INRY, an expert in ServiceNow solutions, proposed a two-phased approach to the FSM solution implementation. During Phase 1, INRY initiated a detailed scoping/ business requirements discovery exercise for implementing the ServiceNow Field Service Management (FSM) solution. Over 3 weeks, INRY conducted workshops aimed at collecting and validating solution requirements from stakeholders, outlining a high-level design solution, and mapping business requirements to the solution. These workshops also facilitated discussions on solution implementation best practices, additional features to be leveraged, and ensuring the solution can scale to meet changes to existing processes in the future.

Phase 1 Outcomes:

Requirements Identification: Key business requirements for efficient field service operations were identified as per the customer's requirements.
User Story Documentation: Documentation of business requirements as user stories for the customer’s review and approval prior to implementing the solution.
Foundation for a Roadmap: The scoping and discovery process formed the foundation for creating a detailed roadmap for the FSM solution expansion.

Using the user stories crafted in Phase 1, INRY implemented ServiceNow’s FSM application for the customer. Leveraging the PASS methodology and its expertise as a ServiceNow Elite Partner, INRY executed the project and validated business outcomes at each stage.

The following solution capabilities were implemented in phase 2:

Knowledge Management: For sharing technical documentation and SOPs with technicians and dispatchers by creating a knowledge base tailored to the customer's needs.
Work Orders execution: Smooth tracking of work orders by auto-creating tasks for orders and setting service level agreements for the tasks.
Scheduling and Dispatch: Management of technicians and their schedules was simplified by automating task assignments, managing skills, and creating a central workspace for dispatchers.
Asset and Parts Management: Assets and parts management was simplified by maintaining inventory, availability, and warranties within the system.
Planned Maintenance: A maintenance schedule was established for a proactive approach towards preventive maintenance.
Dashboards and Reporting: Dashboards provided the customer insights into their operations and efficiency.

Transformative Results of INRY's FSM Solution Implementation:

Improved Technician Workload Management: With the ability to track tasks per technician, the customer optimized workload distribution, ensuring balanced work assignments and increased productivity.
Efficient Route Planning: Real-time data gathering, and route planning capabilities enabled better resource utilization, reducing travel time and enhancing service delivery.
Enhanced Inventory Management: The FSM solution provided the customer with improved visibility into inventory across multiple locations, enabling better inventory control and cost management.
Increased Technician Productivity: Mobile functionality for field service technicians facilitated on-the-go access to essential information and task management, boosting technician efficiency and service quality.
Enhanced Asset Management: Customer gained better control over asset lifecycle processes by effectively tracking warranty and contract agreements, managing tasks with payback, and streamlining asset refresh cycles.
Automated Preventive Maintenance: The implementation facilitated the automated scheduling of preventive maintenance tasks, ensuring timely maintenance to minimize downtime and extend asset lifespan.

INRY's Commitment to Excellence and Dedicated Partnership

INRY's collaboration improved field service operational efficiency for the customer by utilizing ServiceNow's FSM application to streamline processes resulting in decreased outage times and availability of sites for servicing customers. Post go-live support provided by INRY, including organizational change management assistance and working sessions to ensure a seamless transition to using the solution. The dedication to excellent customer service underscored the retail customer’s pursuit of continual improvement in the domain of field service operations management.

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