Field Force Tracker has been slowly building a presence as a rising star among field service management (FSM) software providers for the last several years. However, across the last twelve months or so they seem to be distinctly focusing on pulling together a enviable list of good customers, and a  lot of new features. They have revised new apps and added many features to the system.

The addition of experienced engineering team and marketing leaders has added a depth of industry knowledge and understanding of best-practice in the field service software, go-to-market strategies on the communications side of the business.  The team has experience in successfully working with top-tier enterprise account sales, but also a strong knowledge of product development within FSM systems. Field Service sector will see Field Force Tracker getting new momentum in the sector and competing with established players.

New Momentum in the Field Service Software

There has been a lot of momentum that has been building over time, but now it is beginning to become more visible as things are all coming together around the product, around the marketing and around our go-to-market strategy. We are becoming more visible in the market, but in a controlled way. From the board’s perspective it has been building up the momentum and now they are bringing in key personnel that will drive the company into the next field service market environment.

There seems to have been a very clear plan from the senior team at Field Force Tracker to get the product right, before then building the team that can firmly establish the company as a key player within the FSM software community.

Indeed, as the company CTO explains there was a lot of behind the scenes work in developing the product in order to be able to integrate easily with others that had to be completed before Field Force Tracker could really begin to move forward into the enterprise.

Addressing the Enterprise Field Service Software

Whilst the company were operating primarily in the small to medium sector, we invested heavily in developing a mobile led, innovative solution that was built on an enterprise approach architecture. We wanted the ability to have a field force management solution, where we could have custom objects associated at multiple levels, so the application could through configuration be quickly tuned to the needs of different customers in different verticals.

To then expose that flexibility to all of the communications channels – so out through the API, into the integration layer out to the mobile and then out to the web, as you can appreciate it takes time to build that kind of product, but it was where we saw future.

However, listening to CTO speak it is not just care and attention that Field Force Tracker have put into the development of their product – he is keen to outline how they have taken a very different approach than some of the more traditional vendors in the market have done in the past.

“Our focus has been to develop a mobile application that is very intuitive and easy to use – everything we do is about intuitiveness and being thumb friendly. Successful solutions are always easily adopted because they’re so easy to use.”

“Everything we do is about intuitiveness and being thumb friendly. Successful solutions are always easily adopted because they’re so easy to use…”

“Our approach has been to really focus on empowering the people in the field, the field service technicians that are working directly with their customers and can therefore have the biggest impact on a brand when service is being delivered. By making sure that they have an application that is simple to use but also offers access to rich data that is embedded within the service call (so they don’t have to be reliant on syncing up, it’s all there for them, they can just go ahead and use it) the aim is that it all leads to them being able to deliver better service.”

“So we’ve really been focusing in from that perspective. We’ve been taking into consideration how service manager think when they are in the field and how do the older members of the workforce think whilst they are in the field too.

It’s a different approach from the traditional world of big optimizations that are focused on macro management of a workforce and then driving that work out. In fact, it’s a very different approach.

Field Service Software – Upgrading with New Features

Whereas before the focus has been, both from a technology and a management point of view, about ensuring field service teams are working as efficiently as possible – i.e. on task such as processing the workload and optimizing the work schedule, now with customer service rising to the forefront of most conversations about company wide KPIs, the focus is very much on empowering the field service engineer with the tools at his disposal to be able to delight customers on each and every visit.

Indeed the landscape is ever changing, and Field Force Tracker find themselves in the interesting place of being able to compete with other FSM software but also at the same time offering a solution that can also fully compliment such competitor systems due to their focus on integration.

“Applications like ours enable companies to effectively digitise the last mile – i.e. get all the work instructions, all the processes out to the workforce. They can use it online or offline depending on their connectivity, but is has to be intuitive.’

Of course one trusted route to speeding up adoption which we have discussed a number of times in various Field Service News articles is getting the involvement of some of the field service technicians in the selection process of any given new tool they will be using.

This is a trend that Mason admits he has seen growing in recent years with more and more field service organizations involving a selection of service technicians to give their insight into any potential new solution.

“We’re seeing a growing trend where the selection process will include some members of the field team,” Mason agrees. “What this does do is enable both us and the customer to accelerate the time to value because it allows the customer to see how the tool will work within their wider system, but also allows us to better understand the challenges we’ll have to work through in the project.” He concludes.

It is a sensible route and one that is quite indicative of the customer-centric approach that company has adapted.

So could 2017 potentially be Field Force Tracker’s year? They are certainly getting themselves in the right place at the right time…