Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
In the most traditional sense, field service professionals and technicians can tend to work in difficult and sometimes dangerous work environments, whether that’s reinstalling and servicing a tall wind turbine out in a rural section, or answering a call for an unplanned outage. A field-service technicians’ work can be time-consuming and costly, and that being said, it’s important to hit the nail directly on its head the first time, so that these techs can deliver the most accurate and efficient service to their customers. 
The larger and more advanced an outage appears may mean a whole world of hurt for the technician, as his process may be a little more strenuous. From applying additional equipment to one’s uniform to scaling whatever literal or metaphorical cliff they might be addressing, there could be a series of roadblocks that are thrown their way.
Let’s say the field service technician rode their way up to the top of a telephone pole and then upon arriving realized that they didn’t have a specific piece of equipment in their possession, they would have to scale back down and start the process over again. Though this is probably the manual labor workload that they knew they were signing up for, but what if they could skip all of those road bumps and remotely diagnose and troubleshoot issues?
Real-Time Monitoring
IoT-based sensors can track and assess the following data, an asset’s position, speed, and any other variables that could impact the quality of the service, or how quickly the services gets completed. Before going through with specific tasks, technicians would be granted access to an ETA for how long the job would take to complete. With this information in hand, they could better plan out their work flow, receiving notifications all the while.
Managing Assets Remotely
Connected assets and other devices allow field service professionals to connect to a situation physically and from anywhere. Remotely diagnosing a situation is essential if one wants to start the troubleshooting process to locate errors in the process, whether they be by humans workers, or due to a technical inconvenience. This tactic to help advice workers on how to proceed in the future, if a similar reaction is recorded. Taking touching out of interactions and transactions, from person to person, is also important as well, what with this global pandemic being on everyone’s radar. 
Supporting Proactivity on the Clock
When a device updates the technician on its status report, the IoT platform will then distribute specific analytics to better detect where repairs are to be allocated. In addition to that, digital alerts can be sent to these workers while they are out in the field to keep them in the know of any updates in the test, and how much urgency will need to be factored into the task, before it implodes on itself.
Utilizing Analytics for Predictive Maintenance
AI-enabled predictive and prescriptive analytics are utilized to address some of the real-time complication that are run into, while out on a service call. Introducing these capabilities can reduce overall costs and increase uptime. From conditions-based monitoring and digital twin creating, troubleshooting situations and service calls is able to be observed and successfully. A company is putting their employees first when it comes to them analyzing how they are out in the field responding to a call. Enabling remote diagnoses and automated process allows workers to continue working in a safe and controlled environment, while also unlocking a whole new world of opportunity for the field service industry.
