Organizations that send service technicians or other personnel to the customer site need to empower this mobile workforce with efficiency tools. Whether the work is installation, inspection, maintenance, repair, asset management or meter reading, placing computing power and decision-making capability in the hands of your field service technicians creates greater efficiency in your organization. The availability of mission-critical information at the point of activity deliver features and benefits like:

Computer aided dispatch
Dispatching is a core component of field service applications. This function allows personnel in the field to receive new customer orders without returning to the office. Normally, the dispatching function includes routines for managing a mobile workforce, or perhaps a fleet of vehicles, and supports planning and resource allocation so that customer calls are carried out more efficiently. In many cases, the dispatching function is supplemented by equipment and software for positioning, usually using GPS (Global Positioning System), so that order dispatchers know the location of field personnel at all times.

Access to corporate data
In most cases, work performed during a customer call requires access to customer and/or product data that is stored on a central system, either in a database or on a corporate intranet. An engineer can access a central database while at the customer site to check service history or the availability of spare parts. Mobitex also allows online coordination of teams handling the same group of customers.

Real time order processing
In a field service application, the dispatch order received by field personnel is a live customer order, and its status in the order processing system change as work progresses. The field service representative can print out an invoice or a delivery slip at the customer site and forward the complete order back to the office for further processing. In many cases, it is also desirable to be able to accept some form of payment, perhaps a credit or a debit card. A great benefit from this system is that it increases the efficiency and speed up billing and enhances accuracy and therefore lowers your costs.

Instructions on the go
By eliminating the need for the field employees to make daily visits to service headquarters to collect paper job instructions you get a more efficient operation. You may also distribute an entire work day schedule or dynamically updating information wirelessly as the work day progresses.

Workforce Management
By sending work assignments and other detailed information to field service staff an efficiency improvement is achieved, as there is no need for going into the office and mileage and time are saved.

Status and time reporting
Field service staff can report time, activity and status directly from the field and do not need to go to the office. This saves miles in travel.

Instant messaging
With instant messaging the message will always get through to the receiver and the message is sent in high speed. This leaves no room for misunderstandings between the field staff and the office.

From passive to active
When empowered with Mobitex, employees are no longer passive. They can push or pull work through the system. Job details can be relayed back to headquarters moments after the work is done. Service calls can be pre-scheduled for immediate or same-day action. Wireless communication enables the transmission of information, whether initiated by the employee in the field or from headquarters to the employee. This two-way exchange enables the real-time dispatch or re-routing of the closest employee, automatic routing, dispatch from last-known location, or pre-scheduled and manual routing.

Predicting arrival times
A major advantage of a real-time system is the ability to give a specific arrival time commitment to the customer. This can help to reduce one of the most frequent customer complaints in the field service industry: the 'customer waiting all day' problem. When you can more accurately predict the arrival time of you field force through automated systems, you can offer customers a smaller arrival time window and improve your customer satisfaction ratings