Inflexible working costly

LogicaCMG has revealed the results of a pan-European research that found that businesses could be losing €5m each year by not providing real-time asset information to engineers in the field.

A lack of flexibility in rescheduling work dynamically could also be contributing to this cost.

The report showed that field service crews in the telecoms, utilities, transport and allied service industries spend 39 per cent of their time back at base or en route to jobs, thus only spending 61 per cent of their time actually working. According to LogicaCMG, by reducing commuting time, companies with 500 field workers could save almost €2m annually.

People who took part in the survey said they felt that remote access to real-time information on the location and status of assets could solve the productivity problem. They also believed that it would save eight per cent of travelling time and increase overall productivity by nine per cent.