How Wearables Are Being Integrated With Field Service Management

By Charles Settles, Product Analyst, TechnologyAdvice

The field services industry has undergone massive change as companies move their workforces to mobile software solutions. Now, wearable electronic devices are poised to disrupt the industry yet again.

Field service management software isn’t new, but the proliferation of consumer mobile devices (such as tablets and smartphones) is allowing the industry to reinvent itself. Legacy field services systems were designed for expensive commercial-grade mobile devices or laptops. Ultra-rugged, they were built to take years of use, but like most computing devices, they quickly become obsolete. Too large of a sunk cost and companies are left using equipment and software that’s outdated, sluggish, and frequently buggy. Often, using the system makes technicians less efficient; one large U.S. appliance service firm has technicians dragging around what amounts to a portable dot matrix printer tethered to a 10+ lb. laptop. The move to consumer-grade devices couldn’t come at a more opportune time for the field services industry.

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