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  How Federated workforces will replace dedicated field service workforces by 2005
 
The latest technologies are sounding the death knell for dedicated workforces and all the costly overheads they represent. A combination of web services and artificially intelligent software is poised to re-shape the service industries of the future by encouraging the adoption of federated workforces between organisations.
 
With web service technology standards easing application integration, and the advent of intelligent software automating field workforce management, organisations have the opportunity to seamlessly integrate not only their operational processes but also their mobile workforces with rivals, business partners and customers alike. Telecommunications firms are already pioneering sharing their mobile workforces where the need arises and common skillsets allow.
 
The goal of such unique collaboration is to reduce costs and increase productivity, but the ultimate prize is a quantum leap forward in improvement in customer service.
 
In today's increasingly electronic world, players in the service industry have much to lose if they fail to meet customers' increasingly high expectations. The service industries are under immense pressure from customers demanding a 24 x 7 quality service at their personal convenience and regardless of their geographical location. Large and small players are fighting on equal terms for dominant market share thanks to de-regulation in areas such as telecommunications and the utilities, and there is increasing global competition. In commodity service marketplaces such as electricity and gas, there's little to differentiate between organisations other than by their quality of service.
 
To date, the service industries have done their best to improve customer service by throwing extra resources at the area. However, this is a black hole that can never be filled by one organisation's human resources budget alone. No matter how well controllers of dedicated field service workforces juggle their increasingly complex schedules of work, taking into account service level agreements and penalties for late and missed appointments, they still only have at their disposal a finite number of mobile workers with certain skillsets available per region.
 
Getting these workers to the right place at a time convenient to the customer is the exception rather than the rule. Typically, it is still commonplace for customers to be offered appointments that dictate only morning or afternoon timeslots rather than precise arrival times. We all know that customers are dissatisfied with such an arrangement but the way that the service industries have operated to date means that little can be done to address this situation.
 
Clearly, with customers becoming increasingly intolerant of inconvenient and unpredictable appointment times, and more easily able to swap to an alternative service organisation, the company that can dramatically improve its customer service will be dominant in its sector in the future.
 
There are technologies available today that could enable the service industries to do just this without the pain of trashing existing legacy systems and spending huge amounts of money on more equipment and staff. Web services, combined with the latest automated, artificially intelligent fieldforce management software, offer an unprecedented opportunity for players in the service industries to share business processes and mobile workforces, and so set a new standard in customer service.
 
How? Web services allow applications and systems to talk to each other more easily than ever before, enabling organisations to seamlessly connect their business processes cost-effectively and securely with any business they choose - commercial partners, suppliers, customers, and even business rivals where the need is mutual. For service industries, this means that different suppliers that depend upon each other to deliver a complete service to their customers will be able to collaborate more closely; reducing costs, improving productivity and ultimately improving customer service.
 
Where business processes can be shared, so, too, can staff. This means that a service organisation could potentially have a mobile workforce as great as the combined workforces of all the service providers in its market sector, right at its fingertips.
 
For service organisations, a federated workforce means that they will always be able to respond to a customer need in the way the customer expects, since they can call on a vastly extended pool of mobile talent to meet their work schedules, no matter how busy they become. Predictive modelling through an intelligent system enables organisations to work out where their own field workers need to be, and therefore where there is spare capacity to be shared with other organisations, or conversely, where demand exceeds supply and contract workers are needed to meet customer commitments.
 
They can also benefit from huge savings on economies of scale. By sharing work schedules, duplicated visits can be identified and one engineer sent out to cover work on several service organisations' equipment. This means that job schedules can be run more efficiently and cost-effectively, minimising travel and waiting time. With one engineer able to honour call-outs to the same premises on behalf of many service organisations, there is also a greater potential for building a close relationship with the customer, which could generate previously unidentified and lucrative business benefits.
 
Long-term, it's not unfeasible that freelance engineers in the services industries could register their capability and availability through a set of web services, and find work with any interested service provider through a broker.
 
As a first move towards implementing web services and deploying a federated workforce, service organisations will need to come to terms with - and create business processes that address - the sharing of customer information with others that were once deadly business rivals. It also makes sense to take advantage of the capabilities of web services to radically automate the management of field service workers using embedded artificial intelligence software to generate further cost efficiencies.
 
With US research firm, Gartner Group, predicting that nine out of ten of all major IT suppliers will have added web services to their applications by 2004, it would be wise for service providers to prepare an internal strategy for the adoption of this technology, and exploitation of the federated workforce idea, now, ready for deployment in 2005, since their rivals surely will be.
 
Dedicated field service workforces have had their day. It's time for federated workforces to replace them. Only then will today's services industries be able to provide a customer service worthy of global commerce in the 21st Century.