Unplanned Downtime. Most companies experience it, as much as 82 percent of companies have experienced unplanned downtime over the past three years. Unplanned downtime can cost a company as much as $260,000 an hour. According to a recent Vanson Bourne study, 82% of companies have experienced at least one unplanned downtime outage over the past three years, and two on average. These outages on average, lasted four hours. Depending on the company and type of equipment, this can cost organizations anywhere from $50k- to $150k per hour. For example, a medical device company, and up to $2 million for a major outage on an industrial critical asset. The research also revealed high levels of asset ignorance across organizations, with 70% of companies lacking full awareness of when equipment is due for maintenance, upgrade, or replacement.
Other than the financial burden that downtime can have on your organization, you lose customer trust and retention. Customers will start to have a perceived notion that they cannot rely on you to deliver a service with no unplanned downtime.
The study found that almost a third of respondents said they were unable to service specific equipment assets, while 65% of respondents from the energy sector, and 62% from the medical sector cited losing the trust of their customers as a possible impact of suffering a high-profile incident or disaster. Across all sectors, about one in ten admitted their company would never recover from such catastrophic incidents and would ultimately cease to exist as a business.
The growing reliance on automation is already widening performance gaps. Businesses are losing sight of assets, leading to a broken insight of manufacturing or service delivery. The result is that unplanned downtime becomes a real problem and even worse, the lack of visibility leads to a lengthy recovery time that could be otherwise avoided with FSM. Closing this downtime gap is a fundamental step in a service organization’s digital maturity and a core part of its transformational journey.
Referencing back to the Vanson Bourne study, 8 in 10 companies have already recognized that software can improve the visibility of the business and help eliminated unplanned downtime. About 50% of companies committed to invest in field service/asset management software in the next three years, while 72% of firms claim that zero unplanned downtime is now a number one priority. So it is obvious that companies are realizing they need the right digital tools to come close as possible to net zero downtime.
Unplanned downtime is a leading cause of the digital transformation that we are seeing in field service industries.
This is where ServiceEcho comes in with its robust features, helping reach zero unplanned downtime. ServiceEcho has the ability to function in remote locations where an internet connection is not always stable, saved service information syncs when the user returns to a stable connection. ServiceEcho gives your technicians the information they need about work orders, if the customer is due for maintenance or renewal, this ensures that the customer is always taken care of and reduces the possibility of downtime. Less downtime equates to money saved from what would have been costly downtime for your customer. With ServiceEcho, you will have better visibility of your service organizations which in turn will improve your relationships with clients and have the perception of being a reliable service provider.
No one wins when a company experiences unplanned downtime. Avoid this by investing in the right technology that will transform your business, and give your technicians the digital tools to deliver faster, immaculate service. A field service management software has to allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition in a world of high expectations. ServiceEcho wants to help your field service organization reach zero unplanned downtime.