I’m having a great day here at OnForce today — why, you ask? Our iPhone app for OnForce Pros just hit the app store!

The app is designed to be a hyper-efficient way for OnForce Pros to access OnForce while on-the-go, and it fully supports all the activities needed to review and accept new work orders as well as to handle open work orders.

In a way, today is both an end and a new beginning for us. It’s the culmination of months and months of extreme effort and a lot of impressive teamwork. And this is the beginning of some big new things for OnForce.

As field services is a mobile activity by its nature, an app for our Pros is a very natural extension of our offering. And I believe, at my core, that there are still huge opportunities to leverage technology to make field services dramatically more efficient. Today is a big deal not only because our mobile app is a vastly improved way for Pros to access OnForce while in the field, but also native apps and the smartphones they run on represent a new platform upon which we’re able to build some fundamentally innovative and valuable new things. Things that will help our service buyers and OnForce Pros connect, engage and work in new and better ways that weren’t possible just a few years ago.

This (and caffeine) is the kind of stuff that inspires and energizes us and gets us excited about coming to work in the morning! We’re really proud and want to sincerely thank everyone inside OnForce and in our community who helped get this app designed, built, tested (and beta tested) and launched.

The app is now available in Apple’s App Store and is compatible with iPhones running iOS 4.2 and above — more details about the app are here.

Android users, don’t fret! We definitely didn’t forget you. In fact, our team has already made great progress on the Android version and we hope to have a beta available very early next year. If you’d like to help test the Android version, just reply to this blog post with your email address or user ID and we’ll get in contact with you.

Thanks for listening and stay tuned – we have a lot of great stuff in the works that I think you’ll love.

CSOs are talking and OnForce is joining the conversation at the upcoming Aberdeen CSO Summit. Sumair Dutta, senior research analyst from Aberdeen – and our guest blogger – sheds some light about the Summit where executives are gathering to discuss current challenges associated with IT field service and to learn best practices on how to overcome them.

Words from Sumair….

At Aberdeen’s 2011 Chief Service Officer Summit (Oct 12-13 in Boston, MA, www.chiefserviceofficer.com), we’re investigating how leading organizations are looking to ensure that the culture of service and support spreads across the entire workforce, from C-Level to the front line, from finance and accounting to sales and marketing and so on. Another dimension that will be discussed is the extension of the champion philosophy outside of the 4 walls of the service organization. Our 2011 research has shown a relatively healthy reliance on third-parties for service delivery, whether it be in field service, contact center, or in the back and forth flow of service parts. For instance, in Aberdeen’s Field Service 2011: Trends in Workforce Management research (January 2011), responding organizations indicated that, on average, 20% of service tasks were handled and managed by third-party or outsourced field service workers and twenty-five percent (25%) of respondents in that survey indicated that they planned to increase their reliance on outsourced field workers in 2011.

Most organizations that are currently leveraging third-parties, especially for field service, have experienced cost and productivity benefits from their reliance on third-parties. However, these organizations continue to remain concerned with establishing a direct line of sight into the end experience delivered to their customers. This is a primary challenge for those organizations that are outsourcing and a barrier for those that have chosen to keep everything in-house. Inability to accurately track the performance of the service network and the final service brand delivered is a vital challenge that CSOs are looking to overcome.

Best practices to overcome the line of sight challenge range from better integration of technology systems, improved collaboration and training, and a focus on direct feedback capture from customers who are served by third-parties. In addition, organizations are also looking to overhaul their partner selection, compensation, collaboration and performance evaluation strategies to provide a better final service product to their customers. These strategies will  be analyzed at the 2011 CSO Summit in various sessions, starting with a Day 1 breakout panel on field service workforce strategies and culminating in a Day 2 presentation around collaboration strategies to further empower service partners, provided by Dave Dora from Kawasaki.

If you’re interested in attending the Summit, please register here.

Every morning I make tea, turn on the TV for news of the world, and I pop into Google Reader/Twitter/Google+ etc. to see what’s happening in tech.  This morning I came across an interesting article by Jason Hiner for TechRepublic and ZDNet.  In the article he talks about the huge IT build up in the 90′s, the dot com crash, and the current situation.  The thing that caught my eye is that he talks about the disruption of the traditional IT department and the resultant shift to independent consultants and outsourcing.  He says: “We’re going to see most of traditional IT administration and support functions outsourced to third-party consultants.”  At OnForce we see this trend in action every day and so I couldn’t agree more with the conclusion  However, I think Jason missed an opportunity to talk more about the advantages and challenges of the new model.  Change is opportunity, but it’s rarely easy.

Here are four key advantages of using independent contractors:

1. Pay for results, not time.  In field services, employees in large organizations generally average about 60% utilization – meaning that 40% of the cost of those employees is wasted.  With independent contractors you can structure agreements to pay for outcomes and not time… and even if you pay for time, you pay until the job is done, not for the gaps between jobs.  This is particularly important for businesses that have spikes in demand.  For example, the retail industry has a real spike in IT work over the summer to get ready for the holiday selling season.  If retail chains tried to handle this with internal staff, they would be faced with huge demand over a few months resulting in lots of overtime, extra hiring and training, or failing to fully execute.  The only practical way is to leverage independent contractors.
2. Geographic reach.  With improved collaboration tools, video conferencing, and an increasingly mobile workforce, businesses have more locations than ever before.  Whether that’s a result of acquisitions or a telecommuting plan it’s an IT challenge.  Using local, independent contractors eliminates the need to pay employees to sit in airplanes watching Harry Potter and eating peanuts.  One of our clients is in the business of providing medical devices in clinics and has hundreds of locations to serve.  It’s frightening to imagine the travel schedule for an IT team to cover that territory – and even more frightening to think about gas expenses.
3. Talent.  With technology changing so rapidly (Google+, tablets, smart phones…) it’s increasingly difficult for an IT team to maintain expertise in everything.  Specialization is increasingly important.  By using independent contractors you can hire the right person for each job.  Further, with the commoditization of some IT jobs, sometimes the best person for the job is the new grad just starting a consulting business and not the seasoned network engineer.  By using independent contractors and matching the right expert to the right job, you end up getting a higher success rate on the job, reducing follow-up calls, and you can avoid overpaying by selecting the right talent level.  Maybe the most important point about talent is that many of these independent contractors are real entrepreneurs and unbelievably skilled at what they do.  I’ve spent lots of time meeting OnForce independent contractors and I’ve met some really impressive people with serious expertise and impressive resumes… and not one of these people would ever willingly work for a corporation on an IT team.
4. Dealing with Economic Uncertainty.  Just this morning, the Boston Globe had a story about a business owner who is optimistic about his business, but unwilling to hire due to all the economic uncertainty – compounded by fears that we won’t reach an agreement about the debt ceiling.  We have been hearing variations on this theme throughout 2010 and 2011.  Businesses were burned by the economic crisis of 2008 and layoffs are still painful memories that no one wants to repeat.  Using independent contractors is a great way to allow your business to capture opportunities without committing to a high, fixed “burn rate” with lots of new employees, salaries, and health care costs.

And there are challenges when using independent contractors that don’t come up/aren’t as important with employees:

• Insurance:  Using an uninsured independent contractor makes you liable for whatever happens on the job.  Further, insurance is confusing.  Often, a contractor will say they have insurance, but it may not cover the work they will be doing for you or their own sub-contractors that they bring in.  The stakes are large.  When something happens on a $1,500 job (and eventually, it will) you may lose your business if you don’t have insurance coverage.
• Contracting:  You should make sure you have a clear legal agreement.  Managing and updating agreements across hundreds or thousands of independent contractors can be a nightmare.
• 1099s:  At the end of the year are you ready for a mountain of 1099s?  Also, be careful in preparing them.  The IRS is surprisingly efficient at doling out penalties for errors.
• Quality:  If you need a contractor to convert your office in Akron to VoIP phones, how do you find the right person/company to do the job?  How do you verify that they can do what they say they can do?
• Pricing:  So, what should you pay for the project in Akron?  How do you know what a fair price is?  You probably need to get three bids to find out what’s fair.  If you just get one bid, you expose yourself to paying too much.  Of course, you should also be careful about choosing just on price.  The cost of rework can undo any savings you might have hoped for.
• Management:  Once you have an agreement, how do you keep tabs on the project?

There are huge benefits to using independent contractors and significant challenges.  Visionary CIOs and service leaders are going in “eyes wide open,” addressing the challenges, and reaping the benefits.  I’m excited to be a part of bringing this new way of business to the main stream.

Service buyers are constantly re-evaluating the balance between in-house staff and independent contractors in order to get the best business outcomes. They let us know what’s working and what isn’t and where they could use some help. Peter Cannone, CEO of OnForce, talks to buyers all of the time. Over the years he has discovered that buyers who get the best results tend to be those who follow certain guidelines. He recently shared these guidelines or “tips” in an article posted in Network Work titled: “5 tips for getting better results from your IT contractor.” I think he makes some great points that are worth sharing here: 5 tips…

I’m going to be on the road over the next couple of weeks and I thought I would take the opportunity to make some appointments with people outside of my home territory.  If you’ve got something you want OnForce to hear, I’d love to meet with you!  Even if you don’t, I’d love to learn more about your business.

So, here’s my schedule for the next several weeks:

• San Francisco/San Jose area: Next Monday, April 18th afternoon/evening.  May have some slots Tuesday or Wednesday as well.
• Philladelphia: April 25th afternoon/evening
• Providence, RI: May 12th

Toby Metcalf has graciously agreed to help organize while I’m in the air.  If you’re interested in getting together, please send an email to Toby at toby.metcalf at onforce.com.  Be sure to let him know when you are available.  Depending on interest we’ll set a final time and place.

See you soon!
Bill Lucchini
Chief Operating Officer