New advancements in technology always amaze me. Promises of faster delivery from days to minutes, instant access to information and people, and the ability to get more done with far less effort — become reality and effectively change how work gets done.

As technology continues to evolve, so does the field service delivery landscape.  Smarter and faster tools like mobile solutions, for example, help to drive better processes and collaboration that enhance your customer’s experience, and ultimately, your bottom line.

Current street buzz is on 3D technology. Is 3D technology the new wave that will hit the field service landscape? Quite possibly, according to Smart Van that highlights how 3D printers and scanners could very well be the next big thing.

Do you agree? Which of the latest technology innovations do you think will impact you and how you deliver field service today?

For most, a New Year brings the desire for change. It means re-evaluating your current situation, setting a goal, and then taking action. It’s a time that causes us to reflect on where we are and where we want to go. As a field services technician, what are your New Year professional goals? Where do you want to take your business in 2013 and beyond?

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or are just getting started in your IT career, there are a number of soft skills (i.e., personality attributes) that I have often found with field services technicians who are successful. As you embark into the New Year with specific business goals in mind, here are the top five soft skills that can help you stand out with customers and encourage repeat business.

Know your technology. With technology innovations coming out every day, it’s almost impossible to stay on top of it all. Regardless, do your best to be an expert in your particular area of interest. Is most of your work focused on mobile solutions? Make sure that you stay current with the latest trends and developments in the mobile space. The key is to complement your years of experience with the latest skills to help you navigate the ever-evolving IT terrain.

Set expectations. If a customer expects you to arrive at a specific time (and you have confirmed that you will) but then show up late, it’s not good. Of course, things happen that are out of our control (e.g., there’s an unexpected traffic jam, service event location details are inaccurate…etc…) but if the unexpected happens, then let your customer know as soon as possible. This will not only help prepare your customer accordingly, but also will demonstrate that you are proactively managing the situation.

Be a strong communicator. The ability to manage multiple service events and allocate resources, all while juggling a variety of customer requests requires strong communication skills. While it’s important to be able to effectively communicate what you want to say, it’s also about being a good listener, observer and being willing to ask questions.

Stay positive. No one likes to work with someone who views life with a “glass is half empty” mentality. Instead of focusing on what’s going on with the economy, direct your attention to where you see opportunities and go after them. Are networking skills in hot demand? Make sure you have them and indicate it in your service profile. Are you losing time between service events because you are getting bogged down with important, yet inefficient, administrative tasks? Use a mobile app to help you streamline processes so you can stay productive.

Love what you do. Life as a service technician involves dealing with a wide variety of tasks and challenges every day. It’s important to have the motivation and persistence to keep going even when things get complicated or when problems arise at a job site. If you don’t, customers can pick up on your lack of enthusiasm and choose not to work with you again. If you really care about your work and consistently strive to do your best, you are often called upon for repeat work.

Are these soft skills that you practice on a regular basis? Is there a skill that you would add to the list?

Over the past couple of weeks there have been some great debates regarding iOS6, Android, and even Windows Phone 8 (sorry Blackberry) among OnForce Pros on our LinkedIn forum (if you are an OnForce Pro you should sign up).  I thought it would be worth summarizing some of the thoughts as well as sharing my own experience and perspective as a way to broaden the debate.

Overall, Pros seem neutral to negative about the new OS and neutral to positive about the iPhone 5.  Some highlights/problems cited from the discussion regarding iOS6:

• iOS 6 is killing battery life!  Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’s of ZD Net gives his view.
• Passbook seems almost non-functional.  Bev Robb said: “[iPhone 4] It was a train wreck with the Passbook”  Tuaw’s overview of the problem
• Several Pros are choosing to wait to upgrade until there is more stability
• Some reports of wifi connection challenges – ZD Net’s view here
• Split perspectives on Maps.  Here’s Tim Cook’s letter about it.
• Some installation problems
• Some Pros having great experiences and problem free

As for me, I’m still using my iPhone 4 on iOS6, although I’m about to switch to my Galaxy SII for a while.  Have to say that I’m still not clear about whether iOS 6 is an upgrade.  I like the VIPs in mail, but it seems like battery life is reduced.  However, either I am getting used to it or it’s getting better for some hard to understand reason  Initially I felt that I could watch the battery drain (and others have said the same), but now I’m not sure if it’s different from when I was on iOS5.

Also, can’t tell for sure, but it seems to lose wifi connection periodically.  It recovers quickly, but I don’t remember this before iOS 6.  Maps – I haven’t had a problem but I haven’t used it much.  In the end, I think that iOS 6 has pushed my iPhone 4 one notch closer to obsolescence.  I’m not unhappy, but I’m not impressed either.

Yesterday, in a conversation with my neighbor I got the best endorsement for iPhone that I could have.  My neighbor is excited about his Samsung Galaxy Nexus SIII (Could they make their phone names any longer?) and was telling me he thought that this was Apple’s last big release.  I was agreeing with him that it might be true although we had different reasons.  His reasoning was that his SIII was so much faster and far ahead and Apple just wasn’t keeping up.  I was a bit skeptical as he quoted processor speeds and mentioned that I hadn’t seen that the faster processors lead to consistently improved performance… and he proceeded to demo his phone and watch it freeze for a few seconds while scrolling and then come back… then freeze again.  We proceeded to test who could do basic tasks faster – like finding a phone number.  The iPhone was much faster.  This is the not so well kept secret of why Apple continues to do so well.  The phones just work and work well.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time tuning and managing settings like my neighbor does on Android.  This conversation really drove home a point though – the specs do matter to buyers.  As consumers we often buy on specs – more is better.

I’m no Apple fan boy.  I love the competition and I’m really hoping that Microsoft will get back into the game with their innovative approach with Windows Phone 8.  As for Apple, I’m watching the problems stack up with this latest release and I have real concerns that they erode Apple’s key competitive strength – the phones just work.  In particular, the problems with Maps are hard for me to understand.  At first, I thought that people were over-reacting to a few small issues, but it seems fairly wide-spread.  How does Apple – with all their focus on customer experience and quality – let this happen?  Is it indicative of greater problems as the company scales or problems stemming from the loss of Steve Jobs?  Stack this one with all the other reported issues and I get worried about their future.  If Apple doesn’t deliver the best quality and best experience, what are they?  It’s still early and there’s a lot of noise about the problems that makes it hard to tell how serious they really are.  When the dust settles we’ll have a better picture.

Lastly, in our Mobile Perspectives Study (pre-iOS6/iPhone 5) iOS users had a Net Promoter Score of 69 while Android users were at 27.  Further, iOS was 10 or more points higher in satisfaction when it came to performing 10 of 11 key tasks with the phone (like email, phone calls, voice mail, video, etc).  The only category where Android scored better was in Maps/Directions which makes sense given that Android has had turn by turn navigation.  It will be very interesting to see how the scores shift in the next survey.

What has been your experience?

Guest Blog: Scott Epple, OnForce Product Manager

As many of you may know, we released our first Android beta app in February to a small group of OnForce Pros, and have been steadily iterating on the product and growing our beta group in the months since. Today, we’re pleased to announce the release of version one of the OnForce mobile app for Android smartphones to the Google Play store. If you’re in a hurry, you can grab the app here. If you have a minute to stick around though, I’d like to share a few of the learnings we’ve picked up along the way.

Android’s a jungle

We always knew our OnForce Pro community was a diverse crowd, now we know their choice in smartphones is just as varied. During the beta, the OnForce app was installed on 144 distinct devices running on 23 distinct flavors of the Android OS, not one of which holds more than 8% usage share among Pros. When people talk about fragmentation, this is what they mean. Developing for such a wide array of devices makes for an interesting challenge, but one that we know will be worth it as we expect the app to reach about two-thirds of our Pro base that use Android devices.

User feedback is invaluable

In the past four months, we’ve grown our beta group from a small handful to more than 500 Pros. One thing OnForce Pros have never been shy about is sharing their opinion – and we couldn’t be happier about that. It sounds obvious, but it bears repeating:  user feedback is critical to the process of building great products and services, and great companies. Our beta Pros have given us feedback in spades and our whole team was able to see it and read it in real time. Feedback sparked many conversations and debates internally, it helped us discover issues faster, and it gave us data to prioritize what we work on. And it’s not just a beta thing:  we’ll keep that line of communication open for all users of the mobile app. So, send us a thought, a question, a suggestion:  it all helps us improve.

Powerful tools lead to powerful results

We’ve written before about the impact of mobile technology on field services. The results continue to confirm our belief that Pros in the field are able to be more responsive, more efficient, and more reliable when equipped with the proper tools. We see evidence of this in our data and in comments from our beta Pros. Today’s announcement means that these capabilities will now be available to thousands more OnForce Pros. In fact, we expect that around 85% of our community will now carry the OnForce app on their Android or iOS device.  Our plan is to continue to arm this community with the features and information necessary to deliver great service efficiently.

Last, but certainly not least, the entire OnForce team would like to say a sincere thank you to all of the Pros who participated in the Android beta for your honest, thoughtful, and constructive feedback. We’re proud to have worked with you to get this app shipped, and we’re excited as ever for what’s to come!

Today the Wall Street Journal published a great article by Angus Loten about a critical issue in successfully building a small business – getting paid.  The article goes into great detail, but in a nut shell it says that companies are getting slower and slower when it comes to paying invoices.  Small businesses typically have to wait 45 days for payment and in the article, they give one example of a business that waited 404 days.  Over the years working at Intuit I spoke to thousands of small businesses and this was a frequent topic.  Very small businesses struggled to stay on top of paperwork and invoice promptly.  Once they did invoice, often companies wouldn’t pay on time and they had to remember to follow up (often several times) to get payment.

What the article doesn’t hit is that not only is slow payment a problem, bad debt is also a problem.  As a small company, you can expect that some percent of your invoices will never get paid.  This is a huge issue when you factor in the sunk cost in time, materials, payroll, and missed opportunities (customers you didn’t work for).

What really struck me when I read this article is that this issue never comes up when I talk to OnForce Pros… at least about the part of their business that they get from OnForce.  This is a problem that dates back to the invention of credit.  I love that the OnForce business model has solved this.  Here’s some data on how OnForce compares to the typical experience that the WSJ describes:

• Zero unpaid work orders! During the last few years of economic turmoil several of OnForce’s customers have gone out of business.  During that time not a single work order went unpaid due to lack of funds.
• Paid in 54 hours! Last check, on average, OnForce Pros get funds credited to their account 54 hours after they mark a job as complete.  That certainly beats 45 days or 404 days.
• 99.97% of work orders paid in 30 days! As of right now, we have about 1.2% of completed work orders that haven’t been paid within 5 days.  Looking out to 30 days, we have 0.035% of completed work orders not paid.  That’s less than 4 work orders for every 10,000 completed.  Each of these is actively monitored as we help the two parties work through the dispute.

We constantly hear stories in the press and on TV about small business lending and access to capital.  While this is a critical issue, imagine how much easier it would get if businesses weren’t investing funds up front to pay workers, buy materials, and do work, only to wait for weeks/months after completion to get the revenue associated with that outlay of capital.  Small business success will be critical to reviving our economy and cash flow is at the heart of how small businesses start, grow, and thrive.  I’m happy that we can help in the IT industry.

Related: ZDNet covers the OnForce index of economic confidence