Field operations glossary

The terms used every day in a field service operation, explained in two minutes and with what they mean in practice.

• Asset history

  The asset history is the complete record of everything done to a piece of equipment: interventions, parts replaced, observations and failures, in order and with dates. It is what turns a series of loose visits into usable information.

• BPM (Business Process Management)

  BPM is the discipline of modelling, automating and improving an organisation processes explicitly: what steps each process has, who performs each one, what rules trigger them and what evidence they leave behind.

• Citizen portal

  A citizen portal is the channel through which a person reports a problem to a public body and follows its resolution: a pothole, a street light, a complaint. It connects what the resident sees with the crew that will go and fix it.

• Compliance audit

  A compliance audit verifies that an operation is following the rules that bind it: a standard, a contract, an internal policy or a regulatory requirement. It reviews the whole process, not one specific object.

• Corrective maintenance

  Corrective maintenance is the intervention performed once the equipment has already failed. It is unavoidable — no operation eliminates it — but its share of the total says a good deal about how well planned asset management is.

• Cost per service

  Cost per service is how much each complete intervention costs: the person hour, the travel, the materials and the proportional share of overhead. It is the figure used to set a price and to compare efficiency between zones or between contracts.

• Coverage

  Coverage is the proportion of customers or points of sale in a territory that were actually visited in a period, out of the total that should have been visited. It measures whether the territory is being served in full or only in its most convenient parts.

• Digital signature

  The digital signature, in a field operation, is the acceptance the customer leaves on the device when the service is closed. It stays attached to the order along with the time and the location, and it replaces the paper delivery note that had to be carried back to the office.

• Dispatching

  Dispatching is the decision of who each work order is assigned to and when. It crosses four things: the technical skill required, each person actual availability, the distance to the site and the deadline committed to the customer.

• Equipment fleet

  The equipment fleet is the set of assets an operation maintains: machines, vehicles, lifts, facilities or equipment installed at the customer premises. Managing it means treating them as a population with a history and not as a list of goods.

• ERP integration

  ERP integration is the connection between the field system and the company administrative system, so that orders, customers, materials and costs travel between the two without anyone typing them in again.

• Field collections

  Field collections is the debt collection work done by visiting the debtor at their home or business, rather than by phone or digital channels. It is common in consumer finance, services and fast-moving consumer goods across the region.

• Field mobile app

  The field mobile app is the tool with which the person working away from the office receives their work, executes it and returns the evidence. It is where the record is created: if it is not entered there, the data does not exist anywhere else in the system.

• Field productivity

  Field productivity is how much effective work each person completes per shift: orders closed, visits made or services delivered per day. It is the indicator used to size a team and to compare performance between zones.

• Field sales force

  The field sales force is the team that visits customers at their place of business to sell, take orders, collect payments or sign them up. It differs from remote selling in that its unit of work is the visit and its main constraint is geography.

• Field Service Management (FSM)

  Field Service Management is the discipline — and the software category — concerned with planning, assigning, executing and verifying the work a company performs outside its own premises: maintenance, installations, inspections, deliveries and sales visits.

• First-time fix rate

  The first-time fix rate is the percentage of services resolved without having to go back. It is calculated by dividing the orders closed on the first intervention by the total orders in the period, and it is the indicator that best summarises the health of a field operation.

• Geofence

  A geofence is a virtual perimeter drawn on a map around a place: a customer, a site, a point of sale. The system detects when someone enters or leaves it, and uses that to log visits without anyone having to declare them by hand.

• Geomanagement

  Geomanagement is the management of operations in which geographic location is a first-order variable and not an incidental detail: where each person is, where each task happens and how much the trip between the two costs. The term was coined by GoDoWorks in 2015.

• Geoproductivity

  Geoproductivity is the ratio between the work actually completed and the total time the team spends on the street, travel included. It measures how much of the day turns into service delivered and how much goes into getting there. The term was coined by GoDoWorks.

• HL7

  HL7 is the international standard for exchanging clinical information between healthcare systems: records, orders, results and patient data. It lets a field system and a hospital system understand each other without custom development.

• Indicator dashboard

  An indicator dashboard is the view that summarises how the operation is doing: compliance, productivity, costs and alerts, updated with what gets recorded in the field. Its purpose is to make a decision possible without having to request a report.

• Inspection

  An inspection is the on-site verification that something meets a standard: a machine, an installation, a vehicle, a construction site or a store. It ends in a ruling — compliant, compliant with observations, or rejected — and in the evidence that backs it.

• Inspection checklist

  An inspection checklist is the structured form that guides a review: what has to be verified, in what order, which answers are valid and what evidence is required at each point. It turns a criterion into something repeatable across different people.

• ISO 55000

  ISO 55000 is the family of international standards on asset management. It defines how an organisation should plan, operate and improve the handling of its physical assets across their whole life cycle, and not just their maintenance.

• Last mile

  The last mile is the final stretch of the delivery: from the last distribution centre to the recipient door. It is the most expensive of the whole chain and the only one the customer sees, so it concentrates both the cost and the perception.

• Mean response time

  Mean response time is how long it takes, on average, between a service request coming in and someone arriving on site. It measures the operation ability to react, and it is the indicator the customer perceives first.

• Mean time to repair (MTTR)

  Mean time to repair is how long it takes, on average, to get a piece of equipment running again from the moment the fault is detected. It is known by its English acronym, MTTR, and it is the flip side of asset availability.

• No-code and low-code

  No-code and low-code are ways of building or modifying applications without writing code, or writing very little of it: flows, forms and rules are assembled with visual tools. In process management they let the change be made by whoever knows the business.

• Offline work

  Offline work is a field app ability to operate without internet: it receives the day orders in advance, lets them be completed and stores everything on the device until there is signal, and then syncs without the person having to do anything.

• On-shelf availability

  On-shelf availability is the percentage of times a product is actually available on the shelf when someone goes looking for it. It is abbreviated OSA and it is the positive measure of the same thing a stockout measures in negative.

• On-time delivery

  On-time delivery is the percentage of deliveries that arrive within the committed deadline. When the condition of also being complete and correct is added, it is known by its acronym OTIF: on time, in full.

• Photographic evidence

  Photographic evidence is the photo taken during an intervention that stays attached to the order with its time and location. It serves to prove what was done, what condition something was found in and what was left behind, without depending on anyone account.

• Planogram

  A planogram is the diagram that defines how products should be arranged on the shelf: what goes on each level, how many facings per product and in what order. It is the standard against which what is actually in the store gets compared.

• Point of sale (POS)

  The point of sale is the store where the product meets the shopper: a supermarket, a pharmacy, a kiosk, a shop. In trade marketing and retail it is the unit on which everything is planned, measured and compared.

• Point-of-sale audit

  A point-of-sale audit is the in-store verification that what was agreed is being complied with: product presence, price, display, promotional material and space. It is carried out with a checklist and documented with photos.

• POP material

  POP material — point of purchase — is all the promotional material placed at the point of sale to draw attention to a product: displays, signs, shelf strips, hanging signs, floor stands. It is produced by the brand and installed in the store.

• Predictive maintenance

  Predictive maintenance intervenes when the equipment data anticipates a failure, not when an interval expires. It relies on measurements — vibration, temperature, consumption, hours — and on the failure history of the same type of asset.

• Preventive maintenance

  Preventive maintenance is the scheduled intervention carried out before the equipment fails, on a fixed interval of time or usage. Its purpose is not to repair but to avoid the unplanned stoppage, which always costs more.

• Process mining

  Process mining is the technique of reconstructing how a process really works from the records systems leave behind: which steps were executed, in what order and how long they took. It shows the process as it happens, not as it is documented.

• Proof of delivery

  Proof of delivery is the record that a shipment reached its destination: who received it, when, where and in what condition. In its digital form it brings together signature, photo and location, and stays attached to the order there and then.

• Routing

  Routing is the decision of in what order and by which path the stops of a shift are visited. It takes into account distances, traffic, time windows, vehicle capacity and the priority of each stop, and its output is the day itinerary.

• Sell-in

  Sell-in is what the brand sells to the channel: what leaves the manufacturer or the distributor towards the point of sale. It is the sale that shows up in the brand invoicing, and not necessarily what the end consumer ended up buying.

• Sell-out

  Sell-out is what the point of sale sells to the end consumer: the real movement of the product off the shelf. It is true demand, unlike sell-in, which only measures what was placed into the channel.

• Service ticket

  A service ticket is the record of a request: someone reports a fault, a need or a complaint, and it is logged with its date, its source and its status. It is the entry point of the operation, before deciding who resolves it and when.

• Shelf share

  Shelf share is the proportion of display space a brand occupies relative to the total of its category in a store. It is measured in facings, in linear metres or as a percentage of shelf, and it is an indicator of competitive position.

• SLA (Service Level Agreement)

  An SLA is the service commitment agreed with a customer, expressed in measurable times: how fast you respond, how fast you resolve and with what availability. It usually carries a financial penalty attached when it is not met.

• Stockout

  A stockout is the absence of a product at the point of sale when the shopper goes looking for it. It is not the same as having no inventory: there can be stock in the store back room and the product still be out of stock on the shelf.

• Time window

  A time window is the range of time within which a delivery or a visit has to take place. It is set by the customer or by the contract, and it is the constraint that most shapes how an itinerary is built.

• Traceability

  Traceability is the ability to reconstruct what happened with an order, an asset or a product: who intervened, when, where and with what result. It is not about storing data, it is about being able to answer those four questions without depending on anyone memory.

• Trade marketing

  Trade marketing is the work of ensuring that what was agreed with a sales channel actually happens at the point of sale: that the product is there, that it is visible, at the agreed price and with the promotional material in place.

• Visit compliance

  Visit compliance is the percentage of planned visits that were actually carried out, on time and at the intended place. It is the basic measure of whether the work plan is being executed or merely written.

• Work order

  A work order is the digital document that assigns a specific task to someone in the field: what has to be done, where, with which materials, by when and with what evidence it has to come back. It is the smallest unit used to plan, track and invoice a field operation.