The challenges facing field service organisations aren’t unique to one market. Whether it’s workforce shortages, ageing technology stacks, rising customer expectations or increasing cost pressures, organisations across the globe are trying to answer many of the same questions.
As Area Director for APAC at Totalmobile, Andrew Wiltshire has spent the last three years working with field service organisations across the region to help tackle these challenges head-on.
In his blog, he shares the trends shaping the industry, from data and AI to workforce pressures and the factors separating organisations that are adapting to change and those struggling to keep pace.
The four forces reshaping field service management in APAC
There are really four forces at play, and honestly, they’re pretty consistent across the markets we work in. The first is customer expectation. There’s been this “Uberisation” of the customer experience – people now expect a digital, seamless interaction with every organisation they deal with. That puts enormous pressure on businesses to modernise, and quickly.
At the same time, you’ve got a declining workforce. Fewer and fewer people have the skills to do the work, and yet the volume of work keeps growing. Think about asset maintenance; the sheer amount of work required is increasing every year, but each day, more skilled people retire or leave the industry. That mismatch creates a cost-to-serve problem that’s really hard to solve. You’ve got tighter labour markets, rising wages, and a growing backlog, all while customers are less willing to pay a premium in an increasingly complex market.
I see this pressure show up day-to-day in two ways. The first is purely economic – when skilled people are scarce, they cost more, your classic supply vs demand scenario. So wages inflate and margins compress; businesses are caught trying to do more with less.
The second is harder to quantify but it’s just as real. There’s pressure from every board, in every organisation we work with, to digitise and improve how they engage with clients. That expectation isn’t internal – it’s being pushed on them by their customers. And meeting those expectations requires investment in technology, people, and redesigning how the business operates. It all adds up, and businesses are struggling to keep pace with it.
Why I think this volatility is here to stay
With everything happening globally – geopolitical instability, oil prices, supply chain disruption – people often ask whether this is temporary or not. I think it’s the new reality. The old idea of stable, predictable operating conditions is gone. Margins are tighter than they’ve ever been. Regulation is heavier. Competition is fiercer. And on top of that, you’ve got the macroeconomic layer – inflation, conflict, rising energy prices. None of that is going away anytime soon.
The organisations that will survive and thrive are the ones that learn to adapt. Flexibility and the ability to pivot aren’t nice-to-haves anymore – they’re crucial survival skills.
The three issues that come up in every project
Some of the industries we focus on – utilities, local government, housing, health – have traditionally been slower to adopt technology than others, like banking or telco. In almost every project, three things come up without fail.
The first is change management. Their people are their biggest asset and their biggest retention challenge, so any technology change has to be handled carefully. The questions organisations are always asking are: Can my workforce actually sustain this level of change? Will they adopt new tools? How much disruption will this cause before we see the benefits?
The second is data. Without exception, every organisation we work with has a data problem. It’s not usually that there isn’t enough data – it’s fragmented, inconsistent, or sitting in silos. The ability to turn raw data into something decision-makers can actually act on is a real gap.
And the third is legacy IT. A lot of these businesses have been running on the same platforms for 15, 20 years – systems that have been endlessly customised to fit their workflows. And one day they wake up and realise those systems are holding them back. They can’t adapt fast enough to meet where the market’s going.
Why data keeps tripping organisations up
Every executive needs to make business decisions, and ideally those decisions are data-driven. But if the data you’re working from is inaccurate, or out of date, or you’ve got three different systems giving you three different answers, you’re making decisions in the dark. That’s a real risk.
The goal has to be a single source of truth. When you have that, decisions happen faster and with more confidence. But getting there requires consolidating your systems, cleaning up your data, and fundamentally changing how information flows through your organisation. It’s not a small thing.
Where AI is adding pressure – and where it isn’t
I think about this in two ways. The first is what all this AI and digital investment means for field service management. The amount of money going into data centres and infrastructure right now is extraordinary – it reminds me a bit of the dot-com era, in the late ’90s and early 2000s. But all that infrastructure has to be maintained. Someone has to service it, repair it and keep it running for decades. So if anything, the demand for skilled field service workers is increasing, not decreasing, as a result of AI.
The second angle is whether organisations in this space are rushing to AI themselves. And the honest answer is, it varies. Some sectors are further along – utilities and telco are ahead. Public sector organisations, like health and local government, tend to be further back.
Where organisations fall apart under cost and demand pressure
Usually in the same three places I keep coming back to: legacy technology that can’t flex with the business, data that’s fragmented and unreliable, and people – specifically the capacity and cost of the workforce.
What I see constantly is organisations that have grown organically, building on older systems, customising them over years and years. And eventually that creates real legacy debt. The platform then can’t support the changes the business needs to make. The market and customer expectations are shifting, but the technology just can’t keep up.
What separates organisations that keep pace from those that fall behind
There’s no avoiding the workforce challenge – it’s going to intensify, not ease. The demand will keep growing. The pool of skilled people will keep shrinking. So technology and process improvement aren’t optional anymore.
The organisations that invest in platforms that help their people do more – not work harder, but work smarter – are the ones that will pull ahead. We’re talking about finding 25 to 30% more capacity in an existing workforce just by giving them better tools, shifting from reactive firefighting to predictive, proactive maintenance. When you do that, assets last longer, fewer breakdowns occur, and your people have more time. That frees them up to take on more work, win more contracts, and improve the client experience. It all compounds.
Building a team from two people to fourteen
Honestly, I’m lucky. The people I have are genuinely self-motivated. They joined Totalmobile because they wanted to be part of building something meaningful. There’s something powerful about knowing you’re building from scratch.
Our customers are dealing with really complex, real-world problems. Helping them work through those – by understanding their needs, being honest with them about what’s possible, and staying with them through the difficult parts of a project – that’s meaningful work. I don’t think there’s another team in the industry doing a better job of it.
And truthfully? They motivate me more than I motivate them.
