4 Actions to Enable Gen AI Success in Field Services

Generative AI is redefining field services, but unlocking its true value requires strategic groundwork. Here are four essential steps to align your MSP relationship, maximize ROI, and minimize risk to enable Gen AI success in field services.

The rapid ascension of Generative AI tools in the marketplace has led many organizations to consider internal investments in AI to better capitalize on the automation, content generation, and data analysis capabilities of the tool. This has led to a “gold rush” of sorts in profit generation for IT hardware and software providers that offer Gen AI in their solutions.

However, one category of IT providers that has been slow to develop Gen AI offerings is Managed Services Providers (MSPs), despite there being a long list of areas where Gen AI has the potential to improve organizations’ relationships with these providers. These areas include streamlining of support, automation of processes, and enhancements to cybersecurity.

While still in the early stages, this vision is exemplified with many of the large MSPs making significant investments in AI. For example, Accenture, Cognizant, and Infosys have announced investments of $3B, $1B and $2B, respectively, into developing Gen AI solutions over the next three years.

Even with these investments, an interesting dynamic is at play unique to MSPs – there is still a general hesitancy in implementing Gen AI in MSP proposals as there are concerns about potential cannibalization of offerings and reduced revenue for MSPs.

Given this, it is still too early to say exactly how these investments in AI will impact clients, although one area of managed services that appears to benefit is field services. While MSPs are still in the early stages of developing specific tools to drive added revenue, there are several areas within field services that MSPs are focused on to drive value for clients, including Field Service Automation, ITSM Ticketing, and Remote Monitoring.

Before implementing a Gen AI solution related to field services with an MSP, you must do your due diligence to maximize your time and investments. Taking the four steps below prior to implementing a field services Gen AI solution will help you set up your organization for success.

Steps for Evaluating Gen AI in a Field Services Environment

1. Evaluate Current Field Services Landscape

The value you receive from a Gen AI solution will be dependent on the current landscape of your processes and field services vendor structure. If your vendor landscape is disjointed, or your relationship with your field services MSPs is not optimized, it will be challenging to realize the full value related to Gen AI.

Taking stock of all the tools that providers are investing in will help to determine where synergies are and how to address any current complexities in your field services environment. A better understanding of your current field services landscape and the tools offered by providers will drive the determination of where your teams’ energy will be best spent.

2. Understand Specific Areas of Impact

Understanding what areas of field services will benefit the most from Gen AI will ensure optimization of your MSP’s investments. For example, if you see a path to leveraging Gen AI to support your ITSM ticketing, you will want to ensure your MSP’s strategy for implementing Gen AI is aligned.

Every organization’s goals will be different, but below are some early areas of MSP focus:

• Automation of scheduling, dispatching, and route optimization
• Streamlining of ITSM ticketing and support
• Proactive support including remote monitoring and predictive maintenance for assets and facilities
• Loss prevention via incident management and risk mitigation

For existing relationships, we recommend having a conversation with your MSP once you identify what these key areas of focus are.

If you are running an RFP for a new MSP to support field services or any other Managed Service tower, it will be important to request information about each prospective MSP’s Gen AI strategy in your RFP documents.

3. Pressure Test Value/Cost Relationship

A major question facing MSPs regarding the rollout of Gen AI tools is how these tools can execute on one or both of the following: better business outcomes and reduction in costs.

Pressure testing how (or if) efficiency improvements will be passed on to organizations via fee reductions is a critical component to evaluate prior to moving forward with Gen AI for your field services support. Below are a few key questions to consider as you approach negotiations with the MSPs:

• Will there be any cost benefits directly passed on to your organization? Or will benefits be entirely operational?
  • It is still too early to see how MSPs will treat this – the best opportunity to maximize cost benefits driven by Gen AI is likely during RFP scenarios
• Will internal investments be required to achieve the desired outcomes?
  • Seek to understand what will be required of internal resources and their expected capabilities.
• How mature is the MSP’s strategy? Can you provide specific use-case examples?
  • Consider starting small at first to allow time to learn lessons.
• How explicit is the MSP in the timelines put together for implementation?
  • This can provide additional insight into the actual capabilities of the MSP in implementing a Gen AI solution for field services.

Asking these questions to your current or prospective MSP can help you to understand how value could be captured by Gen AI usage.

4. Determine Tools Leveraged by MSP

To ensure you are maximizing value from your MSP, it is critical to gather information around what tools the MSP is using to leverage Gen AI capabilities.

As an example, let’s say your organization sees a clear path to driving value by leveraging Gen AI with ITSM ticketing support. Your field services MSP agrees with your assessment, but all their use cases leverage ServiceNow while you use an in-house solution. This may (or may not) negatively impact the efficiencies gathered by Gen AI and is important to understand prior to making any significant investments in AI with an MSP.

A similar analysis should be conducted in RFP scenarios as well, with IT weighing the benefits of using like-for-like tools with the MSP. This review should include an evaluation of how well the MSPs tool integrates with existing systems, a close inspection of data usage rights, and security measures.

Conducting this analysis will ensure you are setting your business up for success when it comes time to implement Gen AI in your field services environment.

The Bottom Line

Leveraging Gen AI to revolutionize the way organizations manage field services is a new frontier for organizations and MSPs alike, which presents both risk and opportunity. Executing the above key actions will be critical to minimizing your risk exposure to any investments made, while setting up your business to maximize generative AI value in managed services.

UpperEdge helps clients understand the risks and rewards of Gen AI product adoption to enable Gen AI success in field services. Explore our Managed Services Advisory to see how we can help.