We recently hosted a webinar with our partner, Fluid Topics, to educate our joint potential users on the ways in which our combined solution can deliver efficiencies and cost savings to field service organizations.

 

Fluid Topics and Tridion are loved by field service-intensive organizations, spanning the manufacturing and retail sectors. Fluid Topics’ solution is deployed by some of the world’s largest enterprises, such as Siemens, Teradata, Liebherr Mining, Ceridian, and Thermo Fischer Scientific.

 

When we combine Tridion and Fluid Topics, we get a complete and cutting-edge end-to-end content solution that field service organizations today strive for. Tridion manages the product content and Fluid Topics connects all mobile workers to the technical and support content they need to get their job done right - no matter where they are.

 

The combined solution addresses the two most pressing challenges facing organizations today, ‘employee productivity’ and ‘customer satisfaction.’

 

Here we outline how Fluid Topics’ Dynamic Content Delivery supercharges Tridion-generated content, drastically improving the efficiency of field service teams.

Accessibility is the key to even the best technical documentation. Technically, access to product information relies on two fundamentals: secure remote access to all essential resources and the capability to work offline, disconnected from any network.

 

For field technicians, remote access to product information is not an option but a must. When working on the customer’s site, having access to the correct information leads to fewer truck rolls, fewer escalations to level 2 or 3 support and product experts, and more first-time fixes.

 

But this can be a significant technical challenge for IT teams to execute as most organizations produce and store their documentation on different systems and information is often scattered across multiple silos. Further, it is highly inefficient for an organization to grant each field personnel access to all these other systems individually. In particular, giving remote access beyond the internal network while managing diverse user groups and profiles. It requires high maintenance, involves high operation costs, and is error-prone. 

 

Fluid Topics’ modern Content Delivery Platform gathers all the content sources that a company owns, including that stored in Tridion, and provides a single knowledge hub with centralized user management, alongside access rights and security. A single admin console makes it easy to:

 

With this, IT teams get the means to guarantee information security and lower their admin efforts, while field service teams get remote access to their entire pool of resources.

 

Field technicians often find themselves in situations and locations where there is no/poor network. Elevator shafts, cellular dead spots, or overloaded networks can suddenly make the needed technical content or information inaccessible - interrupting or delaying the service call.

 

Documentation must be available offline directly on the technician’s device to serve field technicians effectively. Tridion integrates with Fluid Topics, which offers an 'Offline Mode' feature to deliver this critical need. When connected to a network, a technician can sync either specific content or all of their content on their device. While offline, they can seamlessly access and read the same technical content as if s/he were online. And when the technician gets internet connectivity back, they can sync their device once again and any changes in the meantime are updated instantly.

 

Offline availability of technical documentation means that the field technician can approach any service call or maintenance visit with full confidence, knowing that the content they need will always be there.

Uptime is crucial for most industries as any interruption in service has a substantial and long-lasting impact on customer satisfaction and profitability. Enterprises work hard to reduce delays and the time to search for correct product information while servicing an installation or support request.

 

Search capabilities associated with the technical documentation portal make all the difference in service performance. It must match the standards of the best web search engines we are accustomed to today. Tridion with Fluid Topics offers a semantic search that understands the request and its context. As a result, it returns the most relevant answers and documents to search queries. It filters out the noise otherwise produced by traditional 'keyword-based' search engines, keeping at bay thousands of similar documents on different products or versions - many of which are irrelevant.

 

Finding relevant answers from the technical documentation ensures a better first-time fix rate and a faster service. It delivers tangible results: such as a significant reduction in search time after switching to Fluid Topics’ solution. Search results enormously benefit from Tridion Docs’ structured content enriched with metadata. 

 

Further, many enterprises have cut search times to zero with Dynamic Content Delivery. By adding QR codes directly onto machines or equipment, technicians get immediate access to the correct product information, fit for purpose, exactly matching the installation requiring service.

Field technicians rely on more than just descriptions and written processes to get the job done right. Graphs, 2D and 3D images, or even videos are valuable resources to support them. They're completely useless, however, if they're not correctly rendered in the field. Whether on a simple smartphone, a tablet, or a rugged field laptop, the technical documentation must be readable on any mobile device. 

 

Technical documentation teams often struggle to anticipate such rendering requirements and user experiences with several screens and devices available worldwide. However, Dynamic Content Delivery technologies overcome this challenge. Fluid Topics is natively designed for a responsive mobile user experience and removes the burden of rethinking and reformatting content for every device. The application can deliver and display all technical content irrespective of the format or the screen the technician is using.

 

Seamless rendering of all formats on mobile devices dramatically improves the usability of product content in the field. It helps ensure the correct procedure is being used during installation, maintenance, and repair services.