Hand in hand with economic recovery, business leaders will be looking to create new sources of value in their organisation through business change projects and programmes. But delivering change and a healthy return on investment is a notoriously difficult trick to pull off.

In 2007 Spectrum Consulting carried out a survey of the UK field service industry highlighting the enormous amount of time spent by engineers on administration and paperwork. The survey also showed how much additional effort was spent in the back office handling the paper records created in the field.

For some years facilities maintenance and repair budgets have been under sustained downward pressure. Unsurprisingly the field service industry, which undertakes much of this work, is being asked to shoulder the burden and reduce prices.