A new report on adoption of AR in the field service industry shows enterprises are continuing to invest in immersive technology. The survey was conducted by Librestream, a global provider of augmented worker enterprise solutions, in conjunction with Worldwide Business Research (WBR). 

In its Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, Gartner reports that, “By 2025, over 50% of equipment manufacturers will offer outcomes-based service contracts that rely on access to digital twin data, up from less than 20% in 2019.”

The Librestream report shows similar trends. Here are our takeaways from the survey.

Respondents

The survey collected 100 responses. Respondents were from large enterprises—82% had over $1 billion in annual revenue—that do field service. 100% of respondents had some level of AR adoption within their organizations. 

Investment

Over the next 12 months, only 1% (so 1 enterprise) plans to reduce AR spending, only 5% plan for no investment, and 40% plan to keep AR spending level. 

Of the 54% of enterprises planning an increase in their AR investments in the next year, 82% plan at least a 20% increase. The companies investing in AR for field service are going all in. 

Business Benefits

What benefits do enterprises associate with AR? The winning response, with 45% answering in the affirmative, was that AR offers a selling point in 3rd party contractor negotiations. Other top benefits included:

• Improved technician productivity - 40%

• Improved service ROI/cost savings - 38%

• Improved worker safety - 37%

• Shorter training timelines for new technicians - 34%

Features and Capabilities

The capabilities respondents ranked as “very important” most often were digital work instructions and machine learning. The most important remote expert assistance features to respondents were:

• Analytics that incorporate usage statistics, AI, and machine learning algorithms

• Device agnostic software that offer a similar experience across all platforms

• Diagnostic tool support

• Offline features for areas with no internet connectivity

COVID-19

For respondents, AR plays a role in business continuity in the face of unpredictable market conditions (a la a global pandemic). 

While just 29% were concerned with using AR to help with safety and social distancing, the majority of respondents were more concerned with the bottom line:

• Reduction in overhead leading to protected margins on service - 53%

• Reducing the need to travel for delivering service - 56%

• Improved support of contractor and new technician onboarding - 59%

Challenges

Enterprise AR strategy presents plenty of challenges. For survey respondents, their biggest challenges were:

• Collecting and implementing technician feedback on solution performance

• Managing the scaling of technology after successful pilot

• Change management and training

What This Survey Tells Us

Jereme Pitts, COO of Librestream, said, “Sophisticated organizations are harnessing the full power of AR-powered remote assistance platforms...to improve productivity, enhance service ROI, and even create new revenue streams. These findings make it clear why these solutions need to be deployed on an enterprise-wide basis by executives, not on an ad-hoc basis."

While this survey looks specifically at AR in field service, it matches trends we’re seeing across industrial enterprises—a growing adoption of AR/VR/XR to improve safety, efficiency, and costs. 

Enterprises are continuing their investments in AR from afar.