Field Service and MRO Organizations Sharing Best Practices to Achieve Superior Asset Uptime

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - July 12, 2007) - Among field service and Maintenance and Repair Operations (MRO) organizations recently surveyed by the Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), companies that have implemented leading practices and technology solutions to support mobile field service, remote asset tracking and monitoring, business intelligence and analytics and optimized scheduling and dispatch have improved asset uptime to almost 90% overall. These Best-in-Class organizations are also showing increased daily technician "wrench time," an increase in work orders completed per week and an impressive 5 hour average mean time to repair, beating the industry average of nearly 13 hours.

The recently published study -- "Bridging the Gap - The Convergence of Asset Maintenance and Field Service" -- found that leading field service and MRO organizations are successfully implementing strategies to link traditional asset management practices to advanced, mobile-enabled field service optimization best practices. These organizations have begun to move from costly highly reactive break/fix maintenance and service operations to more efficient predictive maintenance approaches that yield higher asset uptime performance, fewer service disruptions and overall reduced asset maintenance costs.

"Meeting increasing demand for asset uptime and availability requires a change in thinking," said Micky Long, Research Director at the Aberdeen Group and co-author of the report. "By combining the best available technology and business practices around traditional asset management with the most effective resource optimization best practices pulled from field service, enterprises can effectively manage asset maintenance, regardless of who owns the asset being serviced."

Other Best-in-Class characteristics adopted in field service and asset maintenance include the following, according to the report:

--  63% use historical usage and requirement trends to plan/forecast and
    allocate resources
--  50% have standardized, enterprise-wide procedures for planning,
    forecasting and execution
--  58% have a senior executive overseeing maintenance or service
    operations
    

Long recommends that MRO and service organizations consider the following strategies to better position themselves as to meet customer service needs:

--  Establish process and discipline to measure key service performance
    metrics
--  Link asset management systems to mobile-enabled service technology
--  Share service information across the entire enterprise to drive
    decision-making
--  Begin migrating from reactive to proactive maintenance strategies
    

Nearly 200 companies participated in this quantitative study, including: Dow Corning, Medrad, Xerox, Pacific Gas and Electric, Johns Manville and Siemens Energy and Automation.

Underwriters of the "Bridging the Gap - The Convergence of Asset Maintenance and Field Service," are SeeControl, Inc., Syclo LLC, and Motorola, Inc.

To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4126

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

© 2007 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
260 Franklin Street
Boston, Massachusetts  02110-3112
Telephone: (617)723-7890
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com

Contact Information: Media Contact: Sumair Dutta Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5298 sumair.dutta@aberdeen.com