Number of Devices set to reach 2.2 million by 2023.

According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the market for lone worker protection solutions and services in Europe and North America is forecasted to grow from € 154 million in 2019, to reach € 284 million in 2023.

The number of users of dedicated lone worker safety devices based on GPS and cellular technology on the European market is estimated to grow from 645,000 users in 2019 to reach 1.1 million users at the end of 2023. In North America, the number of such users is estimated to grow from 205,000 in 2019, to reach 380,000 at the end of 2023. In Europe, app-based solutions are estimated to account for around 25 percent of all solutions, while in North America more than 40 percent of the solutions are based on apps for smartphones and tablets. In both regions, app-based solutions are forecasted to account for an increasing share of lone worker safety solutions in the coming years.

The lone worker safety market is led by a handful of specialist companies based in the UK and Canada, where legislation specifically addressing the safety of lone workers has fostered growth. SoloProtect and Send For Help Group have grown to become two of the world’s largest providers of lone worker safety solutions and services. Send For Help Group mainly serves the UK market and operates under the three subsidiaries Peoplesafe, Skyguard and Guardian24. SoloProtect is active in the US, Canada and other parts of Europe in addition to its main UK market. Both SoloProtect and Send For Help Group, also operate their own alarm receiving centre (ARC).

Additional companies with notable market shares in the UK include Lone Worker Solutions, Reliance High-Tech, Orbis Protect and Safe Apps. In Canada, the main providers of safety devices and services for lone workers are Blackline Safety, Tsunami Solutions, Roadpost and Aware360. Blackline Safety is known for developing technologically advanced safety devices for lone workers using both cellular and satellite communications technology.


The market drivers for lone worker safety solutions includes occupational safety regulations, increasing employee insurance costs and higher awareness of risks associated with lone working. The number of individuals working alone is also expected to grow as businesses strive for increased efficiency. A job previously performed by two persons or more is now being done by a single worker. “Traditionally, lone workers exposed to the highest social or environmental risks have been found in industries such as security services, social care, field services and in heavy industries such as oil & gas and construction” says Martin Backman, IoT Analyst at Berg Insight. He adds that companies in other industries are now also starting to see the benefits of these services. “There is now an increasing demand for lone worker safety services from workers in retail, financial services, education and more, which fuels market growth”, concludes Mr. Backman.  

Understanding the various ways in which your customers may perceive value from your services is crucial if you are to be able to effectively sell preventative maintenance based service solutions to them, writes Coen Jeukens...

Selling preventive maintenance is not what it used to be. In the old days a manufacturer could use its expert position to prescribe a maintenance scheme. Today, a combination of emerging technologies and pressure from buyers to do it cheaper/ smarter warrant a revisiting of the value proposition of preventive maintenance.

PM = Periodical Maintenance

As acronym we use PM. When talking we utter the words preventive maintenance. But what do we really mean?

• Planned Maintenance
• Periodical Maintenance
• Predictive Maintenance
• Prescriptive Maintenance

Analysing a lot of service contracts offered by OEMs we still see most of the maintenance is periodical or counter based. Just like the maintenance interval for your car; a PM each year or at 15,000 km.

All those periodical or counter based maintenance jobs are good service revenue for your service organisations But what happens when customers start challenging you? What if the customer has access to knowledge that amends or contradicts the engineering assumptions that led to the definition of your current maintenance intervals?

Buyers seek to reduce maintenance cost

In a world where people are more vocal, we see customers expecting things to work and buyers seeking to reduce maintenance cost. These expectations impact the way we sell service contracts.

Selling is more straight forward when you can see a direct relationship between the pain and the gain. Such a link is obvious for installation and break-fix activities. But it is less apparent for preventive maintenance. Try to picture buyers asking these questions:

• What does PM prevent and what is the risk that remains?
• What is the rationale of the current maintenance interval?
• Nothing happened last year. What will happen if we skip or delay a PM?
• Can you dissect the PM job in activities (show me what you do) and is it really necessary to have all those activities done by an experienced/ expensive technician as yours?
• Can we do pieces of the PM job ourselves?

You get the gist of the conversation and know where it is leading less cost for your customer at the expense of less PM revenue for your service organisation.

What complicates the selling of service, is that in most scenarios the buyer and the customer/ user are not the same person. You may convince the user of a piece of equipment to do preventive maintenance, the buyer on the other hand has a different set of objectives. Most likely the buyer will push you on a path towards commoditising and cannibalising your PM services. All in order to reduce cost.

Rediscovering value

To stay ahead of the game let’s dissect PM along the lines of value creation for the customer. High level you can split a PM into three pieces:

1. The execution of the maintenance activities
2. The reporting on those activities
3. The communication and interpretation of the results

Ask your customers to rate the value of each of those pieces. It’s probable that you will find that the business value of PM to a lesser extent is in the execution and more in the reporting and communication.

Maybe you pride yourself in your uniqueness of execution, whereas the customer might perceive it as a commodity. If also reporting and communication are on par, you may face price erosion.

If your customer needs the PM report for compliance or insurance purposes, the value of the report increases. When you consider that PM is often a play of risk and liability, you can price the value of your brand.

Example: It does make a difference to an insurer if a yearly PM/ inspection is performed by a triple A company or a middle of the road company. Communication value comes into play when your customer expects you to be a partner rather than a supplier.

• Supplier – “just send me the PM report, I’ll read and interpret it myself. When I need assistance, I’ll contact you.”
• Partner – “help me interpret the findings and consequences of the PM. How does this impact my business?”.

In the latter situation you can monetise the communication beyond the effort of having a conversation for a couple of hours. PM can thus elevate from an obligatory periodical execution to an instrument of customer satisfaction and cross- and upselling.

Repackaging the preventive maintenance offering

In order to retain and expand your PM revenue stream in a context where the buyers move to reduce their spend, do go in discovery mode and (re)define preventive maintenance.

PM is not a singular black box once defined by somebody in engineering with a product focus. Modern PM is a menu of choices (and consequences) for your buyer based on the usage profile of the product, budget and risk.

Route-planner start-up sees strong initial investment.

OptimoRoute, the route planner tech startup founded by former Yelp and Google engineers, announced it has raised a $6.5-million Series A round, led by Prelude Ventures. Participating investors include Congruent Ventures and Michael Stoppelman, former SVP of Engineering of Yelp and investor.

OptimoRoute helps companies of all sizes manage their mobile workforces, ranging from delivery to technicians. OptimoRoute’s industry-first platform includes system planning live dispatch, an easy-to-use mobile app for drivers and real-time order tracking for end customers. Users begin to see 10-30% year-over-year growth after introducing the system, while employees get more done in a day while also empowering them to do their jobs better and faster. 

Tackling the underlying 90-year-old “traveling salesperson problem” is one of the most intensely studied problems in optimization, and breakthroughs at OptimoRoute enable it to solve problems that are considered extremely difficult even for academic research engines. OptimoRoute is the first company to offer comprehensive pickup and delivery planning, up to a month in advance.  

Offering a fast user-friendly web interface and a simple pricing model, OptimoRoute has over 800 clients, and is used by everyone from large energy companies to small businesses. While 90% of customers are in the U.S., OptimoRoute is used in over 20 countries globally. Clients include Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline with 300 maintenance technicians; Telgian, which uses OptimoRoute to efficiently plan thousands of fire-safety inspections across U.S. each month, increasing the number of inspections by 70% while keeping the number of technicians the same; and Hardies, a Texas-based grocery delivery company using OptimoRoute, which is now delivering 14% more deliveries without increasing fleet size or working hours, but decreasing mileage by 20%.

“Prelude is excited to help OptimoRoute expand its reach and further develop its offerings for a multitude of mobile workforces,” said Victoria Beasley, principal, Prelude Ventures. “We strongly believe that OptimoRoute is set to have a huge impact on the route optimization market, saving time, money and resources, while also reducing carbon footprint, for their many diverse clients.”

OptimoRoute has spent over 5 years on in-house R&D developing algorithms to help create and organize schedules, while optimizing routes. Everything from the road network and travel times, to how much room is left in the van, to hourly wages, contractor costs, working hours and skills are taken into account to produce routes and schedules that get the largest amount of work done, while keeping driving and waiting times down.

“We are thrilled to be working closely with Prelude Ventures and Congruent Ventures to help us grow and meet demand,” said Marin Šarić, co-founder and CEO of OptimoRoute. “Every business with employees in the field, whether it's drivers doing deliveries or techs doing jobs faces a complex task of deciding who gets to go where, at what time and in what order.”

Šarić added, “Small business owners end up spending a significant part of their working hours organizing and reorganizing people, sometimes many hours per day. In large companies, planning groups and departments are formed with a primary goal of creating a schedule, a process that can take weeks. With OptimoRoute, the planning processes are cut down from hours to minutes every day.”

OptimoRoute's international team of experts and engineers bring decades of experience from Google, Yelp and Facebook. They have won awards at international programming competitions, such as the International Olympiad in Informatics and the International Collegiate Programming Contest, and have published machine learning and information retrieval research in leading publications.

The system is simple and easy to use. Orders are entered or imported to OptimoRoute. Based on the entered constraints like travel durations, driver work times, delivery/service time windows, vehicle load capacity, driver skills and vehicle features the system proposes efficient routes and stop sequences. Users can manually change the routes and the platform allows for 5-week advanced weekly planning, optimal dynamic re-planning and the ability to do multi-day routing of personnel across multiple states with overnight stays. 

Paul Joesbury, Commercial Operations Director at Homeserve discusses the pitfalls and victories 'Uberizing' can bring to your firm.

Paul Joesbury joins the pod again this time discussing the Uberization of service and how him and his team at Homeserve are implementing it into the service offering.

Listen here to Paul's last visit to the podcast when he suggested tech will eventually supersede the human in service and to take this up with him or to discuss any of the points he raised you can connect with him on LinkedIn here.

Sigfox operator WND UK exceeds 90% coverage for secure sensor data network.

WND UK, the UK’s Sigfox Network Operator, has deployed the UK’s first wireless public network for secure sensor data, achieving over 90% population coverage in just 18 months.

The network uses Sigfox, a proven, low-power wide area network (LPWAN) technology, which is purpose built to provide low-cost connectivity and enable the use of cost-efficient silicon modules.

Sigfox is the world’s first dedicated low-power wide-area communications service for the Internet of Things (IoT). Harnessing ultra-narrow band technology, Sigfox provides basic connectivity to devices that do not require high throughput. This approach is ideally suited to the vast majority of IoT devices as it requires very little power – enabling devices to run for years on a single battery.

“Our Sigfox data sensor network is fully operational today,” said Tim Harris, chief executive, WND UK. “We now have over 130 channel partners and the list is growing by the day. These companies are using the network for real-world commercial applications – from metering to flood detection to legionella monitoring.”

“Sigfox has growing momentum worldwide,” said Luke Thomas from EBI, a WND UK Channel Partner. “If you want to deploy an IoT application, Sigfox is the logical choice. The other technologies we explored simply did not come close. WND UK’s network rollout has been extremely impressive. The Sigfox network is reliable and the technology is market leading. With thousands of active devices performing above expectation, our IoT deployments have been a huge success and award winning.’’

“We have pioneered the development of AMR, or automated meter reading, using Sigfox,” said Ian Rose, professional services director at PassivSystems. “As part of an ongoing deployment programme with a major utility, we’ve already delivered 3,000-meter readers for district heating installations, enabling accurate billing for residents. With 17,000 district heating networks in the UK connected to nearly half a million properties, the market opportunity is substantial.

“Most retrofit AMR devices use mobile GSM networks but achieving reliable signal connections can be problematic. Heat meters are often tucked away, located in a basement or in housing blocks with poor signal coverage. Using Sigfox is cheaper than using GSM networks and we get a higher level of coverage that offers better penetration within buildings. In addition to the improved reliability in signal for accurate billing, we can also collect data on the flow and return temperatures within a property to optimise performance of the heating system.”

“We’re continuing to strengthen the network by working with our customers to achieve deep in-building coverage where it’s required,” continued Tim Harris. “We will also be installing a further 500 repeaters during 2020, which will further enhance our coverage. The range of IoT applications is set for explosive growth and Sigfox is the natural, low-risk enabling technology.”

Zack Bergreen, Astea’s outgoing CEO, has nearly 40 years in the service sector. As the firm finally confirms its merger with IFS, Mark Glover speaks to IFS’s Marne Martin to discuss the dynamics of the transition.

Marne Martin is telling me when she first met Astea’s Zack Bergreen. “I’ve known him since 2013,” she recalls “when I tried to convince him to merge with the company that I worked for at the time.”

Of course, Martin bats in IFS colours these days, but seven years on she is finally overseeing the acquisition of Bergreen’s Astea, a deal confirmed in December which saw Bergreen step aside as CEO, allowing Martin to assume the position during the period of integration, absorbing the task into her current mantle as President of IFS’s Service Management Business Unit with overall responsibility for the merger. But as is the case for any transition, both parties need to work together. How will the pair make this handover work?

“Zack and I have a good relationship,” Martin explains. “He’s not involved in the day-to-day post the transaction, but absolutely is involved in the customer transitions and has been very supportive. For example, he and I together will go to Japan in early February.”

As I write, both may well be in the Far East, smoothing relationships in a market foreign to IFS’s strategy. That Bergreen curated business in such unorthodox regions at the time is testament to the customer focus that Astea created and as Martin alludes to, this will be an important factor going forward given IFS’s larger global presence.   

“Astea has a wonderful customer base,” she explains. “Customers reach out to him and that’s been a great conduit in the early days because Zack and I can compare notes around customers. Hopefully they’re hearing the messages that we’re investing even more in them!”

Martin of course is no stranger to such business transitions. The Astea deal will be her second go-private to add to her two previous IPOs. “An even-steven,” she says, laughing.  I quote from an old press release where she is referred to as an “industry veteran”, a term that in the UK at least, evokes an individual on the cusp of retirement, but one full of experience and knowledge.

“Although I’m not as much an industry veteran as Zack,” she retorts, musing over the phone. “He actually founded Astea not long after I was born.”

Zack Bergreen, one could argue, is a genuine veteran of the service sector, bringing Astea to market in 1979, a digitally baron time when the first clunky and commercially available mobile phone would not appear for five years and Tim-Berners Lee, the man credited with the internet, was ten years away from presenting his idea.

“With Workwave, I did need to bring that company into a place where it was part of IFS and part of our strategy and really rationalise how it all fits together..."

Since then, before IFS’s acquisition, Bergreen had built the company into one of the leaders in global service management software. It’s meant, according to some analysts, the firm has been ripe for takeover for some time. “Astea has been on the list of potential acquires for as long as many of the market analysts can remember,” says Bill Pollock, “It is not a surprise that it has finally been acquired – the real surprise is that it took so long.”

Despite the delay though in Astea being acquired, Martin remains on-brief with IFS’s CEO Darren Roos, who tasked her on arrival to create and grow the Service Management Business Unit. With the integration of Astea, the successful go-to-market implementation of WorkWave, and strong organic growth of the products acquired previously by IFS, Martin is on track.

Skilfully, Martin recruited Dave Giannetto to take over the day-to-day as Workwave’s CEO, him being promoted approximately a week before the Astea deal was closed out.  Having worked alongside Giannetto for eight months leading up to his appointment, Martin felt confident handing over the reins.

“With Workwave, I did need to bring that company into a place where it was part of IFS and part of our strategy and really rationalise how it all fits together,” Martin recalls, “but it was also a talent expansion strategy, so with Darren’s support, I recruited in Dave and I was able to transition these CEO duties to him.”

However, she was quick to credit the team around her and the recruitment of those bought in for the fantastic growth IFS is experiencing in the Service Management Business Unit and with the Astea transition. This included Simon Niesler who joined in December as CRO, laying a foundation Martin says, to sustain their rate of growth – the division’s bookings growth was over 100 per cent in 2019 – and successfully absorb Astea. “It was absolutely time to bring in a CRO, and with again Darren’s support, we were able to bring in another very strong talent,” she says. “I'm thrilled, as it enables us to keep scaling and gives me the confidence we really have someone who is best in class in the role.”

Through Q1 at least, IFS will retain the knowledge of another class act in Bergreen, who has an advisory role as a sort of relay between Astea’s customer-base and its integration with IFS. Officially, he will take on the role of Senior Advisor of IFS’s Group Management and be an influential voice in the Service Management Advisory Board.

Come Q2, we will know more about the success of the transaction. Given Martin’s track record however, don’t be surprised, if there were any cynical Astea customers, our bet is that they will be more than appeased with the engagement and customer focus.

Enjoyed this article? You can read more analysis and news from Marne and the IFS team by clicking here 

Firm says enhanced customer-focus contributed to strong figures.

IFS has announced its financial results for the full year ended December 31, 2019, revealing a 51 per cent business growth in its Field Service Management business.

“I am incredibly proud to lead the team that has delivered this impressive performance. Our employees clearly understand our focus, feel ownership of our progress, and stand united in a passion for our customers. Our differentiator is not that we talk about customer centricity, but that we commit to delivering customer value.” IFS Chief Executive Officer Darren Roos said. “The investments made last year into our product and partner enablement will benefit the company in the long-term and will have a positive impact for our customers – and our own business – in 2020 and beyond.”

The year the firm added notable brands to its roster across the five focus industries it serves, including SPIE, Rolls-Royce, Tietex, Revima, Resolute Mining, Primo and Cryostar. It also joined with PTC for product innovation, Acumatica for channel innovation and, in December, completed the acquisition of Astea International.

In the Big Discussion we bring together a panel of industry experts and focus on one key topic within the field service sector. In the first of a four part series, we turn our attention to AI where our panel includes FieldAware's Mark Tatarsky and ServiceMax's Amit Jain.

Just how important is ArtificIal intelligence going to be in the future of field service?

Mark Tatarsky, SVP Marketing, FieldAware

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already working its way into many different aspects of field service delivery today.

However, its prevalence and impact will be more influential for some field service organizations than others. It really depends on the industry served; the type of service provided as well as the complexity of the equipment serviced. AI can impact all field service delivery to varying levels.

In many instances, AI can be applied behind the scenes to improve efficiency without the end-user, even knowing it is at work.

An example of behind the scenes activity is when AI improves the optimization engine results for scheduling and routing. Even basic consumer-oriented routing systems like WAZE or GoogleMaps use varying levels of AI to help select the most efficient route.

When field service organizations are servicing sophisticated equipment monitored via IoT connectivity, AI will be applied to the monitoring and deployment process to enable predictive maintenance and automated dispatch based on AI processes and equipment tolerance thresholds.

Amit Jain, Senior VP of Product, ServiceMax. 

Artificial Intelligence is going to play a significant role in many areas that are crucial to field service delivery today and moving forward—it is early stages now.  Much of the conversation in field service now is centred on two key aspects - how we drive efficiency and how we establish the 360-degree view of the customer. In each of these areas, data is an essential factor in terms of driving improvements - and having a view into asset service data is equally important.

Connected asset and service data as maintained in the field hold insights far beyond the service department, providing a better business lens for almost every other line of business. Within field service operations, a major component of any day-to-day business is the data that is used in the variety of operational processes. Field service engineers, dispatchers and managers rely on and collect valuable data direct from source and ensure its accuracy, whether that’s product status and performance, contracts, location or account details.

With the advent of predictive analytics and condition-based maintenance, this data, which can be curated and fed into an organization’s data system has the potential to provide accurate intelligence across the organization. As it gravitates towards the data lake, it can touch and enhance other data sources such as CRM, ERP, parts, logistics and supply chain, HR, compliance and even data sources such as traffic and weather forecasting. Essentially, field service and asset data gives all other data relevance and accuracy.

However, the sheer unprecedented volumes of data being generated today, which is set to continue to increase almost exponentially moving forwards, is simply too vast to be useful unless we implement Artificial Intelligence within FSM systems. This is also the case with interpreting IoT data, which is largely predicted to be the backbone of field service operations of the future, and is empowering field service organizations to move away from the traditional break/fix approach to much more effective and profitable advanced service models.

The second part of this Big Discussion will be published next week, when the pair are asked the difference between Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

The Field Service News editorial team offer analysis on the stories circling in the service sector...

As IFS finally completed its full acquisition of Astea, Mark Glover ponders the challenges ahead for Marne Martin, who is tasked with overseeing the transition...

It’s not new news, but IFS finally completing its acquisition of Astea, following the announcement the pair had signed a definitive agreement in October, meant a fresh press release pinging into Field Service News’ inbox confirming a deal that many had been predicting for a while. 

As is the form for acquisition announcements the release took a postive angle, explaining what benefits the merger will bring to IFS and its customer base. “With the acquisition of Astea, IFS has strengthened and deepened its ability to help customers innovate in field service and service management,” affirmed Nicole French, VP and Analyst at Constellation Research in a quote taken from the release. Delivering innovation to its customer base falls sqaurely on the shoulders of IFS’ Marne Martin, who is set to assume leadership of Astea, taking the reins from Zack Bergreen, who founded the company in 1979. 

In an interview with Martin, just after the confirmation announcement in December, I asked how the dynamic between the pair will operate through the transitionary period. However, in response she reveals the pair could have been working together seven years ago. “I’ve known him since 2013, when I tried to convince him to merge with ServicePower,” she recalls.

“Customers reach out to him [Bergreen] and that’s a great conduit because he and I can compare notes around customers.Hopefully they’re hearing hearing the messages that we’re trying to speak to them about.”

Martin is no stranger to acquisitions, being at the helm of ServicePower when it merged with IFS in 2017, but three years on and this time absorbing a company that has a dedicated, loyal and expectant customer-base, the task ahead could be one of her biggest challenges to-date.

The full interview with Marne Martin will be published Thursday 5 February.

... and Field Service News’ Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland, also reflects on what the big stories in the news are for him...

For me the most exciting story that leaps out of our news round-up this month is that Nokia are entering the race to solve the headaches of last mile delivery.

This story albeit just a tempting snippet and a glimpse of a potential solution will come as very welcome news to all field service providers as the challenges of inner-city congestion are just set to worsen as we enter the third decade of the twentieth century.

Not only does the introduction of a company with a history of pioneering innovation entering this arena to solve what I fear may be the biggest challenge of the coming years for field service companies bode well for overcoming this challenge. They are also looking to fix it with cute little delivery robots.

Finally, the year 2020 is living up to its billing of being ‘the future’. I might even get the personal jet pack I’ve been dreaming of since I was 11 at some point in the next few years as well!

In terms, of industry trends I think that the move by WebFleet to introduce a sustainability initiative is not only smart but also a likely sign of things to come. Indeed, I was discussing this exact topic with Rich Agostinelli’s the new CEO of ByBox recently (look out for that discussion in an upcoming edition of the Field Service Podcast) and I think we will see plenty of companies across the next year tapping into the ‘green dollar.’

As I mentioned to Rich, it may be that I am just a bit of a cynical old man, but I think the true driver behind much of the moves towards more sustainable operations will still inevitably be economic rather than some sudden shift in the corporate mindset to save the world.

However, given the current high focus on the well intentioned, but somewhat naive actions of the likes of Extinction Rebellion and their teen messiah Greta Thunberg, the societal pressure for businesses to at least be seen to be focussing on green issues are moving from huge to enormous. However, the fact is that solutions like ByBox’s overnight delivery services ultimately reduce costs and increase efficiency within a field service operation, whilst simultaneously reducing carbon emissions due to less idling.

So we get to improve our bottom line and save the planet from impending doom at the same time. Now that’s got to be classed as a win-win in anyone’s book?

The only question that remains is ‘will we be able to play snake on those cute little Nokia robots?