ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘asolvi’ CATEGORY

One of the largest suppliers of equipment and consumables for the dental industry is all pearly white smiles after deciding to swap its predominantly manual service operation for an automated one: Tesseract.

Wrights Dental supplies both NHS and private dentists with everything from syringe tips and toothbrushes to dentists’ chairs, digital imaging scanners and suction systems. Much of its business revolves around the sale and installation of equipment, but in the last five years, a shift has occurred. Mark Pitts, Technical Services Manager for Wrights, explains,

“Now, the ongoing service and maintenance side of things is just as important as sales. This is because the industry has changed. Dentists are open longer hours, which means more service and support is required. As a result, we’ve had to expand our service teams and increase their skill sets, flexibility and working hours.”

Till now, Wrights has got by with SAP for billing and invoicing, and Microsoft Outlook for diary management. “This was fine for a small service team,” says Mark. “But as soon as we began growing our teams to meet the increased demand, we realised we needed something more substantial.”

One of the big things for us was spare parts management. Tesseract gives everyone in the company full visibility on what we have and whereThe biggest problem with Wrights’ existing service management system has been its manual nature. A particular issue for Wrights was the movement of spare parts. As demand and the level of customer expectation grew, Wrights’ commitment to delivering the first-time fix became ever more important. There were instances when engineers would turn up on site without the parts they needed to complete the job, largely because tracking stock manually is arduous and prone to error.

This led Wrights to Tesseract, a comprehensive service management system from leading solutions provider Asolvi. Mark Pitts says, “We came across Tesseract on LinkedIn and it was obvious pretty quick that there were a lot of things it could do straight away. One of the big things for us was spare parts management. Tesseract gives everyone in the company full visibility on what we have and where. Everything is live on the system, including the full-service history of the site. It’ll help make sure all our engineers have the parts and information they need when they arrive, improving the likelihood of a first-time fix.”

Another big benefit for Wrights is Tesseract’s Remote Customer Access (RCA) tool. Instead of phoning a helpdesk, Wrights’ customers can report issues directly through the system.

“This saves our customers time,” says Mark. “It also stops the information from getting diluted before it gets to us. A customer can report the issue directly rather than passing it to a receptionist to make a phone call, which can lead to misinterpretation. Also, the improved accuracy of the information helps us work out which jobs are emergencies and which aren’t.”

In general, Wrights expects to offer a higher standard of customer service via the Tesseract system. The automation and optimisation of scheduling and stock management will ensure four things: right engineer, right area, right tools, right time. In addition, Tesseract will reduce the number of customer queries Wrights receives because RCA lets customers see live information about billing, outstanding jobs and the terms of their contracts.

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks exclusively to Dan Sewell, COO of Espresso Service about the improvements to their service delivery that they have seen come to the fore since the implementation of Tesseract Service Centre, an Asolvi product.

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Kris Oldland Talks exclusively to Dan Sewell, COO, Espresso Service about why he and his organisation identified the need for a dedicated field service management solution including why they felt it needed to be a cloud solution and the reason they opted for Tesseract Service Centre Tesseract an Asolvi product has had on his engineer and dispatchers...

See more from this interview where Sewell outlines the impact of implementing the solution has had on his engineers here

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Kris Oldland Talks exclusively to Dan Sewell, COO, Espresso Service about the impact installing a dedicated, cloud-based Field Service Management System Tesseract part of the Asolvi group has had on his engineer and dispatchers...

Find out why Evatic have rebranded to Asolvi here

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Evatic Group, the leading provider of service management software for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Europe, has been rebranded "Asolvi".

It's the latest development for a company that has been at the centre of some big changes over the past couple of years, most notably the acquisitions of Tesseract in the UK and WinServ in Sweden. Asolvi is now helping 800 customers across 30 countries to attain greater flexibility, scalability and profitability in their service operations.

Pål M. Rødseth, CEO of Asolvi, explains the reasoning behind the new name: "We wanted a name indicative of the fact that we don't just supply software. We solve problems. We find solutions to our clients' service management needs. We're a partner that helps you become more efficient." He adds, smiling, "And since we're a multilingual and multinational company, we also wanted something easy to pronounce in many languages!"

We wanted a name indicative of the fact that we don't just supply software. We solve problems. We find solutions to our clients' service management needs. We're a partner that helps you become more efficient.Asolvi will continue to offer service management solutions under the Evatic, Tesseract and WinServ brand names, but felt that the time was right to distinguish between the company and its products. "Our products have been in the marketplace for a long time and have established themselves as leading brands within their respective segments," says Rødseth. "Each product has its own distinct benefits and will continue to develop under the Asolvi umbrella."

Rødseth goes on to explain how he expects Asolvi's recent growth to bring some stability to the market. "Having acquired both Tesseract and WinServ in the last 18 months, we expect to continue the much-needed consolidation of service management software players in the SMB space in Europe. Being a larger entity gives us economy of scale to meet the future demands of modern service companies."

Asolvi is headquartered in Trondheim, Norway and has offices in the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, Holland and Singapore. It is a private company owned by the employees and Viking Venture. For more information, please visit www.asolvi.com.

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Outmoded, inflexible and server-based service management software can make it difficult for companies to grow. However, thanks to the fully automated, integrated and optimised cloud-based workflows facilitated by Tesseract, SCS Technologies Ltd has found scaling up a piece of cake.

SCS is a leading UK-based provider of technological solutions to hospitality, retail, utilities and telecommunications companies, along with local authorities and social housing organisations. Its solutions include TV systems from Samsung, Philips and LG, Wi-Fi, satellite services, TV distribution systems, digital signage, and security systems such as CCTV and access control. High-profile clients include BT, Next and Vodafone. It also provides and maintains the TV systems for every Travelodge in the UK, which amounts to approximately 40,000 rooms in over 540 hotels.

SCS has been using Tesseract’s field service management software for the past 18 years. At first it was used for call handling only, but has since grown into a cradle-to-grave system covering everything from contracts to scheduling to logistics and stock management.

Clearing space for a new meeting room

Tesseract has allowed SCS to go completely paperless. Job sheets no longer exist. Engineers use their smartphones to access job, site and contract information, input service reports, and get electronic signatures from customers to close down jobs. Parts are requested and tracked through the system, and invoices are sent automatically from the database to the customer, rather than being printed out and posted via Royal Mail. This saves time as well as paper. The days of looking after everything with six whiteboards on the office walls are a fading memory.

“Not only have we been able to drastically reduce paper, printing and postage costs,” says Mark Kenyon, Managing Director for SCS, “but we’ve also saved massive amounts of space. One of the rooms in our office used to be wall to wall with paperwork and filing cabinets. Now we use it as a meeting room.”

Scaling up with SaaS

For many years, SCS used an on-premise version of Tesseract’s software that the company purchased outright and hosted on its own server. A few years ago, SCS upgraded to Tesseract’s Service Centre 5.1 (SC5.1). This is a cloud-based version, hosted in-house by Tesseract and licensed on a subscription basis — better known as software as a service or SaaS.

SCS moved to SaaS for a number of reasons. First was the heavy IT burden that comes with on-premise software. Maintenance, fixes and updates aren’t instant. You either have to handle them yourself, or call your provider to assist you. It meant that SCS’s system didn’t move forwards at the same pace as Tesseract, because time and money sometimes inhibited the company from integrating the latest improvements.

With SaaS, all maintenance, fixes and updates are done in-house by Tesseract and distributed instantaneously to all users. It means that SCS is always up to date. And because all data is backed up centrally too, this saves SCS from having to back up its server in order to keep its data secure.

 

There’s also less risk with SaaS. Using on-premise software meant that if SCS’s server was damaged somehow, e.g. by fire, then the company wouldn’t be able to operate. Using Tesseract’s SaaS means that if something were to happen now, SCS’s teams could still access the system and work from home.

These benefits combined have allowed SCS to grow much faster than on-premise software allows. Mark Kenyon explains, “Tesseract has been key to our ability to expand our teams and acquire other companies. We purchased a local company in 2015, absorbed another in 2016, and took on staff from a company that had gone into liquidation later that same year — all made simpler and easier by the flexibility and scalability of Tesseract’s SaaS. Things are definitely better in the cloud.”

More visibility, more accuracy

SCS enjoys far greater visibility with Tesseract. The elimination of paper and centralisation of all its field service data means that everybody can see what’s happened or happening on a job. Service reports, invoices, purchase orders, parts requests and stock movements are all on the system for everyone to access in real time. This makes reporting and responding to customer queries faster, easier and more accurate, and eradicates any data gaps caused by the loss of paperwork.

It’s improved the accuracy of SCS’s invoices, too. Carol Newall, HR and Finance Manager for SCS, says, “In the past, the odd extra 10 minutes might not have been billed, and certain small replacement parts were sometimes missed. Now that the system automatically calculates timings and tracks every part, every opportunity for revenue is captured. Thanks to Tesseract, nothing gets missed.”

A roadmap for the future

SCS hasn’t managed to eliminate all manual processes from its service operation just yet. Quotes are still done manually, and there’s currently no way of checking which quote was accepted, apart from going back into emails and comparing figures. This makes it difficult for SCS to track its margins. As a result, Tesseract’s Quote Centre and Prospect Centre are part of SCS’s roadmap for the future.

Another module SCS will soon seek to implement is Tesseract’s Repair Centre. At first, SCS didn’t think it was needed. But since repairs are managed manually, the lack of visibility is fast becoming an area for improvement in SCS’s otherwise very efficient service chain. SCS is keen to implement Repair Centre so that everyone in the company can track the movements of faulty or damaged parts without having to trawl through the minutiae of a spreadsheet.

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Field Service News (commissioned by Tesseract)
Title: The Wind of Change: When and How to Implement your FSM System - A Guide to Change Management Best Practices

 

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Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Field Service Professional? Click here to apply for a complimentary industry subscription to Field Service News and get the resource "Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity" sent directly to your inbox now

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Synopsis:

Within the last decade we have seen field service shift from being a necessary evil, to a core differentiator and even in some instances, to ultimately becoming the primary revenue stream.

Whilst this shift may not be as dramatic for all companies, you can be sure that almost every company with a field service operation – including you and your peers, will be at least some way along this path. What is also certain is that as you make your way along this path, at some point you will need to take a look at your current field service processes and the technology you are using to support them. Indeed, technology continues to play an increasingly important role in field service.

Your existing field service management (FSM) solution is likely to be well embedded within your workflow already - but as tools like the Internet of Things and Augmented Reality drive concepts such as ‘connected field service’ from futuristic vision to genuine process, an upgrade of your FSM system is going to be unavoidable. The problem is that a FSM solution is of course mission critical and therefore any disruption caused when changing such an important system must be managed and minimised.

With this in mind this white paper explores how to identify key signs that it is time to upgrade your FSM system as well as examining some best-practice thinking on implementation and change management methodologies.

 

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Overview: 

The key topics discussed in this white paper include:

Knowing when to upgrade your FSM system:

Whilst knowing when it’s time to replace your FSM system is based on multiple factors unique to each organisation, there are a number of strong indicators you can monitor to help you make that call at the right time.

A selection of these include...

• Your Own Efficiency
• How does your tech investment compare to industry trends?
• Know your enemy
• Listen to your end-users
• Listen To Your Customers
• Regular reporting nightmares

Change Management Best Practice:

Let’s make no bones about it, a FSM system is mission critical. Whether you are implementing a system for the first time or switching from an older system to a modern equivalent, doing so is a significant change management project. If you are to minimise the negative impact of this program and reap the efficiency and productivity improvements (and see return on investment) as swiftly as possible, then getting that change management process right is very simply a must.

There will of course be different dynamics at play within every organisation, so a comprehensive and detailed plan, put together in a methodical and structured manner is imperative. However, there are certain factors that remain true in almost every change management scenario. Equally, there are widely adopted best practices that can be applied.

Also included in the white paper is a look some key considerations that sit at the heart of good change management:

Understand the task ahead

Change is hard, and without proper understanding of your goals and the challenges you face, successfully managing it can be at best a complicated and drawn out process and at worst an abject failure.

In fact, according to change management guru John Kotter, 70% of change management efforts fail and this is largely due to a lack of preparation, a lack of understanding of best practices or more often than not a combination of both. However, at the heart of every successful change management exercise there is one maxim that holds absolutely true. Change Management is always about people.

Engaging the Head and the Heart

For a change management program to be successful it is absolutely vital we acknowledge that change is about individuals, not organisations. Yes, change will be driven by organisational needs and requirements, but individuals will implement it - individuals will determine its success.

Given this notion, we must next consider how individuals will react to change. Successful change management is as much about feeling as it is about thinking. This is one of the key principals in the Kotter Change Management philosophy and is one that is widely accepted to be an important step on the change management journey.

Principals of Influence

Robert Cialdini’s six principals of influence are certainly also worth considering when planning your change management program and the white paper looks at each of these and how they relate to change management within a field service context. The Six Principals include:

• Reciprocity
• Commitment and consistency
• Social Proof
• Liking
• Authority
• Scarcity

The importance of the change agent:

The white paper explores what a ‘Change Agent’ is and why they are key to successful change management, is another important piece of the puzzle.

Gartner’s Elise Olding neatly sums up this approach stating, “Change resistance is a myth. Employees support enterprise goals when they understand what needs to be done. Change Agents put a face on change and leverage trusted informal leaders to create understanding among employees and influence organisational change”

Breaking down the barriers of resistance:

The goal of a successful change management program should not be to completely eradicate resistance to change - this is an impossible task that will take too much energy. Instead, focus on reducing the impact of resistance, and overcoming it as quickly as possible to move the change management project from concept to full adoption as swiftly as possible.

The true key to successful change management is minimising the impact of resistance in your workforce - and to achieve this we must understand the types of resistance we are likely to encounter.

Generally, these will come in three broad categories which hare explained within the white paper:

• I don’t get it
• I don’t trust you
• I don’t like it

Progressing through the adoption cycle:

Finally, the white paper explains why it is important to have an understanding of the various stages of adoption. In almost any organisation there are generally four groups of adopters that can be plotted on a standard Bell Curve.

Broadly speaking they should be categorised as follows:

• Early Adopters
• The Majority
• Laggards
• Naysayers

 

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Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Field Service Professional? Click here to apply for a complimentary industry subscription to Field Service News and get the resource "Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity" sent directly to your inbox now

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When Planned Lighting Maintenance (PLM) decided that its field service management system needed to be as smart as its lighting solutions, Tesseract came to light the way. Now Tesseract’s Service Centre 5.1 is brightening PLM’s days with super-fast scheduling and dispatch, instantaneous invoicing, and an end to coffee-stained job sheets.

A big change before a big birthday

Established in 1968, PLM is a family business that designs, installs and maintains lighting solutions for commercial premises and leading UK retailers. This year, finding itself approaching the big 50 in an increasingly service-oriented economy, PLM realised it was time for a change. Specifically, an overhaul of its long-winded, labour-intensive service management system.

The software PLM had before Tesseract was very limited in what it could do. Over the years PLM built an intranet to try and fill in the gaps, but there was no automation and everything took a lot of time.

Tracey Hughes, Business Support Services Director for PLM, says, “Our intranet reduced some of the data entry, but increased the checks we had to do. And it was slow, manual processes every step of the way. Dispatchers had to select an appropriate engineer for a job by remembering who was doing what, and which engineers were allocated to which postcode. Engineers would have to phone the office to let us know what stock they’d used, and to request more. And the whole system was heavily reliant on paper — handwritten job sheets from engineers that were sometimes unreadable or covered in coffee stains!”

 

These manual processes became increasingly onerous as PLM tried to keep up with the demands of the modern customer and stay profitable. It was losing revenue because of paperwork-related delays, and had to employ more people each time it took on a new contract. The trigger was losing confidence in its financial reporting. PLM’s admin teams would be gathering information from two, three or four different places — normally a slew of human error-prone Excel spreadsheets — and would have to decide which source was accurate. They eventually lost faith in what the data was telling them.

PLM decided it needed something with more automation, more accuracy and more efficiency — and far less reliance on paper.

The search for a new solution

To investigate options, PLM’s IT manager went to the annual Field Service Management Expo in London and met with five different software providers. These five were whittled down to three, one of which was Tesseract. PLM received a series of presentations about Service Centre 5.1 from Tesseract’s, which were attended by a team of eight from PLM, including several of its engineers.

Hughes explains, “We really liked Kevin. His presentations were simple and easy to follow and we were impressed by how quickly he understood our business.

We then met with one of Tesseract’s clients, Artic Building Services. We were completely bowled over by how well they were doing and how much they’d grown thanks to Tesseract. They were very, very enthusiastic and literally all of their issues and problems prior to implementation were gone. We felt like they were exactly the same as us, but five years on.”

Convinced, PLM took a phased approach to implementing the full suite of software that Tesseract offers, including Call Control, Customer Assets, Parts Centre, Invoice Centre, and Remote Engineer Access (REA).

More control, more visibility, more time to spare

Tesseract’s service management software has provided PLM with an end-to-end workflow that is automated, integrated and optimised. As soon as a call is logged, the system sources the contact information for that customer and tells you what you can and can’t do. Then the information is transmitted automatically to the phone of the engineer who is closest to the customer’s site.

With REA, engineers can log in remotely using their smartphones, input service reports directly onto the system, and obtain electronic sign-off from customers in order to close down jobs. Use and replenishment of stock is also managed directly through the Tesseract system.

 

Hughes explains, “With Tesseract, there’s far less admin and data entry and we’ve managed to reduce the number of staff doing admin from seven to four. We have much better visibility of our engineers and their workloads, and can see what’s been completed and billed and what hasn’t without having to make a ton of phone calls. This lets us answer customer queries faster and easier because we’re able to see exactly what stage a job is at.”

Hughes adds, “We also have much faster turnaround on our invoicing. On the old system, it could take up to ten days because we had to wait for paperwork to come in from our engineers. Now that all the information we need is right there on the system, same-day invoicing is the new normal.”

 

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In the first part of this feature, Tesseract’s Kevin McNally explored the importance of contract management and workforce scheduling within a field service management system. Now in the concluding part of this feature he looks at three other key elements of a modern FSM system...

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Want to know more? A white paper on this topic is available for Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you the white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!
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Mobile tools and communications: 

It is fair to say that the biggest revolution in field service has come from the rapid explosion in mobile computing power. Today’s smartphones are capable of greater computing tasks than even the laptops of just a few years back.

For the field service organisation this is fantastic as it puts information at the field service engineers finger tips, empowers them to spend far more time on maintenance and repair and far less on activities such as paper work and enables them to deliver a far more effective and impressive service experience for the customer.

[quote float="left"]The real key to a FSM solution is the ability to keep a number of differing business units all on the same page at once, [/quote]The real key to a FSM solution is the ability to keep a number of differing business units all on the same page at once, and the mobile aspect is the key to ensuring the field service engineers – perhaps the most vital cog in the service operation wheel, are kept up to date (and are keeping their colleagues updated about their own progress) whilst working remotely.

For the field service engineer, his FSM app is perhaps now the most important tool in his belt, but if it is cumbersome to use its benefits may well be underused and much of its true value lost. Therefore, for those seeking a new FSM solution the mobile app is a key area for scrutiny. If you are already working with an FSM system it is worth considering getting some feedback on this aspect of the mobile app from your engineers and taking this back to your FSM provider – a good systems partner will always value such feedback and often if there are areas where you feel the solution can be improved, these will likely be felt by other companies using the same solution, so such changes may well surface in the not too distant future in a new update.

Parts & Inventory Management: 

[quote]Part’s Management is a real fundamental piece of the puzzle that is overlooked by many companies – Kevin McNally, Tesseract[/quote]  

Parts and Inventory management is perhaps an area that in the past has not received the focus and attention that it requires. It has often been the mantra of field service organisations that they are aiming to the get the right engineer to the right job, at the right time. But that all becomes moot if the right engineer doesn’t have the right parts to hand as well. Consistently at industry conferences parts management remains a hot button and a common pain point.

One area where many companies get themselves caught out is by thinking that they can use a system such as a financial system that is designed at best for companies whose stock resides in static places such as warehouses and stores.

However, field service is far more dynamic than that, with parts moving back and forth and in and out of locations constantly each and every day.

In no time at all a company that isn’t using a system designed with field service in mind will soon find themselves having to find workarounds to make their system work, which ultimately will mean a far less accurate understanding of stock levels, which can only ever lead to unnecessary spending and a negative impact on the bottom line.

But there are other less obvious impacts poor stock management can have as well.

[quote float="right"]Field service is far more dynamic than that, with parts moving back and forth and in and out of locations constantly each and every day.[/quote]For instance, in such a set up stock realistically can usually only be written off once it has been invoiced. However, in the dynamic world of field service that is of course too late. It could be quite conceivable that an engineer visit could be scheduled with a customer based on a specific part being in stock but in fact whilst there is one of those parts remaining in the inventory, the reality could be that it has already been fitted but just not written off yet as the job hasn’t been invoiced.

For example, lets say an engineer who is onsite is unable to complete a first time fix, but is able to identify a faulty component and then order it whilst still with the customer - giving them a confirmed date for a second appointment when the needed maintenance can be undertaken.

This is a far more powerful and commanding response compared to the negative situation we often find ourselves in where an engineer cannot find the right part – and he just heads off to his next job, leaving the first customer to wait for an unconfirmed rescheduled appointment whilst they try to track down the right part.

In one example we see an engineer empowered by his technology, the other he is hampered by the lack of it.

Integration: 

We are living in a world of data lakes, data rivers, data mountains and all other types of data topography it seems! But all these vast swathes of data are meaningless unless you are able to draw insight from it, and quite often that means being able to let the data flow seamlessly from one set of business applications to another

[quote float="left"]We are seeing more and more companies offering ‘off the shelf’ or ‘out of the box’ integration with the leading CRM, ERP and even Telematics solutions.[/quote] Integration varies from provider to provider but often it is led by the integrations they have been asked to undertake, so if your current provider or a provider you have identified as being a good fit for your business don’t advertise integration with a specific system you are using – it is worth discussing the possibilities with them especially if it is a common platform so making their product work with it may be useful for other future clients also.

We are seeing more and more companies offering ‘off the shelf’ or ‘out of the box’ integration with the leading CRM, ERP and even Telematics solutions.

It is worth discussing with your providers how they are future proofing their products when it comes to integration – there is for example a large amount of proprietary technology centred around IoT at the moment and until accepted universal protocols are in place you want to make sure any technology you have invested in today is going to be of use tomorrow.

Tesseract is the leading service management software provider in Europe and have been in the Field Service Business for over 30 years.   For further information contact Tesseract on 01494 465066 or www.tesseract.co.uk
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Want to know more? A white paper on this topic is available for Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you the white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!
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