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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Click Software
Title: The Cloud: Up where customer service for the field belongs
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Synopsis:

The Harris Interactive Customer Experience Impact report revealed that 86% of consumers have quit doing business with a company because of a poor customer experience—up 59% in four years. Other research has revealed it takes 12 positive service experiences to make up for one negative experience, whilst 91% of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with the same organization again. This white paper discusses how leveraging cloud solutions to optimise mobile workforces can improve the experiences of customers while lowering operational and IT costs. More field service management software is now available in the Cloud making it more accessible for SMEs and an alternative to heavy IT investments for large service organisations

Overview:

Customer complaints: What you hear is only the tip of the Iceberg. Many service companies don’t realize it when service levels are running low. In an increasingly savvy and connected market where information is readily available and easily accessible, customer service is often the only discerning difference between competing businesses. Investing in customer satisfaction is not only important but imperative for the long term survival of businesses especially where commoditisation has taken place

• Process improvement – to ensure prompt customer service and correct resource assignments
• Workforce development – to give the staff the opportunity to learn new skills
• Automation – rather than relying on error-prone and time-consuming manual processes
• Cultural changes – creating a working environment that stimulates the entire staff

Field personnel: you most valuable players

Only with real-time data can everyone shine. Providing real-time data across the entire organization is key to enhancing the customer experience. All levels of the service organization need actionable information to enhance how efficiently the field-service team operates and to improve experiences delivered to customers.

Silver linings within the Cloud

Cloud-based solutions open new doors for field service companies of all sizes by allowing for the quick, flexible adoption of new technologies that previously proved to be too expensive, risky and time-consuming to deploy.

Delivered via the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, cloud solutions provide several advantages over traditional on-premise solutions: inlcluding PAYG, rapid deployment, immediate ROI and free upgrades. In field workforce management, cloud-based solutions typically allow companies to achieve productivity gains of up to 20% and return on their investment within 12 months. The cloud approach gives businesses the opportunity to replace high, up-front capital infrastructure expenses with low, predictable costs, while also delivering other key benefits:

The service delivery chain

Cloud-based mobile workforce management solutions cover every step of the service chain—from planning and forecasting, to real-time intelligent scheduling, shift management, mobility and execution—underpinned by extensive user-defined analytics and dashboards to provide clear and intuitive reports. Optimised scheduling: Advanced resource scheduling and optimisation tools provide the main interface for dispatchers, supervisors and managers. Service companies can increase the efficiency of their workforce with by combining a powerful cloud-based scheduling and optimisation engine with strong decision support tools.

• Multiple scheduling options and policies
• Real-time optimisation immediately responsive to changes
• Optimised scheduling using multiple factors, people, crews, contractors, assets and complexities
• Street-level route optimisation
• Intelligent and flexible appointment booking
• Workflow dispatch and progress updates

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Mobility that connects entire teams. 

Mobile enterprise field execution software should allow both field workers and dispatchers the convenience of real-time communications and full end-to-end visibility. By using real-time mobility, field workers can update dispatchers; they can update customers, thereby benefiting everyone with true connectivity and better productivityReal-time information, when and where you need it. View jobs, service histories, customer information.[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• Mobile solutions should be compatible leading devices and operating systems, through all service workflows, and with 24/7 availability
• Mobility is driven by apps. Don’t reinvent the wheel – build your business process using ready-made apps without having to code or go through a lengthy upgrade process
• The enterprise mobility solution must offer a robust and scalable infrastructure that can adapt to the needs of the business and its users.
• Cutting-edge capabilities include artificial intelligence and automation that anticipate and act proactively upon user’s needs

Real-time and historic service performance

Look at the entire service delivery chain - before, during and after the moment of service - and the collected business metrics that result from each moment. Make key performance metrics delivers strategic value to service organizations by placing graphical, easy-to-understand key performance metrics directly into the hands of executives and service managers. Each user chooses which actionable data to report based on their role and business challenges, from the C-suite to front line supervisors.

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Click here to find out more about Click Software in the Field Service Directory

 

 

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A next generation cloud version of the field service management solution Siclops has been announced by Advanced Field Service. Siclops LIVE provides SMEs and large, multi-site companies with real-time visibility of their clients, jobs and engineers to increase efficiency and profitability levels.

The cloud-based functionality means it is a scalable and more affordable option for businesses operating across multiple sites, saving investment in expensive IT infrastructures. The solution is compatible with desktop, tablet and smartphone devices and seamlessly integrates with finance, CRM and telephony systems offering secure access to comprehensive information to improve productivity.

The system enables service management firms to easily manage all aspects of their business anytime, anywhere. Users can quickly access accurate mobile data relating to field workers, customers and suppliers from a single solution to speed up response times and enhance customer service levels by eliminating manual paper-based processes.

The user-friendly interface includes interactive business intelligence dashboards that display the current status of calls, jobs and contracts, along with extensive search facilities to assist with project management and scheduling requirements.

 

Greg Ford, managing director of Advanced Field Service, comments, “Siclops LIVE has been built on world class and reliable cloud technology which underlines our commitment to the field service industry. The solution has been specifically developed to address the challenges that growing service organisations face by providing unprecedented visibility into their field staff to drive efficiencies and operational control.

“By providing customers and suppliers with instant access to real-time information, they can gain unprecedented insight into the most, and least, profitable areas of their business, in order to deliver exceptional customer service.”

Ffor organisations employing that repair, service or install equipment in the field the system includes built-in specific data forms ensuring full compliance on the move with leading industry regulations, such as NICEIC, SIA, NSI, HSE and F-Gas.

 

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So far in our exclusive interview with Paul Massey, Managing Director of IFS, we’ve taken a look at where Applications 9 sits against previous milestones in both Massey and the Swedish ERP provider's history in part one and then in part two we looked at whether the field service world is finally ready for the Cloud and IoT.

Now in the final part of this interview the conversation turns to the impact of consumerisation on enterprise software and why being an ERP provider can be a double edged sword for IFS when it comes to working with Field Service companies….

Given the trend towards consumerisation in enterprise software across recent years it is evident that this is something that is ingrained within the IFS development mentality.

“It is getting bigger and bigger,” admits Massey. “I’ve been around a few years and it just wasn’t as relevant before because for example the first graphical interface in work someone used was probably much more up to date than the software they used in their personal life. Now its completely the other way around. Our challenge is sometimes our applications may look really old and dated compared to what they use on their tablet or what they use on their PC at home.”

“That’s becoming more and more relevant to people looking at our applications and valuing them against other applications. If the users don’t like the application, then it is much harder to get them to use it irrespective of the business benefits and everything else. That’s really sometimes an intangible but very significant hurdle to get across.”

 

“So since 7.5 with the .net release the UK has been a big focus of what we are trying to do because if you don’t get their hearts you wont get their minds. That’s the challenge: you can have as much complex detailed functionality as you like but if the end user can’t use it in a relatively intuitive way then it’s wasted.”

As the conversation drills down to more specific field service side of their offering I was keen to see if Massey, felt that being an ERP provider was a help or a hindrance to them in terms of how they approach field service. Particularly given that they essentially have to separate offerings in the space.

“I think being primarily known as an ERP provider is a bit of a double edged sword as far as field service is concerned,” Massey begins. “We do have customers that use the original IFS service management functionality which is very much best suited to being at the back end of something where you’ve manufactured it, you commissioned it and then you maintain it. So your following the whole asset lifecycle and its probably a more complex asset maintenance scenario where there is a field service element but its part of something wider and in that story the whole integrated ERP approach is really powerful. All the data moves from one phase of the lifecycle to the next, seamlessly.”

“Whereas you’ve got another set of people who are looking purely at field service for who having an ERP is almost an anathema because they want a very light footprint: field service with probably mobility and scheduling so the advantage to them of integrated finance, HR, inventory and a complex infrastructure is much less evident and almost in some cases even a negative.”

 

“So it’s about understanding the audience, understanding what a particular customer wants and that’s why we have the two offerings that we have in field service -  the FSM product as well as the embedded service management product as well. Plus then they’ve obviously got mobility which can talk to both of those things.”

“Sometimes it’s a challenge when we talk to a prospect to understand which sort of flavour of service do they want. There are some obvious things like the number of resources your scheduling, the geographical coverage or whether they have some specific end functionality which can tend to push you in one way or another but ultimately it is about understanding what the customer wants at the end of the day. It’s a fairly glib cliché but its true.”

“If we are into highly integrated service management solution space then we think we can absolutely compete with everyone and that’s why we are strong in Defence and areas like that because it is a more complex typical service solution.”

“On the simpler field service side we believe some of the things that we have done in scheduling, in mobility and with the latest release of the field service product we believe we can compete as a standalone with anybody as well.”

“I think particularly our close integration with our scheduling application gives us some real benefits,” Massey continues. You’ve always got the question of which version of mobility do you want you’ve got Android, IoS Windows and all those things but we certainly believe with the two offerings we can cover all the bases.”

“That’s why we’ve invested so heavily in service over the last few years with the acquisitions made and the functionality we’ve added in these releases. We see it as a big area of growth for IFS going forward. It’s a massive area and in most geographies that sector is still growing very strongly. Service continues to be a major focus for us and hopefully our investment decisions will pay off.”

 

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In the first part of this exclusive interview with Paul Massey, IFS, Managing Director we looked at where he felt the recent announcement of IFS Applications 9 sat against previous milestones within the Scandinavian company’s history.

Now in the second part of this interview we look at Massey’s thoughts on the Cloud and IoT, plus whether he was ready for the reception to the most talked about new tool in Applications 9 – the lobby function…

Head in the Cloud

One of the big announcements at the recent IFS World Conference was the launch of a fully managed cloud. However, many of IFS’s existing clients have already invested significantly within the infrastructure to run previous iterations of the ERP solution so is this a platform that is geared towards winning new business I asked Massey.

“From a marketing perspective of course the managed cloud is going to be aimed at winning new business. It’s a good coherent and deliverable Cloud story.” He began

“But in terms of the uptake I think it’s going to be out to our customer base quicker. Obviously there is a big customer base to shoot at and we only bring in so many customers each quarter.”

“So whilst an increasing proportion of those will be on cloud the bigger potential market for us is obviously the existing customer base. As part of an upgrade proposal we can try to convince them to go to the managed cloud and I think actually some of the benefits and return on investments are actually more tangible for the existing customer base than they are for new customers because they understand whats involved in running IFS, deploying new releases, managing the application, managing the database. They already know the importance of resilience and uptime so potentially it’s a very easy sell for us.”

“So I think in terms of the uptake the momentum will be generated from the existing customer base. But that in itself will obviously provide us with more references for the business.”

The managed Cloud solution is a direct result of the IFS’s close partnership with Microsoft. Which of course leads to questions around yet another disruptive technology on the horizon namely The Internet of Things. Whilst there has been a lot of discussion around IoT and Field Service it’s not really been as embraced as fully as some may have thought by now. Perhaps partnerships such as IFS and Microsoft could be the next stone to that wider spread adoption?

“I think so” Massey replies when I put the question to him “Its certainly ticking a few more boxes that actually facilitates some of the benefits of IoT because with a hosting platform like Azure behind it that provides a lot things from the reliability and scalability, the security of data, and all those things that people are sometimes a bit frightened of when people talk about automating”

 

“Having data moving around between machines and the cloud, those are real life concerns that classical ERP and companies using ERP in that classical way are very frightened of.” He adds

“It’s not just to do with the IoT but the whole security of Cloud computing is approached the same. But just the fact that it’s Microsoft if you engage with them they’ve got a really good story about security which does take a lot of the potential concerns off the table I think it’s another facilitator effectively in terms of IoT meaning something tangible to people.”

The killer app?

As we return our focus to the Announcement of Apps 9 I reflect that the biggest buzz in the break after the initial sessions was all around a new solution called Lobby which allows individual users to have all of the data they need for their own specific roll or project in one easy place. It’s easily configurable, and a first initial look suggests it could be a powerful tool.

So what were Massey’s thoughts when he first encountered the idea, was it always a case of knowing that this would be the ‘killer app’ that would resonate so well with his customers or was he taken back by the overwhelmingly positive response?

“I think to some extent we’ve had similar technology in the past and through portal technology but because its’ now much more embedded in the application and it’s easier to set up and quickly show some real practical use of it” he explains.

 

“Yes I do think it will be the sort of headline feature that we are pitching it to be as one of the perennial challenges in selling ERP applications is presenting to the prospect the potential of all the information being at their fingertips. There is always a myriad of data in an ERP system it’s just a matter of getting at it in a useful way. So I think it’s a really graphical and hopefully relatively simple way of demonstrating that there is so much data that you can choose what data you want and how you present it .” he expands

“As a way of attracting attention to the depth of functionality beneath it in the ERP application I think it is really good and hopefully the technology in how to deploy it and customise it is straightforward enough for people to understand that it is easy to get it up and running.”

Look out for the third part of this exclusive interview as we turn our attention to the impact of consumerisation on enterprise applications…

 

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Continuing our series of interviews with industry leaders, Kris Oldland took the opportunity to sit down with IFS Managing Director, Paul Massey at the IFS World Conference in Boston last month. Against the backdrop of the launch of the swedish ERP provider’s latest product suite Applications 9, the conversation looked at both Massey and IFS’s journey across the last twenty years or so…

It’s been a busy month for IFS with a raft of new developments announced at their 2015 world conference including the launch of IFS Applications 9, key partnerships with Accenture and Microsoft, the launch of a Managed Cloud Solution plus a number of improvements to their field service offerings.

Field Service News Editor Kris Oldland spoke to Paul Massey to discuss what these announcements mean for the Scandinavian based company.

With so many big announcements coming in the first morning of this years world conference it felt like a sensible idea to try and put this into context of the near twenty year journey Massey has been on with IFS.

“Back when we became IFS back in early 1997 that was when the product was becoming graphical” Massey begins.

“There was a long history with my company Avalon and IFS who at the time were our Scandinavian distributor. Basically Avalon didn’t make the transition from character to graphical so IFS acquired most of the assets of and at the outset it was all about that new graphical user interface along with the component architecture story that IFS already had. So for us that was the first major milestone and in a way that was the first wave of internationalisation for IFS.” He continues.

Indeed IFS had been a very Scandinavian centric company before that point with one operation in Poland but little else beyond there home market.

This all began to change in the the late nineties as following on from the UK acquisition France and Germany and then a US acquisition.

As Massey explains “The first three or four years of our time with IFS was all about becoming an international company. There was a massive amount of investment in that area in sales and marketing functionality to cover other markets etc so that was a big investment period for IFS so in the early noughties there were some financial difficulties from a financing point of view because that was such a period of aggressive expansion. I wasn’t involved in the senior management then as I am now but I’m guessing they saw that was required to get a global footprint as quickly as possible.”

 

In fact this aggressive expansion plan resulted in a marked a period for IFS between 2000 and 2004 when there was negative growth. However as the world faced an economic crisis in 2008 IFS had already taken their hit and as competitors started to suffer they emerged as a healthy, profit making organisation.

“We’d finished spending our money and were set to reap the benefits of our investments” Massey admits. “We managed to more than survive that phase because it definitely impacted on others much more than it did us. We continued to grow as we moved from a negative cash flow to a really positive cash flow and we came out the other ends of that in a very healthy state.”

But what about the product how did evolve also?

“Having gone through the transition to graphical interface right at the beginning the next major milestone was enterprise explorer, the .net client in the Apps 7.5 release.” Massey explains.

 

“That was the next technology milestone from IFS’s point of view from then all of the releases i.e. 7.5 then 8 and now 9 have been more heavily focussed on broadening out the level functionality in each of the industries we target and obviously keeping the technology up to date.”

Which brings us up to Apps 9 which has brought a number of new features that had the delegates of their world conference more than impressed (see page 48)

“From a technology point of view I think the Layered architecture and some of the stuff we are doing with in-memory optimisation (which will be in an update of Apps 9 a little later in the year) is really important.” Explains Massey “You’ve got to keep the functional and technical streams running together in parallel which I think we’ve done. I think there is enough of both of those things in this release to get the customers interested in it.”

Look out for the second part of this exclusive interview where the conversation turns to the Cloud…

 

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Upgrading a service management system can be a challenge, but unifying and upgrading multiple systems across a continent? Here’s how Pitney Bowes approached the task…

Service management software has evolved and the benefits of moving to a modern next generation system are well documented. But what are the considerations that need to be factored in when changing systems? And what about companies that have evolved multiple systems across various regions?

One company who recently went through this process was Global Franking Machine giant Pitney Bowes as they sought to both standardise and upgrade their systems across the whole of Europe.

"We started with different service systems across Europe that had become built up across the years which that didn’t talk to each other” Andy Beer, Director of Service & Postal Market Development explained at a recent Service Community event.

Of course this is an issue for any organisation that operates across multiple divisions, with differing centres of operations. And whilst it may not be impossible, it certainly makes it harder to identify company wide trends, swiftly enough to act on them with any great effect.

“We had six or seven different systems that we had built up across Europe and in fact in the Nordics we were still using a paper based model similar to when I started with Pitney Bowes in the 80’s” continued Beer before describing the Nordic system “whereby our engineers would come into the office in the morning, go to a big rolodex and pull out their cards for the day, come back and write it all up.”

With such disparity it was clear for Pitney Bowes the direction they needed to take.

“Our number one goal was to give us one platform across Europe so we could then report on our key performance metrics, whatever that may be and do it on an international level.” Beer explained

“We looked at our existing systems and to upgrade us from the platform we were on and to add in other companies we needed, would have required and investment in a little over a million dollars, so it wasn’t a decision that we were going to take lightly.  We weren’t going to just say give us the upgrade, give us version 2. We wanted something more for that.”

Quite rightly so as at level of cost whilst the right solution could lead to significant added insight into the operation of the company and ultimately large potential savings, get it wrong and it would be a costly mistake. As it turned out even this level of investment would have failed to deliver the requirements that Pitney Bowes had identified as key to their needs.

As Beer explained further “even with that investment we still wouldn’t have a web front end, which we were looking for, and we would still be beholden on either the suppliers of that system or our own internal IT department to help us write reports.”

“We felt we were looking in our rear view mirror an awful lot and it wasn’t just what was immediately behind us that we were looking for, it was sometimes looking months behind us before we could actually start to get reasonable reporting, so we definitely needed to change”

With field service experts from all quarters exalting the importance of data this was another area that Pitney Bowes were acutely aware that their current system wasn’t empowering them as much as it should be.

“Data is important but when you have tons of it and you can’t sift through it, when you can’t find an easy way to get meaning from the data, then you’re just hamstrung by it.” Beer outlined before adding further

“When I say about looking in the rear view mirror, visibility of particular production or productivity metrics were very low and it was then very difficult to manage either individual engineers, based on their metrics, or build that up into a team of engineers, or into a country, let alone build that up across a European view.”

“The pain we went through to change reports, even just to tweak things slightly” Beer recalls before pausing a moment with a wry smile.  “ When your running the operation, you want to be able to see everything at a whim, you don’t want to have to be beholden to an IT group or a vendor to be able to give you something you think you might need. “

This is perhaps the fundamental difference between, the last generation of service management software and current systems. In this data driven age non-technical people are used to accessing highly customised reports with ease, and often depend on this ability to do their job.

As Beer points out “The thing is, as operational people we think we need to see an awful lot of stuff but then may stop and look at it and think ‘Do I really need that after all?’ but we need to see it first to make that call.”

Other considerations that were key for Pitney Bowes were that their new solution had to be able to integrate with Salesforce, as this was their chosen CRM and also that it to be Cloud based.

Outlining their thought process Beer added “Our existing systems wasn’t cloud based and we absolutely knew that our prime need was to move to the cloud, we didn’t want to have the hassle of owning the system, we wanted instant upgrades where available and instant fixes where available. “

“Essentially we wanted to future proof our investment.”

With the plethora of service management solutions on the market selecting finding a solution to meet their needs was always going to be possible, although dependent on a robust evaluation process. However, selecting a solution to meet these needs was one thing, implementing a solution across such a complex mix of territories another.

The approach required needed to involve all of the key stakeholders.

“We knew we were beholden to IT in our previous systems, we didn’t want to be in that position now but we also knew that they couldn’t not be involved.” Beer explains

“So we had two phases of the project, the first one was business and operations led. We picked a team of people from across Europe that came together and then spent five or six months getting really deep into what we had and what we thought we needed moving forward, and putting together a plan to get to from one to the other. Once we had that we engaged with IT”

“We wanted to the establish how we could integrate what we had into other systems, interfacing with the vendor and outlining what we saw as our business and operational requirements and then asked how readily available those were.

“We took this approach knowing that the more you fiddle around the edges of what your vendor can offer you the harder it comes to manage going forward”

Beer further expands on the practical and pragmatic approach by adding

“Nirvana is to take something off the shelf in PC World, type your code in and bang the following morning you’ve got a system, real life is not quite as beautiful as that, we know that, but the more you can avoid trying to tweak the edges of a vendors system and what it does to try and make it fit with your processes the better.”

It is through taking such a measured approach of understanding not only needs and goals but also limitations, and building the flexibility to overcome any limitations through adapting processes, that Pitney Bowes have been achieve the massive challenge of unifying disparate systems across a continent, and it is an approach worth considering for any company considering upgrading their existing system.

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The field service industries are often leading the way in terms of technology being used within enterprise.

For example the wider world of Enterprise Mobility Management is still something of an infantile stage compared to the percentage of field service companies that have embraced mobile solutions. Yet in field service the message has become clear and it is now a case of how and when companies move to an automated mobile led solution, rather than if and why.

So with this in mind Field Service News has taken a look at some of the key technological trends that we believe will impact the field service industries in the next 12 months.

In this the first of three features in this series we look at The Cloud, Wearables and NFC

 1. The Cloud will finally come of age in field service management...

It has been debated for a long time and worries around security of the cloud have been continuously refreshed by the occasional high profile breaches of consumer cloud technology such as last years breach of Apple’s iCloud, which due to the celebrities involved, made headline news across the globe.

However, in the world of industry Cloud security is far more sophisticated, with companies such as Axeda and Amazon Web Services being names regularly thrown out in discussions around the Cloud as they have built a reputation for being leaders in developing robust cloud security within their product offerings.

Early last year Field Service News conducted research into how the Cloud had taken root amongst field service companies, and we revealed that although at that point only 23% of field service companies were using a Cloud based field service solution. Of those that were either using either an on premise solution or manual based processes, well over half were actively considering moving to a Cloud based solution in the next iteration of their field service software.

 

The benefits of the Cloud are well documented and well suited to field service organisations. Scalable, low IT costs, quick roll out, easy mobile access, and built in disaster recovery plus an affordable pricing structure for smaller and medium sized companies via the SaaS model. With almost all Field Service management software vendors now providing a cloud offering it seems just a matter of time before Cloud becomes the dominant distribution model of field service software and we think that 2015 will be the year that we really see the pendulum swing in favour of the Cloud.

2. We will start getting smart about wearables…

Given that last year was supposed to have been ‘The Year of The Wearables’ it has to be said that the appetite for wearable computing both amongst consumers and businesses alike has been rather stunted. In fact a recent report from Juniper Research predicted that sales of Smart Glasses, perhaps the most exciting of the current wearable options, are unlikely to reach more than 10 million per anum globally by 2018.

Yet are we victims of falling for the hyperbole a touch too much when it comes to our expectations of wearables, almost certainly. In too many corners wearables were being heralded as the next wave of technology that would be all conquering, much along the lines of tablets and smartphones before them.

This is where we are going wrong. Wearables such as Smart Glasses and Smart Watches are not replacements for tablets and smart phones, they are companion devices and when we change our thought process to view them as such they can be powerful tools – particularly in the area of field service.

 

We all can see for example how Smart watches offer a great means for a field engineer to receive alerts and messages without having to interrupt their workflow. However, a more specific use for the field service engineer could be if he were to use the camera on his smart watch in combination with the screen of his phone to view otherwise inaccessible area - such as the back of a machine.

With Smart Glasses the opportunities in field service are even more apparent. For example a less experienced field service engineer could put a video call into a more experienced colleague. Whilst this is of course possible with most modern smart phones, when such a call is made via smart glasses the more senior engineer can see exactly what the onsite engineer is looking at, whilst of course the onsite engineer has their hands free.

As the hyperbole dies down and real-life practical uses of wearables such as the above become better developed then we will see wearables take their place within the field service engineers tool-kit.

3. NFC will finally take it’s rightful place amongst field service must haves…

Near Field Communication (NFC) has been kicking around for some time now and the term is fairly well known amongst those with just a modicum of technological understanding, yet it hasn’t yet truly emerged to meet it’s potential as yet. And that potential could be massive in terms of further automating and streamlining multiple steps across a field service technicians working day.

However, as with smartphones themselves, it may just be that now computing giant Apple has stepped into the NFC fray (albeit somewhat tentatively it must be said) that we see NFC achieving true mass market penetration.

In very basic terms NFC acts in a wi-fi lite type where an NFC tag can be written to convey a set of rules which can be actioned by an NFC enabled device (many smart phones are now NFC enabled) when the device is brought in close proximity (typically within 10cm or more).

For the field service engineer for example there are a number of potential options for adding further layers of automation throughout his day. For example an NFC tag within the field service engineers vehicle dashboard could be programmed to open up a routing/mapping application and log the start of a journey in a field service app simply by pressing the field engineers smart phone against the tag.

 

If your field service operatives visit a company regularly then you could ship out NFC tags to your clients for them to put on reception so when a field service engineer comes in he can log his arrival at your clients premises – important when providing SLA reports for example.

As well as being able to provide actionable instructions, some NFC tags can also be written to contain data as well. So one other particularly useful application of a NFC in field service could be to leave an NFC tag on the device being repaired with notes on the maintenance carried out. That way the next time that device is repaired the field service engineer can read his colleagues notes to see if there are recurring problems etc. Similarly an NFC tag on the device could also open up a web-based knowledge base for that particular model etc.

Whilst all of the above options could of course simply be actioned by manually accessing apps what NFC offers is a means to further speed up and improve a field service engineer’s workflow. Indeed, the potential for NFC is vast and what makes it a particularly attractive proposition is that it is a relatively inexpensive addition (appx 30/40p per tag) that simply takes advantage of the functionality of the existing tools being used by the the field service engineer (i.e. smart phone or tablet)

With NFC now becoming an expected feature in most smartphones and tablets field service news believes that NFC will see much wider adoption in 2015.

Look out for the second part of this feature where we will be revealing three more of the big technology trends we believe will appear in 2015…

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The Cloud. Can you really avoid it? The cloud market is expected to grow to $121 billion dollars in 2015, a 26% compound annual growth rate from 2010’s $37 billion[1].

Such growth is set to continue, with research showing that 81% of organisations forecast a move to the cloud for 50% of their future transactions.

Indeed field service news research at the beginning of this year identified that whilst the shift to cloud based computing for service management software solutions hasn’t been as prevalent as say CRM systems there is a growing ground swell as companies establish an appetite for the cloud when it comes to the next generation of their service management software.

So what are the drivers for the growth in the cloud market?

With 60% of CIOs stating that their number one priority is cloud computing[2], a major driver has been the adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) technology.

By 2017, SaaS is set to generate almost 60% of cloud revenues[3]. The move to SaaS is primarily driven by its ability to offer greater scalability, higher efficiencies with no loss of functionality, and reduced application costs, with a move to the cloud offering annual savings of over 20%.

However, there are of course additional benefits to the cloud as well as the SaaS model which whilst in the short term can make software more affordable in the long term can sometimes become the more costly option across a period of 3 years or more.

One significant benefit that the Cloud brings is that by it’s very nature it comes with disaster recovery essentially built in. Unlike an on premise system, should any significant problems hit your office such as fire, flooding or theft, if your core operating systems are Cloud based there will be no direct impact on your ability to continue work the next day.

Also we are now finally seeing fears around Cloud security being put to bed. Whilst amongst the general populace and in consumer computing the risk remains somewhat and the perception of this risk is amplified by security breaches of high profile consumer systems such as Apple’s iCloud, in the world of enterprise Cloud security is far more protected.

It is no coincidence that companies such as Axeda and Amazon Web Services have become dominant within the enterprise cloud sector and that both have an excellent reputation for understanding and delivering complex security solutions that meet the demands of their marketplace.

How are these trends reflected in the Service Management market?

IDC Research sponsored by Axios highlighted that every second company that now uses on-premise IT Service Management software plans to launch a cloud-based version within the next two years[4]. For many organizations, cloud has already become mainstream and their ITSM solution may be the 3rd or 4th major application that they have moved to the cloud.

The uptake of Microsoft’s Exchange365 in particular has increased businesses faith in cloud provision and allowed them to concentrate on their core business while cloud providers look after the infrastructure. Similarly, whilst some 15 years ago the likes of SAP and IBM were openly questioning and even mocking the likes of Salesforce.com and their cloud based infrastructure now there is something of a race amongst the slumbering IT giants to try and catch the tail of the wave and make out they were their all along.

Commenting on the research Scott Leckie, CTO at Axios Systems, said

“We’re seeing a shift in the market, with SaaS gaining substantial traction over the past year. Why is Service Management so suitable for cloud? For us, the move has been driven by a significant increase in user mobility and range of devices from which users require access to technology, anywhere and at any time. SaaS technologies fully support this, and provide compliance without sacrificing on functionality or standards for data security or speed.”

Tasos Symeonides, CEO at Axios Systems, went further adding

“Here at Axios, we’re seeing a 25% compound annual growth rate in the uptake of SaaS, which reflects the current trends in the cloud industry as a whole. IT leaders are seeing the benefits of moving to the cloud, allowing them to be more agile and responsive to business needs. Ultimately this drives greater efficiencies.

Our IT Service Management solution, assyst, provides the technology you need over the web, without any of the application management overheads. All you require is a browser-enabled desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. That means no new infrastructure, no server application, no desktop installs, no upgrade projects. No hassle.”

<em><strong>[1]</strong></em><em> Cloud Computing Market: Global Forecast (2010 – 2015), October 2010: </em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cloud-computing-234.html"><span style="color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;"><em>http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cloud-computing-234.html</em></span></a></span></span>

<em><strong>[2]</strong></em><em> CloudTweaks ‘Demystifying the Cloud’ Infographic, January 2014: </em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #0000ff;"><a href="http://cloudtweaks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/demystifying-the-cloud.jpg"><span style="color: #0000ff;"><em>http://cloudtweaks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/demystifying-the-cloud.jpg</em></span></a></span></span>

<em><strong>[3]</strong></em><em> Worldwide and Regional Public IT Cloud Services 2013–2017 Forecast, August 2013: </em><span style="color: #0000ff;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=242464"><span style="color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;"><em>http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=242464</em></span></a></span><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span> </em></span>

[4] IT Service Management in Deutschland 2014, ITSM im Spannungsfeld von Cloud Computing und Enterprise Mobility, Mark Alexander Schulte for IDC, February 2014:: http://idc.de/de/research/multi-client-projekte/it-service-management-in-deutschland-2014

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