ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘disruptive-technology’ CATEGORY

Marne Martin CEO of ServicePower gives us her insight into why the company continues to focus on evaluating and developing the latest technologies for field service...

Disruptive new, connected technologies are changing the workforce management industry, by leap and bounds.

ServicePower Technologies Plc, is incorporating the latest in technology innovations into its leading field management software solutions. These new technologies, including social, mobile, cloud, analytics, IoT and M2M, and collaboration, drive efficiencies and productivity, reduce costs and increase first time fix rates. Most importantly, they transform workforce management to improve customer satisfaction, recognized as the overall measurement of success.

Schedule optimisation is the cornerstone of workforce management software, and the key on which the success of operations rely. Without real optimisation, the software won’t deliver on its ROI promises. There are generally three types of scheduling approaches: 

1. Basic scheduling: Managers build and manage a schedule manually, using no logic to decide the best tech or the best place on a schedule for a job.
2. Automated/Simple Rules-Based Scheduling: Simple, rules based systems, including computerised logic automatically builds a schedule, filling an open slot on the schedule, with no reshuffling of existing jobs to achieve a less costly schedule.
3. Intelligent Route Optimisation, as offered by ServicePower.  The schedule is built automatically based on configurable parameters and sophisticated optimisation algorithms to minimise costs, maximise margins, reduce response times and improve customer satisfaction, while ensuring that the best field tech is assigned with the right skills and parts. It also re-optimises the schedule in order to reduce costs.Place your list items here

ServicePower pioneered true intelligent, configurable route optimisation,  providing its ServiceScheduling software since the late nineties. We’ve continuously enhanced the engine which is offered through competitive partners as well. In 2015, we incorporated a modern Management Console which provides managers the ability to monitor key metrics, scheduled jobs, staff location and collaborate with remote team members.

We’ve enhanced lat/long travel matrix capabilities, long and complex job functionality, as well as crew and third party scheduling, and are working on evolving our scheduling algorithms to the next generation in artificial intelligence technology.

We’ve improved planning and forecasting using the latest map layering technology and coupled it with a true, non-production modelling environment and robust, cloud self-service Business Intelligence to ensure results.

Most importantly, we’ve realised that at times integration budgets or timelines stand in the way of deployment. Optimisation as a Service (OaaS), our newest product, provides enterprises and SMBs alike the power of true, intelligent, automated, route optimisation, in the cloud and on demand, by offering schedule optimisation as a service, priced transactionally. For field service organisations that want the productivity and cost savings of optimised routing, but don’t necessarily require the power of continuous optimisation, OaaS enables them to book jobs, optimise them, creating the best, least costly schedule available.

OaaS enables any organisation, even SMBs which previously were priced out of the technology, to benefit from real optimisation, moving past manual or simple rules based solutions. Likewise, enterprises looking to supplement existing ERP or CRM solutions without a full workforce management software deployment, or those with sales, stocking, or depot work not requiring travel, will also have the option of utilising OaaS.  OaaS will revolutionise how route and schedule optimisation is deployed.

We’ve also extended our M2M Connected Service product through a partnership with UK-based Concirrus, a top 10 Platform-as-a-Service UK company, and named by Gartner in its report: Cool Vendor in the Internet of Things 2015.   Concirrus adds cloud based IoT services to our scheduling software, creating new opportunities in the insurance sector and other industries with high levels of early IoT adopters, as well as new countries around the world. Additional partnerships are also under discussion in interesting new segments of IoT and application development.

We’ve enhanced ServiceMobility, our cross-platform mobile application, with additional payment and pricing features, estimates, product catalogues real time collaboration and most importantly, configurable, rules based forms. Rules provide the ability to rapidly define when data or forms are to be visible to a technician on a job-by-job basis, deploying new strategies in the field without code changes.

On the back of OaaS and ServiceMobility,  ServicePower launched Nexus FS, in September, providing the same mobile features with a SaaS business management portal that any business, from enterprise to SMB, can use to manage customers, vendors, jobs, and field employees. Combined with OaaS, those enterprises seeking a true end-to-end mobile workforce management solution can rely on ServicePower as a single source vendor for all field service operations requirements.

ServicePower is continuously evaluating new technologies to ensure that clients achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction today, as well as future proofing our workforce management software so it supports our clients tomorrow as well. In 2015, our new products and partnerships are leading the way in technology innovation for field service businesses.

 

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Servitization in some sectors and  for some companies is driven by market forces, not customer demand. In this exclusive interview with Field Service News, Des Evans, former Managing Director of MAN Truck and Bus UK and now Honorary  business professor at Aston University Business School, explains how the truck manufacturer transformed its business from a sales-led organisation to one focused on customer service. 

As we begin to hear more and more about servitization, often it is the same company names being held up as core examples of adopting this approach. What is interesting is that these companies often tend to be in very disparate industries, but what they all have in common is that they have been able to harness technology to allow themselves to become a disruptive influence within their sector.

For some companies - Rolls Royce, for example - the move to an advanced services model has been client driven.  For other companies such as truck manufacturer MAN Truck and Bus UK, however, the need to evolve has been very much market driven, as Des Evans explains.

“Over the past forty years truck volumes have almost halved, so you have to run a lot faster to stand still,” Evans begins “If you are not going to sell more vehicles, or gain more market share (which is expensive) then you have to divert your energies into service operations and into your installed customer base.”

“That was the real focus for us to develop the service business: talking to the installed base that was already in the market,” he continues.

In fact, via the Trucknology generation of trucks and buses,  MAN not only transformed their own company considerably, they also transformed the market for ever. Only now are some of their competitors beginning to catch up.

 

However, being a pioneer involves radical thinking and such thinking really needs to be driven from the top if it is to prove a success. For MAN, fortunately, it was an approach all of the senior executive team believed in.

“I think the organisation was a far more collegiate organisation than most and everything was very much a team effort,” Evans explains. “We had to focus on how we could not only sustain the business model but actually to maintain it. When faced with market volumes halving, whilst it is not exactly a burning bridge, we also knew we had to do something different. When we introduced the new truck model it was the trigger really to introduce the new business model as well.”

 

“The catalyst was the Trucknology generation which introduced electronic, digital vehicles as opposed to analogue, mechanical vehicles. It gave us the opportunity to present a completely new business case to the operator by including three years servicing as standard, not something you charge for. However, it required a completely different service organisation to deliver that and a completely different sales force.”

“The challenge was interesting. It did help us move our market share from 8% to 12%, albeit in a smaller market, but that was what we had to do. We had to increase volume, not necessarily by price cut but by some added-value service.”

Still, despite the new strategy being born out of necessity, it was still reliant on the technology, although the wider picture was also reliant on the culture within an organisation.

“The technology was the driver and the enabler,” points out Evans. “But the cultural environment that you created was the real reason whether it worked or it didn’t. You had to create the right culture. You weren’t able as an executive team to impose this: this was something where you had to first of all assess the state of readiness, within the organisation and then do a hell of a lot of communicating and explaining what it is you were doing and why you were doing it.

 

Yet despite the approach being both complex and ground breaking at the time, the premise at the heart of everything was in fact incredibly simple, it seems.  “The main message for the customer both internally and externally was we were going to improve the profitability of the customer,” Evans explains. “Because we saw first hand that not only was the truck market itself going down but also the profitability of the operators was going down too. Simply, we could no longer afford to sell to a customer base that couldn’t afford to buy our products or services.”

“It was a case of trying to make your customers more profitable, and by doing so you could secure our future business,” Evans concludes.

Whatever the business driver, what MAN Truck and Bus UK has achieved in recent years has been both impressive and intelligent. They have revolutionised their industry and put service back at the heart it.

 

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