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ServiceMax, Inc., a leader in asset-centric field service management, has announced that FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe has selected and deployed ServiceMax’s field service management platform for the digitization of its service operations in Europe. As part of its move from a product-focused services strategy to outcome-based solutions, ServiceMax is empowering FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe to better support hospitals and other medical providers with more personalized solutions and service maintenance as they continue the expansion of treatment and diagnostic capabilities available to patients.

SERVICEMAX DRIVING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE, EFFICIENCY AND DIGITAL MONITORING OF KPIs

“By digitizing its service operations, FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe will drive operational excellence through optimised processes, delivering greater customer and employee satisfaction and more efficient service planning.

“We already had plans to move our service technicians away from pen and paper, but COVID-19 forced us to rethink healthcare and connect digitally,” said Jean-Luc Budillon, President and COO at FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe. “Our vision is to become a leading healthcare company with excellent customer experience and innovative solutions. With our shift to outcome-based solutions, the ServiceMax platform ensures we will always be able to provide timely and personalized assistance to our engineers whilst still being able to prioritize individual relationships and commitments with our customers. We are a passionate team going the extra mile for our customers, and ServiceMax is the right partner to help us take service care to the next level.”

By completely digitizing its technical service support process, FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe has instant and easy access to critical customer information, such as machines installed, contract details and warranty duration, as well as specific parts. The company can now optimize service planning and improve the management of spare parts, and ultimately provide a better customer experience.

“With ServiceMax, we can plan resources more efficiently and provide faster and more proactive customer support with all the necessary information directly available, enabling our engineers to take immediate decisions,” added Robbert Merkus, Head of Services Europe at FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe. “ServiceMax also simplifies our review process with dashboard monitoring and management of all KPIs for our outcome-based solutions.”

ServiceMax was deployed in Italy in November 2020 and is currently rolling out across Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, UK, DACH and France.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about ServiceMax on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/servicemax
• Read more about Healthcare on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/healthcare
• Find out more about ServiceMax @ www.servicemax.com
• Learn more about FujiFilm Healthcare Europe @ hce.fujifilm.com
• Follow ServiceMax on Twitter @ twitter.com/ServiceMax

As pharma companies continue to scale up digital transformation processes, a survey by GlobalData has highlighted that teaming up with experienced external vendors is driving innovative technology implementation.

The leading data and analytics company notes that technologies such as 5G, IoT, sensors, blockchain, cloud and virtual/augmented reality were the top technologies for which pharma companies used external vendors, whereas they were more likely to develop artificial intelligence (AI), big data/analytics or robotics in house comparing to the rest of smart technologies.

IMPLEMENTING SMART TECHNOLOGIES INTO PHARMACEUTICAL PROCESSES REQUIRES FINANCIAL RESOURCES, TIME AND KNOWLEDGE.

The survey, which was published in GlobalData’s latest report, ‘Smart Pharma’, revealed that the majority of healthcare professionals would turn to external vendors to implement 5G to their processes, at 65% of respondents. This was followed by Blockchain at 55% and IoT and sensors at 50%. On the other hand, 28% of respondents would implement AI in house, followed by big data/analytics and robotics at 26% each.

Urte Jakimaviciute, Senior Director of Market Research at GlobalData, comments: “Implementing smart technologies into pharmaceutical processes requires substantial financial resources, time, and knowledge, especially since the speed of innovation is accelerating rapidly. As pharmaceutical companies continue to revamp their portfolios and digital transformation speeds up, partnering with technology providers becomes a natural step for the industry to take.

“Businesses are more likely to use external vendors to deploy technologies that are less widespread, have fewer use cases, or need to be implemented in short timeframes. While there is no way to slow down the digital transformation, a collaboration with external technology vendors may be a key to success.”

Jakimaviciute continues: “Partnering can enable not only faster adoption of the new technologies, but also bring substantial cost savings. External vendors tend to have specific domain knowledge, and are also fast to respond to any regulatory or compliance requirements that the pharmaceutical sector needs to adhere to.

“Pharma companies are already accustomed to working with external vendors to enhance processes in research and development (R&D), manufacturing and supply chain management. As the need to control the rising costs of pharmaceutical processes is becoming more pressing, leveraging smart technologies is expected to create more sustainable operational models and improve business agility. The companies that can optimize the processes faster are primed to succeed - this forces healthcare industry to pursue more open and collaborative approaches.”

In 2021, Boehringer Ingelheim signed a collaborative agreement with Google Quantum AI to implement quantum computing in pharma R&D; UCB and Microsoft announced a strategic collaboration to combine Microsoft's computational services, cloud, and artificial intelligence (AI) with UCB's drug discovery and development capabilities; Bristol Myers Squibb created a collaboration with Exscientia to use AI to accelerate the discovery.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Technology in the Healthcare sector @ www.fieldservicenews.com/healthcare+technology
• Learn more about the latest GlobalData report "Smart Pharma" @ store.globaldata.com/smart-pharma-thematic-research
• Find out more more about GlobalData @ www.globaldata.com
• Read more about GlobalData on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/globaldata

In the first in a new series of videos where we look at field service operations and technology within different industry sectors we talk to Gary Milne, of Healthcare at Home about the important work they undertake, how that has changed since the pandemic and why dynamic scheduling engine Fast Lean Smart (FLS) has been a crucial element in their ability to meet customer demands and plan for expansion

 

Join the webinar to hear how a leader in healthcare diagnostics is implementing AI tools.

As the medical device space shifts to more specialized equipment, organizations are increasingly turning to AI-powered tools to ensure maximum uptime for mission-critical equipment. For those who manufacture and service these machines, debate hinges on whether to build or buy AI platforms. Join the webinar Sysmex America, Inc. and Aquant to hear about the journey choosing AI tools.

In the live webinar, learn how Adan Deroche and Peter Tregarthen of Sysmex America, Inc., a leader in healthcare diagnostic solutions, took steps to:

• Assess the benefits and drawbacks of internal development versus using an AI vendor
• Uncover and analyze free text service information to drive meaningful outcomes in service delivery
• Work with Aquant to determine a roadmap for success by combing the knowledge of employee experts with the output of the tool’s AI-powered solutions.

Sign up here for the live webinar. We’ll be walking through Symex’s AI journey and are available to answer your questions.

What: Live Webinar with Sysmex America, Inc. and Aquant

When: June 9, 2020 @ 12 PM EDT

How: Register now

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About Aquant

Aquant’s service intelligence platform transforms how organizations deliver service through artificial intelligence. The platform unlocks prescriptive and actionable insights from scattered data and free text and combines them with the collective experience and tribal knowledge of your most trusted experts. It empowers teams to use that intelligence to predict outcomes, optimize service team performance, and solve problems to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Learn more at Aquant.io.

Paul Whitelam, ClickSoftware takes a deep dive into the healthcare sector, putting forward the case that it is high time healthcare providers embrace schedule optimisation to help cost-effectively improve operations and ensure patient care does not suffer. 

2018 saw continued merger and acquisition activity in the home healthcare and related markets as firms moved to build out their services footprint, offerings and build economies of scale.

And 2019 appears to be trending in the same direction. However, it is quite possible that many providers that have a mobile team delivering care in the field fail to understand the complexity that comes with size and multiple service offerings, especially as it relates to scheduling ever growing teams in the field.

Many organizations do not understand that as the number of appointments increase, the scheduling complexity does not increase linearly. In fact, it is not even close! The reason complexity does not increase in a linear manner is due to the fact that each scheduling decision has a factorial growth. For example, here are the number of scheduling possibilities for various jobs:

• There are 6 possible schedules for 3 jobs and 3 nurses; 
• There are 720 possible schedules for 6 jobs and 6 nurses;
• There are 3,682,800 possible schedules for 10 jobs and 10 nurses. 

This is why it is important that healthcare providers utilize scheduling software that can handle such complexities. Scheduling optimization technology, found in Field Service Management (FSM) software, enables organizations to create detailed schedules that can handle the complex scenarios detailed above.

Optimizing the schedule for an organization with hundreds to thousands of nurses and care providers is far beyond the capability of simplistic scheduling products (not to mention manual approaches). The complexity is due to the number of events that must be taken into account when developing a schedule such as travel distance, travel time, overtime costs, labor costs, employee availability and skills, patient or member availability and preferences, contractor availability, regulations and a myriad of other inputs. With FSM schedule optimization, an organization can create an optimal schedule that meets unique business rules that can:

• Minimize associated costs related to care delivery such as travel time, overtime and missed appointments;
• Meet patient and regulatory requirements by assigning only the person with the correct skill set for the visit.

An emerging trend in the home healthcare space is providers offering new services that deliver specialized, hospital-level care. For example, one program provides a 7 day a week offering that promises a 2-hour response to a patient call. While the benefits to the patient are great, the potential strain on the organization that has to schedule these appointments could prove to be difficult.

"As healthcare organizations scale, they need to invest in technologies like FSM software..."

The organization will need to estimate capacity, understand who can make the appointment (taking into account travel time and other business objectives) and who has the correct skill set to deliver care. These variables highlight the need for schedule optimization (and capacity planning) to calculate all of these variables to help deliver cost effective and safe care while delivering on their promise.

Schedule optimization provides real, tangible business results for organizations. The approach organizations take to optimize scheduling and appointment booking often depends on unique business policy and goals. Some healthcare organizations might prioritize on time arrivals or decreasing overtime, while others might prioritize a reduction in travel time. With schedule optimization software, organizations can define business goals and quality metrics, then tune the scheduling policy to comply with these variables. For example, let’s look at an organization that prioritizes on-time arrivals as a key business KPI. You have two customers who live on opposite ends of town and there’s only one nurse available in the area that is certified to deliver care. How can this organization meet the patient and regulatory requirements while maintaining business policy?

If that nurse runs into unexpected traffic, or the previous appointment runs over, he might arrive late to the next visit. With schedule optimization, the scheduler can recognize the possible conflict and assign the appointments with enough buffer to ensure an on-time arrival, meeting that business objective and satisfying a patient need.

FSM software provides advanced schedule optimization that enable a healthcare provider to schedule and manage hundreds to thousands of patient appointments. Not only does this help control costs with better routing and a reduction in overtime, it also helps to deliver a better experience for both the patient and the employee. For example, extended travel times can increase turnover among caregivers. In fact, a study that found that for every 15-mile increment that an employee must travel to a client, that provider becomes two times more likely to leave the organization. In an industry that is struggling to find and keep talent, improving travel time can be a great employee retention tool.

As healthcare organizations scale, they need to invest in technologies like FSM software that will help enable this growth in order to cost effectively improve operations and, most importantly, ensure that patient care does not suffer.

Paul Whitelam is VP Product Marketing at ClickSoftware.

Surefire, a UK provider of fire safety systems, is starting to reap the rewards of Tesseract, an Asolvi product, which it chose to replace a popular vertical solution...

Founded in 1990, Surefire began locally, providing systems in London and the South-East via a handful of engineers. Today it designs, installs and maintains full-scale fire protection solutions up and down the country for offices, financial institutions, facilities management companies, hospitals, prisons and schools. It also manufactures, sells and maintains the UltraGuard system for the residential market. A portable misting unit that detects and suppresses fire at an early stage, UltraGuard is a more intelligent, more versatile and more effective alternative to your basic, fixed sprinkler system. It is designed to protect the vulnerable in our communities and Surefire reports that it saves around ten lives every year.

 

Out with the old...

Surefire’s old service management system was developed and customised specifically for fire and security systems providers. Asolvi’s Tesseract solution, on the other hand, is much broader, its usefulness extending across a wide range of markets, from lifts and escalators to commercial lighting to industrial cleaning equipment. But why was this better for Surefire?

Joanna Hawkins, Surefire’s office manager, explains, “Our old system was too basic, too inflexible. Its functions were limited and it was very difficult to elicit information from it. Reporting was non-existent. Asset lists weren’t integrated, which made it impossible to see their productivity and profitability without lifting the data manually and inputting it into a spreadsheet.”

 

"Inflexibility is a common problem across field service management (FSM) solutions designed for particular markets..."

 

Inflexibility is a common problem across field service management (FSM) solutions designed for particular markets. Sometimes the basics of an FSM system get forgotten about in favour of market-specific customisations. Horizontal software like Tesseract is concerned with getting the basics right first, i.e. call control, contract management, asset management, scheduling, mobile working, invoicing and reporting. In other words: the fundamental elements of FSM regardless of the industry you’re in.

“The old system was only useful to a point,” says Joanna. “A lot of the basics were missing. That’s why we decided to go with Tesseract. We wanted a system that would streamline our call control, scheduling and contract management processes, speed up invoicing and give us a better overall view of our assets. Tesseract fitted the bill. The enhanced visibility of the new system has already improved our reporting capabilities dramatically, and we’re able to track our profitability in a way we simply couldn’t before. We’ve also seen a big reduction in admin and paperwork.”

Things have improved for Surefire’s sales teams, too. In addition to Tesseract’s call control, assets and invoicing modules, Surefire is using Tesseract’s Quote Centre. This sophisticated quoting engine streamlines the generation, management and approval of quotes and automatically converts them into ready-made contracts. “We use Quote Centre for everything,” says Joanna. “New service contracts, one-off projects, remedial work, parts—it all goes through Quote Centre. It’s a faster, more transparent system than we had before.”

 

An incremental approach to implementation

Surefire has decided that the best thing for the company and its people is a gentler, more incremental approach to implementation, streamlining one part of its service chain at a time. Having successfully overhauled its contract and asset management, Surefire is looking to improve the performance of its engineers by implementing Tesseract’s mobile working solution: Remote Engineer Access (REA). REA lets engineers generate live service reports, look up asset and customer information, order parts, close down jobs and obtain customer signatures—all from a phone, tablet or laptop.

 

"A few of our engineers are already using Tesseract on their iPads and the results have been very positive..."

 

“A few of our engineers are already using Tesseract on their iPads and the results have been very positive,” says Joanna. “They now have all the information they need when they arrive on site, and if they don’t, they’re able to get it directly from the system without having to call the office. REA enables them to work better and by extension give our customers a better service.”

Joanna adds, “We’re also seeing the benefits of our engineers inputting job information directly onto the system in real time instead of filling in service reports and posting them to the office. It reduces admin for them while improving efficiency and accuracy for us.”

 

Moving forward

After a successful trial, Surefire is set to roll out REA to all of its engineers by the end of the month. At that point it will start seeing the benefits of live job data, radically reduced paperwork, and same-day invoicing. Next, Surefire will turn its attention to spare parts management and implement Tesseract’s Parts Centre. This multi-location stock control platform lets you view stock quantities, raise parts requests, make purchases, and track all parts bought, sold, used, changed, moved or sent for repair.

“Asolvi has helped us open our eyes, scrutinise our processes and look closely at how we can improve them,” says Joanna. “Thanks to the Tesseract system and Asolvi’s support—particularly Graham and Chris, who’ve been superb—we have more control over our service operation than we’ve ever had. There’s more to come, too. We’re moving forward in leaps and bounds every day.”

 

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NRS Healthcare has selected Paragon’s routing and scheduling software as part of its commitment to continually improving the quality of service provided to social care users on behalf of the NHS and Local Authorities.

The company will use the planning solution to better manage a fleet of 300 vans responsible for the delivery and collection of mobility equipment, wheelchairs and daily living aids, which are allowing people in communities across the UK to live independently and with dignity.

As a leading provider to the social care sector, NRS Healthcare sources, procures, installs, services and recycles over 2,000 different products to help keep people active when mobility becomes difficult following an operation or due to a debilitating health condition. Following the results of a service user feedback survey, the company identified a preference for tighter delivery and collection windows, so it needed an advanced planning tool to replace the existing manual process.

NRS Healthcare initially implemented a pilot scheme in Cambridge and Norfolk using Paragon Integrated Fleets to plan a mixture of 40 home-based and depot-based technicians, with a view to rolling out the software across all 16 depots.

Over the course of the trial, the company demonstrated quantifiable service improvements which included the introduction of two-hour time slots. In addition, NRS Healthcare achieved an increase in the number of activities per technician by 28 per cent and 17 per cent at each depot respectively which has provided technicians with a more consistent workload and predictable finish time.

 

Moving forward, NRS Healthcare’s central planning team will use the routing and scheduling software to schedule daily operational delivery and collection requirements, including both one-and two-man services, across the nationwide depot network. Estimated delivery times for each product will also be incorporated into the planning process to increase schedule accuracy.

Raaza Temour, Director of Implementation & Training at NRS Healthcare commented: “The key driver for embarking on this project is our desire to continually improve the quality of service we offer. With the NHS and Local Authorities under huge pressure to provide social care within very tight budgets, we needed to find a way to further enhance the experience of the service user without increasing cost. We teamed up with Paragon because of their unrivalled experience across many industry sectors, which gave us complete confidence that they could help us deliver the service improvements.”

William Salter, Managing Director of Paragon Software Systems said: “The growing demand for NRS Healthcare’s services in a market under huge funding pressures means that operational efficiency is critical but this cannot be delivered at the expense of good customer service. The ability to provide time windows that customers can be confident will be met is just as important for NRS Healthcare as it is for a food or furniture retailer.  We are proud to have been chosen by NRS Healthcare to help them deliver an efficient and reliable service to the health authorities that also meets the individual needs of the social care user.”

 

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief talks exclusively to Tom De Vroy, Senior Product Evangelist, Field Service Management with IFS at the Field Service Medical conference to find out why they were involved within the Field Service Medical sector, what unique challenges he saw for field service management in the healthcare and medical sector and what key points he took away from the three day conference held in San Diego a few weeks ago.

at Field Service Medical held at Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego.

We also take a sneak peak at what to expect at this year's Field Service USA event being held in Palm Springs this April

 

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Thinking of attending Field Service USA this year? Field Service News subscribers are entitled to a 25% discount! 

Field service professionals can subscribe now for free here and then simply email the subscriber benefits team on subscriber.benefits@fieldservicenews.com to get your discount code!

 

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief talks exclusively to Jonathan Massoud, Divisional Director, Field Service, WBR about the key topics and discussions that took place at Field Service Medical held at Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego.

We also take a sneak peak at what to expect at this year's Field Service USA event being held in Palm Springs this April

 

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Thinking of attending Field Service USA this year? Field Service News subscribers are entitled to a 25% discount! 

Field service professionals can subscribe now for free here and then simply email the subscriber benefits team on subscriber.benefits@fieldservicenews.com to get your discount code!

 

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