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Tom DeVroy, senior product evangelist, Enterprise Service Management at IFS outlines three technology driven developments poised to disrupt field service...

Effective field service is about proactively managing your workforce and inventory in order to meet the constantly sliding scale of customer expectations. As a result, field service organisations are constantly looking to improve on the key metrics to better serve customers: first-time fix rate (FTF), mean time to service (MTTS) and mean time to repair (MTTR).

Three new technology driven developments are establishing themselves in the market, with the potential to dramatically impact these field service metrics to benefit both the customer and service provider:

• Advanced mobility: augmented reality, instant messaging platforms and native apps
• Predictive analytics enabling prescriptive maintenance
• Optimised scheduling and demand forecasting in an IoT world

First: Beyond mobility: augmented reality, instant messaging and native apps

A mobile workforce needs a mobile-driven field service strategy. In a recent study on mobility, performance and engagement, 60% of employees said mobile technology makes them more productive in the workplace. But field service organisations are now moving beyond simple mobility, looking for more intelligence and flexibility from their mobile computing platform in order to take full advantage of next generation devices.

Native apps are a key part of this - allowing engineers to receive instant updates, access repair information or collaborate with product experts without leaving the job site. Instant messaging platforms such as Slack and WeChat are also allowing field service engineers to keep connected, with more information and collaboration supported on their mobile device. Engineers are able to contact other colleagues for assistance in real-time – reducing the need to return to base for assistance.

Seeing is believing

 

 

ABI Research shows augmented reality is on the rise, and Gartner predicts businesses will purchase 53 million tablets by 2016. There are instant benefits for field service engineers. Mobile solutions now allow engineers to receive real-time feedback and expertise while on the job, enabling repairs to be completed more quickly and efficiently. An IFS partner, XMReality, is already working on pioneering augmented reality projects like this.

 

With this remote guidance, a support technician is able to watch and guide the engineer through every step of the repair without having to leave base. Using smartglasses, engineers are able to see a real-time and interactive demonstration of the repair job right in front of their eyes. These skills can be leveraged anywhere, any time with the capability of modern mobile technology – drastically improving FTF.

Second: Beyond business analytics: predict and prescribe maintenance:

The rise of IoT sensors and integrated technology on equipment is also enabling more efficient field service. Instead of scheduling maintenance when a fault is recorded, predictive analytics and the remote monitoring of equipment through IoT means faults can be detected before they become a problem.

Combined with business intelligence to make sense of the big data being captured through IoT, predictive analytics can be used to find actionable data to inform business decisions. Enabling service organisations to be proactive in regard to equipment performance means moving away from calendar-based scheduling, and towards predictive maintenance.

IFS has a predictive maintenance capability embedded in its field service applications, allowing better allocation of an engineer's time. With sensors deployed on the factory floor, service organisations can monitor vibration analysis of bearings and predict when machine parts will start to degrade, then schedule maintenance proactively.

Field service solutions should be able to find and collect patterns of data from past actions and use this information to create generic rules to highlight how processes and services can be improved in the future - delivering new insight into operational efficiency.

Mobile devices are now able to run intelligent diagnostics and capture potential problems. Based on the diagnostic output, the mobile device is able to recommend a maintenance plan and the various tasks needed to be performed, before the engineer gets on site. This technology is going one step further than just predicting when faults will occur, and will prescribe which action needs to be taken in order to fully maintain that asset.

Prescriptive maintenance will take into account budget, time and other constraints and provide an optimal order of actions and the work orders to fully maintain that equipment – all in a matter of seconds.

Third: Staying ahead of schedule

First-time fix rates are an important KPI for field service organisations, but recent Blumberg research shows that the industry average for first-time fixes was under 80%, meaning 20% of jobs require additional follow-ups. Inefficient scheduling results in a lower first time fix rate and longer time to final resolution, as unqualified engineers can be sent and the necessary equipment may be unavailable.

Although not a new technology, schedule optimisation is a foundation on which new technologies can thrive. By combining scheduling with data from IoT devices, the next generation of schedule optimisation tools go much further and help to forecast field service demand, SLAs and potential resource needs – all in real-time.

IoT-enabled sensors can trigger actions when an event changes, and automatically re-schedule jobs around this. This combination allows field service organisations to improve FTF, MTTS and MTTR by consistently scheduling the right engineer for the right job, at the right time.

When one hand washes the other

Take one recent example. A custodial services company - that uses IFS to optimise their field scheduling - is responsible for maintaining and replenishing washroom supplies for a large number of hospitals, restaurants, and other commercial facilities. The company has a sizeable contingent of mobile workers who provide delivery and replenishment services.

Much of the work is done on a planned basis, so delivery schedules are organised in advance to streamline operations. In addition, the optimisation software analyses all SLA obligations, geographic considerations and other relevant parameters to design service routes that minimise travel times and costs, and produce the highest possible productivity levels.

 

Since optimising its field scheduling software, the company has saved nearly $3 million in fuel costs alone – thanks to the optimal routes and planning the software generates and its integration with field workers' mobile devices.

Don't get left behind

These new technologies are going to bring serious benefits to field service organisations because they are so tightly integrated with delivering improved customer service and improved bottom lines.

In what is a dynamic and changing market - with tech-savvy customers demanding higher and higher levels of service - it is vital for organisations to be able to implement these cutting edge technologies.

The new breed of enterprise solutions takes away the risk

Traditional field service management solutions are simply too cumbersome and inflexible to enable field service organisations to reap the benefits. To quickly benefit from these latest advances, organisations need the backing of a new generation of flexible, agile enterprise solutions.

Traditional enterprise solutions can take months or years to simply implement, let alone adapt to an entirely new technology. The new breed of modular enterprise solutions are designed to remove the time and pain of modifying existing processes, and instead maximise the opportunities of new technology. These agile systems negate the need to fully customise legacy systems - a costly and timely process - and are enabling organisations to quickly adopt new technology, without the risk of losing out on a competitive edge.

These disruptive technologies and the digital transformation they require offer benefits that resonate throughout the whole service organisation - from the top-down. Strategic planners have real-time visibility to plan tasks and schedule the workforce in an industry with many unknown elements, from customer unpredictability to traffic, and even the weather.

 

This, in turn, directly empowers technicians, providing them with the right tools and information at their fingertips to better perform their job. But ultimately the most important stakeholder reaps the benefits - the customer receives the best possible level of service.

 

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IFS, a global enterprise applications company, announced recently at the IFS World Conference 2016 the launch of IFS Mobile Workforce Management version 5.8.

Among the enhancements in the new version are:

• Automatic shift generation—The new version supports automatic shift planning and rostering for individuals or groups based on constraints such as number of work hours, number of work days, and permissible shift patterns. With only one click, the solution then automatically plans shifts that are optimized for the company’s requirements and constraints.
• Self-learning scheduling—Leverages an extended data archive to allow for more educated and informed scheduling decisions based on historical data. The solution automatically learns to produce more accurate work schedules by analyzing a broad range of data including average job duration by activity type, customer and contract.
• New cloud deployment options—Features such as capacity planning and target-based scheduling can now run in scalable, multi-tenant Microsoft Azure environments to support occasional users and ensure maximum system availability for the solution’s Dynamic Scheduling Engine (DSE).
• Big data optimization—The new version offers even better support for large datasets, including support for aggregation and de-aggregation of planning data, extended options for filtering tasks and time-slicing as well as intelligent support for allocating processor time.
• Enhanced visual insights—A new cockpit view empowers users with customizable key performance indicators for quick and easy data access, driving efficiency and a positive user experience.

IFS product director for service-, asset-, and project-based solutions Jørgen Rogde added, “The new version of our dynamic work scheduling solution represents a major product investment aimed at helping our clients streamline and automate their scheduling processes while maintaining and enhancing the flexibility of the solution through new options for cloud deployment and big data management. It will help our customers use their resources more effectively, ultimately saving them time and money.”

 

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IFS Labs unveiled a live demonstration of an innovative project using drone technology in combination with IoT designed to drive digital transformation at their recent World Conference held in Gothenberg last week... 

Designed and realised by IFS Labs, the company’s in-house think tank, the drone proof-of-concept featured live integration between the drone and IFS Applications for automatic generation of work orders when inspecting assets.

Using computer image analysis, the drone can recognize a break in a power line and automatically generate an observation that is registered in IFS Applications via the IFS IoT Business Connector. The end user can analyze and process the drone observations via the IFS Lobby interface, in which additional information such as geolocation and customer feedback is cross-referenced to help the user action appropriate maintenance and repair.

 

“At IFS Labs, we look beyond the current needs of businesses to anticipate what solutions will be required in the future,” IFS Labs director Bas de Vos said. “There is enormous potential in drone technology and by presenting this proof-of-concept, we have demonstrated that IFS is ready to help companies not only conceptualise but importantly derive value from new innovations so they can digitally transform their businesses.”

Also presented in the Innovation Area of IFS World Conference 2016 are innovative business applications leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality, wearable technology, beacon technology, and 3D printing.

IFS Labs is inspired by consumer technologies and innovative solutions in a range of industries, and applies these to IFS’s enterprise solutions. IFS Labs proves concepts today that customers will ask for tomorrow to make their everyday work more productive, efficient and inspiring.

Read more about IFS Labs’ past and current projects here: www.ifsworld.com/corp/solutions/ifs-applications/ifs-labs/

 

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IFS announced yesterday the launch of IFS IoT Business Connector, a new product that is designed to shorten the time from ideas to tangible benefits for customers’ IoT initiatives by providing an end-to-end architecture and the ability to turn IoT discoveries into actions.

The product which was first announced yesterday during CEO Alastair Sorbie's  keynote and demonstrated this morning by Dan Matthews, CTO IFS at the IFS World Conference 2016 currently running in Gothenburg, Sweden.

IFS IoT Business Connector has been designed to de-risk and accelerate IoT initiatives in areas such as predictive maintenance, service management, asset management, and manufacturing. It provides the ability to harness data gathered from products, assets and equipment to identify actionable observations that trigger user-defined, automated or semi-automated workflows in the IFS enterprise software. IFS IoT Business Connector provides plug-and-play connectivity with the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite for device communications and data analytics, alongside open APIs to connect other IoT platforms or specialized IoT discovery applications.

IFS IoT Business Connector bridges the gap between analysis of IoT data and using the output from such analyses to execute maintenance, service, and manufacturing more efficiently. It adds the ability to turn an investment in IoT connectivity and data analytics into savings through process efficiencies, and into new revenues through service innovation.

The key components of IFS IoT Business Connector are:

• IFS IoT Controller, determining what actions to take when IoT data analysis reveals observations relevant to the business. It also handles a range of practical issues that occur when mapping operational technology (OT) into IT and business applications.
•  IFS IoT Gateway, enabling secure communications between the cloud-based discovery and analytics of IoT data, to the on-premise or cloud-based IFS products.
• IFS IoT Discovery Manager, providing additional management and monitoring capabilities when using the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite as the discovery platform.

The IFS IoT Business Connector is currently being implemented at early adopter customers Songa Offshore, an international midwater drilling contractor, ATS, a leading provider of factory maintenance and IT services based in the U.S., Anticimex, an international pest control company, and Hecla Mining, the North American precious metals mining company.

“We decided to join the early adopter program because we understood the enormous impact that IoT technology can have on our business,” ATS Automation Director of IT Christopher Lebeau said. “By connecting our field service value chain we are able to automate our processes in a new way and use the insights to make smarter business decisions.”

Anticimex CEO Jarl Dahlfors said, “The IFS IoT Business Connector allows us to take control of the data generated by our range of digital pest control devices, improving both the service to our customers as well as providing them with the information they need.”

IFS CTO Dan Matthews added, “By working with our customers and partners we are able to connect the dots so that investments in IoT not only yield piles of data and pretty charts, but result in real actions that are co-planned and executed in an optimal way together with everything else that is going on in a business. For our customers it means an easier way to get started with IoT, lower risks, and faster time to realized value.”

The IFS IoT Business Connector will be released to market in early 2017. Find out more: www.ifsworld.com/iot.

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  IFS
Title: Software selection for enterprise service management

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Click Here to access the white paper

 

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By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here

Synopsis:

Choosing to invest in a new service management solution is one thing, selecting the right system for your organisation is an entirely different challenge...

Service is becoming a central pillar of most organisations operations and investment in the tools to improve your service delivery are well documented to deliver clear R.O.I. However, the market for service management systems is highly competitive with numerous different vendors offering a multitude of solutions.

This white paper written by IFS's Tom Bowe, one of FSN's 20 most influential people in Field Service, offers some excellent, impartial and objective advice as to how you can identify the right solution for your organisation...

Overview:

This white paper, published by IFS, discusses the following key topics:

• Common business challenges including rising competition, greater margin pressures and burgeoning communications demands
• How the right software can address these business challenges including improving vision, knowledge sharing and flexibility
• A dozen key questions to ask when selecting the right service management solution for your organisation

Common business challenges:

Rising competition:

Competition in services is rising, from both big players and small players. Consider a manufacturer providing field services to customers that have purchased their equipment. Today there are huge service players that come in saying they can service everything, as well as small, nimble service organisations with a regional focus.

So for the manufacturer, sophisticated global competitors pressure service at the top end and agile competitors with a local or regional focus pressure service at the bottom end. They’re getting squeezed, and in this they are not alone among service organisations.

Greater margin pressures

In many business sectors, markets have matured for strong product growth, threatening revenue streams and driving down margins. The challenge and opportunity here is service growth: a part of the business heretofore an afterthought has moved to the front in executive suites. The immediate need is to turn service from a cost centre into a profit centre. The window of opportunity to do this effectively will not stay open forever.

Burgeoning communication demands

The proliferation of technology has had multiple effects, all of which act to increase the need for fast and pervasive communications. We see this embodied in the ubiquitous smartphone, conditioning a generation to expect access to information 24/7/365 and answers to questions immediately at the touch of a screen or click of a mouse. This has changed the game in service delivery, where performance issues (i.e., risk) have become more pronounced with lack of responsive speed or inability to deliver as promised.

The flip side of this risk is the opportunity that comes with new technology. Consider what McKinsey reported from a survey at the decade’s outset, as emerging Web-based technologies were beginning to create the networked enterprise: “The attainment of higher operating margins ... correlated with a different set of factors: the ability to make decisions lower in the corporate hierarchy and a willingness to allow the formation of working teams comprising both in-house employees and individuals outside the organisation. These findings suggest that Web technologies can underwrite a more agile organisation where frontline staff members make local decisions and companies are better at leveraging outside resources to raise productivity and to create more valuable products and services.”

 

How the right software can address these business challenges:

The right enterprise service management software supports an organisation’s ability to meet emerging challenges and respond to constant change by providing the foundation for enterprise agility. The concept of business agility involves the development of capabilities to achieve sustained competitive advantage in an unpredictable environment. Agility is the product of three foundational blocks—vision, knowledge, and flexibility—that effectively designed and developed software facilitate across the business.

A dozen questions to ask when selecting service management software

1. DOES THE SOFTWARE PROVIDE ESSENTIAL ACCESS TO DATA—THE RIGHT DATA FOR
   THE RIGHT PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT TIME?
2. SOFTWARE SELECTION FOR ENTERPRISE SERVICE MANAGEMENT
3. DOES THE SOFTWARE ALLOW FOR FUTURE GROWTH?
4. IS THE SOFTWARE APPEALING TO TODAY’S GENERATION OF WORKERS?
   [/ordered_list]

To get the full list of questions (and why these questions are important) download the white paper by clicking the link below and completing the brief for and it will be sent straight to your inbox.

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Click here to access the white paper 

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Field Service News (sponsored by IFS)
Title Standing alone or part of a bigger picture?

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Click here to download the white paper

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By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here

Synopsis:

The benefits of adopting a scheduling solution for field service companies are well documented. Increases in efficiency and productivity are matched by clear and tangible return on investment, whilst enhanced service delivery standards lead to greater customer satisfaction.

However, scheduling solutions come in a number of different flavours including manual, semi-automated and fully dynamic plus there is the consideration of whether to opt for an integrated scheduling engine or a stand alone 'best-of-breed' solution. So which is best for your organisation?

Overview:

For those that have already implemented a scheduling tool as part of their field service delivery, whether it be a fully dynamic system or something simpler that is designed to assist a human dispatcher rather than fully automate the dispatch process, it is almost certain that there will have been some important savings made in key performance areas.

However, there is another perhaps equally important argument for implementing some form of scheduling tool – the impact it will have on a company’s ability to deliver the highest levels of service excellence.

We live in an age where service is absolutely a key differentiator between similar competing brands.

It is certainly fair to say that the consumer of these early few decades of the twenty first century is more empowered, more knowledgeable and far more demanding than ever before.

 

But does this translate across from our consumer lives into our working environments?

We have already seen the consumerisation of technology within the working space and very simply the mind-set of many is “If Amazon can guarantee to deliver products to me within 60 minutes for no extra charge why can’t my service provider improve his Service Level Agreements (SLA) so I can expect an engineer on site within hours rather than days?”

So in a world of high customer expectations can field service companies afford not to assess their own scheduling set up and see what solutions are available?

Almost certainly not because they can be assured that their competitors most likely will be doing so at some point in the near future, such are the clear benefits identified in any given case study on the implementation of a scheduling solution.

However, scheduling solutions come in many different flavours and across the following pages we shall look at some of the considerations field service companies must take into account when selecting a solution that is right for their organisation.

This white paper looks at:

• The different types of scheduling engine available
• Selecting which is right for your organisation
• Stand alone solutions versus integrated
• What differentiates scheduling engines?
• What advancements should we be looking for in a scheduling engine?

 

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IFS Applications 9 selected as the new finance and service contract management system for JLA’s growing business in an agreement valued at £1million

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, announces that JLA, one of the UK’s leading suppliers of commercial and industrial laundry and catering equipment , will implement IFS Applications™ 9 for its entire operation.

IFS Applications 9 will provide JLA with an advanced system to manage its customer contracts by encompassing service contracts, rental and asset management, as well as full financials, purchasing, inventory, and production control in one centralised system. Once implemented, JLA will be able to control and improve the quality and efficiency of its service to clients.

 

James Greenman, JLA Chief Information Officer commented “IFS Applications 9 was selected because it not only meets JLA’s current needs, but it is agile enough to adapt to changing requirements, laying the foundations for a long-term strategic relationship. The project will begin immediately and is scheduled to go live in the second quarter of 2017”.

“It’s great to be working with such a customer-focused and growing company,” IFS UK Managing Director Paul Massey said. “Our work with JLA demonstrates our strength in helping service-centric firms effectively manage business and we look forward to a long and successful partnership.”

 

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Optimised scheduling remains an absolutely crucial tool for many field service companies and one that could improve many other companies’ efficiency and productivity levels if they were to adopt such a system. On a recent Field Service News webinar based on this topic, Kris Oldland interviewed scheduling expert Daryl Dudey from IFS to find out more…

KO: What is a typical timeframe from modelling a scheduling solution through to actual implementation?

DD: There are several things that affect that.

Firstly how driven a company is but also how large the organisation is. If we are dealing with smaller teams we can roll out a bit quicker, so we could even be talking weeks moving from pilot to live, if we are talking about a larger organisation with a couple of thousand people out in the field generally speaking we’d like to take a little longer with that to make sure we are considering all the factors.

Really we try to go for a timescale of six months from start of project through to live, that’s the goal if possible. Also the nature of the business the more the senior management is driving the project the more likely it is we are going to get to live quicker, that’d very important.

A lot of the time these implementations can be viewed as IT projects but they’re not they’re business projects and businesses need to understand there is a lot of change involved in this, employees are involved, customers are involved and everybody really needs to be concentrating on it and focussing on it to get the result everybody wants.

KO: In your experience is it a case that those companies that have the full management buy in get more from these types of implementation?

DD: Absolutely. The ones that have that buy-in, that have that drive, they’re the ones that see the significant improvements to their business. They’re the ones that see the big numbers in improvement in terms of cost of travel and increasing jobs per day. They’re the ones that see the most success.

[quote float="left"]A lot of the time these implementations can be viewed as IT projects but they’re not they’re business projects and businesses need to understand there is a lot of change involved

Also in a company that decides they’re not over ride the system manually they’re not diluting the benefits. By the management setting those sorts of rules down the project works just that much better. From experience I’ve also seen that those companies that drive an implementation better, those people out in the field and in the dispatch office end up liking the system more anyway. Because they get the benefits out of it that they were expecting.

 

KO: So as well as there being a need to be driven by the top level, is there also a strong case for involving the end users, the field engineers and dispatchers throughout the implementation process?

DD: Involving the technicians, their team leaders and the dispatchers is absolutely key. At the end of the day this could be seen as a bit of an invasive system, coming in and changing working practices and taking responsibilities away from people. So we need to manage it in the right way to keep those people on-board.

[quote float="right"]Involving the technicians, their team leaders and the dispatchers is absolutely key. At the end of the day this could be seen as a bit of an invasive system, coming in and changing working practices and taking responsibilities away from people.

However, in the end people end up doing what they are better at. So with dispatchers for example, instead of having to decide which job to do in which order, they have more time to do what they are better at which is contact customers and dealing with the technicians and making sure everything is running smoothly.

 

It’s the same with the technicians. They are able to do what they are best at, which is being on-site, fixing equipment, interacting with customers etc. Basically not deciding which route is the optimum etc. So in my opinion, everyone benefits.

KO: What is the typical R.o.I following an implementation?

DD: It can vary but scheduling as a project is very much a return on investment project.

Most companies can expect to see five to fifteen per cent increase in productivity in SLA hit rates so that will hit the bottom line. Every organisation of course has different priorities so they tend to tune things in a different way.

Fuel savings are a particularly direct way of measuring cost savings. PHS in the UK for example made fuel savings of around 7 or 8% a year, which for them equates to around £2 million. So they made some significant savings – quite a lot more than they paid for the solution I might add, so the solution paid for itself pretty quickly.

We are currently running a free field service health check, which is a great way of getting a picture of this, and a great way of putting the business case together. We can take customer data if they are unsure and we can run that through and we can give you some predictive numbers which is a great way of seeing what that R.o.I specifically in line with your business.

KO: All too often we hear that service doesn’t perhaps get the voice it should in the boardroom, what do you recommend a service director should do when building the case for investment in a scheduling solution?

DD: To be honest the numbers make a pretty good case for themselves. Increasing jobs per day, reducing fuel costs etc there are all pretty big numbers and there aren’t many projects you can implement that are going to get you big savings like that.

But there are some more intangible benefits as well such as customer satisfaction. A lot of organisation using manual systems can end up sending the wrong technician out, or maybe a technician is missing parts and that just causes frustration at the customer end really.

[quote float="left"]There are some more intangible benefits as well such as customer satisfaction. A lot of organisation using manual systems can end up sending the wrong technician out, or maybe a technician is missing parts and that just causes frustration at the customer end really.

So sending the right engineer, with the right skills and the right parts, in the agreed allotted time window is pretty important when it comes to customer satisfaction.

 

Also a possibility given the increased efficiency is maybe offering shorter time windows, which can be a big competitive benefit. If you customers are all offering AM or PM slots and you can offer one hour or two hour slots that’s another pretty compelling case for scheduling optimisation I think.

The reality is from my experience is that companies may have these SLAs in place but they may not necessarily be meeting them and it’s interesting that when we do the initial phase and we take some historical data we discover some often huge discrepancies between what a company thinks they are delivering and what they are actually doing.

The reason being is that when you are using a manual system or a semi-manual system then it’s pretty hard to consider all these variables.

You’ve got to consider where the technicians are, what jobs are nearby, what parts and skills are required on those jobs, when you need to get there etc. It’s just to much for a person to deal with in reality. So sometimes things slip.

Whereas in an organisation not only are they to hit the SLAs they’ve already guaranteed to their customers, they also have the opportunity to offer shorter SLAs. If your peers and competitors are using manual systems and offering a four hour delay you could offer a two SLA and they simply wouldn’t be able to achieve that.

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Work-at-height and scaffolding solutions company Turner Access is improving operational management and increasing productivity of its mobile workforce with IFS Applications 9 ERP software. 

Turner Access is a  division of family-owned, Turner & Co (Glasgow) Ltd and was founded over 30 years ago. It  designs, manufactures and supplies access equipment for safe working at height. In response to the current skills shortage facing the UK construction sector, the industry is under constant pressure to ensure employees are as efficient with their time as possible.

As part of this drive for efficiency, Turner Access was looking to refresh its legacy IT infrastructure, which was running a number of disparate systems working together inefficiently. As a result, staff have been spending unnecessary time inputting data into multiple systems and were struggling to access important documents on the move.

In addition, the company wanted to grow net margin and improve factory productivity through increased visibility of employee performance by centralising systems and providing an easy-to-view summary of key business data via the IFS Lobby, a key feature of IFS Applications 9.

Turner Access is also looking to increase turnover through tighter internal control and better cost visibility leading to increased competitiveness. Through the standardisation of processes users will be expected to save time and be more efficient and productive through communication improvements and better visibility of real time information and analysis.

Ian Wilson, Managing Director, said, “The needs of Turner Access are specific to manufacturing, sales, rental, training and contracting across multiple industry sectors and International territories and IFS demonstrated its specialism in this area with IFS Applications 9. The system will ensure we can improve efficiency across the board and we also have the option in the future to scale the solution across a number of specialist areas in both hemispheres.”

Paul Massey, Managing Director of IFS Europe West, said, “It’s always great to see manufacturing and contracting companies taking technology seriously, especially in the current climate where we are facing a serious skills shortage - technology can help. Introducing IFS Applications 9 will ensure that Turner Access stays one step ahead of its competitors and is in an excellent position to improve efficiency throughout its business over the coming years.”

 

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