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Geo-data specialist, Fugro, is fueling a transformation journey to unify its people, processes, and business data with a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solution from IFS.

With a 9,000-strong workforce in 61 countries, Fugro collects and analyzes information about the earth and the structures built upon it. The company helps its customers determine the optimal site for the safe, cost-effective, and sustainable design and construction of buildings and infrastructure by acquiring, analyzing and advising on geodata for clients in industries such as offshore and land-based energy, renewables, infrastructure, and nautical engineering.

 

IFS Software to empower Furgro employees worldwide with cloud-based capabilities across global finance and accounting, project management and procurement

The investment in IFS is part of a company-wide initiative that is aimed at bringing staff together in one collaborative way of working, on a centralized technological framework. Without a central system and access to one version of its business information, the company was challenged in leveraging efficient and collaborative ways of working, with common processes and effective business and financial reporting. To provide a single, digital home to its business units, the company opted for a flexible solution that could support its project-based business and ensure timely and accurate reporting in one fully integrated solution. The cloud-based IFS solution will support mission-critical processes including financial management, project and business management, project accounting, and purchasing. When fully deployed, the system will be used in some 40 countries worldwide.

“Companies like us, supporting our clients in managing their complex project lifecycles, are often forced to use separate software products to manage different stages of the project, creating multiple disconnects between data, people and time,” Fugro Chief Executive Officer Mark Heine said. “The IFS solution will standardize and harmonize our project-oriented processes in one highly intuitive ERP platform. Having all of our people accessing the same data and working in the same way will be faster and more enjoyable for our teams. We look forward to working with IFS to usher in the next phase of our company’s business transformation journey.”

Frank Beerlage, Managing Director, IFS Benelux, added, “Project-based service providers such as Fugro need business technology that can scale and flex as business and circumstances dictate. We have a very successful track record in developing tools for companies in some of the world’s most demanding environments, both offshore and onshore. Fugro is a well-respected brand in the project-based service space and we are excited to be working alongside them to establish new standards of efficiency and value.”

The solution will be implemented in collaboration with management and technology consultancy, and Platinum-level IFS partner, BearingPoint.

Learn more about how IFS supports project-based businesses at www.ifs.com/corp/solutions/enterprise-resource-planning/project-erp-software/.

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com
• Learn more about Fugro @ www.fugro.com 
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Learn more about the IFS Enterprise Resource Planning @ www.ifs.com/enterprise-resource-planning/project-erp-software/
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

 

In the first part of this exclusive interview with Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower we looked at the development of their product suite with the recent launch of NEXUS FS^TM giving them a great platform to drive forward with Martin admitting that there will be a big focus on sales execution in the coming year as they see to capitalise on the considerable investment and resources they have put into developing and refining their product.

So in this the concluding part of this interview we ask just what what sector are they looking to conquer?

Well one of the advantages Martin sees ServicePower having over their competitors is that they are ideally placed to work across a broad spectrum of field service organisations.

“If you think of where we are now I like to describe us as in the middle of the triangle.” Martin begins.

“So you have ClickSoftware at the top and then ServiceMax and Service Bench in the two bottom corners. We sit in the inside of the triangle competing in all those areas. Each corner has slightly different focus but we are able to start looking at the markets and verticals of all three of those.”

 

“It gives us a very broad spectrum if we can compete directly where Click compete, where ServiceMax competes, where Service Bench competes that gives us a lot of business to go after and that is why sales execution is going to be very interesting as we go after that business.” Explains Martin.

It’s a bold strategy, that will see the UK based company, whose US offices are in Virginia taking on all comers, even ServiceMax who they also work with as a partner on occasion and whilst Martin clearly has respect for her Californian

based rivals, she also believes ServicePower are well placed to compete with them for business.

“I think ServiceMax validated that in the field service sector you really can go after the SMBs and the enterprise” she comments before adding “but the issue a little bit with ServiceMax of course is the cost, as a SaaS only solution it is quite an expensive solution and does has both the pros and the cons of being built right on the Salesforce ecosystem.”

“So we worked with NEXUS FS^TM to have a technology that is actually very scalable at a lower cost point. That will enable us to go in at a good and attractive price point and demonstrate real ROI to a lot of the SMB segment as well be able to scale that with functionality to the enterprise market as it’s very versatile and modular.”

However, as mentioned above, whilst the ServicePower team are gearing up for an eventful few years in the short term, Martin has an eye on the long term as well.

 

ServicePower now have a number of patents currently being filed having worked with KPP and Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK – an area Martin believes is a hotbed for emerging technology focussed talent.

“I’m a little bit of a technology nerd in the sense that I have always been involved with companies that have a lot of technology patents and interest in patents” confesses Martin “I firmly believe there is a ton of excellent technology developed there (in the UK) because there are still a lot of people studying maths and sciences in the UK and the quality of the technology is great there.”

And the area of this investment in technology is all focussed on developing the next-generation of algorithms to drive field service management scheduling forwards.

As Martin explained “Our simulated annealing algorithms is excellent, its very versatile and it works across a broad variety of verticals. But when you think about the future you want to get algorithms that use less meta-data and work faster and more efficiently.”

“You need to start thinking about not just optimising the work-flow and technicians but how do we start bringing in predictive analytics, more integration touch points and all these Big Data elements. To do that you really need to go to the next level.” She adds.

 

“That’s where we started doing the investment with some people in Manchester Metropolitan University looking at Quantum Annealing.”

“What’s interesting with the ServiceScheduling product, and this is one of the reasons it has always performed so well, is it never allows a bad schedule. When it optimises in the process it runs through various optimisation scenarios and then only writes that change if it is definitely better.”

“What quantum will do is do this in a more efficient way and faster. If simulated annealing takes an one-minute of optimisation to get to a result, we want something that will take 15 seconds to get to a result.”

“It also will enable us to migrate the product into the next generation.” Martin comments before explaining further

“Rather than a boring discussion on how do you keep re-writing the existing product, when we look forward five years we want to have a new back-end engine based on quantum annealing, so ideally we would have that in two to three years and that will fit in with a lot of the predictive capabilities that are in demand especially by the larger enterprises to day.”

Such vision and desire to innovate whilst also building the business in the current is impressive, however for Martin it really is a simple case of wanting to build a product that will become a significant player within the field service industries for many years to come.

It is also the biggest differentiator she can build between her companies and her competitors who she feels are not pushing the boundaries as much as they perhaps should be.

“Even if you look at SAP and Oracle and other big players, there really is very limited true technology innovation.” Martin states.

“ServiceMax doesn’t use any algorithms, the TOA algorithm is older, ClickSoftware uses so many algorithms that it makes its very complicated when training, or at least it makes it very labour intensive.”

 

“We want to keep driving superior results for the field service organisations but do it with technology that makes their life easy not complicated.”

Indeed whilst Martin is eloquent and laid back during our interview, she also clearly has plenty of belief in her product line which shines through our conversation.

“I’m very passionate about our product suite; I’ll put our products up against everybody, especially as we continue finishing off the road map of where we are going.” She states boldly.

“It’s coming together slowly but surely and steadily and us being able to do this across the next 12, 24, 36 months it’s going to be phenomenal.”

“We want to make sure that we are setting up a company that can continue growing in the immediate future but we also want to set up one that can keep growing for twenty years as an exciting field service player.”

Although they may not be ploughing that path alone, as Martin alluded to a soon to be announced partnership with Thingworx to add to their IoT partners, with the potential for other partnerships along the way.

“I am very much a partner person and one of the things that I have always cared about is not thinking business is an environment where I win by someone else losing. Instead we have to find ways with our partners and with our customers where we all win.” She states

“I think there is enough opportunities that even through a partner ecosystem, both should be generating profit whilst still delivering ROI to our customers.”

 

And this is at the core of Martin’s thinking when it comes to partnerships, delivering customer ROI must remain at the very hear of any conversation.

“My approach is I will partner with whomever is going to be a good partner as long as we can deliver real return on investment for our customers.” Adds Martin.

“Those partnerships that are all about window dressing and marketing, that the customers don’t get value from, well they may be nice but in the end its all about customer value.”

With a steady growth trajectory, a desire to innovate continuously and a firm grasp of the most important factor of all - delivering customer value, ServicePower under Martin’s guidance are certainly on the right track.

With an active sales approach being the adopted in 2016 there is a fair chance you’ll be speaking to someone in the ServicePower sales team at some point next year. Given the vision and direction of ServicePower , I’d say that when the call does come, you may well want to listen.

 

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In the third and final part of our exclusive interview with Telogis UK General Manager Sergio Barata, we find out what Sergio's thoughts are on the impact of smart phones on field service software and what he thinks is the next stage for the field service industry...

FSN: Given your such a fan of the iPhone, do you think that the consumerisation of mobile devices has led to a major shift in the design of the interfaces you and your competitors are designing?

SB: Telogis never really developed heavily in a Windows Mobile development - we just never felt it was right for us. Our belief was that these things would take care of themselves.

There were companies that would have 20 engineers just developing an environment [for Windows mobile]. We just felt that this was never a model we could get behind, however, we were always happy to partner and integrate and take a more open approach.

Now with the newer iOS and Android systems we can take advantage of the situation and have some pretty compelling technologies. Just downloading an application and updating it now is completely seamless whereas previously companies had to throw thousands of pounds at project management to get an update out to the field. So we are big believers in what’s happening with the mobile handsets and tablets. 

FSN: What is the biggest trend in solutions that you are seeing come to the market? What are your clients most commonly looking for today that they weren’t asking for two years ago?

SB: Today the market is asking for our platform. Two years ago we were pushing a platform and the benefits because we believed it was the right way forward, even though the market wasn’t necessarily asking for it. There were some organisations that were interested in that conversation - today we are finding that most of the market is asking for it.

One objection I have heard on a number of occasions is why would I deny the company the opportunity to have best of breed in all particular elements?

That’s an interesting discussion in that a large part of our platform, if you took it individually, is best of breed anyway. ABI Research last summer rated us as the most innovative telematics solution you can buy anywhere today. Even if we ranked third or fourth in each of those disciplines, it’s all about leveraging the data that each investment creates, rather than the sum of each of those pieces.

Now customers know what they are trying to achieve and ask us to present our platform. Often they may have a requirement for one of the elements, but it is now a very easy conversation to show the benefits of the whole holistic approach.

FSN: What do you think the next biggest technological advancement in field service will be?

SB: I think that bringing more Big Data to the field service individual, to the actual agent, is something we will see. I have seen it with driver behaviour for example. The traditional driver behaviour solution is that you put a unit in my vehicle, I drive and if I violate the rules then my line manager prints it out, confronts me and then hopefully I improve.

We have a solution called Telogis Coach, which has all of those same elements but does it in a very non-confrontational way.  It gets the driver to buy into the process through a portal on his phone, which just creates a different dynamic and environment for him to digest the information. I personally think treating agents in this way will engage them more positively.

People are ready for more information as long as it is done in a way that the employee can say, “okay this is positive, it’s not big-brother, they’re not policing me”. The trends towards more efficiency will probably add more benefits for the agents as well, whether profit sharing or incentives.

FSN: What is the biggest difference between when you started in the industry and today?

SB: I think the biggest difference between when I started and today is now we have new devices and tools to deliver the level of information required, which along with more platforms mean you can bring more and increasingly diverse data together and interpret it better. As a result we are seeing greater understanding both from agents working in the field and in the central offices alike, helping organisations work smarter and better.

Missed the first parts of this interview? Find part one here and part two here

Want to learn more about Telogis? Find more news, features, videos and resources in the Field Service News directory 

 

In part one of this exclusive interview with Telogis' Sergio Barata we learnt both about his personal background and the background of the company. In this second part of this three part series we discuss the growth of Telogis and the technology that makes Sergio tick.

FSN: With the launch of progression a few years ago Telogis stepped much more firmly into the field service software arena rather than solely fleet management. We have seen similar moves from other companies with a fleet technology background such as Trimble and TomTom, are the lines blurring between mobile workforce management and fleet management technologies?

SB:There is no doubt that telematics on its own is a pretty competitive space with a low barrier to entry. I think Trimble, TomTom, Telogis, companies like this, have taken that next step of investment in terms of R&D in trying to develop a more holistic approach. I do think that the companies that win will be those that offer true value to any organisation.

FSN: Since 2009 Telogis has been on the acquisitions trail with the purchase of Darby, Remote Dynamics, Integris, Onboard Advisor, Maptuit and Navtrak across just three years. How have the acquisitions of these companies shaped Telogis’ own development both as a company and also in terms of your product lines?

SB: We have been fairly aggressive in our acquisitions, having secured companies for either market share or for more depth in a particular segment of the market place. For instance we acquired Maptuit as a very dynamic navigation technology that we have integrated into the rest of our offering. We are always monitoring the UK market to see what makes sense.

FSN: One of these acquisitions, Onboard Advisor was a risk reduction product and you subsequently partnered with Travelers Insurance on their IntelliDrive fleet safety program. How important is technology in improving driver safety?

SB: The telematics driver-profiling element is essentially a tool for our largest customers, the enterprise fleets, to help bring in behavioural change that will increase opportunities to save on fuel and insurance costs.

We look for technology that allows us to engage the drivers directly in an innovative way to help manage and improve their driving behaviour; the idling, how they drive - sudden braking, acceleration, their speed. We then needed tools and dashboards to take that underlying data and the driver profiles to help large organisations change business practices to make improvements.

Certainly Onboard Advisor and the tie up with insurance telematics has been very important for us and our largest accounts, which have global fleets that deal with these issues and can now take advantage of this approach.

FSN: What was the first piece of technology that made a huge impression on you both personally and in a work environment?

SB: I think the biggest impression on me personally as well as the workplace, has been my iPhone.

Working in a technology led industry I got into smart phones and the Internet early. I’ve always been an early adopter but I don’t think anything has changed the way I think as when first picked up my iPhone. I had Nokia N70s, Blackberrys and so on, but nothing has been as complete, as easy to use and as seamless as the iPhone. 

 

Read part one of this interview here

Find out more about Telogis in our online directory here

Having become a regular member of the Deloitte Fast Track 500 Telogis have become a firmly established leading provider in the US. Field Service News caught up with Sergio Barata, the man tasked with leading the charge into the United Kingdom.

FSN: You have been involved with Telogis since they launched in the UK. Firstly could you tell us a bit about your own background and also the approach you took when introducing what was a successful US product to the UK market?

SB: I moved to the UK just over ten years ago when first working for a mobile start-up and have worked in the LBS (location based services) space ever since. 

Initially starting in pure Geo Spatial technology, I find myself now immersed in the sector. I joined Telogis back in 2008, having just come from another US based software company where I had spent time localising and refocusing their key capabilities for the UK.  On joining Telogis, I had some specific views on how we should launch the company here – the leadership team understood and bought into the fact that we would have to localise correctly if we were to launch in such a competitive environment.

We initially started with our GeoBase product, thinking that if we could correctly localise and licence this within the UK as we have done in the US, we would have a strong platform to build upon. Once the underlying technology was in place, we could introduce the rest of our SaaS solution which is all built around this.

Since the early days Telogis has grown rapidly both in the UK and wider.  When I started at Telogis we had around 120 people in the whole organisation, now we have nearly 500. In the UK we have just moved into our new facility, which will allow us to continue to grow substantially.

FSN: With Telogis only being founded in 2001, you are in relative terms still a young company within the field service industry. Do you think this gives you an advantage in being able to build a cloud based solution from the ground up rather than having to adapt a legacy solution?

SB: We launched as a SaaS company, which in 2001 was quite a brave thing to do. Browser adoption, both as a way of working and technologically still wasn’t quite there - but that quickly shifted. The vision our founders had clearly worked. Around 2005/6 all our competitors had essentially become organisations supporting their customers in the field - not black boxes but servers with their software running on them, so their ability to innovate was hampered. Being cloud-based has meant we didn’t have these issues.

The other critical decision we made was not to develop our own hardware and to remain hardware agnostic. This has meant that our R&D budgets have been focused on the data, the software and our platform, which we are now selling as a strategic approach.

I think not having an incumbent legacy, adopting the hardware agnostic approach and choosing to be SaaS from day one has allowed us to remain innovative and scalable, which has been a key part of our success to date.

FSN: You recently wrote an article for Field Service News in which you talked about the platform approach, something we are hearing more and more of within the industry. Do you think this model, i.e. working with one provider for multiple solutions is likely to be the future for field service software?

SB: We certainly see the benefits of it!

When we meet customers we find many burdened with costly overheads and challenges of integration, even to the extent that they are not meeting the ROIs and initial business case. The costs that it takes to get systems to talk to each other can be significant.

There are also other elements: different companies have different commercial models - our telematics is a subscription model, making it straightforward to cost and manage. Other systems often have capital expenditure costs upfront and deploying different systems and suppliers efficiently can be very challenging.

We think starting with one part of a solution and then integrating other elements is the right approach. We never advocate the ‘big bang’ approach to implementing a complete solution - it’s not commercially or even technically feasible to embrace a whole system at once. Our strategy is based around ‘lets put one piece of the solution in and then work with you on building a longer term strategy and at the end you will come out with a holistic approach.’

The other question we address is the integration of our systems - the telematics, the routing and scheduling - with the customers’ systems that they have already deployed. We have some interesting platform tools, middleware/application programme interfaces that are essentially self-help modules that we can offer our customers to help this integration.

 These may be scripted alerting, customised reporting on driver stats or just workflow management that actually allows them to translate data between our solutions and their other systems. Integration can become seamless – there are even situations where they don’t even need to log into our system, they are just communicating with the cloud and getting the data straight out of it.

Look out for the next part of this exclusive interview coming soon...

Want to know more about Telogis? Check out their page in the Field Service News Online Directory here