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Competition in the Field Service Management Solution sector is fiercer than ever and new technology is constantly emerging. So we asked a series of industry experts what we should expect of our FSM solution today and what should we look for in a provider?

Features as Standard?

With the amount of functionality in standard FSM applications constantly improving, new innovations quickly become standard features. With this in mind what is the baseline level of functionality we should expect from an FSM solution? I.e. Should a solution include a mobile piece, scheduling, parts management?

Rue Dilhe – Managing Director, Exel Computer Systems explains their solution as being predominantly aimed at “established SME’s within the service industry, these companies are, generally speaking, well aware of the benefits available from a full breadth system.”

“The baseline functionality the majority of our prospective clients look for encompass pretty much all of the technologies and functionality offered. If we are able to show them functionality they weren’t aware of, such as configurable user dashboards displaying pertinent KPIs and reports, then these soon make it onto their requirements list, ” he adds.

“We expect the following to make it onto the majority’s ‘must have’ list: fully integrated solution, a dynamic/assisted scheduler, real-time information, remote engineer application, management reporting, user pertinent reporting, document management, call/case centre management, service oriented CRM, job information and technical documents pushed to engineer device, customisation tools, workflow tools, financial management and the ability to invoice on-site. Not to mention, the preference to partner with a well-established solution provider.”

For Kony, the focus is perhaps more understandably on mobile, as Steve Luong, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, explains.

“Although there are many FSM solutions in the market that address different needs, back-office capabilities such as scheduling, parts & inventory management and team allocation are commoditised features now.”

“Mobile is now a critical functionality in modern solutions, with native apps providing a better user experience and performance over others, allowing leading service organisations to differentiate themselves. Customer-centric solutions that even include the end user into the business process will soon be the new must-have functionality.”

 

Tesseract’s Kevin McNally, comments “In our experience, customers are looking for a best of breed service solution.”

“This includes service contract and asset management, service call taking and scheduling, planned maintenance control, stock & logistics management, quoting, job costing/invoicing and Engineer mobile communication. We are also seeing the requirement to control internal workshop / repair centres as a growth area requiring a different solution to that of field processes.”

“One of the often-forgotten areas of a solution is reporting,” he continues.

“The ability to report on any piece of data is crucial and a reason many companies are looking for change. Our customer’s clients have also become more demanding, and the ability to communicate externally also needs thought, whether that is a web portal, client reporting or direct data integration.”

Deb Geiger, VP Global Marketing, Astea International points out that there is not a 1 size fits all requirement for field service.

“I think that it all depends on the individual needs of the organisation in regards to baseline level of functionality. For example, if a company manages a mix of internal and external subcontractors then the base of functionality also needs to include third party vendor management capabilities,” she comments.

“But at a general level, the most basic elements of FSM solution should have the ability to manage service contract and entitlement information; asset/equipment information; scheduling, parts management, mobile (online & offline), customer self-service, and performance management/reporting as well as ability to configure solution without coding.”

For Mark Homer, Vice President Global Customer Transformation at ServiceMax, a GE Digital company “Any field service management solution worth its weight should handle work planning and scheduling; give technicians all they need to complete a job and close out a work order from a mobile device (on or offline); manage entitlements while technicians are onsite and handle service supply chain logistics”

 

However, he goes on to add that “as field service management evolves to become more integrated in other aspects of the industrial economy and proves a necessary lynch pin of optimising the performance of industrial equipment, these basic functionalities will progress to include more advanced features.”

Again scheduling and mobility are tow key components that are expected by ClickSoftware’s Paul Whitelam, Group VP of Product Marketing “Baseline capabilities for FSM consist of scheduling and mobility (specifically communication with the field and task execution support). Beyond that there are certainly additional aspects such as planning, forecasting, customer engagement, analytics and so forth, but as Field Service Management software becomes increasingly sophisticated, thinking in terms of feature sets can be something of a red herring,” he explains.

“In particular, there are non-functional aspects such as open APIs and extensibility, as well as the deployment model that can have a huge impact.

For example, software delivered via multi-tenant SaaS can offer a significant advantage in terms of agility and speed of deployment. More so than a feature list, it’s the way in which technology is combined with processes and people that delivers business advantage.”

Buying for the future...

So, whilst there is of course a variety of different elements that different experts think of as standard requirements, there are indeed some universal core functionalities that should now be embedded within any FSM solution, with these primarily being some scheduling automation, a mobile tool for engineers in the field and dashboard or similar reporting tools for monitoring what is of course a mission critical part of the business.

But one thing that is certain in our industry is that technological innovation is never far away. Whether it be connected devices, quantum annealing, or augmented reality every where we look there are technologies being intrinsically linked with field service that could change the way we approach service delivery entirely.

So given the constant development of technologies within field service management solutions, what steps should field service companies take to ensure that the solution they opt for is future proof?

Exel’s Dilhe explains that from their experience “from the outset, prospective clients are usually pretty confident they want a common, ‘out-of-the-box’ solution, and this is true for maybe 90% of the implemented solution, the remaining 10% however, the client can usually see a benefit in configuring the solution to the way they work now, whilst having the ability to adapt to how they may work in the future. It is for this reason that within the Eagle Field Service solution Exel provide a customisation tool-kit.”

“Customisations can range from the introduction of simple validation on fields to new panels and scrolling data sets for data entry and data display. Clients are able to extend any table by adding any number of columns for storing additional information, these can be managed from within the software without the need to make any manual database changes.”

Of course customisation sits at the very heart of the Kony offering also however, it is the pedigree of the platform and the provider themselves that offer the best glimpse of how future proof a solution is in the eyes of Luong.

He comments: “To ensure solutions they opt for are future proof, field service companies should look at solutions that have a strong technology stack supported by an underlying platform and cloud. These characteristics will allow for rapid implementation but more importantly, enable simple and fast updates to adapt to a quickly changing marketplace.”

“Additionally, understanding the solution provider’s roadmap and view of the market will ensure alignment between the field service company and provider into the future."

For McNally the responsibility should be shared by the providers and their customers.

“It is difficult to foresee future technologies in the fast-moving modern world, but customers should try to understand the impact of these within their own markets,” he begins.

 

“As an example, the “Internet of Things” may be viewed by some verticals as a distant reality but equipment such as coffee machines, compressors and many other products viewed as “unconnected” are today providing useful data. This information is allowing providers to be both reactive and proactive in their service delivery. It is vital that companies understand the data and use this as a competitive edge.”

“It can seem unfathomable for small and medium size service providers to understand the complexities of new technologies but suppliers should be assisting their customers on their future requirements and helping them understand the benefits, as these may already be “out of the box” based on previous implementations within that vertical market.”

This sentiment is echoed somewhat by Geiger who explains that when selecting technology we can’t just think of today.

“What is right for companies at the moment, might not suit as their business grows and evolves. It’s important for businesses to not only to understand their immediate need but to get the full picture of their objectives so that companies can find a solution that will support them today but also in the future. Even if an organisation may have very limited requirements today, it is much easier to start with a platform solution that has rich capabilities and a high level of configurability instead of a solution that just meets the requirements for today.”

“By leveraging a solution that offers a high-level of configurability, it is very easy for companies to remove fields or turn features “off” with a feature-rich solution, to get the base feature set to support their needs today. But as their business model changes, they have the tools to quickly adapt the solution without having to pay for customisations or having to wait until the software vendor adds specific features to a roadmap if they even decide to add those features at all.”

“You never know what is around the corner, so you need a solution that gives you the flexibility to add functionality as and when you need it.”

For ServiceMax’s Homer however, the answer is simple - the future belongs to the Cloud.

“Because field service organisations rely on remote workers for the majority of the information needed to run their business, flexible and constantly updated cloud-based software is a must – and a pre-requisite for mobile synchronisation and offline capabilities,” he asserts.

“And when it comes to enabling field personnel, companies need to seek out vendors with proven mobile capabilities. They need to find providers who continually invest in the latest mobile architectures for deployment ease and full functionality across all mobile platforms.”

“Lastly, and most importantly, customers need a platform that grows with them. They need a system that easily supports configuration with workflow management that organises standard operating procedures not only in the office, but also in the field. And it should all work together to keep service delivery consistent from the office to the field.”

Cloud-first is again echoed by ClickSoftware’s Whitelam, who also sees the need for field service companies to keep their finger on the pulse n terms of how emerging technology could impact their vertical markets.

“It is often much easier to predict new technology than it is to predict which of these innovations will be widely adopted, and in what manner. Field service companies have to be attentive to what their customers value the most and remain flexible in the face of new technology,” he comments.

 

Indeed Whitelam lists the following as the key to ensuring a future proof approach are:

• Move to cloud-first solutions which enable fast, seamless, and frequent updates to the latest feature sets and enhancements—something all but impossible with on-premises installations.
• Adopt systems with open APIs and extensibility so that new capabilities—be they IoT enabled devices or Augmented Reality goggles—can be easily adopted in a modular way.
• Ensure your FSM solution is highly configurable, and not limited to a particular data model. For example, IoT devices represent a new set of inputs or variables to be incorporated into your operations. Having a generalised approach to data management, coupled with the processing power of a cloud platform enables companies to translate this data into actionable—and automated—improvements.

Solution provider support?

It is interesting to note that many of the experts that we spoke to identified a shared responsibility between vendor and customer to understand the technology trends and establish a sensible roadmap of FSM technology to implement.

Of course in any industry where the product is as absolutely vital to business  operations one would expect a consultative approach from solution providers, but this willingness from many such providers to engage with and in many ways educate the market.

This leads us to question what other factors, aside from feature set and cost, should field service companies take into consideration when selecting a solution provider?

At Exel would prefer to see the selection process as the client choosing a business partner, instead of supplies,” replies Dilhe.

“The chosen solution will become an integral part of the business and a business tool used by most, if not all, employees. As such, it makes sense to ensure you choose a solution provider that can meet your company’s needs, both now and into the future.”

 

“With a 32 year history of implementing our solutions and supporting our clients, we feel our services far exceed those provided by a reseller,” he concludes.

McNally is certainly on the same page here also .

"The implementation of a system should be viewed as a partnership,” he opens, before adding “and partnering with an experienced provider who has a track record of delivering both technology and functionality is of key importance.”

“A strong vision and roadmap is also vital, because implementing a system  should be viewed as a long-term relationship. Speaking with reference customers can be a useful exercise. The software is only one part of the picture, implementation and support are also just as important as is the relationship between the two teams.”

Choosing a provider whose vision aligns with the field service company is key states Luong.

“Field service companies should understand how a provider plans to leverage new technologies and smart services such as IoT, sensors, beacons, image recognition capabilities, integration with cloud services or other public services such as maps, storage, identification,” he says.

“These technologies and services can totally transform existing business processes to make them more efficient, driving costs down while improving customer loyalty by providing a better overall experience.”

“As service continues to become a key differentiator, companies need a partner who understands service – a specialist who can help them get the very best from the software platform, and give them the tools to take service to the next level.” Geiger adds.

“Transitioning to a new solution is often seen as a risk by most organisations - posing potential challenges for business continuity, adoption and usage, and data security”

 

“Many solution providers therefore pride themselves on the speed on their on-boarding process – to get companies up and running on their solution in a matter of weeks. However, aiming for speed often comes at the expense of quality – things overlooked, staff not fully trained, and opportunities missed”

“A quick on-boarding process may potentially cause more problems than it solves. With something as mission critical as a company’s service business, it is worth the time and effort to ensure successful deployment and adoption.”

“Additionally it is important to look at service solutions holistically. There are many cool technologies and new capabilities are entering the market constantly. It is critical to look at all of these solutions in a holistic manner and the value that they will provide to the service business.”

“It is imperative that the solutions share data intelligently between applications, allowing operatives to make decisions and take action with full insight into the situation,” she concludes.

For Homer, another consideration is that “field service organisations need to consider time to market, as with any other investment in enterprise software.”

“Implementation time, employee adoption, and training all need to be looked at critically as they all impact the return on investment. Software vendors should have good options for buyers to evaluate these aspects of their products, as well as a very good understanding of the nuances of the service domain. Without service expertise, product development capabilities can stall and implementation projects can run over budget.”

Finally, Whitelam believes that besides features and costs, field services companies should strongly consider a number of other factors when selecting their FSM solutions including:

• Company viability and focus: Look for external proof points and proven implementations. To what extent is the company focused on FSM?
• Vision: What does the roadmap look like? Does this align to the way you think about your field service business going forward?
• Experience: Has the company worked with companies like you before?
• The Team: This is a long-term partnership, where a strong relationship can lead to great things. Is this the team you want to partner with?
• Support: What kind of ongoing support is available? 24/7? Global? Will this vendor be responsive and strive for your success?

Indeed it seems that whilst the features of field service management solutions are ever evolving, the selection of the right tool for your business should look far beyond a summary list of features on your wish list and ask what can the provider do to make this a partnership that works both as soon as possible after implementation and also in the future.

The right solution is there for you, just look with open eyes.

 

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Numerous research from varying sources, including our own studies, have revealed that there is increasingly becoming two separate types of field service organisation. Those that have embraced field service management technology and those that have not. We spoke exclusively to Jonathan Best, SVP & GM Europe with Kony to get his insight on this divide...

As we catch up for a morning coffee in an upmarket cafe in the centre of Amsterdam it is interesting to cast our minds back to the last time we met, some months further back in London. At that point, Best and his team at Kony were just beginning to step into the world of field service and much of the reasoning, whilst based on solid suppositions, remained largely untested in the real world.

Now, however, many of those suppositions are being proven to be true, which is always a gratifying, but more importantly it confirms to Best, that they are on the right path.

Pretty much the entire underlying premise of Kony’s approach to developing field service management tools is that there are two distinct types of field service companies.

 

The haves and the have nots. Those with FSM technology and those without.

And whilst the latter are traditionally the low hanging fruit for any FSM system provider, it is the first group who are likely to benefit most from the approach Kony are taking.

“The thing that has been interesting for us is that talking to our product guys their view was that we would produce this set of components and we would see an increase in the number of people who implemented them as is. We’ve seen a few examples like that but typically they tend to be quite simplistic cases - typically companies that haven’t got any technology supporting their field service people at all,” Best begins.

“The much more common cases are where we find organisations who have already got some type of field service technology and what they’re interested in is how they can either augment or replace those existing systems with something more refined to their needs.”

“To put things very, very simplistically there are two types of field service company, those who have no technology at all - who are still using pen and paper etc. They are very interesting to talk to as they are very open minded, but still they don’t know what they don’t know.”

“Then there are those who are already using some technology with their field service operations but are finding it sub-optimal in some way.”

“Who I have yet to meet is somebody who has said we have all the technology we need perfectly at the fingertips of our field service technicians. I’m not saying that they don’t exist but from where I’m sitting I don’t think there seem to be too many of them,” he adds

 

In many senses, it feels that the approach Kony are taking is putting the onus of design back on field service organisations themselves. For those who have been around the block a few times this can have significant benefits, empowering them to iron out the imperfections of other tools that have been utilised in the past.

However, for those who have yet to spend time with another solution to identify what those imperfections would look like in their own business, such a solution may be a overly complicated. No so much running before they can walk exactly, more like buying a baby an expensive set of Nike running shoes.

“For those companies who don’t have any technology the challenge for them is should they go and buy an off the shelf FSM solution, which they can take out of the box, plug it in, set themselves up and it is going to give them a capability that they didn’t have,” Best explains.

“And they can typically do that faster and quicker than they could if they took a tool set approach - like what we offer, and then build things up themselves.”

“The people who like our approach are the ones who want to step iteratively into something or those who look at the quite formulaic approach to traditional field service solutions and find it sub-optimal.”

 

“If you can go into a shop and buy exactly what you want, or you can buy the bits to build something that can do exactly what you want - most people will buy the product not the components. Nobody goes into a shop and buys the parts to make a microwave oven, when you can just go out and buy one and it will do what you want a microwave oven to do,” Best quips.

“But the kinds of organisations who are interested in having some sort of approach to field service that isn’t supported by the typical solutions, these are the ones interested in building something themselves and that’s where the tool set we provide can often help them. The advantage being that what they end up with then is built bespoke to their needs, and is designed specifically to enhance their own unique workflows.”

 

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Andrew Quail, Head of IT at SGN, explains how the energy supplier is transforming its mobile app delivery. Sharon Clancy reports...

Gas companies are one of the most heavily regulated in the UK – after all, gas leaks have the potential to be fatal.

The UK’s energy sector regulatory regime is acknowledged as world-class, but safety and innovation are rarely comfortable bedfellows, and innovation has not traditionally been a strong point for the UK’s utilities companies, who have focused on meeting the demands of the industry regulator Ofgem.

So we were intrigued to hear that one of the UK’s biggest gas distributors, SGN, is embarking on a business transformation process that includes greater use of mobile tools and data for its 2,000 strong field service engineers.

SGN distributes natural and green gas to 5.9 million homes and businesses across Scotland and the south of England via a network of over 75,000 km of gas mains and services.

Critical business processes such as emergency gas response procedures have been automated for over a decade and have been mobilised to help ensure SGN meets it legal obligations to respond within an hour to any reports that might indicate a potentially lethal gas leak.

 

“The safety culture at SGN is core to our business and will never diminish. Data on performance has to be accurate and readily available to the regulator, and mobile data played a big role in providing that,” explains Andrew Quail, Director of IT at SGN.

Quail credits Ofgem with now encouraging an innovative climate that still puts safety first.

“We have relied on our mobile solutions for over a decade to deliver safety-critical services. Our legacy estate was great for some parts of the business: it’s solid, reliable and highly available.”

“However, with the legacy estate, if we change a piece of code or an element within an app, it has potential to affect other things.”

With such a large field workforce, SGN could appreciate the benefits of mobilising other activities in its business.

“Our existing estate was not agile enough to meet the changing needs of our customers and employees,” continued Quail.

“Customised apps take too long to develop and deploy and we wanted faster improvements to our efficiencies and customer services.”

"At the same time, we could not risk any mobility initiative affecting our ability to respond to core emergency repair work. We also wanted to control app distribution to ensure it met our IT security needs.”

The solution has been to retain the legacy SAP platform for emergency gas response services, while deploying Kony Inc’s MobileFabric cloud-based mobility platform to develop and maintain mobile apps for other parts of the business.

 

MobileFabric decouples corporate front- and back-end systems so changes can be made quickly.

Connectors and adaptors means back-end integration for mobile apps is configurable and flexible rather than being custom-built.

“We were looking for a platform that would allow us to quickly develop well-designed apps that are attractive to our workforce.”

“At the same time, we wanted to capture data in a standard format that could be distributed and presented to any part of the business.”

“Mobile Fabric is an enterprise-grade mobility platform which is tightly integrated into our legacy systems. One of the attractions was the fact that is cloud-based, says Quail.

“It is a scalable consumption-based model requiring minimum financial commitment. That reduces the risks to our business.”

A cloud-based solution also suits the fast-paced environment of mobility services, he thinks, and help delivers quick wins.

“Our first priority has been to develop customer focused apps to improve the whole customer experience.”

“So one of the first apps we have deployed is a is a customer satisfaction app that has digitalised feedback."

“It encourages engagement between our staff and the customer and also simplifies the back-office process of keeping the regulator informed about customer satisfaction scores.”

 

“We get real-time feedback into our ERP system, which means we get early notification of any potential issues for customers and we also get to hear about customers’ positive experiences – which was not always the case in the past.”

Another benefit, says Quail, is the app allows SGN to respond quickly to employee and customer suggestions about improving service.

The app was developed and deployed within weeks – much quicker than on a legacy platform and at much lower cost, points out Quail.

Security

IT directors have form when it comes to security concerns about Cloud computing, but Quail is one of the converts who believe Cloud platform services actually can enhance IT security. “

There is no denying that IT security is a sensitive topic and an area with potentially huge corporate risk for SGN.

However, cloud platform providers invest heavily in security, and we are confident the Kony platform is actually extremely secure.”

Moving to a mobility platform has also enabled SGN to define exactly what security standards it needs in various parts of the organisation, he explains.

Future plans

So what’s in the pipeline for the future, we asked?

There are lots of possibilities for efficiency improvements beyond the regulatory environment enthuses Quail.

“We are looking at productivity tools such as inspection apps that can make life easier for our engineers and simplify mobile data acquisition. We can digitalise site safety procedures and inspections, and move from paper to mobile apps for tasks such as time-sheets.”

 

Quail believes the introduction of mobile apps will help change the image of IT within the business from enforcer to enabler.

“We don’t want mobile app development to be a top-down process where IT comes up with all the new apps. We are encouraging our colleagues and employees to suggest what mobile apps might improve their work experience.”

Nor is it just field service engineers who are benefiting from the digitalisation of the business, says Quail.

“The Internet of Things” is beginning to transform our operations. When we deploy robots for pipe inspections, for example, we’ll be capture that data in real-time helping us to optimise maintenance with less disruption for our customers.”

 

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With the launch of a dedicated field service application, enterprise mobility platform firm Kony has stepped firmly into the busy arena of FSM software providers. However, they bring with them a new set of thinking that could change the way the entire industry approaches app development in the future.

Kris Oldland spoke exclusively with Jonathan Best, VP EMEA at Kony to understand why they believe they are changing the game for the better...

As we sit down to discuss the new launch of Kony’s dedicated field service application I am genuinely intrigued.

The launch seems to fly in the face of the logic that has underpinned the success of Kony in many senses. Kony has established an enviable reputation for being a slick and intuitive platform that facilitates the ease of developing mobile apps.

Facilitating bespoke app design is what these guys do and they do it brilliantly. So surely an off-the-shelf, vanilla field service app goes against their very ethos?

However, my mistake here was thinking that the app stopped at being just plain old vanilla. Sure the base layer may be the same for everybody, but to continue the metaphor the ability to tailor this app is as open and as varied as the contents of a tin of hundreds and thousands.

“Principally what we have is a platform for the development of apps within enterprises. And that’s where most of our customers are investing,” explains Best

“But when we see the same app requested in multiple places rather than us doing custom built apps for every single client, it makes sense for us to provide at least a foundation that they can start from,” he adds.

 

And here in lies the rub.

Kony’s approach is very much centred on client empowerment and in the understanding that whilst there are core requirements across differing companies in differing verticals, ultimately no two businesses are identical, and therefore no two businesses will require an identical field service app.

“Probably the big difference between our apps and the more traditional field service app is that we are trying to provide a base level of functionality, that somebody can take out of the box and use if they don’t have a process or they just want to build something very quickly; but much more, what we are trying to provide is a base level functionality that people can build on top of and develop,” Best states.

“We are not trying to build a 100% solution but instead build a 60 to 80% solution that can then be tailored to meet your business process.”

 

This approach is something that Best and his colleagues don’t see in the FSM market currently and is an approach that could ultimately prove to be a genuinely disruptive influence within the sector.

“Our approach of course opposes what quite a lot of what the traditional apps have had, which is ‘this is a field service solution this is how it works.’ You can tweak around the edges a bit but really you must follow the processes as it is laid out in the core application.”

“And most of those field service applications that have been developed for mobile historically have come from some kind of core system provider be that a ClickSoftware or a SAP or an IBM, whoever, where it is a mobile part of wider solution.”

“What we are trying to say, as a mobile company, is lets look at the mobile process and then try and figure out all the ways that you connect that to whatever your back-end systems might be.”

“So what we are doing for customers is helping them to develop the mobile use case and connect that to their back-end systems. What we saw with field service is that lots of people wanted a field service capability - they either had one that they weren’t very happy with or they didn’t have one and they wanted to create one, and what they wanted was the capability to tie that into whatever their back-end systems were.”

“So they do not necessarily have to take SAP’s field service solution for example just because they use SAP’s systems on the back-end,”

 

Such flexibility to tailor a mobile application to truly fall in line with your own specific workflows is of course both an innovative and exciting approach. But it also sounds like an option that could require some heavy development and a bunch of spare programmers to undertake such work isn’t a resource every company has to hand.

So what exactly is the process of evolving the Kony app beyond the 60% out-of-the-box offering into a well tailored app designed for a specific company’s needs?

“It can be undertaken by the customer if the customer wants to do it,” replies Best.

“Or it can be Kony if the customer wants us to do it - we have a 600 person strong professional services organisation that we can bring to bear on these projects, but probably most commonly it is partners - the traditional model of us being the software provider, the customer being the driver of the demand and the expert in what the processes are; and a system integrator sits in between and takes the Kony technology and builds the app together with the client.”

Fundamentally what the Kony platform provides is an ability to plug into your existing systems and then provide a dedicated tool for mobile interaction with the data stored in those systems based around the needs of any given individual within the enterprise.

And as we enter more fully into an age where information and data is key, the free flow of data facilitated by deep level integrations is of course highly advantageous for the field engineer, enabling them to arrive on site fully prepped for the job they are about to do. However, such movement of data is of course a two way street and the amount of valuable data that is available to a field engineer could also be highly useful if fed into the right place, whether it be sales, R&D or even third party partners.

 

“There is a lot of good stuff in those back end systems that you want to be able to provide out to salespeople, that you want to be able to provide to service engineers and you probably want to be able to provide it to business partners as well,” Best begins.

“A lot of our customers have got a core field service organisation of their own but then they use a third party to fill in the gaps around peaks in demand etc. and they probably want to provide different amounts of information about assets and customers to a third party than you would do to your core sales force.”

“What Kony traditionally provides is the platform that allows you to say ‘we want this information to be available to this person on this device for this purpose.”

However, perhaps Kony’s greatest strength in coming to the field service sector is that they arrive less encumbered by the rules and formulae of any previous iterations of their product, meaning they can take a fresh pair of eyes, that are customer focussed, when it comes to what should or shouldn’t be included within a field service application.

“A lot of people say to us there are gaps in the field service solutions that are available on the market."

“Again, if you look at a lot of the typical field service solutions that are on the market, it’s difficult to extend them to have an additional capability or to add something new into the mix. For example if you look at IoT,” Best ventures.

 

“As people are putting more and more sensors in the capital equipment that is getting serviced, they want to be able to integrate it much more with the field service engineer and the system they are using but it’s very difficult in a lot of the traditional field service solutions that weren’t built with IoT in mind.”

“We are saying lets provide the core capability that allows you to do scheduling, that allows you to push jobs out to the field, allows you to do all the things that any field service person needs you to do. But lets do that on our platform which enables you to tie back into a much broader set of back-end systems than is probably the case in the offering that you are using today, and lets do that in a way that opens up the capability to integrate new things like IoT.”

Of course one of the most exciting factors of the field service industry right now is that it is in a state of almost constant beta, with new technologies being integrated and adopted every year.

With such a dynamic technology base at play future proofing any investment as much as possible is crucial. Which is another benefit of Kony’s approach to FSM app development.

“One of the reasons people are increasingly investing in Kony is because we provide that future proofing at both ends,” Best claims when the subject is brought up.

 

“Our capability to integrate into back-end systems is recognised as the best in the industry and our ability to support differing device types and OS that are getting produced is unparalleled.”

Another factor to be considered within the development of any enterprise app, whether it be for field service, or other areas, of the business is the User Interface. This is something Best is acutely aware of and believes the move to a platform based approach, will see user experience in business to enterprise apps improve vastly as costs of development become greatly reduced.

“One of the things that is happening in the current generation of apps is that people are paying much more attention to what can be done with the interface”

“A large driver for this is that now with Cordova and HTML5, and tools like Kony provide, we can produce native output at a much lower cost by using technology to create it and so there’s ‘this write once, run everywhere’ approach to building apps which has taken a lot of the cost out what previously used to be associated with glossy native development.”

Of course there is another benefit of the ‘write once, run everywhere’ approach as well. There is a growing demand amongst field service providers to be able to provide their own clients with applications that show information on their assets such as maintenance history, mean time to repair, current uptime availability and so on.

Such apps are powerful sales and marketing tools, and as such, a slick user experience here is an absolute must.

However, Best points out that whilst the idea is sound, outside of a platform such as Kony’s actually implementing such apps could be a significant resource strain. “Of course that sounds like a very logical business process to have,” he comments.

“But if you think of what it means logistically, you are going to push that out to the end customer where you can’t control what their devices are. Maybe they want to access it on an iPhone or an Android device; or, in the future who knows what else.”

“That means our customer, using our platform has to provide that app in whatever format their customer wants to consume it in, so they need that capability to provide apps for various OS or device agnostic apps and that’s one of the key capabilities that Kony provides.”

Whilst both the ability to provide customers access to service information as well as being able to tailor an app to meet your exact workflows both sound exciting, it is the potential of the Kony platform to enable field service companies to simply and intelligently expand the role of the service engineer that could be the potential game changer.

 

And as our conversation progressed Best was able to reveal a number of ways that this was already happening with their existing clients.

“The field service engineer is on the customer site and the customer says something about wanting assistance with a new project – that’s great sales data that you want that field service engineer to capture and pass to the right guy in the organisation to follow up with,” Best says outlining one such scenario.

“That functionality typically isn’t built into a field service engineer’s general workflow but of course its very easy to build that into an app. For example, if you have got a notes field and some sort of capability that says press a button here if you think the sales guy should give them a call and follow up.”

“Another example is a utility firm we are working with. They have a customer feedback form which they ask the customer to fill in to show how prompt were they, did they fix the issue, did they leave things neat and tidy after they left etc.”

“That’s a logical business process but when we dug in and looked at it we found that it was actually only about 1 in 12 customers who filled in the form. Then at the end of the month the engineer was supposed to have collected all this stuff up and mail it back to the head office.“

“So he had this massive pile of paper in the back of his van which he’s then got to pick up and put into an envelope and mail to HQ: and then there is somebody who’s job it is to go through each one.”

“It was a horrendous process and of course that guy is already there, with the customer, with a tablet doing his field service work – how much simpler to give that tablet to the customer at the end of the job with a brief survey?”

“In this case just 6 questions, each with a slider ranging from very happy to very dissatisfied at either end , and they don’t have to fill anything in because that is already captured from the job data. It takes them literally less than a minute.”

 

“The response rate went from 1 in 12 to 1 in 2. It gets immediately processed at HQ, there is no rekeying and then there is the cost saving - no paper, no postage, no wasted man hours...”

“So all of these business benefits came about but it’s not something anybody had ever thought of as a field service process. Yet it’s a completely logical add on for a field service capability.”

“It’s also something that no FSM system today provides but it’s the kind of thing that we can add on very simply because its just an extension to the app.”

I often comment that technology at its finest just makes things work better, and given the flexibility and ability to adapt and evolve applications on the fly, it seems the Kony platform could well go some way to helping companies achieve that.

Indeed the biggest change Kony’s arrival in the field service space may bring is in how we approach our service engineers’ workflows in an increasingly mature digital age.

 

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Leading mobility specialists Kony and Cognizant are joining forces to deliver a new class of mobile enterprise solutions. The two companies have announced they will jointly develop and deliver solutions spanning enterprise mobile applications, mobile app design, and mobile back-end services to enhance business process efficiencies and security.

The suite of cross-platform mobile applications  will be suitable for industries such as banking, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and government, as well as horizontal mobile applications that can be used by sales and field services, workflow, and human resources organisations. Clients will have access to Cognizant's Digital Fabric robust mobile middleware back-end service, based on Kony’s MobileFabric for enterprise-grade mobile services.

In addition, Kony's advanced mobile app design capabilities will be integrated into the offerings of the Cognizant Digital Collaboratory in New York, further enabling clients to envision the "art of the possible" as they architect their digital future using Cognizant’s Digital Works methodology.

The news of the collaboration has been welcomed by clients.

 

“We are looking forward to working with Cognizant and Kony to architect and implement our digital transformation,” said Dan McCormick, regional IT director, Rentokil Initial plc.

“Cognizant’s digital expertise, deep domain knowledge and global scale, combined with Kony’s market-leading platform for enterprise mobility, gives Rentokil access to best-of-breed capabilities. We’re confident that Kony and Cognizant working together will drive the highest value and best possible outcomes for Rentokil as we take our digital journey.”

“We are excited to join forces with Cognizant to provide unparalleled mobile and digital solutions to help our global clients,” said Thomas E. Hogan, chairman and chief executive officer, Kony, Inc.

“What makes this partnership so powerful is the unique and complementary fit of our respective assets and capabilities – Kony’s deep knowledge and intellectual property in enterprise mobility and Cognizant’s tremendous domain expertise, business process and design innovation, industry vertical depth, and impressive market reach and scale. Most importantly, our combined strengths will bring industry-leading innovation and value to our clients, which is the ultimate barometer of success.”

“The world is mobile. Serving today’s customers means connecting with them anytime they want and anywhere they are. As a result, we’ve seen an explosion of emerging end points and apps to engage, capture information, and support decision-making. This trend lies at the heart of digital transformation,” said Sean Middleton, chief operating officer, Emerging Business Accelerator, at Cognizant.

“Successfully harnessing these forces to capture value, though, requires a thoughtful approach supported by an efficient, secure and agile platform. We’re pleased to partner with Kony and to harness their world-class expertise and platform. Together with Cognizant’s Digital Works methodology, this alliance will help our clients across industries.”

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Enterprise mobility company Kony Inc. has launched a mobile solution with SAP-Certified Integration to help companies modernise their field service processes for mobile devices, IoT and wearables.

The Kony Mobile Field Service solution for SAP Business Suite is a set of three new apps and implementation services designed to help businesses move away from a paper-based field service operation to a completely mobilised environment within 30 days.

“We are seeing more organisations turn to mobility to streamline processes and increase productivity; however, many are still held back by expensive upgrades and limited resources,” said Dave Shirk, president, Product, Strategy and Marketing for Kony. “With Kony Mobile Field Service solution, enterprises using SAP Business Suite can now quickly mobilise the field team without investing in expensive upgrades to their SAP systems, or having to rip and replace their entire backend infrastructure. With mobility, they can now process more work orders, improve their service levels and first time fix rates; and ultimately increase revenue by introducing the ability for technicians to upsell and process payments in the field.”

The solution is a single integrated suite that optimises the entire field service business process. This enables businesses to maximise efficiency while processing notification, planning and tracking, and executing work orders all in a single integrated app suite.  It is built on the Kony Mobile Platform, and extensive experience and expertise based on helping global companies and brands mobilise their field service business processes.

One of the first users to deploy the solution is Irish utility company ESB.  "Servicing more than two million customers, we needed a mobile solution that our field technicians could rely on to help streamline work orders and improve overall efficiency,” said Eugene O’Sullivan, Networks Mobile programme manager, ESB. “We turned to Kony to help mobilise our field services because data is very important in our industry and Kony’s solutions offered the data synchronisation we needed. With our Mobile Work Order solution, technicians have the ability to view work order details, see location maps, review meter details, and record data to complete the work orders.”

Kony is a silver partner in the SAP PartnerEdge program and provides enterprises using SAP systems the flexibility and agility they need to use these apps as is or they can customise the front-end application design and integrations with their back-end systems to fit their requirements. In addition to SAP, Kony can also mobilise other enterprise applications such as Oracle, Microsoft, Siebel, and Salesforce to drive process improvements.

 

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Enterprise mobility specialists Kony and Citrix are teaming up to offer a comprehensive mobile app development and  mobility deployment solution.

Enterprise mobility specialists Kony and Citrix are teaming up to offer a comprehensive mobile app solution that includes initial mobile app design and development to enterprise mobility management and operations.
 
“We are excited to work with Kony to help power the mobile enterprise with industry-proven applications, visualisation, development, and management tools for a wide range of industries, ” said Scott Schwarshoff, Vice President of Mobile Application Platform at Citrix. The combination of Kony’s mobile app platform and XenMobile enterprise mobility management solution will empower customers to accelerate their mobile strategy to deliver world-class mobile experiences, he continued.
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[quote float="left"]Customers get individualised solutions from quick-start app templates designed to efficiently mobilise the business

Kony Apps are now verified by the Citrix Ready program, designed to allow customers to get their apps to market faster. The apps, which include the Kony Mobile Service Solution,  incorporate built-in best practices, features, and connectors.  Customers get individualised solutions from quick-start app templates designed to efficiently mobilise the business or customer processes to meet business needs, exceed user expectations and drive business results. They integrate with existing ERP systems to deliver all mobile devices, including phones and tablets and are  highly secured, scalable, and business-ready with reporting and analytics.
 
“Leading companies across the globe are successfully using mobility as a catalyst for business innovation,” said Dave Shirk, president, Products and Marketing, Kony. “Enterprise mobile apps are no longer a nice to have. It has now become a strategic imperative for businesses to effectively compete in this new mobile era. We are excited to work with Citrix, a long-standing industry technology leader. Together, we will empower enterprises to fast-track their mobile strategy with a proven mobile-centric approach from start to finish, with leading technology at every level.”
 

 

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Two market leaders partner to offer a comprehensive DevOps solution for building     enterprise-class mobile applications and ensuring peak performance

Kony, Inc., a leading enterprise mobility company and SOASTA, a leader in performance analytics, have recently announced a partnership that combines both companies’ capabilities to optimise the performance of enterprise mobile apps across the mobile application development lifecycle.

Through this partnership, Kony and SOASTA will work together to integrate their technologies and combine their expertise to deliver a comprehensive, integrated mobile solution across the DevOps lifecycle for customers. As a result, from prototype to production, mobile apps built on the Kony Mobility Platform can be tested, monitored, measured, analysed and optimised for peak performance with SOASTA’s TouchTest,CloudTestand mPulse solutions for an integrated Mobile DevOps solution.

According to industry analyst firm Gartner, “The need for automation in mobile application testing is high, and is being driven by agile development practices and a desire to drive quality and features based on user analytics. This pace, combined with a broad and changing device ecosystem, creates a test explosion that without automation will end up crushing all but the most trivial application efforts.” (Gartner, Market Guide for Mobile Application Testing, 3 December 2014)

The Kony Mobility Platform is an open and standards-based, integrated platform that supports the entire application software development lifecycle (SDLC), and empowers enterprises to quickly design, build, deploy and manage multi-edge app experiences. The combined Kony and SOASTA offering delivers an expanded, comprehensive new generation mobile DevOps lifecycle support, including design prototyping, rapid development, functional test automation, back-end integration, deployment, user monitoring and advanced mobile real-time analytics. No other vendor is offering this kind of comprehensive solution. This underscores SOASTA and Kony’s commitment to providing the highest level of mobile developer support, helping enterprise companies align business and IT, while also keeping the rapidly growing mobile user population productive on their systems.

DevOps is a software development method that stresses communication, collaboration, integration, automation and measurement of cooperation between software developers and other information-technology (IT) professionals. DevOps acknowledges the interdependence of software development, quality assurance and IT operations and aims to help an organisation rapidly produce software products and services and to improve operations performance.

“In the rapidly growing world of mobile, user experience and application performance are fundamental to enterprise mobile application adoption and success,” said Thomas E. Hogan, CEO, Kony, Inc. “By adding performance analytics and testing solutions to our market-leading enterprise mobility platform, we will empower developers and DevOps teams with the best platform for creating mobile applications at any scale, with the best performance and experience.”

With the integration of Kony and SOASTA, the following new capabilities will be offered to customers:

• Mobile test automation eliminates manual testing delays and accelerates time-to-market, with the SOASTA TouchTest offering
• Continuous performance testing at speed and scale through SOASTA’s patented CloudTest federates millions of cloud-based servers from every major cloud provider
• Access to hundreds of real mobile devices through the cloud for testing at every phase of mobile development, with SOASTA Mobile Device Cloud
• Real User Monitoring (RUM) validates each user experience in real time and correlate real user activity to business metrics through performance analytics, with SOASTA mPulse

“Enterprise mobile application developers will hugely benefit from the partnership between SOASTA and Kony, with the best end-to-end solution to create apps that will perform at the most optimal level,” said Tom Lounibos, CEO, SOASTA. “SOASTA customers are committed to providing the highest level of user experience. Now, Kony customers can also rely on the same market-leading performance analytics to optimise their mobile and Web platforms.

Key benefits of the new end-to-end DevOps platform:

• Continuous test integration and agile delivery enables the business to respond to market and competitive change
• Reuse code and backend APIs across apps, digital channels and form factors
• Leverage the cloud to instantly build, provision, test and scale mobile apps and infrastructure
• Keep up with the rapid pace of new devices, versions, OSs and form factors as they are released
• Use powerful analytics to drive insights, iteration and perfect the UX/UI
• Accelerate performance by analysing all the real user data in real time in a single pane for quick and accurate insights
• Create visually rich, device-exploiting apps in record time using collaborative WYSIWYM (“what you see is what you get”) design tools
• Guarantee compatibility across a constantly changing device landscape with unmatched 30-day service level agreement (SLA) on new OS updates
• Ensure a mobile app scales in line with the growth of your customers and business
• Define smart, context-aware policies to secure your enterprise apps and ensure data integrity and availability
• Reuse, Integrate and extend high-value LOB processes to mobile users with powerful backend mobile infrastructure
• Ability to automate functional test cases against a variety of devices and form factors
• Significantly reduce quality assurance cycles
• Create proactive testing plans letting enterprises know of problems before their customers do

SOASTA has been recognised by Gartner as a “Leader” in its Magic Quadrant forIntegrated  Software Quality Suites report published August 28, 2014.

For two years in a row industry analyst firm Gartner placed Kony in the “Leaders” quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms, published September 2, 2014. Kony also received the highest scores in 3 out of 4 use cases in Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for Mobile Application Development Platforms report published December 24, 2014. In addition, Kony was recognised as “One of the Best Platform Solutions for the Enterprise” amongst Mobile Application Development Platform providers: Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Mobile App Development Platform Solution, 2015-16.

 

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Kony, Inc. a leading enterprise mobility company, recently announced that it has been named as a “Leader” and recognised as one of the best platform offerings for the enterprise, and most comprehensive cloud-based mobile solution on the market in the Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Mobile App Development Platform (MADP) Solution, 2015-16 report.

Kony was also highlighted as one of the most widely deployed application development platforms, with a broad range of both mission-critical enterprise and consumer-facing scenarios. As the largest pure-play provider focused on enterprise mobility solutions, Kony serves more than 20 million mobile app users worldwide and manages more than a billion user sessions annually.

“Mobile will be the ante to the game of commerce, productivity and loyalty,” said Thomas E. Hogan, chief executive officer, Kony, Inc. “As mobile is fast becoming a major catalyst for business innovation and process transformation for the enterprise, I believe companies will either lead with mobile or be left behind. The recognition of Kony as an industry leader by Ovum is a testament to the relentless focus and commitment by our Kony team to help our customers take full advantage of the power of mobile to advance their business agenda.”

According to the Ovum report, “Smart mobile devices are proving to be the preferred choice when connecting to the Internet, not only for consumers, but also now for enterprise workers.”

 

The report also states that many enterprises are prioritising mobile apps over all other app development requirements, for both external (business and consumer-facing) and internal requirements. Furthermore, enterprises today must have a mobile app strategy, driven by consumers choosing to do more with their mobile devices over traditional computers.

Ovum recognised Kony for developing a leading business to address the needs of enterprises as they turn to app development solutions that offer a build-once, deploy to many device operating systems and form factors.

The Kony Mobility Platform is an end-to-end mobile app development platform that offers full lifecycle support on-premise or on the cloud. In the Key Findings section of the report, Ovum states “The advantage of a wide-scope MADP solutions in one box is that developers have a one-stop solution, reducing tool overheads and integration issues, facilitating traceability of work assets.”

 

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