Leading Author and founder of Alexander Consulting, James ‘Alex’ Alexander puts forward a series of strong arguments for the reasons why product-focused companies can and must sell services. This is essential reading for the service director struggling to get their voice heard in a product-centric organisation...

Leading field services in a product company is not for the weak of heart. You must deal with executives who feel that products are the only ingredient in the recipe to organization success and that services are a bothersome, necessary seasoning like garlic in a casserole.

Like trying to convince a toddler that vegetables are good for them, you must constantly demonstrate your value internally, while confronting a product-thinking, product-is-everything culture.

Where to begin? I suggest that the best defence is a good offence. Research and review, prepare and practice, and then request individual or group sit-downs with your executive peers to address the question, why sell services anyway? Your future may depend upon your persuasion.

Why sell services anyway? Following are the benefits to articulate and motivate.

1. Sell More Initial Deals

Here is a bit of blasphemy to a product executive: Most customers view products as commodities! Regardless of how truly unique or elegant or innovative, your products are from your perspective, in most all buying situations, customers see no meaningful difference in the top two or three products in any category, across all industries, across all geographies.

Yes, I understand this may not be 100% factual, but from the perception of the customer, it is true. Hence, the old adage comes into play: Perception is reality. Kind of a sobering thought. 

Once customers have determined their shortlist of the two or three potential products or bundles of products that they will seriously consider buying, they almost always cast their product ballot based on what they believe are the best services that surround the productOnce customers have determined their shortlist of the two or three potential products or bundles of products that they will seriously consider buying, they almost always cast their product ballot based on what they believe are the best services that surround the product—services that will best ensure the product works as promised, keeps working, and does so with a minimum of hassle and added expense.

It is important to note that, in many cases, they will pay a premium for your offering if they understand the higher value your services bring to them. In essence, they vote with their pocketbook.

Furthermore, if your salespeople were strategic and sold an assessment early in the buying process—before needs were clear and products were specified—the probability of you getting the product business, later on, is greatly improved, giving you the chance to shape the final recommendations early while building relationships with people key to the final purchase.

GIST: Selling services effectively from the get-go will land you more initial deals.

2. Handle Fewer Train Wrecks

Sadly, sometimes products are positioned to the customer with these words coming out of the salesperson’s mouth: “Our products don’t break.

You don’t need any additional services,” or “It is so easy to implement our software. Just read the manual and you can do it, no worries.” This is all a bunch of baloney, especially if you are dealing with a fairly complex situation, an important customer process, and/or the customer has little if any familiarity with the implementation.

Rare is the product that will not need some type of service in its life cycle, whether a tailored implementation, ongoing maintenance, software updates, refurbishing, and on and on. Not positioning this reality of life with the customer upfront is negligent selling.

Services appropriately sold up front greatly improves the probability that:

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• The product will work the way it is supposed to work the first time.
• Greater functionality of the product will be utilized.
• Irritated customers ringing the bell of the fire engine, escalating their concerns up your organization ladder, will be greatly minimized.

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GIST: Selling services upfront saves your organization time, hassle, and money over the long term.

3. Sell More Products and Services Later

Experience also shows that when deals are sold with services up front, more products and services are sold later on.¹ Services greatly improve the chance that installation and implementation will be done correctly the first time, and services and support improve uptime and productivity.

Delivering services means dealing personally with customer personnel and, done properly, starts to build trust-based relationships. These customers are very likely to buy more of your products (and more services, of course) and are well on the way to being loyal, highly profitable customers for life. 

Figure 1 shows a real-world example of this revenue opportunity beyond the initial product sale. By selling services correctly early on along with the product, this company had a very realistic opportunity to add 2.7 times the original product revenue through incremental services. In this example, the product sold for approximately $100,000, so the potential for more services revenue was approximately $270,000. Plus, the customer was much more likely to buy this company’s product at the end of the equipment’s life.

GIST: Want to be a true total solutions provider? Services are the key.

4. Enjoy Predictable Revenue Streams

Want to see a CFO’s eyes light up?

Watch their face the first time they grasp an understanding of the predictable, repeatable sales that come from a services business built upon service and support contracts coupled with a finely tuned professional services capability.

This is pure joy to a bean counter. The services annuity stream makes life a whole lot easier for all of management, as it helps take the guesswork out of business financials and becomes an early warning, leading indicator of organization success or failure.

GIST: Strong services help you manage your business more effectively

5. Differentiate Yourself

Depending on the maturity of your industry, your competitor’s strategy, and your competitor’s dealings with distribution, services can differentiate you in a really big way. The more complex your products, the more they cost the customer; and the more mission critical they are to your customer’s business, the more the value-packing promise of services. Leading services researchers note from their studies that more and more companies in tough competitive markets are looking at services to yield competitive advantage.²

If your competitors don’t have full portfolios of strong service offerings, or if they don’t know how to sell them, this is a huge opportunity for you if you embrace the challenge. Give your customers what they need, want, and will pay for while locking out everyone else.

GIST: Services are the drivers of market dominance.

6. Create New Markets

Business consultants like to talk about adjacency strategy,³ the strategy of building upon an organization’s core competencies in one market to transport those capabilities to an adjacent, but different market space.

For example, a company with specialized battery technology designed for the automotive industry could potentially attempt to build upon that battery expertise to develop and sell to the marine market. The same possibilities hold true with services. For example, an energy utilization assessment developed for the automotive industry could be adapted for the marine market.

Taking advantage of your past experience and expertise can crack new markets and expand profitable revenue.

GIST: Services adjacency strategy can be a powerful component of any growth blueprint.

To summarize, services have proven themselves to be able to contribute significant value to many, many product companies through profitable growth of both products and services. Properly executed, strong services capabilities can increase customer satisfaction and generate customer loyalty. In addition, for some companies, having the right portfolio of services helps smooth the entry into new markets. Finally, in some cases, having an arsenal of new or better services can create competitive differentiation.

Question: But aren’t services less profitable?

Answer: Normally not.

Here are the core elements of a conversation I had with the CEO of a software company that I was interviewing as part of a services assessment for his company.

• Alexander: Tell me what role you’d like services to play in helping your company be successful.
• CEO: Frankly, I wish services was a much smaller part of the business. They negatively impact our overall profitability. Every time I talk to financial analysts, they beat me up on this issue. If you can tell me how to eliminate services altogether, I’d be extremely happy.

This perception is fairly common among executives at companies with high product profit margins. However, in most cases it is not entirely correct. 

On average, my research shows that there is no difference between the profit margins of products and those of services.⁴ In general, product profit margins have decreased as industries have matured, and services profit margins have increased as services management has learned how to optimize their organizations. For example, professional services organizations within product companies have improved their profitability by seven points over the last decade. In fact, top-performing services organizations have profit margins double that of their products. 

Adding a portfolio of services, even at lower margins than products, will increase the overall value to the customer.There are exceptions, of course. New products in new industries could have higher profit margins initially. However, experience shows that product margins will consistently drop. A few products, due to their innovation or patents or special circumstances, may be able to maintain very high product margins over time.

Yet, recalling the high value that customers place on services, adding a portfolio of services, even at lower margins than products, will increase the overall value to the customer. Hence, looking at blended margins is probably a much more realistic way to view and understand overall profitability. 

Finally, examining the financials of many services businesses inside product companies raises a few eyebrows, if not a few questions, about how profitability is calculated and the fairness of the calculations. Here are some issues to consider:

• Place your list items here

• If services consultants are spending 30% of their time in a pre-sales role, why isn’t that expense charged to sales?
• If you are a VAR (value-adding reseller) and your partner agreements require you to have a number of certified experts on staff, shouldn’t some of the costs of having these low-billable people on board be charged elsewhere?
• If a big customer has a blow-up, and company execs require a busload of top technical talent from the services business to do whatever it takes to fix the problem at no charge to the customer, should that cost be eaten by the services business?

My own biased experience says that if you sell the right services to the right customers in the right way, they will be very profitable and make the rest of your products look much better as well.

 

GIST: Re-look and re-think cost allocation, pricing strategies, and margin expectations versus customer value. There is a good chance that you don’t readily have this information, and it will take time to get the quality data you need.

 

So, there you have it—proactively communicate the value that your services deliver, help build a more profitable organization, and gain the respect you and your people deserve.

Endnotes

This article was adapted from Seriously Selling Services: How to Build a Profitable Services Business in Any Industry, by James “Alex” Alexander, and can be purchased from Amazon.com or the Alexander Consulting website.

References

1. Hahn, Al. 2007. The True Strategic Value of Services. Sandy, OR: Hahn Consulting.
2. Brown, Stephen W., Anders Gustafsson and Lars Witell. 2009. “Beyond Products.” New York, NY.: The Wall Street Journal.
3. Zook, Christopher. 2004. Beyond the Core: Expand Your Market without Abandoning Your Roots. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
4. Note that services margins are declining on average in some industries as more and more services appear alike to customers, are hence seen as commodities, and thus seem to have less value.

 

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CSG the trusted partner to simplify the complexity of business transformation in the digital age now offers even more ways for Pay-TV and other service providers to proactively communicate in real-time with consumers about their service appointments.

CSG's Where's My Tech solution offers a real-time view of a service technician's arrival schedule.

As part of CSG’s overall philosophy to enable an exceptional, interactive experience between service providers and their customers anytime, anywhere, on any channel, CSG now offers a real-time option for consumers to follow the arrival progress of a service technician.

Today’s digitally-savvy consumers are conditioned to receive updates from the companies they do business with at every step of the customer experienceThe new solution, named Where’s My Tech, is part of CSG’s field service management solution, Workforce Express (WFX), which offers the ability to get the right technician, to the right job, at the right time and now, can show consumers exactly where their service technician is and when they will arrive at the job site.

Where’s My Tech offers consumers real-time information about the status of a service technician appointment, enables consumers to digitally follow the technician while they are on their way to the service location, and receive email or SMS messages with the estimated arrival time of their technician’s arrival.

“Today’s digitally-savvy consumers are conditioned to receive updates from the companies they do business with at every step of the customer experience,” said Tim McElligott, senior consulting analyst at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan. “When those real-time updates don’t happen, the customer experience is tarnished which can potentially have a negative impact on customer satisfaction, and even a Net Promoter Score.”

The Where’s My Tech solution is the latest enhancement to WFX, in addition to real-time traffic, capabilities announced earlier this year.

“CSG’s communications management solutions offer an integrated approach for service providers to manage and more actively engage with their customer interactions throughout the customer lifecycle,” said Chad Dunavant, head of product management, CSG. “This solution is the latest step we have taken to help our clients deliver easy-to-use, connected experiences that instantly raise the consumer experience to a new level.”

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Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief Editor, Kris Oldland's latest white paper, sponsored by eBECS, explores why field service organisations should be ensuring their field service technicians are collecting data from assets whilst on service calls even if they aren't ready to implement an IoT based approach to service delivery yet as by doing so they can reap some of the benefits and more importantly build the processes for a future world in which connectivity and data will be at the heart of customer service operations...

Want to know more? The bad news is the full white paper is only available exclusively for fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by eBECS

In today’s field service sector companies are facing an increasingly complex set of challenges and the collation and analysis of data paradoxically seem to often be found at both ends of the spectrum.

Data can be at the heart of many problems for a field service organisation as they struggle to find useful insight amongst ever-increasing banks of data locked away in differing business silos. Yet the rewards for breaking down those silos and also being able to identify where the insight is within your data can lead to better service levels than have ever been possible previously.

The vast amount of data that we have access to today can potentially give us a much more intimate understanding of our customer base than ever before, giving us the ability to understand and even predict their needs, far more accurately than we have ever been able to manage previously.

The vast amount of data that we have access to today can potentially give us a much more intimate understanding of our customer base than ever beforeHowever, the flip side of this benefit is that companies are now finding themselves drowning in data - which becomes meaningless without insight, a challenge which can be magnified further if data is locked away behind walls within an organisation.

It can be a daunting challenge to not only establish processes that allow the collection of data but also to ensure that when collected, data can move seamlessly across an organisation to fulfil its maximum potential. Yet in today’s business climate where service has become a core differentiator, there has perhaps never been a more urgent need to ensure you are harnessing every tool available to you in the most efficient manner in order to stay just one step ahead of the competition - and data certainly holds many of the keys to service excellence when it’s collected, processed and analysed correctly.

An interesting symptom of operating in a world of technological advancements, is that when we talk about data collection within a field service context the topic immediately turns to IoT - but in doing so are we overlooking one of the most important resource in a service organisation already at our disposal - the field service engineers themselves?

The importance of data collection in an increasingly connected world

The question of whether the Internet of Things will play a part in field service has been and gone. The answer was a resounding ‘yes it will.’

Research from Field Service News showed that 86% of companies were actively either developing plans to implement IoT or had already done so. Indeed, in terms of IoT and field service, the question for the overwhelming majority of companies has moved from why to how.

However, the impact of IoT in field service is set to be so revolutionary that it cannot just be viewed as a new technology to be rolled out, it is a decision which must be grounded with a firm understanding of your business strategies, your future goals and a rock solid foundation of both processes and technologies that can allow an organisation to fully reap the benefits of an IoT based service strategy.

But the revolution isn’t really an IoT revolution, it is a data revolution.

Asset performance data and even component performance data can open the doors towards moving towards both a more preventative maintenance focused approach as well as empowering your service engineers to be able to find a first-time-fix on a more regular basis.

Asset performance data and even component performance data can open the doors towards moving towards both a more preventative maintenance focused approach as well as empowering your service engineersYet, for many service organisations, the sheer volume of data that a fleet of connected assets will produce will cause a series of problems and pain points in and of itself.

With companies facing unprecedented levels of data coming into their service operation not only from IoT connected assets but also various digital customer touch points whether that be via contact agents, self-service portals or even sentiment analysis of relevant social media, finding meaning and value within such a deep data lakes can be a daunting task.

In addition to this, there is the further question of retrofitting assets that a discussion on IoT necessarily brings with it.

For organisations with a large install base there are a number of considerations that must be given thought including:

• Which assets are worth retrofitting with IoT connected sensors?
• Is it worth waiting for some assets in the field to reach their natural obsolescence and then replace them with newer connected models?
• Should you prioritise retrofitting assets for those clients that are the most profitable or will having multiple levels of service contract be a hindrance to service delivery?
• What data is it important to track from retro-fitted assets? What is essential and what is merely nice to have?
• What processes will you need to develop or adjust in order to facilitate this data within the workflow of your service delivery teams?

Want to know more? The bad news is the full white paper is only available exclusively for fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by eBECS

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The IFS World Conference has been held in Barcelona and Boston in recent years, A telling testament to the Swedish software company’s growing importance on the global stage. However, in 2016 it was time for a successful homecoming as the conference headed to Gothenberg.

Field Service News was there to report on the key announcements made...

At the IFS World Conference in Boston held 18 months ago the headlines were all about milestones. The company had recently hit their millionth user, Applications 9 had just been launched and key partnerships with the likes of Microsoft and Accenture had seemingly launched them into the world of enterprise level organisations as a genuine challenger to the likes of SAP and Oracle.

So looking ahead to this year’s event in Gothenberg there was an anticipation of just how the Swedish ERP provider had moved onwards from those milestones - just how much progress had been made?

However, just ahead of the conference in September 2016 it was announced that private equity firm EQT had acquired 97% of the company which added a further dynamic to the backdrop of the conference’s three day agenda - what did the acquisition mean for IFS and would it change the roadmap for better or for worse?

These questions were addressed swiftly as Alistair Sorbie, CEO IFS took the stage for the opening keynote session - and the message was clear.

It was still business as usual and field service remained a significant priority for the company.

This sentiment was echoed when we spoke to Paul Massey, Managing Director, IFS Europe West, about the take over.

“They’re very hands off, have been positive in terms of their messaging and are supportive of the existing management” Massey commented.

In terms of the field service sector Massey also further outlined why it remains such a key priority on the IFS roadmap.

 

“It’s a growing market that we have got some really good stories in which we haven’t exploited as well as we might, so with EQT coming in and us taking an initial view of where we might target some early investment field service is an obvious candidate because we weren’t maximising the benefit we’ve got from having that product.” he added.

So with field service still very firmly on the agenda and the private equity acquisition looking - upon initial observations at least, to be something that is good for both IFS and their existing users the tone of the conference was able to gain sharper focus - and that tone was very much all about innovation in the technology. The headline stealing announcement being the introduction of IFS IoT Business Connector...

With IoT still very much the key technology on everyone’s buzz list it was an anticipated launch and potentially an essential one, as competitors in the FSM space at least, race to deliver similar tools.

What is interesting about the IFS solution is that as you may guess from the name it is a tool that connects other systems potentially shortening the time from ‘ideas to tangible benefits’ for IFS customers’ by providing an end-to-end architecture.

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 either user-defined, automated or semi-automated workflows in the wider IFS software suite.

Another important benefit is that it also comes with plug-and-play connectivity to the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite (but also has open APIs to connect other IoT platforms also.)

Essentially the IFS IoT Business Connector is designed to bridge the gap between analysis of IoT data and using the output to then execute maintenance and service more efficiently.

A number of earlier adopter case studies were rolled out during the announcement including Songa Offshore, an international mid-water 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.”

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 realised value.”

Another key technology announcement from the conference that will be of interest to IFS’ field service clients was the introduction of an new and enhanced version of IFS Mobile Workforce Management (MWM).

 

Major feature updates include automated resource planning, rostering and shift scheduling as well as extended deployment options in the cloud. Commenting on the updated solution IFS product director for service, asset, and project based solutions Jørgen Rogde commented,“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.”

Another important announcement made at the conference was the unveiling of a new version of IFS Enterprise Operational Intelligence (EOI).

Included within the new version - the first major release since the solution was acquired through the acquisition of VisionWaves in July 2015 were a number of new features such as capabilities for adding custom visualizations,

plug-and-play integration with IFS Applications, and of course integration with the IFS IoT Business Connector.

A number of elements of EOI are particularly suited including of course the scheduling element, which is powered by the IFS dynamic scheduling engine that users will be familiar with.

This tool used in combination with the ability to customise maps by incorporating drawings, illustrations or performance data onto a map could be a fantastic tool for prescriptive analytics and potentially modelling different schedule scenarios. In combination with the in-memory database technology demonstrated in Boston last year could theoretically mean that running simulations to find optimum workforce division could be done in minutes as opposed to weeks or even months that such a task using manual tools.

However, whilst the developments of both EOI and MWM and their integration to the wider suite of IFS Applications were not only impressive but also have easily identifiable use-cases within field service operations, it was the glimpse into the not too distant future from IFS Labs that was the show stopper from a field service perspective.

At the innovation centre sat proudly at the heart of the exhibition hall the IFS labs team demonstrated drone technology integrated with IFS Applications with a live real-time demo.

 

The drone proof-of-concept featured live integration between a drone and IFS Applications for automatic generation of work orders whilst inspecting assets on a scaled model demonstration.

Using computer image analysis, a drone flown by a member of the IFS labs team was able to recognise a break in a power line within the model and automatically generated an observation that is registered in IFS Applications via the IFS IoT Business Connector.

The end user can analyse 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.

Although still not available, the proof-of-concept demonstration certainly opened up a number of eyes as to the power of technology to help in the delivery of field service within the not too distant future.

“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.

And perhaps this is the key takeaway from the three day conference, for those asking how the EQT acquisition will affect the IFS, the message was it’s business as usual - and on the evidence on show in Gothenberg this year, the usual is innovation.

 

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Switching from paper to digital mobile forms can  transform field service maintenance operations, says Mark Scott, Vice President Marketing, ProntoForms.

Mobile technologies have taken over our personal lives, enabling us to be more productive and efficient as we shop, consume and communicate daily. When it comes to operations and maintenance in field services, however, mobile technology has been slow to permeate our workforce. Operations and maintenance are critical to ensuring safety, compliance and productivity in field services. Yet, many  maintenance practices today are still relying on paper-based processes that are error-prone, vulnerable to audits, and overall, highly inefficient.

Manual maintenance procedures hinder productivity and add unnecessary steps to operation practices hurting your company’s bottom line. For many businesses, ineffective internal practices also don’t guarantee that safety compliances are being enforced.

Mobile forms technology offers an end-to-end solution for a company’s maintenance programme, by enabling users to accurately collect and store field data, then easily share it in real time with key stakeholders.

Mobile forms bring many benefits to any field services operation. Here are five examples of how a mobile solution can make your business operate more efficiently and ensure your customers take notice:[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Embed rich media in your reports
   Sometimes words alone cannot accurately capture a problem or issue in field work, but a picture can tell a thousand words. Mobile forms allow maintenance inspectors to sketch and annotate directly on photos from the job site to highlight specific concerns. In addition to taking pictures on site, images like equipment diagrams can also be pre-loaded onto a form for field workers to reference. Mobile form providers are also offering barcode scanning and audio functions within forms as well so users can include richer field data.
2. Informed decision-making and a logical workflow
   Data gathered in the field is meant to ensure that operational standards are reached and exceeded, but it’s important that the data is communicated in a timely manner and shared with the right people. Mobile forms can be configured to automatically send completed maintenance forms to specific supervisors and decision-makers within a company, based on the data entered. If an inspection pinpoints a safety concern, that form can be configured to automatically send a report to a safety compliance manager. What’s more, maintenance forms can also be scored by the severity of the issue, and if a major maintenance breach is revealed, key stakeholders can be alerted through SMS messages and social media.
3. Business intelligence with analytics
   Analytics can provide a wealth of information, as maintenance trends can be compared over time. This means that a company can leverage its previous response to a maintenance issue and also determine whether this issue had arisen in the past. With mobile forms, in-depth analytics reports can also be scheduled for regular delivery to key supervisors and decision makers. Since field service data can be logged as it happens through mobile devices, these decision makers can analyse performance and spot hidden business trends in real time to predict potential issues or mitigate risks.
4. Dispatching inspections
   Field service workers need to provide accurate and in-depth maintenance inspections, however, they are also pressed for time and need to move on to the next job. Across all departments, improving productivity and automating mundane and repetitive tasks is essential, but this is especially critical for your maintenance programme. By using mobile forms technology, maintenance jobs can be dispatched to specific field workers, which saves valuable time. This means that field workers can avoid unnecessary trips to the head office to receive their next assignment, which gives them more time to spend in the field and conduct detailed inspections.
5. Calendar invites for follow-ups
   Irrespective of the size or efficiency of your field workers, it’s imperative to prioritise tasks and optimize workflows. High-risk maintenance concerns need to be addressed immediately, while less critical issues can wait. However, these low-risk concerns still require a response. As soon as non-critical issues are discovered, field workers can use mobile forms technology to schedule a maintenance technician and send calendar invites while they’re on the go at other appointments

 Now more than ever, it’s critical to take maintenance procedures to the next level by adopting the right type of technology. Businesses utilising mobile technology will see increased productivity and reduced costs, while quality of service is improved and risks are mitigated. When it comes to operations and maintenance don’t let your company fall behind the rest of the industry.

 

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Bytes Managed Solutions is transforming its service management operations in South Africa and Africa with Astea International Inc.'s Alliance mobile workforce optimisation platform. 

Bytes Managed Solutions (Bytes MS), a subsidiary of Altron Group, supports and maintains enterprise-wide end-to-end technology solutions and related services for medium to large enterprises in South Africa and Africa.  It is the exclusive distributor for NCR products in South Africa and partners with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Alcatel, Burroughs, Unity, Postec, Unisys, Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco, in the financial, retail, petroleum and infrastructure sectors.  

The company supports more than 1.2 million devices in over 46,500 locations throughout South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.  With the Astea Alliance mobility platform  it wanted to gain additional efficiencies, support its green initiatives by reducing paper, emissions and fuel costs, and reinforce its commitment to superior customer service. 

Additional benefits resulting from the implementation include the introduction of standardised operating procedures, accelerated billing cycles, and providing employees and partners with real-time access to information, with the expectation of ultimately increasing revenues and boosting customer satisfaction. 

The Astea Alliance mobility platform provides a comprehensive mix of capabilities such as mobile workforce management, real-time scheduling optimisation, field service, contact centre, depot repair, customer self-service, sales order processing, logistics and parts management, third party vendor management, professional services automation, and performance management. The end-to-end solution will further drive and improve efficiencies and reduce the cost of service delivery supporting the organizations strategic growth and acquisition strategy.

 “We are focused on providing innovative, value-added products, services and solutions to our customers. Our success is based on our customers’ success. We are constantly looking at ways to drive positive outcomes for our customers that will support their service solutions and business objectives,” said Fourie van der Merwe, Chief Operations Officer.  “With Astea Alliance, we have gained a leading-edge, unified, robust, and user-friendly solution that will support our initiatives and grow with our business. The solution, which is rated by Gartner in their Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, is based around service excellence disciplines and best practice experiences drawn from Astea’s long and established history in the service marketplace and is uniquely positioned to meet our needs. The system will enable us to provide a shared service management system platform for the group,” he added.

 “Bytes is a leader in its field as a result of its commitment to delivering superior service to its customers, a commitment which is made possible by the company’s continuous improvement of their internal processes,” said Zack Bergreen, CEO of Astea International. “Bytes MS truly understands the strategic value that quality of service can have on overall profitability, customer satisfaction and retention as well as providing a distinct competitive advantage in the marketplace. We are extremely proud that Bytes and Altron has selected to partner with us to further automate and optimize their service operations.” 

 

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What do you think is the biggest challenge facing today's  field service organisations?  Submit your view to ClickSoftware's Service is Hard contest and receive a free Amazon voucher. 

Delivering service is hard, acknowledges ClickSoftware.  It is compiling a new book on the challenges facing the industry and would like input from Field Service News readers to help it identify and address the industry's biggest challenges and help make delivering service easier in future.

The company wants to combine its 20-years experience in field service with input from customers to create a book which will outline the most critical challenges in the sector market and present recommendations from experts, thought leaders and analysts on how to address these challenges.

All you have to do is to submit your challenges using the short form here by Tuesday 15^th March 2016. (The form is in English but you can enter the details of your challenge in your own language.)

No challenge is too small, too simple or too complex.

Everyone who submits a challenge will receive: 

• A free copy of the completed book (available in April 2016)
•  An Amazon Gift Card worth £15.

If your challenge is selected to appear in the book, we will also:

• Acknowledge your contribution by mentioning you by name as a contributor.
•  Send you a signed copy of the book (signed by Alec Berry, VP Consulting and Technical Services, ClickSoftware) thanking you for your support.
•  Send you an additional £35 Amazon Gift Card.

Some examples of the challenges already identified include:

• Business Challenge:  Service is hard….because we can’t meet our customers’ expectations while keeping operational costs down.
•  Functional Challenge: Service is hard….because we lack accurate planning and reliable appointment booking.
• Technical Challenge: Service is hard…because it is difficult and complex to integrate the most advanced field service solutions with our legacy systems.

 

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To submit your challenge, use this form. All challenges will be reviewed but may not all be included in the book.

 

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Leading UK gas distributor SGN has selected enterprise mobility company Kony, Inc.’s MobileFabric to develop and manage its mobile enterprise applications and streamline integration with its enterprise backend systems.

The move comes as SGN seeks to strengthen customer service and increase employee productivity. The company manages a UK network that distributes natural and green gas to 5.8 million homes and businesses across Scotland and the south of England. It operates over 74,000 km of gas mains and services.

SGN’s Accelerated Delivery Team will use the Kony cloud-based mobile backend-as-a-service (MBaaS) solution MobileFabric to rapidly develop mobile apps, secure interaction with backend services and simplify the app maintenance process.

“SGN is committed to delivering gas safely, reliably, and efficiently to every one of our customers. Our collaboration with Kony will allow us to deliver innovative mobile solutions that empower our employees and connect us to our customers,” explains Andrew Quail, Director of IT at SGN. “Customers are at the centre of everything we do and working with Kony helps us to fulfil our promise.”

MobileFabric is part of Kony’s mobile application development platform portfolio that allows developers to use any open mobile developer framework and tool without sacrificing security or quality. SGN anticipates greater efficiencies as MobileFabric will enable seamless integration with its existing enterprise systems.

“As enterprises realise how mobility can transform the way business is conducted, we are seeing organisations find more business processes that can be transformed and new capabilities that can be created," said Jonathan Best, vice president of Europe and Africa, Kony, Inc. “We are excited to partner with SGN as it uses the power of mobility to provide innovative services to their energy customers and increase business efficiency.”

 

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The Apprentice winner 2015, Joseph Valente, adopts BigChange field service technology to springboard growth at his Impra-Gas plumbing business.

The winner of the BBC’s The Apprentice 2015 competition, Joseph Valente,  has selected BigChange's JobWatch platform to accelerate the growth of Impra-Gas, the plumbing business he owns 50:50 with Lord Sugar.

Impra-Gas is on a mission to revolutionise the plumbing industry, using the latest technology to offer people a faster, higher quality service.  The company looked at a number of software companies and after a rigorous tender process chose BigChange’s all-in-one Mobile Workforce Management system.

The team at Impra-Gas are totally focused on scaling the business, whilst delivering industry leading levels of service and convenience for customers. The paperless app-based JobWatch system allows Joseph’s management team to manage the entire operation from quotation all the way through to invoice, with integrated planning, management, job scheduling and real-time vehicle and resource tracking. The system also ensures consistent service quality and compliance with an app that guides plumbers through critical checks and procedures.

JobWatch is also enabling Impra-Gas to offer a seamless and convenient service experience for customers, with real-time booking on the company’s website as well as on a mobile app. Customers receive live updates that confirm the estimated time of arrival and on completion of work can make mobile payments. Automated electronic job cards and gas safety certificates ensure essential safety documents are safety stored and recorded.

BigChange founder and CEO Martin Port added, “BigChange exists to help ambitious businesses like Impra-Gas scale quickly, giving them everything they need to run a dynamic, profitable and customer focused operation. We’re really excited to have Joseph on board as a customer. His team will be receiving the same 5-star service and support that is there for every one of our customers.”

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