ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘mergers-and-acquisitions’ CATEGORY

Acquisition follows Silver Lake's recent majority stake purchase of ServiceMax from GE in December.

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Communication platform Zinc has been acquired by ServiceMax, the cloud-based field-service management firm for an undisclosed sum.

The deal follows ServiceMax's parent company, GE, selling a majority stake in the firm to private equity firm Silver Lake at the end of last year, and comes almost two years after GE's $915mn acquisition of ServiceMax in January 2017.

Aly Pinder, ServiceMax's Programme Director of Service Innovation and Connected Products, IDC said: “The ability of ServiceMax and Zinc to immediately surface tribal knowledge in-context not only aids in solving the task at hand on a work order, this integrated solution can also lead to significant improvements in customer experience, as well an enhanced ability to help acquire and engage talent for these critical customer-facing roles.”

Stacey Epstein, Zinc CEO added: “The perfect combination of Zinc’s modern, real-time communication with ServiceMax’s cutting edge and comprehensive suite will be unparalleled in the market, and I am thrilled to continue to help companies realise the promise of complete Service Execution Management.”

ServiceMax CEO Scott Berg, told diginomica that Zinc's real-time communication software will compliment their own platform, and lead to potential transaction-led benefits for customers. "Picture a world where those service engineers in a company could deploy this," he said, "and the first thing they start to do is communicate in real-time, starting to build those knowledge networks. Potentially then, phase two, they start deploying some of the more transaction-led capabilities…the handling of contracts, parts, work orders, and scheduling that they get with ServiceMax.” 

You can read Field Service News' recent interview with ServiceMax CEO Scott Berg here.

 

Asolvi, a European leader in field service management solutions, has purchased Purpose Software Ltd, Asolvi's third acquisition in as many years.

Purpose Software is the UK's top supplier of service management software for managed print services (MPS) providers. Together Asolvi and Purpose Software will have more than 900 customers across 30+ countries.

“Following the acquisitions of Tesseract and WS Software in 2016 and 2017 respectively, we are proud to welcome Purpose Software into our growing family,” says Pål M. Rødseth, CEO of Asolvi. “Purpose Software has the leading position in the document management space in the UK while Asolvi occupies a similar position in the Nordics and Continental Europe. We both offer software that generates enormous efficiency and productivity gains for providers of managed print and document services. Having known Michael Burke, CEO of Purpose Software, for years, we all agreed that the two organisations would be much stronger together. We saw an opportunity to pool our resources and knowledge of this industry, empowering the creation of new and improved solutions for MPS providers in the future." 

Purpose Software CEO Michael Burke says, "We are delighted to join Asolvi. We have got to know Asolvi as a competent and dedicated company in the service management space and I am confident that bringing the companies together will benefit our customers going forward. Being part of a larger software group will add strength to the product development that is needed to be a service management solution provider for the future, and I look forward to working closely with the Asolvi team to achieve this." 

The consecutive acquisitions of Tesseract, WS Software and Purpose Software are in line with Asolvi's strategy to become the leading provider of field service management systems for SMEs in Europe. The company has now added Purpose Software's 2Serv and CBS solutions to its broadening product suite, which already includes the world-renowned Evatic, Tesseract and WinServ solutions.Asolvi is a private company owned by the founders, management and Viking Venture.

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Service Fusion, a field service management software provider helping small and mid-sized field service companies streamline their businesses and increase customer satisfaction, has announced a $10M Series A investment from leading B2B software investor Five Elms Capital.

The financing will be used to fuel growth and accelerate the release of new functionality for its customer base of over 2,000 service contractors.

"We are thrilled to bring in a partner with so much experience in the B2B software space," said Max Paltsev, CEO of Service Fusion.

"Nearly 70% of service contractors don't use a specialized software to manage their business. This results in higher operating costs and missed opportunities to delight customers, and we are changing that with our software."

Nearly 70% of service contractors don't use a specialized software to manage their business. This results in higher operating costs and missed opportunities..."We are beyond excited to partner with Max and the team at Service Fusion," said Ryan Mandl, Partner at Five Elms Capital. "We believe the field service industry is in the early innings of a multi-decade shift to utilizing modern software solutions to more effectively manage operations and provide a better customer experience. Service Fusion has developed an industry-leading product and reputation for serving the needs of its customer base really well, both of which we plan to build on as we work together to fuel the company's next phase of growth."

Service Fusion's rapid growth will create a significant number of new jobs in the North Texas area as the company expands its engineering, customer support, and sales operations at its headquarters just outside of Dallas. "As one of the fastest growing technology companies in Texas, we are extremely excited to be able to create more career opportunities in this region," said Paltsev. "This investment will allow us to better serve our customers' needs by adding top-notch talent to every team at Service Fusion."

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Evatic Group, the leading provider of service management software for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Europe, has been rebranded "Asolvi".

It's the latest development for a company that has been at the centre of some big changes over the past couple of years, most notably the acquisitions of Tesseract in the UK and WinServ in Sweden. Asolvi is now helping 800 customers across 30 countries to attain greater flexibility, scalability and profitability in their service operations.

Pål M. Rødseth, CEO of Asolvi, explains the reasoning behind the new name: "We wanted a name indicative of the fact that we don't just supply software. We solve problems. We find solutions to our clients' service management needs. We're a partner that helps you become more efficient." He adds, smiling, "And since we're a multilingual and multinational company, we also wanted something easy to pronounce in many languages!"

We wanted a name indicative of the fact that we don't just supply software. We solve problems. We find solutions to our clients' service management needs. We're a partner that helps you become more efficient.Asolvi will continue to offer service management solutions under the Evatic, Tesseract and WinServ brand names, but felt that the time was right to distinguish between the company and its products. "Our products have been in the marketplace for a long time and have established themselves as leading brands within their respective segments," says Rødseth. "Each product has its own distinct benefits and will continue to develop under the Asolvi umbrella."

Rødseth goes on to explain how he expects Asolvi's recent growth to bring some stability to the market. "Having acquired both Tesseract and WinServ in the last 18 months, we expect to continue the much-needed consolidation of service management software players in the SMB space in Europe. Being a larger entity gives us economy of scale to meet the future demands of modern service companies."

Asolvi is headquartered in Trondheim, Norway and has offices in the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, Holland and Singapore. It is a private company owned by the employees and Viking Venture. For more information, please visit www.asolvi.com.

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With a new US patent approved for their Quantum Computing algorithm, Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower explains her vision for what the future of customer experience excellence will look like and outlines the path her organisation can offer to consumer-focused organisations as they begin rolling out a raft of new CX tools...

The last time Field Service News sat down and spoke with Marne Martin, ServicePower’s bold and ebullient CEO, for a formal interview, it was to discuss their recent acquisition by private equity firm Diversis at the beginning of this year.

At that point, Martin was keen to express the fact that it was she who had courted investment with a vision to expand upon their product suite more rapidly than they could through organic means alone and that this acquisition was not just another PE shark circling the rich pickings of the Field Service Management sector. At the time Martin commented ‘I felt that we were 75% and we were really looking for someone to get us to 100% of where we saw the opportunity in the sector not just for the current but in the future.”

I felt that we were 75% and we were really looking for someone to get us to 100% of where we saw the opportunity in the sector not just for the current but in the future.”Of course, many a CEO has said similar things in the past having just been acquired, a message of confidence is par for the course to keep the client base assured that their future is still safe in a steady pair of hands. But just how far along the path Martin outlined have ServicePower come in the last six months?

“We are completely thrilled with the progress we have made already in 2017” Martin responds when this question is put to her. “We’ve been supplementing the talent that we already have by bringing in some really great people and we will continue doing that, as it’s allowing us to constantly move forward with the development efforts and plans that we already had in place.”

One thing that has certainly seemed to materialise since the acquisition is a greater outward projection of where their core market lies. For Field Service Solution providers this can be a challenge within itself as field service straddles so many vertical industries, which whilst sharing many shared pain points and challenges, also have their own specific vertical nuances to be considered as well.

Yet whether it’s the result of some business refinement that came out of the acquisition process, or whether it is simply something they are now verbalising that little bit more, ServicePower now seem to have a very clear understanding of their target market.

“All of this [development] is around really expanding our dominance in consumer industries” Martin explained. “We sell B2B but we are enabling the consumer experience for our customers so we are essentially B2B2C primarily, ServicePower is really unique in dominating that positioning. The other field service providers are either more focused on preventative maintenance or other such aspects of the sector. We really are the only field service company that has this domination and focus in the consumer sector and that empower our customers to cultivate consumer experience as they deliver it - whether that be through different service routes or through different types of technicians.”

But how does this translate into actual developments of the solution?

“The new customer experience will incorporate a lot more of web service front end User Interfaces that we are coding with the latest programming standards,” Martin tells us.

It is really designed to give customers a better digital experience whilst also making call centres more productive and for the technicians“It is really designed to give customers a better digital experience whilst also making call centres more productive and for the technicians, the mobile tech enablement is better. We’ve done a huge amount of R&D on how integrated ecosystems deliver a much-improved customer experience but actually it is better for every stakeholder in the service continuum.”

“I firmly believe, and so do many of our customers, that the customer and the tech want the same thing - a great experience,” she continued.

“That is either an experience where things don’t break - because of processes like tailored proactive maintenance or incorporating IoT diagnostics to leverage what you know about the assets, or if they do require repair then we’re facilitating a repair experience that doesn’t necessarily require a truck roll, ideally they’re able to do some remote maintenance and fix it without coming into the client’s home.”

“However, if there does have to be a truck roll, if they do need to come to the client’s home - then they should be making sure they are coming into the home at a time that’s convenient for the customer and with the best knowledge about the asset possible - that is how you facilitate the first-time-fix. So now you are seeing the first few steps to making this all happen and soon you’ll also see some of the additional predictive types of improvements that we’re also rolling out with Smarter Field Service and the new algorithm.”

“In fact, we were recently awarded a new US patent for our quantum annealing work and you’ll definitely be seeing the further evolution of this vision as we move into 2018.”

Now, it was felt in some corners that it was ServicePower’s research work into Quantum Annealing that made them such an attractive proposition for investment in the first place. However, up until now the conversation had centred mainly around theoretical research ServicePower had undertaken.

But if this research work is set to move into the practical realm, then this could truly be a game changer for field service optimisation.

What I think will be the service experience of the future for our customers, is tying in the power of this quantum computing algorithm not just to do the traditional pipe of ‘technician-route-schedule-optimisation’ but also to think about optimisation across the different types of service.“What’s interesting to me and what I think will be the service experience of the future for our customers, is tying in the power of this quantum computing algorithm not just to do the traditional pipe of ‘technician-route-schedule-optimisation’ but also to think about optimisation across the different types of service. For example, having more flexible work queues or how you triage and route the delivery of service for a customer - all through digital enablement,” Martin explains.

“Say for example, a customer hits our new intelligent customer portal - you can send them to a process, you can use IoT diagnostic information, or upload photos or whatever type of triage type of information that you have, then depending on how you assess that you might then send them through to a work queue that is optimised and we can have a dynamic work-flow between back-office activities, call centre activities, technician experiences and triage assessment activities.”

“We’re actively thinking about how to use our quantum annealing algorithm in a more flexible way to optimise the total service experience. What I have seen is that even amongst our customers and prospects that have an IoT diagnostic group, they are not working that information into an integrated service experience.”

“They might have some techs that are trained in that or the might have an elite network that is doing it, but they are not tying it into the overall workflow and optimising a more efficient service experience.”

“Ultimately you only want to send a technician on site when you really have to and as much as possible you want to make sure that when the technician gets on-site they’re able to do what the customer really needs - which is, of course, a first-time-fix.”

This scenario is, of course, the ideal field service win-win-win. The customer is happier because they are back up and running, the engineer is happier because they have a better work-life balance and less angry customers and the board is happier because they are seeing improvements to the bottom line. Indeed, if it is achievable, we are getting close to field service nirvana.

Martin concludes: “We are also looking at how we can use the quantum computing power looking at demand forecasting, capacity planning, and parts information, focusing on consumer industries and how we deliver a great service experience. It is about so much more than just the technology – it is a whole integrated approach that looks at the digital journey with the customer, the call centre and mobile technician enablement.”

It seems that Martin and her team at ServicePower are undeniably still on the right path to deliver the future of customer experience.

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Verizon Communications Inc. has announced the acquisition of Movildata Internacional, a Murcia, Spain-based provider of commercial fleet management solutions. Terms of the transaction, which closed on Jan. 19, 2018, have not been disclosed.

Verizon Telematics is an established leader across Europe with a strong presence in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Poland. Movildata, an established industry leader in Spain, complements Verizon Telematics’ expanding operations in southern Europe, specifically Portugal and Italy. “We see Movildata as a natural fit and highly synergistic with our European business,” said Andrés Irlando, CEO of Verizon Telematics. “This strategic acquisition strengthens Verizon Telematics’ market position, accelerates growth and allows us to expand the footprint of our market-leading solutions and services.”

With more than five million commercial vehicles, Spain represents the second largest market for commercial vehicles in Western EuropeWith more than five million commercial vehicles, Spain represents the second largest market for commercial vehicles in Western Europe according to leading industry analyst firm Berg Insight.¹ Furthermore, the market for fleet management solutions is significantly underpenetrated compared to other major markets in Europe, creating opportunities for growth.

Movildata employees have joined the Verizon Telematics team and will continue to drive sales and support for its current fleet management products. In addition, Verizon Telematics plans to add Fleetmatics’ REVEAL™ to the portfolio of software solutions available to Spanish fleet operators. Verizon Telematics provides world-class vehicle tracking and business intelligence solutions designed to help generate cost savings, improve productivity and help monitor driver safety for virtually any mobile workforce.

“We are proud of what the company has accomplished in this market, and we know that with this transaction our success will continue,” said Luis Enrique Rodrigo, CEO of Movildata. “Verizon Telematics’ expansive global reach and robust portfolio of technologies and solutions will allow us to grow the business in Spain and expand our customer service to the next level.”

1Source: Berg Insight “Fleet Management in Europe, M2M Research Series” (2017)

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Field Service News speak exclusively to Evatic, CEO Pål Rødseth, about their ambitious plans to conquer the European SME market...

The field service industry has of course seen a lot of merger and acquisitions activity in the last couple of years, much of which has seen major global enterprises such as GE and Microsoft entering the market, through acquisitions of ServiceMax and FieldOne respectively, plus there has also much been private equity investment in established leading brands within the industry such as ClickSoftware, ServicePower and IFS.

However, there is another organisation on the acquisition trail which has gone beneath the radar of many of the more mainstream IT and Business focussed trade journals, yet they are perhaps set to have an equally big impact on the field service management landscape - that is Norwegian company Evatic who currently have offices in Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Holland, UK, America and Singapore.

UK readers may well recognise the name as they acquired the highly respected British FSM pioneers Tesseract towards the end of last year - however that was just the first piece of the puzzle as the Nordic firm aim to build up a pan European organisation. Indeed, they’ve spent little time resting on their laurels and have recently added a second FSM provider to their growing family having recently acquired Swedish company WinServ.

However, whilst the acquisition of Tesseract was very much about securing the excellent IP that the UK team had developed as well as giving them a foothold into the UK market, with WinServ it seems Evatic are making a move that firmly establishes them as the number one player in their home sector.

 

“WinServ has been the toughest competitor to Evatic over many years in the Nordics,” explains Pål Rødseth, CEO, Evatic.

In fact, around 50% of the 330+ clients that currently use WinServ are in the copy/print sector - which is also Evatic’s main area of focus. Additionally WinServ’s clients are also predominantly spread across the Nordics with a large market share in Sweden. So for Evatic this move is more about building a dominant base in their primary sector to build upon rather than spreading their wings into different sectors or geographies.

Taken the two acquisitions separately, one may be mistaken in thinking that they were both merely opportunistic acquisitions for an ambitious company hungry for growth. Indeed, both Tesseract and WinServ were headed up by their original founders who were reaching retirement age - so there certainly is a certain grain of truth in that assertion. However, as Rødseth explains there is a much more focussed strategic approach to Evatic’s approach to acquisition pattern than merely picking up companies who happen to be in the right place at the right time.

“There are too many of these small companies that have all been around for twenty odd years that are not able to take the next leap forward in product development,” he explains.

“We see customers demanding more and more functionality. They are demanding new solutions be Cloud based, they are expecting business intelligence capabilities, they are demanding easy integrations. All of these things are only possible if you have a large enough customer base to spread the development cost across.”

“We believe that here is a need to consolidate these ten to twenty employee companies across Europe to be able to keep on developing solutions because if you don’t do that you will eventually lose your customers over time."

"You need to face up to what the bigger companies are doing in the service management space and be able to deliver the majority of that functionality down to the SMEs - which is our core customer base.”

It is an admirable approach and one that makes sense. The SME market remains largely under served and with so much money flowing into FSM providers at the moment the main battleground has become the enterprise sector - leaving plenty of space for someone like Evatic to come in and dominate amongst smaller organisations.

But of course, this can also be a very tricky path to negotiate. Will there come a point when by unifying the many smaller companies together essentially Evatic risk transforming into a big business themselves and lose the flexibility and adaptability that often makes smaller providers the right fit for their client base in the first place?

“We don’t want to become a Microsoft. We want to be able to retain flexibility and be able to take decisions quickly and work efficiently but we also want to scale the business more than we’ve done so far. We are moving into a new premise in Wycombe with Tesseract and that facility will have additional space for a good number of employees so we are planning to ramp up the Tesseract business and also expand into Europe.”

 

So how quickly can we expect Evatic to build their empire? With two quick-fire acquisitions back-to-back Rødseth perhaps wisely is planning a fallow year.

“We need to be realistic in what we are doing,” he explains.

“There are challenges in integrating businesses and there are challenges in getting people to work together when there are cultural differences and so forth - so I don’t think we will be making another acquisition in the next 6 to 12 months. We are more focussed currently on getting operational excellence in place. Doing M&A is challenging and the majority of such projects fail - we want to make sure ours doesn’t.”

“But we do have a list of 8 to 12 companies that we follow and we are in dialogue with them and we have investors that back our strategy and we do have the ability to move quickly if we need to.”

 

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IFS is now uniquely positioned to offer world leading service management software solutions to the full spectrum of service businesses, independent of size, level of operational complexity, vertical focus or geographical location.

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, has recently announces it has signed an agreement to purchase WorkWave LLC. WorkWave is a leading provider of highly scalable, cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for the Field Service and Last Mile Delivery and Logistics industries. WorkWave primarily serves small & medium sized (SMB) service businesses, with specific vertical focus on Pest Control, Lawn & Landscape, Cleaning & Janitorial, Heating/Ventilation/AC, Plumbing & Electrical and Transportation.

WorkWave’s SaaS solutions seamlessly integrate the office to the field, enabling SMB service businesses to streamline back office tasks such as scheduling, planning and billing, increase field visibility and productivity, and automate marketing and sales activities. As a result, WorkWave’s clients are able to significantly improve efficiency, reduce cost, boost revenues and enhance customer satisfaction.

From its headquarters in Holmdel, New Jersey, WorkWave’s 260 employees support more than 7,300 customers who are primarily based in the U.S. Thanks to its deep industry expertise, cutting-edge technology and focus on customer service, WorkWave is proud to be recognised with multiple awards for its outstanding growth and culture, including the Inc. 5000 and Best Places to Work, among others.

 

Commenting on the acquisitions, Fredrik vom Hofe, Group Senior Vice President for Business Development at IFS said “This acquisition is further evidence of how IFS is investing to extend its global leadership in Service Management. WorkWave, with its very strong SaaS offering and deep knowledge of how to serve SMB service businesses, complements IFS’s already leading service management offering that is used by many larger service-centric companies. We can now offer the most complete, connected Service Management solutions across the full-spectrum of service organisations and service-intensive industries, globally! In addition, we have significantly strengthened our presence in North America, the world’s largest software market, meaning that the Americas is now the largest region in the IFS Group.” He continued: “We are very pleased to have WorkWave’s CEO, Chris Sullens, and the talented WorkWave team join IFS to continue our growth in Service Management.”

Chris Sullens, CEO of WorkWave, stated “We are very excited to join the IFS team and looking forward to mutually accelerating our growth in the field service and logistics industries - and beyond. This is a great opportunity for our clients, partners, and employees.” He added, “We now have the opportunity to leverage the resources of a leading service management software organization, while continuing to invest in and deliver exceptional products and services to our core clients in pest control and other field service verticals. Our combination of offerings will help service businesses of all sizes solve their operational and growth challenges through our market-leading software solutions.”

 The acquisition is expected to close in Q4 2017. The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed.

 

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