In his leader for issue 12 of Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief Kris Oldland discusses the number of field service solution providers companies flourishing in an industry that is going through seismic change and evolution...
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Jun 20, 2016 • Features • Leader • Magazine (digital editions) • Microsoft • Oneserve • ClickSoftware • Co-Tap • Field Service USA • servicemax • Trimble
In his leader for issue 12 of Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief Kris Oldland discusses the number of field service solution providers companies flourishing in an industry that is going through seismic change and evolution...
Click here to download a digital version of Field Service News issue 12 now
Field Service News issue 12 - Available nowAs the field service conference season enters full swing there have been plenty of solution providers banging the drum of late...
Indeed, the list of field service solution providers at Field Service USA held in Palm Springs a month ago was a certifiable who’s who of the industry, and alongside what was a truly fantastic three days of education, there were a number of big announcements from some of the industry’s key players.
ClickSoftware announced a new solution that takes advantage of some pretty slick artificial intelligence algorithms, Trimble Field Service Management introduced an entire new end-to-end FSM suite called Pulse whilst ServiceMax announced a very interesting tool called Service Performance Metrics that brings together analytics and best-practices in a highly innovative solution.
Then there were the new kids on the block such as Help Lightning, whose ‘mobile merged reality’ solution we’ve championed in Field Service News previously as a great use of an emerging technology that could have a truly disruptive impact on the industry.
Another honourable mention should also go to Co-Tap whose collaboration tool is perfectly set to help empower knowledge sharing and intra-engineer collaboration, a perfect tool for the emerging millennial workforce.
Not to be out done by their software counterparts, there has been plenty of innovation coming from the hardware side of the industry of late as well.
Getac have announced the launch of the next-gen S400, a fully rugged laptop that has the footprint of a regular business notebook, whilst the Toughbook 20 (which Field Service News first reported as being in development back in March last year) is the world’s first fully rugged detachable and has been picking up some very positive comments since it became available at the beginning of the year.
“We can’t talk about new developments from solution providers with out mentioning Microsoft who have arrived firmly back within the field service sector with all the swagger of the Rolling Stones announcing yet another world tour...”
And if new technology launches are the drums being banged, then it is also important to note that there have been a number of new band leaders coming to the fore lately too.
Perhaps the highest profile of these is the new CEO at industry stalwarts ClickSoftware. Following the sale of the company to Californian private equity firm Francisco Partners, Tom Heiser has been appointed and in his own words one of his first tasks is to start ‘banging the drum’ a bit more about the innovations his R&D team are developing.
Another new CEO on the block is Chris Proctor of OneServe who has had a meteoric rise through the Exeter based company within the last year. Proctor also sees the need to raise the bar in terms of shouting about the Exeter based companies successes, and is not afraid to call out his competitors (as he did back in Field Service News back in November last year).
In this issue we’ve exclusive interviews with both Proctor (page 18) and Heiser (page 40) as well as another new face to field service Rei Kasai who recently joined ServiceMax from SAP and spoke to us about what exactly Service Performance Metrics means (page 32).
Of course, we can’t talk about new developments from solution providers with out mentioning Microsoft who with their purchase of FieldOne and it’s subsequent recent re-brand to Field Service have arrived firmly back within the field service sector with all the swagger of the Rolling Stones announcing a new world tour.
Like the Rolling Stones, Microsoft having been around seemingly forever, yet they still have it in them to mix it with the very best. By incorporating FieldOne into their wider Dynamics platform, the software giant have put together a very attractive solution and I spoke to Carsten Groth about Microsoft’s plans for Field Service which you can read on page 50.
With so much development and innovation in the sector it is truly an exciting time, and such fierce competition amongst field service solution providers is not only indicative of the growing importance of service within industry, but also can only be a good thing for practitioners when it comes to finding the right solution for them.
Bang on.
Click here to download a digital version of Field Service News issue 12 now
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Nov 10, 2015 • News • CRM • Microsoft • Mirosoft Dynamics
Seamless integration between sales and service together with productivity improvement tools are two of the key enhancements in Microsoft's new cloud-based Dynamics CRM 2016, which the company calls “game-changing”
Seamless integration between sales and service together with productivity improvement tools are two of the key enhancements in Microsoft's new cloud-based Dynamics CRM 2016, which the company calls “game-changing”
Microsoft's Dynamics CRM 2016 includes advancements in intelligence, mobility and service and is said to be the most comprehensive ever upgrade of the company's CRM solution. The new enhancements are designed to increase productivity in three key ways: by providing a simple and seamless experience across Dynamics CRM and other applications; delivering an enhanced mobile experience for the worker on the go, and providing enriched data and analytics.
“Microsoft’s obsession with customer success is rooted in our ambition to reinvent productivity and business processes,” said Bob Stutz, corporate vice president, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “Dynamics CRM 2016 is designed from the ground up to deliver core capabilities all in a single system to eliminate distractions, to make it easier to get things done, and to dramatically increase productivity so our customers can spend more time serving their customers.”
The new interactive service hub incorporates real-time dashboards that provide a single view of the workload, giving organisations and agents the flexibility to choose the order of case resolution. Interactive charts provide a visual representation of the work items and can be used as visual filters that allow agents to slice and dice the data, view what is most important, see the next action and focus on faster resolutions. The Unified Service Desk gives agents access to Skype and Yammer so they can engage customers and peers via chat for service resolution and collaboration.
Turning data into intelligent action is a cornerstone of business transformation and productivity, and the new Dynamics CRM release includes data management and advanced analytics capabilities powered by the Cortana Analytics Suite. Azure Machine Learning capabilities are incorporated, enabling organisations to continually learn from the problems and solutions that they are encountering so that patterns can be identified, speeding time to resolution and continuously improving performance over time.
The new version of Dynamics CRM provides full offline capabilities for service professionals on phones and tablets and across all major mobile platforms (Android, iOS and Windows). The release also introduces the ability to create task-centered mobile apps to streamline the completion of activities on the go.
The new version of Dynamics CRM closes the customer relationship loop by providing an end-to-end solution for customer service across self-service, assisted service and field service. It captures the signals communicated in various channels in the market, and empowering the agent to provide meaningful feedback and leverages social channels to instantly track and analyse relevant sentiment and engage directly with customers on social channels such as Twitter and Facebook.
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Aug 26, 2015 • News • Microsoft • end-to-end • field one • Software and Apps
Microsoft’s acquisition of FieldOne recently caught the headlines but other additions to the software giant’s portfolio could suggest that the plans for field service may not end there...
Microsoft’s acquisition of FieldOne recently caught the headlines but other additions to the software giant’s portfolio could suggest that the plans for field service may not end there...
Microsoft has reached an agreement to acquire FieldOne Systems LLC (“FieldOne”), a provider of field service management solutions that allow organisations to better manage and deliver service to their customers in the field.
“In today’s connected world, people expect to engage and be engaged by organizations in new ways, in ways that are most convenient for them” commented Bob Stutz - Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics CRM on the official Microsoft Blog when announcing the acquisition.
“To help businesses respond to these changing expectations, we are committed to providing the most comprehensive customer service offering, and this includes the best field service capabilities.” He added
Stutz went on to comment “Field service management is a specific but critically important area of customer service, providing companies with the ability to deliver end-to-end field service.”
This is a unique, and transformational point in time for these solutions as enterprises look to improve their responsiveness to customers
“In this critical area, FieldOne really stands out. They have the baseline functionality that organizations need to drive a more effective field service operation.”
“They are a leading provider of end-to-end solutions that enable businesses to drive revenue, reduce costs and deliver great customer service. Their industry-leading solution specialises in delivering a full set of capabilities that include work order management, automated scheduling, asset contract, inventory and procurement management, workflow capabilities and mobile collaboration – providing enterprises with a comprehensive modern field service solution.”
In an announcement on the same day on their own blog FieldOne CEO Ilan Slasky stated “For FieldOne, having the breadth of the Microsoft sales and marketing organisation, and leveraging their product development group to augment our R&D efforts was instantly attractive.”
“Our ability to aggressively grow our business across the enterprise is much, much stronger partnered with Microsoft and they have identified field service management software as an enormous and rapidly growing market. For Microsoft, the opportunity to bring a fully integrated field service solution into the Microsoft Dynamics group, pairing it with the powerful capability of applications like Azure, Parature, Cortana Analytics and Power BI, led to a natural conclusion that it made perfect sense to acquire FieldOne.”
Indeed it seems as though Microsoft have certainly placed field service high on their agenda in the enterprise realm, having also announced a significant partnership with IFS in May this year.
In addition to this Microsoft have also made some acute acquisitions in the mobile productivity space this year acquiring calender app Sunrise, email app Acompli and most recently task manager app Wunderlist, with all three being cross platform tools that work across both IoS and Android.
With Acompli already being re-branded as Outlook and further integration across the three surely to follow it seems that Microsoft have quietly gone out and bought an excellent suite of mobile productivity tools that can help them establish a much broader stake of the growing enterprise mobility sector.
Whether or not these tools will also be integrated with Dynamics CRM and FieldOne remains to be seen, but they would certainly add further strength to an end-to-end a Microsoft field service offering.
Field Service News is published by 1927 Media Ltd, an independent publisher whose sole focus is on the field service sector. As such our entire resources are focused on helping drive the field service sector forwards and aiming to best serve our industry through honest, incisive and innovative media coverage of the global field service sector.
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