Study shows Machine Learning, Cloud and Process Automation key part of software.

The application software sector is undergoing profound and rapid change, according to data and analytics firm GlobalData.

The company’s latest report ‘Tech, Media, & Telecom Trends 2020 – Thematic Research’ reveals how the value was historically all in the application itself but is now driven by the integration of software. Listed below are the top application software technology trends, identified in the study:

 

Cloud Computing

The cloud is an important model for IT resource delivery. The growth of application programming interfaces (APIs) has made sharing data easier and encouraged the development of new applications. A new wave of platform services will use artificial intelligence (AI) to increase operational efficiency and automate workflow controls. Advanced platforms will enable intelligent apps and improve user experience. 

 

Process automation:

Process automation refers to robotic process automation (RPA), in which new developer technologies will help shore up various phases within the application lifecycle. RPA uses AI, low-code platforms, and software robotics to automate manual processes. Industrial IT providers will continue to invest in RPA innovation.

 

Machine learning:

Machine learning is a high priority for businesses everywhere. There are relatively few AI specialists, and developing a model is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. As the market matures, enterprises will incorporate data from a variety of sources into their machine learning models.

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) libraries:

To overcome the skills gap, vendors are designing products specifically for people without data science skills. Vendors are offering translation services, speech-to-text, natural language generation, image recognition, and video analysis to non-AI specialists. 

Data will become a key differentiator, and an enterprise’s ability to manage and glean insights from it.

 

Conversational platforms:

Conversational platforms employ a variety of technologies to enable human-like interactions with computer systems. Virtual personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant can schedule appointments, provide weather updates, and play music based on voice commands. In 2020, application platform providers will develop user interface (UI) tools to support advanced conversational platforms.

 

Open source AI:

AI relies heavily upon open source (OS) technologies. Google's machine learning framework, TensorFlow, is a prime example of this trend. Released via the Apache OS license in 2015, TensorFlow is currently available to developers across most public cloud platforms. Investment in OS AI technologies will proceed apace, particularly among vendors selling both open and proprietary technologies.

 

Augmented reality (AR):

AR allows the user to see the real world overlaid with a layer of digital content. Having come to worldwide attention in 2016 with Pokémon Go, the next two years will be pivotal for AR. Its chances of crossing over to the mass consumer and corporate markets will be determined by the richness and variety of AR content, the development of smartphone applications, and the arrival of all-in-one glasses. 

 

Independent power producer and energy services provider ENGIE is introducing a Digital Factory to accelerate the delivery of mobile applications for its customers, partners and employees, in France and globally, as part of the company’s new three-year transformation plan. It will be built on Kony Inc.'s industry-leading Enterprise Mobility Platform.

ENGIE employs around 155,000 people worldwide and operates in 70 countries. Impressed by Kony’s ability to quickly design, build and deploy secure, enterprise-grade mobile apps across multiple devices and operating systems, the company chose Kony’s Mobility Platform and solutions for its enterprise-wide digital transformation initiative. As part of the Digital Factory, Kony will help the group build several consumer-facing and employee productivity mobile apps.

“The global partnership between ENGIE and Kony was born from a desire to support our digital transformation initiative through new value-added services,” said Isabelle Kocher, CEO, ENGIE. “It also aims to enhance the digital skills of our teams and enable us to meet the needs of our business units to accelerate the time to market of mobile application projects for customers, partners and employees.”

By fully adopting enterprise mobility across their organisation, the utility company aims to drive significant improvements in customer satisfaction, increase market share and lower costs through faster mobile application development cycles through the Digital Factory.

“Digital will transform virtually all industries, companies, and geographies,” said Thomas E. Hogan, chairman and CEO, Kony, Inc.”  “It will transcend and shape value, service levels, quality, and the customer experience.  Companies will either lead, become a fast-follower, or perish.  Fortunately for ENGIE and its customers, Isabelle Kocher has elected to assert ENGIE as a digital innovator and leader in the new energy world.  Kony is thrilled to partner with this visionary leader and an iconic brand, and to leverage our market leading mobility solutions in their digital journey.”

The Kony Enterprise Mobility Platform is an open and standards-based, integrated mobility platform for mobile app development and beyond. It supports the entire application software development lifecycle and operations lifecycle, empowering enterprises to quickly design, build, deploy and manage multi-edge app experiences. The solution encompasses unique app UI design and development tools, powered by Kony’s mobile backend-as-a-service and backend application development offering, as well as testing and analytics. Kony Apps allows customers to deliver secure, enterprise-grade mobile apps faster to market.

 

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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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For any field service organisation there is often one simple key objective, to deliver excellent customer service whilst working as effectively as possible.

However, we are working in a market place where both economic pressures and customer demands have risen to greater levels than possibly ever before and sometimes it may seem like this ‘simple’ objective is becoming increasingly unachievable. Yet at the same time we are seeing technology at our disposal moving forward in quantum leaps, as we witness technologies emerge that can and will literally change the shape of the field service industry as we know it.

Multi-person video conferencing enabled by increasing mobile internet speeds is now a common place reality when not so long ago it was the domain of science fiction. The field engineer facing on site who doesn’t have the requisite knowledge to deliver a first time is now able to access a wealth of information and advice direct from his handset, he can see where the nearest parts he requires are and if their not readily available he can order them and schedule the appointment with Mr. Bloggs there and then. (First of course checking that Mr. Bloggs account has the correct privileges and if he doesn’t than the engineer can is perfectly placed to up-sell!!)

Then there is the Cloud… Many of the initial fears around cloud based computing, a large number of companies were hesitant to move business functions into the cloud with security worries at the top of the list of peoples reasons for hesitancy, are now being allayed and the reality is that cloud technologies offer an incredible opportunity for the service industry.

If having fast mobile devices is the key, then having knowledge bases, communications platforms and even central systems in the cloud, is the door that opens the way into a whole new world of service excellence.

Even better, unlike the majority of technologies, which are prohibitively expensive when they first emerge, the cloud is in fact the opposite. Suddenly expensive and complex service management systems that were once the exclusive domain of the enterprise organization are now available as Software as a Service, bringing the cost per person down in some cases to under $100 a head.

In a period of continuing economic uncertainty, where Service is a major battle field in all manner of industries, the combination of ever improving mobile data speeds and cloud computing is a clear example of how technology is changing the shape of the industry today.

Of course, not every company is able to or indeed should invest in every new piece of technology and software that comes along. Indeed what is cutting edge today could well be obsolete within a few short years, and no matter where we see similarities in service departments, and we see them in wide and diverse industries, the simple truth is no one service story can ever be the same. Companies, like individuals require a solution that is geared just for them.

However, having an understanding of the technologies available and the advantages they may bring to your service department is a core responsibility of every field service manager.

It’s vital that field service managers understand what the options available to them are, whilst taking the time to understand their own needs and weaknesses and then find the system or systems that are fit for purpose

There is plenty of good information out there (including of course this very website!) and another source of good and refreshingly impartial advice is Service Max’s new ebook “A Definitive Guide to Modern Field Service Management”. Which we are very pleased to be able to offer to you for free when you subscribe to our fortnightly newsletter.

Drawing on research from Gartner, Aberdeen, The Service Council and Forrester as well as a real life case study this ebook gives insightful and concise advice on how technologies such as cloud, SaaS, big data and analytics, smart phones and tablets and optimised scheduling engines can be brought together to empower organisations to adopt a fully 360° view of the service they deliver.

To download a copy of this excellent book please just click the link here and then complete the very brief (less than a minute) registration form.