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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 with service in the field – taking service directly to the customer anytime a service cannot be managed by phone or other channels.”

 

“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.

 

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The next event of the Service Community will be the held on the 30th September 2015 from 12.30 to 17.00. We are very lucky to be hosted by the Aston Business School, where Professor Tim Baines, Director of the Aston Centre for Servitization Research and Practice leads one of the largest UK teams looking to support UK manufacturing be more successful through service based business models.

This special event is themed on a current key industry issue:

‘Using Big Data to achieve successful customer Outcomes’

Dr Andreas Schroeder from the Aston Business School will provide a perspective based on leading edge research as to how to overcome the challenges of leveraging the big data opportunity to deliver successful  customer outcomes.

We will then hear from industry speakers as to the hands on challenges their companies have faced in using data to create competitive advantage.

• Andrew Harrison will be talking about the how Rolls Royce Aerospace use the data they collect from their engines to deliver new services and reduce costs
• Jeremy Harpham from Pitney Bowes will present the role data is playing as this household brand transforms itself into a leading global e-commerce provider
• Marc Noble will tell us about the role data has played in  Inca Digital’s journey to service excellence

The format will be very informal to encourage as much dialogue as possible, and if there is time we will have a Panel Q&A.

To register your interest and reserve a place – please send your contact details to TheServiceCommunity@gmail.com

Please tell your colleagues about the event, which is free of charge.

For details of our last event in April where  35 professionals met at Fujitsu, Stevenage, see this link.

And for more background on this unique community of like minded people, see this link

 

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Workwave, the US-based provider of cloud-based solutions for businesses with mobile workforces,  reports revenues up 55% and adds 900 new customers. 

WorkWave, the US-based provider of cloud-based field service management and last-mile fleet management software solutions has announced it added over 900 new customers in the first half of 2015, grew recurring revenue by 55% and increased staff by nearly 30%.

The company, founded in 1984,  was best known as Marathon Data Systems until it underwent a corporate rebranding in June 2015 coinciding with its  acquisition of telematics company Foxtrax. Workwave has made significant investment in its field service management platform to improve the level of connectivity and visibility its customers have inside their office and in the expansion of its mobile workforce platform. This now includes proprietary mobile apps and route planning and optimisation technology, to provide the same visibility and connectivity for field service operations.   The tightly integrated, mobile-first,  suite of software solutions includes WorkWave Service, WorkWave Fleet, WorkWave GPS, PestPac, together with marketing and sales automation  solutions.

“Demand for WorkWave’s field service management and fleet management software solutions continues to grow among both small businesses and enterprise customers, as they increasingly realise that efficiencies from the cloud continue to make their options more affordable and effective,” said Chris Sullens, CEO of WorkWave. “WorkWave helps clients large and small operate more efficiently and profitably, and our combination of deep industry expertise in multiple service and delivery verticals and flexible cloud-based solutions enables us to quickly scale to support this continued year-over-year growth.”

 

WorkWave is off to a strong start in 2015, fuelled by growth in its core vertical of pest control and rapid adoption of its integrated routing, GPS and lead generation offerings across its target industry segments. Key customer wins US Coachways, Friendly’s Ice Cream, Fort Point Beer Co., Hoskins Pest Control, Budget Pest Control, Molly Maid, City of Houston and Spring-Green. Staff numbers increased from 144 employees to over 180 during the first half of 2015 and are expected to reach 200 by the end of 2015.

WorkWave and CEO Chris Sullens were also named a winner in the 2015 Globee Fastest Growing Private Companies Awards which recognise company growth and success in privately-held organisations from around the world.

 

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Field Service News recently ran a research project in partnership with ClickSoftware looking at the appetite for Cloud based field service management solutions. We had a great response with over 150 field service professionals giving us their insight. As a thank you for taking the time to give us their input all respondents were entered into a prize draw with three £50 Amazon vouchers to be won and we are pleased to announce the winners below:

• James Shepherd - It Director, Stonegate
• Antony Newton - Regional Service Director, Danwood Group
• Jesus Rodriguez - Service Manager, Daikin A.C SPAIN, SA

Thanks again to all of those who contributed to the research and look out for a series of features outlining the findings coming very soon.

 

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Why not help us with our current research project exploring the potential of IoT in Field Service sponsored by ServiceMax? Once again there is a prize draw with three £50 Amazon Vouchers available!

Click here to take part in our research into IoT and Field Service now and you could be the next winner!  

 

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Warranty, claims and customer care provider Castelan Group is using scheduling software from Paragon Software Systems to centralise the planning of its UK home service operation and manage the allocation of its mobile technician team.

The Paragon software schedules service calls for Castelan’s nationwide team of mobile technicians, enabling the company to improve the customer care experience it offers on behalf of the UK’s major high street retailers.

Castelan (previously Homeserve Warranties) provides furniture and electrical warranty and care packages to more than 1.5 million households. With a team of over 80 service engineers carrying out home visits ranging from damage assessments to TV repairs and French polishing, Castelan wanted to streamline the routing and scheduling process, enhancing the overall efficiency of its technical service operations and in turn improving the company’s customer satisfaction levels.

Castelan chose Paragon’s Multi Depot system with HERE Map Content, enabling the company to plan the routes and schedules for its entire team of mobile technicians as a single planning task. With each technician treated as a “depot”, the system is able to flex the depot boundaries automatically to take into account the availability of its technicians, and provide a higher level of route planning capabilities. This results in improved efficiency in a multi depot planning environment.

“We’re very happy with the support we get from Paragon,” said Lisa Harbison, Network Deployment Coordinator, Castelan. “Paragon’s support team helps us with software upgrades and to use our solution to address new business requirements as they arise. For example, we needed to incorporate the collection of spare parts from stores prior to the service engineers’ visits into our planning process. These collections are now routed through Paragon.”

William Salter, Managing Director, Paragon Software Systems concludes “Paragon’s flexibility helps our customers create efficiencies in many different ways including fleet optimisation, cost control and reduced planning time. Paragon Multi Depot has facilitated the switch to central planning for Castelan, providing the ability to share results and incorporate changes from other sites across the operation. Not only does this reduce planning time, it also improves visibility of the service schedule and gives the planning team added flexibility, helping Castelan to distribute the workload evenly between its service engineers.”

 

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Mobile workforce solutions company Fleetmatics Group has launched Field App, the latest enhancement to its REVEAL web-based mobility platform. The Field App software is designed to keep dispatchers, managers and drivers on the same page by delivering important information directly to the driver’s mobile device and improving the experience of the mobile worker.

The app is available as a free customer download and provides mobile workers with a variety of capabilities. Customers can push routes to the field in real-time, enabling mobile workers to easily access turn-by-turn directions on their mobile device. The application also provides mobile workers with direct access to their performance metrics, allowing them to track their own progress and benchmark against the rest of their team. Using both the location of the worker’s mobile device as well as vehicle location, the Field App intelligently recommends vehicle assignment, an easy means for customers to unlock additional insight into mobile worker performance.

“Having seen the efficiencies our mobile apps have brought to fleet operators for several years now, we felt the time was right to extend these gains to the mobile workers themselves with our new Field App,” said Peter Mitchell, the Company’s Chief Technology Officer. "And because it's specifically tailored for the driver, it effectively puts the power of Fleetmatics in the pockets of those directly operating more than half a million vehicles that are globally utilising our software platform.”

The Fleetmatics REVEAL Field App is a free download from Google Play or Apple App Store.

 

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Enterprise applications company IFS has announced that Kanes Foods one of the UK’s leading suppliers of fresh prepared foods, has chosen IFS Applications 9 to replace its legacy ERP systems.

Founded in 1990, Kanes Foods now has an annual turnover in excess of £100m and supplies over 3.2 million packs of fresh produce to the UK’s leading supermarkets every week. In order to support its rapid growth, Kanes Foods needs to update its current landscape of disparate systems with one, fully integrated ERP solution.

“With IFS Applications 9 we will have a system that supports the business through the entire supply chain – from procurement, raw material handling, production and final shipment to our customers,” commented Mark Harris, Production Director at Kanes Foods. “In addition, IFS Applications 9 will allow us to replace a number of stand-alone systems, such as quality management, plant maintenance, payroll, HR and time & attendance giving complete visibility across the business.”

 

Kanes Foods operate in a fresh produce environment, with much of the product arriving, being processed and dispatched within the same day; as a result speed and accuracy of data capture is imperative. That is why the deployment of a number of IFS mobile solutions will be critical to the implementation project. Kanes Foods will use IFS Warehouse Data Collection for the reporting of all movement of goods throughout the process. In addition, IFS’s mobile solution will be utilised by over 100 maintenance and quality technicians – to allow real time reporting on the shop floor.

Paul Massey, Managing Director of IFS Europe West, said “we are excited to welcome Kanes Foods into our growing list of food customers. It is encouraging to hear that the breadth of the IFS solution, along with our ability to deploy functionality to a mobile workforce, were key factors in the company’s decision to work with IFS. We look forward to a long and successful partnership.”

 

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Water control systems and plumbing company Reliance Worldwide Corporation (UK) Ltd has improved mileage logging and slashed administration times after implementing a telematics system from Masternaut.

Reliance Worldwide has  implemented Masternaut telematics across its fleet of 26 cars, to accurately and effortlessly log all private and business mileage for its field sales team.

Reports are automatically sent to the administration manager on a weekly basis, breaking down the total mileage into business and personal, based on agreed cut off times for business related mileage. Employees use a fuel card to purchase all fuel, both private and personal, and a deduction is made from monthly pay in line with HMRC Fuel Advisory rates for any private mileage recorded. As such the process is HMRC compliant.

The Masternaut system has benefited the whole business, from the finance department to individual drivers, enabling authentication of business and private mileage, whilst storing data for regulatory compliance. This provides absolute transparency and avoids any over-claim issues.

 As a result of having the technology installed in all 26 vehicles, Reliance Worldwide has also managed to reduce insurance premiums across the fleet.

 “Expense and mileage logging is a heavy admin burden on any business, but the data and technology provided by Masternaut has helped us to eliminate that burden for our sales team,” commented Sally Pearson, administration aanager, Reliance Worldwide. “The support provided by the Masternaut team is excellent. We have reduced the company car drivers’ admin workload, eliminating the pain of manually logging their mileage. The reporting process gives total transparency on mileage across the business, giving a far more accurate picture on private mileage. By streamlining the process, we’ve given time back to our employees and saved them from an additional administration headache.”

Steve Towe, Chief Commercial Officer and UK Managing Director, Masternaut added, “Fleet car drivers are more likely to use their vehicles for both personal and work use, not something typically seen with vans or LCVs. Reliance Worldwide now has transparency on the actual mileage drivers have done allowing for a far more accurate picture of business versus private mileage. For many drivers, handling tax and expense claims can be a complex and time-consuming task, providing a real challenge to get everything right. Telematics is helping to reduce this burden.”

 

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Construction technology systems specialist SITECH UK and Ireland is to distribute Trimble' s Field Service Management solutions to the heavy civil construction market.

Construction technology systems specialist SITECH UK and Ireland has become a distributor for Trimble's Field Service Management (FSM) solution for the heavy civil construction sector in the UK and Ireland.

"We are delighted that SITECH UK and Ireland will be adding Trimble's broad range of FSM solutions to their portfolio of solutions that they offer for heavy civil contractors," said John Cameron, general manager of Trimble's FSM Division. "We recently integrated our GeoManager Fleet Management with our VisionLink solution to provide construction businesses with the ability to centralise the management of on-site operations for improved productivity, efficiency and cost savings."

Trimble's GeoManager Fleet Management solution offers contractors visibility into their fleet service needs by providing real-time location updates of vehicles for service from VisionLink, as well as vehicle status and reports. Overall fleet productivity can be improved through optimised routing of service vehicles to VisionLink-based assets while maintenance schedules can also be managed, which can reduce fleet downtime and costs. The optimisation of service vehicle routing and work orders is based on the location and health information that is shared from VisionLink into GeoManager. Construction managers using VisionLink can thus ensure that their fleet is being serviced in an optimal location/health/time approach.

[quote float="left"]Construction managers using VisionLink can thus ensure that their fleet is being serviced in an optimal location/health/time approach.[/quote]The integration of GeoManager Fleet Management with VisionLink offers contractors a dynamic, all-encompassing solution. They can also integrate site productivity, material quantities and materials movement with asset and fleet management, to create a holistic view of their fleet in one place and on one platform, enabling them to make intelligent business decisions and streamline operations.

The global network of SITECH technology dealers represent Trimble and Caterpillar machine control systems for a contractor's entire fleet of heavy equipment and Trimble's portfolio of Connected Site site-positioning systems, construction asset management services, software and wireless and Internet-based site communications infrastructure.

"We are focused on providing contractors with the best technology available that will enable them to meet their project needs, said Erica Parkinson, business manager of SITECH UK and Ireland. The integration of Trimble solutions provides contractors with a truly unique end-to-end solution. Never before have contractors been able to view and manage their assets, vehicles, maintenance and jobs in one place and on one platform."

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