Leading global provider of consulting, compliance checks and engineering support for the security, reliability and cyber security of industrial products, H-ON Consulting relies on OverIT's SPACE1 to provide users with an advanced, immersive and unprecedented remote collaboration experience.

The company's remote collaboration system called DIV-CO Collaboration System, for the technical management at customers' facilities, required integration with a component to be dedicated to certification processes and product compliance inspections of industrial manufacturing end customers remotely, with significant benefits for more agile and efficient procedures.

H-ON Consulting choose OverIT's SPACE1 Augmented Collaboration, a high-tech product combing Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence. SPACE1 offers advanced collaboration features for connecting H-ON Consulting's expert technicians with their clients, conducting inspections, tests, certification processes and compliance checks on industrial machinery entirely from remote, relying on real-time sharing of audio/video streaming, product checklists, 3D models, multimedia files and AR notes.

The integration of SPACE1, has resulted into major benefits for H-ON Consulting, such as a 20% increase in the efficiency of its operational staff, improved safety in the execution of product certification operations and significant time and cost savings, thanks to a 30% reduction in travel and the consequent downtime for the execution of large projects.

"In choosing OverIT, we were certain that the solutions provided would exceed our expectations," says Francesco Rosati, Marketing Director at H-ON Consulting. "In addition to the most apparent advantages, such as those related to cost and time reduction, the integration of SPACE1 has allowed us to access advanced post-intervention reporting features and to improve the organization of works both internally and for our customers, enabling us to collaborate remotely even in noisy environments with poor connectivity."

H-ON Consulting is an international provider of consulting and engineering services for the safety and reliability of industrial products. They provide engineering consulting for product safety and technical support for product certification.

Backed by US Capital with development Headquarters in Italy and main US offices in Chicago and Miami, OverIT is a multinational company with more than 20 years of international and cross-industry experience in Field Service Management. With more than 500 professionals, OverIT supports over 300 customers and more than 150,000 Field Service Users. The firm is recognized by premier global advisory and consulting organizations as a leading vendor in FSM and AR industries.

 

 

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Further Reading:

• Learn more about OverIT @ www.overit.it
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about OverIT on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/overIT
• Read more about AR on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/augmented-reality
• Learn more about H-ON Consulting @ h-on.it
• Follow OverIT on Twitter @ twitter.com/OverITSpA

 

In this article we look at how the adoption of new digital technologies can help your business grow with simPRO, leading field service management solution for service, maintenance and project contractors.

Businesses in the building services sector are increasing efficiency and growing their business faster, by trading outdated manual processes for new digital technologies.

At the top of the list? Cloud-based job management software that streamlines project, service, and maintenance workflows in one end-to-end solution.

Harnessing this technology and its mobile features lets you access the most accurate and up-to-date information pertaining to project progress, billing and invoicing, scheduling and dispatch, inventory and more, all from one central location. This eliminates wasted time spent linking essential data from disparate sources, gives full visibility into your numbers, and streamlines communication from the office to the field. So how does digitising your operations help your business grow? Here are the top benefits of cloud-based job management software.

1. Streamilined Team Management

With all information accessible in the cloud, teams are able to view real-time awareness of job progress and location of field staff, in turn, enhancing job scheduling capabilities. You can make scheduling changes as they happen, closing gaps and keeping your team productive.

2. Improved Productivity

Field staff can access job information, site history and even request inventory without returning to the office. Any updates from the field sync in real-time via a mobile app. By giving your team the information they need, when they need it, you reduce travel time, increase productivity and expand capacity to find new revenue streams or take on new jobs.

3. Clear and Effective Communication

Communication between office and field should not end once a job has been dispatched. It should be ongoing and instant, enabling efficient processes and a seamless experience for the customer. Cloud-based job management software streamlines all communications in one easy-to-access portal.

4. Optimised Business Management

Investing in software to digitise your business leads to reduced overheads through automated workflows, centralised data and integrations with third-party applications. In the office, replacing manual, time consuming tasks such as data entry with automated workflows frees up resources to focus on value adding activities and minimises error.

5. Clearly Identify Where You Are Making and Losing Money

Capture all of your data from each job, in one centralised location, accessible from anywhere. You can also clearly identify where you are making and losing money through job costing and profitability reporting, and use collected data to optimise workflows, analyse the profitability of customers and inform hiring decisions.

Learn more about how simPRO can help grow your business at simprogroup.com.

Contact:

T: 0800 622 6376

W: simprogroup.com

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Learn more about simPRO @ simprogroup.com
• Read more about simPRO on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/all-about-simpro 
• Follow simPRO on Twitter @ twitter.com/simprosoftware

Volta Trucks, a leading and disruptive full-electric commercial vehicle manufacturer and services provider, has issued a guarded welcome to the publication of the UK Government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan, but has called for a greater level of ambition to tackle the climate and air quality emergency faced by the environment.

Chief Executive Officer of Volta Trucks, Essa Al-Saleh, said; “The publication of the UK Government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan is welcome because it gives British fleet operators and buyers a level of certainty that didn't previously exist. That said, the ban on internal combustion engine trucks by 2040 is nearly 20 years away, and today's climate emergency cannot wait. Trucks account for less than 2% of road vehicles but 22% of CO₂ emissions from road transport, and the relative share of truck emissions is certain to increase as emissions from passenger cars are driven downwards by the surge in the sales of electric cars.

THE VOLTA ZERO IS THE WORLD'S FIRST PURPOSE-BUILT FULL ELECTRIC VEHICLE DESIGNED FOR INNER-CITY LOGISTICS, REDUCING THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF FREIGHT DELIVERIES IN CITY CENTRES

“It’s therefore disappointing that the UK Government hasn't been as ambitious as the French authorities, for example, who have banned diesel engine trucks from the streets of Paris and other large city centres by the end of 2023. This type of progressive legislation, twinned with incentives, is what's needed to accelerate the migration to zero emission large commercial vehicles. The Volta Zero is the first purpose-built full electric large commercial vehicle designed specifically for logistics within city centres where air quality is at its worst. We will begin customer trials in London and Paris next year ahead of the start of full-scale production by the end of 2022. This will ensure we can meet our customer's demands, and the needs of the wider population, to have full-electric zero emission commercial vehicles available in the market as soon as possible."

About the Volta Zero

The Volta Zero is the world’s first purpose-built full-electric 16-tonne vehicle designed for inner-city logistics, reducing the environmental impact of freight deliveries in city centres. Designed from the ground up with an operating pure-electric range of 150 - 200 kms (95 – 125 miles), the Volta Zero will eliminate an estimated 1.2M tonnes of CO₂ by 2025.

Safety is also at the heart of Volta Trucks, with its ambition of producing the safest trucks for our cities. The Volta Zero was designed for electric from the outset, which facilitates a step-change in vehicle, driver and pedestrian safety. Thanks to the removal of the internal combustion engine, the operator of a Volta Zero sits in a central driving position, with a much lower seat height than a conventional truck. This combination, plus a glass house-style cab design, gives the driver a wide 220-degrees of visibility, minimising dangerous blind spots. The prototype Volta Zero was launched in September 2020, with the first vehicles expected to be operating with customers in late 2021.

About Volta Trucks

Volta Trucks is a start-up full-electric goods vehicle manufacturer and services company. Volta Trucks has offices in Sweden, France and the UK and is partnering with a number of global leaders in the supply chain for the development and production of the Volta Zero.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Service Innovation & Design @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Sustainability on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/artificial-intelligence
• Find out more about Volta Trucks @ www.voltatrucks.com/
• Follow Proact on Twitter @ twitter.com/trucksvolta

Proact placed fourth among managed services providers within the leading “GIARTE IT Xperience Monitor 2021 (ITX)” assessment, in which the IT outsourcing experiences of customer organisations are measured annually. Amongst mid-sized companies, Proact secured a top score for workspace outsourcing, and obtained the highest scores in the categories of workspace management and support.

“Of course, it's about the whole picture that you offer as an outsourcing partner”, says Proact Service Operations Director of Proact Netherlands Bertus Doppenberg. “Basically, you have to prioritise the total unburdening of the customer when it comes to their workspace. Customer satisfaction starts with a positive user experience. That is one of Proact’s key priorities, which we now also see being rewarded in this benchmark. Still, it's not the only thing we focus on. If you don’t have a firm foundation in terms of your offering, you will notice this immediately in practice. We have managed that well, which is apparent from the wonderful scores we have received.”

THE IT SERVICES PROVIDER SCORES HIGHEST ALSO IN THE TRANSPARENCY CATEGORY FOR ITS WORK WITH CUSTOMERS

The fact that Proact emerged from the survey as one of the highest rated mid-sized organisations in the area of outsourcing — with an average managed services score of 8.4 on a scale of 10 — is in itself a great achievement. Infrastructure management, workplace management and support, system integration and security management are also enthusiastically praised by Proact's 20 largest customers within the survey. Equally impressive, however, is that the IT services provider also scores highest in the transparency category for its work with customers. These results are all the more notable considering that Proact expanded its presence in the Netherlands and in Belgium through the acquisition of PeopleWare in the end of 2019. The company specialised in outsourcing prior to its acquisition, and this has developed into a very strong component of Proact’s offering in this region since.

“We could not have achieved these great results without our customers. As an organisation, we are close to our customers. Our personal approach and our prioritisation of open and honest communication in our relationships are the basis for this. This is only possible if parties work together openly and honestly. The results of GIARTE therefore reflect the extent and intensity of cooperation with our customers. That is a two-way street”, adds Mark van Liempt, Business Unit Director, West. “We do it together, so the credit must go to our customers as well!”

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Artificial Intelligence @ www.fieldservicenews.com/artificial-intelligence
• Learn more about Proact @ www.proact.eu
• Read the full GIARTE ITX study @ https://itx.giarte.com/
• Follow Proact on Twitter @ twitter.com/proact_it

Businesses are missing out on a significant opportunity to use technology to fix internal processes and address the root causes of customer experience issues in the wake of the pandemic, research from enterprise software specialist IFS has today revealed.

The global study, which surveyed 1,700+ executives and 12,000+ consumers, shows that businesses understand software has a key role to play in consistently delivering positive outcomes, but that current approaches to customer experience do little more than wallpaper over the cracks, instead of identifying and addressing systemic problems in their operations.

Although businesses claim to pay close attention to customer service, the inflection points that occur throughout the lifecycle of their operations and encompass processes, technology solutions, and human coordination are even more important to a positive customer experience – but these are far too frequently overlooked. It is only with careful orchestration of these components that companies can deliver a quality ‘Moment of Service’, in which everything comes together to create a positive result for a customer.

29% of managers don’t take action on known operational issues, while 18% are too busy to report issues not considered urgent

This orchestration is only possible when the technological foundations are in place to provide visibility of these inflection points. Only then can businesses take the appropriate action to ensure they delight, and don’t disappoint, their customers. Indeed, some 85 percent of businesses said that their enterprise software helped them measure performance and act on issues at these inflection points to affect the end customer outcome.

However, IFS’s research also uncovered that while 79 percent of businesses have invested time and resources in identifying where these inflection points are, when problems are identified nearly a third of managers (29 percent) admitted to reporting them but not taking any action. Furthermore, some 18 percent revealed they were too busy to report issues unless urgent, while just 15 percent said they proactively look to preempt problems.

Despite the majority of companies (66 percent) investing upwards of $250,000 each year evaluating the customer experience through Net Promoter Scores, reviews, and customer satisfaction surveys, it is clear that unless they resolve these issues when they find them, customers are unlikely to see a meaningful change in their experience. Indeed, 82 percent of respondents were unable to recall a single positive example of a recent frictionless customer experience. This gap between understanding and acting is a business risk that few can afford.

For enterprises that fail at the moment of service, the ramifications are significant. A quarter of consumer respondents stated they would never engage with a brand again after just one bad experience, while over half (52 percent) would abandon a company after two to three. IFS also sought to examine the impact of negative experiences on wider brand perception and uncovered that 58 percent of consumers are very likely or somewhat likely to share their negative perceptions with their network, highlighting how easily a bad interaction can be amplified.

90% of businesses now reengineering operations to ensure better customer experiences

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Over half (52 percent) of consumers are inclined to leave a positive review, underscoring just how much can be gained by focusing on delivering an exceptional customer experience.

To ensure they’re delivering the optimal customer experiences that breed this kind of advocacy, businesses need to rearchitect themselves to remove pain points and streamline operations, rather than trying to talk their way out of issues they walked themselves into. Investing in the right enterprise technology, that enables them to not only address current problems, but adapt to emerging conditions will be key to consistently delivering positive outcomes for customers and a powerful competitive differentiator for organizations.

“When it comes to delivering a positive customer experience, businesses have a limited opportunity to get it right. And if they neglect to assure every single inflection point, they are gambling with their outcomes,” IFS Chief Customer Officer Michael Ouissi said. “There are many points where you can either delight or disappoint a customer across the value chain and it is clear from these findings that consumers are willing to voice their opinions either way. As more and more businesses look to service provision as a key competitive differentiator, running the right enterprise software—engineered for the moment of service and which is able to orchestrate the multitude of people, assets and customers—will separate the winners from the losers.”

With 90 percent of businesses stating they have reengineered or are reengineering their business to ensure customer touchpoints and stages come together for better moments of service, it is vital that companies ensure processes are optimized across each of these inflection points to mitigate issues and fuel growth.

IFS believes a composable enterprise approach, which harnesses a combination of packaged functions and technologies to derive data-driven insight and deliver positive outcomes, will be key to delighting customers and creating competitive advantage, but businesses need to move quickly to seize this opportunity.

Download a copy of the report Fixing the fundamentals: Understanding new business models and opportunities in the wake of Covid-19.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com/
• Download a copy of the IFS Study @ www.ifs.com/sitecore/media-library/assets/fixing-the-fundamentals/
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

 

WorkWave®, a leading provider of industry-changing software solutions that enable field service companies to reach their full potential, today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Real Green Systems, a prominent provider of field service solutions in the green service industries.

This unique combination brings together two proven software solutions in the field service industry and furthers WorkWave’s position as a premier provider of leading solutions, delivering brands that have been proven over decades to drive the success of their customers.

“This acquisition is something rarely seen. It is two successful, fast-growing, market-leading companies coming together to create something truly special,” said David F. Giannetto, CEO of WorkWave. “It marks the beginning of a new chapter where WorkWave will help our customers focus on the future, helping them to go beyond service to create effective, fast-growing, highly profitable service organizations that also deliver the best service experience possible. Real Green believes in this same mission, and together we will allow every solution in this expanded WorkWave product portfolio to deliver greater value. We have tremendous respect for the Real Green team, and the goal of this acquisition is to not just allow them to continue to lead the green industries forward, but to help them make an even greater impact.”

THIS ACQUISITION BRINGS TOGETHER TWO OF THE MOST RESPECTED SOLUTIONS IN THE FIELD SERVICE INDUSTRY

Real Green and WorkWave share a common background as two companies created by industry professionals nearly 40 years ago, both becoming well respected in their respective industries, and continuing that success across the following decades. The merger of these two companies will allow WorkWave to combine the best parts of each organization, allowing Real Green to advance more quickly and WorkWave to embrace their depth of expertise in the green industries that Real Green is known for. While the Real Green solution and PestPac will remain separate, additional product offerings that support customer growth, including the equally respected Coalmarch and WorkWave Agency groups, will combine forces to maximize their development and value.

“This acquisition is one of the most impactful combinations in field service, merging two forward-looking companies who helped shape their respective industries,'' said Darren Roos, Chairperson of WorkWave. “The board of directors, along with EQT Partners, are honored to support WorkWave’s commitment to empowering its customers through strategic acquisitions that make a positive impact on its customers and the field service industry overall.” As a sign of their support, Serent Capital, the former investor in Real Green, and Real Green Founder Joe Kucik will roll significant equity and join TA Associates as minority owners of WorkWave.

“After years of watching WorkWave develop alongside Real Green, we’ve long known that the combination of these two companies would create something special,” said Bill Nunan, President and CEO of Real Green, who will stay on as the head of Real Green operations within WorkWave. “We are thrilled to be joining such a progressive solutions provider that shares our commitment to helping customers thrive, and who so strongly supports the continued growth and development of Real Green solutions, and our passionate customer base.”

This acquisition follows WorkWave’s recent acquisition of Slingshot, a leading provider of customer call center software, and further demonstrates WorkWave’s commitment to building an organization that is the best partner in the industry, enabling its customers to think and go beyond service, to create the best service organizations possible.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about WorkWave on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/WorkWave
• Find out more about WorkWave @ www.workwave.com
• Learn more about Real Green Systems @ www.realgreen.com
• Follow WorkWave on Twitter @ twitter.com/WorkWave

 

Totalmobile, the UK leader in Field Service Management software solutions, has announced it has helped Fortem, the property solutions provider, to digitise its repairs and maintenance service delivery with their Mobilise solution, improving compliance and providing a more comprehensive customer experience.

For nearly two decades, Fortem has delivered repairs and maintenance for over 40 social housing clients across the UK. The company annually completes 400,000 repairs in occupied homes as well as preparing 10,000 vacant properties for future occupancy. It also carries out repairs nationwide for a wide range of clients and to public sector buildings.

Totalmobile’s cloud-based mobile workforce management solution, Mobilise, helps Fortem to deliver a more efficient service for these customers. It enables offline working for all trades and ensures key information is available at the frontline worker’s fingertips, including questions to ask each customer based on the job at hand and forms to fill in that can be easily created and customised by Fortem.

TOTALMOBILE'S CLOUD-BASED MOBILISE APPLICATION CAPTURES JOB INFORMATION AND IMPROVES COMPLIANCE TO HELP TRANSFORM FORTEM'S NATIONWIDE SERVICE

Vehicle checks are quicker and simpler with a digital checklist that needs to be filled in prior to vehicle use, which is driving compliance as well as efficiency. Specifically, Fortem has seen a significant improvement in meeting its compliance obligations regarding waste notes – the logs staff need to take of every piece of waste produced at a job – as real time note-taking on the Mobilise app can be made mandatory.

Totalmobile’s solution was rolled out across the company over the last year, and as of April 2021 the application is now used by all 450 trade staff across seven contracts including Stonewater, Birmingham, PA Housing and Onward. It will also be the default mobile application for all future contracts. During the global pandemic, with Mobilise, Fortem has been able to update risk assessment forms as the government guidance has changed regularly, ensuring that all staff are kept up to date and are able to meet the current guidelines to keep themselves and their customers safe.

Chris Hone, the Systems Director at Fortem said “The ability for our trades to work reliably offline is key to service delivery. Combining that with the flexibility for our in-house IT team to evolve the forms and processes to meet our clients’ needs means that can are truly able to offer a differentiated service to our clients”.

Mick Williamson, Managing Director at Fortem, said “The introduction of Mobilise is a huge step forward for our trades. Since the solution was rolled out, they are better equipped to carry out repairs resulting in a more efficient service for our customers. As a responsible business, the opportunities offered by the solution in terms of health, safety and compliance are extremely important to us.

Rolling out our Mobilise solution has already helped support Fortem throughout this challenging year. Having a digital solution that provides all of the information mobile workers need and allows them to remain compliant throughout their work benefits the company as well as the customers, who receive a more efficient and comprehensive service every time.”

Looking to the future, Fortem will look at the subcontract supply chain and roll out Mobilise to its subcontractors, to use on their own mobile devices. The company will also move onto applying the solution to permits and void surveying to continue to drive the gains in efficiency and reductions in costs.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Totalmobile on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/totalmobile
• Learn more about Totalmobile @ www.totalmobile.co.uk
• Follow Totalmobile on Twitter @ twitter.com/totalmobile
• Follow Totalmobile on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/totalmobile

Aquant, the leading service intelligence platform announced Service Insights. The tool, capable of analyzing your data out of the box, provides a detailed window into factors that impact customer experiences. This empowers service leaders with the knowledge to prevent customer disasters ahead of a negative Net Promoter Score (NPS) or service escalation.

“Historically, service decisions have been made using only a fraction of available service data. That causes blind spots into customer satisfaction and creates an environment of reactive problem-solving. If you wait until you receive a negative NPS, it’s too late,” says Shahar Chen, CEO and co-founder, Aquant. “The new normal in service requires providers to approach customers with solutions before a customer comes to a provider with a complaint.”That kind of data-driven decision-making fosters better customer experiences and improves service outcomes. But before you can make informed decisions, you need a clear picture of what story the data is telling — and that’s been a roadblock for many organizations.

Service Insights Curates and Analyzes Disparate Data and Provides Actionable Recommendations

“We’ve worked with leading service organizations to build a powerful analytics tool that is designed for business users,” adds Assaf Melochna, president and co-founder, Aquant. “Service Insights provides targeted information in the language that service leaders understand, and it does so in days, without the need for a multi-department deployment.”

Service Insights is Not a BI Tool. It’s an Entire Data Science Team at Your Fingertips

Aquant delivers a 360-degree view of the service lifecycle. Unlike traditional BI tools, Service Insights is able to access more of your data, and then analyze and interpret it — without the need for a team of data scientists. Users will see immediate value following a simple deployment process. Isolated data points become descriptive and predictive intelligence presented through auto-generated reports and easy-to-access graphical dashboards. Here’s what’s possible with Service Insights:

• Mine insights out of your (un)structured service data - Gain a deeper dimension of insight into your unstructured data with Aquant’s Service Intelligence Engine by identifying key symptom and solution data directly from customer comments, call center agent notes, field technician debriefs, and machine log files. Formerly hidden data becomes a powerful decision-making tool.
• Generate service performance and risk models - Service Insights automatically generates trends, recommendations, industry benchmarks, and predictions based on more than 5 million service tickets from manufacturers and service providers. Leverage Aquant’s predictive modeling to create customer risk scorecards, and manage workforce performance, and training strategies.
• Get the right insight at the right time - Need a quick summary of your business, a snapshot of customers, or an overview of the workforce before your next meeting? Aquant auto-generates easy-to-read overviews for each customer or service provider, identifying key statistics and important trends. Focus on the most critical service issues without having to dig into dashboards.

To learn more or schedule a demo, visit www.aquant.io

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/aquant
• Read more about Aquant on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/aquant
• Find out more about Aquant's AI Tool Service Insights @ www.aquant.io/platform/service-insights/
• Learn more about Aquant @ www.aquant.io
• Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io

 

IFS, the global cloud enterprise applications company, announces that the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One™ Team will use its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to track costs, guide investment decisions and development choices, and evidence spend during competition accounting periods.

The IFS solution will play an important role in ensuring spend compliance with the stringent new Formula One cost cap audit requirements introduced this season by the Federation Internationale d’Automobilie’s (FIA).

The 2021 season sees a radical change in the way Formula One racing teams can spend funds to compete. New cost cap rules by the sport’s governing body, the FIA, limit how much a Formula One team can spend on enhancing the race car’s performance during a calendar year.

This year sees F1 teams starting with a cap of $145 million, gradually reducing to $135 million by 2023. The implications are far-reaching, especially for the finance operation of each team.

IFS SOFTWARE ENABLES ASTON MARTIN COGNIZANT FORMULA ONE TEAM TO OPTIMIZE OPERATIONS AND REPORT FINANCIAL COSTS TO FIA

Robert Yeowart, Aston Martin F1 Chief Financial Officer, is responsible for ensuring the business operates as efficiently and effectively as possible, and, with the cost cap, getting even more value from every pound spent. “The FIA can come and audit us at any time. They can scrutinize our accounts—examining everything we’ve spent, when and where. The new reporting requirements are demanding. Alongside the technical and competition compliance we’re used to, the body is looking for anomalies and trends to expose any team operating beyond the defined cost cap parameters. We have to be ready to supply the evidence and audit trails to support any inspection.”

Aston Martin F1 has implemented IFS to support its operations, financial reporting and production areas.

“IFS has given us the perfect platform to build on,” says Yeowart. “It enables us to really understand where we're spending our money by detailed cost analysis, which we couldn't do before. We can track our inventory and answer questions like ‘what parts do we have available to us?’ What state are they in? How many parts are in the building and how much does each cost?”

The IFS solution enables Aston Martin F1 to run “pound-for-lap-time” ratio analysis in its development projects. This means the organization can get, for the first time, an objective view of how much one upgrade might cost versus another, and the resulting performance improvement in lap time for each.

The FIA also requires teams to track inventory to ensure the cost of parts is not allocated to the wrong accounting year, including evidencing when parts are first used with a bar code tracking system. All the data needed will be fed through IFS. “We know exactly where our inventory is, when we first used a part, how many kilometers it's done, how much life it has left and when we need to be considering a spare or replacement,” says Yeowart. “Towards the end of the season all this is absolutely critical as we may have had accident damage and be up against the cap.”

As F1 racing evolves, Yeowart is clear about the importance of the system. “IFS can help my team meet the cost cap regulations through improving our planning, our data and our analytics. It helps us understand where we've spent our money so far, what we've left to spend against the cap and how we plan to spend it. It lets us analyze where we're adding performance on the car, and if that’s the best use of our capped resources. And it ensures that, when we report to the FIA, we are 100 percent sure that the information we provide is accurate and exactly what is required.”

At the end of 2022, Aston Martin F1 will also become the first team in 20 years to occupy a new, purpose-built factory. “Against a cost-cap environment, we have the perfect opportunity alongside our IFS system to really focus on efficiency, optimization and, ultimately our purpose: helping over 1,000 people to create, within regulated constraints and spends, the highest possible performance for our F1 competition cars,” concludes Yeowart.

As a strategic technology partner, IFS will empower Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team with its state-of-the-art tools to ensure operational excellence. The platform gives the team flexibility in this exciting new era with fresh investment from the shareholders and the construction of a new factory.

Oliver Pilgerstorfer, Chief Marketing Officer, IFS, added, “Effectively capturing and handling data is crucial for high-performing businesses like Aston Martin F1. The sport of Formula One is all about precision, which is relevant across the whole value chain, where hundreds if not thousands of separate processes need to be perfectly orchestrated to ensure success on race day—that’s the moment of service, when everything comes together. IFS is proud to empower many of the world’s most respected brands to operate at peak performance, often in highly regulated industries where compliance, traceability and quality assurance truly matter.”

Learn more about how IFS supports the Aston Martin Cognizant F1 Team at www.ifs.com/f1.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com/
• Learn more about Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One @ www.astonmartin.com/en/our-world/amf1
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs