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IFS’ new ownership private equity firm EQT are standing true to their promise to accelerate the growth of the Swedish firm as they make to key UK acquisitions...

ERP provider IFS have further enhanced their offering into the field service management sector this month with two key UK acquisitions.

Both announced on the same day the Swedish organisation took ownership of both field service management system provider mplsystems and also implementation specialists Field Service Management (FSM).

Whilst the latter acquisition perhaps had an air of inevitability about it as FSM have been working as resellers and system integrators for IFS for some time now, it was the acquisition of mplsystems that will have raised eyebrows within the industry perhaps the most.

However, the acquisition also makes perfect sense from a technology point of view as mplsystems, who have only just launched a new genetic algorithm based scheduling engine themselves, (see page 8), are more widely acknowledged for their omni-channel contact centre technology which has earned them recognition from Gartner as a visionary within the CRM Customer Engagement Magic Quadrant.

Indeed, IFS’ move to bring this technology into their own, gives them a truly end-to-end service lifecycle solution, following a similar path to Microsoft in terms of how they have brought CRM and Field Service together under one platform.

 

“It’s quite specific why we’ve acquired mplsystems” Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director, Service Management told Field Service News as the announcement went to press. “It is very directly a recognition on IFS’ part that we have a gap in our end-to-end offering in the customer engagement area.”

“We were looking to acquire some IP, and in the case of mplsystems, some very strong IP, to plug that gap in the customer engagement piece, at the centre of which is their omni-channel contact centre capabilities.”

In fact, the acquisition of mplsystems and the integration of their contact centre technology within the IFS solution, is in perfect line with the roadmap that IFS appear to be continuing down, and sits perfectly alongside the introduction of the embedded CRM within their ERP solution that was introduced at their last significant roll out (IFS Applications 9).

“There has been a lot of conversation recently around the convergence of CRM and FSM and when speaking at Field Service Management Expo a couple of months back I alluded to this then also.” Brewer commented.

“We see now both technologies sitting under the customer experience space, and there will be three prongs to our offering in this area moving forward.”

 

“Firstly, we will continue doing what mplsystems have done very successfully across the last few years which is to offer a Contact Centre as a Service (CCaS) capability to many organisations with large contacts centres - people like Aviva and ALDI. The two other prongs to the offering then are that it will integrate with our IFS FSM solution so it will form the customer engagement capability of that offering. It will then also form the customer engagement capability of IFS Apps.”

“So whether you are taking down a service request, whether you are taking a return material authorisation, whether your taking a feed from an IoT connected device or even if you are utilising social or chat-bot technology, whatever the medium of engagement you choose we will go through the mplsystems customer engagement solution.”

So how do IFS see this new ability to manage the entire customer experience lifecycle? Is this something they feel gives them an advantage over competitors or are they getting themselves back on a level playing field? Is the inclusion of this technology a USP that they can push as vendors, or is it something their customers have been demanding for some time now?

“I think there are two points to that question,” Brewer replies.

“I think there is definitely a customer pull because we are seeing the focus that is evolving from productivity improvement and operational excellence to a model that is more focussed on revenue enhancement. In its most simplistic terms people are seeing service as a growing opportunity from a profitability perspective.”

 

“However, we do also see this as a USP as we believe we have best-of-breed capabilities in a number of our separate offerings and in our standalone FSM solution now we have the capability to run a world class contact centre, we have the capability to do world class optimisation and scheduling. We have the capabilities to deliver a full return material/reverse logistics operation and we have the capability to do very strong contract and warranty claims management as well.”

“All of those elements are what we perceive to be best-in-class, and by filling in the gap with the customer engagement capability, via the acquisition of mplsystems, we now genuinely have a unique offering as it is not just a broad set of capabilities, it is a number of complimentary best-in-class solutions that can feed into and off of each other.”

Finally, with the acquisition of FSM Ltd it appears to essentially be a case of bringing a very successful outsourced operation into the IFS fold.

“FSM has been a very successful in the UK and Ireland in securing some very big customers for us, they’ve got a great track record and ultimately with the new ownership of EQT we now have a much more aggressive growth strategy and in key geographies including Europe West (which includes UK) the investment is there to bring companies like FSM on board to support our capability to grow our market-share further."

 

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Evatic, a leading software vendor within Service Management, has acquired WinServ Software in Sweden.

Together Evatic and WinServ will have more than 800 customers in 30+ countries and be the leading European service management software supplier. WinServ Software has its main office in Stockholm.

“We are extremely happy to add WinServ to our product family” says Pål M. Rødseth, CEO of Evatic. “We have known Ronny, founder and CEO of WinServ, for years and we believe that the two organisations will be much stronger together when it comes to developing the service management software solutions for the future.

This is our second acquisition in less than a year, following our acquisition of Tesseract in the UK in September of 2016, and it is in line with our strategy to become the leading player within this space”.

 

“I believe that WS Software are in the best hands going forward”, says Ronny Fransson, founder and CEO of WS Software. “We have known Evatic for many years, and we are confident that the WinServ solution will be in the best hands going forward. Being part of a larger software group will add strength to the product development that is needed to be a service management solution provider in the future”.

Evatic is a leading European service management software company with the head office in Trondheim, Norway and offices in the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, Holland and Singapore. With a global reach and more than 800 customers in 30+ countries providing customers with service management solutions under the Evatic, Tesseract and WinServ umbrella, Evatic offers a broad product suit for companies that need to make their services profitable. Evatic is a private company owned by the founders and Viking Venture

 

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IFS, the global enterprise applications company, today announces it has completed the acquisition of mplsystems Limited and Field Service Management Limited.

mplsystems Limited is a provider of omni-channel contact center and customer engagement software that, together with IFS’s leading Service Management offering, provides a complete end-to-end customer engagement solution. Field Service Management Limited, an implementation specialist of Field Service Management solutions in the UK and Ireland will bolster IFS’s Service Management sales, consulting, and support organisation in the region.

UK-based mplsystems Limited develops and implements omni-channel contact center and field service management solutions at some of the UK’s most well respected brands, including: Babcock International, HomeServe, Ecomaster, ENGIE, and Iceland. The company is recognised as a Visionary by Gartner in its Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service for Western Europe (published 24 October 2016) and a Niche Player in its Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center (published 8 May 2017), primarily thanks to its investment in innovation that has resulted in a flexible, integrated and easy-to-use contact center management platform.

Field Service Management Limited is a UK based implementation partner of IFS in the UK and Ireland. Its expert team of Service Management consultants will join IFS’s UK operation in order to drive further growth in the region. To date, Field Service Management Limited has supported IFS with some of the largest service management implementations in the UK.

 

Commenting on the acquisitions, Fredrik vom Hofe, Group Senior Vice President for Business Development at IFS said “IFS is already recognised as a global leader in the Service Management sector, which we are extending further with these two acquisitions. The opportunity resulting from the acquisition of mplsystems will mean that businesses around the world who want to deliver the best customer service from the moment a customer makes an enquiry through to an issue being resolved, now have the most complete and connected service management proposition available on the market’.

Paul White, CEO of mplsystems Limited, stated “The team at mplsystems is delighted to be joining forces with IFS. We now have a great opportunity to take our award winning omni-channel and customer engagement solutions onto the world stage”.

Alex Stratis, research analyst at IDC, commented: “IFS is not only extending but also strengthening its Service Management proposition with the acquisition of mplsystems. The combination of IFS’s existing capabilities in managing field service with mplsystems’ ability to connect to service recipients via contact center, web, text, and mobile interfaces means customer engagement can be managed in a more integrated way. Both companies share similar values in innovation and a customer centric mindset which is important for the businesses to effectively integrate.”

 

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Xplore Technologies Corp. and Intel Corporation have announced that the fastest rugged tablet available today, the Windows®-powered XSLATE R12, is gaining another significant boost in speed, power and storage capacity as Xplore becomes the first rugged tablet manufacturer to integrate Intel® PCIe Solid State Drives (SSD) into its portfolio.

The performance-accelerating Intel PCIe SSDs are now shipping as a standard feature on all XSLATE R12 Intel Core® Series i7 models, including a new 1TB configuration option. The new drives deliver over 2X improvement in disk performance, and when combined with the i7 vPro processor, a 48% improvement in overall system performance*.

“Xplore is deeply committed to bringing the latest technology and innovation to our rugged mobile customers, and that is demonstrated once again with our new enhancements to the XSLATE R12,” explained John Graff, vice president of marketing at Xplore. “Our long-standing technology collaboration with Intel is delivering improved productivity and performance to applications that require significant data storage and/or data processing, especially those used by manufacturers, utilities, first responders and field service organisations.”

 

Some of the mobile workers who will immediately benefit from the Intel PCIe SSD-equipped XSLATE R12 include those who:

• Opt not to store data in the cloud, either due to security concerns or application design, and instead need to store locally on the rugged tablet;
• Frequently rely on data- and graphics-intensive applications, such as those used to generate 3D CAD drawings or GIS location intelligence; or
• Have historically been forced to delete files to make room for the large amount of inspection, investigation or quality control photos and videos captured in a day’s work.

“The Xplore XSLATE R12 with an Intel Core i7-7600U processor and an Intel 600p Series PCIe-based SSD is, by far, the fastest rugged tablet we have ever tested,” noted Conrad H. Blickenstorfer, editor, RuggedPCReview.com. “It's amazing how Xplore's proactive adoption of leading edge technology is boosting rugged tablet performance to levels thought impossible just a short time ago."

*According to Passmark testing conducted in July 2017.

 

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Check out our own Hands On Review of the XSLATE R12 here 

 

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New research which examined how organisations are evolving from a traditional office environment to a digital workplace reveals that gaining competitive advantage and improving business process are among the top goals of their digital transformation strategy.

This is according to 40% of 800 organisations in 15 countries on five continents that were interviewed for Dimension Data’s Digital Workplace Report: Transforming Your Business which was published this week.

Another insight in the Report is that digital transformation is not just about adopting the technologies of the past: 62% of research participants expect to have technology such as virtual advisors in their organisations within the next two years. In addition, 58% expect to start actively investing in technology that powers virtual advisors in the next two years.

Today, the digital workplace is no longer just made up of managers and those managed; co-workers collaborating with one another to complete projects; and employees interacting with customers and partners. It’s increasingly populated by ‘virtual employees’ who do not exist in a physical sense, but nonetheless play an important role in the organisation.

While artificial intelligence (AI) technology is still in its infancy, it is sufficiently advanced to be working its way into companies in the form of virtual assistants, and, in certain industries such as banking, virtual tellers and virtual advisors. Manifested as bots embedded into specific applications, virtual assistants draw on AI engines and machine learning technology to respond to basic queries.

 

“It’s no longer enough to simply implement these technologies,” says Krista Brown, Dimension Data’s Group End-user Computing SVP. “Organisations have grown their use of analytics to understand how these technologies impact their business performance:  64% use analytics to improve their customer services, and 58% use analytics to benchmark their workplace technologies.”

Meanwhile, around 30% of organisations said they’re far along in their digital transformation initiatives and are already reaping the benefits, while others are still in the early stages of developing a plan.

Brown says one reason that could be holding companies back from implementing a digital workplace is their corporate culture. Often, technology and corporate culture inhibit – rather than encourage – workstyle change.  However, the number one barrier to successful adoption of new workstyles was IT issues, and research participants cited organisational issues as another.

“The complexity of the existing IT infrastructure can present a major hurdle to implementing new collaboration and productivity tools to support flexible workstyles. Successful transformation implementations are achieved when IT works closely with line-of-business heads,” says Brown and adds that these transformations are supporting new ways of doing business or supporting clients.

IT leaders were asked to rank which technologies were most important to their digital workplace strategies.

Robert Allman, Group Senior Vice President, Customer Experience and Collaboration believes that mobility is pivotal to a digital workplace. “Business leaders and CIOs are switched on to the importance of mobility in the digital workplace, with an even mix of companies supporting company-provided and employee-owned devices in the work environment.”

Enterprises are also turning to new workplace technologies to drive increased customer service, with 45% of respondents saying they’ve improved customer satisfaction as a result of their use of digital workplace technology.

 

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Field service appointments can be high-friction events, or strategic opportunities to engage customers and build trust. The outcome depends on whether customers, field agents, and back office support teams are informed and empowered throughout the process. Glympse, a pioneer in location services and location-powered customer experience, is teaming with Microsoft so businesses using Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service can provide customers with constant, accurate awareness regarding the status of field service appointments.

The collaboration seamlessly embeds Glympse En Route, a location-powered customer experience management solution, within the Dynamics 365 for Field Service application through a new, off-the-shelf integration. As a result, end customers receive continuously updated appointment and technician visibility that culminates in a live map view of the technician's location as he travels to the appointment destination.

“Location and estimated time of arrival (ETA) management have become two of the most critical elements of successful field operations and customer interactions - whether it's for a cable installation, office equipment repair, furniture delivery or maintaining mission-critical medical equipment. Customers demand better information to help them manage their busy schedules, including visual, interactive digital engagements that fit their mobile, on-demand lifestyles. Static, one-way alerts aren't enough anymore, and service providers cannot afford to roll trucks to customers who are not available,” said David Troll, senior vice president of Sales and Customer Operations, Glympse.

 

“Our alliance with Microsoft means more field service organizations of all types and sizes, spanning industries across the globe, will have a faster, easier way to leverage Glympse location technology alongside Microsoft Dynamics 365,” continued Troll.

Jeff Comstock, general manager, Dynamics CRM at Microsoft, commented, “By working with Glympse, we're helping our customers provide their end customers even more visibility into technician location and ETA information with a custom branded web experience.”

Users of the joint solution can improve customer service and the effectiveness of field operations - and ultimately drive revenue growth. End customers get steady updates and can track the live status of a service agent, allowing them to more effectively coordinate their schedules with service providers. Prepared customers mean fewer missed, delayed or rescheduled appointments, fewer calls to customer care, efficient appointment execution and faster time to revenue. In addition, internal back office users get better operational visibility through location data, including metrics and live map views of technician teams.

How the Glympse Integration with Field Service Works

The integration package uses standard Field Service workflows to trigger Glympse En Route actions:

• End-customers receive automated periodic notifications containing a unique web link.
• This link directs customers to a web-based experience (accessible via a mobile device, browser or embedded in a customer portal) to view the ETA and/or location of their service representative. As the appointment draws closer, the status is continually updated.
• En Route uses location data from the field to provide organizations with increased internal visibility and performance metrics, helping them better manage their operations.[/unordered_list]

Installing the pre-built integration package is fast and simple. Field Service users with a Glympse license can add these capabilities by completing a simple set-up process.

More information about Glympse can be found here.

More information about Microsoft Dynamics 365 can be found here.

 

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Want to know more about Glympse? Check out our interview with David Troll filmed @ Field Service USA earlier this year here

 

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Three of the largest insurance companies in the UK and Europe have deployed FLS’ appointment scheduling software to improve service and enable efficient field service scheduling and routing of field based resources.

FLS, Fast Lean Smart, a leading provider of workforce scheduling software and mobile workforce management solutions with UK offices in Reading and Warrington, announces that three major general insurance companies have recently deployed FLS VISITOUR for workforce optimisation, appointment booking, workforce scheduling and routing of their claims assessors, including motor engineers and property surveyors, in total more than 500 field based employees.

The challenge

Insurers each operate a criteria upon which they determine when an insurance claim needs to be assessed by a surveyor, either a review of photographs at their desk or a field visit.

Some perform these assessments using employed resources, others outsource this to third-party service providers, often there is a combination of these to best cover the country and cope with ‘surge’ events, for example a flood in Devon can result in an extraordinary number of claims to be managed in that area.

The Insurers objective is to detect fraud whilst also resolving genuine claims quickly and so build a reputation for good service. Insurers use key performance indicators to monitor each stage of the process from first contact to closure but in parallel to this is the continuous need to control and reduce costs so they can offer competitive insurance policy premiums.

The business need

For each of these FLS customers the requirement was to speed up the appointment booking process to visit and assess claims and to gain efficiencies for office and field based staff. VISITOUR achieves this by enabling a central claims liaison team to instantly offer a flexible choice of time slots which are also the most cost efficient to achieve with the available field based resources (and in some cases desk based resources using images) and whilst ensuring previous appointment commitments must be kept.

The approach and benefits realisation Each Insurer took advantage of the FLS offer for a Software-as-a-Service ‘try before you buy’ pilot. FLS VISITOUR was configured and used live for a region of the country to prove the suitability of the solution and return on investment, before the choice was made to continue from pilot to rollout.

Within the first two weeks of pilot, one insurer determined as much as 50% reduction in average mileage and 2 hours a day driving time could be saved, however, for rollout the most important business objective was to give the best possible customer experience to their customer by attending appointments and closing claims sooner, therefore the settings were adjusted in VISITOUR to achieve these priorities.

 

Mobile App for real-time communication and reporting two of these insurers have also deployed FLS MOBILE which enables paper-free provision of case information, capture of assessment reports, and real-time appointment status updates.

This field information also makes it possible to track that progress is on-time, to automatically message customers with estimated arrival times, and to book new ‘same day’ appointments based on this progress – further advantages to offering market leading customer service. FLS UK Managing Director, Jeremy Squire, comments “We are very proud of the success and benefits achieved using VISITOUR by our customers. In partnership with these insurance market leaders, FLS will continue to develop the unique capabilities of VISITOUR to their advantage”.

 

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For those attending Field Service Management Expo FLS are exhibiting on Stand Q770 visit them to find out more

 

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eBECS are one of a number of Field Service Management system providers who are sponsoring at the Field Service Management Expo across the next three days.

It is one Europe’s key events event dedicated to the service management and field service industries, showcasing the latest technologies and practices from industry experts in London's ExCel centre.

As part of the Protection & Management Series, those registered to attend Field Service Management Expo will not only access to the Field Service Management Expo, but four other shows as well, including; Firex International, IFSEC International, Facilities Show, Safety & Health Expo. The Protection & Management series attracts 45,000 visitors, more than 1,600 exhibitors, and with your Field Service Management Expo badge you will have access to them all.

There will also be free education sessions within the popular Field Service Solutions Theatre returns, taking place at the heart of Field Service Management Expo 2017, hosting a series of interviews, presentations and panel debates, plus a chance to work with fellow professionals over a drink at the end of each day’s education. This theatre is the ideal place to update your core industry knowledge and view bite-sized updates and demonstrations of the very latest inventions and innovations in the Service Management Industry.

eBECS themselves are a specialist in total Microsoft Business Solutions drawing on the full Microsoft stack, including Microsoft Dynamics AX, NAV and CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft’s intelligent business cloud. However, eBECS have a particularly strong history in Field Service - having developed the unique eBECS Field Service Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics and the eBECS Site Assessment Survey. Both these solutions are part of a complete set of eBECS IP for Dynamics 365 that extends and enhances the already powerful capabilities of Dynamics 365.

You can find out more about how these additional tools enhance the Microsoft Field Service solution by visiting the eBECS team at M615 in hall N6 across the next three days.

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