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Coresystems, a leading provider of cloud-based field service and workforce management software for mid-sized and large enterprises’ field service organizations, today announced that Orchard Machinery Corporation (OMC) is using Coresystems’ platform to support OMC’s field service operations. OMC is the world leader in orchard harvesting equipment, using its patented Shakermaker machines to harvest fruits and nuts for worldwide distribution.

OMC was created from a dire need to automate the extreme labour required to pick fruits and nuts by hand. As OMC’s Shakermaker deployments and operations expanded, it ran into similar obstacles of suboptimal field service productivity. During rotating shifts from early mornings to late nights, OMC’s field service technicians would fill out paperwork to document service projects and request additional parts. However, the paperwork would typically take up to three days to process, which was often too late to restock the field service technicians’ trucks before the next appointment.

OMC turned to Coresystems to automate and accelerate its field service operations, and thus improve productivity for its travelling technicians. Coresystems’ platform provides OMC with a manufacturing and enterprise resourcing planning (MRP/ERP) solution to make time-intensive paperwork obsolete, fully incorporating existing field service processes into mobile phone and tablet devices. With the mobile platform, OMC’s technicians' input project updates and part requests in real-time. This not only streamlines inventory management for OMC’s in-office service managers, enabling them to focus on customer service within the shop, but it also provides OMC’s upper management valuable insights of the number of service calls fulfilled most profitable customer integrations and more.

Between manually inputting paperwork and waiting for requests for restocked parts, our field service operations ended up being an all-hands-on-deck effort“Previously, OMC’s field service operations revolved heavily around paperwork – and the rate at which we were able to process it. Between manually inputting paperwork and waiting for requests for restocked parts, our field service operations ended up being an all-hands-on-deck effort,” said Brian Kaufman, Parts Manager, Orchard Machinery Corporation. “With Coresystems, we are able to automate and streamline our field service processes, optimizing our in-field technicians’ workdays and freeing up in-office service managers to focus on driving business goals elsewhere. We are now much better equipped to ensure the thousands of deployed Shakermaker machines are in prime condition to produce bountiful harvest seasons worldwide.”

OMC selected Coresystems for the customization capabilities of its platform, as well as its ability to address OMC’s needs that are highly specific to the agricultural industry. OMC’s ERP systems use unique terminology, to which Coresystems can translate generic field service descriptions for various assets.

“While the agriculture industry is built upon a history of physical, manual labour, innovators such as OMC are discovering new methods of automating and accelerating the industry – but they require the back-end infrastructure to enable them to do so,” said Manuel Grenacher, CEO of Coresystems. “By offering OMC a paperless, mobile solution, Coresystems addresses the specific needs of harvesting operations and elevates them to the real-time pace of technology today.”

OMC plans to expand the Coresystems implementation to additional service centres, extending the reach of its field service offerings. OMC also envisions incorporating third-party integration with customers and dealers to further streamline inventory management, sales orders and requests for parts.

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With a new CEO taking the helm Swedish FSM and ERP providers, IFS enter a new era of their ongoing development. Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief was on hand at the IFS World Conference in Atlanta to see the developments first hand and caught up with FSN associate columnist Mark Brewer, Global Director of Field Service, to get the inside scoop...

The IFS World Conference is an event that never really fails to deliver at least one key highlight of interest. Memories of CTO, Dan Matthews bouncing around madly to Bruce Springsteen on the stage last time out in Gothenburg- he was demonstrating how IoT sensors work just in case you were wondering, is one such example of the unique way the Swedish company approach things.

Similarly, Ulf Stern, one of the companies original founders keeping customers, prospects and the press alike entertained playing some (pretty darned good) rock and roll with his band in a ‘Fish Cathedral’ later that evening is just another example of how the same core ethos remains in the company today as it did when they first started out some 35 years ago. Despite significant growth and development across the years, there all often overlooked secret-sauce that can allow a company to flourish, the uniqueness within their DNA - has always remained the same.

Who IFS are today is very much a different company to who they were then, just 18 months ago.Yet, who IFS are today is very much a different company to who they were then, just 18 months ago.

Firstly, there is the acquisition by - investment firm EQT. Which was in fact announced just days before the Gothenburg World Conference.

At the time the discussion had been highly positive - especially from a field service point of view as the message from EQT was clear - we are giving you the funds to go and do what you do better and faster - with field service being one of the top three areas IFS would be targeting for significant growth.

Given their stature in the market at the time as an already established major player within the field service industry, this was certainly an exciting announcement for those close to our sector.

Indeed, there have already been some significant acquisitions that Field Service News readers, especially those from the UK will be aware of which have followed after the acquisition.

The first of these was to bring IFS UK and Eire reseller Field Service Management in-house, which was a sensible and largely expected move.

The second, which saw mplsystems become part of the IFS family, however, was far more strategic.

mplsystems core strength lies is there omnichannel contact centre technology, essentially plugging a major gap in the IFS solutionAlthough, an FSM solution provider themselves, mplsystems core strength lies is there omnichannel contact centre technology, essentially plugging a major gap in the IFS solution and giving them a genuinely robust end to end service solution.

This is not to mention the US acquisition of WorkWave, an FSM solution that is dedicated to the SMB market - which instantly gave IFS access to a huge market, which many of the larger FSM solution providers struggle to penetrate.

So in fairness the record of EQT in terms of delivering on their promise has been mightily impressive and IFS have continued to grow in stature within the FSM sector as one of the true key players - an achievement all the more impressive given the attention our sector has had within the last few years with the lieks of GE, SAP, Microsoft and Salesforce all investing significantly in building a global presence.

My anticipation was therefore high when I spotted that the launch of FSM6 was to be given a major spotlight, being presented on the main stage as a key announcement on day 1.

Mark Brewer, Gloabl Director, Field Service, alongside Steve Jeff-Watts, Senior Advisor, IFS were the men tasked with giving that presentation.

“If you go back to the origins of IFS, we are an ERP company, but that can be something of an ambiguous term,” opened Brewer when I caught up with him.

We built a product that managed service, maintenance and projects. This means the intrinsic DNA of the business is actually service not manufacturing“ERP for most people is a product built for managing a manufacturing business. IFS did not ever take that approach. We built a product that managed service, maintennance and projects. This means the intrinsic DNA of the business is actually service not manufacturing.”

“Fast forward to today with the IFS FSM platform you’ve got a best in class service offering, there is an almost equivalent best-in-class service functionality in an ERP in Apps 10.”

“This means you can already have an existing ERP such as SAP or somethign similar which you are unable to swap out, we can layer that with best-in-class field service. However, if you also need solutions for your manufacturing, supply chain, financials etc then we can also give you all of this whilst encapsulating a best-in-class service solution within it.”

Customer experience is a huge part of the equation in service organisations now and we are moving into the experience economy “It is a unique position, where we can not only offer the stand alone FSM solution but the wider ESM (Enterprise Service Management) solution as well.”

“I also thought it was very telling that the announcement of our acquisition and mplsystems and our integration of their technology into IFS FSM was front and centre on the main stage during the opening key note sessions.”

“We call our solution IFS FSM but the truth is now that it is a full end-to-end lifecycle management solution. It is far more than just field service, it includes depot repair operations, reverse logistics, customer specific billing, deep contract and warranty capability.”

“Given that it goes all the way to the end, we were missing a piece at the front,  and mplsystems omni channel solution completes the picture. Customer experience is a huge part of the equation in service organisations now and we are moving into the experience economy so that customer journey needs to be consistent across the whole lifecycle.”

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Winterhalter Gastronom GmbH is a global leader in commercial dishwashing systems for the catering, hospitality, and hotel industry. With over 1,000 employees worldwide and revenue of €134 million in 2011, the owner-operated company ranks among the global players in the catering industry.

The company is headquartered in Meckenbeuren in the Bodensee district and has a second production facility in Endingen am Kaiserstuhl. Worldwide, Winterhalter has offices and partners in over 70 countries. Also part of the group is Winterhalter Gastronom AG, based in Rüthi, Switzerland.

From paper to IT-based scheduling

In order to provide customers from Winterhalter always with clean plates, glasses and utensils, hundreds of service engineers worldwide take care of the maintenance, repair and commissioning of the machines. Some 100,000 jobs are planned, controlled and handled per year.

In 2010 Winterhalter decided to introduce a field service management system in Germany in order to optimise the data processing and quality customer service and to ensure process reliability. Until this time, the resource planners used a SAP-MRP list. The service engineers received their orders by fax. Additional information about the customer or the machine could be obtained only by phone. The technicians completed their service reports on paper, which were checked by the back office team and then released for billing.

The decisive criteria for the selection of a solution were the integration in the existing SAP CS system and in the processes of Winterhalter as well as the internationality of the provider. In addition, the mobile client should run online and offline, and the ROI of the solution should be represented. The decision was made on mobileX-Dispatch, the solution for the graphical scheduling, and mobileX-MIP for Field Service, the mobile solution for the service technician.

 

Introductory project in Germany

In autumn 2011, the solution was implemented in Germany. The dispatchers now plan and control the service technicians in a rotation system. They are also responsible for customer contact, order acceptance and customer satisfaction surveys. The graphical scheduling in mobileX-Dispatch shows the dispatcher all resources and the SAP CS orders clearly on the Gantt chart as well as on a map display.

Based on the order type and the respective transaction mobileX-Dispatch automatically determines the necessary qualifications and draws up a list of suitable technicians. The route optimisation ensures that the service technicians get an ideal order of jobs and directions for handling of their jobs.

After the allocation by the dispatcher the service technician receives the jobs on his laptop in the mobile client mobileX-MIP for Field Service. He can therefore start directly from home for the first customer. Even in fringe areas - ie offline - he can access all order data, such as documents or the service history and prepare the feedback report. Once connected again, the data transfer takes place automatically in the background.

The material logistics is also connected to the mobile client. Depending on consumption, the technician orders spares one to two times per week. If necessary, urgent spare parts can also be delivered by overnight express. In addition, he can capture his vehicle stock level for the annual inventory or the periodic inventory correction in digital count lists. These are then sent back to SAP MM.

After repair or maintenance, the service technician creates his service report by click on a button. This can consist of modular times, travel expenses or other services and material consumption. The final service report is signed by the customer on the touch screen. Subsequently mobileX-MIP for Field Service automatically transfers the data to SAP CS. The office staff reviews the feedback in the mobileX-release monitor and then forwards it on to invoicing.

 

Meanwhile Winterhalter service technicians use mobileX-MIP for Field Service in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK.

Cost-benefit analysis

“At the beginning of the rollout, there was a certain mistrust of the new solution. But today, the colleagues cannot imagine working without the system. Data quality has improved dramatically with the field service management system. In addition, our personnel structure has changed in the customer service. While the number of our dispatchers has hardly changed, we now have a lot more service colleagues in the field. That is, we can provide more customers with a better and faster service.” commented Christian Schneider, Director Operations International at Winterhalter Gastronom GmbH

Outlook

The number of service technicians in customer service at Winterhalter rises from year to year with more and more customers. Even more countries will use the WFM solution in in future.

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