Having recently caught up with ServiceMax CEO, Neil Barua, Field Service News Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland realised just how unusual the story of ServiceMax is amongst tech companies. It is a story of twists and turns and now that Barua is driving...
ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘scott-berg’ CATEGORY
Aug 16, 2021 • Features • Dave Yarnold • Scott berg • servicemax • Leadership and Strategy • Neil Barua
Having recently caught up with ServiceMax CEO, Neil Barua, Field Service News Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland realised just how unusual the story of ServiceMax is amongst tech companies. It is a story of twists and turns and now that Barua is driving forward his own chapter in that story, Oldland felt it was an appropriate time to recount the epic tale of the start-up that changed the industry before becoming worth almost a Billion Dollars and ask Barua where the next chapter is going to be set in these most disrupted of times...
Most tech companies have a decent origin story.
Indeed, many could (and often have been) the subject of an entire book of their own. However, not many companies have the oh so many twists and turns that ServiceMax has had. The life story for most companies within the small $25Bn corner of the enterprise tech world that we in the field service sector call home is mostly Mills and Boon. A brief account of love that ends in the protagonist being whisked away to a quieter life far away from the frantic frontier world of innovation.
The tale of ServiceMax, at least to my mind, is more akin to the great epics, with a far less linear but ultimately more fulfilling story to be told, and like most great epics, it is a story that spans more than one volume.
Maybe it is simply because I have been personally close to the story from near the very start that I see it in this way - although I personally don’t think it is just that. I’ve been there at the birth of several companies within our sector. I’ve watched them flourish and then watched them fade back into the general noise of the industry as the cycle of innovation and acquisition, acquisition and innovation rumble ever onwards.
Such companies, the Coresystems’, the TOA’s and the FieldOne’s, all had their stories. They all had their heroes, and they all had their moments in the sun. Yet, there was a sense of inevitability when it came to the final chapter. Slowly, inevitably, they became assimilated into the corporate colours of the respective industry giants that acquired them along the way. There is no shame in that. Indeed, it is the way these things are generally done; ultimately, the innovators almost always end up becoming a footnote in someone else’s story.
"From these humble origins, which can be traced back to a two-week project Athani and Hari initially built for a client under the moniker of Maxplore, ServiceMax quickly rose from start-up to genuine market leader in record time..."
And this is what makes the ServiceMax story so intriguing.
Despite being the biggest prize of them all, despite hitting the headlines across the global technology press when GE acquired them for close to a Billion dollars, simultaneously shining a spotlight onto our sector like never before, the GE chapter remains a footnote in the ServiceMax saga and not the other way around.
As I say, I’ve been privileged to have a front-row seat for almost a decade in the ServiceMax journey. For me, as an outside observer watching the company move through its various evolutions, there are three very distinct personas of a company that has dominated our industry headlines for that same period.
Firstly, there was the brash, brightly coloured ServiceMax, all bold colours, orange lettering against a big blue cloud if I recall. Built on the Salesforce platform but identifying a gap in the market and meeting it long before the rest of the world had begun to catch up. This first iteration was the story of the plucky start-up rising to become the industry titan. It was a true story of disruption and vision.
It was only over the year’s as I got to know then CEO Dave Yarnold better that I realised just how humble the origins had been for the company. I remember Yarnold recalling one story about their rented office in a tucked-away corner of Silicon Valley lovingly nicknamed the beige palace and having to head over to Best-Buy to pick up a TV so he and founders Hari (Subramanian) and Athani (Krishna) could give a presentation to their first-ever prospect.
Yet, from these humble origins, which can be traced back to a two-week project Athani and Hari initially built for a client under the moniker of Maxplore, ServiceMax quickly rose from start-up to genuine market leader in record time.
“We looked at what everybody was doing around service and we thought everyone was missing the point,” Yarnold explained in an interview with me back in late 2016. It was this confidence that they had found a missing piece of the puzzle that oozed throughout the business. The best way to describe how ServiceMax operated in this period was with the confident swagger of a youthful start-up that knew they were destined for the stars.
Of course, the rise was meteoric. By the time they had reached the top of the FSM tree, the value of that success was the acquisition of ServiceMax by GE for an eye-watering $915 Million. While rumours of various potential suitors to acquire the Pleasanton based company had been circulating for some time, this was an acquisition from the left-field not only regarding the price tag but also, who was paying it.
However, as the dust settled, increasingly the acquisition on the surface at least, seemed to make sense. As Scott Berg, former ServiceMax COO who took over the CEO mantle from Yarnold after the initial transition to GE had been completed, explained to me when I sat down with him at the Minds and Machines conference back in 2017.
“I think with GE being largely a company and culture built around engineers, we have both shared an asset centric perspective on service. For us, it was always about a system of assets in the field that customers wanted outputs and outcomes from - we were never about being your typical field service, scheduling only solution. For us it was an awareness of the people, the schedule and the asset. And certainly GE’s culture is grounded in engineering, machinery and assets - so we are on the same page.”
Indeed, if the first iteration of ServiceMax was characterised by a swashbuckling and pioneering approach to rethinking field service management, the GE period in their history was one better characterised by a more restrained and cohesive approach as part of a bigger, more holistic whole.
"If you look at GE as a company, I like to call it the largest field service company in the world. There are tens of thousands of technicians, and the vast majority of revenue at GE is derived from service contracts”
- Scott Berg, Former CEO, ServiceMax
As Berg had explained, “if you look at GE as a company, I like to call it the largest field service company in the world. There are tens of thousands of technicians, and the vast majority of revenue at GE is derived from service contracts”. Suddenly, the vision of the future of field service management that Hari, Anthani and Dave had successfully convinced our sector was the way forward was now backed up by an organisation that had the engineering gravitas to put it to the test and had backed that vision with an investment that broke all records within the FSM sector.
For many FSM companies, this is where the story may have ground to a halt. ServiceMax was increasingly aligned within the ill-fated GE Predix platform as part of GE Digital; this is the point in the story where all too often, rebrands occur, and the identity at the core of the acquired business is slowly eroded.
Yet, while the wider GE Digital business faltered (most notably Predix, which at the time was the archetypal solution for a problem no one had yet found), ServiceMax continued to report above industry earnings.
Indeed, when GE finally made the decision to carve out their GE Digital business into a standalone company (against a backdrop of analyst rumours of a distinct lack of buyers for the various elements of the portfolio and GE’s confidence in their move into growth tech markets appearing to wane), it is little wonder that ServiceMax, the jewel in the crown that had continued to shine in an ailing portfolio, remained the one valuable asset that GE could cash in on.
As such, SilverLake, the private equity firm with investment in significant technology brands such as Dell Technologies, Stripe and Peloton among many others, were able to take advantage of the uncertain future of GE Digital and introduce the third chapter into the ServiceMax story.
And the man shaping this latest chapter of the story is Neil Barua, current CEO of ServiceMax. I recall first meeting Neil within just a few days of his announcement as CEO as we met over a beer in the dry heat of the Palm Springs desert. It had been a long day for us both; I had been chairing the mainstream at Field Service USA; Neil had literally just arrived an hour or so before we met.
Yet, at the time, I recall saying to him that his passion for the role he had just taken on and the belief he expressed in the importance of how the field service sector keeps the world turning had echoes of some of those earliest conversations I had held with Yarnold almost a decade earlier.
It’s hard to pinpoint, but there was already a distinct hint of the confidence, the belief and the sheer desire to be the change that the world needs that came across in that first conversation.
Of course, in the two years in between, our world has changed immeasurably. The appealing idea of another relaxed conversation in the Californian sun seems like a long way off still as the dust settles from the pandemic.
Yet, in many ways, everything Barua said to me that evening about the importance of the field service sector was laid bare for us all to see as we collectively made our way through what have been truly unprecedented times.
“This is a time period where partnerships really matter, so we’ve reached across the aisle on both sides to make sure we do right by our customers...”
- Neil Barua, CEO, ServiceMax
His point about field service engineers being the unsung heroes of industry, now seems more prescient than ever after a year where it has been the field service workers that have quietly kept things ticking over while the rest of us adapted to the monotony of lockdown life safe in our private bubbles.
Neil and I have spoken occasionally in the intervening period, most notably after the announcement that Salesforce Ventures invested a further $80 Million into ServiceMax at a time when the partnership between the two is being firmly re-established.
It is another interesting twist in the tale, and to return to our literary metaphor from the beginning of this article; it is almost the classic plot of lost love rekindled. The classic 90s rom-com story arc of a reunion between two high-school lovers that had grown apart as they made their own paths in the world before rediscovering their affinity for each other at a later point when they are now both mature enough to realise how much they genuinely compliment each other.
ServiceMax, as we’ve covered, have had their growing pains, especially in the fall-out of the uncertainty of the GE Digital restructuring, but so to have Salesforce.
Like ServiceMax, they are another industry pioneer who for so long had so much potential to dominate within the FSM space given their position as the world’s number one CRM. Yet, somehow they never quite managed to hit the mark in terms of truly understanding the market’s needs in the granular detail that their peers and competitors did. This very much changed with the acquisition of ClickSoftware.
While the technology acquired was well accepted as an industry leader in the scheduling space, it was the depth of knowledge from former ClickSoftware CEO Mark Cantini (now GM Field Service Salesforce) and down throughout the team that has since moulded Salesforce into a true giant in the industry.
With Silverlake’s backing of ServiceMax and a newly invigorated Salesforce working in closer harmony, each aware of their own particular strengths they bring to the table, it is a formidable combination – and as our industry goes through the birth pains of seismic change brought on by the global disruption of the pandemic, to be blunt, our sector desperately needs our brightest and best innovators on top of their game and pulling in the same direction wherever possible.
As Barua commented when I spoke to him about the partnership while we were still in the depths of the pandemic, “this is a time period where partnerships really matter, so we’ve reached across the aisle on both sides to make sure we do right by our customers.”
At the heart of that partnership is Asset 360, which was at the centre of our last discussion when we caught up on Zoom a little earlier in the month.
“What does successful service delivery look like?” It was a question that we had drifted into as we had started to discuss just how much the perceived value of field service may have changed as our industry adapted to a post-pandemic world.
"As we continue to grow rapidly and expand into new industries with Asset 360, our core tenant of customer obsession still remains central to everything we do. All decisions we make around product and partnerships are all done with our customers in mind..."
- Neil Barua, CEO, ServiceMax
“For me,” Barua replied, “it absolutely requires a collection of well-orchestrated actions and data - an all-encompassing solution that supports the post-pandemic world. Honestly, that’s precisely where Asset 360 comes in – there really is no use case that we cannot support in this new era of work.
“It is one of the many reasons, that I’m incredibly optimistic about ServiceMax’s future. Despite all of the challenges and hardships we’ve faced in the last 18 months, we’ve moved so far, so fast and now the momentum is strong, to build a future that will take advantage of technologies to drive service excellence to a whole new level.”
Yet, for all the technological innovation that has come out of the ServiceMax team across the years and various iterations, there is one thing that remains consistent throughout. One thing that has become so woven into the company’s DNA that it has permeated through every incarnation and continues to shine through under Barua’s leadership.
That is an intimate understanding of the importance of customer-centricity, both for ServiceMax themselves but also for the industry they serve.
“As we continue to grow rapidly and expand into new industries with Asset 360, our core tenant of customer obsession still remains central to everything we do. All decisions we make around product and partnerships are all done with our customers in mind,” Barua explains.
“Our priority will always be to help them run more profitable, efficient service operations and ensure uptime on the world’s most important assets,” he adds.
If the first iteration of ServiceMax had the brash confidence of the arrogant start-up set to conquer the world, and the second iteration of ServiceMax had the confidence of being part of one of the world’s most iconic and successful brands, then this third iteration of ServiceMax has the confidence of a company that has been at the forefront of the industry for so long that they don’t just get the t-shirt, these guys make the t-shirts now.
Despite the significant investment from both Silverlake and Salesforce Ventures, ServiceMax distinctly has an air of entrepreneurship back in the mix and that stems no doubt from Barua’s own personal flair.
The entrepreneurial innovator is a role that just seems to suit the company better perhaps than the smaller cog in the corporate wheel that they had become under GE. It is hard to explain why, but some companies just have a natural persona and this third iteration of ServiceMax just seems to have found the right blend that fits with their corporate DNA.
Indeed, it is this blend of individual flair met with genuine passion and deep subject matter expertise that for me personifies ServiceMax and it is one that permeates across many members of the team I have grown to know well over the years (such as senior members of the Global Customer Transformation team like Kieran Notter and Coen Jeukens two of the brightest minds in the industry.)
Yet ServiceMax, also are making more measured movements this time around, perhaps having gone through the corporate machine, but equally in no small part down to Barua’s leadership and previous experience as CEO at fintech provider IPC Systems.
As our industry moves through yet another mass evolution, once again at a breakneck pace, indeed at a more incredible pace than ever before, I fully expect Barua’s iteration of ServiceMax to be at the vanguard of the innovation once more.
Whatever comes next, though, in the ServiceMax story, it almost certainly won’t be part of the standard script
Apr 16, 2019 • News • Scott berg • servicemax
Scott Berg to transition to Board Advisor.
Scott Berg to transition to Board Advisor.
ServiceMax has announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Neil Barua as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors.
Previously, Barua was CEO of IPC Systems and most recently served as an operating partner at Silver Lake. Barua’s appointment, effective immediately, concludes a thorough search for a successor to Scott Berg, who will become an advisor to ServiceMax’s Board.
“I’m thrilled to join ServiceMax at such an exciting period of change and innovation,” said Barua. “The team at ServiceMax has a passion for service and is an established leader in the Field Service Management software industry. Together we will help ServiceMax accelerate its growth, expand its product offerings and continue to deliver on the promise of service execution management through powerful outcomes for customers and partners.”
“It has been a privilege to lead ServiceMax, and I am enormously proud of what our team has accomplished together,” said Berg. “We have achieved growth that has outpaced the market over the past two years, expanded beyond ServiceMax’s leading Field Service Management capabilities, entered the Asset Service Management market, brought real-time communication to service technicians through the acquisition of Zinc and stood up the company as a standalone business. With Neil at the helm, I know the future of the company is in good hands, and I look forward to working with him to ensure a seamless transition.”
Feb 27, 2019 • News • Mergers and Acquisitions • General Electric Digital • Scott berg • servicemax • Software
Acquisition follows Silver Lake's recent majority stake purchase of ServiceMax from GE in December.
Acquisition follows Silver Lake's recent majority stake purchase of ServiceMax from GE in December.
Communication platform Zinc has been acquired by ServiceMax, the cloud-based field-service management firm for an undisclosed sum.
The deal follows ServiceMax's parent company, GE, selling a majority stake in the firm to private equity firm Silver Lake at the end of last year, and comes almost two years after GE's $915mn acquisition of ServiceMax in January 2017.
Aly Pinder, ServiceMax's Programme Director of Service Innovation and Connected Products, IDC said: “The ability of ServiceMax and Zinc to immediately surface tribal knowledge in-context not only aids in solving the task at hand on a work order, this integrated solution can also lead to significant improvements in customer experience, as well an enhanced ability to help acquire and engage talent for these critical customer-facing roles.”
Stacey Epstein, Zinc CEO added: “The perfect combination of Zinc’s modern, real-time communication with ServiceMax’s cutting edge and comprehensive suite will be unparalleled in the market, and I am thrilled to continue to help companies realise the promise of complete Service Execution Management.”
ServiceMax CEO Scott Berg, told diginomica that Zinc's real-time communication software will compliment their own platform, and lead to potential transaction-led benefits for customers. "Picture a world where those service engineers in a company could deploy this," he said, "and the first thing they start to do is communicate in real-time, starting to build those knowledge networks. Potentially then, phase two, they start deploying some of the more transaction-led capabilities…the handling of contracts, parts, work orders, and scheduling that they get with ServiceMax.”
You can read Field Service News' recent interview with ServiceMax CEO Scott Berg here.
Jan 28, 2019 • Features • Future of FIeld Service • GE Digital • IoT • Scott berg • servicemax • Mark Glover
A year into his tenure heading-up ServiceMax Scott Berg is in a positive mood. Field Service News’ Deputy Editor Mark Glover went to meet the CEO to discuss life after GE’s acquisition, Brexit and why IoT still has more to offer...
A year into his tenure heading-up ServiceMax Scott Berg is in a positive mood. Field Service News’ Deputy Editor Mark Glover went to meet the CEO to discuss life after GE’s acquisition, Brexit and why IoT still has more to offer...
Note: This interview was held prior to the announcement of Silver Lake's acquisition of a majority stake within ServiceMax which sees GE to continue as a minority investor. Find out more about the acquisition here
Ahead of my interview with Scott I go online to read a handful of the firm’s customer case-studies. I browse with the intention of spotting a pattern, a pool of similar companies that can give me handle on the ServiceMax success story. Of course, the firm have always operated in diverse sectors: aviation; food production and pharmaceuticals to name a few.
As I delve further the specialism of the companies narrow into impressive and exciting-sounding niches: centrifugal pumps manufacturers; architectural coating companies; bio-analytical measurement system providers all extolling the values of ServiceMax’s solutions. With this in mind, I start by asking Scott how he keeps a handle on this array of industries, a forest of complex verticals. “You’re talking about large workforces that have scheduling needs at a real primitive level who have a real despatch and scheduling element,” Scott tells me in a meeting room at GE’s London offices.
“I think that unifies all those vertical industries for us. At the bottom of that, for the most part, there is either a complex piece of equipment and it’s really that machine or that piece of equipment that we that’s at the centre of what we do. “We tend to provide solutions for those with complex asset types of services which could be a wind turbine or a power plant, a centrifuge, or a brain-surgery machine in a hospital. When you look at it that way, there’s a lot of similarity across them.”
It will be a year this January since Scott took up the post as CEO of ServiceMax coinciding with GE’s acquisition of the firm. Despite being part of a multi-national conglomerate, a company who this ranked 18 in this Fortune 500, has the technician-focused ethos remained “This is a company that cares quite a bit about assets and equipment and machinery and engineers,” Scott says.
“I think there’s something close to 25,000 employed service engineers. There’s a real love and affinity which has been good and benefitted us.” Since the acquisition, ServiceMax have gained traction beyond Europe in countries where previously it had been difficult to get a footprint. Of course, investment has helped but Scott suggests GE’s global respect has also been a factor. “In the past 12 months we’ve had a number of customers in the Middle East fuelled by the positive brand and reputation of GE in that part of the world.”
"This is a company that cares quite a bit about assets and equipment and machinery and engineers..."
Europe though remains a strong area for the outfit with clients spanning the continent. On the day I meet Scott, Britain is reacting to Theresa May’s draft Brexit proposal, and my mobile buzzed and bleeped with news notifications as I made the train journey down.
The process of Britain’s extraction from the European Union has been fraught and complex with political commentators and business leaders offering various doomsday scenarios if negotiations falter. I ask Scott what effect, if any, Brexit could have on its European footprint? “I don’t want to get political and be on one side or the other and I can’t say I fully understand it,” he says wisely, “but there’s a demand out there for global operation in the world’s largest corporations and people are going to have to get through trade barriers and deal with the consumer on a worldwide basis regardless.”
We’re both happy to swerve further discussion on Brexit so I steer back to where it all began for Scott, in pharmaceuticals at Eli Lilly and Dendrite in the early 90s where he held Business Director and Senior Director roles respectively. A role at Connect offered a peak into the field service sector dealing with territory management systems, introducing large volumes of laptops into white-collar knowledge workers. “I had an early glimpse of the mobile workforce and what that was going to look like,” he recalls. At the time, California was the focal point of US software development. Fuelled by a growing interest in technology, Scott, originally from New Jersey headed to “chase the dream”. Fast forwarding then to 2009 and Scott is interviewing at ServiceMax.
As he plotted his experience, he was able to align his previous roles to the field service sector. “Even as I was about to join the company,” he says with a smile, “I was remembering all the things – even from pharmaceuticals – about remote working and parts ordering. We would deploy thousands of laptops to a sales team and none of those laptops had the means to service them, repair them, return then, ship them and prep them. Back in those days we had to run a full-on field sales operation because how else would 2,000 reps get what they needed.
“I had no idea how pertinent that would end up being first-hand experience of aftermarket or a parts operation where frankly where we trying to deliver a software solution.”
We work out that “back then” was 35 years ago and we both wince slightly at the speed of time passing. “My daughter calls me old,” Scott, 50, jokes. Still, the last four decades have seen a revolution in technology and software advances; the advent of the internet underpinning most applications. I ask Scott, given his experience, if he thinks the world wide web was a watershed moment, or perhaps something else? “I think the big change that I’ve seen for has been mobile,” he offers.
"The internet is not as ‘everywhere’ as people believe. It’s blocked in hospitals and airports. It’s enhanced by smart-mobile devices that have these rich capabilities but we also have to deal with the reality that they will sometimes lose connectivity..."
“Of course, this would be nowhere without the internet but going from luggable, yet heavy and fragile laptops to really smart affordable mobile devices; I think that’s a big deal.” And what about the internet? “ It’s been a bit of a double-edged sword,” he says. The internet is not as ‘everywhere’ as people believe. It’s blocked in hospitals and airports. It’s enhanced by smart-mobile devices that have these rich capabilities but we also have to deal with the reality that they will sometimes lose connectivity.
“We acknowledge the mobile workforce and the internet connectivity and getting data to people; we acknowledge the mobile devices and how important they’ll be but the only way to really do this properly is to think about that device and software operating in a connected and dis-connected way,” he pauses. “It’s a balance of the two. Relying on connectivity, the Internet of Things (IoT) goes beyond laptops, smartphones and tablets. Monitoring our heating and air-conditioning and even dimming our lights, its potential impact across heavy industry is huge."
In a previous interview with Field Service News’ Scott said that IoT had been an “unfulfilled promise”. Does he stick by the statement? “I think what needs to happen now, and this is where the real value will come from IoT,” he says recalling the earlier Interview.
“I think what needs to happen now, and where the real value will come from IoT, is when input from a machine can be fed into more predictive models using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning. Only then we will get truly predictive services, and only then will you get a learning model rather than an alert system.” He elaborates further: “Part of the early benefits for our customer base have been error logs and early warning systems. Now, what we offer for field service management and asset performance management can be through IoT and the predictive side; and then measure whether or not that had the impact that was wanted.”
"I think the version of autonomy that applies to complex services is a smarter machine that asks for help before it needs it..."
So, not only pre-empting but learning from pre-empting? “Exactly,” he affirms.
“We talk a lot about the closed-loop mentality; where you’re predictive about the maintenance instruction, then you capture the service that was actually executed then feed that back and now the model gets smarter over time.”
Despite the speed in which technology is progressing Scott believes the technical role of the engineer will remain.
He’s wise and experienced enough however, to know it is changing.
The asset, assisted by IoT and Machine Learning, will come to complement the technician. He references the term autonomous, suggesting – perhaps correctly – that people only associate it with self-driving cars. “I think the version of autonomy that applies to complex services is a smarter machine that asks for help before it needs it, a smarter machine that provides realtime data to advise the technician,” he says.
While IoT is certainly changing the field service marketplace, the hype around the technology is bringing a side-effect, a bi-product that requires effort for an end-user to control: data, reams of data. Scott is sympathetic towards clients who find themselves drowning in error-codes.
He tells me about a client he met the previous day - a provider of cancer surgery equipment.
“Every morning,” he says shaking his head, “the technician woke to an email reporting 2,000 potential error codes. And it’s all on this technician to decide what’s meaningful and what’s not. Sure, it’s a good IoT application that’s come up with 2,000 codes, but which one actually matters?”
The issue of data-overload affirms Scott’s earlier point, that IoT needs to be reined in by a strong predictive model that can filter the relevant information.
“That’s where things are really advancing now,” Scott affirms.
“To go from IoT spewing data at people, to layering a predictive model on that to advise and lead a technician’s actions, delivered through a smart mobile device that can present the relevant information.”
All of this ultimately adds up to efficiency, a key factor for those organisations whose business models are asset-heavy; the wind turbine or nuclear reactor for example. The effect of down-time across an assembly line, for even a short period can have serious financial consequences.
“They can’t afford for it to be down,” Scott explains, “and you can’t just call anyone to come and fix it. This isn’t a Google or a Yelp search to get someone with credentials to climb 300ft and fix a wind turbine.”
"The effect of down-time across an assembly line, for even a short period can have serious financial consequences..."
With good timing, a week before our meeting, a GE press release lands in my in-box announcing the launch of PreDix ServiceMax Asset Service Management software aimed squarely at these heavy-asset sectors. I’m drawn to the safety and compliance element of the software where the solution creates documentation for workers to check the correct Personal Protective Equipment is fitted.
“Even a simple checklist at the start of each technician’s day that asks if you are equipped with the right boots, or hard-hat or eye wear; just the reminder can contribute to a reduction in safety incidents,” Scott says.
Importantly, signed employee safety and maintenance documentation creates evidence of compliance. Scott outlines the process: “It [the documentation) shows that every technician, that morning acknowledged that safety procedure and that instruction, the documentation can prove it occurred. Along with the maintenance documents, it shows that everything that needed to get done was done.”
Checklist management has been a focus at ServiceMax.
The firm have produced capabilities around form-data capture, the uploading and capture of photograph as well as video; all feeding into the battle against inefficiency. To make this point Scott cites describes wind-turbine maintenance, which to take place, a technician must climb 300ft, a journey that can take several hours.
“Imagine the tremendous inefficiency if you weren’t perfectly ready with everything you needed when you got up there. “You don’t want to get all the way and not have the right bulb,” he says, only half-smiling. You have to be perfectly ready to execute because you’re about to spend four hours getting to a destination.”
I wrap up the interview by asking Scott what inspires him to do what he does?
He lists the variety of industries that they serve, clearly enjoying the different experiences this brings.
However, he finishes – unsurprisingly, as is the ServiceMax ethos – by bringing it back to the engineer.
“I think the field-service technician is an underserved, individual skill,” he says. So, perhaps serving, literally, millions of technicians is part of what drives me.”
Scott Berg is CEO of ServiceMax
Be social and share...
Jul 10, 2018 • Features • Artificial intelligence • Connected Field Service • Future of FIeld Service • Machine Learning • Preventative Maintenance • cloud • Field Service USA • GE Digital • IoT • Scott berg • servicemax • ThingWorx
Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to Scott Berg, CEO at ServiceMax about why IoT has so far failed to hit the heights it really is capable of and what we more should be expecting from connected assets in the near future...
Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to Scott Berg, CEO at ServiceMax about why IoT has so far failed to hit the heights it really is capable of and what we more should be expecting from connected assets in the near future...
When I sit down with Berg, he has just given a highly well-received presentation at Field Service USA, perhaps the biggest event in the global field service calendar. He managed to hit the two big topics that dominated conversation over the four days of the conference, namely preventative maintenance and IoT.
However, whilst many of his peers have spent the time still talking about why these are essential topics for field service companies today, Berg is already looking towards tomorrow.
“There is a big move towards predictive service, which a lot of us have talked about wanting to do. I think IoT has arrived on the scene and that might be what finally enables it. One of the things I’ve seen as we’ve come deeper into GE and seen what some of the other assets are around us from a technology standpoint is that the asset performance management concept is really unique,” he opens.
“As a field service guy I didn’t even know that this stuff was out there- I didn’t know that it was possible. That, of course, makes sense as it was used in process manufacturing, chemicals, oil and gas so it just wouldn’t occur to bring that over to field service, but this linking of the predictive analytics fed by IoT allows us to create a closed-loop process.”
“Frankly, now that I know these APM guys better within the GE company, it was one of the first epiphanies we had last year where we said you send that work to me, I’ll send you this back, arm the technician with the predictives that say ‘here’s why your here today.’”
“Another theme is also that this whole IoT thing is making me scratch my head a little bit and I’ve been talking to more and more people lately about this.,” Berg admits.
For me as a technology salesperson by trade it really gets good when someone can see real obvious value articulated, experience it and it becomes a bit of a no-brainer, I don’t think IoT has reached tha“$2.9Trillion dollars is going to get spent on IoT by 2020. Now this is not to say that many companies including a number of our customers haven’t experienced value, but it it’s still not quite fulfilling the full potential that it had - so what is the problem? For me as a technology salesperson by trade it really gets good when someone can see real obvious value articulated, experience it and it becomes a bit of a no-brainer, I don’t think IoT has reached that.”
It is a question I have raised myself in these pages. So what does Berg think is holding everyone back from seeing the true potential of IoT?
“I think it’s a combination of things,” he replies, considering the question. “Firstly, people are still drowning in data - and I do think that is still a problem. We see it even in GE businesses, there is so much more data by our own creation that it just gets harder and harder, and so now you’ve got things like Edge computing as opposed to sensors feeding data to Clouds, which is way to slow and far away, so that’s one thing that is changing rapidly.”
“And yes, there are people who have got the benefit but so far I see it as just a one and done benefit. We’ve had good examples of our customers, where they’ve identified a failure pattern, in one case a company were able to identify that they were fixing something too early, they could’ve gotten two more weeks out of it, so that leads to a modification of a service protocol or procedure, but it is still a one-off benefit.”
“It’s big don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t do anything for you next year and it didn’t uncover the next problem. In fact, it may be even pushing a problem further downstream and so then another one surfaces.”
“That’s what is so exciting about the whole conversation around AI and Machine Learning - in that it offers continuous learning. The ability to model risk and put that into a plan - maybe that is the final way to bring IoT to its full potential in terms of service management and to create a pretty cool closed-loop process really.”
“I don’t mean to push IoT to a back seat, don’t get me wrong, there are so many side benefits that are game changing but it is a bit like you’ve planted something and then your like when is it going to come out of the ground, when am I going to see a flower and then to continue that analogy when that fruit first comes out, you don’t want to pick it and then that’s if you want it to be a constant crop."
It is interesting to hear Berg’s view that there is so much more to come how we implement IoT in a field service context. Particularly given ServiceMax’s role as an earlier pioneer within the space. When he speaks on the topic he invokes a clear belief in the scientific method - i.e. that each hypothesis is subject to continuous testing and re-evaluation.
“We were early partners and integrators with things like PTC and the ThingWorx products, launched connected field service and we’ve had some customers who have seen some real benefit - but why didn’t it sustain, why didn’t it evolve, why didn’t it grow - why wasn’t it everywhere?” He asks.
“I think it is because people were just a bit stalled looking for that extra piece of the puzzle,’ he continues answering his own questions.
One of the reasons we didn’t call Connected Field Service our IoT API is because the notion of connecting field service was not only getting the device to give up its data but also in the mobile device then arming the technician with why are you here“In fact, one of the reasons we didn’t call Connected Field Service our IoT API is because the notion of connecting field service was not only getting the device to give up its data but also in the mobile device then arming the technician with why are you here.”
“What was the reading that led to this? But let’s take that further, let’s get an understanding of what the is device doing right now so they know what it was doing yesterday when they were summoned, but also me what it's doing now, how has that changed.”
“I think that’s that notion of equipment centricity. The cool thing about GE is that it is the world’s largest field service company and it is also at it’s core a completely asset-centric group of engineers, the machine is everything they worship the machines - there are pictures of machines all over our office.”
When I last spoke to Berg, ServiceMax had only recently become part of the GE family, but even then he spoke of an early affinity between the companies and of a kindred spirit at each companies core. Fast forward some 18 months and it is clear that the relationship is proving to be even more symbiotic with benefits flowing both ways.
“I was in a meeting recently where one of the innovations another team was pushing in APM was maximising the performance and predicting the health of a set of assets. By that I mean not just one isolated machine but for example think of a wind-farm, maybe there are a thousand of assets within that fleet. We were trying to establish how we can comprehend the collective health of those assets and how they work together.”
This is just another example of how Berg, ServiceMax and now the wider team within GE are not satisfied with pushing the envelope today but are dedicated to understanding how they can continue to stay at the vanguard of innovation for many, many years to come.
Be social and share
May 02, 2018 • Features • Asset Performance Management • Future of FIeld Service • IIOT • digitalisation • GE Digital • Industrial Internet • IoT • Scott berg • servicemax
Scott Berg, CEO at ServiceMax, from GE Digital explains why for those organisations getting the results that matter, the Industrial Internet of Things alone isn’t enough to transform their service offering...
Scott Berg, CEO at ServiceMax, from GE Digital explains why for those organisations getting the results that matter, the Industrial Internet of Things alone isn’t enough to transform their service offering...
Complex machines power the world’s largest industries, from offshore rigs to networks of medical devices, to massive wind turbines.
Over the last decade, we’ve seen everything from treadmills to coffee makers digitized in pursuit of smarter, better and faster machines to get better results. Industrial companies are adopting digital strategies and require a distinct understanding of connected machinery to do so successfully. It’s no surprise that these machines require thoughtful, technical and predictive maintenance.
Companies now more than ever are in the business of keeping machines running to ensure that the absolute most value is derived from each piece of equipmentCompanies now more than ever are in the business of keeping machines running to ensure that the absolute most value is derived from each piece of equipment. Our customers report, on average, a 19% increase in productivity since implementing Predix ServiceMax. That basically means that we can add an extra day to the technician’s week without working overtime.
ServiceMax from GE Digital is helping the world’s largest companies on their digital journey, starting with service delivery. What is fundamental to our understanding of Field Service Management (FSM) is the scale at which we provide service. We are meeting our customers at a global, enterprise level. As the industry adopts the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) we think about service in a big way and help companies on their digital journey.
We are 100% invested in making sure our customers are getting absolutely all the value they can from the equipment they have and how it’s being used.
Why IIoT won’t be enough to transform service
IIoT-enabled devices and data insights alone are not enough to paint a clear picture of service in the future. Talk of IIoT is everywhere, from budgets to yearly planning, to newspaper headlines. At the end of the day, data informs a procedural change within only one part of a machine at one point in time. Decisions are made on a limited set of inputs, whether that be wear and tear of a specific part, or work order history.
You might say that using IIoT alone is tunnel vision.
Meaningful service is going beyond IIoT, and Asset Performance Management (APM) is the catalyst: it opens up data to more contextual inputs from the broader ecosystem. APM harnesses the behaviour of the machine and goes beyond a simple exercise in efficiency.
It’s important to understand the key is not solely APM, FSM or IIoT. Rather, it’s all three working together to create a holistic solution.It’s important to understand the key is not solely APM, FSM or IIoT. Rather, it’s all three working together to create a holistic solution.
APM monitors the behaviour of the machine, and the FSM platform brings it all together to inform how, when, and why we choose to service or replace a machine. It monitors machine health directly after a repair, and cycles that information into future repairs, to close the loop of service.
The powerful combination of APM and FSM provides a complete view of a product and establishes lifecycle management strategies. The result is a service product management solution that has up-leveled a traditional connected device strategy, incorporating a business’s bottom line. This has saved our customers millions of dollars.
Digital industry brings dynamic results
Field service in the industrial era is more than a one-time project. Done well, it is an industrialists guide to a digital future, providing vital insights and outcomes for customers. The new era of field service will be marked by connectivity and share a fundamental goal of zero downtime for critical equipment.
There will be industrial behemoths and then there will be digital industrial behemoths.
Field service is evolving into a system that doesn’t forgetField service is evolving into a system that doesn’t forget: an APM-integrated platform incorporates past data to make decisions about parts, technicians, and compliance in the present. And then the magic happens: the system integrates several data factors based on the outcomes of similar work orders and controls for a business perspective: how much time and money can we afford to spend here? That data is translated to actionable insights for technicians on the ground, meaning they are not working towards a static goal of ‘machine repair.’ Instead, technicians are working towards a dynamic outcome: machine uptime.
We are reaching a point where FSM is simultaneously smarter than us yet utterly useless without the most vital component of service: humans. Technicians close the loop between data and predictions by recording the actions they take.
They have the training, the expertise, and the context for each work order with a FSM platform at their fingertips. And the result is that not only is complex machinery functioning smoothly, but FSM is providing the savvy digital industrialist an avenue to a more prosperous day on the job tomorrow.
Be social and share
Sep 14, 2017 • Features • APM • Outcome based services • GE Digital • Scott berg • servicemax • Servitization • Software and Apps
It has now been ten months since GE Digital acquired field service management solution provider for a cool $915 Million. Even against a backdrop of constant M&A activity within our industry, it was a deal that made the wider world sit up and pay...
It has now been ten months since GE Digital acquired field service management solution provider for a cool $915 Million. Even against a backdrop of constant M&A activity within our industry, it was a deal that made the wider world sit up and pay attention to the field service sector. But how have ServiceMax slotted in two the GE Digital fold and how big a part will they play in GE’s vision of how best to serve the industrial markets of the future?
Kris Oldland, spoke exclusively to Scott Berg, COO, ServiceMax just before he participated in their first major outing as a GE Digital company at the Minds and Machines conference...
With the Minds and Machines 2017 event just days away it was an opportune time to reconnect with Scott Berg, COO of ServiceMax.
The last time I spoke with a member of the senior executive team at the Californian based Field Service Management Solution provider was when I spoke with their CEO Dave Yarnold, literally a few hours ahead of the announcement that ServiceMax was being acquired for a figure just shy of a Billion dollars by General Electric (GE) and would become part of their expanding GE Digital portfolio.
And whilst field service management is undoubtedly a hot ticket for investment at the moment, with the list of acquisitions within the market being a veritable who’s who of FSM vendors including ClickSoftware, ServicePower and IFS amongst others, nothing has come even close to matching the size of deal between GE and ServiceMax.
But has that ability to rise to the challenge been hampered or enhanced whilst being taken under the wing at GE?
He talked excitedly about the reasons why he had decided GE could be a suitable home for ServiceMax, outlining hugely ambitious plans to work with GE to build out a working IT platform for entirety of the industrial sector, something that connected people, assets and workflows together to drive business forwards in the twenty first century.
Indeed, it is often hard to not get caught up in Yarnold’s enthusiasm, and sometimes the trick is to separate the passion from the plans, the hyperbole from the reality - although in fairness he and the ServiceMax team do tend to have a habit of meeting the ambitious plans he puts forward.
But has that ability to rise to the challenge been hampered or enhanced whilst being taken under the wing at GE?
Just ahead of the Minds and Machines conference is a great time to sit back and assess that question, whilst Scott Berg, is perhaps the perfect barometer.
The big news for us is the integration between the ServiceMax Field Service Management (FSM) Solution and Asset Performance Management (APM) within the GE portfolio
As such he is a perfect foil for Yarnold, the two compliment each other well, (in fact that is trait that seems to be apparent throughout the whole ServiceMax family, there is a shared ‘something’ in the DNA and it seem that at all levels the team members feed well off each other) so who better to discuss how the integration with GE has progressed and whether the roadmap for Servicemax as part of GE remains on a similar course, to that which Yarnold described?
“This is really the first opportunity for us to be a GE Digital company and showcase some announcements of what we are planning,” explains Berg when we catch up to discuss what we can expect to come out of the event.
“I think this is the first time that we’ve made a public announcement where people can start to see some of the synergies across the GE Digital portfolio and the big news for us is the integration between the ServiceMax Field Service Management (FSM) Solution and Asset Performance Management (APM) within the GE portfolio. It’s big news and I think it’s a first proof point around GE’s thinking around the Industrial Internet and what role services and assets will play within that world.”
Indeed, when ServiceMax launched their Connected Field Service offering in the beginning of last year the vision was very much to bring the install base to the forefront of an FSM system, rather than just being focussed on the mobile workforce - which had traditionally been the primary focus of industry tools to date. Connected Field Service of course leveraged IoT, and from my limited understanding of AMP this was a solution that could build on that?
If you think about our field service strategy it was about getting data from the machine and the asset. Basically, letting the machine become the sensor rather than the customer being the sensor when something goes wrong
“If you think about our field service strategy it was about getting data from the machine and the asset. Basically, letting the machine become the sensor rather than the customer being the sensor when something goes wrong.”
“That is still very much part of the on-going strategy, what APM adds to the process is a significant amount of additional intelligence around preventative maintenance.”
“The concept has always been about avoiding unplanned downtime and in terms of providing preventative maintenance there is a rapid evolution going on where we are moving quickly from interval based maintenance i.e. perform this maintenance every 6 months or a year, to condition based maintenance - which is perform maintenance every 1,000 cycles of a machine. But now with APM combined with IoT we basically have data from the machine itself, embedded into a sophisticated analytics engine in APM, combined with the finance and the strategy to optimally operate an asset and to do so in the most profitable manner.”
“So what APM adds, fed by this IoT data, is basically recommendations and intelligence of when maintenance should most optimally be performed. For example right now, or next week or next month. It can even do things like suggest the maintenance shouldn’t even happen at all. It may be that the best strategy and profit outcome on a particular asset would be to let it burn out its useful life - it might be more profitable to replace it than it is to make the repair. And if so that is what APM will suggest.”:
“It is an evolution in the concepts around maintenance. From interval, to conditioned and now to predictive analytic schedules. And when combined with the power we already had in ServiceMax, which was taking this IoT feed from the machine and suggesting when service can happen, it becomes a very powerful tool indeed.”
One thing that is of particular interest with APM is how the solution can work from fleet level through to sub-component level.
“We are definitely down at the component level now if we look at the areas such as the Power industry or Oil and Gas - vibration sensing, the speed things are rotating at, the temperature of bearings and how do those factors impact performance behaviours or how do they impact output or throughput of a machine. It could be the volume of fluid passing through something, It could be on a grander scale, the level of power production from a thermo-nuclear plant that is converting fossil fuels to electrical output,“ Berg explains as we discuss the importance of being able to see the health of various levels of both components and assets.
I think one of the big struggles people always have with IoT is that they basically drown in the data. You’re being sent all these readings but how do you make sense of it?
Essentially this is perhaps where APM can deliver the most value, in helping make the vast streams of data from assets connected to the IoT, truly useful.
As Berg alludes to when he comments: “I think one of the big struggles people always have with IoT is that they basically drown in the data. You’re being sent all these readings but how do you make sense of it?”
“What APM does is make sense of that data in light of maximising the uptime and the output of an asset and its components. It’s that added layer of intelligence that IoT on it’s own doesn’t have. It’s making that data useful essentially,” he adds.
Of course, one of the big benefits of FSM tools such as ServiceMax is allowing the service organisation to empower their field service technicians by putting such rich layers of customer information, ultimately being able to put the core intelligence of the organisation itself, into the hands of the field service technician.
Given that the integration between ServiceMax and APM is geared towards increasing the efficiency of preventative maintenance strategies, I was intrigued to see how much of this intelligence would be filtered down to the engineer. For example if he was on site fixing asset A would he be able to see that in fact Asset B was due to for maintenance in the next few weeks and therefore potentially undertake the second maintenance job whilst on site to save an unnecessary future truck role?
“I think that layer of insight is there on two different levels,” Berg responds when I put this point across to him.
“From a back office standpoint certainly, APM will suggest maintenance should occur on machine number one based on a threshold that’s been reached, but more importantly than that, it will also look at the fleet of the assets and see anything else that is approaching that same level of wear and tear (or that same maintenance condition) and alongside what we’ve already created within Connected Field Service - where we are pushing that machine data down to the technician, we can use our install base management capabilities to identify the fleet of assets that are at his location and highlight those near the warning condition or those that would approach it soon.”
One interesting if indirect result of giving the technician this level of insight is that by being able to relay such information to the customer, he can also reestablishes the importance of the maintenance visit in the first place
One interesting if indirect result of giving the technician this level of insight is that by being able to relay such information to the customer, he can also reestablishes the importance of the maintenance visit in the first place.
In today’s markets as we see companies moving to outcome-based services and preventative maintenance strategies in ever greater numbers, there is the new challenge of the workload of the technician perhaps going unseen by the client. In the old traditional break-fix model there was the theatre of the service engineer being the superhero, coming in to rescue the poor Ops Manager who has had to put an exasperated call in to say - “Hey! I can’t produce anything!’ Then the engineer comes in, meets his SLA and makes everything work again. Going above and beyond and generally being a hero.
In today’s world of outcome-based contracts there is a challenge to make sure you are effectively communicating the work your technicians have done for the client, to demonstrate the value your service provides them.
With the tools Berg is discussing, it seems there is the potential to almost move the engineer into something more of a consultative role. Someone who can say I’ve come to undertake the maintenance on ‘a,b,c’ but I can also advise you that ‘x,y,z’ could be also be done today and this will improve your output by ‘n’.
“I think there is a great opportunity here to improve the lifestyle of the technician themselves,” Berg comments as we bring the conversation onto this point. “Sure, there is the heroic experience of saving the day but that is also a high anxiety moment as well. When we consider the psychology of the technician, the challenging bit is to go out there by yourself, with no one to help you, then when encounter a really bad situation hopefully you’re the one that can resolve it. It can be a life with a lot of tension, which is sometimes overlooked.”
“Alongside that I also think that customer expectations are shifting as well,” he continues.
There is the classic metaphor that people don’t want to go out and buy a drill they want to buy a hole and the concept is largely about outcomes
“So now you put a technician in the position to not only be the hero by just fixing something retrospectively, but to be the hero that proactively maximises the customers output and production from an asset they acquired? I think that is not only going above and beyond but it is catering to more of the outcome-based mentality that companies now want to consume output rather than buy a set amount of machines.”
So it seems at least on the technology side of things there is already progress being made between the two organisations coming together, although it could be argued that this is the result of the two separate existing technologies just being plugged into each other.
The real fruits of the union are likely some way off, although how far could largely depend on how quickly and easily the ServiceMax team are integrating into the wider GE group. I mentioned Yarnold’s views at the time of the acquisition about the two organisations having a shared understanding and a similar DNA in terms of the view they both held of what ‘good service looks like’ - as well as the importance of service within industry as we move further into the twenty first century.
And of course, I was keen to see if that was holding out now the ServiceMax is fully embedded within GE.
“I think it is and I think it was very prescient of Dave to be highlighting that right at the start of us coming together,” Berg replies.
“There are several things here. Firstly, we’ve always served markets that I would largely classify as OEM manufacturers or industrial companies and certainly these are the companies and sectors that GE is already working amongst. As a direct result of that we are already seeing great energy and sales momentum by our alignment with GE business units around Oil and Gas, Energy, Power - as these were the industries we would have sold to anyway.”
[quote]I think with GE being largely a company and culture built around engineers, we have both shared an asset centric perspective on service.
“Secondly, I think with GE being largely a company and culture built around engineers, we have both shared an asset centric perspective on service. For us, it was always about a system of assets in the field that customers wanted outputs and outcomes from - we were never about being your typical field service, scheduling only solution. For us it was an awareness of the people, the schedule and the asset. And certainly GE‘s culture is grounded in engineering, machinery and assets - so we are on the same page.”
“The third thing that I think is interesting is that GE was one of our largest customers and if you look at GE as a company, I like to call it the largest field service company in the world. There are tens of thousands of technicians, and the vast majority of revenue at GE is derived from service contracts - so there is definitely a kindred spirit and a kind of alignment with GE because of these vertical focussed, asset centric mentalities. Plus then there is a shared passion for service which is such a big contributor to the GE business.”
Of course one would think that as one of their biggest clients, having the GE team on hand to add weight to their cause could also add some heavy kudos and gravitas at times that they need to call in the big guns.
In particular GE have been early adopters in the move towards outcome based models in a number of verticals. Is that helping the ServiceMax team when they go into conversations with prospective customers?
Of course, the move to outcome-based services is heavily tied to the use of the cutting-edge technology that ServiceMax provide, so it is in their vested interest to be avid promoters of such shifts in thinking.
But the reality is a move to outcome-based contracts can be a hard sell for service businesses to their own clients, whilst many still may need some convincing that a shift away from recurring spare parts revenue within the break-fix model is indeed the future of the Aftermarket sector.
However, having the back story of now being part of GE, who have already taken that path and who are able to say we believe this is the future because we’ve already gone out and done it in our own business, that must surely be a powerful tool when it comes to talking to those companies who are more reticent to make such a switch?
“This is actually one of the core themes at Minds and Machines,” Berg replies.
“The concept our chairman will be talking about is how our digital transformation at GE from an industrial company to a digital industrial company is really focussed on three different markets.”
“Firstly there is GE for GE, which is how we help ourselves go through this digital transformation towards outcome-centric models. Secondly, we have GE for Customers and this is looking at the business units which GE serves and the companies they sell to, and we want to help and advise them - sharing what we’ve learnt from our own experiences with them.”
“The final one is called GE for the World. What has been interesting with this and what has truly surprised me is the amount of times we’ve been speaking to companies who are traditionally staunch GE competitors, but they are curious about what we are doing.”
The whole idea behind this is to share the experience GE has had broadly around digital transformation of industrial businesses.
Given this experience and the broad touch-points Berg has access to I was curious to find out what his take on the shift to servitization was. Is it becoming as prevalent as it seems from behind my admittedly sometimes magnified field service lens? Indeed, are there many companies still in need of persuading that outcome-centric models are the best way forward, or has acceptance of the need to move towards servitized business models become widespread?
“It is interesting because I’ve yet to see much real push back on the concept,” Berg comments. “It is a as if everyone has come to accept that an outcome based model, i.e. a Service as a Product model - is the essential thing to do.
I think that value GE plays in those conversations is more geared towards telling these companies what is the first step to take on a journey like that. Sharing what our experiences have been, how we’ve done it and what our accomplishments have been.”
“It’s really interesting that in practical selling situations to potential customers one of the most impactful people we can bring into a scenario like that is someone like a CIO form one of the GE business who has made these investments, made it happen and can show you the results. I think the door is open but I think people are perhaps a bit confused as to how and where to start and that’s what GE can help them. We can outline how to start their journey and how best to stay on the right path.”
As we come to the end of our time together, a few things have become apparent throughout our conversation.
The first is that the technology seems to be a natural fit and combining ServiceMax with APM is a natural evolution, that is set to yield impressive results for those that are in place to put the two together.
The second is that Yarnold’s earlier prediction about their being a shared vision across the two organisations seems to be bang on target. As Berg explains their future plans to me there is a real sense not just of unity between the two organisations but also of continuity in terms of the original ServiceMax core beliefs that were so fundamental to their success.
However, one other thing that was apparent was the number of times Berg used the word industrial. This of course makes sense when we factor GE into the conversational mix - but one of the things that ServiceMax developed a strong reputation for pre GE, was for that every Sony, GE or Scheider they worked with - there were also the companies like Service2 - i.e. small local companies with less than twenty engineers.
Will SMEs still be of relevance to ServiceMax or will they be forgotten as ServiceMax under GE goes hunting for a place amongst the industries enterprise elite?
“I think the conversation has changed a little bit for smaller companies but in a positive way,” Berg responds. “The GE brand credibility is really helping us send a positive message to smaller companies. We continue to serve all those markets and in fact one thing you will see from us is an expansion in the market at this level.”
“We see three separate groups of customers, one is the OEM manufacturers which has been a sweet spot for our business, people that make complex machines, such as medical devices or heavy machinery.”
“One expansion will be in what we call asset operators so you could think of in that realm are the power producers. Electric and Oil and Renewables who basically don’t make anything, they buy a whole bunch of assets and then produce something. Then the third group would be one that we’ve always focussed on, namely the service providers and that’s where you get a lot of these smaller companies.”
“The really interesting thing is if you take any one of the seven or eight business units in GE and think of it as an ecosystem of something like Oil and Gas then certainly you could be talking to someone like Shell or BP doing oil exploration and production but as soon as you take a step back from the centre of that industry, that’s where those relatively smaller providers are really important. What’s really interesting is that they are also really important to the GE verticals as well because there is an ecosystem of those service providers working with a GE - or maybe competing with a GE but supplementing the value in that market. So we will continue to focus on those types of companies and actually a lot of the companies we’ve historically sold to in those spaces are aligned to the GE ecosystems anyway.”
“We really think that effective field service execution is a combination of people, assets and outcomes,” Berg offers in closing.
“I think that our integration into the digital portfolio combined with the GE business experience puts us in an incredibly unique position to not only help our clients manage their people but also to help manage their install base of assets and make this shift to this outcome-based mentality around preventative maintenance a less painful and more fruitful path to follow.”
Be social and share this feature
Field Service News is published by 1927 Media Ltd, an independent publisher whose sole focus is on the field service sector. As such our entire resources are focused on helping drive the field service sector forwards and aiming to best serve our industry through honest, incisive and innovative media coverage of the global field service sector.
Leave a Reply