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With a new US patent approved for their Quantum Computing algorithm, Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower explains her vision for what the future of customer experience excellence will look like and outlines the path her organisation can offer to consumer-focused organisations as they begin rolling out a raft of new CX tools...

The last time Field Service News sat down and spoke with Marne Martin, ServicePower’s bold and ebullient CEO, for a formal interview, it was to discuss their recent acquisition by private equity firm Diversis at the beginning of this year.

At that point, Martin was keen to express the fact that it was she who had courted investment with a vision to expand upon their product suite more rapidly than they could through organic means alone and that this acquisition was not just another PE shark circling the rich pickings of the Field Service Management sector. At the time Martin commented ‘I felt that we were 75% and we were really looking for someone to get us to 100% of where we saw the opportunity in the sector not just for the current but in the future.”

I felt that we were 75% and we were really looking for someone to get us to 100% of where we saw the opportunity in the sector not just for the current but in the future.”Of course, many a CEO has said similar things in the past having just been acquired, a message of confidence is par for the course to keep the client base assured that their future is still safe in a steady pair of hands. But just how far along the path Martin outlined have ServicePower come in the last six months?

“We are completely thrilled with the progress we have made already in 2017” Martin responds when this question is put to her. “We’ve been supplementing the talent that we already have by bringing in some really great people and we will continue doing that, as it’s allowing us to constantly move forward with the development efforts and plans that we already had in place.”

One thing that has certainly seemed to materialise since the acquisition is a greater outward projection of where their core market lies. For Field Service Solution providers this can be a challenge within itself as field service straddles so many vertical industries, which whilst sharing many shared pain points and challenges, also have their own specific vertical nuances to be considered as well.

Yet whether it’s the result of some business refinement that came out of the acquisition process, or whether it is simply something they are now verbalising that little bit more, ServicePower now seem to have a very clear understanding of their target market.

“All of this [development] is around really expanding our dominance in consumer industries” Martin explained. “We sell B2B but we are enabling the consumer experience for our customers so we are essentially B2B2C primarily, ServicePower is really unique in dominating that positioning. The other field service providers are either more focused on preventative maintenance or other such aspects of the sector. We really are the only field service company that has this domination and focus in the consumer sector and that empower our customers to cultivate consumer experience as they deliver it - whether that be through different service routes or through different types of technicians.”

But how does this translate into actual developments of the solution?

“The new customer experience will incorporate a lot more of web service front end User Interfaces that we are coding with the latest programming standards,” Martin tells us.

It is really designed to give customers a better digital experience whilst also making call centres more productive and for the technicians“It is really designed to give customers a better digital experience whilst also making call centres more productive and for the technicians, the mobile tech enablement is better. We’ve done a huge amount of R&D on how integrated ecosystems deliver a much-improved customer experience but actually it is better for every stakeholder in the service continuum.”

“I firmly believe, and so do many of our customers, that the customer and the tech want the same thing - a great experience,” she continued.

“That is either an experience where things don’t break - because of processes like tailored proactive maintenance or incorporating IoT diagnostics to leverage what you know about the assets, or if they do require repair then we’re facilitating a repair experience that doesn’t necessarily require a truck roll, ideally they’re able to do some remote maintenance and fix it without coming into the client’s home.”

“However, if there does have to be a truck roll, if they do need to come to the client’s home - then they should be making sure they are coming into the home at a time that’s convenient for the customer and with the best knowledge about the asset possible - that is how you facilitate the first-time-fix. So now you are seeing the first few steps to making this all happen and soon you’ll also see some of the additional predictive types of improvements that we’re also rolling out with Smarter Field Service and the new algorithm.”

“In fact, we were recently awarded a new US patent for our quantum annealing work and you’ll definitely be seeing the further evolution of this vision as we move into 2018.”

Now, it was felt in some corners that it was ServicePower’s research work into Quantum Annealing that made them such an attractive proposition for investment in the first place. However, up until now the conversation had centred mainly around theoretical research ServicePower had undertaken.

But if this research work is set to move into the practical realm, then this could truly be a game changer for field service optimisation.

What I think will be the service experience of the future for our customers, is tying in the power of this quantum computing algorithm not just to do the traditional pipe of ‘technician-route-schedule-optimisation’ but also to think about optimisation across the different types of service.“What’s interesting to me and what I think will be the service experience of the future for our customers, is tying in the power of this quantum computing algorithm not just to do the traditional pipe of ‘technician-route-schedule-optimisation’ but also to think about optimisation across the different types of service. For example, having more flexible work queues or how you triage and route the delivery of service for a customer - all through digital enablement,” Martin explains.

“Say for example, a customer hits our new intelligent customer portal - you can send them to a process, you can use IoT diagnostic information, or upload photos or whatever type of triage type of information that you have, then depending on how you assess that you might then send them through to a work queue that is optimised and we can have a dynamic work-flow between back-office activities, call centre activities, technician experiences and triage assessment activities.”

“We’re actively thinking about how to use our quantum annealing algorithm in a more flexible way to optimise the total service experience. What I have seen is that even amongst our customers and prospects that have an IoT diagnostic group, they are not working that information into an integrated service experience.”

“They might have some techs that are trained in that or the might have an elite network that is doing it, but they are not tying it into the overall workflow and optimising a more efficient service experience.”

“Ultimately you only want to send a technician on site when you really have to and as much as possible you want to make sure that when the technician gets on-site they’re able to do what the customer really needs - which is, of course, a first-time-fix.”

This scenario is, of course, the ideal field service win-win-win. The customer is happier because they are back up and running, the engineer is happier because they have a better work-life balance and less angry customers and the board is happier because they are seeing improvements to the bottom line. Indeed, if it is achievable, we are getting close to field service nirvana.

Martin concludes: “We are also looking at how we can use the quantum computing power looking at demand forecasting, capacity planning, and parts information, focusing on consumer industries and how we deliver a great service experience. It is about so much more than just the technology – it is a whole integrated approach that looks at the digital journey with the customer, the call centre and mobile technician enablement.”

It seems that Martin and her team at ServicePower are undeniably still on the right path to deliver the future of customer experience.

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ServicePower Inc. a market leader in field service management solutions, has recently released a new Customer Experience service solution that combines its patented Artificial Intelligence engine with its new Gantt, maps, dashboards, improved technician mobile enablement features, and a new integrated registration, diagnostic, self-scheduling and point-of-sale enabled Customer Portal.

This integrated solution is new to the industry, being the first solution to help field service organisations drive a faster, smarter end-customer experience, while also improving the effectiveness of field technicians and operations teams.

“Customer experience is key. This product release uses the latest in artificial intelligence, real-time engagement and mobility tools to deliver a better, and more digitised experience,” said Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower. “Customers and technicians care about great service, which ServicePower now can deliver it in a differentiated way.  Our suite of solutions eliminate many of the frustrations customers experience when requesting installations, maintenance or service.”

ServicePower drives faster service for the end customer. 

The Customer Experience release empowers end-customer users to instantly book appointments through an integrated self-service portal, on any device, utilizing the patented AI technology. Relying on ServicePower to seamlessly book employed and credentialed contracted field technicians using its smart brokering technology, field service organisations can delight customers with faster response times and a consistent, branded service experience, while providing greater call center efficiencies at the same time. The new release also improves visibility for customers through real-time job status notifications and technician location information, enables customers to upload diagnostic and triage information, and engage with their technician as a trusted advisor. Customers gain improved control over their own experience, uploading and viewing job related information and configuring notifications from the platform.

ServicePower drives a smarter service experience for the mobile field technician.  

With the Customer Experience release the field service team gains a market leading set of capabilities, enabling predictive maintenance, higher repair success rates, and delivery of a more personalised service experience to end-customers. Technicians have access to a more complete customer data set, including all relevant job, customer, asset and part information to deliver higher first time fix rates, while being able to push data downstream, improving manufacturing and long-term product viability for customers.  Extensive product catalogs and pricing capabilities enable technicians to deliver parts, accessories and service offers in person, adding value to each customer interaction.

ServicePower drives a unified experience for service operations. 

The Customer Experience release enables field service operators to streamline field service operations, from entitlement and claims management to scheduling, labor and parts forecasting, reporting and analytics. ServicePower’s modern interfaces and patented AI-scheduling algorithm improves customer processes such as appointment booking, with employed or contracted field personnel, while driving productivity up and costs down.  Responsive, collaborative dashboards improve visibility of operations, driving improvements for both the customer and the technician.

Marne Martin, CEO, ServicePower said “This latest Fall 2017 product release is all about changing the service paradigm to incorporate the latest in AI technology, digitisation, and a great user experience to empower the technician to deliver great service and the end-customer to manage their own engagement with service organisations, when and where they want, with clear visibility of technicians’ visits, so they know what’s going on. Technicians enjoy providing faster, smarter service, so they can delight the customer and provide more value. Our focus is about streamlining operations on a unified platform to provide a better experience for all, continuing to innovate with new features targeted across the entire service ecosystem.”

 

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ServicePower recently hosted an excellent webinar the discussed the Customer Experience release on which you can access here

 

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Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower explains why the connected customer is far more than just a marketing buzz phrase and focuses on the benefits of a truly unified platform...

In today’s consumer-centric economy, companies must do more than manufacture solid products for the home or business. Consumers consider the entire product lifetime value, from point of sale to the service experience, when deciding to buy.

They rely on sources other than brick and mortar showrooms to research and select products, often going to the web and most importantly other consumers’ reviews of products online. The connected consumer is no longer just marketing speak, and customers expect a differentiated service experience also from their connected devices or equipment.

What defines good service?

Whether providing service to a connected home or business, or simply on a faulty appliance or television, inspecting a wrecked automobile or damaged roof, installing a security system or a delivering healthcare supplies, ‘good service’ encompasses more than simply referring a consumer to a call center and then a service employee or contractor who may or may not call to schedule an appointment.

That model started changing in the early 1990’s with the growth in adoption of field service management software. Today, consumers expect more of service providers than scheduling an appointment and waiting for a technician to arrive.

What defines a great service experience?

A great service experience relies on improving the entire service lifecycle by providing Faster, Smarter Service on a Unified platform. The best field service management software supports the entire lifecycle, empowering consumers to digitally engage with you, enabling field technicians to deliver personalised service and providing a unified platform with modular functionality on which service operations can continuously optimise ongoing service delivery.

Let’s discuss how each below offers a digital, connected process that is differentiated from that of old.

Digital Engagement

Consumer engagement is critical to faster service. Providing an intelligent digital experience which enables customers to book appointments at their convenience with your trained and credentialed workforce, check status, communicate with technicians and track their locations is expected in today’s digital economy.

You also need one place that diagnostic data and added triage information available from the customer or the connected device or piece of equipment, service history, asset information that is easily available for both the customer and the technician. The days are gone where you want to send a technician out for something that can be handled remotely. Likewise, customers want to do more online, such as registering product purchases, buying additional products and services, and posting reviews of the service experience.

 

Consumers can research purchases and buy online, right now. Their expectations for service post-sale is exactly the same, and they also want their service experience to be ideally such that they want to buy more from the product or service brand.

The best field service management solutions easily engage consumers where, when and how they desire with the service contract provider.

Technician Enablement

Field service technicians, insurance adjusters, installers, delivery personnel- they are the heart and the face of the post-sale experience. As service industry employees, it is in their very nature to want to do well by your customers, to be faster and smarter at their jobs, so that they can delight every customer and walk away feeling accomplished. Enable them with the tools to do so as generally speaking, customers and technicians want the same thing – more up-time and better first time resolution rates.

Field service management and mobile software enables your teams to deliver faster, smarter service. Customer engagement software provides an end-to-end digital experience.

Artificial Intelligence-based scheduling software automatically positions techs for success, selecting the best resource for every job, and scheduling shorter, realistic service windows that techs can achieve, making service delivery faster for consumers. IoT integration revolutionises the service model, allowing field techs to proactively service and maintain products before they fail, and predicting future service requirements such that service contracts can be used to extend product life-cycles beyond the traditional break-fix model.

 

Mobile software with access to assets, inventory, service history, information and expert resources makes techs smarter at every appointment, armed to resolve issues through personalized service delivery, and adding value for consumers through additional services which improve the long term value of every product.

Unified Platform

Field service and mobile workforce management software set the stage for faster, smarter service delivery with a Unified - and integrated - platform.

Functional groups ranging from manufacturing and quality, to IT, marketing and sales, customer service and field service delivery require a unified platform which supports the full customer service lifecycle.

A unified platform improves your organisations ability to deliver faster, smarter services with employees, contractors or both, increasing service capacity and decreasing time to service. It can also standardises onsite process with configurable mobility, while decreasing the cost of service with schedule optimisation and dynamic, logic based contractor dispatching. No longer do you want to be making myopic decisions that don’t enhance your brand and the service experience for your customers.

 

A unified platform improves the process of performing service on your behalf for contractors, creating a faster, smarter model through integrated warranty claims management, which also reduces claim costs and fraud, ultimately better protecting warranty reserves.

A unified platform is the basis on which a great consumer experience is executed.

Transformational Service

The customers’ service experience with your organisation can be transformational.

Delivering faster, smarter service using a unified platform enables your field technicians to drive a better experience for your customers.

Customers experiencing great service become your most effective marketing and sales tools, loudly evangelizing about their experience through positive reviews, increasing sales, brand loyalty and long term service revenue.

ServicePower’s field service management solution empowers any organisation with a mobile workforce to deliver Faster, Smarter Service, while providing a Unified experience for customers, field technicians and your organisation.

We also offers a fully managed network of 3rd party service providers to enable rapid and high-quality on-demand “spill-over” servicing at peak times and in hard-to-reach locations across North America and the Europe.

 

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Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower describes what field service management professionals should expect from their solution providers and offers some excellent intel on how to pick a partner that is right for your business...

Customer service, customer satisfaction, customer experience. Those are more than buzz word, more than trends in field service.

Field service organisations have recognised that to achieve the highest levels of retention and overall growth in consumers, they must focus on providing the highest levels of service. High service levels may mean faster service, less break-downs, higher first time fix in the field depending on the given industry and customer expectations, but regardless, the focus needs to be on what the customer wants.

We frequently find that the account management or sales organisations which hold the customer relationship budget, aren’t engaging as effectively as they could be with the service side of the organisation to put existing or new technology to use. Customer experience is about more than the CRM!

Using the latest in technology and mobile workforce management software, field service organisations are able to create a sales to service experience that is game changing and seamless.

Using robust integrations or other sorts of data inputs to take customer information in, utilise intelligent online portals which customers can use to engage, schedule, communicate, track service appointments and even purchase additional services makes service events a walk in the park versus a departure down the crevasse. Artificial intelligence, IoT and schedule optimisation software can improve the service experience through proactive services, real time appointment booking, higher schedule adherence and increased first time fix rates.

 

They can also facilitate scheduling your most important or more profitable customers first. Mobile software can enable field techs with the data, access and processes to delight each and every customer on every service call that mobile techs are truly enabled to be experts for every customer and asset by technology, not just their memory.

The question is, why should a field service organisation expect less than the best ‘customer experience’ itself from its FSM vendor?

Solution deployment

Field service management solutions are used by a wide range of organisations across many different verticals. The best FSM software should be configurable enough to support standard service processes, while also supporting processes unique to particular business requirement- without unexpected development.

And though business in general has become more accepting of cloud deployments, due to improved security, increased power of distributed computing and reduced costs related to hosted infrastructure, there remain industries, particularly in insurance, healthcare and finance, which cannot and will not migrate to a cloud-based deployment. The most versatile FSM vendors will not force migration to a newly built cloud platform simply to comply with its own roadmap, nor sunset functionality without providing similar, better options.

Look for vendors which can support your business today and in the future, based your requirements, not theirs.

Support

I find it ironic that with so much focus on improving the end-customer experience that so many FSM vendors in fact provide poor customer service to the field service organisation which they support.

Customer satisfaction isn’t solely focused on the end user. It starts with the sales process and moves through deployment, validation and recurring process improvement. The best FSM vendors define a solid picture of the desired end state for a deployment and then build a robust SOW around the deployment such that the intended outcome is achieved and improved upon without unanticipated cost or time overruns.

Evolving business requirements and changing consumer expectations dictate a continuously improved mobile workforce solution. To expect less than the incorporation of emerging technologies, new features and improved deployment options is ridiculous. Expect more. Rely on your FSM partner to proactively provide a better solution to support you and your customers, for the long term.

Value add

Deploying a software solution and walking away shouldn’t be the business norm. Nor is simply providing annual software upgrades the only ‘value added service’ you should expect. After all, you’re probably paying for support and maintenance. That’s what the fees are for!

Value added services are what increases your ability to provide the best customer experience to your customer, and in our mind, are really what define the best customer experience for your organisation.

The best FSM vendors can provide not only software solutions which improve your ability to execute the best service experience, but also your utilisation of the software, your labour strategy and possibly your labour capacity.

 

ServicePower’s team of experts excels at post sale value add.

Our teams, with an annual tenure of 15+ years working in software and field service management, work with your field service and IT teams to fine tune your deployment, prove your business case, improve performance, and plan for the evolution of your business and upgrades.

ServicePower also uniquely provides workforce strategy planning and outsourced managed services both in North America and EMEA.

Our client success teams have been on the ground, managing employed technicians and contractors for some of the biggest field service organisations in the world. We can lend that expertise to your teams in terms of evaluating your workforce, optimising your resources and executing a plan to integrate a contracted workforce element to maintain and improve your service levels.

We also offer a fully managed network of 3rd party service providers to enable rapid and high-quality on-demand “spill-over” servicing at peak times and in hard-to-reach locations across North America and the Europe.

ServicePower considers its clients partners, not ‘contracts’. We enter into relationships with the expectation that we’ll be our client partners trusted advisors, trusted providers of the best possible customer experience for themselves and their end customers.

 

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Research conducted by Bill Pollock, president and principal consulting analyst at Strategies For GrowthSM (SFGSM) reveals that selecting a Field Service Management (FSM) solution often requires months – if not years – of due diligence to reduce the “long list” of potential vendors and solutions down to a carefully selected “short list” of possibilities...

Making a decision based on your own research is often a daunting task, collating and interpreting RFP information and sorting live demonstration ‘vaporware’ from actual, live software capabilities.

The following provides an additional set of information that your peers in the industry consider fundamental to the decision – data your team can use to make a final, intelligent choice that grows with your business into the future.

The results from SFGSM’s 2017 Field Service Management Benchmark Survey clearly identify four specific factors cited by half (or nearly half) of the survey respondent base when making their respective FSM vendor and solution decisions, namely:

• 50% Prefer a solution that interfaces with Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• 47% Prefer to work with a single provider of Field Service functionality
• 47% Prefer a solution that is intuitive and easy to train on
•  45% Prefer to invest in a solution that fosters Sales and Service collaboration

Another 35% also cite their preference for a solution that rolls out quickly.

While each (or all) of these factors may have contributed in some way to your decision-making process, your final decision is likely to rely more on how the FSM solution you choose will address your greatest challenges, provide the greatest opportunities and benefits for services delivery improvement, and allow you to compete head-to-head against your strongest competitors.

Compounding the importance of your selection, the chosen solution must also provide the ability to improve existing customer satisfaction levels, and increase the services organisation’s contribution to the company’s bottom line. Quite an undertaking, to be sure; but certainly doable – but, only with the most effective and robust FSM solution in place, and a full complement of vendor resources to support it over time.

Functionalities to Look For When Selecting & Evaluating an FSM Vendor/Solution

Gartner cites six categories of FSM enablement that should be included in any (i.e., every) FSM solution – at least every FSM solution that is strong enough to run the entire organisation’s services business. They are:

1. Demand Management – including customer portals, multichannel customer communications, IoT integration, triage support, field work order/appointment request, field quoting, field parts sourcing, ticketing system integration and long-cycle work requests.
2. Work Planning – including forecasting, scheduling optimisation, parts demand planning, purchasing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) integration, customer communications and third-party service enablement.
3. Technician Enablement (Mobile) – including Global Positioning System (GPS) integration, routing, equipment history/site details, social collaboration, customer communications, knowledge base/work instructions, purchasing & quoting/sales and tool management.
4. Work Order Debrief – including work order financial information, customer forms, site evidence, equipment updates, recommendations, payment collection and customer surveys.
5. Operations – including invoicing and price books, installed equipment manager, maintenance agreement management, maintenance plans and quoting, warranty management & warranty claims management, revenue recognition enablement, reverse logistics management, depot repair, equipment supersession, engineering change requests and fleet management.
6. Analytics and Integration – including field service performance management; cross-functional predictive analytics; alerts, notifications and gamification; and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and GPS integration.

While most vendors will say they offer all of these functionalities within their FSM solution offerings, it is more than likely that there will be significant gaps in key categories such as work planning, technician enablement, and analytics and integration (among others).

However, each of these areas will be critical to the overall enablement that your FSM solution is needed to provide and, therefore, must be included in the FSM solution that is ultimately selected and implemented.

Marne Martin, CEO, ServicePower, a leading provider of field service and hybrid mobile workforce management solutions, agrees that all six of these areas must be addressed in any FSM solution, noting “For organisations looking for a single vendor, end-to-end solution with an easy integration process to existing CRM or ERP packages, ServicePower is a great fit.”

“ServicePower supports a seamless integration mechanism to any CRM, including the launch of an App for the Salesforce AppExchange and new prebuilt connectors to most major software packages.”

 

“Our solution provides a full complement of mobile workforce management functionality, from consumer entitlement, to schedule optimisation and contractor dispatching, work order management, enterprise mobility, asset, inventory and contract management, and 360° BI (i.e., Business Intelligence).”

She further adds that, “While most FSM vendors also offer ‘scheduling’, ServicePower’s solution is the only one on the market designed to improve the customer experience though real time AI (i.e., Artificial Intelligence) and robust mobile functionality, while streamlining service operations with integrated hybrid workforce management functionality.

SFGSM’s survey results validate the effort ServicePower has expended in extending our solution to include the full spectrum of functionality required to manage a mobile operation, from entitlement through a plug and play intelligent consumer portal to warranty management and BI.”

Making the Final Decision – It’s Time to Decide!

The Cloud has normalised the playing field for most FSM vendors and their customers.

The options are many, the costs have come down (i.e., through the proliferation of the subscription basis model) and the FSM solution alternatives are “all over the place” with respect to the comparative breadth and depth of product functionality, strategic partnerships, FSM vendor acquisitions, “new” product roll-outs and the like.

However, in deciding which is the best fit for your field service operation, today and for the long term, one thing remains clear – the field service operations at your organisation will remain the central focus of your role and responsibility.

Why would you want to go with a vendor that doesn’t provide it all?

 

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Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower, discusses how the “intelligent” service organisation is able to meet increasing customer expectations whilst simultaneously driving increases in revenue and brand loyalty...

Productivity, for field service operations, is the means to an end of delighting both your customer and the C suite in your company.

Improved customer satisfaction and increased revenue are the holy grail of any field service department. If you are also able to do these two things using a hybrid workforce, your internal metrics and profitability of your service organisation can also improve.

Large enterprise organisations have long understood the value of artificial intelligence algorithms embedded within mobile workforce management technology, in its ability to improve productivity and efficiency of staffed mobile workers, as well as its ability to provide field teams with the process and information needed while on site to resolve issues in a single visit.

The power of big data, cloud computing, and machine learning are all proven to reap benefits of more productive, least costly schedules which improve overall metrics and customer-centric KPIs like schedule adherence and mean time to schedule. Service priorities can also be driven off of more than SLAs and start looking to customer profitability, propensity to purchase additional services, and a number of other emerging customer-centric areas that service organisations are starting to focus more on.

 

In the last decade, more and more of these same organisations have taken hold of the additional benefits of intelligently integrating contracted mobile workers into the labour mix, as well as the ability for customers to schedule into the time slots that a service organisation or manufacturer want to make available.

Using contractors expands capacity, in terms of availability, skills or geographical coverage, field service organisations can provide service when and where their customers require, in a manner that’s more consistent with an employee with a branded van.

In an “intelligent” service organisation, service is enabled to meet the customer’s expectations, drive increases in revenue, brand loyalty, as well as efficient capacity planning.

By using the available technology, plus a hybrid workforce model that looks to coverage and demand to assess what technicians you need where, the type, skills and training such that you can begin blending employed with contracted workforces, the next level of productivity beyond that of your peers can be achieved.

Field Service experts know service. But what can expertise in field service bring to complimentary sectors that are used only to point to point travel optimisation and not schedule or priority based optimisation.

The fact of the matter is that any business with mobile workers whether service, sales, delivery, inspection, home health care, etc. are dearly in need of the ability to drive improved schedule prioritisation, compliance and productivity.

Even financial services companies with work allocated to the back office can benefit from optimisation.

 

With that goal in mind, ServicePower recently released Boost, on the Salesforce AppExchange.

Boost provides any organisation with mobile workers beyond field service, to healthcare, financial services and sales teams, the ability to continue using their Salesforce application to manage customers and create work orders for when field based services, of any type, are needed. Then, using Boost, pass that list of work orders or tasks to ServicePower which uses our patented Artificial intelligence-based optimisation technology to produce a more productive, least costly schedule.

Boost makes schedule optimisation go far beyond only travel optimisation as it does both to achieve greater improvements in productivity, capacity and schedule compliance available to every organisation, easily, from the Salesforce AppExchange.

Start moving beyond just the CRM to after-sales service to prioritise your visits by propensity to buy, profitability on orders, or any other customer metric you feel important.

It’s also worthy to note that true optimisation is not geo-productivity or Uber-like logic. Products that claim geo-productivity or Uber capabilities do provide a mechanism to schedule a resource when a customer raises a hand for a service. So, is response time better in this scenario?

Yes, in so much as you have a worker in the field already sitting idle, you can see their proximity on a map, and send them to the new customer. It doesn’t limit the schedule costs, because it’s not taking into account the entire daily schedule. It’s reactive scheduling, which is nice if you have slack  capacity, but slack capacity costs money.

On demand scheduling is great, from a PR perspective. It doesn’t offer the proactive services customers expect from providers today.

Mobile workforce management software with optimisation does.

Boost, in particular, provides more than a point on a map. It provides an easy route to a real optimised schedule, using your existing Salesforce implementation, regardless of whether you’re managing 25 mobile workers or 1,000.

Find Boost on the Salesforce AppExchange at: http://sforce.co/2p4mKV2

 

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There has been considerable Mergers and Acquisitions activity amongst field service management solution providers across the last eighteen months. At the same time we have seen a rapid rise in the adoption of servitization based business models, which has driven a move away from traditional break-fix SLA based maintenance contracts to contracts based around guarantees of uptime and availability.

Does this provide both the opportunity and the need for the development of new breed of field based platforms - the Service ERP? Kris Oldland, FSN Editor-in-Chief, reports...

For as long as there has been Field Service Management (FSM) Solutions there has always been a conversation around how well a solution integrates with other key business systems in the B2B world it has largely been about connecting through an ERP system, in B2C the same conversation was centred around bolting on a field service solution onto a CRM.

Indeed for many years use of a dedicated FSM system could be avoided entirely either by some clever and hugely laborious recoding of the functionality of an existing tool such as SAP or Oracle for example, or alternatively some equally ingenious means of reworking existing processes and relabelling existing form fields to find a semi-workable solution.

Something a bit W Heath-Robinson that could involved going from 'a' to 'j' via 'e' all just to get to 'b', but something that kind of did the job.

 

However, with the advent of Cloud computing and the democratising impact of the emergence of the SaaS revenue model we have seen a far greater and more widespread adoption of FSM systems from companies of all sizes in all sectors.

In turn, this increased use of FSM systems has driven further product development and feature enhancements in what is a relatively small but Undoubtedly fiercely competitive sector.

Meanwhile, we have also seen service, and in particular field service rise in importance amongst the executive boards in all areas as the world begins to adapt to the twenty first century and it’s service centric, on-demand driven business models. Uber and Amazon are thrown around constantly as examples of best practice (even though the former have yet to break even apparently) in today’s data driven world, and are very much tools of their time.

Closer to home within FSM systems, indeed the gig-economy is one of a number of new twenty first century additions to the field service equation - as are challenges of an ageing workforce, dealing with a customer base more empowered and more vocal (via the joy of social media) than ever before, plus the emergence of game changing technology such as IoT and Augmented Reality.

With the investment in solutions at an all time high, we are seeing an emerging race to become the dominate platform for the increasingly lucrative and important field service sector begin to heat up with a series of FSM providers including IFS, ServicePower, ServiceMax, ClickSoftware and Telogis all being acquired - and the story in the large part is very much the same from each of them - the investment is intended to help them get to their technology (and sales and marketing) ready to take a podium finish.

This of course is driving development in terms of technology, further and faster than ever before.

Indeed, functionality within FSM systems has now become widespread and diverse that the standard terminology is shifting to a full ‘end-to-end’ platforms. Solutions that not only include field service management elements such as scheduling and job reporting but also incorporate wider spectrums such as parts and inventory management, asset management and reverse logistics Have we finally reached a point where we can see the solutions that are essentially today’s FSM systems ready to step out of the shadows of their business software cousins CRM and ERP and stand shoulder to shoulder with them as an equally valid business system?

 

With all the investment in the FSM sector are we reaching a point where FSM systems will no longer be just a humble add on for ERP but a mission critical service and business delivery platform within it’s own right. You use your ERP for product-based activities you FSM system for all service and aftermarket related activities with a CRM, and financial package sitting across the perhaps? Of course, the likes of Gartner and other such important acronym makers would argue (and they’d have a point to be fair) that such a system would be probably a bit more than FSM so we would need a new bunch of letters to put together.

My humble suggestion would be Service ERP (sERP) but this may cause confusion with those pesky marketeer types and their Search Engine Results Pages (hence why I went with a small s at the front), but quite frankly other than needing something to refer to in this article, I’ll let the real industry makers work that one out.

The important thing is the concept - which I genuinely think is the logical conclusion of all this talk around FSM platforms.

We are at a level now with integration and cloud technology, where things just talk to each other naturally, or at least they are supposed to and that is definitely the path we’re heading down.

 

With this in mind, I believe the route we are heading down will lead us to a point where companies will look at their mix of business systems and say OK my ERP is SAP (for example) and that handles my production and manufacturing side of a business.

And then my sERP/FSM system - which includes scheduling, a mobile piece (including Augmented Reality), customer management (including CSAT and other customer engagement pieces), parts management, reverse logistics, asset management (including IoT connectivity) and anything and everything else required for running the service and aftermarket side of the business - is in place to run that part of our operations.

Essentially, for a company that only offers third party service, the sERP platform could be all they need as long as it included a light CRM embedded in there as well.

From a field service management perspective there has always been a feeling that FSM has always been the bridesmaid and would never be the bride, that we would always be the slightly poorer relations feeding off the table crumbs of our close, yet infinitely more important cousins in the ERP and CRM world.

But given the rising growth in importance of service in the global business ecosystem, given the amount of Tier A companies shifting their business models, at least in part, to a servitized business model where delivery of uptime replaces traditional break-fix SLAs and sloppy service will result in direct loss of revenue – it is of little surprise that those companies offering the tools to ensure that service is delivered as efficiently and productively as possible have become a major focus for investment of late.

As mentioned above FSM is rapidly gaining in recognition as an important tool within the business software ecosystem, the question is just where will that rise to prominence end – so is the prospect of FSM ultimately being the opposite side of the coin to ERP likely?

Or is it just a short-term bubble as the world realigns itself to a more service orientated future and the major ERP players re-interpret their platforms to add more attention and focus to service related activities and how to optimise those into their own mix?

 

I recently discussed this conversation at length with Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower, one of the key organisations within the FSM sector that have recently attracted significant Private Equity investment.

It is interesting to note that as with the private equity investment in both ClickSoftware and IFS, the intention does not appear to either asset strip the technology and look for a quick buck or prime the business for a bigger sale in the near future - which is so often the case of such investments. In fact, in all three cases it seems that the goal is to plough further resources into R&D and marketing to help each respective company flourish. In the case of ServicePower it is very much a case of a boost in resources to help meet what Martin sees as their own longer term vision a lot quicker than they could have done so organically.

Indeed, Martin’s comments on the matter are almost an exact echo of what Paul Massey Managing Director, IFS and Dave Yarnold, CEO, ServiceMax told me when I spoke to them both about the recent investments within their own businesses.

Yes, the cynic in me might see the similar sound bites as nothing more than holding up a business-as-normal-here flag to allay any customer fears and perhaps even more importantly those of prospective customers. Yet, I don’t think that is the case. At the last IFS world conference, Massey (and indeed CEO Alastair Sorbie) made a big point about Field Service being one of the top three priorities for the business in the wake of investment from EQT, given they are an ERP provider with a lot of other areas of focus within their business, this in itself was a significant endorsement of the vibrancy of the sector.

Similarly, when speaking with Yarnold about why GE Digital was the right home for ServiceMax, the conversation was very much focussed around how having access to both the technology of the Predix platform but also importantly the brand power of GE to open doors at the C-Suite level of enterprise, was a significant factor.

Close to a Billion $USD will certainly be part of the reason GE Digital were able to bring the market leader of an increasingly important technology market into their fold, but one also suspects that the opportunity for Yarnold to further expand his vision and ambition for the system he and two others launched in California just over a decade ago was another fundamental element to why GE Digital was the right destination.

Indeed he even commented at the “I didn’t just want to see us end up as part of another CRM/ERP system”.

So did Martin agree with my assertions that FSM would become equally as powerful and important as CRM and ERP in the future?

“I believe so, but with a few caveats” she replied

“If you think about what a CRM does, in it’s most basic, a lot of CRMs are structured around loading in your customer data, their buying patterns, and their contacts – so if you have sales people that churn then you have all that data still. At it’s most simplistic that is what a CRM covers at the basic level. That is pretty straight forward. And if they want all of the other functionalities of a more robust CRM provider then they can pay for it from one of the million and one CRM providers.”

“It’s the same as when you think of a typical ERP - a lot of that is built around finance and accounting packages there’s a million good finance and accounting packages out there and we’re not trying to become a finance - what we are interested in is the use cases around a mobile worker.”

“Give the mobile worker the tools to do everything they need to do in their business. So that they can access what they need to know about the customer, about the asset, where parts are, what they need to do on the  service contracts and so on.”

“The potential for a lot of this to be completed within a standalone FSM platform – that incorporates the spare parts management, warranty management, service sales CRM alongside the more traditional aspects of FSM such as scheduling and parts management etc is certainly there.”

 

Of course, one of the big shifts that we have seen in recent years is the power of data to transform the way we operationalise our business as Business Intelligence platforms powered by the Cloud, IoT and Big Data give field service organisations greater visibility into both their customers and their own operations more than ever before.

At large we are seeing a seismic shift in how field service is measured, both in terms of operational and success metrics.

“That’s very true.” Martin agreed when I put this point to her.

“The field service industry really is in a state of evolution. It’s on the verge of transforming itself into both a customer centric focus looking to bring the power of customer relationship management into the field, while also incorporating technology around machine learning, Internet of Things, and more actionable insights from data.”

“That’s also what is attracting so much acquisition activity. To get to the next level, any business with field based resources must invest in technology and business process consulting to move forward. Mobile workforce management is key to any organisation performing activities away from a plant or office.”

“We are still seeing companies at differing levels of business or use case complexity, some still moving from paper or less sophisticated platforms and others ready to move beyond their current technology to the next level technology in order to incorporate actionable insights and efficiencies from emerging technologies like wearables and IoT, the power of big data, and machine learning are also now realities. Whereas in the past they were nebulous concepts, their ability to be incorporated into mobile workforce software is reality today.”

Perhaps at the heart of the current spate of rapid development within our sector is the fact that all of these emerging technologies can be combined to solve traditional challenges. Whilst they can bring value to service operations by themselves it is when harnessed together alongside existing technologies that we are seeing true leaps forward.

“Each [technology] can be used in conjunction with products like ours to improve productivity, and reduce schedule costs, improving the overall operational metrics, and of course the power of cloud computing is what enables all this to be provided with greater flexibility and value to the customer,” adds Martin.

 

But as we mentioned earlier there is a whiff of chicken and egg in the question as to whether business models are driving a need for improved technology or vice versa. Martin also recognises this fact.

“It is key to recognise that the shift isn’t only about technology adoption, the industry is moving quickly towards a more consumer-centric model where the customer experience is the overriding measure of success,” she explains.

“KPIs like schedule adherence and mean time to schedule continue to be indicative of customer satisfaction, however, up-time, customer value, and propensity to purchase additional services are emerging as more dominant, and are increasingly where focus and resources are applied, to improve profitability.”

“Customer relationship management is about more than getting your sales people to sell to your accounts. It has to be about how you delight the customer after the purchase of the equipment or service contract so that they stay with you, and come back for more.”

“We have also seen so much investment into call centre technology, but in reality, customers don’t want to talk to a call centre if they don’t have to. So technologies which improve the experience, like self-service customer portals which offer the ability to book real time appointments, monitor status, and interact with scheduled mobile workers before and during the visit, integrated knowledge management, machine learning, and actionable insights are what drive additional or longer term revenue, driving profitability. Customer satisfaction and profitability are the new reality for field service organisations.”

So the billion dollar question for Martin and her peers in the industry is has FSM become about more than just field service now? So where does she see the industry moving now?

Indeed, where are ServicePower heading now?

“As I said, to get to the next level, any business with resources that travel beyond a given plant or office must invest in technology to move towards improved profitability and efficiency. An integrated platform is also necessary in order to not run a business in silos, but actually with the greatest intelligence related to maximising the overall performance,” she replied.

As Adam Smith said, it is about labour, capital – and now technology. Staff, parts (if applicable), and technology all need to work together for a common goal. This is also why mobile workforce technology should be on top of mind for the C-suite. CRM and ERP technology isn’t enough to have a great performing organisation if you have workers in the field”

“Mobile workforce management technology therefore isn’t only for organisations which offer field service, traditionally thought of as repair or maintenance. Any mobile worker’s productivity can be improved, the customer experience can be improved, while those traditional metrics like cost and mean time to schedule can be improved at the same time.”

“What I see often is that not only does technology have a role to play, but also equally critically, companies must be looking at business and field processes, and how to use the data within an organisation to agree actionable insights.”

“By that definition, the addressable market for mobile workforce technology expands exponentially, including any organisation with feet on the street. Consider the Salesforce ecosystem. Salesforce users range from traditional wrench turners, to home healthcare, sale forces offered by big box home retailers, pharmaceutical reps, to financial planners, government, and housing and facilities. The list of businesses which rely on people delivering ‘services’ in the field is enormous and expanding.”

 

“Mobile workforce management can be used in every one of those verticals to improve the service delivery process, improve operational metrics and delight the customer, which in turn drives additional revenue. It also when applied with the customer facing technologies as well, can bring the power of the CRM to the customer you want to retain and make another investment in your equipment or services after the point of sale. Only mobile workforce management takes your brand and your people to your current customers in a way that CRM and ERP does not.”

In conclusion she adds the final statement “The opportunity for our market is exponential.”

And I wholeheartedly concur with her on this.

We may see a few new acronyms pop up in the next few years but the future of FSM, in whatever new guise it may take, looks to be in a good place.

 

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Kris Oldland deliver's his editorial leader in issue 17 of Field Service News where our theme was the ever changing nature of field service...

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Field Service News subscribers are entitled to our bi-monthly magazine in both print and digital versions. Subscription is free for field service professionals click here to apply for a complimentary industry professional subscription now and get a digital copy of issue 17 sent straight to your inbox instantly

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Now any regular readers of this column will know that I’m a big fan of change.

Not that I think change needs to be wholesale and sweeping. No I subscribe much more to the journey of continuous improvement method of change. I like the concept of constant refinement, of being in constant Beta.

As a result of such an outlook I do tend to focus on innovation quite closely, which is a happy coincidence that there seems to be constant innovation within the field service sector too.

So I often talk about changes in our industry. Changes in business processes such as the shift towards servitization or the concept of crowd service

Changes in technology such as the emergence of Augmented Reality and IOT as two highly credible emerging technologies that the field service industry must embrace.

Even, the changing skill-profile of the field engineer as an incoming generation replaces an ageing outgoing one.

But the change referred to in this edition of Field Service News is actually a completely different type of change and for once I found myself wondering if such seismic change within our industry is good for us.

That change is amongst the solution providers, the pioneers and innovators that helped usher in so much of the revolution we are currently experiencing.

 

In the last 18 months we have seen most of the big names in field service  management solutions being acquired. Tesseract, IFS, ServiceMax, ClickSoftware, Telogis, and most recently ServicePower have all been bought up and that’s just a few from the top of my head.

There are many, many more.

The thing is that all of these companies had a common thread that allowed them to thrive in our industry. They were all independent companies who truly understood and cared about field service.

If I recall correctly the redesign of Solarvista a few years back took 3 MILLION lines of code, more than it takes to send a shuttle up to the space station, there are far easier sectors to enter, far easier places to make money as a software provider.

But it was the passion to help drive service forwards that was at the heart of many of these companies’ success.

Colin Brown former MD and founder at Tesseract for example came from an engineer background himself, so he got the challenges that companies were facing and was able to tailor that into a series of industry first solutions (i.e. first windows based solution, first browser based solution, first SaaS solution).

Similarly, Dave Yarnold, CEO at ServiceMax has spoken at great length about the importance of service - even going as far as to described ServiceMax once as a Field Service Enablement company who happen to use technology to do so.

And while Yarnold, remains on board in ServiceMax’s new guise as part of the GE Brand one just hopes that is infectious enthusiasm for great service delivery isn’t diluted by being in a bigger pond.

Indeed, the message from almost all camps is that it is business as usual just with bigger expectations, and quicker developments. On the surface it all sounds great and I must admit that it is fantastic to see the field service sector become such hot property globally - it’s just when so many great independent companies are bought within quick succession of each other it does make me a little nervous.

All Change maybe fine, just not at once, is all I’m asking.

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In this brief sample form the Q&A element of a Field Service News webinar presented in Partnership with ServicePower, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News and Paul Lucas, EMEA Sales, ServicePower discuss whether companies upgrading Field Service Management Solutions see as big a benefit as they would have when they first implemented a FSM system...

 

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