ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘software-and-apps-2’ CATEGORY

The Apprentice winner 2015, Joseph Valente, adopts BigChange field service technology to springboard growth at his Impra-Gas plumbing business.

The winner of the BBC’s The Apprentice 2015 competition, Joseph Valente,  has selected BigChange's JobWatch platform to accelerate the growth of Impra-Gas, the plumbing business he owns 50:50 with Lord Sugar.

Impra-Gas is on a mission to revolutionise the plumbing industry, using the latest technology to offer people a faster, higher quality service.  The company looked at a number of software companies and after a rigorous tender process chose BigChange’s all-in-one Mobile Workforce Management system.

The team at Impra-Gas are totally focused on scaling the business, whilst delivering industry leading levels of service and convenience for customers. The paperless app-based JobWatch system allows Joseph’s management team to manage the entire operation from quotation all the way through to invoice, with integrated planning, management, job scheduling and real-time vehicle and resource tracking. The system also ensures consistent service quality and compliance with an app that guides plumbers through critical checks and procedures.

JobWatch is also enabling Impra-Gas to offer a seamless and convenient service experience for customers, with real-time booking on the company’s website as well as on a mobile app. Customers receive live updates that confirm the estimated time of arrival and on completion of work can make mobile payments. Automated electronic job cards and gas safety certificates ensure essential safety documents are safety stored and recorded.

BigChange founder and CEO Martin Port added, “BigChange exists to help ambitious businesses like Impra-Gas scale quickly, giving them everything they need to run a dynamic, profitable and customer focused operation. We’re really excited to have Joseph on board as a customer. His team will be receiving the same 5-star service and support that is there for every one of our customers.”

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Enterprise software company Pegasystems Inc. has unveiled Pega Field Service, a new CRM application that allows organisations to extend customer service capabilities to their field technicians and agents, improving customer service while reducing operational costs.

The out-of-the-box functionally enables field service organisations to unify data and processes across the front and back office for a 360-degree view of the customer. With predictive analytics and guided interactions, customer service reps will always know the next best action to take in real time based on a complete assessment of each situation.

A centralised management control panel monitors activity from customer service reps on the phone through scheduling and dispatching technicians in the field. The fully integrated mobile app allows field workers to efficiently complete their job with features such as digital signature capture to confirm completed work in real time and barcode scanning to ensure the right equipment is matched to the right part every time.

Pega Field Service is built on the Pega 7 platform, which incorporates improved mobile functionality including more responsive touch interactions. There is also support for larger data sets in offline mode which allows users to access data such as entire parts catalogues or full customer lists on the go.

The software can be customized to meet the requirements of specific verticals such as home inspections and appraisals, broadband installations for telecoms engineers and emergency services and equipment repair and maintenance.

“With the introduction of Pega Field Service, Pegasystems is building on a decade of experience creating field service apps for many of the world’s leading service providers,” said Kerim Akgonul, Senior Vice President of Products. “Now with Pega Field Service, we can provide a turnkey way for organisations to transform their field service operations and improve the customer experience while at the same time reducing operating costs.”

 

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In Part One of this Industry Leader interview, Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax, spoke about the company's rapid growth and the technology underpinning that rise to prominence. In Part Two, he talks to Marc Ambasna-Jones about the the changing world of field service and  the 4Ps he considers essential to success.

Service is not just considered a cost centre any longer, Yarnold points out. "Service people are getting involved in growth discussions. So you will have to know what is going with your customers and all these products will have to be calibrated and serviced and this means a field service tech is needed to go do it.

More of service will be on manufacturers now and they will want it because it’s an opportunity to evolve selling product into a service business model. Instead of just selling licenses and products up front, you now have powerful long term relationships because you offer upgrades and so on. There is more tie-in. It also gives manufacturers longer, recession-proof, financial models and you will see more field techs as a result.

The reality of course is that no one knows for sure how service will develop. All you can do is support the service teams with a set of tools that make them more central to the ongoing success of a business."

People, Products, Processes and Promise

FSN: While this sounds great, surely there are gaps in the ServiceMax arsenal?

DY: “All this stuff is deep. When you dive into the four Ps - People, Products, Processes and Promise - (ServiceMax’s key message), there’s just an incredible amount of depth that you can add into the platform. We built it with the 4 Ps in mind, so we can expand. I don’t see any huge gaps but the more we get into it, the more we peel back the onion and discover more about our customers’ needs, the more we can develop new features and pump out capabilities.”

FSN: Is Product IQ is an example of that?

DY: Yes, Product IQ enables companies to uncover, track and interact with their installed base and make it come alive.

How many companies have a handle on their installed base and their system of record for all their customer assets? Very few. It’s a big gap – all these companies growing through acquisitions with all these different sets of data in different systems. It’s not one of the first things that gets harmonised so we are hoping we can help.[quote float="left"]How many companies have a handle on their installed base and their system of record for all their customer assets? Very few.

 

Selling on Salesforce

FSN: Looking back, how important has Salesforce been to ServiceMax and what is the relationship now? They must look at you and think, ‘I wish we’d done that?’

“Well, yes, they have the platform on which to build but we have spent a lot of money and time to build ServiceMax. It’s taken years to understand the needs of a market, which is one of the reasons why it’s not been disrupted previously. From a system perspective it has all the complexities of an ERP system, multiple functions having to work together, multiple data sources, a lot of integration points.

Plus it has all the complexities of a CRM system in that you have to deliver a customer-facing app to enable customer-facing folks to do their jobs. So, it’s got to be simple, easy to use, easy to interact with and on top of that it has to be disconnected and mobile.

That of course means solving the problem of data synchronisation – you are talking about one of the most complex enterprise application domains ever – so it’s not trivial to go and build one of these.

“In terms of Salesforce, it has been an awesome enabling technology because we go into service organisations that are tasked with taking care of massive customer bases and they are not going to put that at risk. It’s reputation and a significant revenue stream, so organisations must be super conservative.

We are riding in on one of the best, well established cloud platforms and in many cases already tried and tested and used for sales and marketing, so building on the Salesforce platform has given us a tremendous head start. It’s allowed us to get over a lot of hurdles that we would have otherwise had to face in a very conservative target market.”[quote float="right"]Service people are in front of customers every day. They are generating revenue and performing this incredibly vital function. Why does nobody think about those guys?

 

FSN: ServiceMax growth has been impressive. Does it reflect the growing importance of the service industry?

“When we were a 40-50 person company I was having meetings with CIOs of $25bn Fortune 500 companies.
There were times when I was looking around thinking this is unbelievable. When we started the company we looked at the competitive landscape and realised nothing has really happened since the late 90s. No one had really cared about this market and that surprised me. Considering how much revenue comes out of service operations, it’s shocking.

I won’t share the logo but, when I spoke to the CIO and head of service one of the biggest companies in the world, I asked ‘why is it the case that when a new mobile device comes out everyone says, your sales people need these?’
Service people are in front of customers every day. They are generating revenue and performing this incredibly vital function. Why does nobody think about those guys? He shook his head and said, “I’m not sure.”

FSN: Do you see yourself as championing their cause? Is that what drives you and the business?

“It’s one of the drivers. Certainly for a long time service has been an afterthought. It goes back to the business model. If you generate a sale and from that sale, everything after cuts into that profit, so businesses want to minimise costs. Service has traditionally been viewed as a cost but times are changing fast and we believe we are a big part of that change.”

Yarnold talks a great game. He has enthusiasm and determination in abundance and that can only be applauded.
He has come a long way since his days with Clarify and there is a sense that he really does want to fly the flag for field service but it is the company’s land grab that is intriguing and also telling.

Offices in Europe and the Far East have been added to the roster. Although Salesforce may not be jockeying for position, the giants of Oracle and SAP are players yet to fully wake to the potential of the market. By the time they do ServiceMax could be an attractive acquisition target anyway. Certainly ServiceMax is not short on investors.

“There are a lot of service companies out there, millions of field technicians around the world who are trying to do their job but still don’t have great tools. They have clipboards, old Lotus Notes, applications that are simple and do not do a great job in terms of helping them do their job. There is a huge opportunity for us here. And as a place to invest technology dollars, that sentiment is starting to build.”

 

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Miss Part One of this interview? Find it here

 

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 In our continuing series on field service industry leaders, Dave Yarnold, CEO ServiceMax talks to Mark Ambasna Jones about the company's journey so far and the future of field service. 

When Dave Yarnold, ServiceMax CEO,  first ventured into Europe in search of business, ServiceMax were nothing more than a start up. Today it is one of the most successful field service management providers in the world. 

Still a relatively new kid on the block in software terms, ServiceMax is only eight years old. You get the feeling it’s still punching above its weight and Yarnold encapsulates the energy and excitement of the company that believes it is onto something.

ServiceMax has witnessed phenomenal growth (300% year on year with 150 new customers in 12 months, according to the company). Its inaugural ServiceMaxLive Europe customer event in Paris last year showed it has certainly arrived.

Yarnold was fresh back from Japan when we met. Was it easier to set-up in Japan than in Europe, I asked?

“Western Europe in particular and North America were clearly the top targets for us when we first started but then the next one in line terms of the number of manufacturers and the premium on service and quality was Japan. It’s always hard going into a new territory, a new country. No one wants to be the first to break a market but fortunately we have a number of companies that have done global roll outs and that has helped us and continues to do so.”

Did the company feel established in Europe now, I wondered, particularly in terms of business development and not just software sales?

 

“In our early days in Europe we were a small company with just a few use cases. To have people like Manish Gupta from Schneider Electric and John Cooper from Sony at ServiceMax Live was great and I think that says a lot about how far we have come. I have personally been working with Manish for five years, before we even had a team here, I was flying to Paris working on the details, looking at the installed base and helping find a solution. Schneider has over 20,000 field technicians.”

I asked why Yarnold had seemed particularly enamoured with Inspecta when its CCO Timo Okkonen spoke at the event.

“Timo has such a great story to tell. Inspecta is an interesting company and what it’s trying to do using ServiceMax is so interesting. It now has 1,600 users of  ServiceMax but it’s using the software for company transformation. The thing I love about his story is that it’s not just about service it’s a tool for collaboration, for employees to talk, to share important information. It’s really cool to see what different folks are doing with the platform.”

Service as a software

Transformation is a recurring theme. Yarnold’s suggestion that software as a service is becoming service as a software seems to fit with the Inspecta case study.  He believes ServiceMax has found itself at the heart of this changing landscape, partly by design but also partly as a result of being in the right place at the right time.

So does he see the company as a disruptor, ripping up the rule book?

“Ah yeah, certainly in making service a focal point in a technology world. No one else is doing that. Also catalysing this move towards a service model, we have a platform that allows companies to put these ideas and plans into place. We can take these grand ideas around IoT and make them usable, creating understandable user cases for IoT.”

 

What would that be, I asked?

“Quite simply it’s a machine talking to a machine, and when the machine says something is wrong, you take that data, dispatch a technician and fix the machine before the customer even knows there is a problem, eliminating unplanned downtime. We can help here and play a very disruptive role. We have the right tools to do that.” Banking on IoT makes sense and for service it’s an obvious fit.

ServiceMax had even rolled out Kevin Ashton, the guy credited for coining the term the Internet of Things to talk at the event and drive home the point. But isn’t everyone thinking along these lines?  And what makes ServiceMax so different?

“We’ve been looking at IoT for several years now, going back to when it was referred to as M2M – seemed like a good idea then but now it’s a better idea because it’s called IoT right? So we were always clear that we didn’t want to solve the data problem – all that data coming off of sensors, we didn’t want to get involved with sorting out the big data. We figured others would do that. We wanted to distil the data into something useful for service organisations. Our platform is geared to ultimately be agnostic, taking smart distilled data and to use in a service environment. This is where service becomes more strategic.”

ServiceMax has partnered with PTC to deliver the IoT bit, leaving it to focus on the service angle. Yarnold admits it’s still early days but you get the sense that this is a pivotal moment for the company and the industry as a whole.

Does Yarnold see a shifting role for field service technicians?

"There are two objectives here. One is to elevate the head of service so that service decisions are more strategic. We think that the Chief Service Officer  should be a C level position. The second objective is to determine the future role of the field service team.

 

We had 30 plus CSOs in a room and the liveliest discussion was on this – do your service people sell or serve and how best to generate revenues? Do you provide incentives to sell and potentially break the trust they have with customers?
Customers do trust their service techs. I’ve been in meeting s where customers have turned to the field service tech and asked, “should I buy this product?” There is a lot of power and trust here so you have to be careful.”

Are any companies doing this now?

“A lot of companies have armed the service teams with soft skills; they don’t call them sales skills. I think that some of the more forward thinking ServiceMax users have put some tools in place to coach field service people in what to look for, how to look for competitive equipment, for example, to identify a potential upsell opportunity and putting lead generation buttons in the system. It’s a delicate balance.”

Too delicate? Will it last?

“Service people are wary of pushing field teams towards selling too hard but they also seem excited by the fact they are relevant and generating revenue. Now service is not just considered a cost centre. Service people are getting involved in growth discussions.”

 

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Look out for part two of this Industry Leader article when Yarnold talks about the 4 Ps he considers essential to service success.

 

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The selection of a field service management system that meets the needs of your company is one of incredible importance. In this installation of our serialisation of The Service Manager Handbook (2015 edition) published by Advanced Field Service we look at some of the key considerations field service managers should be aware of when selecting their own field service management systems... 

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Download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

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Whatever your goals – growth, increased efficiency, cost savings or improved customer satisfaction – you differentiate your business by demonstrating flexibility and responsiveness to customers’ needs.

The latest advances in service management technology provide businesses with increased opportunities to automate processes, uncover new revenue streams and add value for customers.

The power to transform your business

Questions to ask your management team:

• When was the last time we thoroughly investigated and evaluated our business processes?
• Can we accurately pinpoint where time is being spent or which are the most/least profitable areas of the business?
• Can we say with confidence that all of our teams are consistently working at optimum efficiency?[/unordered_list] 

Successful service managers maximise their use of available technologies to eliminate unnecessary manual processes, such as making multiple entries of the same information. Freed from laborious, manual administration, such as timesheets, your staff can spend time on higher value tasks.

Moving to a modern, secure and reliable service management solution will enable your organisation to significantly improve its productivity through streamlining processes and cutting costs.

A note on cloud: Cloud-based solutions, where IT resources and services are accessed via the web, remove the need for the software to be physically located on your premises or in a data centre. Increasingly, service businesses are using cloud-based applications and enabling their engineers to access and enter data via the cloud field.

Finding the right software for you

With what might seem an overabundance of software providers promising the earth, how can you go about finding the solution that’s right for your business, both now and in the future?

Here are some pointers...

Prioritise: Internally agree which processes you are looking to automate and improve, and make these requirements your priority. Think, too, about where you want to be and what you want to be able to do tomorrow, so you don’t get ‘boxed in’ by your purchase within a few short years.

Get buy in: Establish a product steering group that includes people from across the business who will either use or be affected by the implementation of a new system.

Requirements: Look at your requirements against the supplier’s feature lists.

Integration:Modern software solutions can no longer afford to work in isolation. Explore the areas where information needs to be shared across multiple systems.

Culture: Do not underestimate how the culture of your company will be affected. Explain to your staff the rationale for the change and how it will benefit them.

Expertise: Pick a supplier who has relevant experience in your industry and can provide references.

Create a shortlist: Once you’ve compared potential software packages against your key requirements, draw up a shortlist of your preferred vendors, who you will invite to demonstrate how their solution could work for your business. Ideally, this should be three maximum.

Planning: Be realistic about the time it will take for your system to be fully up and running and how much involvement will be required internally.

Support: Ensure your supplier provides you with timely ongoing support once you have implemented the solution.

Supplier stability: Pick a supplier with the resources to support all of their clients with day-to-day technical assistance, while still having a dedicated development team for producing new versions to continuously improve the software and keep it aligned to changing industry requirements.

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Download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

 

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Our Industry Leaders interviews series continues  with an exclusive interview by Field Service NEws Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland with ServicePower CEO Marne Martin. In Part 1  they talk about the thinking behind the development of  the new NEXUS FS^TM  software, and the importance of user-friendly interfaces and deep functionality...

It’s been a busy time for the team at ServicePower, a company heavily focused on the constant evolution of their own suite of products, with a clear strategy of exploring and harnessing the latest emerging technologies and implementing them within their own solutions aimed solely at the field service management sector.

The recent release of NEXUS FS^TM  an enterprise-class, cloud-based field service management solution designed to be suitable for any sized service business is the latest addition to the Service Power line. It incorporates comprehensive mobile dispatch functionality that sits well with the dynamic scheduling engine that ServicePower is perhaps best known for.

In Marne Martin,  ServicePower have a focused and savvy CEO, with a strong background in highly senior roles, with both a passion for innovation and an understanding of what it takes to drive business forward. It is clear that Martin has a clear vision of the road map ServicePower needs to be taking both in the short to medium term as well and way beyond.

“We’ve really taken what we have -  a twenty year deep and rich experience in field service - and have accelerated it into new product development and innovation of our existing applications, to find new ways of approaching the pain points and needs of the field service industry,” Martin begins as we discuss where exactly ServicePower are in their development right now.

“Especially, the last twelve to eighteen months we’ve really accelerated,” she continues.  “We acquired the source code for mobility in January 2013 and we’ve actually built out a leading mobility product, so we’ve been able to leapfrog our competition in many regards.”

Our conversation is taking place just after the announcement of NEXUS FS^TM  which has a definitively fresh and modern feel with a lot of focus on the user experience. This is something that will sit across the suite of ServicePower products in the not too distant future and is clearly a consideration for the development of their product line.

The importance of the User Interface

“With the existing applications we’re about half way through migrating the User Interfaces to the really great new look and feel of NEXUS FS^TM . We’re using angular JS and Bootstrap but we’re looking at new technologies all the time and it’s a really beautiful UI,” Martin comments.  “Even when you think about what Salesforce and some of the really big players are doing, I feel we are really at the cutting edge now.”

UI has become an integral element of what makes a successful business application in today’s modern environment and this is something Martin is acutely aware of.

“You can’t underestimate how radically Apple has changed everything. With what they put out with the iPhone and how it looks and feels. You certainly have leaders in software that really care about user experience and UI like Salesforce, but I think Apple with the penetration they had really took it to the next level”

So how does this Martin filter this approach into her own organisation?

“The key is taking what we’ve done with some of the new technology, and then making sure we have integrated a great user experience throughout the other applications, modernising the UI, but not losing all the functionality that we have built over the last twenty years. It’s a really exciting time”

“I think ten years ago there were certainly some competitors that were more proactive in terms of UI than ServicePower were but we’ve actually worked to leapfrog them and even go beyond Salesforce is at the moment using them and Apple as a benchmark”

“Even if you look back at TOA at the time, they had a great UI and ClickSoftware were doing some UI development maybe ten years ago but I think we’ve actually moved beyond that.”

“At this point we are benchmarking off ourselves in a way; we have a great team led by Steve Higgins who joined with us in late January, and then he has integrated with all the various product teams with the existing applications. The product guys were just at Dreamforce the other week and they walked away saying wow we are actually ahead in certain areas now. I’m really proud of that.”

However, Martin is also keenly aware that mission critical software, especially at enterprise level, cannot be all style and no substance.

“When we look at SMB solutions on the Internet you know they want to see a UI like that but when ultimately when it comes to the enterprise deals, when you get to a certain scale it is still all about the functionality,” she explains.

 

“The UI is nice but in the end what enterprise level field service organisations care about is things like our ability to do real-time optimisation, heavy duty management of third party contractors, the warranty claims,  analytics -  all these things.”

“A great UI is necessary now, but it’s not enough - you’ve got to have depth of functionality because that’s what gives a barrier to entry,” Martin states before adding, “With a hundred grand I might be able to spin up a little UI and an app, but I’m never going to be able to get a robust solution that will satisfy the leading enterprises as well as having the depth of functionality.”

And with a product development road map starting to come to fruition, the next stage for ServicePower is an aggressive growth period as they seek to capitalise on the attention a raft of awards and recognition their technology has gathered as they’ve continually sought to improve their own suite of solutions.

Martin admits the next phase of their strategy is to really focus on sales execution now. “I think we have a very good position now in terms of growing our brand awareness, recognition of the technology in the product suite that now we can really start scaling on sales execution. That’ll be the big push the year forward.”

Look out for the second part of this exclusive interview coming next week....

 

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Trimble Field Service Management's John Cameron takes a look at what intelligence means in field service today...

Today, a field service operation is characterised by the running of multiple technologies, from GPS and vehicle-tracking systems to telematics, fleet management and workforce management solutions.

Each of these technologies generates vast amounts of data and businesses are increasingly realising the importance of reviewing and monitoring their performance using the data they collect. However, being able to organise and analyse data in an effective, simple and reliable way is a major challenge and without the means of turning it in to something actionable, many businesses just don’t take advantage of it. Business analytics and reporting tools have come to the fore as a solution able to tackle this and empower field service organisation’s with the information they care about to make faster, better informed decisions.

Fostering business intelligence through business analytics and reporting tools

Understandably, no field service organisation has the same reporting requirements. Many have different metrics and performance indicators to manage, from driver behaviour to vehicle usage and maintenance to overall worker performance. Many also need to report on metrics relevant to their role eg: finance, risk, customer service and operations.

Advances in business analytics and reporting tools provide businesses with the ability to view all of their data in one place then configure and cross reference it in a simple, easy way. Businesses are then able to make better decisions and better decisions mean a more effective, efficient operation.

 

Many business analytics and reporting tools offer users the chance to view the information they want, when they want it. Using drag and drop metrics, dashboards can be constructed tailored to reporting needs, to show the most important metrics and represent those metrics in ways that users choose.

For example, productivity can be looked at alongside driver safety and vehicle performance to ensure that while SLAs around completed jobs are being met, safety isn’t being compromised.

The dashboards can be utilised to run on-demand reports from any number of metrics which can then be interrogated and filtered to the level needed for individual requirements. The purpose for this data is to then be distilled to generate concrete, actionable details, which can then be used to benchmark and identify trends which will in turn help businesses to determine which assets and employees are the most productive.

Immediate and long term benefits

Fleet and workforce management systems give managers the ability to review a day’s work and measure performance results against company standards.

With the use of business analytics and reporting tools, managers can extract the data from these solutions to identify top performers, determine which schedules and routes produce the best results, and compare results from one vehicle or worker against the entire fleet. Performance analysis can also help with job assignments, helping managers match the skills of field technicians to specific service calls. This increases the prospect of first-time case resolution.

Telematics solutions alike can capture a wealth of useful information, from mechanical and emissions to driver safety habits. With the use of reliable, analysed information, knowledge can lead to action.

A manager who knows which drivers have bad driving habits is better equipped to coach those drivers; up-to-date information on the health of vehicles leads to better maintenance, which in turn leads to safer vehicles, improved fuel consumption and less wear and tear.

 

These are some of the immediate benefits, but understanding data also brings long-term benefits, as companies engage in strategic planning based on historical patterns and predictive analysis.

For example, a company which focuses on repair could make use of its historical data to know when a specific part on a specific machine is likely to fail. This could lead to preventative maintenance by fixing or changing a part before it fails, helping to deliver excellent customer service, reduced downtime and significant cost savings. The work becomes less about being reactive and more about precise, well researched planning.

Analysis of operational trends and patterns also reveals what areas businesses need to target for improvement. Perhaps drivers are using shorter routes that actually take more time because of traffic patterns, or technicians are returning to customer sites because they lack the knowledge or part to complete the job, or vehicles are left too long on idle and wasting fuel. With intelligence and analytics tools, organisations can drill down into the data to benchmark and identify situations where problems are occurring.

For more information and insight into how you empower your field staff to make more intelligent business decisions, visit: www.trimble.com/fsm

 

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Leading mobile workforce management company ServicePower Technologies Plc has launched Nexus FS, an enterprise-class  cloud-based field service management solution for any sized service business that incorporates comprehensive mobile dispatch functionality.

NEXUS FS (Field Service) is designed to provide service businesses of any size an enterprise-quality cloud-based field service management solution with a comprehensive mobile application. It incorporates work order management, mobile dispatching to field based resources, real-time schedule monitoring through an interactive Gantt, timesheet reporting, location monitoring and reporting, asset and parts capabilities, and user configurable maintenance, all in the cloud, with fast and easy data set-up and a modern and easy user interface.

The NEXUS FS mobile dispatch component has new features such as rules-based, user configurable forms delivered on a job-by-job basis, allowing organisations and technicians to quickly adapt to job conditions, improving both efficiency and productivity, while enhancing the customer experience.  It also incorporates the latest release of ServicePower's  ServiceMobility providing job and activity management, scheduling, inventory management, parts information, schematic diagrams, note-taking, timesheets, signature capture, photograph capture, collaboration with office-based resources, navigation, estimates and payments, and customer surveys.

For those requiring real-time optimisation, Nexus FS can be integrated with ServicePower’s ServiceScheduling module, and later this year it will also be available with the company’s patented field service optimisation algorithm Optimisation on Demand.

NEXUS FS also will offer connected global third party contractors the ability to manage their own business while receiving work from our ServiceOperations global client base, aggregating all jobs into one software platform, reducing costs and improving operational efficiencies.

Marne Martin, CEO, ServicePower, commented "ServicePower are investing in rapid development of our mobile workforce management platform adding in new features and new products that further connect the service supply chain, provide improved efficiencies and productivity, and enhance the customer experience.  NEXUS FS changes the field service market. It's not simply another disparate mobile dispatching solution. It provides small, medium and even large enterprise organisations with an economical, cloud-based solution to manage their business and fully mobilise their field operations with access to real algorithm-based optimisation, connectivity to multiple job sources and the ability to file claims for work performed, through our connected platform and offerings, providing an unmatched, single vendor solution to any business."

 

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Investment in new smart mobile technology pays off for Kings Security Systems with improved productivity and service levels and elimination of over half a million paper records.

Kings Security Systems, the large Bradford-based independent national security services provider, has boosted efficiency and performance of its field service technicians by deploying Field Link, the scheduling and mobile workforce management technology from mobile network operator EE which incorporates Aeromark's Optimatics technology.

Kings has increased the productivity of its 300 field-based service engineers by 25%, improved customer service levels by 30% and  replaced over half a million paper records with automated electronic documentation.

The company had already been using automated scheduling and mobile applications for over 5 years, but in January 2014, it decided to investigate what improvements could be gained by using the next generation of technology.
After a comprehensive selection process to upgrade its existing systems and improve performance, Kings chose EE Field Link, powered by Aeromark's Optimatics mobile workflow management solution, to replace a number of legacy systems used by its field service division.

Kings’ Engineers cover a wide geographic area, and the reach and reliability of EE’s mobile network combined with the offline capabilities of the Mobile app ensures total system availability. EE Field Link provides Kings with a single platform for dynamic real-time job scheduling, integrated mobile workflows, vehicle tracking and seamless integration with engineers’ devices. This system allows planners central visibility of engineers and jobs, meaning planners can manage the workforce quickly and efficiently. The system shows how many jobs are outstanding and closed, allowing greater visibility and helping Kings to keep its service level agreements with their customers.

Previously, King’s workforce was managed using a variety of solutions from different providers that proved unreliable, and prevented planners having full control over outstanding jobs and locations. The smart mobile technology provides a comprehensive solution that not only integrated with Kings’ existing business processes, but also allowed Kings to launch new processes and features that were previously undeliverable using the old systems.

"Before we started using the Field Link solution from EE and Aeromark, we had a similar system for dispatching calls electronically to engineers’ PDAs. However, Field Link has completely changed the way we work in that we can now see outstanding jobs at the site, or within a radius, improving our planning and boosting efficiency as we deliver an excellent service to our customers." Said Kerrell Cronly, Service Manager at Kings.

 

Within 3 months, Field Link has already helped reduce operational costs and enabled a quicker service delivery. "Since we have been using Field Link, we have seen an increase of over 1 job a day per engineer and a 30% increase in SLAs which is not a result of working longer but by working smarter," said Kerrell.

Steve Evans, Chief Operating Director at Kings said; "Our investment in this new technology was an essential part of our strategic plan. It will enable us to grow significantly with automated and streamlined processes that ensure the service we offer to our customers and our cost base are fully optimised. As a result of the success that the system has delivered for our service division, we have already rolled out the solution to all other divisions within the business."

Anthony King, Chief Executive Officer at Kings said; "EE and Aeromark have a unique technology and agile approach which not only delivered in the agreed timescales and costs but the results exceeded our expectations. That’s almost unheard of with large IT projects and credit goes to the combined team at EE, Aeromark and Kings who have dedicated their time to this project."

 

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