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ServiceMax from GE Digital, a leading provider of field service software, today announced a major new release of Predix ServiceMax Field Service Management (FSM), a next-generation field service offering that brings new ways of working to all professionals in service delivery. Recognized as one of the most comprehensive and visionary FSM solutions, the newest ServiceMax offering gives service technicians greater autonomy, empowers dispatchers with more robust decision-making tools, and helps companies better plan and execute complex service projects.

“By delivering innovative field service solutions, our customers are able to achieve higher service efficiency and a better experience for their customers – while remaining competitive in an increasingly crowded market,” said Scott Berg, CEO, ServiceMax from GE Digital. “Responding to evolving customer needs and executing on our long-standing commitment to service innovation and thought leadership, we are excited to introduce our next-generation field service solution.”

Leading the market in customer response, ServiceMax FSM 18.3 addresses three key pillars in next-generation field service work, including technician autonomy, dispatcher empowerment and complex work execution.

Granting Technicians Greater Autonomy

Traditionally, technicians receive guidance from a central dispatch in a linear and prescriptive manner. As the face to customers, field service engineers need the flexibility to make decisions that best serve customer needs. Giving technicians and contractors the ability to make autonomous decisions on a mobile device without depending on the central dispatch supports more confident and effective execution of work – ultimately helping them be more responsive to customer needs.

ServiceMax FSM 18.3 is the company’s fourth-generation mobile application and the culmination of its history and experience in empowering and enabling service technicians. Today’s service operations rely increasingly on combinations of third-party and on-staff service teams, requiring a higher grade of usability, easy adoption and a variety of mobile devices. This new release represents a consumer-style field service mobile app running on the device of their choice.

Empowering the Dispatcher

Additionally, service organizations have evolved the role of service dispatchers. Most do not plan to replace their dispatchers with automated scheduling algorithms – but they do want to free them from the mundane task of day-to-day scheduling to focus on complex, strategic decision making. To support this, ServiceMax FSM 18.3 gives dispatchers tools to be more effective – with software serving up recommendations at every step.

Where dispatchers previously relied on their experience and intuition about how to deploy technicians, this FSM offering delivers a new user experience for the dispatchers and planners called Service Board. Featuring an intuitive UI and significant added functionality over the existing Dispatch Console, the Service Board adds new features that support more efficient planning, scheduling and dispatching. This solution gives dispatchers the flexibility to deal with escalations or problems, focusing on more sophisticated work where human decision making is required.

Addressing Complex Work

Not all types of service jobs are the same; they range from short duration and low complexity, such as cable TV installations in the consumer world, too much more complex and sophisticated service calls, as in the manufacturing and energy space. Major projects – overhauls, equipment decommissioning, installations and upgrades – can be highly complex. Additionally, industries such as power and utilities, aviation, and oil and gas must follow strict regulatory requirements. As service organizations look to expand their service offerings, they must be able to effectively manage service jobs that span multiple days, require multiple technicians, and even work done in multiple shifts. ServiceMax FSM 18.3 offers a new way of solving these challenges.

The new FSM solution helps service organizations scale this complex work, giving companies the ability to define standard or complex shift plans. This includes jobs with multiple technician skill sets, management of multiple resources, and situations when technicians must work on a job for days rather than hours. Additionally, FSM 18.3 can incorporate data from predictive maintenance software, such as GE Digital’s Predix Asset Performance Management, giving companies greater understanding of an equipment condition for highly complex assets.

“It is no longer working to just focus on ‘what’s wrong’ when delivering service in the field. Smart service organizations are working to focus on what RIGHT looks like for the customer, delivering reliable uptime rather than just fast response and resolution times” says Vele Galovski, VP of Field Services Research for the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA). “To accomplish that, you need to really empower your employees with the right tools that help them get their jobs done. ServiceMax’s new capabilities capitalize on this trend, and it is great to see ServiceMax, now as part of GE, continue to focus on features that matter for our field service members.”

Availability

The new capabilities introduced in ServiceMax FSM 18.3 are currently available in beta. During this beta period, ServiceMax is working closely with select customers to refine use cases and the product experience, after which the features will become generally available in the first quarter of 2019. For more details about ServiceMax FSM 18.3, click here.

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Trade service businesses now have the ability to become experts with job management software thanks to simPRO’s new learning resource.

The ‘simPRO Learning | Toolbox’ is the job management software company’s latest global product release, specifically designed to educate and support clients who are seeking short-term answers or long-term knowledge about the technology they use for coordinating business operations.

The new solution offers a growing library of essential resources, including how-tos and standard workflow practice materials, which can be learned at any pace. The online materials are self-directed, interactive and delivered in short, five-minute topics, supporting users in just-in-time learning to get the knowledge when needed. Users also have the ability to complete entire courses on specific simPRO knowledge or workflows. All materials reinforce the learning experience with knowledge checks.

simPRO Global Head of Customer Success, Erika Entz, said simPRO Learning | Toolbox was developed as a supportive resource for time-poor customers who wish to stay up to date with business demands.

[quote float="left"]This is a major stepping stone for simPRO customers, to gain a deeper understanding of our job management software, which has become integral to the trade service industry[/quote]“This is a major stepping stone for simPRO customers, to gain a deeper understanding of our job management software, which has become integral to the trade service industry,” she said.

“The learning toolbox allows businesses to enhance their simPRO knowledge anytime, anywhere. The learning materials will help businesses get new team members up to speed faster, and the self-directed learning allows users to become job management software experts in their own right.”

Ms Entz said the simPRO Learning Toolbox’s wide variety of resources would help simPRO to provide job management software that will lead businesses to future success, and help to make modern software a more accessible mainstream tool in the trade services industry.

“simPRO is dedicated to supporting our current and future customers with a variety of learning resources to ensure we enable our customers to get the most out of their software.”

“We regularly update and add new content, providing our customers with just-in-time learning in our new simPRO Learning Toolbox in addition to other learning resources, such as the simPRO Help Guide, videos and Walk Me Throughs to learn more about our groundbreaking solutions.”

The self-paced microlearning materials are available to users anywhere, anytime with internet access.

The simPRO Learning | Toolbox is included with simPRO customer’s user licenses, and comes at no extra costs and launched on 26 September 2018.

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As humans, we communicate as readily as we breathe and eat. Whichever generation we are born into the desire to relate to the peer group we grow up with remains a constant. The difference lies in the communication technology at our disposal. in this the first part of a new series of excerpts from the latest white paper from IFS we take a look at how communication is changing and technology is evolving.

Are improving your communication channels a key issue for you?! The full white paper on this topic available to fieldservicenews.com subscribers. Click the button below to get fully up to speed!

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While a choice of voice and text has been available to all current generations, their accessibility and immediacy has been transformed over the last forty years: from landline to smartphone, from letter to instant messaging. Our preferences tend to be based on the dominant channel(s) within our peer group

Source: Global Mobile Messaging Consumer Report 2016 Twilio

Generation Z parents famously wonder why voice has become such an alien channel to their children. Millennials can still manage a weekend catch up call to parents but typically revert to texting amongst friends, even though workdays become all about email. Meanwhile, silver surfers boast an expanded repertoire of being natively comfortable with live voice and increasingly up to speed with family group messaging.

Naturally, this personal use cascades into our lives as consumers and employees. Retaining our choices is expected. We still want to communicate in ways that suit us. Adoption of these expectations is as common in B2B as in B2C markets. The technology has become ubiquitous.

The problem, of course, is that brands and employers keep finding themselves behind the curve as new channels pop up.

Take messaging for example. The absolute dominance of Tencent’s

WeChat within Chinese daily life is such that cash and credit cards are already in rapid decline. We now see the same payment system being offered to Western brands that recognise revenue growth from Chinese tourists requires a trusted and familiar payment interface.

In terms of ‘messaging as a platform’, enabling users to get most things done in their lives, from booking doctor’s appointments to paying bills, the West lags the critical mass of functionality that WeChat has already gained. As of 2018, we are still at the very beginning of monetising messaging as a trusted channel between customers and organisations.

Although business case logic makes us hope that the latest channels will replace existing ones, the evidence says otherwise...

From a customer service leadership perspective, this must seem like a never-ending road. Although old as an industry topic, web chat remains the next new channel for many organisations. Even those already up and running are still sourcing the best practices required to engage effectively. Besides chat, many have also had to deal with social media and now find themselves being told that messaging is the next iteration.

However, the story gets worse.

Although business case logic makes us hope that the latest channels will replace existing ones, the evidence says otherwise. It is an expanding, rather than declining set that most organisations deal with. As such, it is hard to imagine that a single channel will ever emerge as the ‘silver bullet’.

Email is often written off as a legacy channel yet OFCOM’s 2017 communications report shows it remained the single most popular channel for 16+ adults in the UK. What does that imply if you want to be a customer-centric organisation?

Voice might be declining as is often reported, and yes, there are those millennial orientated brands that don’t do voice because their customers don’t, but it remains the dominant live channel of choice by some margin. For many customers, it has unique qualities. It’s faster than text as a form of communication. It’s richer in terms of emotion. Text channels have to augment with emojis.

As the dominant channel, it also attracts negative press for the lack of sophisticated routing many organisations still subject their customers too. First contact resolution without bumps is not as common as it should be. Customers expect low effort outcomes. Even so, once the right person is found, live voice still fulfils many of the expectations customers have for what a service experience should be.

In truth, we live in a world of five generations of consumers and employees. The choice of communication channel is ours. We pick whichever works for us. And by the way, if you think letter writing is dead just ask any complaints team!

So what does this mean? Does it condemn organisations that want to do the right thing by their customers to every increasing cost? The answer depends on what generation of infrastructure you are using.

Want to know more? The full white paper on this topic available to fieldservicenews.com subscribers. Click the button below to get fully up to speed!

 Sponsored by:

Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content.  

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Web programmers and business managers across the United Kingdom will be able to integrate online applications faster and easier than previously possible thanks to a new API product released by global job management company simPRO.

simPRO’s ‘RESTful API’ product was developed as a software interfacing tool which allows various systems to connect and communicate with a new sense of efficiency, strengthening the bridge between simPRO and other platforms which may be used in the workforce.

An Application Programming Interface, or API, is broadly defined as software that allows two applications to talk to each other, acting as a messenger to allow third-party developers to retrieve and insert specified data into that application.

The simPRO API allows for seamless integration of data between it and other business software platforms.

simPRO Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Eastgate said the simPRO RESTful API would ultimately lead to better software integrations and an overall increase inconvenience for businesses.

“simPRO’s new API is a technical step forward, but its functions are good for users because external applications can be created to move data between simPRO and different applications,” he said.

“With the API you can now create integrations that connect simPRO to mailing and accounting systems, ecommerce, business websites, smartphone and tablet apps and document management systems.

“Thanks to simPRO RESTful API, businesses are able to integrate simPRO and third party applications easier than ever before.

“That’s what we strive to do at simPRO – removing time and complexity from modern necessities like program integration and online product use. We want to empower our partners in the United Kingdom to build valuable businesses around the information flowing through simPRO.

“simPRO’s new API systems will assist in managing workflows and improving efficiencies for thousands of trade service businesses,” Mr Eastgate said.

simPRO’s RESTful API was designed to be up to date with industry standards and features a Developer Centre where users can receive support through a dedicated forum and access assistance resource like code examples and program walkthroughs.

The new API will be made available world-wide upon release and be functional through simPRO’s Service and Enterprise range, making it accessible for a diverse range of users throughout the trade service industry.

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WorkWave, a provider of cloud-based software solutions for the field service and last mile delivery industries, today announced that Network Products Guide, one of the industry's leading technology research and advisory guides, has named WorkWave as a winner in this year's 2018 IT World Awards.

WorkWave Service™ was recognized as a gold winner for Field Service Management, and WorkWave Route Manager™ was recognized as a gold winner for IT Products and Services for Transportation.

WorkWave Service enables field service companies to grow their businesses, be more productive and deliver exceptional service to customers in a scalable and robust, yet easy-to-use way. In addition to helping customers manage their business, it enables businesses to grow by allowing them to easily capture and track leads, and manage and view all sales opportunities.

WorkWave Service enables field service companies to grow their businesses, be more productive and deliver exceptional service to customers in a scalable and robust, yet easy-to-use wayWorkWave Route Manager is WorkWave's all-in-one route planning and GPS tracking solution that is addressing the daily challenges of logistics professionals. It has been proven to drive over 30 per cent operational efficiency and ROI through its smart route technology, and its powerful, proprietary algorithm combined with ease of use makes saving time and money achievable right from day one. Users can also expect to serve 20 per cent more orders, and reduce fuel by 10-15 per cent.

"It is an honour to have both WorkWave Service and WorkWave Route Manager recognized in this year's IT World Awards," said Mike Profit, Chief Product and Service Officer at WorkWave. "Our teams work hard to develop our products to ensure we are enabling our customers to deliver exceptional service to their own customers, while running their businesses from front to back, seamlessly."

The annual IT World Awards recognition program encompasses the world's best in organizational performance, products and services, hot technologies, executives and management teams, successful deployments, product management and engineering, customer satisfaction, and public relations in every area of information technology. More than 80 judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices from around the world participated and their average scores determined the 2018 award winners.

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Service Fusion, a field service management software provider helping small and mid-sized field service companies streamline their businesses and increase customer satisfaction, has announced a $10M Series A investment from leading B2B software investor Five Elms Capital.

The financing will be used to fuel growth and accelerate the release of new functionality for its customer base of over 2,000 service contractors.

"We are thrilled to bring in a partner with so much experience in the B2B software space," said Max Paltsev, CEO of Service Fusion.

"Nearly 70% of service contractors don't use a specialized software to manage their business. This results in higher operating costs and missed opportunities to delight customers, and we are changing that with our software."

Nearly 70% of service contractors don't use a specialized software to manage their business. This results in higher operating costs and missed opportunities..."We are beyond excited to partner with Max and the team at Service Fusion," said Ryan Mandl, Partner at Five Elms Capital. "We believe the field service industry is in the early innings of a multi-decade shift to utilizing modern software solutions to more effectively manage operations and provide a better customer experience. Service Fusion has developed an industry-leading product and reputation for serving the needs of its customer base really well, both of which we plan to build on as we work together to fuel the company's next phase of growth."

Service Fusion's rapid growth will create a significant number of new jobs in the North Texas area as the company expands its engineering, customer support, and sales operations at its headquarters just outside of Dallas. "As one of the fastest growing technology companies in Texas, we are extremely excited to be able to create more career opportunities in this region," said Paltsev. "This investment will allow us to better serve our customers' needs by adding top-notch talent to every team at Service Fusion."

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Field service businesses have a lot of problems that keep them from thriving—like scheduling challenges, high fleet maintenance costs, too few jobs, and wide service windows that keep customers waiting all day.

Now, these businesses can solve all these issues (and more) from within their field service management system with Commusoft's new Real-Time Vehicle Tracking feature.

The new feature builds out from the Commusoft cloud-based software package designed for field service companies both large and small, including plumbers, heating engineers, renewable engineers, electricians, oil technicians, property managers, fire & security companies, and builders.

How is Commusoft's Real-Time Vehicle Tracking feature better than a standalone GPS?

Why pay for a GPS system that doesn’t work hand-in-hand with your job management software? Because Commusoft's real-time GPS system is tightly integrated into a world-class job management system, it allows operations managers to make better decisions when it comes to tracking jobs. 

By bringing scheduling information and engineers’ locations together, Real-Time Vehicle Tracking gives operations managers the ability to create faster, more efficient schedules, which in turn lets them:

• Reduce engineers’ travel time.
• Reduce costs by pinpointing unsafe driving and rough vehicle handling.
• Schedule more jobs into a single day.
• Reduce service windows and provide faster customer service.

Real-Time Vehicle Tracking also increases the odds of recovery in cases of vehicle theft. 

'These are all benefits a business wouldn't see with a traditional GPS,' says Jason Morjaria, founder of Commusoft. 'Our Real-Time Vehicle Tracking now gives businesses of all sizes access to a world-class schedule optimising solution.'

How does Commusoft's Real-Time Vehicle Tracking work?

Commusoft sends users a dedicated Commusoft GPS vehicle tracker; it's highly precise, and can’t run out of battery or be left behind at a work site—unlike tracking solutions that rely on a mobile phone’s built-in GPS. Plus, there's no need to track your engineer’s personal device, just the company vehicle.

The vehicle tracker interfaces with the Commusoft job management software to let the user track their vans and engineers in real time from their desktop or mobile device.

Commusoft’s Real-Time Vehicle Tracking is included at no extra monthly charge for Commusoft's Paperless Office plan users and higher. Users pay a one-time charge per vehicle tracker (one per vehicle), but no extra after that. Now, field service businesses can finally say goodbye to monthly vehicle tracking fees, and say hello to real-time GPS tracking included in the price of their job management software.

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IBS Bürosysteme reports that in 2017 it saved thousands of hours and nearly quarter of a million euros thanks to Asolvi's leading-edge software platform, Evatic.

IBS Bürosysteme is an IT and document management services provider based in Münster, Germany. It started out as a small sole proprietorship founded with very little capital by Karl Isfort in 1966.

It wasn't long before Isfort's entrepreneurial spirit and zest for success transformed the business into a leading player in office services, and one site spanning 170 m² became six sites spanning 15,000 m². In 1996, the IBS Logistics Centre became the largest office retailer in Münsterland.

Evatic has been contributing to the company's success for the last nine years, but last year its cost savings hit the stratosphere.

IBS Bürosysteme uses Evatic's sophisticated scheduling functionality, automated service ticket creation and the specially designed Evatic Mobile Service app for field engineers.

CEO Olaf Isfort explains, "These features combined save IBS Bürosysteme 30 minutes of manual and paper-driven activities on each and every service project. Since IBS Bürosysteme’s 12 field engineers undertake about 40 jobs each day, time saved per day is in the region of 20 hours. Last year this saved us an enormous €216,000."

Isfort is keen to stress that the benefits of Evatic for IBS Bürosysteme go beyond cost savings.IBS Bürosysteme also uses Evatic Consumable and Meter Management (ECMM), a machine-to-machine solution that boosts profitability, cuts out wasted toner and streamlines processing. ECMM is seamlessly integrated with IBS Bürosysteme's fleet management system and directly processes data from all the printers and copiers in the fleet, generating invoices and consumable replacements automatically.

"Evatic cuts out 45 hours a month of manual billing and toner replacement tasks," says Isfort. "Last year this generated a saving of €24,300 for IBS Bürosysteme."

But Isfort is keen to stress that the benefits of Evatic for IBS Bürosysteme go beyond cost savings. "We're able to keep a much closer eye on our profitability, performance and customer satisfaction than we could before Evatic's implementation," he says.

"Evatic's user-friendly dashboards let us monitor contracts, machines and customers, service and toner management, and whether we are meeting SLA requirements and reducing repeat service visits."

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IFS, a global enterprise applications company, has previewed major updates of its IFS Field Service Management™ (FSM) offering at the IFS World Conference in Atlanta today.

IFS Field Service Management 6 features a number of enhancements, including:

• New user experience (UX): With a completely re-engineered, fully responsive front end, IFS FSM 6 will run on any browser and on any device at any time. The new UX features user-centric and intuitive action patterns as well as stunning graphic designs including high-resolution charts and diagrams.
• Major performance boost in IFS Planning & Scheduling Optimization™ (PSO): The IFS PSO component of IFS Field Service Management yields a 50% improvement in processing performance on Microsoft Azure. In addition, the maximum number of activities per standard Dynamic Scheduling Engine (DSE) for dynamic responsive processing has been significantly increased.
• Next-generation configurability: Written in an all-new scripting language that empowers customers to configure data fields, workflows, and user behaviour, IFS FSM 6 eliminates the need for costly customizations, providing greater agility while evergreen service management capabilities ensure seamless updates.
• Key functional enhancements: Alongside these major new architectural changes, IFS FSM 6 introduces a multitude of significant new features and extensions to existing functionality in areas including increased scheduling optimization flexibility, warranty claims management, mobile synchronization, and UI improvements.
• Pay and deploy with even more flexibility: Customers can choose to deploy IFS FSM 6 as a true multi-tenant solution on the Microsoft Azure cloud, as a managed service in the cloud, or on-premise. This flexibility also offers customers choice in how they pay, from outright ownership to a monthly subscription.

“We are very excited to offer a preview of IFS Field Service Management 6, which leads the market in terms of usability, configurability, connectivity, and flexibility,” said Mark Brewer, IFS global industry director for service.

Choice is a good thing, and with IFS, the customer can decide what makes sense for their business.“With this major new release, we are further differentiating our value proposition but are continuing to provide customers with the ability to choose the functionality they need and deploy in the way they want—be it in the cloud or on-premise. Choice is a good thing, and with IFS, the customer can decide what makes sense for their business. Combine this flexibility with industry-leading functionality, leading AI and optimization technology and a new user experience and it is evident that IFS really does represent the most complete, connected field service solution on the market.”

One of the early adopters is Eickhoff, a leading manufacturer of machinery and gearing technology used in mining, wind turbines, and other industrial applications.

Commenting on IFS Field Service Management 6, Dietmar Schmitz, Head of Product Development Service at Eickhoff, said, “As a provider of mission-critical machinery, we see service as a core competency and competitive differentiator. Consequently, we needed a solution to manage our more than 6.5 million items in complex parts lists for over 15,000 custom units. IFS FSM 6 provides an engaging and effective way to make this possible.”

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