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

Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  IFS
Title: Software selection for enterprise service management

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Synopsis:

Choosing to invest in a new service management solution is one thing, selecting the right system for your organisation is an entirely different challenge...

Service is becoming a central pillar of most organisations operations and investment in the tools to improve your service delivery are well documented to deliver clear R.O.I. However, the market for service management systems is highly competitive with numerous different vendors offering a multitude of solutions.

This white paper written by IFS's Tom Bowe, one of FSN's 20 most influential people in Field Service, offers some excellent, impartial and objective advice as to how you can identify the right solution for your organisation...

Overview:

This white paper, published by IFS, discusses the following key topics:

• Common business challenges including rising competition, greater margin pressures and burgeoning communications demands
• How the right software can address these business challenges including improving vision, knowledge sharing and flexibility
• A dozen key questions to ask when selecting the right service management solution for your organisation

Common business challenges:

Rising competition:

Competition in services is rising, from both big players and small players. Consider a manufacturer providing field services to customers that have purchased their equipment. Today there are huge service players that come in saying they can service everything, as well as small, nimble service organisations with a regional focus.

So for the manufacturer, sophisticated global competitors pressure service at the top end and agile competitors with a local or regional focus pressure service at the bottom end. They’re getting squeezed, and in this they are not alone among service organisations.

Greater margin pressures

In many business sectors, markets have matured for strong product growth, threatening revenue streams and driving down margins. The challenge and opportunity here is service growth: a part of the business heretofore an afterthought has moved to the front in executive suites. The immediate need is to turn service from a cost centre into a profit centre. The window of opportunity to do this effectively will not stay open forever.

Burgeoning communication demands

The proliferation of technology has had multiple effects, all of which act to increase the need for fast and pervasive communications. We see this embodied in the ubiquitous smartphone, conditioning a generation to expect access to information 24/7/365 and answers to questions immediately at the touch of a screen or click of a mouse. This has changed the game in service delivery, where performance issues (i.e., risk) have become more pronounced with lack of responsive speed or inability to deliver as promised.

The flip side of this risk is the opportunity that comes with new technology. Consider what McKinsey reported from a survey at the decade’s outset, as emerging Web-based technologies were beginning to create the networked enterprise: “The attainment of higher operating margins ... correlated with a different set of factors: the ability to make decisions lower in the corporate hierarchy and a willingness to allow the formation of working teams comprising both in-house employees and individuals outside the organisation. These findings suggest that Web technologies can underwrite a more agile organisation where frontline staff members make local decisions and companies are better at leveraging outside resources to raise productivity and to create more valuable products and services.”

 

How the right software can address these business challenges:

The right enterprise service management software supports an organisation’s ability to meet emerging challenges and respond to constant change by providing the foundation for enterprise agility. The concept of business agility involves the development of capabilities to achieve sustained competitive advantage in an unpredictable environment. Agility is the product of three foundational blocks—vision, knowledge, and flexibility—that effectively designed and developed software facilitate across the business.

A dozen questions to ask when selecting service management software

1. DOES THE SOFTWARE PROVIDE ESSENTIAL ACCESS TO DATA—THE RIGHT DATA FOR
   THE RIGHT PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT TIME?
2. SOFTWARE SELECTION FOR ENTERPRISE SERVICE MANAGEMENT
3. DOES THE SOFTWARE ALLOW FOR FUTURE GROWTH?
4. IS THE SOFTWARE APPEALING TO TODAY’S GENERATION OF WORKERS?
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To get the full list of questions (and why these questions are important) download the white paper by clicking the link below and completing the brief for and it will be sent straight to your inbox.

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Alastair Clifford-Jones, CEO at Leadent Service Cloud, looks at the challenges IT managers working within service organisations face... 

If you are an IT Manager in a service business, you have a tough job. With an increasingly-squeezed budget, you are constantly expected to deliver more for less. When it comes to your organisation’s fieldforce the responsibility to provide an effective field service software tool for minimum cost and maximum return may well lie with you, together with managers of the operation itself.

But whilst budget is obviously important, we don’t believe it should be the top priority in the decision-making around IT investment. (And yes, we hear your response of “Well, you would say that”, but bear with us.) We think you need to think more broadly, think bigger.

Whilst the budget for field service software may sit with IT, primarily it’s the operations of the business who will be using it day in, day out. If implemented and used correctly, field service management solutions can offer a whole host of savings and benefits, including a good number that will directly impact the IT department and budget.

In trying to explain the return on investment from field service software, we’d usually talk about savings in diesel costs through the use of optimised driving routes, completing extra jobs per day through a more optimised scheduling system, or adding a new customer because you have been able to eliminate repeat visits. All of these savings have a direct impact on the company’s bottom line, and we do acknowledge that they come primarily from the operation. But there’s more to it than that - what about the IT savings that will result from using a best-in-class, cloud-based solution rather than a bespoke or customised system from a small, niche provider?

 

The benefits of a Software as a Service (SaaS) model have been much discussed and well documented. It allows IT Managers to hand responsibility for up-time, service levels, bug-fixing and support back to the software vendor. No more out-of-hours server upgrades (at least not for these systems), or working through complex contracts to understand what’s your responsibility; all you really need to do is make sure that hardware is available and the users’ browsers are the correct version.

When it comes to a system as central to the organisation as field service management, think how much effort and stress could be saved by not having to worry about the system going down. Or, not having to think about how it will integrate with other systems that you might purchase in the future. When you use a market-leading product (like that which Leadent Service Cloud is based on), these worries are a thing of the past.

Obviously, this will never be a decision that sits solely with either IT or Operations; we think it’s vital that the business and IT work together to come up with an aligned approach that focuses on benefits to the organisation as a whole, and which looks at costs/savings across all budgets, rather than putting this all on a single department.

IT Managers are used to having to support business needs – it’s the whole purpose of the function and it happens brilliantly in organisations every day without too many people noticing. So when it comes to field service management software, we’d encourage you to think big, get involved with the Operations teams and consider the organisation-wide benefits of a using a best-in-class solution, as well as thinking about the financial and workload flexibility you can derive from a SaaS solution.

 

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If you would like to know more about how Leadent Service Cloud can help you improve your field service then please visit www.leadentservicecloud.com

 

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Resource Type: eBook
Published by:  coresystems
Title: An Introduction To Field Service Management

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Synopsis:

Over the course of the past several years, field service management (FSM) software has evolved to keep pace with the changing technologies that have emerged in recent years, such as the cloud and mobility.

In the modern environment, it’s now necessary for field service software to integrate CRM and ERP functionality in order to ensure that all aspects of service can be managed more effectively.

This eBook takes a detailed look at the core fundamental areas of field service management and how you can improve your own processes to ensure your field service delivery is best in class.

Overview:

This eBook looks at the following topics across six chapters

Technology and Field Service

We look at the role cloud and mobility have played in transforming field service and also assess what new security concerns these two technologies may bring. We also look at emerging technologies including IoT and 3D printing and explore what role they could have in field service delivery.

High Value Field Service

For high value industries, which suffer substantial losses when downtime occurs, FSM solutions can help to mitigate the risk of downtime, as well as design, plan, implement and report on high value services which are typically complex  industrial installations.

It’s thought that on average, businesses lose between $84,000 and $108,000 in revenue for every hour that they suffer network downtime. This section focusses on the cost to the customer of poor field service delivery and what ultimately that cost could be to your business also.

What to look for in a FSM solution

When it comes to choosing the right FSM solution for your organisation, there’s a lot to consider. It’s necessary to properly understand how it will be used within the business and how it aligns with business goals. It’s also important that the solution is future-proof in order to allow for existing technologies to work for the organisation, as well as consider how these might change in the future.

In this section we explore what some of the key considerations are in terms of identifying the right type of business to meet your organisations field service delivery demands.

Managing the Field Service Workforce

One of the most important aspects of your FSM solution will be team management. In order to make full use of integrated FSM, it’s necessary that your solution have the functionality to allow you to effectively collaborate and mobilise the workforce. In this section we look at how best-in-class organisations effectively utilise their FSM solution to better manage their mobile workforce.

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Astea International Ltd
Title: Standing alone or part of a bigger picture?

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Synopsis:

First-call resolution or first-time fix rates have become a critical key performance indicator (KPI) for field service organisations interested in gaining a competitive advantage.

While historically automation efforts in field service have focused on improving efficiency and productivity in an effort to reduce costs or complete more work orders each day, they have not necessarily had a direct impact on customer satisfaction.

This white paper looks at the importance of first-time fix rates when it comes to customer satisfaction and explores means in which you can improve your own first time fix rates.

Overview:

Customers don’t necessarily measure field service effectiveness in terms of efficiency. Yes, they want a technician to arrive as quickly as possible, but they also want their problem solved quickly and, preferably, in a single visit.

If a repair can’t be made because of a missing part or lack of expertise on the part of the technician, customers experience costly downtime as well as frustration.

That’s why first-time fix rates should be a top priority for companies interested in improved customer retention.

There is significant room for improvement in many organizations. According to data from The Service Council, the average first-time fix rate for service companies is just 74%, while failure to resolve an issue on the first visit was a top customer complaint according to 34% of respondents.

In an Aberdeen Group survey, first-time fix rate was cited as a critical service metric by 38% of respondents, just below service profitability (41%) and customer satisfaction (68%). (Source: “Evolution of the Field Service Business: Optimizing the Field Service Chain,” Aberdeen Group).

First-call resolution plays a critical role in improving customer service and profitability. However, improving first-call resolution rates is not a simple proposition. There are a number of different factors that play a role, including parts availability and logistics issues, technician training, vehicle management, optimised scheduling, diagnostic tools, and dynamic dispatching capabilities. Without the right systems in place and without proper process design, it can be difficult or even impossible to improve performance.

Tackling any one of these elements individually won’t solve the problem. Service organisations have to take a systemic and holistic approach that will enable them to get the right technician to the customer site, equipped with all of the necessary parts and technical know-how in a timely fashion. This is crucial to ensure successful customer interactions.

This white paper looks at:

• The high cost of return visits
• A fix for first time fix rates
• Integrated Service Management
• Preventative measures
• Continuous improvement

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Intelligent traffic signs provider, Swarco Traffic Ltd, is saying good riddance to whiteboards and complex Excel spreadsheets...

The company is implementing SC5.1, the latest iteration of Tesseract’s service management software, in a bid to revolutionise its asset and field service management and boost efficiency.

Swarco is responsible for keeping drivers informed and traffic moving, by way of smart parking guidance signs, directional signs, speed warning signs and smart motorway information boards. Swarco’s tailor-made traffic management solutions are used by city centres and motorways nationwide, including major shopping centres like Westfield in London and the Trafford Centre in Manchester.

With more than ten thousand signs across the UK, Swarco relies on a hardworking team of engineers to maintain the signs and remedy faults. At present, Swarco has dedicated staff using whiteboards and an Excel planner to manage its engineers’ schedules and ensure that sign maintenance and repairs are carried out efficiently and on time. However, the process is manual and time-consuming.

 

The other problem is that Swarco does not always have access to GPS coordinates for each sign, which leads to difficulties directing engineers to the exact location of the equipment.

“Tesseract is going to give us automation, immediacy and visibility,” says Berony Abraham, Operations Director for Swarco. “The new system will automatically allocate work according to skill set and location, direct engineers to exactly the right place using GPS, and let our customers log in and report faults. Several of our largest clients have already expressed interest in this.”

Swarco looked at a variety of different solutions before selecting Tesseract. “We went with Tesseract because it’s UK-based, really simple and easy to use, and the staff are so helpful,” says Berony. “It’s also more or less off-the-shelf. In other words, you can use it straight away without having to spend ages customising it.”

 

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Nick Shipton, Dynamic Resource Scheduling Executive, Kirona explains the importance of understanding your providers own roadmap for development when selecting a field service management solution...

The last piece I wrote for FSN focused on how I believe it’s important to utilise a scheduler that is flexible enough to allow for an organisation to cope with the different types of demand whilst still enabling customer expectations to be met and being as efficient as possible regarding how that demand is dispatched to the workforce.

For a leading field service scheduling software vendor ensuring that the software we provide ticks all these boxes is a challenge. We need to be certain that we are meeting our customer’s expectations by providing not only excellent support and service but also an innovative roadmap that keeps them engaged and moving forward on the solution ensuring they maximise their ROI and continue to deliver further efficiencies.

However there is also the need to look to new markets and prospects whose needs may differ from those of our core business.

The key is that we need to look at the solution as an enabler that enables our customers to retain a position that is at the forefront of their markets, whether that is in giving them a commercial edge or in the case of our customers in the public sector enabling them to cope with the additional strain on services, cuts in budgets and yet still give their customers the best possible service.

 

At Kirona we of course have a roadmap looking at the short, medium and long-term but for me its key that we look outside of our own internal team to drive the content of these, especially in regards to the short and medium term roadmap.

The long term roadmap is more strategic but still contains some customer consultation.

We have an excellent internal team on both the scheduling and mobile products who are constantly looking at new features driven by their own knowledge of our technology, the knowledge of our customer base and knowledge of new advances in our field.

However it’s very important that we don’t get too carried away before trying to understand whether our innovation is relevant to the customers and prospects needs.

Quite often you’ll find that exciting new features in products are great for the Sales Team as they look good in demos but when it comes to the day to day operations we find that users never see the benefits they were expecting.

For this reason at Kirona we always look to use the excellent forum of our user group to both plot and direct our roadmap.

Over half of our roadmap is fed by ideas and requirements from our current user base, and we also ensure that in every update we have between 30% and 50% of customer lead enhancements as this is key to ensuring that the product stays relevant for our customers, as listening to our customers is key and one of the main reasons we have such great customer retention and satisfaction.

Coming back to my original point, how do we as a software company ensure that what we offer gives the customer the flexibility they need in the product, and ensure that we as a company don’t go down a route that only offers a solution to a niche market.

For the answer to that question it’s about ensuring that we are selling into a diverse range of markets, but with the caveat that we always sense check whether any new market and new functionality for that market could be used across our customer base.

This extends further when you then look at our user group, which five years ago was exclusively public sector organisations and from that sector almost primarily housing repairs, whereas now we have representation from retail, healthcare, utilities, central government and facilities management organisations.

 

The important point for us as a software company is that all these different sectors are using the same suite of products just configured to suit their own needs and requirements, and from our customers point of view they get to see how other organisations are not just using the software in a different way but also that actually the goals and requirements of organisations from different sectors are not too far away from their own.

So in conclusion I feel it is very important that when looking for software its key that you don’t just look at the solution itself, you need to ensure that the solution isn’t getting stuck in a cul-de-sac and the provider is challenging themselves, their customers and their prospects to offer you a future.

 

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Improving first-call/visit resolution rates can be challenging and frustrating for field service organisations, because there are so many factors and variables that prevent technicians from completing a repair on the first visit.

This great infographic from Astea highlights the importance of getting them right... 

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Want to know more? Download the white paper that accompanies this infographic here

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Want to know more? Download the white paper that accompanies this infographic here

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Evatic AS, a leading software vendor within Service Management, have acquired Cranbox Ltd in the UK, the owner of the Tesseract service management software product trading under the name Tesseract.

Together Evatic and Tesseract will complement each other’s product portfolio and strengthen the product offering within the service management field in the market. Tesseract has its main office in High Wycombe just outside London and an office in Reston, Virginia in the US.

“We are extremely happy to add Tesseract to our product family” says Pål M. Rødseth, CEO of Evatic. “We have known Colin and his team for years and we believe that the two organisations will complement each other both when it comes to products, industries and geographies. The Tesseract solution with a cloud based platform will make a great addition to the Evatic software suit.”

 

“I believe that Tesseract are in the best hands going forward”, says Colin Brown, founder and CEO of Tesseract. “With more than 150 customers in a wide range of industries, there is very little overlap with Evatic both when it comes to customer industries and geographies, and I am confident that the product and the customers will continue to thrive under the Evatic ownership”.

Evatic is a leading European service management software company with the head office in Trondheim, Norway and offices in Sweden, Germany, France, Poland and Singapore.

With a global reach and more than 300 customers in 30+ countries Evatic offers a broad product suit for companies that need to make their services profitable. Evatic is a private company owned by the founders and Viking Venture.

 

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John Cameron, General Manager, Trimble Field Service Management gives his expert insight into how companies can best make the shift away from manual processes to automated...

Field service companies of all sizes will be at different stages in their scheduling journey. Some will be very experienced with using scheduling automation whilst others are still using manual, paper-based systems to schedule work. Surprisingly, there are many field service businesses out there today that are still at the manual stage and looking to automate their processes for the first time.

With so many advanced scheduling solutions on the market today, it can be a daunting task knowing what type of technology and level of sophistication would be the best fit for a business, as well as how to tackle challenges around change management.

According to Aberdeen Group, 44 per cent of field service managers regard planning and scheduling to be the greatest opportunity for investment. The benefits realised by fully automatic scheduling and optimisation tools are undeniable; allowing the scheduling algorithms to automatically manage resources in the most efficient way not only improves productivity but allows the dispatcher to concentrate on other, more valuable tasks.

[quote float="left"]44 per cent of field service managers regard planning and scheduling to be the greatest opportunity for investment.

However, the change from paper to automatic scheduling is a jump too far for many. A stepped approach or journey is a more sustainable way to manage the business change and ensure that a field service business achieves its primary objective – getting the right technician to the right place at the right time with the tools to do the job, first time.

 

The following article explains the various scheduling strategies as steps, allowing businesses to select the stage that best describes its current operation and identify the goal for its future scheduling needs.

 1.     Paper-based

A dispatcher can typically manage 15-20 technicians via a paper based system. Whilst many service organisations still use paper-based processes today, this is field service scheduling at the simplest level and it can quickly start to fail when volume, complexity or volatility increases.

Often a day’s schedule is forced to change, due to such circumstances as a new high priority service request comes in, a job overruns or a technician gets caught in traffic and arrives late. When circumstances like this happen it becomes very difficult to reconfigure the schedule for the rest of the day, given the number of dependencies, geographic distances and demands of each individual piece of work.

2.     Manual Scheduling

Manual scheduling is characterized by ‘drag and drop’ features whereby a dispatcher can easily drag and drop work orders and tasks onto technicians’ calendars and dispatch work out to them electronically. Typically the system will do some automatic checks once the task is dropped. For example, to check if the technician allocated to a job has the skills to complete it. Manual scheduling offers a more automated and predictive solution to a paper-based system, helping businesses to save time and improve accuracy.

However, as human intervention is heavily involved, it can prove difficult to manage complex scheduling processes via this system.

3.     Intelligent Advisor

A Semi-Automatic scheduling service is invoked by a user, to start an automated process. Although this scheduling system is automatic, it still requires some level of human interaction, which is something few vendors provide yet many businesses prefer as it allows them to maintain some level of control and trust.

[quote float="right"]Having decision making tools built in to a scheduler can also help to alleviate a lot of headaches experienced by a field service manager.

Having decision making tools built in to a scheduler can also help to alleviate a lot of headaches experienced by a field service manager.

 

For large field operations, emergency jobs often come in that need to be added to the day’s schedule so having a tool that advises on the impact of what adding this job in will have before it is assigned can help to prevent the de-railing of a field service operation. Often known as a ‘what-if’ tool or an ‘intelligent advisor’, such a feature allows dispatchers to make quick, informed decisions to keep the best possible quality of the schedule.

For these reasons, transiting from a manual to semi-automatic system is recommended instead of diving head first into a fully automatic process.

4.     Automatic Scheduling & Real-Time Optimization

Some companies may not have the time or resources to drag and drop work orders into manual and semi-automatic systems and check all the details. It can also prove difficult to keep on top of scheduling all of the in-day emergency tasks. Fully automatic scheduling takes the intuitive nature of automated scheduling even further. Such a tool quickly and easily builds schedules automatically and dispatches work to technicians out in the field based on pre-defined parameters. The process completely eliminates manual intervention.

A Case in Point: Pacific Telemanagement Services (PTS)

PTS achieved a 95% job completion rate and 75% productivity increase transitioning from manual to automated scheduling.

The company operates a fleet of 90 mobile workers who service pay phones and pay internet kiosks, as well as perform freezer cleaning and maintenance for their ice cream distribution company, Arctic Express. Until recently, it was using a manual scheduling process to assign tasks each day, which lacked efficiency and productivity suffered as a result.

[quote float="left"]We used to just throw a group of tickets at our technicians in an assigned region to see what they could get done in a day...

“We used to just throw a group of tickets at our technicians in an assigned region to see what they could get done in a day. Each morning they would print out a list of their tasks, then spend a half hour planning routes based on their own knowledge of the area. We saw that this way was not always most efficient,” said Justin Keane, Chief Operating Officer of PTS.

 

The company tried using a map feature to sequence the stops but this took an hour a day for each regional hub, and as they manage 8 regional hubs, it took 8 hours a day to build the routes.

PTS implemented Trimble’s cloud-based scheduling solution to help it improve the efficiency of its scheduling process and raise the productivity level of its workers. By transitioning from manual to semi - automatic scheduling, PTS has been able to cut 3 hours a day spent on routing per dispatcher to about 45 minutes a day — a productivity saving of 75%, or about 9 hours per week. Furthermore, technicians no longer have to plan their own routes, saving an additional 90 hours per week of their time so that they can spend it on completing more jobs per day.

 

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