ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘software-and-apps’ CATEGORY

Infinis, who generate power from sites across the country, have launched StaySafe as a safety solution to enhance the protection and safety of its staff when working on unmanned sites and out of hours.

StaySafe is an app and cloud-based hub which monitors a lone worker’s safety and location on a real-time map and alerts Infinis’ Logistics Centre front desk operators if they do not check-in within a specified time.

Infinis required a more streamlined and secure solution to help enhance the safety of employees whilst working alone on remote sites.

In light of this, Infinis replaced their previous lone worker system which relied on workers to update their location every hour via text, with the StaySafe app which provides clear and consistent GPS reporting to determine a user’s last known location and their safety status. The switch to this mobile app offers a rich range of bespoke features, relies less on the user and provides a safer solution.

Infinis’ HSQE Manager, Mark Skidmore comments: “Over the last 12 months, we have rolled out smartphones within the company and launched StaySafe as a practical and improved safety solution. We understand the risk to our workers who may be vulnerable when working on sites alone and are able to mitigate risk through the app’s hourly timed check-in sessions.

Additionally, we find the app’s note function really useful, allowing staff to provide us with extra detail about their location in order to narrow down our search if they are based on larger sites and in need of support. Overall, we are very satisfied with StaySafe and confident it meets the company’s standards and expectations, to enhance protection of our lone workers.”

Don Cameron, CEO, StaySafe adds “Employees in Energy and Utility based sectors can be vulnerable as they are frequently required to work and travel to sites alone, often outside of normal working hours. We’re seeing a big trend in the sector of companies moving away from user-driven/company manufactured systems and dedicated safety devices towards apps because of the prevalent use of smartphones in the workplace. StaySafe provides a way for organisations to know exactly where staff are and if they are safe – with the added bonus of using equipment staff already carry”

 

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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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Accomplished industry veteran to lead IFS’s Global Service Management initiatives as IFS, the global enterprise applications company, announces the appointment of field service industry veteran Marne Martin as President of IFS’s Service Management business unit and CEO of WorkWave.

The IFS Service Management business unit established under Marne will encompass the global IFS service management organization as well as WorkWave, acquired by IFS in September 2017, and have dedicated engineering, sales and marketing resources to address the unique needs of service management customers globally. Marne’s experience leading high-growth and expansion phases in both publicly and privately held companies will provide the leadership required to propel both brands into their next stages of growth and market expansion.

]As both President of IFS Service Management and CEO of WorkWave, Marne and her leadership team will continue to elevate the strategic importance of service management to the success of the overall IFS business. Marne will focus on ensuring the entire portfolio of IFS’s service management solutions provide customers with the business value they expect from a global industry leader in field service management (FSM).

“I am thrilled to be leading such a great organization and to be part of the overall IFS senior leadership team as we begin a new chapter in our company’s growth,” said Marne. “WorkWave continues to be an important asset to the overarching value proposition of IFS Service Management, and I look forward to working with the talented IFS and WorkWave teams to make sure IFS’s service management portfolio becomes even more customer-focused.”

With Marne’s appointment to its senior leadership team, IFS will be able to draw on her broad experience and proven track record to further increase the significance of the service business and grow its global market share.

IFS CEO Darren Roos said, “Marne’s domain experience will enable us to further develop the service management capability across the entire portfolio to deliver even more value to our customers. We remain completely focused on delivering solutions together with our partners that have an impact on the way our customers serve their customers.”

Prior to IFS, Marne served as CEO and led the executive leadership team at ServicePower Plc., a field service management software company, where she transformed its go-to-market strategy and shifted its focus to SaaS and managed services revenue, increasing pipeline every year during her tenure. Prior to that, she served as CFO of Norcon, Plc., a UK-based telecom and defense consulting firm, where she grew the company from a business largely dominant in only the Middle East to one diversified across the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Martin is a winner of a number of awards including 2016 CEO Gamechanger of the Year (FSM) from ACQ 5 Global Awards and 2015 Field Service CEO of the Year from Executive Awards.

 

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Field Service News Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland offers up some insight into how field service has become a core differentiator amongst competing organisations and how the trend towards advanced services is being driven by technology...

 

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This video was originally included in a video presentation run in partnership with Salesforce.

Download the full webcast @ http://fs-ne.ws/Y8ny30lsZUR

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Surefire, a UK provider of fire safety systems, is starting to reap the rewards of Tesseract, an Asolvi product, which it chose to replace a popular vertical solution...

Founded in 1990, Surefire began locally, providing systems in London and the South-East via a handful of engineers. Today it designs, installs and maintains full-scale fire protection solutions up and down the country for offices, financial institutions, facilities management companies, hospitals, prisons and schools. It also manufactures, sells and maintains the UltraGuard system for the residential market. A portable misting unit that detects and suppresses fire at an early stage, UltraGuard is a more intelligent, more versatile and more effective alternative to your basic, fixed sprinkler system. It is designed to protect the vulnerable in our communities and Surefire reports that it saves around ten lives every year.

 

Out with the old...

Surefire’s old service management system was developed and customised specifically for fire and security systems providers. Asolvi’s Tesseract solution, on the other hand, is much broader, its usefulness extending across a wide range of markets, from lifts and escalators to commercial lighting to industrial cleaning equipment. But why was this better for Surefire?

Joanna Hawkins, Surefire’s office manager, explains, “Our old system was too basic, too inflexible. Its functions were limited and it was very difficult to elicit information from it. Reporting was non-existent. Asset lists weren’t integrated, which made it impossible to see their productivity and profitability without lifting the data manually and inputting it into a spreadsheet.”

 

"Inflexibility is a common problem across field service management (FSM) solutions designed for particular markets..."

 

Inflexibility is a common problem across field service management (FSM) solutions designed for particular markets. Sometimes the basics of an FSM system get forgotten about in favour of market-specific customisations. Horizontal software like Tesseract is concerned with getting the basics right first, i.e. call control, contract management, asset management, scheduling, mobile working, invoicing and reporting. In other words: the fundamental elements of FSM regardless of the industry you’re in.

“The old system was only useful to a point,” says Joanna. “A lot of the basics were missing. That’s why we decided to go with Tesseract. We wanted a system that would streamline our call control, scheduling and contract management processes, speed up invoicing and give us a better overall view of our assets. Tesseract fitted the bill. The enhanced visibility of the new system has already improved our reporting capabilities dramatically, and we’re able to track our profitability in a way we simply couldn’t before. We’ve also seen a big reduction in admin and paperwork.”

Things have improved for Surefire’s sales teams, too. In addition to Tesseract’s call control, assets and invoicing modules, Surefire is using Tesseract’s Quote Centre. This sophisticated quoting engine streamlines the generation, management and approval of quotes and automatically converts them into ready-made contracts. “We use Quote Centre for everything,” says Joanna. “New service contracts, one-off projects, remedial work, parts—it all goes through Quote Centre. It’s a faster, more transparent system than we had before.”

 

An incremental approach to implementation

Surefire has decided that the best thing for the company and its people is a gentler, more incremental approach to implementation, streamlining one part of its service chain at a time. Having successfully overhauled its contract and asset management, Surefire is looking to improve the performance of its engineers by implementing Tesseract’s mobile working solution: Remote Engineer Access (REA). REA lets engineers generate live service reports, look up asset and customer information, order parts, close down jobs and obtain customer signatures—all from a phone, tablet or laptop.

 

"A few of our engineers are already using Tesseract on their iPads and the results have been very positive..."

 

“A few of our engineers are already using Tesseract on their iPads and the results have been very positive,” says Joanna. “They now have all the information they need when they arrive on site, and if they don’t, they’re able to get it directly from the system without having to call the office. REA enables them to work better and by extension give our customers a better service.”

Joanna adds, “We’re also seeing the benefits of our engineers inputting job information directly onto the system in real time instead of filling in service reports and posting them to the office. It reduces admin for them while improving efficiency and accuracy for us.”

 

Moving forward

After a successful trial, Surefire is set to roll out REA to all of its engineers by the end of the month. At that point it will start seeing the benefits of live job data, radically reduced paperwork, and same-day invoicing. Next, Surefire will turn its attention to spare parts management and implement Tesseract’s Parts Centre. This multi-location stock control platform lets you view stock quantities, raise parts requests, make purchases, and track all parts bought, sold, used, changed, moved or sent for repair.

“Asolvi has helped us open our eyes, scrutinise our processes and look closely at how we can improve them,” says Joanna. “Thanks to the Tesseract system and Asolvi’s support—particularly Graham and Chris, who’ve been superb—we have more control over our service operation than we’ve ever had. There’s more to come, too. We’re moving forward in leaps and bounds every day.”

 

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In this excerpt from an exclusive fieldservicenews.com webcast Scott Flatman, Regional Sales Director, Salesforce about how technology is enabling field service companies to bridge the gap between their customers and the mobile workforce.

 

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Want to know more? The full webcast is available for fieldservicenews.com subscribers. If you are a field service professional you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and if you apply for your subscription using the link below you will receive instant access to the full webcast.

Click here to apply and access the full webcast now

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to Pål Rodseth, CEO of Asolvi about how he has brought together three key companies serving the SMB field servicer market across Europe, the meaning behind the new brand name Asolvi, how their customers are benefiting from the collectively shared learnings of a wider pool of peers and what the future holds for Asolvi.

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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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Tom Devroy, Product Evangelist for IFS Service Management products outlines the various options available to field service organisations looking to improve their service management delivery...

Want to know more? Tom DeVroy has written a white paper on this project which is available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by IFS)

When Winston Churchill said, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail,” he wasn’t referring to field service businesses, but it still rings true. Field service organizations understand that efficient route planning is essential to being successful; smart routing is efficient and enables service technicians to become more productive by completing more jobs per day. However, they may be overlooking the added benefits of schedule optimization as an intrinsic part of the solution.

Any organization that needs to manage a mobile workforce—whether it’s for product delivery, service staff or service technicians—can benefit from planning software to simplify scheduling, manage workflows and improve the bottom line.

So what is it that businesses are trying to automate with scheduling and route planning? We ask this question frequently of field service organizations. There are a lot of products in the marketplace, and they all have a value proposition and price point, but each should also be expected to deliver a certain benefit for the cost.

The Essentials of Route Planning

Some businesses simply assign a certain number of jobs to a technician, usually based on geography, or customer visit frequency, and want software that will figure out a route for that technician to finish their assigned work.

This kind of routing software has been around for some time, and, in its simplest form, it’s something we all use frequently: it is navigation and turn-by-turn directions.

This kind of routing software has been around for some time, and, in its simplest form, it’s something we all use frequently: it is navigation and turn-by-turn directions.This basic form of simple route planning is built into almost every smart phone that has a global positioning system (GPS)-based navigation system.

More advanced navigation systems can interact with real-time traffic services to suggest the shortest journey from a time or mileage perspective. This is straightforward technology and quite inexpensive, as it’s usually included in your phone plan.

Service organizations don’t really have to invest much to receive the benefit of this type of simple route planning. However, this solution leaves a lot of decisions in the hands of the technician. This self-planning, self-scheduling method is very inefficient: who they choose to visit first and last can have a huge impact on productive time, drive time, overtime, fuel consumption, service level agreement (SLA) compliance, and customer satisfaction.

Ultimately, this solution will fail when jobs and SLAs are missed, or workloads become inefficient.

Optmizing Resources

Where field service organizations start to see a real payback is when they begin using scheduling software that includes travel calculations as part of the schedule.

The jobs assigned to the technician represent the demand, and the scheduling software manages the labor supply. The scheduling software determines the order and the resource, and considers workload balance, while the route planning software can create the best way to get from one location to the next.

This is a more intelligent, more encompassing planning method that produces a more reliable, scheduled plan. It also takes the subjectivity out of the hands of the technician and puts it back in the hands of management, but it only addresses productivity and cost saving at a cursory level.

Some planning software will take into consideration multiple variables to determine an optimized route.Some planning software will take into consideration multiple variables to determine an optimized route.

The trucking industry has used this kind of route planning software for some time. For instance, a trucker’s licensing and certifications could be considered for what type of equipment they can operate, how many hours they have driven on a given day, week, or month, and how much additional driving time they can be assigned. In this case, fuel consumption or total drive time can be factored into the optimum route as well. This can be fairly effective if the work that is planned throughout the day is static, or, in other words, is not subject to change.

Managing Complexity

In a service business, there can be a plethora of skill set considerations for each job. Perhaps a technician or subcontractor is not welcome at a particular customer site, or maybe the technician doesn’t have the right training on a given piece of equipment.

In simple terms, why send a journeyman to do the work of an apprentice? It is most advantageous for both the customer and the business to send the right resource for the job, based on all the available information at the time the job is assigned to the field, taking into consideration cost, location, capability, and customer expectations.

Many service businesses assign work based on a customer intimacy model; for instance, primary, secondary, tertiary technician (or subcontractor), but this model doesn’t always hold up. In other industries, particularly when the equipment is highly technical and often sold through distribution, the technician is the face of the company to the customer. Although this should be a consideration for who gets assigned to a job, it shouldn’t be the only one.

Dynamic Scheduling

The variability or dynamic nature of a service business manifests itself in other ways.

Besides calls sometimes taking longer than estimated, there are also unexpected traffic problems, emergency calls throughout the day, different prioritization of service work, other skills required to fix a given problem, customer commitments, unexpected fleet problems, and, finally, planned maintenance.

The variability or dynamic nature of a service business manifests itself in other ways.Whether guaranteed through a contract or mandated as an engineering change order, planned maintenance should be considered so that engineers are fully utilized. All of these variables should be balanced against optimum schedule efficiencies, like reduced total travel time, maximum productivity, minimized fuel expense, and least-cost resource assignment.

Having scheduling software that intelligently factors in the best way to assess these variables in a dynamic fashion is a differentiator to efficient service labor management.

Conclusion

The most important part of selecting a successful field service solution for your needs is to plan with your businesses goals in mind.

As you start to create a vision of where you want your service business to be, think about the long-term impact of all of the technology on your business from an operations standpoint. Lay out an implementation plan that will fold that technology into the organization as you are ready to absorb it. This paper just focused on planning and scheduling but other variables in the areas of technical support, contract administration, product management, service logistics and reverse logistics are equally important.

As it relates to moving your field people against customer demands, perhaps a simple route planning tool is where you want to start, but there may be a better way to significantly change and improve your service delivery by implementing solutions that allow you to get where you want to be. And that planning strategy is your best plan for success.

Want to know more? Tom DeVroy has written a white paper on this project which is available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

The good news is that if you are a field service practitioner then you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner.

The even better news is we will send you a copy of this white paper when you apply as a welcome!

Click here to apply for your complimentary industry subscription to fieldservicenews.com and access the white paper now!

Note: Please do take the time to our T&Cs (available in plain English at fieldservicenews.com/subscribe) and note that this content is sponsored by IFS)

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