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If you were building a new house you’d use a blueprint, right? Well, your service department needs the same level of planning and visualiaation to transition from paper-based, manual processes to automated service operations, says Joanna Rotter, of service management software provider MSI Data.

Service technicians work out in the field repairing and maintaining equipment at various job sites. Each task requires documentation, scheduling, and data entry, which when automated can save time and mistakes while making the business more profitable. But in order to make a transformation to service automation successful, you need a step-by-step plan.

 The eight-step blueprint.

 The biggest benefits of automating service processes include greater productivity, visibility, and efficiency, which will infiltrate every area of your organisation.[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Get everyone on board, especially leadership.
   When you have a great idea, sometimes selling it to your team is half the battle. To get your team on board for a big organisational shift like automating service, start by creating a vision statement.  It should include a clarity-of-purpose statement and concrete goals for what you want the organisation to look like when the project is finished.
2. Understanding change management—assign an internal team to take charge.
   Understanding and implementing an effective change management program will require more than just a one-time meeting. Make sure the project is a priority by assigning an internal team to motivate the rest of the workers to take the project seriously. The group should include a project leader as well as several user representatives from each operational area (e.g. field, scheduling, inventory, IT, etc.).
3. Begin with the end in mind.
   Know where you want the project to end up before you take the first step. Technology isn’t magic and it won’t solve your problems without some planning and tailoring.[quote float="left"]Know where you want the project to end up before you take the first step...

    

   Nail down the concrete KPIs you want the technology to help you meet. For example, doing service on mobile shouldn’t be the goal; the goal is to increase communication with field techs or reduce time from service ticket to billing by using mobile. The technology is just the tool you use to achieve your goals.
4. Work with your vendor to produce a timeline and roadmap.
   Establish a clear Statement of Work with your software vendor and map out a concrete project plan and calendar. The plan you come up with should be visible to everyone involved and outline individual responsibilities, assign project leaders, set deadlines, etc. This will serve as a constant remind about what’s coming up next and specific accomplishments you’re aiming for.
5. Model it out.
   You can think of this as the ultimate planning phase. Modeling current and future processes is a vital step because it forces you to evaluate where you are now, why you do what you do, and who needs to do what to move forward.
6. Understand your data.
   Before you make plans to collect new data, you need to understand your current data. From there, you can determine what information you want to be collecting in the new system, who you want to have access to what, and how you’ll use the information to guide future decisions. Set goals for what you hope to get out of the data, map out how you’ll achieve those goals, and monitor your progress.
7. Train, train, train.
   Training is an incredibly important step with any new system. It’s important to remember, even the best software in the world isn’t going to do your team any good if users don’t understand how to use it. Make ongoing training a priority with reminder courses, ongoing new employee orientation, and training to roll out new features as they’re released.
8. Invest in mobile devices.
   If the field service app you choose runs cross-platform on any device, you’re free to select the device that best meets your organization’s needs. Each platform and device has its pros and cons, so make sure your app is cross-platform and native so you have device and platform flexibility.

Conclusion
The key to success with any new system is understanding the challenges while sticking to the plan. Keep your eye on the goals you set early on and treat the vision statement as a mantra, reminding yourself why you underwent this journey in the first place.

Follow these steps to automation and you’ll be well on your way to a huge return on investment, happier workers and customers, and a more efficient field service business.

 

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For five years UK based field service software provider Oneserve have been quietly going about their way, winning significant clients yet flying under the radar. Now with a young, dynamic new CEO at the helm they are ready to stop being the industry’s best kept secret and step into the limelight...

The story of Oneserve is not that of your average field service software provider.

For a start the company actually began life as an in-house field service management tool developed for Connaught PLC - a company that focussed on repair work in the social housing sector. After an employee buy-out in 2010 Oneserve emerged as a fully fledged solution with the advantage of being unencumbered by the initial costs of R&D that many start-up software companies may have faced when entering what is both a complex and busy market.

However, perhaps more importantly they already had an intimate understanding of what good service, and the tools to enable that, looked like.

After a few quick wins on ‘home turf’ within the social housing sector, the team at Oneserve have quietly yet steadily expanded their footprint across a number of different verticals picking up some top tier customers such as Lovell, Islington Borough Council and Sky along the way.

Yet when compared to some of their competitors such as ClickSoftware, ServiceMax and IFS to name a few, it is fair to say that such success has largely remained under the radar for many in the field service industry.

However, with the appointment of a new, young and dynamic CEO Chris Proctor in February earlier this year, it seems that Oneserve are now ready to step out into the limelight alongside their more established peers and start shouting about just why it is that they feel they are ready to become a disruptive force within the sector.

Indeed, Proctor, who was promoted from Sales and Marketing Director to CEO after just eight months with the Exeter based company, has already made an significant impact in the market with a blistering attack on his peers, accusing field service software providers of ‘holding innovation hostage’ in a press release issued shortly before he took over as CEO.

 

And whilst his background as a marketeer would suggest that he is certainly savvy enough to understand the power of such an assertion in terms of getting people to sit up and pay attention to Oneserve and what they have to say, when speaking to him it is clear that this was not just a simple marketing ploy. Proctor, is a passionate guy who truly seems to get the importance of service in today’s modern world.

And in his eyes technology providers should be simply making it easier for companies to deliver the levels of service excellence that twenty first century customers both expect and demand.

“One of the key things for us was that we really felt we wanted the system to be as intuitive and easy to use as possible,” Proctor explains.

“One of our core tenets is that we are always focused on the end user – always focused on how do we make life for that client better?”

It is not only a noble sentiment but also an approach that is ultimately winning them business, although Proctor himself admits that it is now time for Oneserve to step out of the shadows and kick on, building upon their success to date.

“We’ve been working incredibly hard and diligently for the last five years but we’ve been pretty quiet about it,” he comments.

“I don’t have a quarter of a million pound marketing budget, I can’t attend all the shows we don’t get involved in a lot of that stuff and as a result we’ve kind of kept under the radar of a lot of people. I know it was a surprise not so long ago when we won the Islington contract with a lot of people saying who are these guys?”

“Today we are powering about three and a half million working hours, I’ve lost count of how many engineers, we are working across multiple sectors and now we are being pragmatic in that we are now starting to talk a lot more about what we do.”

 

In fact there are two key facets to the Oneserve approach that appear to resonate with the needs of field service companies today.

Firstly it is a model based on licences rather than professional services which will appeal to those more cost conscious Finance Directors (are there any other kind?). And it is also a fully deployable self service product which will be of interest to both Operations folks and IT alike as it means more control of things like reporting and configurations, without having to go back to the vendor every-time a change is necessary.

This is a big plus in Proctor’s eyes and he uses a neat metaphor to explain his thinking.

“If you buy a car and you drive off the forecourt you turn left – why should you have to call an engineer out to configure your car to be able to turn left, and then right and then left again?”

“Whilst that may make your journey really efficient, it makes it very efficient for a snapshot in time but if you need to diversify, if you need to take a detour or a change in direction you have to go through the same process again.”

“Our principal is exactly the opposite in that if we give you the car, really the emphasis should be on the strength of the car, the strength of the support, the strength of the training and really the overall proposition to allow you get in and drive.”

Given their background as an in-house field service solution which previously had a 360 degree role for enabling service delivery at Connaught, is it a fair assumption to say that the understanding of good service delivery remains closely entwined in the DNA of both the Oneserve product and indeed the team itself?

“Absolutely,” Proctor concurs. “For me it’s really simple. The vast majority of service calls start with a negative. For example ‘my boiler has just blown up’ or this has gone wrong or that has gone wrong. Yes there are other more planned things but by and large it always focuses on a negative,” he explains.

“And we’ve all been on the end of those experiences, those times we’ve waited for an engineer that doesn’t turn up or turns up late, but we’ve also all had those really good experiences.

 

Where they’ve told you they are going to be with you around this time and then an hour or so before they are due they call you and tell you actually I’m going to be with you at exactly this time.”

“Where the engineer has come in, they’ve be really nice, they’ve been really efficient and professional, they’ve had all the tools they’ve needed, they’ve fixed the problem and they’ve been on their way really quickly. And the difference between those two experiences is palpable.”

“It’s the same in the logistics world. We all groan into our hands when we see our parcel is being delivered by Yodel instead of DHL -it’s that differentiation in service,” He adds

“We want to turn the paradigm on its head, we want to turn every negative into a positive. We can’t control the negatives, things will always go wrong and things will always break. But if we can enhance the interactions we can control, if we can make those better, we can improve the end experience and it comes back up the chain and makes everything work much more effectively.”

“And that really is our prevailing thought, that is what we are striving for.”

And whilst empowering their clients through a self-service based product is core to the ethos at Oneserve, Proctor also outlines how closely they continue to work with their clients in order to make sure that those tools they are providing allow companies to ensure they can deliver a positive service experience.

“It remains something very important to us so we do spend time with our clients, we do spend time with them understanding how they are using the system,” he comments.

 

“In the same way we do that digitally in terms of heat mapping and workshops and understanding really what that UX means to the end user - that is very key to us. Understanding how we can make those interactions more effective, more streamlined and more engaging is very important,” he concludes.

It is this commitment to understanding exactly how their clients are using their system that will keep Oneserve close to their roots as part of a service orientated organisation themselves, which in turn allows them to develop their product in line with the needs of their customers.

Hopefully this outlook won’t change as the company continues to grow, but one change that seems inevitable is Oneserve will not be a best kept secret for too much longer.

 

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mplsystems, providers of contact centre and field service technologies, have recently announced their inclusion in Gartner’s 04 May 2016 “Magic Quadrant” - for the CRM Customer Engagement Centre.

This positioning follows their inclusion as a Visionary in Gartner’s 15 October 2015 Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) Western Europe, making them one of two vendors to appear in both Magic Quadrants.

This is the second consecutive year that mplsystems have been recognised in the Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center by Vice President and Gartner Analyst, Michael Maoz and Research Director Brian Manusama.

As stated in the report, “This Magic Quadrant examines the global market for customer service and support applications designed to engage customers through whichever channel they are using when they require assistance.”

"We are extremely honoured to be included in Gartner’s CRM Customer Engagement Center Magic Quadrant 2016; we believe it is a reflection of our pioneering technology, which allows agents to deliver an exceptional experience, regardless of whether the customer contacts the company via phone, social media, website or mobile device.” comments Paul White, CEO of mplsystems.

“We feel our inclusion in both of these reports provides validation of our unique capability to create true Omni Channel solutions - bringing together CRM and multimedia, alongside automation and complex business process management.”

 

Gartner evaluated a number of vendors for the 2016 report, performing more than 150 online surveys and 50 telephone interviews with vendor references, as well as conducting over 1000 inquiries with Gartner clients, further evaluating the products.

The report states that; “at the heart of a CEC is a case management and problem resolution system. It requires a strong ability to create, split, federate, join, assign and escalate cases, if it is not to be of merely marginal benefit to a CRM initiative.

The functionalities evaluated in this Magic Quadrant include those for knowledge-enabled service resolution, social media/community management and offer management. Also evaluated, are interaction assistance tools and service analytics dashboards.” Gartner also reflected that, “to support customers, some interactions will remain human-assisted, while far more will be automated and some will require customer self-service through search tools or social media channels.”

mplsystems’ vision is to transform consumer experience and agent efficiency in the service center, by bringing together all multimedia communications with contextual customer data in a single unified agent desktop.

The software guides agents through complex business processes whilst removing the need to hand actions off to the back office for processing.

Alongside this, their innovative self-service module filters out simple interactions for automation as it seamlessly routes the remaining transactions for agent assistance. What makes mplsystems really unique is their ability to offer not only these customer service solutions, but also cloud contact centre and field service technology as part of a truly end-to-end Omni-Channel solution.

About the Magic Quadrant
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

This video takes a look at who Exel Computer Systems are and who they can help you improve your field service operations...

 

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Andrew Quail, Head of IT at SGN, explains how the energy supplier is transforming its mobile app delivery. Sharon Clancy reports...

Gas companies are one of the most heavily regulated in the UK – after all, gas leaks have the potential to be fatal.

The UK’s energy sector regulatory regime is acknowledged as world-class, but safety and innovation are rarely comfortable bedfellows, and innovation has not traditionally been a strong point for the UK’s utilities companies, who have focused on meeting the demands of the industry regulator Ofgem.

So we were intrigued to hear that one of the UK’s biggest gas distributors, SGN, is embarking on a business transformation process that includes greater use of mobile tools and data for its 2,000 strong field service engineers.

SGN distributes natural and green gas to 5.9 million homes and businesses across Scotland and the south of England via a network of over 75,000 km of gas mains and services.

Critical business processes such as emergency gas response procedures have been automated for over a decade and have been mobilised to help ensure SGN meets it legal obligations to respond within an hour to any reports that might indicate a potentially lethal gas leak.

 

“The safety culture at SGN is core to our business and will never diminish. Data on performance has to be accurate and readily available to the regulator, and mobile data played a big role in providing that,” explains Andrew Quail, Director of IT at SGN.

Quail credits Ofgem with now encouraging an innovative climate that still puts safety first.

“We have relied on our mobile solutions for over a decade to deliver safety-critical services. Our legacy estate was great for some parts of the business: it’s solid, reliable and highly available.”

“However, with the legacy estate, if we change a piece of code or an element within an app, it has potential to affect other things.”

With such a large field workforce, SGN could appreciate the benefits of mobilising other activities in its business.

“Our existing estate was not agile enough to meet the changing needs of our customers and employees,” continued Quail.

“Customised apps take too long to develop and deploy and we wanted faster improvements to our efficiencies and customer services.”

"At the same time, we could not risk any mobility initiative affecting our ability to respond to core emergency repair work. We also wanted to control app distribution to ensure it met our IT security needs.”

The solution has been to retain the legacy SAP platform for emergency gas response services, while deploying Kony Inc’s MobileFabric cloud-based mobility platform to develop and maintain mobile apps for other parts of the business.

 

MobileFabric decouples corporate front- and back-end systems so changes can be made quickly.

Connectors and adaptors means back-end integration for mobile apps is configurable and flexible rather than being custom-built.

“We were looking for a platform that would allow us to quickly develop well-designed apps that are attractive to our workforce.”

“At the same time, we wanted to capture data in a standard format that could be distributed and presented to any part of the business.”

“Mobile Fabric is an enterprise-grade mobility platform which is tightly integrated into our legacy systems. One of the attractions was the fact that is cloud-based, says Quail.

“It is a scalable consumption-based model requiring minimum financial commitment. That reduces the risks to our business.”

A cloud-based solution also suits the fast-paced environment of mobility services, he thinks, and help delivers quick wins.

“Our first priority has been to develop customer focused apps to improve the whole customer experience.”

“So one of the first apps we have deployed is a is a customer satisfaction app that has digitalised feedback."

“It encourages engagement between our staff and the customer and also simplifies the back-office process of keeping the regulator informed about customer satisfaction scores.”

 

“We get real-time feedback into our ERP system, which means we get early notification of any potential issues for customers and we also get to hear about customers’ positive experiences – which was not always the case in the past.”

Another benefit, says Quail, is the app allows SGN to respond quickly to employee and customer suggestions about improving service.

The app was developed and deployed within weeks – much quicker than on a legacy platform and at much lower cost, points out Quail.

Security

IT directors have form when it comes to security concerns about Cloud computing, but Quail is one of the converts who believe Cloud platform services actually can enhance IT security. “

There is no denying that IT security is a sensitive topic and an area with potentially huge corporate risk for SGN.

However, cloud platform providers invest heavily in security, and we are confident the Kony platform is actually extremely secure.”

Moving to a mobility platform has also enabled SGN to define exactly what security standards it needs in various parts of the organisation, he explains.

Future plans

So what’s in the pipeline for the future, we asked?

There are lots of possibilities for efficiency improvements beyond the regulatory environment enthuses Quail.

“We are looking at productivity tools such as inspection apps that can make life easier for our engineers and simplify mobile data acquisition. We can digitalise site safety procedures and inspections, and move from paper to mobile apps for tasks such as time-sheets.”

 

Quail believes the introduction of mobile apps will help change the image of IT within the business from enforcer to enabler.

“We don’t want mobile app development to be a top-down process where IT comes up with all the new apps. We are encouraging our colleagues and employees to suggest what mobile apps might improve their work experience.”

Nor is it just field service engineers who are benefiting from the digitalisation of the business, says Quail.

“The Internet of Things” is beginning to transform our operations. When we deploy robots for pipe inspections, for example, we’ll be capture that data in real-time helping us to optimise maintenance with less disruption for our customers.”

 

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Nick Shipton of scheduling specialists Kirona takes a look at the importance of measuring performance and constantly shifting KPI focus in a journey of ongoing improvement...

Kirona recently collaborated with Field Service News and Bill Pollock from Strategies for Change, hosting an interesting webinar covering the key points raised in Bill’s field service benchmarking report.

During the webinar we discussed key trends across field service in terms of what organisation are looking to implement and improve in the future.

The most popular item on the agenda for UK and European organisations was to develop and improve metrics or KPI’s to measure performance.

The thought here was that organisations need to be measuring things better in order to improve and help with the following:

Customer demand for quicker response time

• Workforce utilisation & productivity
• Service process efficiencies
• Customer demand for improved asset availability

 

This if course is all very commendable and is absolutely the correct things to be striving for however, is developing new and improved ways for measuring what we are doing actually going to help us achieve these goals, or does it simply stop short and tell us simply how are we are doing today, last month, last year?

Back office systems, scheduling solutions and mobile solutions give us a whole wealth of potential data to look at and report upon (although those organisations who are yet to jump into the world of scheduling and mobile will only have the very basics), but are we using this data to the best of its ability.

Traditional KPI’s are great for telling us how we are doing now, allowing us to answer the question is the business performing to set metrics? But they stop short of actually giving any insight into how we can improve?

 

The setting of targets doesn’t answer the questions that allow us to improve, it merely creates a benchmark.

Having access to information that addresses; I am meeting the set number of field service jobs I need to complete today that’s great but could I do better if the organisation was configured differently.

The key point is that KPI’s are just a set of controls we like to put into a business to give us some comfort that we are running on track, which is as I say great but do they actually give us any view on how we could improve and deliver a better service to our customers, even if we are doing well.

For us at Kirona it’s about taking that wealth of data we have and giving tools to our customers  that not only allow them to look at the standard KPI’s to ensure they are on track but also to allow them to start analysing where they could get better and implement those improvements.

If you only currently have only a fairly static back office system your ability to get access to meaningful data is going to be very limited, however with scheduling and mobile solutions such as Kirona’s DRS and Kirona’s Job Manager solution you suddenly have an extra dimension to the quantity, quality and type of data available.

Analysing this in the correct way then allows an organisation to start pinpointing exactly where efficiencies in the business could be made.

This extra dimension of data enables the organisation to understanding questions such as;

 

• We may be completing our set number of jobs per day, but actually how much is it costing us to do that?
• Are some geographical areas better performing than others?
• Can we improve this by looking at the distribution of our workforce across those areas?
• Am I giving my customers the most efficient times for appointments for my organisation, and can I improve this without impacting my service?
• Am I deficient in certain skills and abilities in different regions?

 

Are we selling or completing certain services in specific areas of our region and therefore do we need to move the workforce around to support that, or could we be offering a higher level of service in those service areas?

In conclusion I believe what organisations should be looking at in addition to developing new and improved ways of measuring performance, is actually looking at ways at tools that enable your organisation to analyse your business to help improve your performance, without impacting on efficiency, keeping customers happy and attracting new customers.

 

Also if you want to keep ahead of your competitors, hitting your targets isn’t going to do this, the only way to do this is to continually challenge those targets, continual improve your business and analyse what the data is telling you.

Look beyond your KPI’s!

 

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FieldAware, a leader in mobile, cloud-based field service automation solutions, has announced the availability of its Spring product release, the latest software release for its mobile field service management solution.

This release includes integration to leading accounting software packages and moves the solution forward globally with its availability in French language localisation.

“We continue to focus our software releases on bringing additional value to our customers and adding market-driven features and functionality,” said Andy Murphy, director of product development at FieldAware.  “Today we are announcing our latest accounting integrations to further strengthen our integration portfolio.  This means businesses with established technologies already in place can seamlessly add FieldAware to their current infrastructure with minimal risk and accelerated benefit. In addition, we have quickly reacted to increased international demand by leveraging our agile software to release our first in a series of language localizations.

The integration of FieldAware’s mobile solution with the Sage, Xero and Quickbooks Online and Desktop platforms enables customers to streamline invoicing.

When a work order is complete, and a job is closed-out on a field worker’s mobile device, an invoice can be automatically generated in the back office.  The invoice includes all costs related to the work order, such as the cost of service and any parts/inventory consumed, and can be sent to the customer immediately.

 

The result should be an improvement in days sales outstanding (DSO) metrics by getting the job billed immediately; and less leakage because nothing falls through the cracks, every part is accounted for and every job is billed, by connecting the job in the field directly with accounting.  Integration of FieldAware with a customer’s accounting system also means that new companies, contacts and parts can be created in either system and automatically synced to both platforms.

“Integration with best-in-class technology platforms will continue to be a priority for us,” said Lynn Jones, VP, Marketing at FieldAware. “Integrations like these accounting packages, and our NetSuite and Salesforce.com integrations, help our customers drive their businesses strategically and extend the value of their incumbent systems.”

French is the first language to be released as part of FieldAware’s language localisation and international expansion strategy. Available on both the FieldAware web-based app and mobile app, it allows French-speaking businesses to immediately take advantage of the mobile-first field service offering provided by FieldAware. Additional languages will be added with each new quarterly feature release.

FieldAware’s made for mobile solutions provide field personnel with mobile tools that increase their productivity, generate more revenue and turn customers into brand advocates. Its Web-based back office functions are built on a flexible, cloud-based architecture with unlimited configurable fields that can accommodate virtually any business process.

FieldAware’s solution is integrated with the leading CRM, ERP and accounting systems and easily integrates with a business’s custom back office applications.

 

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Marne Martin CEO of ServicePower argues that to be a thoroughbred amongst your competitors you must seek out the best-in-breed technologies...

Spring is the start of the racing season in some parts of the United States, especially in Kentucky where the Kentucky Derby, the first race of the Triple Crown, is run the first Saturday of May.

The 2015 race was historic.

American Pharaoh, a horse owned by an Egyptian immigrant, with half a tail, took the Triple Crown on Saturday, June 7, 2015 by winning the last and longest of the Triple Crown races, the mile and a half Belmont Stakes.

He’s only the 12th horse in history to ever win all three races: The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the longest, the Belmont Stakes. And, he won that last race decidedly, taking it in 2:26:65 minutes and 5 ½ lengths ahead of the 8 horse field, the fastest Belmont since 2001 and 6th fastest time since Affirmed ran it in 2:26 4/5.

Only Secretariat, the legendary race horse featured in the movie Secretariat in 2010, ran the Belmont faster at 2:24 by 31 lengths in 1973.

The Pharaoh stands happily at stud now at Ashford, a 2,200-acre farm in Versailles, Kentucky, where, even as unproven, first-year stallion, he commands a record $200,000 stud fee. Thoroughbreds are athletes in every sense of the word.

They train for years and face stiff competition. Some of them are born with an edge, like Secretariat, whom had a larger than average heart rumoured to have contributed to his racing success. But, most winners are the product of preparation and execution including the latest, best tools and technology. Field service organisation are exactly the same.

 

We must focus on preparing our people and executing seamlessly by enabling ourselves with the tools and technology that ensure success.

Out of the gate, we must seek out the best in breed field resources. New technologies like social, mobile, cloud and IoT are second nature to the emerging millennial workforce. Find field technicians comfortable with new technologies and provide them with complementary tools which improve their personal success. Collaboration tools like video chat, mobile applications and wearables help them help your customers. Satisfied field resources, trained to use their technology, with access to tools and information to get the job done will increase your first time fix rates and customer satisfaction.

To beat the competition down the stretch, we must execute flawlessly by enabling ourselves with the best tools and technology. Mobile workforce management software is not optional. I think most enterprise level organisations, with several hundred or thousands of field resources get this.

But the necessity of scheduling technology is still nebulous for some small or medium sized enterprises. Every business, no matter the size absolutely can benefit from real time route and schedule optimisation, mobile dispatch and field service management software. There are many options for route optimisation, but not all are the same.

While some vendors offer ‘scheduling’, that doesn’t necessarily mean they offer real time, intra-day route optimisation like ServicePower. ServicePower has invested significant effort into enhancing our scheduling software, filing 4 patents on Quantum Annealing, the first new optimisation algorithm in decades, which offers all businesses more efficient, faster route optimisation by harnessing the cloud and distributed computing.

 

For those small, medium and even large enterprises whom do not or cannot deploy a full on MWFM software, Optimization on DemandTM released this summer provides improve productivity and reduced costs without a full workforce management software deployment. Optimization On Demand™ enables field service organisations to book jobs for customers, then pass a set of appointments to ServicePower to optimize, on demand, into the best, least costly order.

Optimization On Demand™ provides a more intelligent tool set, without the expenditure of an entire workforce management or field service optimisation software solution. NEXUS FS™ provides field service organisations of any size an enterprise quality, wholly configurable, cloud-based field service management solution with a comprehensive mobile application.

It supports work order management, dispatch, scheduling, inventory management, time sheet reporting and geolocation, enabling focus on providing high quality service to customers, while benefiting from productivity improvements.

Technology is available/accessible at any level of business operations and is the key to winning the race, beating the competition. To cross the finish line, use of technology is key.

Optimised scheduling, mobility and field service management are all critical components of mobile workforce management software. But, to cross that line, field service organisations must deploy collaborative, operational intelligence and real time control consoles to monitor ongoing operations from across the enterprise.

Monitoring what’s happening today ensures high compliance levels and happy customers. Mining the data, using custom scorecards and predictive analytics enables teams to manage work, coach staff and fine tune processes to get over the finish line today, setting up a successful tomorrow. Do all this, and your organisation will have also won the Triple Crown.

 

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GMS Espresso has woken up and smelled the coffee. In order to bolster its efficiency and lay strong foundations for the future, it is teaming up with Tesseract.

GMS Espresso has been supplying, installing and maintaining coffee machines and equipment for nearly fifteen years, but have been relying on a server-based piece of software that just isn’t moving with the times.

“The problem is, our current software isn’t adaptable or future-proof,” says Seamus Doyle, Operations Manager of GMS Espresso. “This is partly because it’s server-based. If we want to change something or introduce a new kind of report, we have to give notice and wait for them to come and install it. That’s one of the reasons we sought out Tesseract, because they offer SaaS.”

SaaS - Software as a Service - means GMS Espresso will pay a monthly subscription to use the service management components of Tesseract’s Service Centre 5.1 (SC5.1), which are centrally hosted by Tesseract. The benefit of this is that GMS Espresso will receive new features, improvements and updates regularly and instantly. It also means, if there’s an issue, fault or inefficiency anywhere in the system, Tesseract will fix it immediately in-house.

The coffee enthusiasts were also encouraged by SC5.1’s user-friendliness, which is a huge cut above their current system. Doyle explains that they would often have to go round the houses to get even basic things done, whereas the new software  is a lot more efficient and easy to use. It was actually one of GMS Espresso’s own customers who recommended Tesseract, because of their own experiences with the software — testament to  the company's influence in the service management industry.

“We’ve had a really good experience with Tesseract,” Doyle adds. “They’re always on hand to answer our questions and make sure we’re understanding everything. They’re also providing regular training to help our people get to grips with the new system, and are always willing to work around our schedule.”

 

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Click here to find out more about Tesseract software solutions

 

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