New and extended business modules for customer experience management software include configurable self-help portals, enhanced field service technician mobility applications, real-time integration with Microsoft Dynamics AX, and dynamic field...
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May 28, 2015 • News • Vertical Solutions • scheduling • Software and Apps • software and apps
New and extended business modules for customer experience management software include configurable self-help portals, enhanced field service technician mobility applications, real-time integration with Microsoft Dynamics AX, and dynamic field scheduling with optimisation
Vertical Solutions, Inc. (VSI), the developer of customer experience management software solutions,announces new business modules for field service solution VServiceManagement™.
Modules include self-service supply chain portals, a multi device field technician app that includes Android and iOS apps for field service management, a routing and scheduling optimiser, and a robust Microsoft Dynamics AX API. These modules are integrated in the cloud version of the field service management software, and also are available for on-premise installations.
- MyServicePortal™ enables external partners and customers across the service supply chain to schedule, monitor, and manage their service experience via a secure, online portal. This self-help portal experience offers real-time configurable dashboards, appointment scheduling, service history, and parts orders. All service-related information is available via any device, at any time.
- FieldCom™ is a highly configurable online/offline mobility application for field service organisations. Field technicians can access current assignments, view inventory levels, access knowledge articles, create parts orders, view their KPIs, and more while posting their labor, parts, and expenses. Additional functions such as signature capture, payment processing, and bar code scanning are also now available. Featuring online and offline capability, FieldCom supports iOS, Android, and Windows-based smartphones, tablets, and notebook devices.
- VSchedulerTMdelivers dynamic optimised field scheduling, mapping, and routing. Field technician scheduling can incorporate skills, service level agreements (SLAs), travel times, inventory availability, shift patterns, and more. When variables change, VScheduler suggests the most efficient and cost-effective route and schedule for each field tech, with auto-updating when variables change. Further, integration with leading GPS/telematics providers allows for geo-fencing and automated alerts throughout the scheduling process, enabling a pleasant (or satisfying) customer experience.
- VSM-Connector™ offers real-time integration with Microsoft Dynamics AX, using direct web services. The Certified for Microsoft Dynamics (CfMD) integration enables companies to benefit from the native business logic and workflows of each system, yet share all service information that has financial implications – including entitlements, incurred costs, inventory, and invoicing – in real time.
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May 26, 2015 • Features • MIllennials • Recruitment • servicepower • Software and Apps
Field service organisations face increasing competition, declining margin and high customer expectations. But, they also are challenged by new technologies, such as social, mobile, cloud, analytics, IoT and M2M, and wearables. Each new technology...
Field service organisations face increasing competition, declining margin and high customer expectations. But, they also are challenged by new technologies, such as social, mobile, cloud, analytics, IoT and M2M, and wearables. Each new technology has potential to revolutionise field service just as field mobility technology did several years ago. Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower looks at why technology is just one ingredient in field service excellence..
ServicePower is spending much time and effort in innovating our field service management software. We are working hard to be innovative and stay ahead of the latest technologies such that our customers have the best in class FSM solution today, but are also positioned to take advantage of new advances as they hit the market. We are completely mobilising the field service call, enabling the field based tech to complete all onsite processes in one trip. We’re incorporating social collaboration to ensure that the tech has access to materials and expert assistance from the office to get the job finished. We’re partnering with one of the world’s leading research institutions, the University of Manchester, to further improve our scheduling algorithms.
We cannot dismiss perhaps the most important element in the delivery of field based services: the field technician.
However, we cannot dismiss perhaps the most important element in the delivery of field based services: the field technician.
How does the emerging workforce, which is young, technically savvy and collaborative, affect your ability to provide exceptional field service? Let’s look at the following important issues regarding the technicians in your workforce.
Recruitment
One of the top challenges field service organisations face right now is the retiring workforce. However, according to Aberdeen more than half of field service organisations wait until there is an opening to fill to recruit a new technician, rather than doing so proactively. While it’s important to find a great technician with the skills required to perform the services offered by the organisation, it’s just as important to also understand the needs and motivations of its young (averaging 32 years old), technically savvy recruits, and do so prior to needing to fill a position. To that end, it’s also important to identify what will ensure the highest retention rates with the new workforce.
Technology Adoption
With the young, and we’re really talking about Millennials, which in 2015 are projected to surpass the Baby Boom generation as the largest living generation, comes adoption of more and more consumer oriented technologies. Aberdeen says that 62% of best-in-class field service organisations are incorporating some level of BYOD strategy. That’s happening because these young recruits are helping to speed the transition due to high adoption rates of mobile, connected technologies for personal use. As a matter of fact, in America, 2 of every 5 households only have wireless telephones. Technology is changing our personal and professional lives.
Service Evolution
The newest generation of young, tech savvy and collaborative field service technicians grew up with computers and social networks, text, email and chat. It’s how they communicate.
For the customer, further downtime and inconvenience are eliminated. For the field service organisation, costs are minimised, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty are improved.
For the customer, further downtime and inconvenience are eliminated. For the field service organisation, costs are minimised, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty are improved.
Strategy
Field technicians are your face to the customer. They are often the only point of contact a customer has with your organisation post sale. So, how do we find the best and brightest field technicians, and keep them?
- Proactively identify what your customers want.
- The Boomers are retiring. Proactively identify how to attract Millennials to your organisation.
- Identify how to keep workers engaged with your field service operation
- Train them effectively
- Offer and support utilisation new technologies such as wearables, which contribute to their success.
- Provide access to the tools, information and experts to make them heroes to your customers
- Support social communications
- Document how and when to use it for company purposes. A 140 character Tweet can be a huge PR success or a nightmare for your operation
- Encourage adoption of new technologies like route optimization, IoT and M2M and video. The business value of these tools empowers the field technician to create happy customers and make their own day a success![/unordered_list]
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May 22, 2015 • Features • IFS • scheduling • Software and Apps
IFS's Tom Bowe takes a look at the feeling we've all had before where the day is spinning out of control and helps identify how we can stop it with field service technologies...
IFS's Tom Bowe takes a look at the feeling we've all had before where the day is spinning out of control and helps identify how we can stop it with field service technologies...
You know what I mean. It’s 8 a.m. Two field techs have called in sick, three started late and four more are in training, your dispatchers are already biting their nails, and the schedule is looking more like scrambled eggs and less like the beautifully organised chart that 30 minutes ago was going to hit 100% of your SLAs.
Perhaps you have a legacy system that just can’t keep up with demand. Perhaps you use a ‘temporary’ Band-Aid application, or a hodge-podge of Excel and other manual systems. Whatever your predicament, there is a better way.
You’ve heard it before - the right technician, at the right place and right time, with the right tools. Right? This marketing buzz only means so much. What does an optimised schedule truly mean for your business?
You’ve heard it before - the right technician, at the right place and right time, with the right tools. Right? This marketing buzz only means so much. What does an optimised schedule truly mean for your business?
The end game is to deliver the best service possible balanced between lowest cost and highest profit. Pretty simple, right? No, actually that is kind of hard. There is a cost and usually a revenue side of every factor that drives your service business. If you had unlimited resources you could probably keep all your customers happy all the time, right?
If you had engineers within a few minutes’ drive of all of your customers and they all had every part that could ever be used to service the equipment they repair, you could literally achieve the ultimate goal of 100% satisfaction because these techs would be there when equipment fails, and they would always have the right part. But that’s fantasyland, not to mention super-expensive.
What you need is an intelligent system to consider all the dimensions and constraints of your service operations and evaluate them in real-time to make sure you are making the best decision to achieve target service levels.
In other words achieving a level of customer satisfaction where customers return for additional product and service purchases, while you deliver that service at the highest profit and lowest cost possible. So what kinds of dimensions and constraints are we referring to?
The dimensions of field service scheduling usually include geography, capacity, traffic, work to be performed, rules about the work to be performed, parts, people and time. These constraints, and many more, each have an impact on your operating margin. Let’s look at some examples.
The dimensions of field service scheduling usually include geography, capacity, traffic, work to be performed, rules about the work to be performed, parts, people and time. These constraints, and many more, each have an impact on your operating margin.
The work itself is defined when the job is created. It could be an urgent job that requires immediate attention, or a lower priority PM service inserted into the schedule at the last possible moment given their proximity and availability.
Maybe a technician arrived on site and could not get access to the equipment, or the repair took half the time expected. Why not recognise that you now have additional capacity and dynamically adjust the schedule to increase productivity? Perhaps you can do one more job today or you can arrive 10 minutes early to the next one, but maybe there is a penalty clause. These are all factors in making the best decision.
Rules usually define who can do a given job. Do they have the skills, certifications or even travel visas. Are they qualified, available and how much do they cost? Are they close enough, can they get the parts needed, or is someone else closer and equally qualified?
All of these decisions are balanced against time. For instance, knowing where each resource is currently located, who is on time vs. running late, how far do they have to travel to their next job, and if that made sense at 8am in the morning, does the same set of circumstances apply at 9:05am? The same can be said about the value of each service call to your business.
The customer’s happiness is not static. There is a time period within which your response is adequate and after that satisfaction dwindles or costs rise depending on the SLA. And 1 hour appointment windows are better than 2, 3 or 4 hours. Even better if you tell the customer the tech’s estimated time of arrival (ETA).
Today, the best enterprise service management software solutions take all of these factors, and more, into consideration when providing an optimised end-to-end service delivery schedule. Optimised scheduling, as part of an intelligent mobile workforce management solution, means complete field visibility, on-time every time, anywhere.
It means less human error and better efficiency. It gives you back the control you might think you’ve lost…so you can get that cup of coffee at 8:15am instead of having to manage another blow-up crisis.
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May 22, 2015 • Features • Research • scheduling • software advice • Software and Apps
A recent study by US firm Software Advice, a company offering comparisons and research for dispatch software, identified a number of insights into how the levels of service provided by home services are impacted by dispatching technology with...
A recent study by US firm Software Advice, a company offering comparisons and research for dispatch software, identified a number of insights into how the levels of service provided by home services are impacted by dispatching technology with GPS-enabled capabilities.
We spoke with Justin Guinn, the field service market researcher at Software Advice, who conducted the study and developed an in-depth report on the topic. We discussed how, when it comes to home service providers, common customer pain points can include lengthy arrival-time windows and waiting on late technicians. We dove into how GPS-enabled software offers a solution to these pain points by providing more effective scheduling, routing and dispatching.
Field Service News: Your new study shows the impact that scheduling has on customer satisfaction. What did you uncover?
Justin Guinn: Our study uncovered that accurate, strategic scheduling is imperative for successful field service businesses. We found that after a service provider is an hour late to an appointment, two-thirds of consumers simply won’t do business with that company again. In such a competitive market, this sort of customer attrition can kill a business.
Fortunately for service providers, proper scheduling, routing, and dispatching software directs technicians along optimised daily routes so that they most effectively get from appointment to appointment in a timely manner.
FSN: Things can always come up in the field. Is there something that service providers can do to retain those customers if they are running late?
JG: Interestingly, we found that 73 percent of consumers are more likely to rehire a provider if they receive a notification with an updated arrival time for the technician. Clearly customers expect punctuality, but this indicates they also just want to be kept in the know. We all greatly value our time, so this makes sense. This is why many field service software offerings feature automated text messaging capabilities that do just this.
FSN: So, technology can automatically help a business keep a loyal client base?
JG: Well, to maintain loyal customer base field service businesses first and foremost need to obviously deliver quality work with great customer service. Dispatching and scheduling software isn’t going to “fix” technicians with clumsy skills and/or crummy attitudes, but, like I mentioned, it does ensure punctuality and offer an effective remedy to late technicians. The software also enables applicable service segments to schedule repeat/recurring visits while onsite with customers, ensuring retention; some systems even act as a point of sale, allowing technicians to accept payment for the current job and any newly scheduled visits.
These capabilities above are great for increasing revenue and generating customer retention, but what about growing a field service business footprint? Dispatching and scheduling software plays an important role in achieving this growth by simply enabling technicians to get more work orders completed each day. We found that 95 percent of service business saw an increase in work orders completed per technician per day. Work orders equal customers, and the more customer interactions a service business can create, the more relationships they can build and the more chances for repeat business.
FSN: Apart from customer-facing benefits or the number of work orders per day, did you discover any other direct financial benefits of this kind of software?
JG: The other main benefit of this software comes into play by reducing overhead costs and expenses.
Our study showed that 89 percent of service companies see a decrease in fuel costs after adopting dispatching and scheduling software. It makes sense: optimised routing leads to less time spent on the road and less time spent sitting in traffic, thus less fuel being used. On top of that, our research shows that 95 percent of businesses see an increase in technician punctuality after implementing this kind of technology. This brings it back to the first point of getting mobile technicians to a job on time, thus retaining more customers.
Some of these systems can get even more granular by tracking technicians’ driving habits. For example, this capability allows the back office to see if a technician is accelerating too quickly, thus unnecessarily burning fuel. As a mobile workforce grows, so to does the impact of this feature. But no matter the workforce size, tracking and monitoring driving habits enables companies to increase safety by implementing and incentivizing driving best practices.
FSN: You had another recent report that found 54% of field service businesses don't use any software at all to manage their business. For that majority, why do you think they're hesitant to adopt technology?
JG: A likely reason that field service software adoption rates are so low is because companies/owners/managers might be intimidated by the many software choices. So instead of springing for software, they continue going about their manual ways until it eventually just becomes too much to handle. We talk to many field service operators everyday, and this is typically the predicament they’re facing.
They’ve been operating their business with “comfortable disorganisation,” but it’s taking a toll on their professional and personal life. That’s why we try to provide a personalised shortlist of products based on the needs of their business. In a sense, we’re typically the first step for field service operators to get their business in order and reclaim some sanity in their lives.
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May 18, 2015 • News • Kony • Enterprise Mobility • Software and Apps
Two market leaders partner to offer a comprehensive DevOps solution for building enterprise-class mobile applications and ensuring peak performance
Two market leaders partner to offer a comprehensive DevOps solution for building enterprise-class mobile applications and ensuring peak performance
Kony, Inc., a leading enterprise mobility company and SOASTA, a leader in performance analytics, have recently announced a partnership that combines both companies’ capabilities to optimise the performance of enterprise mobile apps across the mobile application development lifecycle.
Through this partnership, Kony and SOASTA will work together to integrate their technologies and combine their expertise to deliver a comprehensive, integrated mobile solution across the DevOps lifecycle for customers. As a result, from prototype to production, mobile apps built on the Kony Mobility Platform can be tested, monitored, measured, analysed and optimised for peak performance with SOASTA’s TouchTest,CloudTestand mPulse solutions for an integrated Mobile DevOps solution.
According to industry analyst firm Gartner, “The need for automation in mobile application testing is high, and is being driven by agile development practices and a desire to drive quality and features based on user analytics. This pace, combined with a broad and changing device ecosystem, creates a test explosion that without automation will end up crushing all but the most trivial application efforts.” (Gartner, Market Guide for Mobile Application Testing, 3 December 2014)
The Kony Mobility Platform is an open and standards-based, integrated platform that supports the entire application software development lifecycle (SDLC), and empowers enterprises to quickly design, build, deploy and manage multi-edge app experiences. The combined Kony and SOASTA offering delivers an expanded, comprehensive new generation mobile DevOps lifecycle support, including design prototyping, rapid development, functional test automation, back-end integration, deployment, user monitoring and advanced mobile real-time analytics. No other vendor is offering this kind of comprehensive solution. This underscores SOASTA and Kony’s commitment to providing the highest level of mobile developer support, helping enterprise companies align business and IT, while also keeping the rapidly growing mobile user population productive on their systems.
DevOps is a software development method that stresses communication, collaboration, integration, automation and measurement of cooperation between software developers and other information-technology (IT) professionals. DevOps acknowledges the interdependence of software development, quality assurance and IT operations and aims to help an organisation rapidly produce software products and services and to improve operations performance.
“In the rapidly growing world of mobile, user experience and application performance are fundamental to enterprise mobile application adoption and success,” said Thomas E. Hogan, CEO, Kony, Inc. “By adding performance analytics and testing solutions to our market-leading enterprise mobility platform, we will empower developers and DevOps teams with the best platform for creating mobile applications at any scale, with the best performance and experience.”
With the integration of Kony and SOASTA, the following new capabilities will be offered to customers:
- Mobile test automation eliminates manual testing delays and accelerates time-to-market, with the SOASTA TouchTest offering
- Continuous performance testing at speed and scale through SOASTA’s patented CloudTest federates millions of cloud-based servers from every major cloud provider
- Access to hundreds of real mobile devices through the cloud for testing at every phase of mobile development, with SOASTA Mobile Device Cloud
- Real User Monitoring (RUM) validates each user experience in real time and correlate real user activity to business metrics through performance analytics, with SOASTA mPulse
“Enterprise mobile application developers will hugely benefit from the partnership between SOASTA and Kony, with the best end-to-end solution to create apps that will perform at the most optimal level,” said Tom Lounibos, CEO, SOASTA. “SOASTA customers are committed to providing the highest level of user experience. Now, Kony customers can also rely on the same market-leading performance analytics to optimise their mobile and Web platforms.
Key benefits of the new end-to-end DevOps platform:
- Continuous test integration and agile delivery enables the business to respond to market and competitive change
- Reuse code and backend APIs across apps, digital channels and form factors
- Leverage the cloud to instantly build, provision, test and scale mobile apps and infrastructure
- Keep up with the rapid pace of new devices, versions, OSs and form factors as they are released
- Use powerful analytics to drive insights, iteration and perfect the UX/UI
- Accelerate performance by analysing all the real user data in real time in a single pane for quick and accurate insights
- Create visually rich, device-exploiting apps in record time using collaborative WYSIWYM (“what you see is what you get”) design tools
- Guarantee compatibility across a constantly changing device landscape with unmatched 30-day service level agreement (SLA) on new OS updates
- Ensure a mobile app scales in line with the growth of your customers and business
- Define smart, context-aware policies to secure your enterprise apps and ensure data integrity and availability
- Reuse, Integrate and extend high-value LOB processes to mobile users with powerful backend mobile infrastructure
- Ability to automate functional test cases against a variety of devices and form factors
- Significantly reduce quality assurance cycles
- Create proactive testing plans letting enterprises know of problems before their customers do
SOASTA has been recognised by Gartner as a “Leader” in its Magic Quadrant forIntegrated Software Quality Suites report published August 28, 2014.
For two years in a row industry analyst firm Gartner placed Kony in the “Leaders” quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms, published September 2, 2014. Kony also received the highest scores in 3 out of 4 use cases in Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for Mobile Application Development Platforms report published December 24, 2014. In addition, Kony was recognised as “One of the Best Platform Solutions for the Enterprise” amongst Mobile Application Development Platform providers: Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Mobile App Development Platform Solution, 2015-16.
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May 15, 2015 • News • automotive • servicepower • Software and Apps • software and apps
ServicePower Technologies have announced that it has signed a contract with a leading US based manufacturer and marketer of automotive appearance protection products, PermaPlate Inc., which will implement ServiceOperations to reduce administration,...
ServicePower Technologies have announced that it has signed a contract with a leading US based manufacturer and marketer of automotive appearance protection products, PermaPlate Inc., which will implement ServiceOperations to reduce administration, cut costs and improve the service levels delivered to customers.
PermaPlate, headquartered in Utah, manufactures and distributes appearance protection products which protect the interior and exterior surfaces of vehicles; it also underwrites vehicle appearance warranties. PermaPlate will use ServiceOperations to intelligently dispatch work to contractors in markets where service is required, as well as create robust claims payment authorisation processes for its experienced technician network.
PermaPlate works in a fiercely competitive sector and in order to improve services to customers it has enlisted ServicePower’s product and development teams to produce new features within the application which facilitate the discreet logic required to manage a network of 3rd party contractors so that they can deliver more competitive SLAs. Repair claims will also be managed through ServiceOperations, providing robust validation logic to the customer to enhance its warranty management process.
Victor Diercksen, Director of Business Technology, PermaPlate Inc., commented “Our dedication to quality products and superior customer service has driven growth of 50% year over year for the past 3 years. Our growth was severely straining our legacy service management system which was in dire need of replacement. We took this opportunity to upscale to an enterprise quality system like ServicePower to improve our service times while reducing or eliminating manual processes. ServicePower is the latest in a series of investments in business systems that will allow PermaPlate to maintain its leadership position in the automotive appearance protection industry.”
We are really pleased to be working with another world-class organisation, in a new vertical, that sees the benefits of our cloud based, 3rd party ServiceOperations product.
“PermaPlate benefits from our early investment in a completely industry agnostic, truly multi-tenant SaaS application in ServiceOperations, which continues to differentiate ServicePower from other Field Service Management vendors. We’re able to offer true hosted, intelligent, dynamic dispatch and warranty claim management to clients who utilise 3rd party contractors or vendor partners in their service delivery equations. Our team of field service experts provides the experience critical to our customers’ success by not only advising how best to set up the software, but by providing advice and industry best practices in managing a connected, contracted workforce.
“With continued enhancements to ServiceOperations, part of our connected field management platform, which provides industry acknowledged scheduling optimisation, cutting edge mobile technology and asset tracking, robust business intelligence, M2M Connected Services and Smart Scheduling of mixed labor pools, ServicePower has positioned itself as not only a visionary, but as a field service management solution of choice to organisations which endeavour to operate most efficiently in today’s changing field service environment.”
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May 14, 2015 • Features • Kirona • resources • white papers • White Papers & eBooks • Software and Apps • software and apps
Resource Type: White Paper Published by: Kirona Title: Six steps to being a leader - the field service checklist Download: Click here to access the white paper By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here
Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Kirona
Title: Six steps to being a leader - the field service checklist
Download: Click here to access the white paper
By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here
Synopsis:
Field workforce management software enables organisations with a mobile workforce to significantly improve their operational performance. The State of Service Management 2015: Connect To Your Customers report by Aberdeen's Aly Pinder found that best-in-class field service organisations achieve on average a 14.4% year-on-year improvement in workforce productivity compared to a 4.1% industry average.
This white paper looks at six key steps that field service companies must take in order to reach these heights themselves and establish their organisations as leaders amongst their competitors.
Overview:
Topics within the white paper include:
- Optimising resource planning: Field resource planning is complex. If you have 100 workers carrying out 5 jobs a day, then that are 10,000,000,000 (1 billion) possible combinations of how those jobs could be allocated. There may also be a myriad of additional scheduling criteria such as worker skills/trade, certification required (and the validity dates), languages spoken, job time frame (appointment slot/site access), the region/ geography, the worker’s experience, parts, materials, equipment required, and the list goes on. No human planner can possibly consider all these scenarios and determine which is financially the best option with the highest chance of customer satisfaction. It is therefore, not surprising that over two-thirds of Best-In-Class service organisations leverage software for Optimised Resource Planning.
- Making and keeping appointments: Compliance to your work schedule is critical for two reasons, first it ensures you are working in the planned most optimum way, but second and more importantly, it means you are delivering against commitments to customers. For work types that require a customer appointment, the complexity of scheduling increases. Now an organisation needs to schedule work by considering two diaries; that of the workforce and the customer. Appointments are also disruptive to the customers, so keeping them is essential to achieving high customer satisfaction
- Connecting with the mobile workforce: Equipping field workers with mobile devices is a well-trodden path, however, whether through limitation in mobile working applications or lack of integration, we tend to find that most field service organisations are not maximising the full potential of connecting the field workforce.
- Real time tracking and dynamic scheduling: One of the biggest challenges for any organisation is how to track and monitor field-based activity and to manage the emerging day. Exceptions will always arise, whether through an overrun, no-access or emergency work, the skill is being able to take this in your stride and be able to dynamically reschedule work to take into account the unexpected while ensuring you continue to work to the most optimum schedule.
- Analysis & Continuous improvement: Standing still is not an option for field service organisations. We see continual change from our clients’ including customer demands, executive level priorities and changes in the workforce – all of which requires them to analyse and continually improve their operation. Knowledge is key. Understanding every aspect of your field service operation, gaining insight into not only what is happening, but why this is happening, and then being able to take action on this insight.
- Integration leads to automation: The more staff ‘touch points’ that are required in a service process, the greater its inefficiency. Not only do manual processes create a drain on labour and therefore an increased cost, they are error prone and they create timescale lags. Workforce management software provides an opportunity to avoid this by automating key activities in the service management chain of processes. The more 3rd party systems that are integrated into automated workflows, the greater the benefit to the organisation.
Click here to access the white paper
Click here to find out more about Kirona in the Field Service Directory
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May 12, 2015 • News • Contractors • News Software and Apps • Xora • ClickSoftware • Software and Apps
ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. have recently announced Service Networks for Contractors, a new mobile field service management solution that synchronises the scheduling, dispatch, and work completion between businesses and their contractors.
ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. have recently announced Service Networks for Contractors, a new mobile field service management solution that synchronises the scheduling, dispatch, and work completion between businesses and their contractors.
Enterprises can now optimally manage their network of contractors to adhere to service level agreements and have better visibility and control of the service delivery process. Simultaneously contractors maintain their autonomy in running their own businesses. Customers, of course, benefit from harmonious service delivery with minimal discontinuities or surprises.
Using the solution, contractors are better equipped to efficiently plan and execute the delivery of service, enabling them to book and complete more jobs overall. The streamlined operations will enable contractors to collect payment faster, thanks to the ability to provide proof of service in real-time, at the time of job completion. The new solution ultimately shortens invoicing and payment cycles to increase reimbursement rates and help drive revenues.
Enterprises can now optimally manage their network of contractors to adhere to service level agreements and have better visibility and control of the service delivery process. Simultaneously contractors maintain their autonomy in running their own businesses
"The field service industry continues to evolve to incorporate more automated scheduling tools, and is quickly advancing to real-time workflow mobile technologies that provide businesses with new capabilities and information to effectively help manage third-party contractors," said Aly Pinder Jr., Senior Research Analyst Aberdeen Group. "These technologies have the potential to enable both enterprise service providers and contractors to more quickly and accurately perform their jobs, while providing consistent customer experience."
"In today's service industry it is very common to see service providers of all sizes operating in a wide variety of outsourcing and contracting models. The Service Networks for Contractors is a milestone in the path to a comprehensive Service network vision where communities of contractors will interact in harmony with each other to deliver outstanding service together with business efficiencies," said Dr. Moshe BenBassat, Founder and CEO of ClickSoftware. "This new network leverages the 2014 acquisition of Xora, seamlessly extending enterprise-grade solutions to workforces of all sizes."
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May 10, 2015 • video • Gas Engineers • HVAC • Service2 • servicemax • Software and Apps
Kate Lovery of UK based, field service focussed Gas Engineering, Catering Equipment and HVAC specialist maintenance company Service2 outlines how they developed their business since selecting ServiceMax field service software.
Kate Lovery of UK based, field service focussed Gas Engineering, Catering Equipment and HVAC specialist maintenance company Service2 outlines how they developed their business since selecting ServiceMax field service software.
In this video published by ServiceMax Lovery explains what has changed, why it has been a success for Service2's clients, how they are using the tools to help them build and analyse their field service operations, how the ServiceMax field service solution addresses the needs of their field service operations, and of course why they chose the ServiceMax field service solution.
You can also read Field Service News Editor Kris Oldland's exclusive interview with Lovery which first appeared in Field Service News March/April 2015 issue by clicking here.
Field Service News is published by 1927 Media Ltd, an independent publisher whose sole focus is on the field service sector. As such our entire resources are focused on helping drive the field service sector forwards and aiming to best serve our industry through honest, incisive and innovative media coverage of the global field service sector.
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