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In part one of this exclusive interview with ServiceMax COO Scott Berg we looked at the the similarities between widely differing industries, the rapid rise of ServiceMax and why the IoT hasn't quite got fully up to speed as yet.

Here in this second section of the interview we begin with the another key significant technology trend, Big Data and why it was the at the heart of the headlines coming out of the ServiceMax CIO summit a few months earlier.

As our conversation turns to this Berg begins nodding agreement.

“We think we are in quite a unique position to make Data actionable.” he says. A pretty bold claim.

He begins to expand further “These Data lakes and all the other terminology around Big Data, all this predictive stuff and data science is all great but somebodies got get it into the hands on a technician in order to benefit from it. To maybe direct their next step or predict their next move. There will always be people involved in the chain, so we think its really our unique place to play as we make Big Data actionable.”

 

“We have a configurable process, we have the mobile device, so if there is going to be any directing or leading or sharing and tapping into knowledge its probably going to be done on a disconnected mobile device under ground at the top of a scaffolding or something like. So our interest in it is trying to connect data science and Big Data into that actionable footprint that you can put in front of the technician.”

This focus on the end user leads us to another current topic of conversation in software circles – is customisation the root of all ills or an acceptable process to refine off the shelf solutions?

 

“I think the whole nature of customisation has changed” answers Berg as I put the question to him “As you know we are on the Salesforce.com platform, and I don’t think that customisation is necessarily a bad word because its so controlled and its such a configurable and extendable experience anyway.”

“We certainly do stress configuration to the extent that this year we’ve really tried to repackage our implementation and delivery offerings. For small businesses we have something called Express, which is an out of the box ‘trust me this is what you need’ solution. If you work with us in three weeks you’ll be live and it’ll look just like the demonstration.” He says

“So we’ve tried to get certainly more prescriptive about it but I do think that peoples notions of customisation are ERP. So obliterated unrecognisable sets of code that drop you off at the road map and that quite frankly it’s a large part of our success I think. Because there is so much of that in Siebel today, one of our big customers has three versions of Siebel all of them deprecated so their off support and they’re faced with this problem its unrecognisable, its un-upgradeable they may as well just go buy another solution.”

“I think that the Salesforce platform has really changed everything. The way that we have to operate in that platform as an independent software company on someone else’s cloud means everything has to go through vulnerability, security and compatibility automated checking. So anything your customer would do on top of that, or anything we would do for a customer, basically inherits that stability. I think that’s just a radically different technological model than traditional ERP”

 

Of course Salesforce.com ended up proving a lot of their far bigger competitors wrong and now it seems that this is a rush to catch them up. It’ll be interesting to see if in the future all companies will follow their route.

As Berg himself outlines “ I think you’ll see a lot of the vendors out their trying to follow Salesforce’s lead and trying to follow some of Salesforce’s approach and try to become that platform as a service provider. You see them all launching market places and trying to attract people. Microsoft have been making a lot of noise around this and trying to launch the Dynamics platform. “

“But as somebody who jumped into the Salesforce.com bandwagon early on and as someone who every year we periodically reassess our situation I can say that nobody has really built the breadth and depth of a business application platform that those guys have.”

It is obvious to all that the connection between Salesforce.com and ServiceMax is particularly close. But is it too close? How reliant is the continuing success of ServiceMax on the Saleforce platform I ask.

“Having been involved with several start-ups in the past I think that they [Salesforce] were extremely critical for us especially in the early days.” Responds Berg.

 

“If you think of what it would have taken for us to launch a data centre and secure it, to build all the platform capabilities and redundancy, also that some of our first 12 customers were in the Middle East and Europe and there we were with two founders selling everything themselves out of northern California… how could that be right?” he pauses leaving the question hang for just a second before continuing.

“All because of the global reach and the global acceptance level of the Salesforce.com platform. So yes it was very important early on.” He concludes.

However as Berg explains the relationship has changed overtime as ServiceMAx themselves have grown to stand on more of an equal footing.

“Overtime I think that the value of the relationship has shifted a bit.” Berg concedes “Salesforce has become much more of a platform, and we don’t tend to get as many outright business referrals from them as before.”

“And it is certainly a big credibility statement to pass our EU safe harbour framework certifications and things because we’re in it but we’ve expanded so much in our own intellectual property investments around the mobile devices, iPad, and frameworks for our configurable workflow that I think when you stack up all the functionality in our product today, its heavily tipped to us now.” He admits.

Look out for the final part of this exclusive interview coming next week... 

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The telecoms market is undergoing a huge transition in the UK and across continental Europe. A number of high-profile acquisitions have been made with analysts expecting further consolidation of telecoms companies still to come. The reason behind this spate of acquisitions? The attempt to bring to the market a quad play offer for consumers writes Tim Faulkner, Vice President EMEA ClickSoftware 

Quad play is a term that has been around for a while now. The idea is that a telecoms company can offer a fixed telephone line, broadband, TV and mobile service. For consumers, they get a one-stop shop for all their services. It means dealing with less providers, consolidated bills and makes the overall service much easier to manage. 

 

The last element of the quad play offer is perhaps the most important one. In research conducted by ClickSoftware last year, we found that over a third (34%) of consumers have either cancelled a service or stopped using a brand altogether as a result of poor customer service[1].

A staggeringly high figure to think a third of the customers that businesses come across on a daily basis can be so quickly and so emphatically put off spending any more money with them.

For quad play to be a compelling offer to consumers, it needs to improve the customer service aspect and ensure that there is consistency in service delivery across the company. Regardless of the role, every employee and contractor needs to be provided with the training, tools and information they need to perform a good job.

Whether it’s discussing a service over the phone or an engineer installing a solution at a customer’s house, everyone working for the company is a brand ambassador and the end user shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the levels of service. In order to succeed, customers need to feel like they are dealing with one company rather than four different suppliers.

When it comes to cost, industry commentators are undecided about whether it will lead to cheaper bills for consumers, however they are in agreement that bringing all of these services together should lead to better customer experiences. That said, in any acquisition, merging the companies together can be a difficult task.

This is further complicated when considering the multiple suppliers each company deals with and how these are integrated. For quad play to take off, companies buying others will need to work out their supplier roster quickly to minimise disruption during the transition.

For the telecoms companies, each should now be in a more powerful position to deal with suppliers. Because there will now be less telecoms companies to work with, the suppliers will need to compete more fiercely than ever.

The purchasing power will be in the hands of the telecoms companies but it will be up to suppliers to provide the best possible offer.

What we will see as a consequence of a quad play market is the development of a marketplace bidding system. Suppliers will need to tender their services via a marketplace platform and the telecoms company will then have to take its pick of the supplier it feels provides the best service.

This new way of working will also benefit the telecoms companies as they will be able to have full visibility across all field resources, including contractors. By extending the same technology utilised by the company to its contractors, they can better ensure consistent processes and level of service are carried out across the organisation.

 Regardless of which service provider is performing the task, the visibility should ensure consistency and a better customer experience. Not only will this achieve greater customer satisfaction but also does so without the need for additional staff overhead, by increasing capacity only when it is needed to maintain service performance levels through demand spikes.

The rest of the year will see the issue of quad play develop. We will see telecoms companies aggressively promoting the offer in order to acquire customers. It will be crucial that for quad play to really take off, the customer experience element improves right off the bat.

Utilising service providers in this new marketplace model is one way of ensuring this takes place

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[1]UK Service Industry Consumer Frustration Index

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Marne Martin, CEO of award winning software provider ServicePower takes a look at what the Field Service should look like in the not so distant future...

Today, field service organisations face increasing competition, changing customer dynamics, reduced margins and are increasingly challenged to achieve corporate metrics. Each must look toward technology that will improve its competitive edge and increase productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. Intelligent, integrated scheduling, mobile and business intelligence technologies must be deployed to:

• Intelligently schedule the best labour resource, whether that’s an employee in a company truck or a 3rd party contractor, to meet customer requirements
• Optimise employee schedules to achieve the greatest levels of productivity, efficiency and SLA compliance
• Fully mobilise onsite processes, ensuring the job is completed, to the customer’s satisfaction, in a single truck roll, driving down schedule costs and repeat trips
• Continuously analyse and fine tune the overall operation through real time, data driven decision making

All in a fully mobile way. Consumers, used to instant access to the web, expect field services to be provided now. They expect technicians to be provisioned with the necessary tools and technology to show up on time, access the parts and other resources needed.

Intelligent Scheduling

Only software solutions provide field service organization with the technology required to schedule field based resources to meet not only customer commitments but do so in such a way as to reduce its overcall costs through optimisation and intelligent deployment of both employed and third party labour.

Demand fluctuation caused by seasonality,for instance, creates unnecessary cost and dissatisfied customers if response time are extended. Additionally, parts, extra labor or helpers, and jobs which require compliance to strict SLAs can’t be efficiently scheduled without an intelligent scheduling application.

This is where intelligent software solutions are invaluable as they consider data and existing schedules to make the best scheduling decisions for the company.

Optimisation

Real time, or intra-day, optimisation is crucial to the achievement of the highest productivity and efficiency.

Manual scheduling, which relies on human capability and emotion, entails a user building and managing a schedule. It is labour intensive and rarely considers travel and cannot be automated to adapt to change or exception management. Manual scheduling just can’t scale for future growth.

 

Rules based scheduling automatically builds a schedule based on simple computer logic, filling an open schedule slot. However it does not continuously move previously scheduled jobs to ensure the least costly total schedule looking also at technician skills, parts availability or travel. Intelligent Scheduling, based on artificial intelligence, delivers true optimisation. In this scenario, schedules are created and continuously and automatically changed to achieve cost, margin, cycle time and customer satisfaction metrics. Priorities can also be dynamically adjusted to changing business needs or KPI goals using also real time mobile status reporting, GPS and other parts and job information.

Only solutions that offer true optimised scheduling including intelligent routing provide field service organisations with the technology to achieve its goals while improving satisfaction, building brand loyalty and positive social networks.

Real time, Data Driving Decision Making

Field service does not exist in a box where the environment never changes. Each operation must continuously collect data, from all parts of its service ecosystem, analyse that data, and use the data to fine tune operations. Field service is a continuously evolving entity that must adapt in order to compete and exceed customer expectations.

The Future is here. Right now. New technological innovations, such as connected machines, are driving further innovation within the within the field service industry.

For instance, sensor information (M2M data) from connected devices, like security systems, building systems and vending achines, can be used to initiate repairs based on a detected failure.

 

However, that same M2M data, as well as other information, such as manufacturing data, can be used to model and predict  equipment failure, enabling the field service organisation to predict the failure of an elevator or power generator, and send a technician to maintain it, before it breaks, minimising customer down time. New technologies are enabling an evolution from the

traditional break/fix repair model, to a proactive, preventative maintenance model, which reduces costs for the field service organisation through higher first time fix rates, and improves customer satisfaction and loyalty due to decreased down time.

ServicePower, named Visionary in the Gartner 2014 Magic Quadrant for Field Service and recipient of the 2014 M2M Evolution IoT Excellence Award provide connected mobile field services solutions that bring together all aspects of the field service value chain, including the customer and the dispatch center, technician, claims and warranty processes, parts, the contracted workforce, assets, mobility, business intelligence, and social collaboration.

Through continuous innovative, like M2M Connected Service, industry acknowledged optimisation technology and cutting edge mobility, our software accelerates business efficiency gains and customer satisfaction while reducing costs, on one underlying and consistent platform. We offer field service experts that have managed businesses and field teams understanding customer’s needs and pain points.

Don’t let your field service organisation be stuck in yesterday. Implement technology to meet your cost, margin, cycle time and customer satisfaction metrics today, and future proof your operation through deployment of the latest, continuously improved field service management technologies.

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Upgrading a service management system can be a challenge, but unifying and upgrading multiple systems across a continent? Here’s how Pitney Bowes approached the task…

Service management software has evolved and the benefits of moving to a modern next generation system are well documented. But what are the considerations that need to be factored in when changing systems? And what about companies that have evolved multiple systems across various regions?

One company who recently went through this process was Global Franking Machine giant Pitney Bowes as they sought to both standardise and upgrade their systems across the whole of Europe.

"We started with different service systems across Europe that had become built up across the years which that didn’t talk to each other” Andy Beer, Director of Service & Postal Market Development explained at a recent Service Community event.

Of course this is an issue for any organisation that operates across multiple divisions, with differing centres of operations. And whilst it may not be impossible, it certainly makes it harder to identify company wide trends, swiftly enough to act on them with any great effect.

“We had six or seven different systems that we had built up across Europe and in fact in the Nordics we were still using a paper based model similar to when I started with Pitney Bowes in the 80’s” continued Beer before describing the Nordic system “whereby our engineers would come into the office in the morning, go to a big rolodex and pull out their cards for the day, come back and write it all up.”

With such disparity it was clear for Pitney Bowes the direction they needed to take.

“Our number one goal was to give us one platform across Europe so we could then report on our key performance metrics, whatever that may be and do it on an international level.” Beer explained

“We looked at our existing systems and to upgrade us from the platform we were on and to add in other companies we needed, would have required and investment in a little over a million dollars, so it wasn’t a decision that we were going to take lightly.  We weren’t going to just say give us the upgrade, give us version 2. We wanted something more for that.”

Quite rightly so as at level of cost whilst the right solution could lead to significant added insight into the operation of the company and ultimately large potential savings, get it wrong and it would be a costly mistake. As it turned out even this level of investment would have failed to deliver the requirements that Pitney Bowes had identified as key to their needs.

As Beer explained further “even with that investment we still wouldn’t have a web front end, which we were looking for, and we would still be beholden on either the suppliers of that system or our own internal IT department to help us write reports.”

“We felt we were looking in our rear view mirror an awful lot and it wasn’t just what was immediately behind us that we were looking for, it was sometimes looking months behind us before we could actually start to get reasonable reporting, so we definitely needed to change”

With field service experts from all quarters exalting the importance of data this was another area that Pitney Bowes were acutely aware that their current system wasn’t empowering them as much as it should be.

“Data is important but when you have tons of it and you can’t sift through it, when you can’t find an easy way to get meaning from the data, then you’re just hamstrung by it.” Beer outlined before adding further

“When I say about looking in the rear view mirror, visibility of particular production or productivity metrics were very low and it was then very difficult to manage either individual engineers, based on their metrics, or build that up into a team of engineers, or into a country, let alone build that up across a European view.”

“The pain we went through to change reports, even just to tweak things slightly” Beer recalls before pausing a moment with a wry smile.  “ When your running the operation, you want to be able to see everything at a whim, you don’t want to have to be beholden to an IT group or a vendor to be able to give you something you think you might need. “

This is perhaps the fundamental difference between, the last generation of service management software and current systems. In this data driven age non-technical people are used to accessing highly customised reports with ease, and often depend on this ability to do their job.

As Beer points out “The thing is, as operational people we think we need to see an awful lot of stuff but then may stop and look at it and think ‘Do I really need that after all?’ but we need to see it first to make that call.”

Other considerations that were key for Pitney Bowes were that their new solution had to be able to integrate with Salesforce, as this was their chosen CRM and also that it to be Cloud based.

Outlining their thought process Beer added “Our existing systems wasn’t cloud based and we absolutely knew that our prime need was to move to the cloud, we didn’t want to have the hassle of owning the system, we wanted instant upgrades where available and instant fixes where available. “

“Essentially we wanted to future proof our investment.”

With the plethora of service management solutions on the market selecting finding a solution to meet their needs was always going to be possible, although dependent on a robust evaluation process. However, selecting a solution to meet these needs was one thing, implementing a solution across such a complex mix of territories another.

The approach required needed to involve all of the key stakeholders.

“We knew we were beholden to IT in our previous systems, we didn’t want to be in that position now but we also knew that they couldn’t not be involved.” Beer explains

“So we had two phases of the project, the first one was business and operations led. We picked a team of people from across Europe that came together and then spent five or six months getting really deep into what we had and what we thought we needed moving forward, and putting together a plan to get to from one to the other. Once we had that we engaged with IT”

“We wanted to the establish how we could integrate what we had into other systems, interfacing with the vendor and outlining what we saw as our business and operational requirements and then asked how readily available those were.

“We took this approach knowing that the more you fiddle around the edges of what your vendor can offer you the harder it comes to manage going forward”

Beer further expands on the practical and pragmatic approach by adding

“Nirvana is to take something off the shelf in PC World, type your code in and bang the following morning you’ve got a system, real life is not quite as beautiful as that, we know that, but the more you can avoid trying to tweak the edges of a vendors system and what it does to try and make it fit with your processes the better.”

It is through taking such a measured approach of understanding not only needs and goals but also limitations, and building the flexibility to overcome any limitations through adapting processes, that Pitney Bowes have been achieve the massive challenge of unifying disparate systems across a continent, and it is an approach worth considering for any company considering upgrading their existing system.

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ServiceMax have been one of the undoubted success stories in field service software of recent years. Kris Oldland, Field Service News Editor spoke to Their COO Scott Berg to find out about the journey they have been on and what happens next....

It was a cold early morning in Paris towards the tail end of last year when I met with Scott Berg. For me having flown in late the night before the famous Parisian coffee brought the welcome caffeine boost required to focus my sleep deprived brain.

However, when Berg entered the room, looking fresh in a crisp suit and bounding with a relaxed and jovial energy, it was clear that for him no such shot of espresso was required. Despite what had been a pretty hectic schedule he was clearly the type of guy that gets up raring to go every morning. And why shouldn’t he be, as COO of ServiceMax he was clearly in a good place.

It seems that almost every other company I speak to at the minute has recently moved to their field service management platform. If that sounds like an exaggeration here’s some interesting statistics to consider.

 

They have just finished their sixth year with a 100% year on year growth so and added 125 customers to their roster within the last twelve months. They operate in a highly competitive market and as far a I am aware at least, nobody is making that kind of progress and taking that kind of volume.

As Berg himself acknowledges “We’ve won more business in the last year than some of our competitors have done in the last 15.”

And these customers come in all shapes and sizes, from all verticals across every corner of the globe.

“The really fun thing for us is to see the variety of companies that we are working with.” Berg begins in an enthusiastic manner “We recently ran a Chief Service Officers summit, the first event that we had ever tried like that and there were 6 Global Heads of Service with the likes of Coca-Cola and Becton Dickinson and so on there. So on one hand we were working with these massive companies and then on the other hand there are companies like Service2 which is a husband and wife owned company that have gone from having five technicians to 10 since they employed ServiceMax -  so it’s a kinda cool thrill a minute kind of energy in the market right now” he adds.

This has always been one of the fascinating things about field service, there are so many parallel challenges across disparate industries and this is something Berg elaborates on further as we talk.

 

“That was completely the case yesterday, there was the Head of Professional Services for the Sony group, the man in charge of service for everything except their consumer brands.  So movie theatre camera systems and BBC News and all of the big news network type of things “ he explains “and he had the same talent acquisition issues as everybody else, he had the same political challenges internally of getting a seat at the boardroom table to enable him to pursue some initiatives, even though he was the only growing part of the business.

“All day it was the same story and it didn’t matter whether you were curing cancer or showing the latest movie at the cinema, it was basically the same sets of conversations we were having with people.”

And it is easy to imagine Berg being able to hold such conversations with these Global Heads of Service or equally with an owner of a small SME such as Service2 who are just taking the first steps in growing their business. He comes across as an approachable and enthusiastic but there is also an earnestness about him as well.

However, it’s easy enough to talk about all the good things ServiceMax have achieved but what about the things that they haven’t. Is there anywhere that Berg felt remained a work in progress for what is lets not forget still a relatively young organisation in it’s market segment.

“I think we’ve done a phenomenal job when it comes to capitalising on the mobility space” he begins “We’ve developed our Android platform and we’ve revamped our iOS solution which has been positive. It’s been somewhat of a surprise in how ready and willing the market is to take on these high-end portable devices. “

 

“One of the things that still perplexes me though is how slow the uptake on Internet of Things, and machine to machine communication." he continues.

“It’s funny, I use solar panels on my house and from my phone I can tell you if they’re working and then through my Nest thermostat I can turn the heating up and down from my phone also. Yet here are these massive, powerful, hi-tech intellectual property companies and they can’t figure out how to get an Ethernet connector jack plug into their devices?” he adds with a laugh.

The thing is he has a point. Widespread adoption of IoT in field service is behind where it should be based on the technology available. And to be fair to ServiceMax for those clients that are set to take advantage of M2M connectivity they are pretty much ready to go .

 

“We are very eager to jump on this [IoT]” he comments “We do have some customers like Elekta who have a full offering which we call IntelMax for machine to machine connectivity and Johnson Controls made huge investments in the area but it still strikes me how hard its been for industry. I have a little hundred dollar consumer device on the wall of my home that can do it and yet industry can’t?”

So is the ServiceMax product all set to go for Internet of Things?” I ask “Is it just a case of waiting for the market to catch up?”

“I think it is” Berg replies ‘”There are certainly relationships we are trying to build. We’re in discussions with people like Cisco and others to try and bridge that last mile of connectivity and we’ve explored some of the Apple iBeacon technology sensing people, locations and the physicality with the device.”

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Service management software provider ServicePower recently announced that a professional services company that provides global commercial and residential property services has successfully gone live with ServiceScheduling.

The technology platform, which was delivered on time and on budget, will enable the client to more easily fulfil highly competitive facilities management/service management Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for some of the world’s largest organisations, while at the same time improving both the productivity and control of operations in the field.

ServicePower’s patented scheduling and connected mobile platform enables the client, which has tens of thousands of employees, to optimally schedule field based resources, fully mobilise field based processes and monitor activities in real time, so that services are optimised and SLAs met. The first phase of the service management project went live for UK based field based resources, with subsequent phases planned for France, Brazil, and Mexico.

 

"The property management sector is highly competitive,” said Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower.

 

"With our service management platform, field-based companies know they can build a ‘connected field organisation’. This means business processes are highly automated and visible across the service chain so that they can move faster and offer more favourable service level terms to clients than the competition.  Additionally, with ServicePower’s focus on investment in latest cloud, mobile, analytics and M2M technologies, they know that they can expect flexible, cutting edge technology.”

Recently named by Gartner as a Visionary in its 2014 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, December 22, 2014 by William McNeill, Michael Maoz and Jason Wong, this latest deal demonstrates how ServicePower’s focus on technological innovation translates into real business benefits for companies operating in the service management sectors. For example, as M2M connected devices continue to penetrate the property sector, ServicePower’s M2M Connected Services and Smart Scheduling Broker service management technologies will allow the client to act proactively with a predictive response to pre-empt equipment failure at properties before they becomes a problem.

As it operates in a highly changeable sector, the configurable nature of ServicePower’s service management technology was deemed important to the client because it will be able to rapidly adjust the platform to internal and external change at minimal cost.

"The selection of SevicePower for another global organisation further underlines our increasing momentum,” continued Martin. “Companies increasingly understand the importance of technology to take their businesses to the next level; they also recognise that with our unique, connected and highly flexible technology, ServicePower is best positioned to support them today and in the future in this objective.”

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For nearly 40 years, Servequip have been in the business of supplying and maintaining foodservice equipment, with customers ranging from Prezzo and Frankie & Benny’s to celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay. Two years ago, they decided to improve their systems by incorporating Tesseract’s service management software.

Servequip have their fingers firmly on the pulse of the foodservice equipment industry. While they don’t actually manufacture the equipment, their parent company Jestic exclusively imports selected brands from Europe and the US and sells it to catering establishments within the UK. For example, Jestic exclusively sells Henny Penny cooking equipment to KFC. Servequip are then responsible for maintaining the equipment during the warranty period, although high customer satisfaction means they are often called upon to continue maintaining it post-expiry of the warranty.

The maintenance work undertaken by Servequip involves a team of over 30 engineers working all over the UK. Given that most of the equipment maintained by Servequip is premium, energy-saving and highly technical, these engineers have to be proficiently trained and factory approved. They can be called upon to deal with a variety of cooking equipment issues.

 

Servequip’s impressive first-time fix rate, currently at 88%, demonstrates how it important it is for them to be backed by an efficient service management system.

The old program

Pre-Tesseract, Servequip relied on an older, less user-friendly service management program. Stock management and service calls were controlled by separate systems, and stock management involved a degree of manual intervention. It was also difficult to see internally what all of the engineers were doing.

They had to look at each engineer individually, which took time and effort. As Servequip are determined to provide a first-rate service, fast response times and first-time fixes, they decided they wanted some consolidation and a greater degree of visibility and efficiency.

“The other problem was that the old program had started to creak and groan and occasionally fall over completely,” says Neill Pearson, Service Director of Servequip. “We wanted to future-proof ourselves by investing in a fresh, new and more adaptable system.”

Tesseract comes aboard

Servequip were aware that other similar companies were already using Tesseract, such as Manitowoc Foodservice, which also supplies and maintains kitchen equipment. In addition, Tesseract’s software was in operation at Jestic, a foodservice equipment company which bought Servequip in 2011.

Jestic is responsible for the distribution side of the business, while Servequip concentrate on the repair and maintenance of the equipment.

With that in mind, Servequip cast their eyes over 10 to 15 service management systems, although they only gave serious consideration to three, including Tesseract. Of those three, Tesseract came out on top.

 

“We looked at Tesseract in operation at other companies,” says Pearson. “It just seemed to do everything, from servicing and scheduling to parts ordering, stock control and invoicing, and it seemed to handle parts and stock a lot better than other systems we looked at. It was also much more user-friendly than our old system, and the fact that it really worked for a number of similar companies to ours led us to make the decision to go with them."

Servequip’s old program was internally installed on their own servers, and while Tesseract does offer centrally hosted, cloud-based software, known as SaaS, Servequip elected to implement the internal version of Tesseract’s service management system.

“We already had a good IT infrastructure, so we wanted Tesseract to integrate with that,” says Pearson. “The other advantage of an internal system is that you don’t have to rely on an internet connection, so if the internet goes down for any reason, we can carry on working.”

One of the numerous benefits of SaaS service software is that it is updated by the host or provider rather than the customer, and on a much more frequent basis than internal service management programs. “This isn’t a problem for us,” Pearson explains.

“Even though we don’t get automatic updates through the cloud, Tesseract is very good at regularly accessing and updating our system. So from our perspective there’s not much difference.”

How have things changed for Servequip?

Tesseract has been in place at Servequip for nearly two years now. Servequip make use of Tesseract’s Core Control Centre, Parts Centre, invoicing and customer asset tools, as well as its reporting service.

Furthermore, Servequip had a working financial system already in place when Tesseract came aboard. Thanks to Tesseract’s  inherent malleability, this was successfully integrated with the rest of the system. The majority of Servequip’s processes are now managed by one integrated system rather than several.

“Tesseract has improved our business by giving us much greater visibility,” says Pearson. “It has sharpened our business. While no business can claim to be perfect, Tesseract helps us to see our mistakes as soon as they are made. This puts us in a much better position than other companies.”

 

Tesseract has also helped improve efficiency and save time. Pearson explains, “Stock is much easier to order now, because the system guides us as to what to order and when. Parts go out a lot quicker to our engineers and the whole process is more reliable because we have cut out human intervention and therefore the risk of mistakes.”

What this means is that Tesseract is helping to have a direct impact on Servequip’s first-time fix rate, which continues to steadily increase and be something that Servequip take great pride in.

What does the future hold for Servequip?

Being a service business, Servequip are always looking for new ways to improve their efficiency and productivity. Currently  they are using Tesseract Service Centre Version 5 and they are looking to upgrade to Version 5.1 at some point in the near future.

They are particularly interested in  getting more usage out of Tesseract’s reporting tools, as they would like to be able to report directly to their customers.

“Our first priorities are to review the reporting side of things, incorporate some new features and upgrade to the latest version,”  says Pearson. “After that, we intend to look at what else Tesseract has to offer.”

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Field Service News podcast. This month we are joined by Tom Oates, Senior Project Manager with service management software provider Solarvista and we are discussing the importance of getting the implementation of any software right if you are to see the expected efficiency and productivity improvements you are expecting.

You can listen to this edited snippet here for free and if you want to hear the full podcast which includes Tom's advice on how best to implement the software and manage the transition from one system and set of processes to another both in terms of the technology in place as well as from a change management perspective, you can get instant access by simply clicking the link below and completing the brief registration process.

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To download the full podcast just click here and complete the brief registration form!

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Oneserve
Title: The metrics that matter: How actionable analytics can transform field service management performance­
Download:Click here to download this white paper
By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here
Synopsis:

The top strategic action for two-thirds of service organisations is to develop or improve the metrics or KPIs used to measure field service performance. And yet only 18 percent of companies believe they have the skills necessary to gather and use insights effectively.

These two statistics represent the predicament of many field service organisations today - they know actionable analytics are vital for business success, but fully utilising the information they gather is a daunting and difficult task. This white paper aims to disentangle the vast quantity of data available in the field service management industry by highlighting the metrics that really matter and demonstrating how analytics can be used to improve business performance.  

Overview:

This white paper covers the following areas:

Customer Centric and Servitisation

Many organisations have data at their fingertips but are paralysed by the complexity and number of data sources available to them. They rely on anecdotal evidence or intuition to make decisions rather than informed business intelligence in order to drive competitive advantage.

Research shows that service organisations that fully interrogate data outperform their rivals. A like-for-like comparison between organisations which use advanced analytics and those that don’t, reveals that adopters of analytics are seeing a 60% higher increase in year-on-year revenue.

Analytics for Field Service Management (FSM)

Analytics for FSM should be based around assets in the field, the resources (time, money and people) it takes to install, maintain and repair those assets and the customer experience. Initially an organisation may just want to understand the numbers around these key activities, then in time improve processes. Ultimately the goal should be to deliver forecast and predictive analytics that achieve optimisation across service delivery.

For field service this goal can be delivered at both strategic and operational levels, for example a director might want to understand how a shift in approach can create gains for the organisation, whereas a manager might want to understand how exactly that shift can be made.

 

Incorporate the metrics that matter

To ensure analytics are able to deliver valuable insight, the right KPIs must be identified. Every service organisation must identify their own metrics based on what success looks like for them. There are however some common measures in the service industry which should be tracked by any service organisation regardless of which sector they operate within.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for field service management should include:

• Business process
• Service delivery
• Customer service
• Operational efficiency

This is by no means an exhaustive list - each metric should unlock more in-depth measures which require analysis. Clear actionable insights will be revealed as part of the analysis from which the organisation can take evidence based decisions and improve the process associated with that measure.

This should be a constant cyclical review process. 

The analytics journey

Assuming a set of KPIs has been defined, there is a hierarchy of analytics that can be applied, dependent upon the richness of the data and the analytics resource available. The advanced analytics journey demonstrated in chart 1 articulates a staged approach, which starts by examining the data and finishes by optimising the intelligence which has been discovered. Evidently each step in the journey becomes more complicated and arguably more useful as the capability and complexity of the analytics increases.

Additional benefits of analytics

Increased customer retention Research by Aberdeen Group shows organisations that embrace analytics outperform their industry average figures for customer satisfaction, customer retention and service improvement. These organisations use analytics to gain a deep understanding of customer behaviour to preempt customer needs and desires without explicit interaction.

Higher levels of motivation in the workforce The mobile workforce is the shop window of any service organisation. In fact some organisations are even combining the role of technician and salesperson. The technician is highly qualified in product knowledge and often in the customer space; this puts them in a unique position of knowledge and trust to be able to sell to the customer.

Improved bottom line Organisations which reap the greatest rewards from business intelligence see a significantly improved bottom line.

Competitive advantage By continuously analysing in-house performance figures these companies can use this insight to monitor their competitors and ensure they stay at the top of their game. The best performing service organisations are twice as likely as all others to consistently benchmark service performance against peers and top performers in other industries.

Click here to download this white paper

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