ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘software-and-apps’ CATEGORY

mplsystems, the multi-channel contact centre technology specialist, has been listed in the market overview section of Gartner’s new CRM Customer Engagement Centre (CEC) report (1) 8 and  in the vendor categories for both the Web Customer Self-Service and Field Service Management sections of Gartner’s 2014 CRM Vendor Guide (2).

The listing in the CRM vendor guide and in the market overview section of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report follows the recent validation of mplsystems’ intelligentContact offering by contact centre operators voting in Call Centre Helper’s 2014 Contact Centre Technology award. Readers selected intelligentContact as 2014’s top technology, citing the flexibility of the mplsystems’ solution and choosing it ahead of offerings from vendors such as Aspect Software, Genesys, Interactive Intelligence, LiveOps, NewVoiceMedia, Noble Systems and rostrvm.

“Our disruptive technology is revolutionising the traditional marketplace, and we believe this further acknowledgement from Gartner confirms it,” commented Paul White, mplsystems’ CEO. “mplsystems’ intelligentDesktops give agents a single view of all customer data from across organisations while managing interactions from any channel - providing massive efficiency savings and Customer Experience gains. What really sets this technology apart, however, is that organisations can rapidly create their own desktops exactly as they need them – and no longer have to force their business processes around over-complex, off the shelf menu-driven CRM models. With deployment options ranging from single or multi-tenant cloud, as well as on premise, mplsystems is one of only a small number of vendors who can provide clients with the flexibility they need to fit in with their existing infrastructure.”

In 2013 Gartner changed its Magic Quadrant title from Customer Service Contact centre to Customer Engagement Centre, recognising the increasingly multi-channel nature of today’s customer contact. Gartner also acknowledges the growing role played by software as a service (SaaS) as the delivery model for these solutions, projecting through 2017 that 60% of core customer support for CECs will be in an SaaS model.

Trimble Field Service Management has recently announced that they will be attending Field Service Forum in Amsterdam from 3-4th June. A brand new event taking place at the Radisson Blu hotel, Trimble will join field service professionals from across Europe to network, exhibit and debate the challenges facing field service organisations today and explore the current and future opportunities for business growth.

Across the two days, keynote presentations will be offered alongside dedicated workshops, focus sessions and one-to-one meetings. A key sponsor for the event, Trimble will be participating in the show's 'Technology Forum' on Wednesday 4th June with a presentation on how to manage a field operation effectively and using emerging technologies to drive service excellence,  focussed on the manufacturing  and capital asset industries.

Across the two day event Trimble will be offering a live showcase of 'Work Management', offering attendees the chance to find out how the cloud-based solution can transform the productivity of a mobile workforce through intelligent scheduling tools and state-of-the-art Performance Management analytics (PMA).

Complimentary copies of Trimble's latest industry publication, 'Transforming Service Delivery: An Insight Report', will also be on offer at the Trimble stand. The report investigates the most pressing issues affecting field service organisations and provides insight into how to transform operations, from measuring service performance and delivering excellent customer service to handling change management and turning data into information.

The report is also available for complimentary download via the following link www.trimble.com/fsm/insightreport

 

Field Service News is currently working in partnership with software provider mplsystems on a research project which looks to establish a clear picture of what software is being used in the field service industry, what is working well and what needs are not being met by the providers in the industry...

The survey itself looks at four key areas of field service software; scheduling, integration & interaction, reporting and looking forward. Already we are seeing some interesting trends appearing five of which we explore below…

1. A large amount of companies are still using some manual processes:

In fact just under half (49%) of the companies that have responded to date are still using manual systems to manage the dispatch of their field service engineers. With the benefits of using some form of scheduling automation well documented this number is perhaps surprisingly large.

However, when we look at the biggest concerns around implementing a new technology at least one reason is clear. Cost of implementation is the highest barrier for companies looking to develop their service management solution with 46% of companies citing this as a predominant concern when implementing a new technology.

When we consider that just over half  (51%) of respondent companies identified optimised scheduling as one of the three most critical areas for investment it would certainly appear that it is a case of when not if these companies will be moving away from manual scheduling solutions.

2.Ratio levels of technicians to dispatchers remain relatively low:

Not surprisingly given the amount of companies that are still using manual systems the ratios of dispatchers to engineers is generally quite low with 77% of companies having a maximum of 15 engineers per dispatcher.

With dynamic/optimised scheduling being claimed by some vendors to be able to handle more than 40 engineers per dispatcher it would appear that there is quite a dramatic opportunity for improving the overall productivity of service divisions.

This is further evidenced when we look at the ratios of those companies using an optimised scheduling system. 44% of these companies operate with a minimum of 16 field service staff per dispatcher with 22% working with between 26 and 40 field service staff per dispatcher.

These figures could be important for companies looking to move their business towards a profit centre, particularly when we consider that in many instances labour costs are greater than any other in a business, so having more of your workforce placed within positions that can directly impact upon revenues could be an essential step to making the transition.

3. Most companies though are pleased with the current systems

Despite the failings listed above it appears that most companies are currently satisfied with their existing scheduling solution with 45% of companies ranking their system as either Good or Excellent compared to 20% who identified their current solution was either poor or very poor.

Of the issues that were cited when we asked “What is you biggest issue with your current scheduling system?” interestingly ‘a lack of visibility’ was one of the most often highlighted problems for many companies. Again have a clear transparent visibility into the location and activities of a mobile workforce is absolutely key to being able to improve the efficiency of the field service unit.

Other common responses included incorrect estimations on time allocated to jobs, lack of flexibility and also integration problems with wider systems.

4. Companies still have to work with multiple systems to accommodate the full customer life cycle

In fact integration issues are magnified by the fact that the vast majority of companies have to work with more than one system to provide them with a full solution to cover the entire life cycle of their customers. 81% of the companies responding to our survey so far are working with multiple systems, with 20% of companies using 4 or more systems as part of their solution.

With visibility and transparency being key issues field service companies need to tackle to improve their efficiencies, it is a simple premise that the fewer different systems they can utilise will be beneficial.

Based on the current findings, it would appear that companies either need to look towards consolidating their existing systems by migrating to one of the many new generation systems such as that offered by mplsystems, which can offer an end to end solution or look to establish better integration with their existing systems via development of or investment in API’s etc.

5. Over a third of companies find integrating systems a problem

This issue is further highlighted when we asked, “Would you say you have an integrated end-to-end service management technology solution?”  With 38% of the companies responding stating “They have a number of different systems across different divisions making communication between departments tricky.”

With this figure rising to 44% of companies when we look at those without any form of automated scheduling, it would seem that many companies in the industry face a decision in how they can enhance their current field service operations, and serious considerations need to be made, with a forward looking approach that ensures the investment in technology compliments any planned changes to business culture and strategy.

 

 

ClickSoftware have recently announced that Wärtsilä, a global player in complete lifecycle power solutions operating in both the energy and marine industries have opted to implement ClickSoftware’s flexible scheduling solution ClickWorkforce, which is available through the Salesforce AppExchange.

The implementation which is across a number of international territories promises to give Wärtsilä full transparency across their whole field services business, providing easier management and planning of its resources by consideribly increasing visibility.

Commenting on the implementation Dr. Moshe BenBassat, founder and CEO of ClickSoftware. “As the pace of business accelerates, more businesses are moving to the cloud to gain agility and meet fluctuating demand. ClickSoftware is proud to work with Wärtsilä to help them to manage an increasingly global and disparate business,”

Increasing productivity

“The depth and breadth of ClickWorkforce functionality means ClickSoftware provides a solution that grows with demand and scope of business to address the need of global enterprises.”

Wärtsilä  field service director Guido Barbazza added “For the Planning Board, cloud-based capabilities allow us to know where our staff and assets are at any one time, and then orchestrate them effectively,”

“This will help us guarantee the best assignment of skilled resources to jobs, enabling us to reduce administration work, improve processes and bolster time management benefits. We foresee that this will have a positive impact on our customer’s experience, bottom line, and boost job satisfaction among our employees.”

Wärtsilä, who support their customers throughout the lifecycle of their marine installations, power generation solutions and oil & gas systems, will deploy ClickWorkforce across all 70 countries that they operates in to manage and synchronise field services skills and resources availability.

A key element of Wärtsilä’s global field services integrated solutions, which include systems for professional skills management and workshops activities, is the resource scheduling.

By implementing intelligent field services management software, the company will now have access to real-time global field services skill availability, allowing for more optimised scheduling, improved asset resourcing and better capacity management.

The new system will increase the capability to draw in wider resources onto different projects from around the world. 

The power of connectivity

One of the major benefits Wärtsilä will see from the new implementation is that each of their field services unit will gain a clearer view of all ongoing activities and projects, enabling better sharing of resources including field engineers and specialised equipment.

ClickWorkforce enables companies to chat live and in context with their mobile workforce, and respond immediately to real-time activities in the field, all within the Salesforce1 Platform.

In just one click, companies have the ability to access a single view of the entire field services operation, give customers (internal and external) field services in real-time, chat with engineers and sales reps and managers to find the best solutions
, schedule engineers instantly based on location, skill and cost
and offer narrow, reliable appointment windows

 

 

mplsystems has announced a new, integrated field service management solution that directly address what they perceive as the three main barriers to field service efficiency: combining disparate IT systems; enabling the scheduling of reactive jobs alongside planned tasks; and solving ongoing issues relating to lack of visibility of activities in the field.

The systems key functionality includes a unified service desk portal, automatic and dynamic planning and scheduling of service activities, as well as mobile communications for field personnel through dedicated apps for all leading smart phones and tablets.

The solution is particularly easy-to-use, supporting a unique combination of automated scheduling with dynamic drag-and-drop capabilities to enable planners to optimise schedules and manage their reactive tasks in real-time. When integrated with a comprehensive service desk portal and updates via mobile apps, organisations will be able to unlock significant productivity and efficiency savings with a true, real-time view of all current maintenance activities across the business.

 

 

 

Bridging the disconnect

“Until now field service management systems have always suffered from a disconnect between the service desk, planning and what’s actually going on in the field. The result is that it has proved virtually impossible for service management firms to react quickly to customer emergency jobs and change requests as the planning function is burdened by overly complex scheduling tools that make it difficult to schedule such reactive jobs in real-time. Our new service management solution directly address this challenge,” commented Paul White, CEO at mplsystems.

“And despite the great advances in smart phone technology, the reality for most service organisations is still that their field workforce is largely invisible. That’s a real concern given that the top complaint from service maintenance customers is that technicians, when on site, can’t resolve issues. By integrating our service desk portal with both automated scheduling and field updates via mobile apps, we can make sure that field service organisations have both the real-time information dynamic planning tools they need to solve this problem.”

The new solution differs with traditional service scheduling tools that are often over-complex with endless menus, options, parameters and screens.

Instead the mplsystems solution features a simplified interface with three core drag-and-drop presentation options that enable schedule optimisation: a dynamic map view that streamlines the scheduling and allocation of tasks, a field service engineer’s calendar view showing all jobs and locations, and a complete list of jobs that can be filtered using a range of parameters.

These three views can be toggled separately or displayed concurrently on a single screen. When the service desk receives a call, all service desk staff need to do is just drag and drop the task onto the appropriate field engineer’s schedule. This action updates diaries and transfers all relevant task information to the engineer’s mobile Android, iOS or Windows Mobile device.

mplsystems vs maximo?

Statutory Support Services, a specialist building services maintenance group, chose the new mplsystems solution to gain a single view of all its field activities.

“With mplsystems we’ve been able to automate around 50 percent of the manual scheduling tasks that we had to do with our previous system, and we’re already seeing improvements in terms of our KPIs and SLAs. Our schedulers are no longer overloaded with endless menus, options, parameters and screens. Instead they get to look at just three simple views – a dynamic map that streamlines the drag-and-drop scheduling and allocation of tasks, a field service engineer’s calendar view, and a complete list of jobs that can be filtered using a range of parameters,” explained Adam Clarke, Statutory Support Services UK Limited’s Managing Director.

“The sheer simplicity of the system means that our staff simply need to drag-and-drop a task onto the appropriate field engineer’s schedule. This action updates diaries and transfers all relevant task information to the engineer’s mobile device. With the time saved, we can focus our helpdesk staff on the kind of added value tasks that other service companies simply don’t have the time to do.

“Thanks to increased SLA adherence and the ability of our new mplsystems implementation to respond effectively to reactive jobs and dynamic schedule optimisation, we’re expecting the mplsystems field service management solution to pay for itself within just six months,” he added. “When you factor in costs such as licencing and hardware costs for field mobile systems, we’re estimating that our cloud-based mplsystems technology solution will work out at around five times less expensive than our legacy enterprise Maximo-based scheduling system.”

mplsystems’ new end-to-end solution can be delivered either on premise or in the cloud, and provides field service organisations with a true real-time view of all their current maintenance and support activities across their entire operation. A full suite of field service management software allows businesses to create and customise exactly the level of functionality they need around their existing IT investments.

 

 

 

xMatters, a company specialising in communications-enabled business processes, has announced its cloud-based, automated messaging and communications platform is now fully certified for integration with the latest version of ServiceNow, the enterprise IT cloud company.

This latest version, known as Dublin, delivers enhancements to accelerate innovation, mobility, consolidation and automation within IT and across the entire enterprise.

With this cloud-to-cloud integration, joint customers can seamlessly integrate the full power of xMatters’ enterprise-grade, multi-modal communications with ServiceNow’s IT management solutions.

The Dublin release adds IT alerting based on rules such as on-call schedules, escalations and device preference as well as proactive subscription-based notifications to impacts or ‘in the know’ individuals throughout the enterprise.

In addition, xMatters’ on-demand platform offers full support for its iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile application, enabling users to take advantage of two-way notifications and the ability to respond from anywhere.

“Our customers operate in a rapid-pace environment and this continued integration with ServiceNow is a testament to providing them with the most efficient communications platform for critical moments,” said Troy McAlpin, CEO of xMatters.

“The added functionality available with this new release will continue to support users as unexpected incidents occur, managing all the message content and handling through our notifications.” He concluded

Based on its recent analysis of the mobile workforce management market, Frost & Sullivan have recognised Xora, a ClickSoftware Company with the 2014 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Customer Value Leadership.

The award highlights Xora's superior focus on enhancing the value customers receive, beyond good service, leading to improved customer retention and, ultimately, market share expansion.

Four key factors contributed to Xora’s leadership in providing customer value:

• a best-in-class customer support program during and after solution deployment
• an affordable, cloud-based delivery model
• the forging of strong partnerships with wireless carriers
• an expanded definition of the solution’s use and value in today’s marketplace

Xora StreetSmart, a suite of configurable mobile apps that turn any mobile phone or tablet into a powerful productivity tool, is designed to appeal to a wide range of businesses and public-sector agencies.

The application is highly configurable through an intuitive, easy-to-use interface and is continually evolving with new feature releases. Cloud-based SaaS deployment minimizes IT requirements. The solution also allows customers to easily scale their implementation, leveraging new features as their needs evolve. This ultimately creates high-value delivery for each Xora customer and rapid ROI.

As a part of its promise to provide best-in-class service, Xora delivers live training to educate users on solution capabilities, ranging from help creating wireless forms to configuring mobile jobs and defining mobile business workflows to better realise the customer’s end goals. Xora also invests time and energy to understand business needs of its customers, which results in clear ROI expectations for the customer and greater use of Xora’s capabilities, ultimately leading to better service for end consumers.

With the merging of ClickSoftware and Xora, customers will receive increased benefits from the ability to expand their functionality as their business and mobile workforce needs grow. The merging of the two organisations will enable Xora to leverage ClickSoftware’s global sales operations, while providing ClickSoftware additional distribution channels through leading wireless carriers.

Xora is both a visionary and evangelist when it comes to the business potential of mobile workforce management solutions. The company has spent the past two years working to expand the industry’s view of the value and capabilities that MWM solutions can deliver—well beyond just understanding employee locations to transforming mobile business processes in the field.

“By merging Xora and ClickSoftware, we expanded our product offerings to service companies of all sizes, from 5 to 50,000 mobile workers. We are proud to deliver services that enable them to provide an exceptional customer experience, while also providing the tools to achieve outstanding operational performance and grow their businesses,” said Dr. Moshe Ben Bassat, founder and CEO of ClickSoftware.

“The combination of Xora and ClickSoftware will enable companies to pick the deployment model that suits their needs—whether it’s an out-of-the-box cloud deployment for an SMB or enterprise solution to meet more complex business needs.” he continued.

“Xora knows the SMB sector—its needs, its fears, its pain points,” said Jeanine Sterling, principal analyst, Frost & Sullivan. “As a result, it understands how to create real value for small and mid-sized businesses, focusing not just on affordability, but also on two other make-or-break factors with these customers—ease of implementation and ease of use. We’re very pleased to recognise Xora, a ClickSoftware Company, with this Customer Value Leadership Award.”

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

Robert Woodhead is an award winning Construction Company operating across the East Midlands and South Yorkshire. Growing steadily since its inception in 1946, Robert Woodhead have developed an impressive customer portfolio and now deliver multi million pound contracts  to some of the largest public and commercial organisations in the UK.

To help meet their rigorous customer service targets, Robert Woodhead decided to develop its service management offering as ‘Woodhead One’ – a specialist operation that delivers responsive repairs and maintenance. As part of the business strategy and to support the expanding repairs and maintenance business, the company knew it would have to optimise its customer contact and scheduling activities if it was to successfully balance excellent customer service with high quality operational performance.

Previously using manual spreadsheets and paper based job allocation, the business wanted a solution that would manage the end-to-end field service operation. To successfully achieve these project goals, Robert Woodhead selected mplsystems to design and deliver a seamless end-to-end field service management solution that would include the helpdesk, scheduling and mobile field service. The solution would need to integrate with existing systems and enhance business processes.

In response to customer demand and to alleviate the volume of service requests going through the helpdesk, mplsystems designed a customised self-service portal that allowed clients to log and track jobs themselves. The portal gave customers full visibility of their service requests and meant they could access the portal at any time without having to call or email the help desk.

Once the request has been made, the helpdesk were able to view real time information on the location and status of mobile field workers and to fully optimise job allocation and instantly send a notification update to the field worker via mplsystems customised mobile app technology.

This solution simplifies the service management process whilst improving efficiencies for both Woodhead One staff and their valued customers. Since implementing the solution Woodhead One have experienced significant business growth and 100% increase in reactive job requests in just two years. The portal now manages more than 75% of these reactive service requests, allowing Woodhead One to reduce their outbound call costs, increase service response times and reduce the admin load on the service helpdesk.

Customers no longer have to call or email the service desk to request a job, they are able to access the portal 24/7 and have full visibility of their request from initiation to completion. Clients can also now effectively measure their job requests through instant reporting from the portal and have full visibility of billing to fully understand associated costs, meaning they too can optimise their business operations.

Stephen Gribby, Repairs and Maintenance Director, Woodhead One commented 

“The team at Woodhead One see our solution from mplsystems as a true differentiator and a feature that is now helping us win new business. We are continuously reviewing our service delivery efforts and the next stage of the project is to encompass our payments system into the portal to achieve a more unified approach across the business”

To find out more you can read the full case study here

 

 

How an enterprise-class service management software vendor embraces the new world of cloud and devices whilst keeping existing customers happy.

It’s fair to say that we are living in times where the rate of change in information technology is faster than at any time in the past. Internet connectivity is becoming ubiquitous. People own multiple devices… phone, tablet, laptop, PC etc. They expect ‘apps’ now, not just applications (apps being instantly available software the installs in a click). And cloud computing promises to drive costs down and availability up.

Great. But… what about the investment made already in the existing systems? What about keeping data secure? What about all those customisations that we spent a lot of time perfecting?

The future is indeed exciting but how on earth do we get there without significant disruption (not least the costs)?

At Solarvista, we have been developing our software application suite for 25 years and through that time, it’s been through several sea-changes (DOS, Windows, mobile etc.). As a software developer, we knew that we were facing another sea-change and that this one could be bigger than all the previous ones. We also knew that the last sea-changes were not always easy for our customers.

So, the question was, how do we develop our products to embrace new technology without forcing our customers through ‘hoops and hurdles’ to get there?

We established a dedicated team to research the options. After nine months hard work, we had a design solution that would enable our customers to keep their existing investment in Solarvista intact, yet allow them to move forward progressively. In fact, our solution also had a great side effect… system integration to third party systems. This side effect is actually something that we have really embraced at Solarvista now and intend this to be one of our key unique selling points (USPs).

With all this change ahead, we also decided that we needed a new fresh brand identity. Our ‘old’ identity had been in place since 2000, so was 14 years old. And it was looking tired. It was, too multi-coloured. It didn’t suit the digital age. We couldn’t fit into a Twitter icon for example. We needed a new brand that was fresh, digital ready and an image that we could design into our applications so users knew instantly they were “in Solarvista”.

The resulting journey has been a big one.

Product-wise, we now have two new whole product categories, having spent the last 20 years with just one! That’s a 200% increase in product base in less than three years! A modern airliner has approximately 750K lines of code. We’ve added 1.5 million in one product category alone!

Brand-wise, we have a fresh, new identity that’s ready for the new age and capable of reflecting our technologies. An ‘S’ made up of dots reflects the move upwards into the sky. And always purple and orange. It’s applied throughout our products and in all our communications of course. This has been no small feat… its involved updating thousands of pages of information and hundreds of web pages.

The first of our new product categories is Solarvista NET. This technology solves the problem of connecting existing systems together without the need for coding and development. In particular, it’s based around Service Oriented Architecture (“SOA”), a proven design used by the very largest systems in the world, including famous social media sites. This significantly reduces cost, time and risk (something that’s always high in system integration).

The second of our new product categories is Solarvista LIVE. To deliver new applications that can operate securely out there in the cloud requires a security model that’s rock solid and proven. That security model is claims-based federated security. You can’t build secure apps without building this in from the start and it being there in every piece of code at the base level. Adding it in afterwards doesn’t cut it.

Solarvista LIVE will initially surface as a new style of mobile app that connects via Solarvista NET and enables full use of Solarvista 8. It also allows Solarvista LIVE apps to be used on other systems, even in scenarios where our flagship solution isn’t even in place. All of this delivered via a cloud-based account that managed for you by us, thus removing the overhead of managing remote servers.

Many systems out there are not true SaaS. They are often web servers hosted in a data centre. Whist this “appears” the same; it isn’t. It’s not scalable; can be vulnerable to attack, and not the most cost effective. Solarvista LIVE is true SaaS. It is delivered in small pieces. So much so that you can just buy what you need and no more/no less. A good example is our non-SaaS product for mobile, Mobile Worker. In the Solarvista LIVE, this one product is broken down into 20 smaller pieces, meaning you can just buy say, 2 or 3 pieces of it to start with. Then 2 or 3 more at a later date. You don’t need to buy the whole application.

We’re excited about the future and look forward to taking all our customers forward as well as attracting new customers in new markets.

Solarvista will be demonstrating their new software at this years Service Management Expo, where you will also find Paul Adams giving a presentation in the Field Service Solutions Theatre hosted by Field Service News. 

To get a free exhibition pass for all three days simply click this link and enter Field Service News in the promotional code box