With 2020 on the horizon, it’s the perfect time to think about new ways to improve your field service business. Paul Whitelam, ClickSoftware outlines nine key areas that you need to be targeting to ensure your service delivery remains competitive as we move into the third decade of the twenty-first century...

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about new trends and visions for the future, and it’s probably a little overwhelming. An easy way to get started is by throwing away some of the outdated practices you’ve been following. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of field service practices you might want to leave behind in 2019.

Manual scheduling

Field service scheduling requires making several quick and calculated decisions. You need to consider everything from travel time and routing, technicians’ schedules and skill sets, equipment tracking, and SLA compliance. It’s much easier to rely on an automated scheduling solution to make optimized decisions for you, so you can focus on the bigger stuff—like your customers’ satisfaction.

Using separate solutions

The only way to gain true visibility into field service schedules is to manage everything in a single solution. This includes schedules, capacity planning, long- and short-cycle work, crew allocations, and more. Limiting field service management to a single solution also gives you the flexibility to manage your workforce more efficiently and ensure that you’re equipped to handle urgent work.

Not prepping technicians for customer service

Your field resources are often the only face-to-face contact your customers have with your company. This means it’s crucial they are equipped to give the best customer service possible. Start thinking of your technicians as your brand ambassadors, and ensure they have the soft skills to make a great impression on your customers.

Lack of visibility into technician location

With Uber you can hail a ride and know exactly where your driver is and when they will arrive. And Amazon provides updates when your package is shipped and as soon as it’s delivered. Your customers know this level of visibility is possible, and they expect it in their service too. Allow customers to track their technician’s location and send them reminders and updates about the status of their service. On top of giving your customers’ peace of mind, this also helps you avoid no shows and last minute cancellations.

Long Appointment Windows & Exact Time Slots

According to our Field Service Report, more than 60% of consumers across all countries said a long wait time between their service appointment being booked and carried out led to a bad customer service experience. It’s no surprise because today’s customers expect service fast, and definitely, don’t want to be waiting around all day to get it. Use optimized scheduling and appointment booking to ensure shorter, two-hour service windows for your customers.

Leaving the customer site before booking a follow-up appointment

Sometimes a repair is more complex than originally thought or a technician doesn’t have the right part to complete a job. When a follow-up appointment is needed, don’t leave the customer site until it is booked. Instead of simply ordering a part and asking the customer to call and schedule when they receive it, do it for them. The customer will feel more at ease knowing that even though the problem wasn’t fixed today, it will be fixed as soon as possible.

Not measuring customer effort score

When it comes to measuring customer experience, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores are usually the go to. But in today’s on-demand world, convenience and ease are becoming more and more important to customers. Many organizations have started measuring customer experience by the amount of effort customers are putting into getting an issue resolved. Add this to your list of KPIs so you can ensure future customer engagements are simple and seamless.

Not using live traffic updates

As customer expectations continue to rise, the importance of route optimization and getting resources from place to place is ever increasing. Many organizations are taking advantage of predictive travel and applications like Google Maps to accurately estimate travel times and plan routes ahead of the service day. However, it’s also important to consider real-time, live traffic updates on the day of service to account for unforeseen traffic and roadblocks.

Leaving out change management

When your service team has been doing things a certain way for several years, bringing in a new solution can be overwhelming. Even if the previous solution was inefficient or completely manual and paper-based, change can be scary. When implementing a new field service management solution, it’s important to get everyone on board and comfortable with the new solution—so don’t skip out on change management. Emphasize the benefits of FSM—such as efficiency, cost savings, and customer satisfaction—and make sure everyone is properly trained on using the solution.

While no one can know exactly what the field service management landscape will look like in 2020, it’s safe to expect increasing customer expectations and new technologies. Start preparing your organization for what’s next today.

 

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What happens when two IT giants using different versions of Tesseract’s service management software decide to merge? In 2015, IT solutions provider XMA found out by embarking on a major systems amalgamation with Alan Sugar’s company Viglen.

In late 2013, Alan Sugar, business veteran and star of hit BBC TV show The Apprentice, decided to sell major PC builder Viglen to XMA’s parent company, Westcoast Holdings. Westcoast took the decision to dissolve Viglen as a corporate entity but allow the Viglen brand to endure as part of XMA.

XMA uses Tesseract’s service management software to govern its print services division, namely the installation and maintenance of printers and photocopiers under tailored, all-inclusive printing and copying contracts. Viglen uses Tesseract’s software to manage the production of its PCs, as well as all warranty and maintenance contracts offered with them. At the time of the takeover, XMA and Viglen were using two different versions of Tesseract’s software, both of which were out of date.

A skill set overlap

As the two companies came together, XMA realised that it now had two customer service desks with a major skill set overlap. One was at the XMA head office in Nottingham. The other was at the former Viglen head office in St. Albans, which has remained the centre of operations for Viglen PC production and maintenance since the takeover. (Famously, it’s also where the BBC films the ‘walk of shame’ sequences on The Apprentice.)

“In terms of dealing with customer support requests, we found that our agents in Nottingham were using the same skills as our agents in St. Albans,” says Vaughan Tyas, IT Manager at XMA. “The problem was having two very different Tesseract systems to look at. We decided that we needed to rationalise this so that agents in both locations could take calls for printer maintenance and PC warranty and maintenance.”

 

This was the main reason why XMA saw fit to merge the two Tesseract systems and bring all the data for XMA and Viglen under one umbrella.

A step up from the old systems

As a result of the Tesseract merge, XMA still has two service desks across two sites, but they share a unified service management software system. Each site now uses a single toolset to record calls, diarise and dispatch engineers, dramatically improving efficiency.

Furthermore, XMA was able to upgrade to the latest version of Tesseract’s Service Centre, SC5.1. Previously it was using SC5, while Viglen was using the much older SC4.2. The upgrade to SC5.1 has brought a range of improvements, including enhanced task automation and a new user interface with simpler navigation. Unlike previous versions, SC5.1 is also completely browser-independent, allowing users to run the software on any browser on any device.

Still, the biggest benefit for XMA is the Advanced Program Interface (API) that comes with SC5.1. Previously, Viglen was relying on a variety of bespoke mechanisms to allow Tesseract to communicate with other Viglen systems and pieces of software. These mechanisms were created by Viglen using old, inflexible technology and could not be developed or evolved. This restricted the company’s ability to upgrade its service management software and was largely the reason why Viglen was still using SC4.2—originally released in 2001—at the time of the takeover.

 

These outmoded systems integrations have now been removed and replaced by the flexible, Tesseract-supported API that is built into SC5.1, which means all the integrations are maintained in-house by Tesseract.

“The new API is so much more versatile than the bespoke integrations we had before,” says Vaughan Tyas. “It means we’re no longer in a cul de sac if we need to upgrade again.”

What were the challenges?

The biggest challenge XMA faced when embarking on the Tesseract merge and upgrade was dealing with the data from the two systems. In particular, each system had different serialised product and service codes for the same actions. These codes needed to be the same in order for XMA to use SC5.1 as one unified system.

To accommodate, Tesseract was able to implement a data translation algorithm to synchronise the codes and bring the two systems in line with one another.

How have things improved? 

Now that the systems merge and upgrade is complete, XMA has seen a substantial rise in operational efficiency and productivity.

Staff are no longer working two systems, dramatically cutting back on time and manpower, and the company doesn’t need to over-resource to make sure it has agents who know how to use each system. In addition, SC5.1’s new and improved functionality has made a number of the company’s processes quicker and easier.

 

“The other good thing is that for our agents, it’s just business as usual,” says Vaughan Tyas. “The implementation was smooth and the training was easy, because they were all so familiar with the previous Tesseract systems—and SC5.1 is even more user-friendly than those were.”

 

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A contractor job management platform for field service and facilities companies has been developed by UK software company Okappy.

As many field service organisations have discovered, it's no fun trying to manage lots of subcontractors when they don’t have access to your internal job management software and take an age to return job sheets or reply to emails. The Okappy job management platform resolves these issues by allowing customers, employees and subcontractors to share information.

Field service organisations can connect to their customers and subcontractors, and receive jobs and then monitor the status of those jobs as they are updated by employees or subcontractors wherever they are. Job sheets can be tailored to suit specific requirements and images and signatures can be added.  Technicians can view customer history electronically and complete invoices.

“In the past jobs sent to subcontractors entered a black hole leading to the same problems that companies thought they’d got away from when they introduced job management software for their own employees,” points out Richard Harris, CEO of Okappy.

The Okappy platform was initially launched last year to plumbing and electrical contractors and already has thousands of users. Benefits reported include reduced paperwork and better management of their employees and subcontractors.

“Often these companies will have already invited their own customers on to the platform so it’s not a great leap for larger companies to get started and see the benefit as well”, says Harris

 

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With the recent launch of ServiceMax Service Performance Metrics™ the Californian based field service software provider has created a new tool that sits between the worlds of consulting and technology. But what exactly is Service Performance Metrics and will this see a shift towards professional services for ServiceMax? To find out more Kris Oldland spoke exclusively to Rei Kasai...

KO: You’ve mentioned previously that you see ServiceMax very much as a field service company providing technology rather than a technology company providing a field service solution. How big of a differentiator is that amongst those other companies in the space?

RK: I think to be fair, it’s why we have been successful. Going back to comments from customers on why they choose us; they view us as experts, they view us as “You are field service”. It’s interesting seeing it that way because it’s not just the technology, that’s just one aspect of it and there are many great technology companies out there; but the big difference is, how do you apply those things into real-world business problems and solve them at scale?

And I think, if you look at what we’re doing, it’s not just taking these technologies but empowering them into these common practices and I think that’s what the big difference is.

 

We need to democratise this and make this knowledge more widely available, that’s our job as a company to bring this value set to everyone in our ecosystem. So we brought those best practices, from a measurement point of view and then put them into a product so our clients can take advantage of it.

These are common metrics, all interpreted in a different way, but we made it so that it could be available to anyone as a customer.

KO: So what makes this new development so exciting, because let’s face it, every FSM software company out there seems to be talking about analytics tools right now...

RK: They’re talking about the technology aspect.

But there’s two components of what we are doing; one is that if you cannot measure, you can’t improve. So we start with what should I measure? Well, we have an opinion on what you should be measuring and that is based on what the best-in-class companies are measuring and then we codify that as eight standard metrics within the technology.

How do I visualise that in a dashboard, how do I slice that data over time? That’s the technology aspect.

But to even come to an opinion on first time to fix, time to repair with a contract attached etc, you need to understand what you should be measuring.

In the second piece, we have what we call ‘catalyst’ and catalyst is what you can imagine as the packaging of process.

Service has not really changed from a procedure point of view over the last 20 years. How you execute that process has changed over a period of time because as technology evolves more and more and we get into the IoT era and age you keep on pushing that, but these are just extensions of how you use that to utilise the process, the base processes haven’t changed.

 

Some companies may or may not know what those processes should be and so going back to why they come to us, it’s like “Oh, you understand how service business should run. You understand how we run” and so we could even help them run better.

KO: Would you say that this is positioning ServiceMax essentially as a much as a consultancy as you are a technology company?

RK: No, we’re still a software company.

KO: But there’s something more here, isn’t there? 

RK: I ‘d say it’s really about capturing the knowledge of hundreds of years of domain experience by all these industry people that we’ve hired onto our team.

Because it’s one thing to consult a customer, to gauge and understand their problems and eventually come up with solutions to them but how do you enable that into the technology so you can scale this?

You may not be able to afford those expensive services but how do I democratise this for everyone in the ServiceMax family?

KO: Is this something that’s going to embed ServiceMax ever closer with your customer’s processes and the way they work - basically build more long-term relationships?

 

RK: Exactly. I think in the end, from a customer point of view, there’s a whole personal connection - but how do they drive value? How do they become the champion within the organisation? They become the leader and we enable them in that way.

KO: Is it applicable across all different verticals?

RK: I think at minimum it’s having the understanding and part of that is education, some customers may not know any better. So, how do we empower them with the knowledge to do something better for their business and then drive that?

I think that’s part of our major difference why people choose us.

KO: That’s an interesting point because obviously there’s a journey of continuous improvement for most companies so how easily does the solution evolve? Because obviously today’s best practice may not be tomorrow’s...

RK: Exactly. And that’s why I think, how do we make it flexible? Because we know that we want people to change as part of how we believe we can make the biggest advances.

We want people to change, so how does the technology allow that? We have to measure that change so we can improve it, it all circles back to if you can’t measure, you can’t improve.

But at the same time a measurement and also a solution, is a point in time of where that company was in their lifecycle. As it grows and we help companies go through that maturity, how do we enable our customers beyond this?

That is all part of our product strategy and as we add other elements and components into the solutions we will see it evolve further.

KO: Coming back to the Service Performance Metrics specifically as a tool, how much is it about the technology and algorithms and how much is about the insight from your customer transformation team?

RK: This is where we get into some of how we design products, in effect it’s about not coming up with technology and then trying to find use cases but instead everything is brimming out from the use cases.

I think that with some of the team we have on board, especially on the customer transformation team, they know exactly how businesses measure success and failure.

 

And so, with that foresight, it’s very easy to engineer those things because if you have that foresight to know where you want to go with it, it’s much easier to plan and much easier to execute and I think that has really helped us.

I think with the global customer transformation team and the engineering team being in close partnership has enabled us to deliver these analytics but that’s just the first stage. You have 96% contract attachment rate - great, so...what does that mean?

But the reality is it’s comparisons that will add value. 

So we also have a notion of time-based series analytics built in. It’s analytics of how you do in comparisons over a period of time as it relates to revenue, cost and time. Those are some of the metrics that we are able to measure.

KO: There’s a position I firmly believe in, which is that in field services the implementation of any service provider software should be viewed as a business investment rather than a technology investment.

RK: It is.

KO: So do you think products like Service Performance Metrics will help service directors make this distinction to their executive boards?

RK: Absolutely. Because it’s ‘How do I translate the business case into true requirements for a solution.’ But also keep in mind the day to day realities of executing the processes.

It’s not similar for many places and it’s too flippant to say, “make it simple,” and so I think it’s important that you’ve got to balance the two. And I think it’s important that when you get back to your observations, ask can we connect these two worlds in an easier way?

 

Having that point of view and the team understanding that as a goal, and as an outcome focused point of view -it changes the way that you implement.

You really don’t want to re-implement again in the near future so instead of looking at it from the point of view, of ‘I’ve got to get this solution live as fast as possible and just re-do what I have now, but with some automation’, understand that this is a time for change. And if you were to think of it in that way, what should you measure and act on? What are the key things that you need to measure to move the business forward? Then think about how you can implement the solution to achieve that.

I think that approach can really help. We see our most successful implementations driven this way especially compared to those companies who go ‘Here are 300 features, go implement them’.

 

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Chris Beling, Commercial Director at Zafire, looks at the connection between ‘empowering field service engineers’ and customer satisfaction and some of the business benefits those organisations, who have already made the connection, are experiencing...

Hands up if your customers don’t expect exceptional service anymore they demand it, if they expect you to exceed SLAs and not just meet them?

Fierce competition and evolving customer expectations mean that meeting SLAs, fixing assets and simply turning up on time don’t really do the job anymore.

Why empower your engineers? 

We are now seeing more and more leading service organisations shifting focus from product to service and, by equipping their engineers with the right tools and knowledge many are seeing year-on-year improvements in customer satisfaction, which as you would expect, reflects in contract renewals, client retention and positive noise about the company and the brand.

According to recent reports published earlier this year the number one compliant made by customers is ‘technician was unable to resolve the issue’.

The key reasons for failing to resolve an issue include things such as; lack of knowledge about the customer or asset, incorrect skill set, wrong tools, no parts – these are not new issues so I’m sure you know how the story goes in terms of business impact – multiple customer visits leading to poor customer satisfaction ratings, increased costs and ultimately a reduction in client retention and new business generation.

 

Communication between back office and field service engineers via mobile devices and software applications has been around for years. The step change we are seeing comes from providing the engineer with real-time insight.

So rather than simply firing a job out to an engineer with the focus of arriving within the agreed SLA, service organisations need to ensure that the engineer not only gets on site with the customer on time but also has the parts, skills, and information to resolve the issue.

Of course it’s not just about engineers receiving data, it’s about enabling them to collect insight whilst on-site and feed that back into a central database allowing other areas of the service organisation to leverage that information and also provide added value for the customer.

This could be an update to asset information, not only identifying but also generating quotes or processing purchasing orders whilst on-site, with the customer or having direct access to parts suppliers.

How do you empower your engineers

Today, top service management solutions will provide enhanced engineer planning and optimisation tools that can automatically plan a job based on any number of parameters including SLAs, customer opening times, skill set etc.

They will also have the ability to auto plan multiple engineers to a single job whilst allowing the capture of individual times on site and eliminating double entry of data.

All aimed at getting the jobs/work orders allocated to the right engineer as quickly as possible.

Once allocated the engineer needs the right parts. Automatic stock replenishment for the mobile workforce means spares can be ordered to a designated ‘Pick up Drop off’ (PUDO) point eliminating the need for engineers to return to the main warehouse to replenish stock.

 

More specifically top service management software providers understand the need to keep mobile solutions simple whist actually providing more functionality to support on-site real-time insight.

Key areas such as on-site quoting, allowing engineers to quote for, and customers to authorise work within a few quick steps eliminates the need for office staff to follow up on quotes, improving both first time fix rates and customer satisfaction.

At the risk of getting overly technical, direct system interfaces play a big part in ’empowering the engineer’.

For example, systems are now linking directly to 3rd party parts suppliers to provide ‘Live Part Lookups’ which means engineers can view the entire parts database, search for and order parts, and manage the requisition-to-receipt process from end-to-end allowing on-site ordering and receipt directly from the mobile device.

The ability to be reactive on site by using ‘Live Checklist Lookup’ functionality means that if the situations changes on site, engineers can reflect this in the paperwork they raise, decreasing time spent altering or changing job details or forms.

So the introduction and adoption of mobile solutions to empower your mobile workforce is not just about saving paper, reducing errors generated through manual processes or improving the speed at which a work order is processed.

It is also about giving your engineers the tools to adopt a truly customer centric approach on every job they attend.

And that customer centric approach will also lead to improved ‘first time fix rates’ and will help  reduce downtime and loss of productivity for customers – things your customers really want their service organisation to deliver.

 

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Rebecca Barnett, VP Marketing Cognito iQ guides us through how they worked with Konica Minolta to improve far more than just service standards...

At Cognito iQ, we love seeing what we do, come to life in the businesses we are lucky enough to call customers.

Konica Minolta UK produces business and industrial imaging products, such as MFP’S (multifunctional peripherals), copiers, laser printers and digital product print.

The company has over 275 service engineers providing planned, reactive maintenance and support to businesses throughout the UK.

Over relationship with Konica Minolta started 15 years ago and exemplifies much of the recent history of mobile workforce technology. From simple automation to today’s solution which provides unrivalled visibility of operational and employee performance.

Konica Minolta originally selected the Cognito iQ mobile application to automate and mobilise their field operation. In 2004, following the merger of Konica and Minolta, the UK business implemented a Europe-wide SAP ERP system which replaced the incumbent mobility solution.

After a few months, the UK team reverted to the Cognito iQ solution which we then integrated into their SAP application.

 

In 2014, Konica Minolta following a market review, we took the opportunity to showcase our new solution, Operational Performance Management (OPM). Cognito iQ OPM represents the very latest in field service analytics.

With easy to understand dashboards and the ability to drill down into granular detail, be it at an individual employee or indeed at a task level, the team at Konica Minolta quickly understood how powerful this would be for them.

18 months on and the Cognito iQ OPM solution is firmly embedded at the heart of the service operation. Here’s a snapshot of just some of the results.

Customer Service

Via their handheld devices engineers are able to request customer feedback on completion of their jobs. The number of customers giving NPS (Net Promoter Scores) scores has more than doubled over the past 18 months.

However, what’s really impressive is that, on average, the Konica Minolta field team are achieving an NPS score of 85.

As a sustained average, 85 is fairly unheard of in NPS terms and here’s the really clever bit - the scores are received by the back office in real-time. Managers have a KPI to call every customer who scores a 10 within an hour to say ‘thank you’ and enquire as to why they felt the service warranted such a high score.

 

In parallel, any customers scoring a 6 or below (NPS calls them Detractors) are called to enquire what the engineer could do better next time.

The insights from all calls are recorded and used to drive a programme of continuous improvement through training, feedback to the engineers and process change.

Productivity

The Cognito iQ OPM solution gives real-time visibility of what is happening in the field. With this comes a greater understanding of where improvements can be made.

By analysing the data through the Cognito iQ dashboards, significant savings have been made by reducing travel times between jobs. Over the course of year, small savings in time have added up to significant savings in pounds.

In addition, the team have measurably been able to service many more machines per man through improvements in training and process.

Employee Engagement

The Cognito iQ OPM solution produces what we call the Worker Scorecard. In simple terms, it measures each engineer against 6 Key Performance Areas and produces an overall, aggregated individual score at the end of each day.

This then feeds into the League Table which shows, at the click of button, who the highest performers are over whatever period of time you choose.

By understanding exactly where improvements in service needed to be made, Konica Minolta developed a whole new engineer career development programme.

To move up the levels an engineer has to consistently achieve certain KPI’s and undertake and pass certain training programmes. Pay and reward is linked to this development and guided by quality markers taken from the Cognito iQ OPM solution such as NPS scores, levels of productivity etc.

 

Sharing performance information transparently has enabled productive conversations and Konica Minolta have quickly developed a reputation for being an ‘Employer of Choice’ enjoying many benefits such as reduced recruitment costs, reduced attrition rates and a happy, motivated, loyal workforce.

Now, I’m not all that keen on tech buzzwords.

Frankly ‘transformation’ is about as overused as they come. However, having worked with team at Konica Minolta on this story, I really couldn’t justify using anything else.

 

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Want to know more? You can read the full transformation story on www.cognitoiq.com/case-studies

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Leading mobility specialists Kony and Cognizant are joining forces to deliver a new class of mobile enterprise solutions. The two companies have announced they will jointly develop and deliver solutions spanning enterprise mobile applications, mobile app design, and mobile back-end services to enhance business process efficiencies and security.

The suite of cross-platform mobile applications  will be suitable for industries such as banking, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and government, as well as horizontal mobile applications that can be used by sales and field services, workflow, and human resources organisations. Clients will have access to Cognizant's Digital Fabric robust mobile middleware back-end service, based on Kony’s MobileFabric for enterprise-grade mobile services.

In addition, Kony's advanced mobile app design capabilities will be integrated into the offerings of the Cognizant Digital Collaboratory in New York, further enabling clients to envision the "art of the possible" as they architect their digital future using Cognizant’s Digital Works methodology.

The news of the collaboration has been welcomed by clients.

 

“We are looking forward to working with Cognizant and Kony to architect and implement our digital transformation,” said Dan McCormick, regional IT director, Rentokil Initial plc.

“Cognizant’s digital expertise, deep domain knowledge and global scale, combined with Kony’s market-leading platform for enterprise mobility, gives Rentokil access to best-of-breed capabilities. We’re confident that Kony and Cognizant working together will drive the highest value and best possible outcomes for Rentokil as we take our digital journey.”

“We are excited to join forces with Cognizant to provide unparalleled mobile and digital solutions to help our global clients,” said Thomas E. Hogan, chairman and chief executive officer, Kony, Inc.

“What makes this partnership so powerful is the unique and complementary fit of our respective assets and capabilities – Kony’s deep knowledge and intellectual property in enterprise mobility and Cognizant’s tremendous domain expertise, business process and design innovation, industry vertical depth, and impressive market reach and scale. Most importantly, our combined strengths will bring industry-leading innovation and value to our clients, which is the ultimate barometer of success.”

“The world is mobile. Serving today’s customers means connecting with them anytime they want and anywhere they are. As a result, we’ve seen an explosion of emerging end points and apps to engage, capture information, and support decision-making. This trend lies at the heart of digital transformation,” said Sean Middleton, chief operating officer, Emerging Business Accelerator, at Cognizant.

“Successfully harnessing these forces to capture value, though, requires a thoughtful approach supported by an efficient, secure and agile platform. We’re pleased to partner with Kony and to harness their world-class expertise and platform. Together with Cognizant’s Digital Works methodology, this alliance will help our clients across industries.”

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In the above video you'll find the Q&A session from our most recent webinar run in partnership with service management software specialists IFS where Field Service News Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland spoke with scheduling expert Daryl Dudey of IFS.

 

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