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Smarter customer engagement, an interactive customer service hub and streamlined knowledge management are some of the enhancements Microsoft will introduce to its Dynamics CRM platform in 2016. Microsoft Dynamics General Manager Bill Patterson gave Field Service News Editor-in-Chief  Kris Oldland the low down on the innovations .

Having spent 2015 focusing on productivity improvements in Microsfot Dynamics, Microsoft is turning to customer service experience enhancements in 2016.  "It has probably been one of the most significant areas in innovation and investment we've been making in Microsoft," Patterson states.  "We see that organisations today are operating still like they were ten years ago. They are still trying to compete on the basis of price or on the strength of their product or service that they have for their offerings. But key data is really beginning to emerge that a lot of consumers today are largely beginning to stay with brands due to the customer experience and we see customer service playing a huge role in that realm of differentiation."

We have all been part of good customer services experiences but those that we remember oftentimes are the most extremely bad ones. What we are trying to do for enterprises today is really help them understand their customers, help them engage with their customers and help them empower their employees to really drive and centre that degree of engagement."

"While organisations may understand this dichotomy, the reality that they find themselves in today is that a lot of their tooling is dated, a lot of their systems have not been modernised to keep up with the needs of their customers and they are struggling with the proliferation and explosion of channels in the digitalisation of the service experience like never before."

Indeed,  in the modern world of the empowered consumer building a cohesive customer experience that translates across the multitude of different touch points with your organisation is critical. "This notion of digitalisation and the empowered consumer really is creating a juxtoposition with the enterprise, because the agent today is mostly dealing with technology and screens that were built for the last decade of computing."

 

This presents one of two key challenges for today's service-oriented organisations.  While the challenge to deliver the level of service excellence is spread across a growing number of channels, simultaneously there is the challenge of overcoming high employee churn rates within customer service roles which Microsoft analysis of labour statistics around the customer service role both in the US and the UK has revealed as worryingly high at around 27%. "If you think that one in four of your team is turning over every twelve months increasingly it's a really struggling proposition to keep employees engaged and empowered to ultimately to deal with customers. "

"And that meta-trend - the ability to engage with customers and to empower employees - is really what's driving Microsoft, what's driving our innovation force behind our set of releases."

With their latest roll out their Dynamics platform, Microsoft is looking to resolve these challenges with three new elements that Patterson describes as being at the centre of that employee empowerment and customer engagement problem set for an organisation. Perhaps the biggest of these changes, and one that is likely the headline grabbing development, is a complete overhaul of the user experience.

"Most CRM systems have been built over time with this notion of the relationship and relationships take time to emerge and unfold for an organisation," explains Patterson. "So it's s oftentimes that a CRM system is designed with lots of data, lots of forms and lots of views. For organisations who need to keep up with high scale but low amount of data within an interaction there was a dichotomy between the optimised user experience and the user experience we find today in most CRM systems."

"So we went back to the drawing board and back to the core of the user experience itself and designed what we think is the most productive user experience for customer service agents on the planet."

A bold statement indeed.  So what is the detail behind the hyperbole?

Interactive Service Hub

The UX Microsoft has introduced is called the interactive service hub. It has the ability to handle large screens of information, and to take a screen and easily turn it into an interaction. It's a technology that many will be familiar with in social solutions, Patterson readily admits. However bringing it into the customer service team at large to help them engage across all the digital channel - web, social email and so on - could be a very powerful tool.

"There is also a focus on building much tighter integration between what Microsoft refer to as Tier One agents (those who have to deal with the most volume) and Tier Two agents (those who have to deal with the escalations coming from the tier one team).  This could prove an important aid in increasing efficiency resulting in speedier resolutions for customers.

 

That interplay between tier one and tier two today for most organisations is where you see the highest degree of latency in closing a business operation. It is our belief that if we can bring the tier one and tier two teams together in a way that information is continuous and seamless throughout a service funnel, then we could help teams react, respond and resolve issues much easier than before.

Smarter customer engagement

2016 will see the release of what Microsoft calls smarter customer engagement.  It's an interesting concept that builds upon their own social engagement technology while addressing what is perhaps a key flaw. "What sentiment and social screens have proven is that it's a signal, a belief at a point in time but it may not get to the full unearthing of a customer perspective on things," Patterson begins. "So in addition to some advances we're making in the social engagement side we're introducing our Voice of Customer solution." This is based on some tech acquired last spring to go to the next level of voice-of-the-customer and feedback as part of the business process."

"When you combine the sentiment analytics with the enriched information on an interaction or on a survey perhaps, organisations can further understand their customers in a way that's not just only a point in time or what they might have said on a social network. The combination of these two is how we see organisations truly coming together to engage in new ways with their customers."

Knowledge capture and management

The third of the new developments particularly caught my attention as it is a tool capable of helping tackle a significant issue being faced by many, many field service companies: the challenge of capturing the knowledge, locked away in the heads of a workforce rapidly set to walk away from the business as they reach retirement age.

Again the challenge is two-fold, firstly there is the capture of this knowledge to ensure it remains in the organisation and secondly there is the need to make this knowledge easily accessible.

 

Microsoft's knowledge capture platform incorporates a WYSISYG designer to allow for simple and easy creation of content, as you'd expect, but perhaps more importantly they have also included social collaboration tools which allow companies to bring teams of people together to work in tandem on the creation of an article.

The upshot of this is that either each article becomes less disputed or you create fewer articles authored by individual experts who have distinct points of view. Either way it makes for a more streamlined approach to developing a knowledge bank and when the aim is to help deliver quicker understanding to your workforce and swifter resolution to customer problems, then quality should always trump quantity.

This is also something that Microsoft are acutely aware, says Patterson, pointing out that most knowledge management solutions have been built more as knowledge aggregators which end up taking in so much volume and so much data that agents really get lost in the cloud of information.

"Often what happens is an organisation will spend so much time indexing and not enough time thinking about the meaningful information that helps drive an interaction to a resolution.  Over time the knowledge index becomes less and less trusted by the customer service team."

"So our focus was putting the knowledge into the core hands of the agents and the experts inside an organisation who can put the right information into the hands of the customer service interaction team so it can become a more thoughtful and ambient experience for an agent."

Supported by a powerful machine learning engine, the knowledge management tool analyses the content of what an interaction is about and pro actively surfaces and pushes the right knowledge into the hands of the agent whilst they are taking the call. This ability to place focused content intelligently in the right place at the right time could hugely improve resolution times within a service centre. However, the magic doesn't end there as the system essentially continues to refine itself through each interaction.

"Once that intersection between knowledge and interaction come together that binding, that fusion if you will, actually tunes the machine learning engine even further and enriches it even further this article solves this problem," enthuses Patterson.

Each of these developments are exciting in their own right but together it looks like Microsoft Dynamics 2016 is certainly shaping up to be an impressive update to the platform.

However, when it is bundled together with Office 365, Microsoft’s productivity suite, for a cost of between £40 and £95 depending on your own configurations, this becomes a platform offering fantastic value. Long may it continue.

 

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Enterprise mobility company Kony Inc. has launched a mobile solution with SAP-Certified Integration to help companies modernise their field service processes for mobile devices, IoT and wearables.

The Kony Mobile Field Service solution for SAP Business Suite is a set of three new apps and implementation services designed to help businesses move away from a paper-based field service operation to a completely mobilised environment within 30 days.

“We are seeing more organisations turn to mobility to streamline processes and increase productivity; however, many are still held back by expensive upgrades and limited resources,” said Dave Shirk, president, Product, Strategy and Marketing for Kony. “With Kony Mobile Field Service solution, enterprises using SAP Business Suite can now quickly mobilise the field team without investing in expensive upgrades to their SAP systems, or having to rip and replace their entire backend infrastructure. With mobility, they can now process more work orders, improve their service levels and first time fix rates; and ultimately increase revenue by introducing the ability for technicians to upsell and process payments in the field.”

The solution is a single integrated suite that optimises the entire field service business process. This enables businesses to maximise efficiency while processing notification, planning and tracking, and executing work orders all in a single integrated app suite.  It is built on the Kony Mobile Platform, and extensive experience and expertise based on helping global companies and brands mobilise their field service business processes.

One of the first users to deploy the solution is Irish utility company ESB.  "Servicing more than two million customers, we needed a mobile solution that our field technicians could rely on to help streamline work orders and improve overall efficiency,” said Eugene O’Sullivan, Networks Mobile programme manager, ESB. “We turned to Kony to help mobilise our field services because data is very important in our industry and Kony’s solutions offered the data synchronisation we needed. With our Mobile Work Order solution, technicians have the ability to view work order details, see location maps, review meter details, and record data to complete the work orders.”

Kony is a silver partner in the SAP PartnerEdge program and provides enterprises using SAP systems the flexibility and agility they need to use these apps as is or they can customise the front-end application design and integrations with their back-end systems to fit their requirements. In addition to SAP, Kony can also mobilise other enterprise applications such as Oracle, Microsoft, Siebel, and Salesforce to drive process improvements.

 

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Facilities and maintenance services provider Arcus Solutions Ltd has achieves a 20% improvement in productivity following deployment of Aeromark Optmatics mobile workforce management software.  Additionally, services levels are up 40%.

In 2013 Arcus went to the market to look for a new system that would help improve the management of the maintenance service to their customers and optimise the productivity throughout  their 155 strong field service engineer workforce.

Aeromark Optimatics was selected as it offered smart technology that would  provide clear visibility of field operations and optimisation of the whole service process, minimising operational costs whilst at the same time improving service levels.

After the first six months of full operation, not only has the cost base been optimised but the service levels delivered have improved by 40%.

“Aeromark’s agile approach combined with the power and flexibility of their Optimatics technology has enabled our entire business process to be optimised and aligned with best practice. This has resulted in over 50% reduction in touch-points, statutory paper records have been replaced with electronic documentation and we have seen a significant, reduction in fuel and wasted time” said Parag Gogate, Head of Projects and Quality at Arcus.

“As a result of the considerable success of this project, we have decided to roll out Optimatics as our standard enterprise software across the whole group” continued Parag.

Optimatics provides a complete mobile workforce management solution for the entire process of service delivery, from scheduling, workflow driven mobile applications through to vehicle tracking. It provides Arcus’s administrative employees a more consistent approach to working, which enables them to plan reactive jobs more efficiently, by sending accurate customer data directly to the Aeromark mobile application.

Roger Marks, Managing Director of Aeromark said “We are very pleased with the results from the deployment at Arcus Solutions who have not only enthusiastically embraced the technology but also the associated changes in business process. We look forward to working with Arcus on the next phase of the wider project.”

 

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Magenta Technology, the developers of the Maxoptra routing and scheduling system, has launched an online application that automates job despatching for users of TomTom’s telematics and fleet management solutions. The app, called Planndit, links job details from Maxoptra directly to TomTom WEBFLEET, eliminating the need to manually type in job details. This makes job despatch and sequencing quick and easy, saving time and eliminating errors.

It means being able to despatch routes to any TomTom Pro device in less than 30 seconds per route, and that includes verifying the overall route on a map and optimising the route sequence within the process before it is sent. The app simply connects to the TomTom service and pools the devices in use so jobs can be sent to the correct operative.

The Maxoptra app automatically calculates distance and driving time for the route and each individual address. The route sequence can be optimised for the best cost by re-ordering stops with a simple drag-n-drop. Notes for the driver can be added and sent with the address to the driver's TomTom Pro with a simple click.

Maxoptra is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform designed to enable quick decision-making within ever-changing operational environments such as service management. The Planndit app is a module available as a low cost, pay-as-you-go service and includes a simple 3-step wizard to take the user through the process, eliminating the need for any training.

Stuart Brunger, Business Development Director for Maxoptra, commented: “In talking to TomTom users it was clear that, although telematics promised big benefits, there was something missing. What they needed was an integrated system; a seamless link between their job management system and TomTom. With the Planndit app, we have addressed this with a solution that transforms job despatching and customer service delivery by linking Maxoptra and TomTom WEBFLEET to create an integrated operations system.”

 

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IFS, the global enterprise applications company, has announced a number of updates to its ERP enterprise software suite IFS Applications 9. New features include  in-memory capabilities,  enhanced visualisation of manufacturing processes, extended support for rental management and improved group consolidation functionality.

Part of the in-memory solution is IFS In-Memory Advisor, which helps customers apply in-memory technology to the areas of IFS Applications where it will yield maximum effect, or if so desired, run the entire application in-memory. By using in-memory, users can run analytical queries hundreds or even thousands of times faster than before. With compression ratios of three to ten times, even terabyte-sized databases are possible to run in-memory.

The release also includes significant updates to the manufacturing component, such as enhancements that let users action production issues directly from the IFS Manufacturing Visualizer. In addition, the visualiser has been equipped with new charts to optimise production planning. The IFS Quality Management module also includes several improvements such as acceptance sampling.

IFS’s rental management capability contains numerous new and improved features as well as major usability enhancements. The solution now allows users to associate specific work orders with external or internal equipment rentals.

The IFS Financials component has been updated with extended support for group consolidation, including advanced analysis of consolidated balances using IFS Business Analytics.

IFS is also launching a new support model based on quarterly updates of IFS Applications. Thanks to the new layered application architecture of IFS Applications 9, updates can be implemented quicker and easier than in previous versions. The result is that customers can benefit from the very latest product enhancements faster and at a lower cost.

“Following the successful launch of IFS Applications 9 earlier this year, we are very excited to release this first update, which includes both new and enhanced features,” IFS CTO Dan Matthews said. “Along with the feature updates, we are also happy to reveal a new update delivery system. This takes us a major step closer to our vision of providing our customers with ‘evergreen’ business applications, allowing them to enjoy the benefits of our latest and greatest software at a significantly lower cost.”

 

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Marne Martin CEO of ServicePower gives us her insight into why the company continues to focus on evaluating and developing the latest technologies for field service...

Disruptive new, connected technologies are changing the workforce management industry, by leap and bounds.

ServicePower Technologies Plc, is incorporating the latest in technology innovations into its leading field management software solutions. These new technologies, including social, mobile, cloud, analytics, IoT and M2M, and collaboration, drive efficiencies and productivity, reduce costs and increase first time fix rates. Most importantly, they transform workforce management to improve customer satisfaction, recognized as the overall measurement of success.

Schedule optimisation is the cornerstone of workforce management software, and the key on which the success of operations rely. Without real optimisation, the software won’t deliver on its ROI promises. There are generally three types of scheduling approaches: 

1. Basic scheduling: Managers build and manage a schedule manually, using no logic to decide the best tech or the best place on a schedule for a job.
2. Automated/Simple Rules-Based Scheduling: Simple, rules based systems, including computerised logic automatically builds a schedule, filling an open slot on the schedule, with no reshuffling of existing jobs to achieve a less costly schedule.
3. Intelligent Route Optimisation, as offered by ServicePower.  The schedule is built automatically based on configurable parameters and sophisticated optimisation algorithms to minimise costs, maximise margins, reduce response times and improve customer satisfaction, while ensuring that the best field tech is assigned with the right skills and parts. It also re-optimises the schedule in order to reduce costs.Place your list items here

ServicePower pioneered true intelligent, configurable route optimisation,  providing its ServiceScheduling software since the late nineties. We’ve continuously enhanced the engine which is offered through competitive partners as well. In 2015, we incorporated a modern Management Console which provides managers the ability to monitor key metrics, scheduled jobs, staff location and collaborate with remote team members.

We’ve enhanced lat/long travel matrix capabilities, long and complex job functionality, as well as crew and third party scheduling, and are working on evolving our scheduling algorithms to the next generation in artificial intelligence technology.

We’ve improved planning and forecasting using the latest map layering technology and coupled it with a true, non-production modelling environment and robust, cloud self-service Business Intelligence to ensure results.

Most importantly, we’ve realised that at times integration budgets or timelines stand in the way of deployment. Optimisation as a Service (OaaS), our newest product, provides enterprises and SMBs alike the power of true, intelligent, automated, route optimisation, in the cloud and on demand, by offering schedule optimisation as a service, priced transactionally. For field service organisations that want the productivity and cost savings of optimised routing, but don’t necessarily require the power of continuous optimisation, OaaS enables them to book jobs, optimise them, creating the best, least costly schedule available.

OaaS enables any organisation, even SMBs which previously were priced out of the technology, to benefit from real optimisation, moving past manual or simple rules based solutions. Likewise, enterprises looking to supplement existing ERP or CRM solutions without a full workforce management software deployment, or those with sales, stocking, or depot work not requiring travel, will also have the option of utilising OaaS.  OaaS will revolutionise how route and schedule optimisation is deployed.

We’ve also extended our M2M Connected Service product through a partnership with UK-based Concirrus, a top 10 Platform-as-a-Service UK company, and named by Gartner in its report: Cool Vendor in the Internet of Things 2015.   Concirrus adds cloud based IoT services to our scheduling software, creating new opportunities in the insurance sector and other industries with high levels of early IoT adopters, as well as new countries around the world. Additional partnerships are also under discussion in interesting new segments of IoT and application development.

We’ve enhanced ServiceMobility, our cross-platform mobile application, with additional payment and pricing features, estimates, product catalogues real time collaboration and most importantly, configurable, rules based forms. Rules provide the ability to rapidly define when data or forms are to be visible to a technician on a job-by-job basis, deploying new strategies in the field without code changes.

On the back of OaaS and ServiceMobility,  ServicePower launched Nexus FS, in September, providing the same mobile features with a SaaS business management portal that any business, from enterprise to SMB, can use to manage customers, vendors, jobs, and field employees. Combined with OaaS, those enterprises seeking a true end-to-end mobile workforce management solution can rely on ServicePower as a single source vendor for all field service operations requirements.

ServicePower is continuously evaluating new technologies to ensure that clients achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction today, as well as future proofing our workforce management software so it supports our clients tomorrow as well. In 2015, our new products and partnerships are leading the way in technology innovation for field service businesses.

 

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For some time, it seems everywhere you look, companies in or close to the field service software sector are on the acquisition trail. Microsoft's acquisition of field service software company Field One in June was followed in July by the sale of ClickSoftware Technologies to a private investment group, preceded by Oracle’s acquisition of TOA in 2014.

Why the scramble to acquire field service expertise? Well, there seem to be a number of drivers for this round of vendor consolidation, including a seismic shift in the corporate mindset that is seeing service operations transformed from cost centres where the focus is on greater internal efficiencies to one where the KPIs are all about delivering top-in-class customer experience to grow recurring revenue streams. Field service is no longer a silo, but an important cog in the growth of next-generation customer-focused business processes.

Another driver is the relentless advance of cloud computing and cloud platforms for both traditional business activities and mobile operations. The cloud is a great enabler of real-time communications with field workers. Currently, acceptance may be more advanced in North America, but European service organisations are catching up. Service, after all, is now a global business, and Cloud platforms can deliver much of the technology required to lift customer service to that higher level.

Finally, as their existing customer base matures, the large ERP vendors are seeking new revenue opportunities. “Larger ERP vendors are waking up to the vast potential of the global field service market. There are over 20 million field engineers deployed worldwide - that's a significant market opportunity,” points out Neil Lewis, EMEA Sales Consulting Director, ServiceMax.

 

Lewis likens consolidation in the field service marketplace to a few years ago when ERP vendors acquired companies with expertise in marketing and social media. "Now they are looking for companies with expertise in field service.”

For Rue Dilhe, Managing Director of Exel Computer Systems, consolidation in field service is inevitable. “There are restricted  opportunities for the large ERP vendors to sell new systems in manufacturing. The maturing market has already led to consolidation among ERP vendors. Those that are left are now looking at integrating field service into their systems, a process Exel's development team achieved back in 2008. ”

Neither of these field service specialists view the entry of the large ERP vendors into field service as a threat, more of a recognition that the sector is both maturing and set for a period of high growth. Both are also confident that their experience and understanding of service organisations' processes and requirements and ability to offer end-to-end solutions is what matters to their customers.

Integration issues

For service operations to be a revenue earner requires easy integration between systems, points out Dilhe. “Having been in business for 30 years, first in ERP then in field service, at Exel we know how important integration of processes and the latest technology is if our customers are going to deliver the best possible service to their customers.”

Companies which have a manufacturing division and a service arm want them to work together in future, acknowledges Dilhe. “However, while the need for removal of data silos and real-time connection with field workers are driving demand for greater integration between ERP and field service systems, it is not necessarily as straightforward as might first appear for those vendors looking to integrate products through consolidation."

For Exel, ERP and field service can be provided as a truly "fully integrated" single solution as both have been developed together in-house," he points out. "Those looking to integrated two previously disparate solutions will certainly have their work cut out for them. It’s one reason some companies have run field service software outside of their ERP system, he points out. “Updating and integrating field service software into ERP may not be easy, and implementing on-premise ERP into a mobile field service environment can also be a fraught process. You have to a clear understanding of processes, data flows and so on.”

While large ERP vendors do have some mobility solutions, they may not have a solution that meets the demands of field service organisations or one that can be deployed on a global scale,” says Lewis. “Some will build mobility platforms on ERP software. However this may not deliver the end-to-end solution offered by vendors such as ServiceMax, a pure play company focused on cloud-based, end-to-end field service management solutions since 2007."

 

"Large vendors have to manage multiple products and technical stacks,” points out Lewis, which may make them slower to respond to changing customer requirements, new technical developments and changing business landscapes and demands.

What next

The latest consolidation is the acquisition by Microsoft of FieldOne. Some field service companies will already be familiar with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but until now it has had little integrated field service support: software has had to be acquired from a Microsoft software partner, one of which was Field One.

Analysts at Gartner believe the deal as a shrewd acquisition choice, and will add add a strong set of integrated field service capabilities to Dynamics CRM, including work order management, scheduling and contract management. FieldOne’s Sky solution is already built on the Dynamics platform, it points out, easing potential integration issues.

Concerns flagged up by Gartner include whether Microsoft will continue to support multiple device OS including Android and iOS and potential channel conflict with independent field service software vendors who are already in the Microsoft ecosystem.

For Oracle, the appeal of its acquisition of TOA Technologies, the US-based provider of cloud-based field service solutions, would seem to be that it  expands the ability to provide end-to-end customer service solutions into field service operations, providing visibility throughout the customer relationship lifecycle. TOA's field service suite has been incorporated in the Oracle’s Service Cloud online platform.

The future for ClickSoftware  is also seen as part of a larger business suite, following  its acquisition by Francisco Partners Management in July when it became a private company. Gartner believes that once is cloud platform is fully developed, ClickSoftware will be sold on  to a company with a business application suite with weaknesses in field service management.  "The business application suite vendor that ends up without a leading field service optimization capability will be the eventual loser in this scenario, as it will need to buy a second-tier product or develop its own."

 

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Today’s world of industry is evolving at a faster pace than ever before. Agility is key to surviving and thriving in this modern era and agility in service can be the difference between you and your competitors writes Tom Bowe of IFS.

At IFS we talk a lot about business agility, because we believe organisations that are able to respond rapidly to internal and external environmental changes without losing momentum or vision will be game-changers in their field. Why is being adaptable and flexible so important in today’s business world? The world is changing at an exponential rate. The youngest generation of the workforce is further removed from those leaving the workforce than ever before.

Then, of course, you have the learning lessons of those businesses that failed to respond effectively to the rapidly changing technological landscape. Nokia failed to recognise evolving customer demands in the smartphone market and ultimately were destroyed by Apple and Android’s fast paced R&D and delivery cycles. They were the world’s dominant mobile-phone maker but by the time Microsoft bought them in 2013, they claimed just three percent of the global smartphone market. The New Yorker put it aptly, stating; “Nokia’s failure resulted at least in part from an institutional reluctance to transition into a new era.”

Agility is something that will not only allow your business to survive and keep up with an ever evolving market, but it will also give your organisation a competitive edge, particularly in the service sector. This flexibility must be driven internally with a scalable approach. The buy-in must be company-wide, and one place to start is with your processes and systems. The implementation and application of ERP software is most often considered traditional, rigid development, but that is not necessarily the case. ERP software from IFS is built with an architecture that lets you pick and choose what you need for your business. It is optimised to be the best option for service organisations, it is user-friendly, and developmentally adaptable and scalable.

 

Imagine having this flexibility and usability across your organisation, driving your service as a profit centre. An integrated service management platform gives you the consistency, reliability and speed to react in real-time to real-world events. It is an enabler for agility. An integrated solution is provided all on the same platform, so changes to business processes and workflows don’t need to be implemented across multiple systems. This means that processes and workflows are applied seamlessly across the organisation, ensuring efficiency, productivity and accuracy of information. Implementations of multiple systems take time, are tied to prohibitive costs, and are fraught with risk. With one fully integrated system rather than multiple systems connected together, you as an organisation benefit from speed of change, ease of change, reduced costs, and less risk.

Having a fully integrated system gives your organisation true visibility into not only operations, but the field as well. From call intake to financials, the entire process is documented, tracked, and easily accessed at any point during the entire service life-cycle. This gives an organisation visibility of day-to-day activity, and business intelligence needed to forecast accurately for the future. Imagine a flexible system that automatically applies certain determined processes to specific workflows, that identifies parts needed for specific jobs and then instructs technicians on what procedures need to take place during certain projects.

An agile system provides automation and optimisation, coupled with complete configurability and usability, allowing you to operate on a level that continually ensures success. Business agility is particularly important when it comes to service. Customer demands are at an all-time high, thanks to social media and the instant gratification culture created by having things available, immediately, at our fingertips. Service organisations must meet, or better yet, exceed, these expectations.

 

Agility in service not only drives speed-to-market, but also speed-to-delivery, which creates a competitive edge. So what can you do to achieve this agility when it comes to your software solutions and business processes? Evaluate the challenges and failings you have in relation to your current systems and delivery. Consider replacing your current back end system with something that will give you flexibility as your organisation grows internally and externally.

Often with larger, monolithic systems, internal change is static or too complicated to be effective. IFS Applications 9 is able to provide a business edge when it comes to visibility with perhaps the industry’s first user-configurable role-specific interfaces in IFS Lobby, enhanced usability within existing mobile service management tools and strategic customer relationship management (CRM) embedded directly in the applications for real-time visibility and control over the customer lifecycle.

Change the game by approaching the market with a system that will give you the visibility and flexibility needed to truly operate in the fast changing service industry. By making this fundamental change to integrated service management, you will be more prepared for external change, including trends like IoT, share economy, drones, and more. With a foundation based on agility, your organisation is guaranteed to adapt, no matter the situation.

 

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Warranty, claims and customer care provider Castelan Group is using scheduling software from Paragon Software Systems to centralise the planning of its UK home service operation and manage the allocation of its mobile technician team.

The Paragon software schedules service calls for Castelan’s nationwide team of mobile technicians, enabling the company to improve the customer care experience it offers on behalf of the UK’s major high street retailers.

Castelan (previously Homeserve Warranties) provides furniture and electrical warranty and care packages to more than 1.5 million households. With a team of over 80 service engineers carrying out home visits ranging from damage assessments to TV repairs and French polishing, Castelan wanted to streamline the routing and scheduling process, enhancing the overall efficiency of its technical service operations and in turn improving the company’s customer satisfaction levels.

Castelan chose Paragon’s Multi Depot system with HERE Map Content, enabling the company to plan the routes and schedules for its entire team of mobile technicians as a single planning task. With each technician treated as a “depot”, the system is able to flex the depot boundaries automatically to take into account the availability of its technicians, and provide a higher level of route planning capabilities. This results in improved efficiency in a multi depot planning environment.

“We’re very happy with the support we get from Paragon,” said Lisa Harbison, Network Deployment Coordinator, Castelan. “Paragon’s support team helps us with software upgrades and to use our solution to address new business requirements as they arise. For example, we needed to incorporate the collection of spare parts from stores prior to the service engineers’ visits into our planning process. These collections are now routed through Paragon.”

William Salter, Managing Director, Paragon Software Systems concludes “Paragon’s flexibility helps our customers create efficiencies in many different ways including fleet optimisation, cost control and reduced planning time. Paragon Multi Depot has facilitated the switch to central planning for Castelan, providing the ability to share results and incorporate changes from other sites across the operation. Not only does this reduce planning time, it also improves visibility of the service schedule and gives the planning team added flexibility, helping Castelan to distribute the workload evenly between its service engineers.”

 

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