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Local government needs wider changes if adoption of such frameworks are to rise writes former Councillor and Chief Executive Officer with supplier Oneserve, Chris Proctor...

The recent commitment from Warren Smith, the head of G-Cloud and the DOS framework, to re-look at G-Cloud 9 with a fresh pair of eyes, is a real step in the right direction if we are to overcome many of the obstacles that remain in the way of wider adoption.

However, all of us that have been involved in local government IT procurement know that there need to be wider changes if there is to be a step change in the usage of frameworks such as G-Cloud.

The original aims of G-Cloud, that Smith seems to want to move back towards, remain sound.

Indeed, it could be argued that local government can actually get more value from G-Cloud than other parts of government, both to make the purchasing process easier and for the public sector to implement the best, most innovative solutions; from companies of all sizes.

Obviously this is much easier said than done; lamentably, local government, largely remains behind the curve, especially when compared to central government department levels of engagement.

So, whilst we on the whole welcome a full revision of the framework, in order to increase local government buy-in there needs to be more fundamental change, not necessarily just in the nuts and bolts of how the framework runs.

Having been a city councillor I have experienced how local councils can be a fearful place. Not only do you have a line manager, a supervisor, a portfolio holder and a chief executive, you also have a number of elected members and of course and electorate. All of whom are looking to deliver the best for their own masters, or at least the ones shouting loudest.

 

Decision making within this context can be like entering a bear pit, especially within councils with no overall control. Procurement decisions can frequently face scrutiny at multiple levels, leading to guessing, second guessing, political point scoring and directional changes.

On top of that, we have a whole sea change potential every four years or less in some cases. How really, can one truly expect to make pragmatic, strategic decisions in such an environment?

Does this give councils the confidence to look at large capital projects within the IT infrastructure, which, whilst improving services, would be a large expense, and not necessarily as visible as keeping front line services operating?

What needs to happen is a wider, cultural shift, one that facilitates decision making, both from a capital and an empowerment basis.

Should councillors, who, have no pre-requisite to be business experts, when they are elected have the ability to change the playing field to the extent that they do? Of course there is a more fundamental question here, but in order to facilitate proper planning and strategies, questions do need to be debated as to how this can be made possible, or at least extents thereof.

As well as the wider changes at a procurement level there needs to be more of a focus on ensuring that local government departments are fully up-to-speed with G-Cloud and it’s potential.

Local government has no fear of spending budget on SaaS. Some of our biggest contracts remain with local government but they are almost all exclusively done outside of the framework.

There is a responsibility from Warren Smith and his team, as well as vendors, to ensure that the benefits are well communicated. The G-Cloud framework was set up to give local government more access to smaller, more innovative companies, that can offer great solutions for a great price.

The obsession remains very much with the traditional vendors, which means something is clearly broken at this level.

Education needs to be placed right at the front alongside the wider procurement changes to ensure that local government is fully aware of the potentially fantastic impact working across the framework can have.

But there is hope.

If Smith can truly get G-Cloud into a position where it can provide the entire public sector with access to the extraordinary level of innovation that exists within SMEs in the UK, then that has to be good for those companies, the public sector and most importantly the tax payer.

 

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Tesseract is helping British Gas expand and diversify by optimising service management at its renewable energy division, British Gas Heat Networks.

Tesseract is helping British Gas to increase the volume of its work and expand its offerings by optimising the service management operation at British Gas Heat Networks (BGHN), a growing division of the company specialising in renewable energy sources and cutting edge new methods.

BGHN began its life as Econergy, designing and supplying biomass heating solutions. Biomass systems – a carbon-neutral solution to the world’s ever-dwindling supply of fossil fuels – rely on heat generated from burning quick-growing, renewable wood instead of gas. British Gas purchased Econergy in order to diversify, to offer customers a wider choice of energy options, and to explore more renewable energy sources and environmentally friendly heating solutions.

Biomass heating solutions continue to be the primary focus of the division, which was renamed British Gas Heat Networks in December 2014. Biomass boilers are provided to anyone who wants them, including private residences, council offices, care homes, schools, rural estates and commercial premises. BGHN offers a complete solution, from initial consultation and project development to design and installation to operation and maintenance, courtesy of long-term heat supply and energy management contracts.

But where does Tesseract come in? Essentially Tesseract looks after the service and maintenance side of things. Following installation, BGHN relies on in-house engineers and a variety of subcontractors to maintain the installations at its clients’ premises. Tesseract’s Service Centre 5 (SC5) is used to manage these engineers and subcontractors, looking after both planned and reactive maintenance at customer sites.

Before the implementation of Tesseract’s service management software, BGHN relied on a predominantly manual, paper-based process to deal with planned and reactive maintenance tasks, plus a modicum of software. Most of the work was scheduled using Excel spreadsheets. Nothing was live, instant or particularly visible.

“We were growing, so we decided we needed better software,” says Kim Dornan, Customer Service Manager of BGHN. “Our old paper-based system had become unmanageable, and we decided we needed to implement a service management software package like Tesseract’s, in order to expand further.”

 

In October 2013, BGHN implemented Tesseract’s full SC5 package, utilising the full range of functions, including remote engineer access, stock control, parts centre and reporting. Now, staff at BGHN do not have to look at spreadsheets to determine what planned maintenance tasks are coming up, or use spreadsheets to log new reactive tasks.

“When we load a contract onto the Tesseract system, Tesseract now tells us what needs to be done and when,” says Dornan. “Before, we would have to enter details onto a spreadsheet and keep looking at it to know what work was coming up.”

Tesseract’s browser-based software can be accessed on all internet-capable devices. Thanks to Tesseract’s Remote Engineer Access (REA), which completely streamlines field service management, BGHN’s engineers can now log in remotely to the Tesseract system from their smart phones, laptops or tablets. They are able to view calls for dispatch, raise parts requests, look at the call history of a site, close down jobs, generate reports and raise same-day invoices. All of the data they input is live and fed back to the office instantly, allowing for much better visibility. REA also has handy offline capability; data can still be entered even if the internet signal is lost, and will be transmitted to BGHN as soon as the signal is restored.

Thanks to Tesseract’s software, a whole labour-intensive, paper-heavy process has been eliminated from BGHN’s operations. As a result, BGHN has been able to increase the volume and multifariousness of its work.

“Tesseract has enabled us to take on more work, and expand the range of services we offer,” says Dornan. “We now employ more in-house engineers and look after more clients. And while our specialism is biomass, we have a number of subcontractors we use for specialist gas work and working with different heat pumps. It means we can offer a more expansive and varied service.”

 

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Tecalemit is a leading UK supplier of vehicle servicing equipment. It first began using Tesseract’s service management software in 1999 and has been pursuing increased automation, greater efficiency and better service ever since assisted by its growing and developing relationship with Tesseract.

Tecalemit Garage Equipment Company Ltd is one of the most recognised brands in the automotive industry, both in the UK and worldwide, and has been operating for nearly a century. The company and its partners design, manufacture, supply and maintain a huge range of vehicle servicing equipment and MOT testing equipment, such as roller brake testers, vehicle lifts and emissions testers.

In the UK, equipment is stocked in two main warehouses and sold to Tecalemit’s ever-expanding network of customers across the country. They range from small and independent vehicle garages and workshops to major national and international car and motorcycle companies.

Once the equipment is sold, Tecalemit have a team of  60 factory trained and accredited engineers in charge of maintaining the equipment, from planning maintenance and servicing to remedying faults and breakdowns.

The customer  service centre is based in Plymouth and handles 500 calls a day from more than 50,000 customer sites across the country. With such an extensive customer bases, it is important for  Tecalemit to have an efficient service management system in place.[quote float="left"]The customer service centre handles 500 calls a day from more than 50,000 customer sites across the country.

 

Tesseract: the early days

Back in 1999, the Millennium Bug was a popular fear for businesses relying on computers and software throughout the world and Tecalemit harboured growing concerns about their own Unix-based service management system. It was not particularly user-friendly or efficient and bore some functionality aches. The fear was that it was going to crash when the year 2000 hit. Therefore, Tecalemit opted to implement something new and browser-based, with much greater functionality and
flexibility.

Tesseract was shortlisted along with three other systems, and eventually selected on the basis of cost, user-friendliness and powerful functionality. Tecalemit incorporated Tesseract’s core system which managed the logging of calls, stored immediately accessible data, and gave Tecalemit the ability to generate countless reports, providing much greater visibility.

Moving into the 21st century

Development and evolution at Tesseract is constant and Tecalemit have benefited from evolving with them, regularly adding new software components. This development has been particular comprehensive in the last five years, with a move from paper-based systems to electronic ones.

For example, Tecalemit have replaced a paper-based diary system with Tesseract’s electronic diary. This gives them much greater visibility over what is going on with service activities, and receives regular upgrades. Another paper-based system that has been replaced with an electronic syustem is stock-taking, which is now faster and more accurate.

One of the most recent implementations is the Quote Centre, which enables and manages the generation of quotes and converts them easily into customer contracts.

Field service management overhaul

The biggest development, however, has been the overhaul of Tecalemit’s field service management system, thanks to the implementation of Tesseract’s Remote Engineer Access module (REA).

 

Tecalemit began using Remote Engineer Access (REA) in January 2014. Before this, Tecalemit's  allocation of jobs and deployment of  engineers to customer sites was a largely manual process. Tecalemit would receive a call, log it on the Tesseract system, and the office would fax, phone or post details of the job to the relevant engineer. Once a job was complete, the engineer would fill in a paper job sheet and post it to the office.  There was no visibility, no instant data, and processes such as parts ordering and invoicing took a lot longer.

“We wanted to streamline the system,” says David Monteith, the Service Office Supervisor for Tecalemit. “We wanted faster invoicing, faster ordering of parts, better visibility, and we wanted to be able to see jobs through to completion directly and with all the relevant information to hand. REA has totally delivered on all those counts.”

REA has allowed engineers to generate live reports, order parts, close down jobs and raise same-day invoices from their tablet devices. They can input their data into the Tesseract system – data which is then fed back to the office directly and instantaneously. In addition, REA has a useful offline function. This means engineers can input data even when they are working at sites with minimal or no communications signal: that data is sent through to Tecalemit as soon as the signal is restored.

Tecalemit has also started to use Tesseract's contract management system, which raises planned maintenance tasks for equipment that has been installed at customer sites. In total, the system raises approximately 500 planned maintenance tasks each month. These jobs are assigned to the engineers, who then use REA when carrying out and completing the job.

 

Next step: automatic job allocation

However, there is one undertaking that remains predominantly manual and is still part of this process, but it’s one that Tecalemit are looking to automate: deciding which engineer should attend to which job.  Currently the service controller decides who to assign, looking at skill set and geographical location, among other factors. The service controller then notifies the relevant engineer using the REA system. In all, this is a time consuming process with scope for human error.

Tecalemit are planning to incorporate Tesseract’s Diary Assist scheduling system to automate this task. It will assign engineers to particular jobs based on skill set, availability, travel time, work time and shift patterns, call response time and customer site cover times.[quote float="right"]We can see Diary Assist saving us a lot of time

 

“We can see it saving us a lot of time,” said David Monteith. “We plan to integrate it with our contract management system. That system will raise the calls, then Diary Assist will take over and allocate the call logically and geographically sensibly. Then we have REA to cover the job itself. It is just another step towards automating and streamlining what we do.”

The future is bright

Tecalemit have watched their processes develop, their efficiency rise and their service to customers improve since they welcomed Tesseract into the fold.

“We now have faster, more accurate information,” says Monteith. “We have cut down on admin, including paperwork and postage, and we can now respond to customers more efficiently. Our staff has better visibility as regards service history, what equipment they’ve got and what needs doing and,  with less admin requirements, can concentrate more on their overall role. We will continue to look at what Tesseract offers, too, because they are very good at driving change and there is always room for improvement.”

 

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It has long been known that field service organisations can utilise technology to reduce costs, boost efficiency and improve the productivity of their mobile workforce. But knowing exactly how to make the most of the technology and opportunities out there is not so black and white. Lucien Wynn, Managing Director of Oneserve discusses...

The last couple of years have brought mobile technology on in leaps and bounds, and as such there is now a plethora of options out there for utilising mobile technologies to improve workforce management. Organisations with a mobile workforce can, for example, use software installed on mobile devices to keep their technicians updated with all the information they need while in the field. Jobs can be updated, instant feedback on the progress of jobs can be provided and the technicians’ exact location can be tracked, all in real time. But implementing the right solution can be a challenge.

The importance of keeping up with the mobile revolution has not gone unnoticed; the 2013 Workforce Management Guide produced by the Aberdeen Group showed that 57% of organisations sampled viewed investing in mobile tools as a priority. Of course, investing in new gadgets alone is not enough, so what else should be considered when thinking about a new investment in technology?

Getting the mobile workforce to buy-in

The first step in making sure you achieve what you set out to when investing in new technology is to gain buy-in from those who will be using it. Without that, it will never be utilised properly and thus wasted. According to research from the Aberdeen Group, 67% of Best-in-Class field service organisations regarded gaining buy-in from their field service technicians as the most important aspect in ensuring the timely and effective deployment of a mobile solution. If your employees are involved in the decision-making process and know what they are getting when new technology is rolled out, they’ll be ready for it and much more likely to react positively to the change.

The impact on the organisation as a whole

The second step is to take a holistic approach to new investments in technology – consider the impact on your whole organisation, not just part of it. Even if new technology is only being deployed in a certain department, at some point it is likely to have an impact elsewhere. For example, consider a new piece of accounting software being used in the finance department – you’d be forgiven for assuming that it would never affect your field service technicians. But that may well not be true – imagine if it had an impact on the way expenses had to be submitted; everyone in the company who had to make expenses claims on a regular basis, including workers in the field, would be affected.

Short-term vs long-term

Another consideration should be the long-term impact of the new technology. Could it lead to an improvement in the way your business functions for many years to come? If so, don’t let worries about its impact in the short-term prevent you from adopting the technology. Most organisations, big and small, will experience some teething problems with new technology initially, but it often just takes a little time to bed in before it yields positive results. Of course, you will need to take into account both the potential long-term and short-term impacts on your business, but if the former outweigh the latter, then by all means you should do what you can to push the adoption of the new technology.

In summary, then, if you are to effectively utilise technology to increase the efficiency of your mobile workforce you’ll need to consider various factors. Of those mentioned above, perhaps the most important is gaining buy-in to the technology from your field workers. They’ve got to want to use the technology you supply them with, and are much more likely to do so if they know how it will help them in their daily jobs (they also, of course, need to know how to use it). Without that, you could be left with both an underutilised new technology and an underproductive workforce.

Of course, it’s also very important to consider how new technology will impact on your whole business, and not just those who it affects directly. If you’re making a big investment, it is inevitable that it will have an impact on the entire business so bear this in mind. At the same time, don’t let a big change put you off – if you think the move is right, go ahead with it.

Finally, remember to take a long-term view. Sometimes the cost of making a new investment in software or technology can seem high and lead you to question whether it is worth it. But consider what benefits the investment could bring over the next 1, 3 and 5 years and then take a fresh look – you may be surprised at the long term benefits it will bring.

One of the UK’s leading building insurance claims management companies LAS Claims Ltd has achieved a 32% saving in fuel costs just one month after implementing two systems provided by field service software provider FLS.

LAS Claims who manage thousands of claims for household buildings claims every year work on behalf of a number of the UK’s leading insurers. The claims management process requires LAS Claims to deal with validation, investigation, and then achieving the best settlement outcomes and then fulfilment.

They have chosen to implement both FLS VISITOUR which incorporates real-time scheduling and optimisation technology alongside a cost-led booking system as well as FLS MOBILE, which delivers improvements in the efficiency of the field force. Together the two technologies have allowed for quicker response times for both LAS Claims’ insurer clients and of course the insurers customers also.

With offices in Birmingham and Bristol the claim management company have a number of strict SLA timescales to adhere to when reacting to a claim. An appointment for a home visit must be scheduled and attended by one of the LAS field force which is comprised of 65 claim surveyors. These claims surveyors also need to be flexible to relocate to meet the demands of surges in claims such as the recent flooding and devastation in much of Somerset and other areas in Southern England as a result of the recent extreme weather.

The FLS solution is delivered via a Software as a Service platform so was able to be fully deployed and being used by all of the team at LAS including office based staff and the field operatives within just 3 weeks of the projects start.

Having adopted a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy for subcontractor surveyors FLS MOBILE, which is device agnostic allowed easy deployment, whilst FLS VISITOUR is being used alongside the LAS Claims proprietary claims management system in the central offices.

Ian Hogarth, LAS Business Development Director, commented:

“We have long believed that technology can deliver significant improvements to claims management in the UK household market. FLS VISITOUR is the latest addition to our technology portfolio, and we are delighted with the results to date.”

“FLS allows our claims handlers to select an appropriate appointment date/time, it tells us where the surveyor is, how long it will take to get to their appointment, how long the surveyor has been on site, and where they’re going next,” he said.

“It enables us to give our customers real time information for example exactly when to expect our surveyor to arrive, but also ensures we only send a surveyor with the appropriate skill set and equipment for each claim, not just any surveyor.”

He added “We can cluster the appointments to optimise the number of visits per day, and this has been especially effective during the recent surge, where LAS claims volumes increased by over 600% above the daily average.”

“We have been using FLS for a month across our business and it has already delivered exceptional benefits. For example, we have reduced surveyor mileage between appointments from an average of 34 miles per job to 23 miles. This means less travelling time and more time spent in customer’s homes helping them after a claim.”

Aside from improvements to scheduling, Mr Hogarth points to other benefits from using FLS:

“There are the obvious environmental benefits from travelling fewer miles, but it also helps improve the safety of surveyors, who are almost all lone workers, as we know where they are at any given time.”

Jeremy Squire, FLS UK Managing Director stated:

“LAS Claims are using FLS VISITOUR to great advantage in a competitive industry. We are proud to welcome LAS as a new customer and of their early achievements using FLS technology. Further gains are attainable and we will work closely as a team to quickly achieve these.

 

 

Delivering high quality service is clearly essential for any successful Field Service Management provider. That’s why it’s so important for service-based organisations across the facilities management, property management, maintenance and cleaning sectors to avoid the common pitfalls that can lead field service operations to fail in delivering service excellence.

Typical issues here can include a lack of integration between service desks, planning/dispatch operations and field staff; poor visibility of customer data, updates, stock and asset information; the breakdown of customer feedback and audit trails in the field; as well as the introduction of vulnerable manual processes and unnecessary administration costs. It’s this inability to join the dots that can make it increasingly difficult for service providers to achieve efficiency savings and remain competitive.

Recent mplsystems research identified mobile field service team visibility as a critical element for helping to address these issues. At a time when increasing field workforce productivity is proving a key challenge, we found that almost 40 percent of service management operations admitted to having no visibility of their mobile workforce at all. For larger field service teams, gaining insight over field service teams is even more difficult, with the dispatch function becoming critical – and a potential bottleneck to performance.

What’s needed is an approach that works to resolve this service disconnect – one where messages are always shared with field-based staff, where updates are accessible across end-to-end processes, where performance monitoring extends across all activities, and where interactions aren’t lost as they pass through multiple departments and systems.

That’s why at mplsystems we have built an end-to-end field service management solution that can provide organisations with a true real-time of all their current maintenance and support activities across their entire operation. Key functionality includes a unified service desk portal; the automatic and dynamic planning and scheduling of service activities within defined SLA adherence guidelines; supporting mobile personnel through dedicated apps for in-field data collection and route optimisation; as well as comprehensive analytics and SLA reporting.

By directly linking service desk and field operations, organisations of any size can effectively automate key processes such as parts and asset management, optimise their scheduling and even deploy customer self-service portals so that clients can carry out their own bookings and changes. And because this service is now available on a Cloud-enabled pay-per-usage basis, it can prove particularly cost effective for all workforce sizes, from just 15 to over 500 mobile staff.

When Balfour Beatty Workplace combined its multiple UK service centres into a single major mplsystems-powered National Operations Centre it deployed just this type of flexible helpdesk solution, helping the TFM operator to manage bookings and plan jobs across its multiple accounts. For Balfour Beatty Workplace the results have been impressive; initial savings of over £500,000 in terms of efficiency savings and penalty reductions have been realised. In addition there has been an 18 percent improvement in response rates, non value-added calls have been cut by 2,000 a month and the company has seen a 28 percent improvement in planned maintenance performance SLAs.

Before deploying its mplsystems field service management solution, Gamestec – the UK’s largest gaming and amusement machine operator – needed separate contact centre technology, CRM and handheld devices to maintain communications with its engineers. By implementing an mplsystems solution, Gamestec has seen an 88% reduction in ongoing IT costs, with increased efficiency across the organisation in terms of how service and field staff are deployed.

Metric Group, the leading provider of car park payment terminals, also uses an mplsystems solution to support its field service engineers. The solution gives Metric Group a single view of all its engineering resources, allowing the company to optimise service schedules, increase field service productivity, improve response times for customer and dramatically simplify reporting.

 

Who are Watling Hope? 

Watling Hope are market leaders in the field of wastewater engineering services and are seen as such not only because they are national specialists but also because they demonstrate a keen desire to innovate when it comes to service delivery. They pride themselves on operating with flexibility and having a truly 'customer-first' attitude. How have they achieved this?

“We've made the service department the business, moving it from an after-sales function to the front end of the customer relationship,” says Edward Palin, managing director of Watling Hope.

In fact, Watling Hope’s development into service leaders in their field has not been a straight line. They have grown into a service business from originally being a ground works company. That is, they were a company which made its revenue from installing pumping stations and mechanical drainage devices but made the transition as they realised the commercial sense in also maintaining those devices, before taking the leap to maintaining devices that other people had installed as well.

Such a change in company emphasis has seen Watling Hope expand from 50  contracts 20 years ago to around 2,500 contracts today. “We provided a unique professional approach in what wasn’t a customer service orientated industry,” says Palin.

“Before us it was guys in overalls handing over dirty bits of paper. “Watling Hope’s unique attraction was a service company which put together usable reports and relationships which effectively looked after the customers’ interests from a commercial perspective, as opposed to on a job by job basis."

 

Ongoing Service Innovation

Like any good service business, Watling Hope are restless innovators, always looking to evolve better ways of delivering.

The latest stage of this evolution involved 18 months sizing up service solutions options, saying goodbye to the previous ERP platform in the process. When the step was made they went with Tesseract Service Centre, and got their mobile engineering team online with Motorola’s ES400 PDAs, although not simultaneously.

“I remember at the time saying to Tesseract that when we get the new system we want to recognise the benefits straight away,” says Palin.

“They wisely advised us we need our office to understand the system first, because you don’t want 25 engineers phoning up and asking how it works when the people in the office don’t understand it yet. That phased implementation has worked really well for us.”

A phased approach was also applied to the eventual hardware rollout, with two engineers in the team given the ES400s to play with. This approach seems to have negated the expected resistance.

“The other engineers started saying ‘when am I getting my PDA?’” says Palin.

Having an engineering team clamouring for new gear is not a common story; Watling Hope might be on to something with the drip feed of hardware solutions. It has revitalised the mobile team’s approach to work; it represents a feeling of being invested in.

Regardless of industry, service organisations all have a similar set of needs. This played a large part in the process to ditch the ERP solution and side with Tesseract.

“They had 20 years working in service, as opposed to an ERP solution which just adapted to fit service,” says Palin.

“We wanted a service solution for a service organisation.”

“If a pumping station goes down it is business critical, people don’t think about that. If you take a restaurant or a hotel, you can turn the water off and the customers would probably stay there. If they can’t use the drainage, the toilets, you’d have to close the business. So being able to respond quickly and being able to keep the customer informed is a crucial feature of what we do.”

 

Assessing the Service Process

Implementing a new system also gave Watling Hope the chance to reassess other areas of the way they worked.

The previous ERP system contained a legacy of site specific comments, meaning the information needed could only be found by trawling through pages of comments. Instead of dumping this data into the Service Centre, engineers were encouraged to re-inform head office of specific details, which would be entered in useful, context specific spaces.

The new system also encouraged a shift in the way regional teams are organised.

“We have quarterly meetings where we all get together,” says Palin. “For a national business it’s a huge environmental consideration for everyone to drive here. As we reorganised into areas with the roll out of the new system, we are now having area meetings; so management and operations will drive to meet the teams instead.”

Communication has always been a key factor to the mobile engineering teams, with free calls between business mobiles encouraging knowledge sharing. In addition the area meetings impart company updates, but also might feature a supplier who will give a presentation on changes to a product. It also forms itself into something of a training road show, imparting customer service and technical training. Each session finishes on a forum to give engineers a voice, encouraging a friendly peer to peer atmosphere.

Watling Hope have fought hard to develop a professional service offering, and don’t seem to have any plans to stop their progression.

 

What does the future hold?

“Continued growth and consolidation of customers,” concludes Palin. “We’re hoping to provide a more diverse range of services.”

Download a PDF copy of this Case Study containing additional commentary from both Tesseract and Watling Hope here

Field Service News is pleased to bring you the first in our new monthly series of podcasts. In this first instalment we speak to Colin Brown Managing Director of  Tesseract Software. We ask Colin how the industry has changed since he first started Tesseract over a quarter of a century ago, how service management software has evolved and how the needs of service managers has changed dramatically over time as well.

With Tesseract having been one of the first Field Service companies to fully embrace a SaaS solution we also take the opportunity to put some big questions about the suitability of the cloud for field service software to him, including:

• Is the cloud/SaaS secure enough?
• How can I make sure that this new SaaS provider is legitimate?
• What about areas where there is no mobile internet?
• Is SaaS suitable for all types of company?

To hear the full interview and see how colin responds to these questions plus many more click the button below and complete the brief registration to download the podcast for free!

Download the full podcast now!