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Welcome to the fourth part of this series exploring some of the big trends to expect in 2016 within the field service sector, written by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News.

 So far we’ve explored servitization in part one, IoT and AR in part two Smart Glasses and Rugged Computing in part three…

 This time around we look at a stalwart of field service technology in optimised scheduling and why it is more important than ever, the growing importance of user interfaces and one of the most hotly anticipated topics in fleet management – the connected car and how it will change telematics forever…

Improved scheduling will become a huge part of the equation for those selecting FSM software this year...

For all of the excitement around technologies such as AR and Smart Glasses in being able to reduce the need for field service companies to send their engineers to the far flung corners of the globe, the truth remains that for the majority of field service companies, for the time being at least, the holy grail of operations remains the age old mantra of ‘getting the right engineer, to the right job, with the right parts on-time, every time.’

As such scheduling tools remain a vital ingredient in the field service management cookbook and this fact hasn’t been overlooked by many of the key players in the FSM software space.

 

With ServicePower having invested heavily in both R&D and the acquisition of intellectual property in this space and the recent roll-out of their new solution NexusTM, they are anticipated to take an aggressive approach to the market, whilst scheduling remains a core functionality of a number of significant players within the space including IFS, ClickSoftware and Astea.

Such a competitive market place makes for an environment where innovation and product development is set to thrive.

For field service companies seeking to either update their solutions or take the plunge and invest for the first time in a solution then having a variety of options is of course a major bonus and given the potential savings that dynamic scheduling engines can deliver, the refinement of such tools, making them more effective and easier to implement, is great news.

Connected vehicles and Telematics-as a-Service will challenge the traditional fleet technology sector

With the advent of the connected vehicle, the telematics industry was in danger of cannibalising itself as specialist providers began working with OEMs to provide in built systems.

On the one hand this was perhaps no bad thing and just the natural evolution of the sector.

Indeed there have been some exciting collaborations spearheaded by companies such as Telogis, who through a number of shrewd partnerships with the likes of Volvo and Ford have seen their technology placed at the heart of many next-generation commercial vehicles.

On the face of it such agreements are win-win-win.

Great for the OEMs as they seek to outpace their competitors in terms of on-board technology, great for Telogis who have access to a much wider market and great for those field service companies who are seeking a complete turnkey solution.

 

But the flip side of course is that such partnerships also limit the choices available to those companies that either want to explore their options further or have existing systems that they don’t want to move away from.

Another approach to building a telematics solution was unveiled by Dutch Telematics giant TomTom at their developers' conference in Amsterdam last year when they unveiled the .connect platform.

With three separate APIs encouraging as much integration as possible the development of the .connect platform was a masterstroke by a company that had already reinvented themselves once in the face of a declining routing and tracking market as it placed them as a telematics platform firmly at the centre of a suite of 3^rd party apps that the field service company could select to define a telematics solution that was bespoke to their own specific needs.

Essentially by modelling their approach along the lines of Apple’s App Store, Google’s Play or Saleforce’s Appexchange, TomTom have paved the way for new thinking in the telematics space and have thrown down a gauntlet for the rest of the industry.

A seamless User Experience will become a prerequisite for field service companies and their clients alike

In September last year I spoke to Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower shortly before the launch of their new FSM software Nexus FS.

They had clearly spent some significant time working on the User Interface (UI) in the face of the growing impact of consumerisation on business software. “The key is taking what we’ve done with some of the new technology, and then making sure we have integrated a great user experience throughout the other applications, modernising the UI, but not losing all the functionality that we have built over the last twenty years.” Martin commented and as we look ahead to what 2016 holds in store her words continue to ring true.

Indeed, whilst in terms of the physical devices our field engineers are using, we may well be seeing the gradual shift back away from consumer devices to more industrial grade, rugged devices, when it comes to the user experience, consumerisation remains a vital trend, and one which FSM software providers will overlook at their peril.

 

But it’s not just about aesthetics, there is a very simple reason why field service companies should expect the apps they deploy for their field engineers to look as good and feel as intuitive as the apps they use in their personal lives.

To cut to the chase, the more instant familiarity an end user will feel with an app, the faster they will take to using it, which means the faster a company will fee the promised benefits of that apps deployment.

Indeed ServicePower are not alone in having put a significant amount of importance on the look and feel of their latest software.

One of the big bits of feedback from the IFS World Conference was that the company had spent a significant amount of time in ensuring their UI had a modern, elegant feel to it and that those efforts didn’t go unnoticed amongst the attendees.

Similarly when Solarvista launched the latest iteration of their own product, not only was there an extensive overhaul of the product itself, but it launched with a distinctly new look and feel that added a further gloss to what was a major product update.

 

However, it is not just within the apps used by field service engineers where UI is of growing importance.

Many field service companies are beginning to offer apps to their own customers also and whether these apps are communications channels, knowledge banks or even tools for monitoring assets within the field, increasingly digital interaction far outweighs human interaction for many companies and delivering a positive user experience through these mediums is as important to a companies relationships with their customers as face to face contact.

 

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Look out for the final part of this series coming soon which will focus on why knowledge sharing and easy reporting are the two operations that all field service managers should be demanding in 2016.

 

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Our Industry Leaders interviews series continues  with an exclusive interview by Field Service NEws Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland with ServicePower CEO Marne Martin. In Part 1  they talk about the thinking behind the development of  the new NEXUS FS^TM  software, and the importance of user-friendly interfaces and deep functionality...

It’s been a busy time for the team at ServicePower, a company heavily focused on the constant evolution of their own suite of products, with a clear strategy of exploring and harnessing the latest emerging technologies and implementing them within their own solutions aimed solely at the field service management sector.

The recent release of NEXUS FS^TM  an enterprise-class, cloud-based field service management solution designed to be suitable for any sized service business is the latest addition to the Service Power line. It incorporates comprehensive mobile dispatch functionality that sits well with the dynamic scheduling engine that ServicePower is perhaps best known for.

In Marne Martin,  ServicePower have a focused and savvy CEO, with a strong background in highly senior roles, with both a passion for innovation and an understanding of what it takes to drive business forward. It is clear that Martin has a clear vision of the road map ServicePower needs to be taking both in the short to medium term as well and way beyond.

“We’ve really taken what we have -  a twenty year deep and rich experience in field service - and have accelerated it into new product development and innovation of our existing applications, to find new ways of approaching the pain points and needs of the field service industry,” Martin begins as we discuss where exactly ServicePower are in their development right now.

“Especially, the last twelve to eighteen months we’ve really accelerated,” she continues.  “We acquired the source code for mobility in January 2013 and we’ve actually built out a leading mobility product, so we’ve been able to leapfrog our competition in many regards.”

Our conversation is taking place just after the announcement of NEXUS FS^TM  which has a definitively fresh and modern feel with a lot of focus on the user experience. This is something that will sit across the suite of ServicePower products in the not too distant future and is clearly a consideration for the development of their product line.

The importance of the User Interface

“With the existing applications we’re about half way through migrating the User Interfaces to the really great new look and feel of NEXUS FS^TM . We’re using angular JS and Bootstrap but we’re looking at new technologies all the time and it’s a really beautiful UI,” Martin comments.  “Even when you think about what Salesforce and some of the really big players are doing, I feel we are really at the cutting edge now.”

UI has become an integral element of what makes a successful business application in today’s modern environment and this is something Martin is acutely aware of.

“You can’t underestimate how radically Apple has changed everything. With what they put out with the iPhone and how it looks and feels. You certainly have leaders in software that really care about user experience and UI like Salesforce, but I think Apple with the penetration they had really took it to the next level”

So how does this Martin filter this approach into her own organisation?

“The key is taking what we’ve done with some of the new technology, and then making sure we have integrated a great user experience throughout the other applications, modernising the UI, but not losing all the functionality that we have built over the last twenty years. It’s a really exciting time”

“I think ten years ago there were certainly some competitors that were more proactive in terms of UI than ServicePower were but we’ve actually worked to leapfrog them and even go beyond Salesforce is at the moment using them and Apple as a benchmark”

“Even if you look back at TOA at the time, they had a great UI and ClickSoftware were doing some UI development maybe ten years ago but I think we’ve actually moved beyond that.”

“At this point we are benchmarking off ourselves in a way; we have a great team led by Steve Higgins who joined with us in late January, and then he has integrated with all the various product teams with the existing applications. The product guys were just at Dreamforce the other week and they walked away saying wow we are actually ahead in certain areas now. I’m really proud of that.”

However, Martin is also keenly aware that mission critical software, especially at enterprise level, cannot be all style and no substance.

“When we look at SMB solutions on the Internet you know they want to see a UI like that but when ultimately when it comes to the enterprise deals, when you get to a certain scale it is still all about the functionality,” she explains.

 

“The UI is nice but in the end what enterprise level field service organisations care about is things like our ability to do real-time optimisation, heavy duty management of third party contractors, the warranty claims,  analytics -  all these things.”

“A great UI is necessary now, but it’s not enough - you’ve got to have depth of functionality because that’s what gives a barrier to entry,” Martin states before adding, “With a hundred grand I might be able to spin up a little UI and an app, but I’m never going to be able to get a robust solution that will satisfy the leading enterprises as well as having the depth of functionality.”

And with a product development road map starting to come to fruition, the next stage for ServicePower is an aggressive growth period as they seek to capitalise on the attention a raft of awards and recognition their technology has gathered as they’ve continually sought to improve their own suite of solutions.

Martin admits the next phase of their strategy is to really focus on sales execution now. “I think we have a very good position now in terms of growing our brand awareness, recognition of the technology in the product suite that now we can really start scaling on sales execution. That’ll be the big push the year forward.”

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

 

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