SERVICEPower is proud to announce the launch of our new website. The website will be used to coordinate several different aspects of SERVICEPower. You can find the site at http://www.servicepower.com.

The new website features a brand new look and feel, much improved navigation, updated search system, and most importantly new content. The new look and feel has a clean modern look to it and is more graphically rich. Navigation has been simplified and is no longer brand led, coupled with a new search feature allows any visitor to find the content they are interested in. We’ve been busy adding new content for our solutions including new descriptions, features, benefits, videos, and additional documentation.

The website also contains information regarding the company, locations, how to get in touch, website feedback, fundraising, and other projects we are working on. There is also a section on the site dedicated our partner program.

Please take the time to visit the site, and pass on the link to people you know. For more information, please check out the site, or a comment to this post.

What’s that smell? Smells like trouble for the competition…

I had the pleasure, and the torture, of attending NAFEM 2009 in sunny Orlando, Florida this month.

My pleasure came from many things. First, and foremost, the overwhelming smell of great food that permeated the GIANT convention center floor. You just couldn’t escape it; with (# of exhibitors) food equipment manufacturers looking to showcase their best products! With row, after row, of exhibitors offering delicious samples and flashy demonstrations, NAFEM was a real crowd pleaser.

It was my first visit to NAFEM, and I was anxious to learn as much as I could. As I made my way around the massive showroom floor I had a chance to have some good conversations, with a great group of people. From those conversations I quickly became aware of overwhelming gaps in functionality between SERVICEPower, and our existing competitors within the industry.

The response was overwhelming! “Send me information!” “Could you show us a demonstration?” With SERVICEPower’s ability to provide our customers with automated claims processing, and advanced business intelligence, I’m confident I can provide a solution for them.

So, you must be thinking to yourself, “none of this sounds like torture to me.” Well how does this sound for torture…imagine smelling and seeing the most amazing food creations you have ever laid eyes on, waiting anxiously, watering at the mouth to get a little taste of heaven. Now imagine that you weren’t one of the lucky few to be close enough to the chef to get one of the samples! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! You are now faced with a difficult choice. Do I wait another twenty minutes for the next demonstration to start, or soldier on in hopes of being one of the lucky ones at another exhibitors demo. Now that my friends is torture!

Brad Callow

I attended the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas with two colleagues. Vegas is not a bad place to be in January! The show was as crazy as ever – it did appear that attendance was down a little on prior years but the pace and crush was still manic.

We use the show as a vehicle for spending time with manufacturers and third party administrators – both customers and prospects. We do not have our own stand – the show itself is dominated by the CE product suppliers. This is the one occasion a year when all the players in the consumer electronics marketplace are together in one place. Most of these companies hire suites in the big hotels around the show floor. So we spend our time running between various hotels stretching to make it to meetings that have been pre-arranged. We were able to progress agreements with a number of companies – so the effort paid off.

ServiceNet – a TPA customer of ours – run a party for their customers and contacts. We sponsored some of the festivities and of course attended. It’s always a good night – themed around the Kentucky Derby and a number of videoed horse races. I didn’t win the main prize – tickets for two to this years Derby but I did manage to get 1st place in one of the preliminary races – not too shabby. We also attend NESDA’s get together where we can talk to a number of the independent services that use our system to get work from manufacturers and to claim payment for their work.

I did manage to spend half a day on the show floor – a treat for someone like me who loves technology. A major focus for the big CE players was ultra thin display technology – and I do mean thin – lots of HDTV’s that were no more than ½ inch thick – impressive stuff. Appliances are getting more energy and design conscious…no real surprise their…The GPS vendors were also present in force… look out for initiatives from ServicePower with both Tom-Tom and Garmin.

3 busy days in Vegas… followed by a plane ride back East and temperatures in the low teens… back to reality with a bump.

Paul Oliver

I recently attended the AFSMI (The Association for Service Management International) conference held in late October, in Las Vegas.  As a new employee of a vendor company and a first time attendee, I wanted to give you my spin. 

 

There was no faulting the venue, held at the Mirage hotel, the service and show halls were exemplary.  The keynotes and breakout sessions were excellent.  The presentations were informative and helpful to the target audience, including content on service strategy, service operations, service development, and service delivery. As a new employee at SERVICEPower, it was a great learning opportunity for me.  Circuit City/ Firedog, one of our retail customers, was there to present the topic, “Service Challenges in the Consumer Market Place.”  Part of Firedog’s service offering is an expanding value proposition, which includes mobility and repair service.  We supply them with the tools to efficiently manage and optimize these services.

 

Where the show fell short, in my opinion, was the lack of focus on field service operations.  The partnerships with the SSPA and TPSA may have increased the attendance, but not to the benefit of the field service vendors taking part.  Visits to the exhibition hall were few and far between, and the organizers left us feeling like second class citizens!  While I understand that AFSMI need to take care of their members, I think they have to look carefully at where the value is for the vendors if they want to continue to receive the sponsorship money that allows them to run it.

There are some confused ideas out there in the market, about the role GPS has to play in automated scheduling.

Earlier this week I was with a prospect who wants to buy automated scheduling, but has stipulated as mandatory in his ITT that the solution must include GPS.

Now that’s fine, at ServicePower we have great GPS integration and visualization with the new stuff in our latest product version, but I was intrigued and asked him why?

“Well”, he said, “if you don’t know where the engineers are, how do you know who to give the next job to”?

Perhaps I hadn’t properly explained that 99% of our scheduling decisions are made for a time in the future, so where the engineer is now is rarely relevant. SERVICEPower knows all about geography and territory and the engineers start and end locations and their centers of operation, and where engineers are planned to be way into the future, so we are self contained.

We integrate to GPS for a very different reason—for health and safety, insurance and duty of care issues, and to monitor more closely the adherence to plan throughout the day.

“But the GPS salesperson I was talking to said it is essential!” the client explained. Well he would, wouldn’t he?

I had a conversation today with an analyst firm specializing in the field service technology area. We were discussing marketing plans for 2008 and one of the topics that came up was the use of tools such as web 2.0 and whether they can make social networking or more specifically user generated content more acceptable in the service business.

Consider this. One of the biggest challenges facing a service business these days is the ‘brain drain’ that is being encountering as experienced technicians are reaching retirement age, and younger replacements are taking the training and then leaving to start their own service businesses. When these guys leave the company, their knowledge leaves with them.

One solution would appear to be user generated content. In real world service organizations we know that when a field technician is struggling with a particular problem they will always call around colleagues to find out if they have seen anything similar. A fix is usually found and implemented. However, once that knowledge is gained by the individual, it goes no further – therefore limiting the benefit of that knowledge.

In my mind, there is an argument for a central knowledge base that isn’t in the form of a manual or product guide, which becomes quickly outdated after publication. This central knowledge base could be placed online and then whenever a technician has a problem, he can search it quickly and easily for the fix he needs. It’s a win-win situation. The field technician gets his job done more quickly and the service business retains ownership of the information.

By giving technicians the tools to capture, store and distribute invaluable field experience for the benefit of the company, as opposed to having it belong to the individual technician, service businesses could potentially stave off the brain drain they fear.

A question I am frequently asked by companies thinking about adopting automated workforce scheduling is “How do engineers react to automated scheduling”?

Well, the answer is quite simple – good engineers love it, bad engineers hate it.

It’s really quite Darwinian – natural selection and the survival of the fittest.

An engineers who has had a good life at the company’s expense, rising late and getting home early, will soon be found out – those that won’t change their ways tend to go of their own accord.

Automated scheduling drives up productivity, so the lazy engineers get squeezed from two directions. If the workload is constant, then their managers find out quickly how many fewer resources are needed, and the slackers are quickly under pressure. If the workload is increasing, everyone gets more work, and slackers turn around or go.

Good engineers find it takes hassle out of the day, and they get on with it. A smart employer pays bonus on extra work completed – so there is a win-win within easy grasp.

For those engineers who work with the system, there are loads of benefits. More regular hours, fewer un-social hours surprises, work shared out more evenly, fewer hours sat in rush hour traffic, closer to home at the end of the day, a better plan so fewer response time panics and less pressure from customers - even a lunch break automatically allocated in the schedule!

And it puts the engineer in closer touch with the overall operation, allows him (or her) to contribute positively. If there are problems and he is running late, he can extend his current travel time or job time via his mobile device, and not only his work but the rest of the work in his region will be re-calculated instantly.

If he is running early, he can be immediately allocated more work and earn extra bonus.

He’s no longer isolated at the end of a long thin wire – he is part of the total operation – as indeed he should be.

So yes – the message is positive – companies shouldn’t be concerned about how their field force will react, as long as they manage change efficiently and effectively.

ServicePower helps a service organization apply technology and processes that harmonize the efficient management of mobile field resources with the delivery of world class customer service. As a result, service organizations are in a much better position to succeed—and significantly increase profit.

The service chain optimization solutions on offer from ServicePower in the latest version 7.0 have been refined with over 10 years of customer feedback.

Best Practice in Field Service

There are a number of options available when it comes to improving the efficiency and profitability of a service organization. Based on our experience, 3 technology areas deliver the best returns:

· Optimized scheduling and routing

· Mobile solutions for field personnel

· Location based services – typically built around GPS solutions.

SERVICEPower Version 7.0 provides integrated technology to deal with all these elements.

Optimized Scheduling and Routing

Consider the metrics below—achieved by a sizeable field service organization through the deployment of optimized scheduling and routing

Field force productivity

· Time on customer site increased 33%

· Total travel time reduced 12%

· Average jobs per technician increased by 15%

· Overtime work reduced by 65%

Scheduling productivity

· Staff time spent producing/maintaining schedules reduced by 30%

Customer satisfaction

· Jobs late reduced by 80%

Improvements in management control and visibility

· Enhanced visibility of the service organization at all levels

· Improved and consistent processes throughout the company

Mobile Solutions for field personnel

A service organization that equips their field personnel with mobile devices that can effectively “talk” to the scheduling component, introduce a whole range of additional benefits and cost savings.

Dispatching jobs directly out to field personnel as they occur on the schedule rather than in batch fashion at the beginning of the day ensures that the schedule can be constantly updated to take account of any changes such as an employee becoming ill, or a job running late. Real-time field status updates from mobile field personnel, e.g. on-site, traveling, job closed, etc. allows the scheduling engine to automatically react to changes without any manual intervention—further enhancing productivity.

This communication between the field and the support/service center should happen regardless of whether you have cell coverage. The best systems, such as SERVICEMobility, will hold the status updates until your field personnel are back in range and then push through the messages.

Location Based Services

Location based Services (LBS) such as GPS tracking, Navigation (turn-by-turn directions) and vehicle management capability (enabled by in vehicle capability like On-Board Diagnostics (OBD II)) are seeing adoptions rates increase across industries. According to the Aberdeen Group it is customer demand, inefficient job scheduling and routing that are the key drivers for adopting this technology. However, increasing service costs in the form of high fuel costs, theft, vehicle maintenance and high insurance premiums are also key factors in the decision to deploy.

The key benefits of a LBS and Vehicle Management system include:

· Better information for management on the daily routes of its mobile field personnel and their vehicles

· Improved response to customer demands – better and faster routing of the correct mobile worker to the customer site

· Enhanced safety and security for drivers and vehicles

· Reduction in fuel costs through better scheduling and reduced travel time

· Lower insurance premiums – insurance providers give discounts for implementing GPS solutions

· Increase theft deterrence since the vehicle and any parts/equipment on-board can be traced

· Voice annunciated turn-by-turn directions get your field personnel to the right place, on time

· Remote vehicle monitoring reduces maintenance costs

ServicePower’s capability in this area is designed to work with the scheduling engine, so not only do you get the general benefits of LBS outlined above, you also get an intelligent analysis of the differences between the planned work schedule and the actual routes worked by field personnel. Key insights delivered by this integrated capability include:

· Knowing that a field worker is where they say they are, and doing what they are supposed to be doing!

· Keeping a record of when each field person starts traveling their route and when they end.

· Recording accurate mileage statistics to satisfy IRS or other requirements.

If you have ever ordered white or brown goods or furniture over the Internet, you have learned two things: it’s cheap and it can be difficult to find someone to install or assemble it for you.

This is one reason why you still go to the local stores. “But” you’re thinking “surely I can replicate the service I receive from the stores and still experience the convenience of the Internet’s “one-stop-shopping”. Surprisingly, it’s only the stores using the most up-to-date technology that can offer this service.

We have a customer who came to us with a challenge – lets call them “Quality Store”. Quality Store runs a chain of over 1,000 large retail stores across the U.S. They sell many different products, some of which the customer can buy in the store and take away, some that need to be designed with a salesperson while the customer is in store, and some that require an in-home sales call.

Some of the in-home sales calls and installations are carried out by Quality Store’s own staff, but they also sub-contract a large portion of these calls to their service partners.

In general, an in-home sales call to provide an estimate takes about 45 minutes, and installations can take from one half to a full day. Overall, Quality Store handles approximately a quarter of a million transactions every month – that’s millions of transactions per year. When you realize what these stores are up against, it’s not surprising that you don’t always get the service you have come to expect.

However, that’s not to excuse them from their responsibilities to their customers. The technology is out there to help them. By providing a solution that enabled the salesperson to book an appointment with the designer at the point-of-sale, optimizing the appointment schedules and providing a mobile solution that dispatches the jobs directly to the designers – we helped Quality Store to streamline their retail operations to the point where they all but eliminated unneeded costs. The improvements in customer service together with the convenience of the Internet’s one-stop-shopping experience have had a major positive impact on customer satisfaction and the company’s bottom line.

If you’d like to read about Quality Store in more detail, take a look at their case study at this URL:

http://www.servicepower.com/library/pdfs/Optimized_Scheduling_for_Retailers.pdf