WHITE PAPER SELECTING AGILE SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE May, 2015 By Tom Bowe Director, Service Industry HIGHLIGHTS P1 P2 P5 If you are providing service in the field, repair center or plant on products or assets for customers, consumers or end-users, you need enterprise software that will adjust ask potential vendors how their solution will support business agility. One of the key principles behind IFS Mobile Workforce Management (MWFM) is that you can change the way the system optimizes on-the-fly and it cannot happen without a dynamic scheduling engine. Get the fastest DSE that you can, and ask for proof. Service is not simple and one screen is never enough. Software systems that restrict users from having multiple tabs open at the same time severely reduce user productivity and ultimately user satisfaction/ adoption suffer.
CONTENT RIGHT PEOPLE, RIGHT TIME, RIGHT VALUE, REPEAT... 1 PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS FOR PROACTIVE SERVICE MANAGERS... 2 ENABLING IOT AUTOMATION... 3 DATA VISIBILITY... 4 CONCLUSION... 6 ABOUT IFS... 8
SELECTING AGILE SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE In the service provider industry, we are seeing changes take place at an unprecedented pace. Some changes are directional like increasing attention on customer service and the growing importance of mobile workforce management. Other changes are fast and furious, like fluctuating fuel prices and disruptive new technologies and business models. But companies delivering field service, providing technical services, maintaining facilities or managing reverse logistics will need to adapt to continuous changes, and their business software must help them. If you are providing service in the field, repair center or plant on products or assets for customers, consumers or end-users, you need enterprise software that will adjust as: If you are providing service in the field, repair center or plant on products or assets for customers, consumers or end-users, you need enterprise software that will adjust ask potential vendors how their solution will support business agility. Customers demand new services requiring you to assume greater operational risk. Existing service offerings are modified to profit from changing trends. Products and assets are connected to the internet (IoT) to remain competitive. Your mobile workforce demographics change and expectations rise. Companies evaluating field service, mobile workforce, maintenance or repair management software ought to ask potential vendors how their solution will support business agility. Here, we will examine core software features and capabilities that enable agile. RIGHT PEOPLE, RIGHT TIME, RIGHT VALUE, REPEAT Service-intensive business models are demanding from a data standpoint because decisions that happen in real time are critically important to the ability to meet customers contractual and emotional requirements. That is one reason agile enterprise service management software must include scheduling optimization. A dynamic scheduling engine (DSE) is essentially a black box that optimizes scheduling data so you can accomplish more with fewer mobile resources and dispatchers while achieving the business targets you tell the system to care 1
One of the key principles behind IFS Mobile Workforce Management (MWFM) is that you can change the way the system optimizes on-the-fly and it cannot happen without a dynamic scheduling engine. Get the fastest DSE that you can, and ask for proof. most about. What is inside of that black box is a set of highly-specialized, extremely smart algorithms that analyze a massive amount of data and create a very efficient schedule in the shortest amount of time possible. While the DSE automatically makes decisions about what resource to assign to which task, managers have much more control of the business and can manage exceptions, measure results and modify the targets as needed (i.e. agile). The DSE contains a data framework which describes resources, skills, activities, regions, shifts, costs, benefits and the relationships between these things, along with the scheduling targets which are set by you and change as your business changes. A product like IFS Mobile Workforce Management (IFS MWFM) then shares the results, both visually to dispatchers and electronically to other company systems in an easily understood way in real time. A DSE will take in quantitative parameters and information on business constraints and practicalities, what the customer has been promised, and past demand patterns. And the DSE allows you to change these parameters in real time, updating the scheduling process accordingly. The specific rules a DSE applies to the schedule should be easily defined by you, the end-user, not an IT developer. This is essential because these rules will change frequently. One of the key principles behind IFS Mobile Workforce Management is that you can change the way the system optimizes on-the-fly. As a deadline-sensitive project spikes demand for resources, demand patterns fluctuate, fuel prices change, service level agreements (SLA) are renegotiated, traffic accidents, severe weather conditions arise, etc., the DSE will generate a schedule that instantly reflects these new parameters. This is exactly the type of flexibility demanding field service situations require, and it cannot happen without a dynamic scheduling engine. Get the fastest DSE that you can, and ask for proof. PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS FOR PROACTIVE SERVICE MANAGERS I never make predictions especially about the future, baseball great Casey Stengel once said. But when workload changes can be anticipated and workforce adjustments need to be made sooner than later, this is exactly what service leaders must do. Predictive analytics must model the future performance of field service in three dimensions resources available/needed, forecasted workload/location and key performance indicators (KPIs). 2
Management should be able to quickly answer and act on strategic questions such as; How can our current resources support the 3 new service contracts just signed? How many new hires do we need next year, which skills, where and impact on OT? How can I improve my SLA performance and satisfy more customers? What would be the effect of reducing the number of field techs, or moving locations? Most of the information required to improve decision-making can be mined from the DSE data streams, enabling management to proactively evaluate and explore different options. With a deeper understanding of sensitivities, implications and trade-offs, service business leaders will make better decisions faster while reducing business risk. ENABLING IOT AUTOMATION In the enterprise software industry, we never met a three-letter acronym (TLA) we didn t like. Two more TLAs that have and will continue to affect the service management industry are IoT (Internet of Things) and M2M (machine-tomachine). M2M is often seen as the fore-runner to IoT, but not always. M2M involves point-to-point communication between devices, whereas IoT is about connecting lots of intelligent devices to the cloud. Anyone who has been involved with equipment maintenance knows a lot of companies already do this with programmable logic controllers (PLCs) or other switches and counters that provide information on their operating status to the back-office system. These connected sensors allow service organizations to support a proactive model where maintenance or field technicians can be notified on their mobile device before a problem occurs and before there is any downtime. This can positively impact your service business performance in many ways: Reducing asset downtime and allowing proactive service contract partnerships. Improving first-time fix rates with better diagnostics when sensors communicate with technician devices, pinpointing the actual failure. Lowering inventory/stock on-hand with greater visibility into the parts required, and technicians with the right part can be dispatched. Increasing service productivity, first-time fix rates and reduced travel costs (fewer trips to a customer site, less break/fix, less re-stocking). 3
IFS Field Service Management (IFS FSM) easily integrates with M2M solutions. We use an open platform for integration using standard XML, making it easy to work with any device or system related to M2M. Right now, however, there is no universal standard for how all IoT devices should communicate with each other. The industry is moving in that direction but until the IoT message standards are finalized, IFS thinks it is important to be flexible in how information is received and flexible in how the system can react to the receipt of that information. For instance, when IFS FSM gets a notification from a networked copy machine that is low on toner, it reacts by automatically scheduling a job and allocating the correct inventory so that when a technician arrives on site, they replace the toner before it runs out. When it comes to plant maintenance and service management in Oil & Gas and utilities, IFS is in a leadership position given its early support for the MIMOSA standards for operations and maintenance information. IFS Applications has also taken real-time condition monitoring to new levels in its support of military aviation, as a jet can signal its maintenance requirements to a crew before its landing gear even hits the ground. But with more and more smart devices coming online every year, there will need to be a more universal industry standard, and companies like Microsoft are leading the way. In the meantime, service management software should support the Azure Cloud and be open with well-defined application program interfaces (APIs) to allow it to accept and share data with other devices and systems efficiently. DATA VISIBILITY With more smart devices and more business complexity driving data into your service management software, one challenge will be to separate the critical few bytes of data from the unimportant many. That means apart from complying with future standards, software from IFS and other vendors needs to determine which data triggers automated action or is useful for decision support and then make that information available in formats that are helpful to users and customers. Dispatchers will need visibility into situations where SLAs are threatened, and your customers want visibility into when a service tech will be at their location. The latest release of IFS Field Service Management (5.6.2) offers enhancements in both of these areas. But even absent the massive data volumes from IoT and M2M, information to support day-to-day service must be presented more intelligently. With productivity per worker at an all-time high already and the total workforce set to decline in the years to come, additional productivity gains must be driven increasingly by technological improvements. That is why role-based interfaces 4
which arrange, on a single screen, the tasks and functions essential to the user logged into the app are a common software selection requirement. But there is a problem with role-based interfaces. They often are not accepted because a given role may be very different from one company to the next. And the tasks and processes a given role deals with will almost certainly change, rendering them obsolete. Service is not simple and, unfortunately, one screen is never enough. Software systems that restrict users from having multiple tabs open at the same time severely reduces user productivity, and ultimately user satisfaction/adoption suffers. Enter the configurable, flexible role-based interface, with perhaps the first example being IFS Lobby, which is a feature of IFS Applications 9. While standard role-based lobbies are included out of the box, these lobbies so named as they offer one-stop access to the other essential areas of the application can be configured or created from scratch by your internal information technology team. Service is not simple and one screen is never enough. Software systems that restrict users from having multiple tabs open at the same time severely reduce user productivity and ultimately user satisfaction/adoption suffer. IFS Lobby can be configured to present maintenance data and processes in an intuitive fashion, helping managers and technicians stay on-task. Other even more ad-hoc visibility and efficiency tools will also be important so that individual workers can access information that is essential to them when they need it. With IFS Streams, a new feature in IFS Applications 9, end-users can subscribe to notifications from a number of information sources, including transactional and embedded social/collaboration systems. 5
Between IFS Lobby and IFS Streams, and subsequent efforts from other service management software vendors, we can expect software to be an important tool for companies that need to complete more service work with more constraints and changing demands with a static number of workers. These features are present not only across components of IFS Applications used for complex maintenance repair and overhaul, contracting, asset management and other service disciplines, but across the entire enterprise suite from finance through to purchasing and beyond. Of course visibility has to do with more than the interface it has to do with the ability to access and interact with data from multiple devices. IFS has long held a leadership position in mobility. The user interface for IFS Applications is touch-screen compliant, and IFS Applications 9 includes key mobile usability improvements. IFS Touch Apps delivers native applications for Android, ios and Windows for common mobile tasks like customer relationship management (CRM), notifications, expenses and work orders. IFS Field Service Management also extends the mobile service experience to wearable devices using Android notifications. This means you can see important service alerts on Android wearables including smartwatches and Google Glass. Mobile techs can quickly review high priority jobs and accept or reject tasks from a phone or wearables. CONCLUSION Classified as a leader in the Gartner Field Service Management Software Magic Quadrant, IFS is designed to deliver on the above requirements and more. IFS Enterprise Service Management solutions include software for field service management, dynamic scheduling, reverse logistics, mobile workforce management and a deep enterprise suite for asset management, maintenance repair and overhaul, and more. Nobody understands your business or service management software needs as well as you do. But at IFS, we encourage you to think not only about your needs today, but about how those needs will change tomorrow, next year, or 10 years down the road. Today, you may be engaging only in break-fix or repair work, for instance. But perhaps tomorrow you will sell proactive service contracts where you get paid for a specific level of predictive asset uptime. That is why IFS Enterprise Service Management, the most complete solution on the market, delivers unprecedented levels of agility. Because it will handle field service in the air, repair on the ground, maintenance underground, or anywhere else you are delivering service. It will meet your needs regardless of whether you are booking appointments against demanding SLAs, adhering to maintenance contracts with businesses, or directly servicing consumers. Will you add shared-risk contracts to your service portfolio, take on full lifecycle 6
management of assets you service, or enter an altogether new segment or service category? Because you don t know where your business will be 10 years down the road, you need a service management software solution that will go anywhere you find yourself headed. Tom has over 15 years of experience in developing, marketing and selling the type of products that somehow seem almost impossible for non-specialists to understand namely business applications. Tom is 100% convinced; being creative and agile as an individual and as a company is crucial for success. Tom works as Global Industry Director for the Enterprise Service Management Center of Excellence unit at IFS, which entails formulating and communicating future product directions and strategies for IFS in tight interaction with regional management, customers and partners around the world. At IFS, Tom spends most of his time out in the field in face-to-face meetings with customers and colleagues or as speaker at conferences to share service business strategies and inspirations, but also to listen and act on new business trends and challenges. When not working, he is a family man with seven children. He enjoys hitting the links, running on the road or hiking in the woods. Occasionally, he also plays Clash of Clans. He has a Master s degree in Marketing, Finance and Entrepreneurship. 7
ABOUT IFS IFS is a globally recognized leader in developing and delivering business software for enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM) and enterprise service management (ESM). IFS brings customers in targeted sectors closer to their business, helps them be more agile and enables them to profit from change. IFS is a public company (XSTO: IFS) that was founded in 1983 and currently has over 2,700 employees. IFS supports more than 2,400 customers worldwide from local offices and through a growing ecosystem of partners. For more information about IFS, visit www.ifsworld.com AMERICAS... +1 888 437 4968 ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, CANADA, ECUADOR, MEXICO, UNITED STATES ASIA PACIFIC...+65 63 33 33 00 AUSTRALIA, INDONESIA, JAPAN, MALAYSIA, NEW ZEALAND, PHILIPPINES, PR CHINA, SINGAPORE, THAILAND EUROPE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA....+48 22 577 45 00 BALKANS, CZECH REPUBLIC, GEORGIA, HUNGARY, ISRAEL, KAZAKHSTAN, POLAND, RUSSIA AND CIS, SLOVAKIA, TURKEY, UKRAINE EUROPE CENTRAL... +49 9131 77 340 AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, GERMANY, ITALY, NETHERLANDS, SWITZERLAND EUROPE WEST...+44 1494 428 900 FRANCE, IRELAND, PORTUGAL, SPAIN, UNITED KINGDOM MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA....+971 4390 0888 INDIA, SOUTH AFRICA, SRI LANKA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES NORDIC... +46 13 460 4000 DENMARK, NORWAY, SWEDEN FINLAND AND THE BALTIC AREA.......................................... +358 102 17 9300 ESTONIA, FINLAND, LATVIA, LITHUANIA En1687-1 Production: IFS Corporate Marketing, May 2015. www.ifsworld.com COPYRIGHT 2015 INDUSTRIAL AND FINANCIAL SYSTEMS, IFS AB (PUBL). IFS AND ALL IFS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES NAMES ARE TRADEMARKS OF IFS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN STATEMENTS OF POSSIBLE FUTURE FUNCTIONALITY FOR IFS S PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGY. SUCH STATEMENTS ARE FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND SHOULD NOT BE INTERPRETED AS ANY COMMITMENT OR REPRESENTATION. THE NAMES OF ACTUAL COMPANIES AND PRODUCTS MENTIONED HEREIN MAY BE THE TRADEMARKS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS. IFS AB 2015