In this article we look at how the adoption of new digital technologies can help your business grow with simPRO, leading field service management solution for service, maintenance and project contractors.

Businesses in the building services sector are increasing efficiency and growing their business faster, by trading outdated manual processes for new digital technologies.

At the top of the list? Cloud-based job management software that streamlines project, service, and maintenance workflows in one end-to-end solution.

Harnessing this technology and its mobile features lets you access the most accurate and up-to-date information pertaining to project progress, billing and invoicing, scheduling and dispatch, inventory and more, all from one central location. This eliminates wasted time spent linking essential data from disparate sources, gives full visibility into your numbers, and streamlines communication from the office to the field. So how does digitising your operations help your business grow? Here are the top benefits of cloud-based job management software.

1. Streamilined Team Management

With all information accessible in the cloud, teams are able to view real-time awareness of job progress and location of field staff, in turn, enhancing job scheduling capabilities. You can make scheduling changes as they happen, closing gaps and keeping your team productive.

2. Improved Productivity

Field staff can access job information, site history and even request inventory without returning to the office. Any updates from the field sync in real-time via a mobile app. By giving your team the information they need, when they need it, you reduce travel time, increase productivity and expand capacity to find new revenue streams or take on new jobs.

3. Clear and Effective Communication

Communication between office and field should not end once a job has been dispatched. It should be ongoing and instant, enabling efficient processes and a seamless experience for the customer. Cloud-based job management software streamlines all communications in one easy-to-access portal.

4. Optimised Business Management

Investing in software to digitise your business leads to reduced overheads through automated workflows, centralised data and integrations with third-party applications. In the office, replacing manual, time consuming tasks such as data entry with automated workflows frees up resources to focus on value adding activities and minimises error.

5. Clearly Identify Where You Are Making and Losing Money

Capture all of your data from each job, in one centralised location, accessible from anywhere. You can also clearly identify where you are making and losing money through job costing and profitability reporting, and use collected data to optimise workflows, analyse the profitability of customers and inform hiring decisions.

Learn more about how simPRO can help grow your business at simprogroup.com.

Contact:

T: 0800 622 6376

W: simprogroup.com

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Learn more about simPRO @ simprogroup.com
• Read more about simPRO on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/all-about-simpro 
• Follow simPRO on Twitter @ twitter.com/simprosoftware

Proact placed fourth among managed services providers within the leading “GIARTE IT Xperience Monitor 2021 (ITX)” assessment, in which the IT outsourcing experiences of customer organisations are measured annually. Amongst mid-sized companies, Proact secured a top score for workspace outsourcing, and obtained the highest scores in the categories of workspace management and support.

“Of course, it's about the whole picture that you offer as an outsourcing partner”, says Proact Service Operations Director of Proact Netherlands Bertus Doppenberg. “Basically, you have to prioritise the total unburdening of the customer when it comes to their workspace. Customer satisfaction starts with a positive user experience. That is one of Proact’s key priorities, which we now also see being rewarded in this benchmark. Still, it's not the only thing we focus on. If you don’t have a firm foundation in terms of your offering, you will notice this immediately in practice. We have managed that well, which is apparent from the wonderful scores we have received.”

THE IT SERVICES PROVIDER SCORES HIGHEST ALSO IN THE TRANSPARENCY CATEGORY FOR ITS WORK WITH CUSTOMERS

The fact that Proact emerged from the survey as one of the highest rated mid-sized organisations in the area of outsourcing — with an average managed services score of 8.4 on a scale of 10 — is in itself a great achievement. Infrastructure management, workplace management and support, system integration and security management are also enthusiastically praised by Proact's 20 largest customers within the survey. Equally impressive, however, is that the IT services provider also scores highest in the transparency category for its work with customers. These results are all the more notable considering that Proact expanded its presence in the Netherlands and in Belgium through the acquisition of PeopleWare in the end of 2019. The company specialised in outsourcing prior to its acquisition, and this has developed into a very strong component of Proact’s offering in this region since.

“We could not have achieved these great results without our customers. As an organisation, we are close to our customers. Our personal approach and our prioritisation of open and honest communication in our relationships are the basis for this. This is only possible if parties work together openly and honestly. The results of GIARTE therefore reflect the extent and intensity of cooperation with our customers. That is a two-way street”, adds Mark van Liempt, Business Unit Director, West. “We do it together, so the credit must go to our customers as well!”

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Artificial Intelligence @ www.fieldservicenews.com/artificial-intelligence
• Learn more about Proact @ www.proact.eu
• Read the full GIARTE ITX study @ https://itx.giarte.com/
• Follow Proact on Twitter @ twitter.com/proact_it

Data management specialist Proact has signed a new partner agreement with LogicMonitor to enable Proact and its customers to better collect and consolidate critical performance and operational data on their IT infrastructure and cloud services.

The new partnership with LogicMonitor will enable Proact to provide its customers with enhanced monitoring services based on industry-leading AIOps (artificial intelligence for operations) toolsets. The functionalities to collect and consolidate critical performance and operational data insights will improve Proact's support offerings and provide even more proactive maintenance opportunities. Customers benefit as the insights can be used to prevent incidents from occurring, and to provide optimisation suggestions that lead to improved performance and efficiency.

THE PARTNERSHIP WITH LOGICMONITOR WILL ENHANCE PROACT EXISTING MANAGEMENT CLOUD SERVICES

We are excited about this new partnership as we are seeing a strong market trend in movement towards AIOps. It’s a new mindset within IT operations where machine learning is applied to collected data, to predict what will happen within certain environments. This new partnership will benefit both customers that decide to operate our monitoring platforms themselves and those who use our Managed Cloud Services” says Per Sedihn, CTO and VP, Portfolio and Technology at Proact IT Group AB.

“LogicMonitor continues to evolve its partner strategy to focus not only on global expansion, but also on hyper-localisation. In the wake of the pandemic, many enterprises have turned to local organisations with market leading expertise to address their business needs,” says Sanjay Gupta, Global Vice President of Channels and Alliances at LogicMonitor. “We recognize the power in aligning with companies that not only have a global footprint but also established trust within their local markets. Partnering with Proact extends LogicMonitor’s availability via a trusted global IT managed services provider who has strong local ties within their key markets.”

The new partner agreement with LogicMonitor stretches across all countries in which Proact operates and will also act as a foundation for enhancing Proacts existing managed cloud services.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Artificial Intelligence @ www.fieldservicenews.com/artificial-intelligence
• Learn more about Proact @ www.proact.eu
• Find out more about LogicMonitor @ www.logicmonitor.com
• Follow Proact on Twitter @ twitter.com/proact_it

IFS today launches IFS Cloud™, a single platform that innately connects all its products to deliver the end-to-end capabilities a company needs to orchestrate its customers, people and assets and deliver amazing Moments of Service.

Customers can choose to deploy best-of-breed or leverage the power of connecting their value chains across capabilities such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), human capital management (HCM), asset management (EAM) and field service (FSM).

With IFS Cloud, IFS offers a unique and single technology platform with one common user experience, one data model and one consistent support offering. IFS Cloud brings simplicity, choice and innovation to organizations that need to evolve to new business models, control costs, expand faster and serve their customers better. By implementing IFS Cloud, companies can easily scale and simply switch on new functionality (such as additional modules or new innovative capabilities) when the time is right for their business.

IFS CLOUD MAKES IT PRACTICAL AND AFFORDABLE FOR CUSTOMERS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE NEWEST TECHNOLOGIES

Likewise, customers can choose how and where they deploy IFS Cloud, which has been engineered for the cloud but can be deployed on-premises with a choice of residency. Unlike many offerings, IFS customers will benefit from the same solution functionality and delightful user experiences, regardless of their deployment choice, without compromise.

As a departure from competing, legacy suites and software portfolios that rely on complex and costly integrations, IFS Cloud is designed to make it easier and more cost-effective for customers to buy, deploy, run, and update their enterprise software. IFS Cloud marks the start of twice-yearly feature releases, giving customers the choice to move to the latest version as and when their business is ready.

Darren Roos, IFS CEO, commented, “The path to digital transformation is not a simple one. Most businesses are complex and have intricate value chains, which is why few organizations succeed and even fewer vendors provide the tools to truly enable it. At IFS, our single most important goal is to deliver value to our customers, and we want to provide a clear path for them to evolve to new business models, compete and win. 

Roos continued, “Customers have told me that their main goals are to drive efficiency, control costs and to develop better products and services. We know that to achieve this, cloud is a pre-requisite. Digital innovations need to be easily consumable and embedded into daily business operations, which is why I am confident that IFS will succeed where others have not. IFS Cloud is unique and delivers on customer centricity and experience as well as capabilities. I am proud to say we are again keeping our promise to deliver value so that customers can deliver on their Moment of Service.”

With digital innovations embedded, IFS Cloud’s architecture also includes new and improved application services for intelligent and autonomous business that can be natively leveraged across IFS products and across industries. This makes it practical and affordable for customers to take advantage of technologies such as machine learning (ML), augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR), artificial intelligence (AI), and internet of things (IoT), ready to use ‘out of the box’.  

IFS Cloud is being adopted by a number of pioneer customers across IFS’s focus markets of Aerospace & Defense, Construction & Infrastructure, Energy & Utilities, Manufacturing, and Service industries. One such customer is Cimcorp Group, a world-leading manufacturer of robotics and automation systems.

Commenting on the benefits of IFS Cloud, Cimcorp Technology Director Jyrki Anttonen said, “The manufacturing and manufacturing service industries are very dynamic and highly competitive, which means we are constantly looking for technologies that will allow us to work smarter and faster than our competitors. Company growth is certainly a goal, but we are a global business and therefore we need to have visibility into our operations globally so that we can target efficiencies, control costs and devise news ways to create value for our customers. IFS Cloud is a platform with next-generation technology built for our industry and this gives us the confidence we need to achieve this and flank the competition.”

IFS Chief Product Officer Christian Pedersen said, “IFS Cloud was designed and built to respond to customers’ needs when shifting to digital business models; something we never lost sight of over the last two years.” Pedersen continued, “We recognize that IFS Cloud will be pivotal in bringing success in a customer’s business and this shaped our approach in several areas: being able to make fast and informed decisions based on a single data model, being completely open with native APIs and providing one single upgrade experience so that customers can focus on what is important, which is to deliver exceptional moments of service to their customers.”

Also released today is the first instalment of IFS’s application lifecycle management capability, IFS Lifecycle Experience. IFS Lifecycle Experience features a portal that puts users in control of their application by fusing multiple touch points, to give them access to information, tooling, code, and permissions.

Learn more about IFS Cloud at www.ifs.com/corp/ifs-cloud/ifs-cloud-overview.

Hear what IFS customers have to say during the digital launch event: www.ifs.com/possibilities.

For additional information on IFS Cloud, read blogs from Antony Bourne, Christian Pedersen, Dan Matthews, Michael Ouissi, Riccardo Bocci and Raymond Jones.

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Further Reading:

• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com/
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Learn more about the launch of IFS Cloud @ ifs.com/possibilities 
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/ifs

 

 

 

In a recent edition of the Field Service Podcast, Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland sat down with Patrick Jansen, Field Service Manager, VBR Turbines, about why they decided to undertake an in-depth build of their own bespoke IoT solution.

"It all started about 6 years ago. We are an MRO (maintenance and repair organisation)  so we do own anything, we don't produce anything, our business is service. We saw that our market was changing. There was knowledge drain, changes in the labour market and more." Jansen explained. 

"So we started to look at what our service deliver should be like ten years from now and alongside that how could we overcome the challenges that we face in the labour market and how could we address the knowledge drain with our customers. There were a couple of things that saw needed to be done.

"One of the main drivers for us was to create an additional tool to facilitate remote support for the customer but also do diagnostics on the assets. This is because in the energy market within Europe has changed significantly." he added.

One such change has been the shift within the energy sector is that the traditional way of working with a predictive maintenance schedule was to base the schedule on running hours, but this is no longer an appropriate methodology as the amount of running hours has reduced. 

However, there were other benefits that Jansen and the team at VBR Turbines were able to benefit from - including the reduction in training time for new engineers. 

"The remote solutions can help people to get trained faster, the time to training a field service engineer really dramatically reduced." Jansen added. 

 

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Want to know more? Check out the Full Podcast in our Premium Content Library by clicking the button below or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes 

 

Field Service News Research identifies trends amongst field service organisations and the Internet of Things when it comes to the KPIs...

A recent Field Service News Research has taken a deep look into how field service companies are continuing face up to the challenge of harnessing the vast amounts of data they are accessing each day... 

 

The Growing Dual Challenges of Data in Field Service... 

In a recent article for Field Service News Research, Kris Oldland explored some of the key findings their current research into the use of KPIs amongst field service organisations has revealed when it comes to analysing,  interpreting and reacting to data...

"In today’s connected world, there is just simply so much data being created that we are very much in danger of being overwhelmed and consumed by it unless we are not careful." Oldland wrote. 

"Paralysis by analysis can be a genuine issue that can stifle innovation. In a customer-orientated world, the ability to adapt quickly is becoming a crucial aspect of modern business. Yet, at the same time, so is the increasingly hackneyed phrase ‘data is the new gold’."

"The ability to be able to monitor, measure and then dissect each aspect of our operation - whether it be internally within our teams and operations or externally with regards to our customer interactions, can offer us the ability to leverage vast amounts of untapped insight into our businesses that can literally open up new revenue streams, or at least maximise to the fullest potential those we already have in place," he continues.

Some of the headline findings within the research which Oldland explored within the article include: 

• 67% of field service companies are now using IoT to provide data from assets in the field.
• 72% of these companies are using data from connected assets to predict failure and schedule maintenance around this data
• 54% of these companies can interpret data from assets in the field when providing triage
• 23% of these companies factor this data into the way they analyse field service KPIs

 

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To find out more and also discover the impact of servitization on the KPIs field service companies are measuring check out the latest analysis from Field Service News Research visit https://research.fieldservicenews.com/drownin-in-data-or-gold

Sigfox operator WND UK exceeds 90% coverage for secure sensor data network.

WND UK, the UK’s Sigfox Network Operator, has deployed the UK’s first wireless public network for secure sensor data, achieving over 90% population coverage in just 18 months.

The network uses Sigfox, a proven, low-power wide area network (LPWAN) technology, which is purpose built to provide low-cost connectivity and enable the use of cost-efficient silicon modules.

Sigfox is the world’s first dedicated low-power wide-area communications service for the Internet of Things (IoT). Harnessing ultra-narrow band technology, Sigfox provides basic connectivity to devices that do not require high throughput. This approach is ideally suited to the vast majority of IoT devices as it requires very little power – enabling devices to run for years on a single battery.

“Our Sigfox data sensor network is fully operational today,” said Tim Harris, chief executive, WND UK. “We now have over 130 channel partners and the list is growing by the day. These companies are using the network for real-world commercial applications – from metering to flood detection to legionella monitoring.”

“Sigfox has growing momentum worldwide,” said Luke Thomas from EBI, a WND UK Channel Partner. “If you want to deploy an IoT application, Sigfox is the logical choice. The other technologies we explored simply did not come close. WND UK’s network rollout has been extremely impressive. The Sigfox network is reliable and the technology is market leading. With thousands of active devices performing above expectation, our IoT deployments have been a huge success and award winning.’’

“We have pioneered the development of AMR, or automated meter reading, using Sigfox,” said Ian Rose, professional services director at PassivSystems. “As part of an ongoing deployment programme with a major utility, we’ve already delivered 3,000-meter readers for district heating installations, enabling accurate billing for residents. With 17,000 district heating networks in the UK connected to nearly half a million properties, the market opportunity is substantial.

“Most retrofit AMR devices use mobile GSM networks but achieving reliable signal connections can be problematic. Heat meters are often tucked away, located in a basement or in housing blocks with poor signal coverage. Using Sigfox is cheaper than using GSM networks and we get a higher level of coverage that offers better penetration within buildings. In addition to the improved reliability in signal for accurate billing, we can also collect data on the flow and return temperatures within a property to optimise performance of the heating system.”

“We’re continuing to strengthen the network by working with our customers to achieve deep in-building coverage where it’s required,” continued Tim Harris. “We will also be installing a further 500 repeaters during 2020, which will further enhance our coverage. The range of IoT applications is set for explosive growth and Sigfox is the natural, low-risk enabling technology.”

Research forecasts IoT gateways, routers and modems shipments will hit 8.0 million by 2023.
Berg Insight has released new findings about the market for cellular IoT gateways, routers and modems.
More than 3.4 million cellular IoT gateways were shipped globally during 2018, at a total market value of approximately US$ 921 million. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.5 percent, annual shipments are expected to reach 8.0 million in 2023. Cellular IoT gateways are standalone devices intended for connecting machines to a cellular network.

These include general-purpose cellular gateways, routers and modems that are enclosed in a chassis and have at least one input/output port. Trackers, telematics devices and other specialised devices are excluded from this report.

North American vendors dominate the cellular IoT gateway and router market. Cradlepoint, Cisco, Sierra Wireless, CalAmp and Digi International are the largest vendors worldwide. Combined, these five vendors generated close to US$ 500 million in annual revenues from cellular IoT gateway and router sales during 2018, accounting for a market share of 53.3 percent. Other important vendors include Multitech Systems, Systech and Encore Networks in the US, InHand Networks, Robustel and NetComm in the Asia-Pacific region, and HMS Networks, Advantech B+B SmartWorx, Matrix Electrónica, NetModule, Eurotech, Westermo and Option in Europe. The European and Asia Pacific markets are fragmented with a large number of small and medium sized players that generate annual revenues in the range of US$ 3–10 million. The North American market is dominated by a handful of major vendors, largely due to entry barriers in the form of carrier certifications required for cellular devices in the region.

“North America experienced the fastest growth globally during 2018, driven by deployments in the public safety, transportation and retail sectors”, said Fredrik Stalbrand, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. The region has also been subject to significant merger and acquisition activity in recent time. “Deal activity has been low over the past decade but has picked up since the beginning of 2018”, continued Mr. Stålbrand. He mentions as examples the recent deals such as Lantronix’ purchase of Maestro Wireless Solutions in July 2019 and most recently Digi International’s announced acquisition of Opengear in November 2019. In Europe, Westermo acquired the remote access specialist Virtual Access in November 2019, expanding the company’s presence in the utilities sector. “Several players continue to have inorganic growth as a strategy and further consolidation can be expected among IoT gateway vendors in 2019–2020”, concluded Mr. Stalbrand.

Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News hosts with Gopinathan Krishnaswami, Senior General Manager, Global Head, Infrastructure Alliances at Tata Consultancy Services as his guest as the two dive into the importance of data in field service including how much data is too much data and the importance of Machine Learning in getting actual insight out of the deluge of data you may be drowning in.