Xylem Customer Story

CORPORATE OVERVIEW

As a leader in global water technology, Xylem is committed to developing innovative technology solutions to tackle the world’s water challenges. Their products and services move, treat, analyze, monitor, and return water to the environment in a variety of markets including agriculture, environment, and food and beverage. To address resource challenges and build smarter, stronger infrastructure for water, electric, and gas utilities, Xylem has created a portfolio of smart metering, network technologies and advanced data analytics solutions. Their application expertise also ensures that their customers, partners, and OEMs can get the product and system performance they expect.

CUSTOMER QUICK FACTS

Company:
Xylem Inc.

Industry:
Mechanical or Industrial Engineering

Size:
10,001+ employees

Headquarters:
Rye Brook, New York

Website:
https://www.xylem.com/en-us

“More than 20% of operating income comes from service activities and it is increasing!”

Helena Sundqvist
International Service Application Manager

Challenge

Meeting customers’ expectations is key for Xylem. Their 130 workshops across the world focus on providing service for Xylem’s array of products. However, the company was facing a challenge: there were a variety of ways and platforms used for organizing their service operations, including whiteboards.

“We really needed a system to lay back on, and to use across all these workshops across the world,” explained Helena Sundqvist, the company’s international service application manager. Service revenue is important to Xylem, as it is a big part of their total revenue.

In order to find consistency across platforms and ensure service contributes to the bottom line, Xylem began the search for a service management system.

Solution

“Several systems were investigated,” Sundqvist pointed out. ServiceMax stood out though. At the time, Xylem had recently decided on a new CRM, which was hosted on the same platform as ServiceMax. The idea of having their CRM and FSM tool tied together was very appealing to the company.

Besides the system the tool was built on, Xylem was very interested in a variety of ServiceMax’s features, including scheduling and dispatching, work order handling, contract management, installed base management, and the ability to go mobile. Today, many of their workshops are utilizing these functionalities across iPads.

"Mobility is very important to us. Being able to use the iPad connected or not connected to the internet is very food for service technicians in the field."

Results

“Now we feel like we have a good process,” Sundqvist shared. With the help of ServiceMax, Xylem’s SMS, service management system, is mainly made up of ServiceMax, and the company is continuing to implement the product across their workshops. This consistency is extremely helpful, as more than 20% of operating income comes from service activities, and it’s only going up!

This centralized system has helped technicians. Sundqvist explained, "they have a much better follow up of work orders. We can log them and then follow up on locations, problems, and technicians and have a much better control of our service work. It is easier for technicians to offer things in place, and to document them. It's a faster rotation and ordering process."

ServiceMax is also a benefit to Xylem's customers, who now have much more visibility into the status of a work order: what it's about, where and when the parts are coming, and when the case should be closed.

With successful ServiceMax implementations in her pocket, Sundqvist has some advice for those looking to launch a new tool, “make it as simple as possible. Small steps. And make sure your resources, like your service technicians, service management, and back office, are available during the process. They can help define requirements.”