Spring has arrived, and so has our Spring ’15 release; boasting a number of enhancements that help organizations manage the delivery of service in the field. To name just a few:
- AirPrint of Smart Docs for iPhone and iPad; making it easier to leave behind a professional-looking work report or service quote with your customer
- Dispatcher time savers, such as improvements to the advanced technician search and related work order filtering
- Barcode scanning on iPhone and Android (already available on iPad)
- Support for Android tablets
While the features are numerous, the end goal for our customers is always the same – grow service revenues and improve productivity, all while delighting the customer. But for some organizations that invest in field service technology, this never happens. Why? Because the organization never actually adopts the solution.
Case in point: A huge consumer products manufacturer who recently chose ServiceMax has invested in mobile field service technology before – only a few short years ago. They purchased several thousand licenses (from their ERP provider) for their field service technicians. The web screens were daunting to technicians and dispatchers alike. A mobile front end on rugged devices was cumbersome and inflexible. The project was sitting idle, and techs were simply refusing to use the solution once faced with tedious screens of data entry, a bulky device, and a process that to them (considering the time it took to complete tasks) seemed even worse than using paper. Something had to give, and luckily they have landed with us.
Adoption is key. Not only for our customers, but for the health of our business as well. ServiceMax has a year-long internal “competition” we just kicked off at our annual company meeting, where teams from across the organization are aligned with select sales reps. The teams get points when a rep sells a deal, but we LOSE points if those seats sit idle. Team members work together to not only move deals through the sales funnel, but get our customers all the way to the finish line of successful usage. Our future success depends on it.
With that in mind, our product strategy team designs for adoption in mind with each and every release. Spring ’15 is no exception – even features that don’t seem usability focused all contribute to our adoption goals. How can I more easily search for parts by serial number? What happens if the event is rescheduled? Can I scan this barcode to check in/out this part from inventory management? What happens when the tech is going to be onsite for a longer “project” – even more than 14 days? Can the search read my thoughts? Or maybe make some form fill suggestions to keep me moving along quickly? Add that to support for all the slickest iOS and Android devices, and we think we have a pretty compelling case for adoption.
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