ServiceMax Announces New Updates to Better Manage Mounting Industrial Internet of Things Service Requests

Improvements automatically optimize technician schedules to scale service operations in the face of flourishing machine-triggered work orders

LONDON, UK. – April 4, 2017 – ServiceMax, a GE Digital company and the leader in cloud-based field service management solutions, today announced the Winter 17 release of its platform that allows organizations to better scale service operations to address the growing requirements of the Industrial Internet.

Service demands can come from anywhere – IIoT alerts, engineering changes, product installations, and manual customer calls from the field – and their increasingly frequent and often unpredictable nature can wreak havoc on pre-planned work schedules. As companies digitally transform themselves by equipping more machines with sensors by the day, keeping up with growing demand for immediate service raises the stakes higher than ever.

ServiceMax’s new features in Winter 17 automate the process of optimizing engineers schedules in real time so they can complete more work and dispatchers don’t have to manually stay atop of sudden requests. Additionally, ServiceMax has added new capabilities that both give field engineers more information on installed products in the field as well as avoid unnecessary maintenance.

Winter 17 Details:

•Real-time schedule optimization. While planned maintenance can be scheduled on a regular interval, most emergency, standard and connected-device service requests need immediate attention. Winter 17 provides the ability to combine the currently optimized events with a continuous feed of new jobs that need to be scheduled.

•Installed-base management. The new Installed Base App is directly embedded in the Field Service App to provide multi-product work orders, support for attachments and administration of workflows. These new capabilities enable field engineers to detail technical information on each product, attach pictures to installed base records, download product documentation and follow a clear workflow for installed base management in the field.

•Dynamic planned maintenance. Equipment traditionally carries a regular cadence of scheduled work; however, when the equipment actually gets serviced often differs from the planned date. This new feature helps customers eliminate unnecessary maintenance in the field by factoring in the actual completion of previously scheduled service. Field engineers will no longer get dispatched for a job until the machine actually needs service; thus further reducing the service cost.

Winter 17 updates will be generally available April 7, 2017.

“Service organizations are becoming the lifeblood of industrial companies struggling to find growth on product revenue alone – in fact, as several studies have shown, service is ballooning at almost twice the rate of product sales,” said Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax. “But scale won’t come automatically and the Industrial Internet revolution is forcing service organizations to significantly scale process to meet new demands. Our new functionality will bring our customers the ability to stay one step ahead of rapidly growing incoming work orders so that service can truly shine as a core strategic part of an organization.”

"IoT provides an infrastructure that lowers the cost of connecting and supporting smart devices by an order of magnitude. The corresponding rapid adoption of IoT is challenging the way organizations manage field service for both customer and internal assets,” said Ralph Rio, vice president, ARC Advisory Group. “With the ServiceMax Winter 17 release, the dispatcher and maintenance planner are equipped to assess and prioritize incoming machine-generated IoT alerts, and schedule field service technicians before a failure occurs. This fulfills the key benefit today of IoT, i.e. reducing disruptive unplanned downtime.”

About ServiceMax

ServiceMax, a GE Digital company, leads the massive global industry of field service management software – an estimated $25 billion market worldwide. The company continues to reimagine and create solutions for the 20 million people globally who install, maintain, and repair machines across dozens of industries as the leading provider of complete end-to-end mobile and cloud-based technology for the sector. ServiceMax goes to every length – from joining technicians on service calls to publishing the industry's leading online publication – to help customers discover untapped innovation, unleash new revenue streams, drive efficiency, and most importantly delight their end customer. To learn more, please visit www.servicemax.com.

Contact:

Vanessa Land
Email: vanessa@devonshiremarketing.com
Tel: 07768 693779