ServiceMax brings KPI dashboards to FSM, adds asset data to Salesforce Field Service mobile app

ServiceMax yesterday rolled out new features in its Field Service Management (FSM) products to meet the changing needs of service organizations in an increasingly connected world. The new features take advantage of capabilities in the Salesforce platform on which the ServiceMax product is built, including new dashboards powered by Tableau CRM to track service margins and costs as well as renewal metrics, and an updated mobile app for Salesforce Field Service that lets technicians look up useful asset data while they're out in the field.

The new functionality reflects changes in how enterprises look at the service management function, with a greater focus on its margin and revenue contribution to the business as a whole. To meet those expectations, service leaders and their peers across the enterprise need more accurate, joined-up data about operational efficiency, servicing costs, and customer revenue profiles. ServiceMax believes that adding these capabilities to its product line, including Asset 360 for Salesforce AppExchange (A360), takes its reach beyond the traditional ambit of FSM, as Joseph June, SVP of Product Management, explains:

Once we're talking about having service insights, or understanding profitability to perform service, in our opinion that goes beyond just the traditional FSM persona. Does it make sense for you as a business as a whole to understand how much it costs to service a specific asset? If you can break that down by locale, office, region, or you tie that in with sales performance with the renewals, I think that we believe that there's a lot of opportunity.

That's exactly what we're doing, expanding A360 capability to an audience beyond your traditional FSM, whether that be in sales, whether that be in the C-suite.

While today's announcement is focused on the Asset 360 product, which integrates with Salesforce's FSM offering, the new dashboards are also being rolled out to existing customers of its own FSM product, ServiceMax Core. Customers without an existing Tableau license can add this as part of their ServiceMax agreement.

Pre-built dashboards

Collecting and qualifying data has always been fundamental to ServiceMax's approach, and June says that when Salesforce acquired Tableau, this meant it was "a no-brainer" to use that capability to bring those metrics and KPIs into dashboards. He explains:

We know a lot of our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in field service — that's something that we're just very familiar with, based on our experience. What we are trying to do is, number one, can we bring visibility into those KPIs for our customers? Number two, once we do, can we make them actionable?

There are pre-built dashboards for analyzing the cost of providing services, service profitability, and location insights, across various parameters, with more to come. As an example, drilling into dashboard data could be used to identify particular models or production runs that are showing up with higher service costs. The off-the-shelf templates can be easily tailored to specific customer needs. June says:

We can easily slice and dice that type of data and bring visibility to our customers in real time. Also, we can enable their Salesforce administrators to be able to tweak and update that so they don't always have to rely on product enhancement, or professional services, to bring those capabilities.

This type of analysis has not been commonplace in the past, where the field service function has been asked to optimize the use of its own resources, but has not had the ability to take a view of whether the tasks it has been assigned make sense in the context of wider cost and revenue considerations. June elaborates:

If you think about traditional FSM, where we talk a lot about schedule optimization, the way it works in reality is about driving distance — how can we schedule these appointments so that we can maximize the total number of jobs that a technician can do per day? That's a very core question that FSM solutions try to solve.

It doesn't matter how many times you can service it, if you're just losing money whenever you service that particular asset. So having that type of visibility is key for actual success of FSM implementation. That's exactly what we believe A360 brings to FSM.

A new renewal dashboard brings together data from ServiceMax, Salesforce and other systems to help sales and account managers optimize renewal propositions, taking into account the full lifecycle of the asset. As June explains:

When you're talking about Asset360, when you're thinking about the full lifecycle of an asset, it goes way beyond having a technician fixing something when something goes wrong. It's about, did you get it installed correctly? It's about, can we sell more of this? Is there more added value? Is it performing? Is it saving their [costs]? That type of visibility is truly asset lifecycle management.

Asset data in the SFS mobile app

Once the technician arrives on site, they are now able to look up information from Asset 360 directly from the Salesforce Field Service mobile app. This includes useful data points such as what items and services are covered under the customer's contract, the service history of each asset, and information about locations and bills of material. This has all been tuned to be easy to use by technicians on site. June says:

If they are at the customer site, or they're in front of the assets that they're working on, the way that you would want to interact with that type of data is very different than if you're at the office or if you're at home prepping for something. So not only did we put it into the SFS mobile app, we created a targeted UI that are designed for mobile consumption.

Having information to hand about what is covered ensures service providers don't inadvertently perform work for free, at the same time as giving the technician the tools to act as a trusted advisor to the customer. June gives an example:

They can inform the customer, saying 'Hey, I can go ahead and perform the work against this particular coverage now, but you may want to think about renewing this particular coverage or plant.'

Summing up, June emphasizes that the common theme running through the new features is making better use of data, which he believes is a sweet spot for ServiceMax. He explains:

All these things — from service history, to hierarchy, to service insights, to renewal — it's really about data. Who has that high quality data in which you can actually start to apply these dashboards and algorithms to be able to drive insights out of? We think that in many ways, we're uniquely positioned, because we have this particular data, we understand how these data must be collected and utilized to bring forth some of these insights. You're really seeing the beginning of ServiceMax really focusing in this particular area.

Of course, we know how to get the right technician with the right parts in front of the customers and the assets to get the work done. But how can we do that proactively? How can we also enable other parts of the business to be able to maximize on service, as well as the asset itself?

My take

Customer service is no longer simply about fixing problems when things go wrong, and reducing the cost of that as much as possible. In an XaaS world where customer relationships are about engagement over time, it's much more about being part of delivering and maximizing value for the customer. In this new connected customer relationship, enterprises need the kind of data and insight that ServiceMax highlights here to ensure the service operation works for the business as part of a larger customer success motion.