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Introduction

What is ServiceMax? Imagine a tool that streamlines your field service operations, increases efficiency, and boosts customer satisfaction—all while making your job easier. That’s exactly what ServiceMax offers. In the world of field service management, ServiceMax is a game-changer. This article will dive deep into the ins and outs of ServiceMax, its benefits, and how you can implement it in your organization.

Understanding ServiceMax

Overview of ServiceMax

ServiceMax is a comprehensive field service management solution designed to help businesses manage their mobile workforce effectively. Whether it’s scheduling and dispatching work orders, managing inventory, or ensuring customer satisfaction, ServiceMax covers all bases.

Products

1. Mobile Field Service

Your inhouse and third-party technicians are always on the go; don’t slow them down with old technology. With ServiceMax Go, our mobile app, technicians see an average 23% improvement in productivity—almost an entire extra day in their weekly schedules without additional overtime. Unlike other apps, ServiceMax Go not only provides information about any work order, location, routing, and asset to be serviced, but is highly configurable and extensible, enabling seamless access to IoT diagnostics, collaboration, asset database, checklists, knowledge base, parts search, and more.

2. ServiceMax Engage

ServiceMax Engage is an intuitive, turnkey mobile application that connects service organizations with their end customers—the owners and operators of the equipment they service—to improve customer experience and asset data quality. ServiceMax Engage addresses two major pain points facing service organizations: the desire for greater visibility into and involvement with the service process by end customers; and the challenge of maintaining complete and accurate asset data.

To improve the experience of their customers, service organizations are increasingly seeking to involve them in the service process. They do that by providing greater visibility into how service is being performed, and by giving their end users an active role in initiating and even performing minor repairs on their own. In turn, engaged end customers help improve the quality and completeness of asset data, contributing to productivity and equipment uptime for service providers and manufacturers.

While web-based portals can play an important role in an organization’s omnichannel strategy, they typically fall short in meeting customer expectations in terms of usability and functionality. Nor are portals designed to leverage end users in addressing the challenge of ensuring complete and accurate data for their assets. What’s needed to fill the gap in a mobile-first world is an app that is both user-friendly and asset-centric—or in short: ServiceMax Engage.

In the same way a banking mobile app lets you review your assets and transactions to gain better insight into your finances, Engage allows your customers to be kept informed of service interventions, service history and asset data quality.

2.1. Enhance the User Experience –

Delivering the best possible experience for its users is the guiding principle in the development of Engage. That means the Engage mobile app makes it easy to locate assets, raise requests, and keep abreast of appointments, work orders, and cases.

For the administrators, Engage provides a refined UI and dedicated tools to quickly set up, test, and manage the mobile app and its users. Engage also includes white labelling capabilities that allows them to fully brand the mobile app according to the CI specifications of the organization.

2.2. Empower Your Customers with Self-Service –

The most common customer request is to request a technician visit. However, basically every interaction with a customer includes an ask. After purchasing their assets, customers might move them to another location, sell them on, or add new assets acquired via M&A. Engage allows service organizations to accommodate all kinds of scenarios and create requests with minimal effort: Scheduling technician visits, opening cases, filing a warranty claim, updating asset location, reporting missing assets, requesting a site inspection, making an appointment with sales to discuss a new contract or equipment purchase.

For the Engage users, it only takes a few taps to complete each request. For example, from viewing all their assets by location, they can attach multiple assets to one request, all in one go – which is a real time saver. At the same time, to cater to unique requirements, Engage allows service organizations to ask for additional information before users can submit their requests.

Engage has chat and hotline features built in to keep end customers more involved and provide service organizations with greater oversight of conversations between technicians and the users on the customer side. Asking for remote support is easy. End customers can just open a hotline conversation that is connected to the affected asset, to instantly get expert help via audio, video, and annotations.

2.3. Improve Asset-Data Quality and Visibility –

Service organizations can enable end customers to view and interact with in-depth asset data including performance metrics, bill of material, service history, and product manuals. Engage can also be utilized to gather feedback about the equipment and ask for asset data updates, e.g., when an asset location has changed, or assets from a company acquisition need to be added.

When automatic notifications are turned on, Engage users can choose which service process updates they want to receive by opting-in and opting-out. They can also subscribe to Product Broadcasts channels to follow announcements about favored topics.

2.4. Appointments –

Instead of picking up the phone to ask when certain assets were last serviced or have preventive maintenance scheduled, end customers can view all past and upcoming appointments on Engage. They can also add appointments to their device’s calendar and see all assets with service due at a glance.

To let end customers know when exactly the field technician will arrive, Engage shows the technician’s location in real time on a map while continuously updating the estimated time of arrival.

How it works?

Engage is integrated with ServiceMax Go, the field technician’s mobile app and without prompts from either the field technician or the end user, the two apps communicate.
Every time a service visit is complete, service organizations can prompt the end customer, through a mini pop-up survey, to rate the technician’s work. Analyzing this feedback data helps service organizations make performance and resource decisions.

3.Preventive Maintenance

Customers depend on their assets to be running 24/7 and that puts pressure on your service organization. Many are moving from a reactive break-fix state to more proactive service models. These can be time-based, condition-based, or even predictive that rely on data from the machine itself that indicates when and how much service needs to be delivered.

To start on their preventive service journey, customers first need to understand their equipment and collect service data. ServiceMax’s Asset 360 solution supports field service organizations on every step of their preventive and proactive service journey. Asset 360 makes asset data, technical attributes and service history available to service teams. This information helps them understand the type and frequency of service necessary for the equipment before it breaks down. With this knowledge, service leaders can create time-based and condition-based maintenance plans that deliver the right amount of service. These service contracts help organizations plan for recurring work and parts, increase revenue, and deliver higher uptime and satisfaction to their customers.

3.1. Proactive and Predictive Maintenance with IoT –

Guarantee uptime and customer outcomes

IoT sensors on equipment are becoming more common, offering the ability for field service organizations to deliver proactive and predictive service driven by IoT insights. IoT data is a powerful way for an asset to tell service providers when maintenance is needed. This opens the opportunity for equipment manufacturers to sell equipment outcomes and uptime, instead of break-fix service.

Asset 360 supports proactive and predictive maintenance with end-to-end IoT connectivity powered by Salesforce’s MuleSoft Platform. Your developers can connect and orchestrate data on IoT devices quickly by using MuleSoft’s APIs that feature open standards and prebuilt protocols. This data can be fed into Asset 360 to trigger maintenance work orders automatically for proactive and predictive maintenance.

3.2. Automate Maintenance Plan Creation with Templates –

Preventive maintenance is essential for the health of an asset, and manufacturers worldwide offer a wide variety of maintenance plans to their customers. Depending on how many customers, assets, and options you have, the number of maintenance plans can balloon quickly. You can imagine that managing them manually can be very time consuming and error prone—and it is no way to scale a service business. In sync with Salesforce’s time-based, condition-based, and IoT-driven maintenance features, ServiceMax’s Asset 360 solution offers a templated approach, so you don’t have to create every plan from scratch. Together, Salesforce and ServiceMax accelerate the journey from reactive to proactive business models for asset-centric businesses, ensure maximum uptime, and help you get the most from your assets.

4. Zinc Intelligent Remote Service

It is vital for your technicians to connect to people and information that can help them solve issues quickly. If field service solutions don’t include a secure way to communicate, your field service personnel will fall back on using non-compliant, unmanageable consumer apps. ServiceMax provides a secure, real-time communication solution that connects mobile workers with the knowledge and expertise that drives results. Purpose-built for service teams, technicians can connect to experts, the back office, management, and each other using whichever mode works best – including 1:1 or Group Messages, Voice, Video, Hotline Groups, and Broadcasts. Central administration and communication analytics ensure the right people are part of the conversation.

5. Scheduling & Dispatch

Dispatchers and planners need to operate at maximum productivity to achieve the best outcomes for your service organization. Throughout the full asset lifecycle, dispatchers orchestrate all internal and external activities. That means supporting your dispatchers at every step of the field service delivery chain is key. Service Board, ServiceMax’s scheduling environment, provides comprehensive capabilities that help you improve technician utilization, service efficiency, and your customers’ experience.

Service Board’s modern layout makes work order scheduling easy. Your dispatchers will love working faster with intelligent, one-click recommendations for resources, times, and schedules. And Service Board has more to offer: a powerful search, map layers, personalized views, notifications, shift management, project scheduling, crew management, and many other features that will make your dispatchers more efficient when scheduling service work.

5.1. Schedule Optimization –

Continuously update your service schedules for maximum efficiency with real-time and batch optimization

Talented and informed dispatchers work wonders with the daily schedule—balancing technician locations, skill sets, certifications, priority customers, and situation severity. But what happens when the number of technicians and work orders goes up or sudden service requests arrive from customer contacts and IoT-enabled assets? As complexity rises, humans need a bit of assistance—that’s where Schedule Optimization comes in. Schedule Optimization from ServiceMax is an automated scheduling, workforce optimization, and dispatch solution that ensures the most effective allocation of your resources based on your business objectives. This allows your dispatchers to spend more time on work orders in jeopardy and treat exceptions that need more of the human touch to be resolved. Ultimately, your dispatch efficiency will improve dramatically and your technicians can complete more work orders each day.

6. Work Order Management

Managing work orders is at the center of field service operations. To grow your business, delight your customers, and reach your service goals, you need to move beyond pen and paper and digitize your complete work order process. ServiceMax’s field service software provides you with everything you need to manage and monitor work orders – from work order creation and assignment to job execution and debrief. Field service teams gain: a modern scheduling environment for your dispatchers, a consumer-style app that empowers your technicians in the field, and a robust, feature-rich platform that keeps track of all work performed on your installed base to help you manage your entire service operation.

6.1. Automated work order enrichment –

Achieve best scheduling results by adding data and logic
ServiceMax Core supports any work order creation process, whether automated, manual, from cases, customer requests, installed products, or triggered via API from an IoT-based system. This is how it works: Upon creation, work orders inherit data from the record they were created from. For example, when creating a work order from an installed product, the work order inherits information such as location and asset details. To get work orders ready for scheduling, the system enriches them with additional information and applies a rules-based engine that is driven by multiple criteria such as duration, SLAs, preferred tech, skills, and more.

7. Installed Base Management –

7.1. Critical Installed Base Visibility to All Relevant Stakeholders –

Asset-intensive businesses succeed by maximizing the lifetime value of the equipment they operate, sell, and service. But it is a challenge for organizations to keep track of equipment history, location, and components when they are out on jobs.
You need a powerful, fast, and easy way to gain visibility into as-maintained equipment and one source of truth for the entire organization. ServiceMax Installed Base helps you instantly know what is actually on site and automatically provides you with the knowledge base you need for your appointment, even when there is no internet connectivity. As a result, your service delivery improves, resolution times shrink, and new revenue opportunities multiply.
Considering connecting products to the Internet of Things (IoT)? Then installed base information becomes even more critical. The Installed Base provides the “home” and context for the data and diagnostics that will be generated by the product itself.

7.2. Visibility –

In depth view into asset attributes to support asset-centric decision making
Ability to track performance trends to determine appropriate maintenance or repair activities
An intuitive visualization tool for access to location, condition, product trees, and usage data
A holistic timeline of asset history in an interactive ad flexible interface

7.3. Mobile Access and Control –

Installed Base capabilities extended to field technicians on their mobile devices—even in offline mode
Allow technicians to view asset performance, add more products, or record competitive equipment installed on customer sites
Automatically download installed base data such as documents, videos, photos, inspections and location data for all products on a work order for offline use
Complete simple or complex checklists to ensure process or regulatory compliance

7.4. Targeted Actions –

Field Change Order (FCO): Easily search the IB for assets by specific attributes and create targeted campaigns
FCO Dashboards: Easily track the status of FCO initiatives to improve results
Create condition-based maintenance campaigns to improve proactive service capabilities
Asset-based scheduling (with Service Board)

8. Remote Triage

8.1. ServiceMax Remote Triage, Powered by Aquant –

ServiceMax Remote Triage applies AI to historical service data to help service organizations identify cost-effective solutions and avoid unnecessary truck rolls. By guiding the user through a series of questions, Remote Triage determines solutions—consisting of actions and parts—that can be ranked on the basis of likelihood of success or cost-effectiveness, allowing dispatchers to apply their judgment and preferences. The work is embedded within the ServiceMax platform, capturing data on the completed job that can be utilized for machine learning and product quality purposes. This “closed loop” ensures that the solution improves with use and drives customer outcomes along the entire service delivery chain.

8.2. Features and Functionality of Remote Triage –

• Powerful AI engine analyzes structured and unstructured service data using Natural Language Processing algorithms
• Service data analyzed from multiple sources, including work orders, installed base, accounts, parts inventory, and machine logs
• Uses machine learning to identify patterns leading to unnecessary truck rolls
• UI and simple guided question-and-answer process requires no user training
• Ranks solutions on the basis of cost-effectiveness and probability of success
• Recommends parts associated with identified actions
• Embedded in ServiceMax platform and can be invoked on cases, service requests, work orders, and installed products

9. Contractor Management

9.1. Contractor Management System To Manage Your Third-Party Technicians –

Outsource work and deliver top services to your customers
For all the outsourcing goals you have set out to achieve, your contracted partners are your direct line to the customers. To be optimally prepared for their jobs, and to hit their SLA goals, your contractors must be current on work orders, parts, service and equipment history, entitlements, and documentation. Third-party technicians also need to communicate with you and each other in case problems arise.
With our contractor project management software, ServiceMax Partner Community, you can securely share information with your partners, get real-time visibility into your partners’ operations to ensure accountability, and manage your customers’ experience.

10. Customer Self-Service

With ServiceMax Customer Community you can effectively connect to your customers and put them in the driver’s seat. With our feature-rich portal, customers can instantly access asset and troubleshooting information and perform tasks such as create service requests for their assets, view work orders, and see the service history of their installed base. Fully integrated with the cloud-based ServiceMax field service management platform, Customer Community becomes a conduit for your brand and a go-to for your customers.

11.Parts & Returns Management

The ServiceMax field service platform ensures you have full visibility into your spare parts across technicians and locations. Wherever you do your repair and maintenance work, and regardless of how complicated your processes are, ServiceMax keeps forward and reverse logistics efficient so you can keep your operations profitable. Named a leader in IDC’s Parts Management 2020 MarketScape, ServiceMax offers features to handle return merchandise authorizations (RMAs), field change orders for asset-driven recall management, depot repair, trigger-based auto replenishment, ad-hoc parts requests, and many more.

12.Entitlements

Keeping service contracts, warranties and maintenance plans up to date across customers, assets and locations is difficult to do, yet crucial to monetizing services. The entitlement capabilities of the ServiceMax field service software ensure that vital contract, maintenance and warranty data are accurate and available for every stakeholder of your service organization. For the back-office staff that means accurate billing and clear customer communications. For dispatchers that means seeing detailed contract information for every asset component of the installed base when assigning work orders. For the technician in the field even when working with no internet connectivity, it means their customer price quotes are always accurate. With ServiceMax, you can capture every growth opportunity and ensure that you never give service away for free.

13.Service Flow Manager

13.1. Address Your Service Needs –

The ServiceMax Service Flow Manager enables service organizations to adapt processes to market, organizational, and technology changes. The powerful business workflow engine ensures consistent service execution across mobile and web platforms without coding, while adapting to your evolving business needs through flexible configuration.
Prebuilt workflows, the result of years of experience in the service industry, can be executed on different objects of the ServiceMax platform such as accounts, service contracts, work orders, installed products, and parts, making it easy for administrators to implement new flows.

14.Field Service Analytics

14.1. Track the Right Performance Metrics –

ServiceMax Dashboards and KPIs provide you with actionable insights into your service operations, give you full visibility and a roadmap for improvements. With ready data and analytics on asset uptime, spare parts, customer NPS, work orders by status – you can leverage more than 90 self-service dashboards, and reports to understand the health of your service business. ServiceMax also offers Service Performance Metrics, a prebuilt dashboard to monitor critical field service metrics, such as first-time fix rate, technician utilization, and average response time.

ServiceMax for Different Industries

1. Manufacturing

In the manufacturing industry, downtime can be costly. ServiceMax helps reduce downtime by ensuring that your equipment is always serviced and maintained promptly.

2. Medical Equipment

ServiceMax ensures that medical equipment is always in top condition, helping healthcare providers deliver better patient care.

3. Energy and Utilities

For the energy and utilities sector, ServiceMax offers tools to manage large-scale field service operations efficiently, ensuring reliable service delivery.

4. Telecommunications

ServiceMax helps telecom companies manage their field service operations, ensuring that installations and repairs are carried out efficiently.

How to Implement ServiceMax in Your Organization

Assessing Your Needs

Before implementing ServiceMax, it’s essential to assess your organization’s specific needs and challenges. This will help you choose the right features and plan.

Choosing the Right Plan

ServiceMax offers various plans tailored to different business sizes and needs. Choose the one that best fits your organization.

Integration with Existing Systems

ServiceMax can integrate with your existing systems, ensuring a seamless transition. This includes CRM systems like Salesforce, ERP systems, and more.

Training Your Team

Proper training is crucial for the successful implementation of ServiceMax. Ensure that your team is well-versed in using the platform to its full potential.

Future Trends in Field Service Management

AI and Machine Learning

AI and machine learning are set to revolutionize field service management. ServiceMax is already incorporating these technologies to provide predictive insights and automation.

IoT Integration

The Internet of Things (IoT) is another significant trend. ServiceMax is leveraging IoT to enhance its capabilities, providing real-time data and predictive maintenance.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance is becoming increasingly important. ServiceMax uses advanced analytics to predict when equipment will need servicing, reducing downtime.

Summary

ServiceMax is a powerful tool for managing field service operations. With its comprehensive features, it helps businesses increase efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and manage resources better. Whether you’re in manufacturing, healthcare, energy, or telecommunications, ServiceMax can transform your field service management. Implementing it successfully requires careful planning and training, but the benefits are well worth the effort.