ClickSoftware
Powering the End-to-End Service Journey

The field service industry has to be fast-moving: take more service calls for increased growth in revenue. Alongside, providers need to be in the game and have technicians prepared to be dispatched at a moment’s notice, with eyes round-the-clock on the customer, the team of technicians, appointment locations, scheduling, and more. This multitasked responsibility has been made easier with technological interventions like field service automation, internet of things, field service dispatch software, among others in the field service industry. In this technological megatrend, taking the field service industry by storm is ClickSoftware—the frontrunner in cloud-based field service management solutions—that designs software in a quintessential blend of unparalleled industry expertise and state-of-the-art computer science. The company equips field service leaders with the smartest technologies and best practices around the globe to deliver real-world results, real-time recommendations, and operational intelligence. ClickSoftware’s solutions deliver meaningful, measurable business value by optimizing critical business processes in field service management.

In a world of hustle and bustle, every minute of the day matters for field service providers, as inefficient routing can lead to higher fuel costs and inaccurate schedules, and can result in fewer service calls for the provider and dismay customers with late or missed appointments. For decades, service providers have relied on point-to-point methodologies like “as the crow flies” routing and street-level routing, which have major flaws because of the fact that neither approach takes traffic into account explicitly. To quickly route technicians along the most efficient path, optimal routing takes into consideration all the necessary variables of travel, including live traffic updates and predictive routing. ClickSoftware takes it up a notch higher with its proprietary approach to optimal routing that incorporates turn-by-turn, predictive navigation powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, with live traffic updates. ClickSoftware’s industry-leading software treats traffic as a critical and explicit part of the routing algorithm and makes an essential distinction between real-time traffic information and predicted traffic patterns. Together, they make a combination that gives unbeatable precision.

Headquartered in Massachusetts, ClickSoftware provides automated mobile workforce management and service optimization solutions for companies. Click’s evolving portfolio of products and services in the field service management sector address an increasing variety of industry needs in the entire service chain, from scheduling employee’s shifts to performance measurement.

At the end of the day, even with everything planned in advance to go perfectly, unexpected disruptions are bound to crop up in an uncertainty filled space like field service.

With customer expectations higher than ever as they demand consistency and speed, organizations that are agile enough to handle in-day changes and make rapid, strategic decisions will thrive. ClickSoftware prioritizes customer satisfaction through early and continuous delivery of valuable service. The company’s idea is to help customers feel more in control: give them the assurance that someone is on the way to help by providing them with multiple channels to contact their technician.

2018 had been a banner year for ClickSoftware with industry accolades, customer wins, and record revenue. Added to that, Click achieved more than 100 percent growth in bookings from Click Field Service Edge (CFSE), a cloud-based platform that provides visibility, increases operational efficiencies of the field workforce, optimizes work schedules, and streamlines tasks for mixed service businesses. CFSE is an innovative field service management software, designed in a modular fashion to cater to a wide range of organizations. The solution is available in four editions: Essential, Professional, Professional Plus, and Ultimate, each supplemented by additional modules. ClickSoftware’s suite of additional modules is designed for enhancements in mobility, customer engagement, contractor management, demand forecasting, and capacity planning. These modules provide field service providers with the flexibility to adopt the necessary features and functions, and to expand as and when their business requirements evolve.

The CFSE Essential Edition is an intuitive solution for organizations to manage field resources’ calendars and availability, and ensure that the right resources with the right skills are being sent to the right place. The Professional Edition includes intelligent, automated scheduling capabilities that ensure optimization of field service operations according to a wide range of business goals, and dispatch capabilities to support improved productivity and efficiency. This enables businesses to strike the perfect balance between superior customer service delivery and operational costs regulation. The Professional Plus Edition offers service providers the ability to continuously optimize service schedule in a volatile business environment. Finally, with the Ultimate Edition, organizations that offer varied types of services are able to schedule and manage both long and short cycle work in one solution. It gives service providers the ability to share resources between different business verticals, which results in increased productivity and efficiency of the service organization.

Among CFSE’s modules, ClickSoftware’s enterprise mobility capabilities fulfill field operations requirements of a variety of users with a mobile platform that supports all major operating systems and includes a development studio with a visual forms editor to enable highly tailored applications.

The company’s customer engagement module connects the end customer with their field service provider through multiple interactive channels without the need for the end customer to install a separate application on their device. ClickSoftware’s contractor management capability gives service providers, and their contractors, greater visibility and control over the service that the end customer receives. The demand forecasting module helps planners create a highly accurate resource plan by merging historical volume and performance data with assumptions about the future. Capacity planning for CFSE streamlines planning and operational business processes, which improves the productivity and efficiency of field service by ensuring balanced resource utilization and SLA compliance.

To maintain strong and longstanding customer relationships with industry leaders, ClickSoftware continues to deliver speed and convenience across devices and channels without sacrificing quality. EPM, the largest multi-utility company in Colombia, has been a Click client since 2016. The previous year, the client approached ClickSoftware to fix a few schedule optimization issues that they were experiencing. EPM’s issues consisted of long drive times to appointments leading to employee complaints, missed SLAs for high priority jobs, an imbalanced schedule, and jobs being scheduled toward their expiration date. To get a clear understanding of the client’s current optimization processes and specific workflows, Click’s professional services optimization consulting team scheduled meetings with a group at EPM. After several discussions, the company zeroed in on the primary issues and keeping in mind EPM’s desired objectives, recommended two service offerings: optimization level 1 and schedule optimization tuning. After the optimization tuning engagement, there was a 24 percent reduction in travel time, which increased employee utilization. The response time for jobs had an 18 percent reduction, allowing EPM to significantly reduce the number of jobs scheduled after their due date. It finally resulted in a balanced schedule that led to an increase in technician utilization. Post engagement, EPM expressed immense satisfaction with the delivered services and reported a significant decrease in complaints from the field. ClickSoftware performs a customer satisfaction survey after each engagement, where EPM provided a 10 out of 10 rating, further accentuating the perks of the company’s optimization services.

In the highly dynamic world of field service, ClickSoftware has been spearheading the change and innovation in field service for over two decades, helping customers run a best-in-class mobile workforce. Now, in the wake of the exceptional year of 2018, Mark Cattini, CEO of ClickSoftware comments, “We’ve seen record top and bottom line performance over the past four quarters. Across our core verticals and beyond, there’s a greater understanding of field service and its impact on customer experience and employee engagement, and we’re well-positioned for 2019.” He adds, “Technology is becoming more intelligent, and our customers are embracing this innovation to deliver significant business value.”