Earlier this week at the Service Council’s Executive Symposium, Will McNeil from Gartner showed an interesting chart about the correlation between service revenue and firm value. Most would hypothesize that the more revenue you gain from service, the higher your firm value.
But that’s not the case.
In fact, according to a study by Eric Fang, et al, there is a decrease in firm value for manufacturing companies that generate more than 0% and less than about 25% of their revenue from service. Take a look at the chart below:

So, companies in the study that were pure manufacturing an… Continue Reading →

Today ServiceMax announced our latest release, ServiceMax Spring ’12! This is one of our major releases of the year and includes some great new products and features, including ServiceMax for Mobile, ServicePulse and ServiceMax Orange. From our press release, here is a some more on each one:
ServiceMax Mobile
ServiceMax Mobile, comprised of ServiceMax for iPad, ServiceMax for Smartphones and ServiceMax for Laptops, gives technicians, managers and executives anytime, anywhere access to ServiceMax via the mobile device of their choice with full offline capabilities.
Servi… Continue Reading →

If you were at Cloudforce yesterday and didn’t get the message that Salesforce.com is all-in on social, then you must have had your noise cancelling headphones on all day. Marc Benioff was loud and proud about it, and this time, had some very real and tangible results to show from companies like Kimberly Clark, Activision and HP.
The idea of the social enterprise started as a vision, something people thought was cool but knew wasn’t for their business. But yesterday, I think we all got to see how real it is, and how social tools in the enterprise aren’t just for being social and… Continue Reading →

As this week winds down, so too does the ServiceMax kick-off for our new fiscal year. The entire U.S. based crew and even some of the Bangalore office all-stars gathered in Sonoma for a week of new ideas, team-building and plotting world domination. Well, at least field service domination, we’ll start there.
I think it’s safe to say that we all left feeling inspired and excited about the present and future of ServiceMax, and it was obvious that we all truly embody the theme for the week: Blazing a New Way. We’re reinventing an industry and, as our customer speaker Kevin Rusin o… Continue Reading →

As a nice follow up to last week’s post, “The Last Mile of Service is the First Mile of Sales,” ServiceMax will be presenting a great webcast next week to give you some real tips and ideas on how you can market and sell your company’s services better.
As is becoming very apparent, customer service revenue is essential to business viability in this uncertain economy. That means that marketing and selling it is a critical skill every company needs.
Stacey Epstein, our VP of Marketing, and ServiceMax customer Kyle Hurlbut, Director of Engineering Services at LitePoint… Continue Reading →

How many salespeople do you know that would go to immense lengths to get an in-person meeting with a prospect or customer? I know quite a few. In fact, I’m sitting next to some right now.
Now tell me, who in your company actually gets to see customers face-to-face on a regular basis? Yes, you guessed it, field service techs.
Just because they fix things, doesn’t mean they can’t sell things — especially when they are incentivized the right way. In fact, being so knowledgeable about the products they are servicing means they should be able to sell them in a very intelligent… Continue Reading →

This past Tuesday was ServiceMax’s most recent installment of FieldConnect in San Diego, and we had an unexpected visitor — Paul Allen’s yacht! (Sorry, it was too dark for photos). He tried to come to dinner, but we had to tell him: field service pros only… Kidding!
Even without Paul we had a fantastic group of folks join us at Island Prime from companies like Xerox, Skytron, Elekta, Brainlab and more. It was a great event on the beautiful San Diego bay and conversation ranged from the importance of service powering sales to carne asada fries, a regional San Diego delic… Continue Reading →

This time of year, you hear about people making personal resolutions to lose weight, quite smoking or get a new job. But what about your field service organization? Shouldn’t you make some resolutions for it too?
If you haven’t yet, then we’re here to help. Here are three New Year’s resolutions that will take your field service operation to the next level in 2012.
1. Get into the cloud!
Many of you may have already taken this step to field service enlightenment, but if you haven’t. NOW. IS. THE. TIME. I’m not going to harp on the incredible benefits of cloud… Continue Reading →