Astea International, global provider of field service management (FSM) and mobility solutions, and Software AG, vendor of Internet of Things (IoT) software and solutions, have teamed up on Tuesday to offer service organizations a comprehensive, turnkey FSM and IoT solution.
Astea’s Alliance Enterprise powered by Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT platform offers service organizations a scalable platform that is easy to deploy and proven to simplify asset maintenance, improve equipment uptime and elevate customer satisfaction and retention.
Astea’s Alliance Enterprise now provides seamless integration to Software AG’s IoT platform, Cumulocity, which will allow enterprises to monitor machines in real-time through cloud-connected applications so that problems can be caught before they occur; addition of devices, users, and equipment to the IoT platform so that the operation can be scaled up as required; and viewing self-service data analytics pulled together from field operations to deliver customers improved performance and maximized uptime.
As the number of smart devices deployed in the field increases, the Internet of Things is fast becoming the cornerstone of innovative and differentiated business solutions.
The availability of low-cost IoT sensors, higher bandwidth wireless networks, and more robust cloud computing infrastructure is moving traditional service delivery beyond simple break-fix to a more proactive and predictive business model. The turnkey solution from Astea and Software AG empowers service organizations to offer the type of proactive, outcome-based service delivery that today’s customers demand.
Service providers can immediately take advantage of real-time data across all key business operations to not only create usage-based maintenance schedules, but also to more accurately predict, and consequently prevent, equipment failures.
Additionally, service organizations can lower the cost of service delivery by reducing the number of truck rolls and improving inventory utilization. Lastly, they can meet greater service level agreement commitments with fewer resources by seamlessly leveraging IoT from within their FSM platform.
The Astea-Software AG partnership will further strengthen software by integrating IoT into Astea’s field service management platform. As customers increasingly demand maximized uptime, field service organizations (FSOs) face mounting pressure to move toward Outcomes as a Service (OaaS) models. Also, with more types of equipment to service and more advanced machines in use, a prerequisite to adopting such models, in most cases, is real-time monitoring through IoT connected devices.
“Thanks to the proliferation of IoT-enabled devices, customers are starting to expect specific solutions for their unique problems. They do not want ‘one-size-fits-all’ service offerings,” said Emily Hackman, director of global marketing at Astea International. “The integrated FSM and IoT solution will identify and analyze all valuable data from an organization’s entire arsenal of IoT components. Service providers can create highly personalized, usage-based service contracts by leveraging all of this collected data on how their customers are operating their devices. They can also simplify asset maintenance and improve equipment uptime by spotting trends and taking proactive action, all of which leads to higher customer satisfaction.”
“We are excited to be working with Astea as their strategic partner for IoT,” said Rob Risany, vice president of strategic alliances and channels at Software AG. “The data generated from IoT devices is only valuable if users can effectively analyze it. With this integration between Astea’s FSM software and Cumulocity IoT, enterprise service organizations will be able to harness real-time information provided by their assets in the field in ways that will improve service delivery, reduce costs and create new service revenue opportunities through differentiated offerings.”
