GE Acquires ServiceMax – Great News for D365 Field Service

GE Digital announced it was buying ServiceMax, the cloud-based field service management company. Read more about the purchase and what it means.

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    On November 14th, GE Digital announced it was buying ServiceMax, the cloud-based field service management company, for $915 million. GE is heavily invested in developing their Predix Platform, on top of which it hopes companies will build applications that take advantage of the data coming off of IoT-connected devices.  “This acquisition builds upon our ongoing efforts to enhance our overall technology stack around the Predix platform and advance our Industrial Internet vision,” Bill Ruh, GE Digital CEO said in a statement. “Improved productivity is critical for the Industrial Internet and digitizing field services is a cornerstone of a successful digital industrial strategy,” he added.

    All of this is great news for GE and their customer base of large enterprise customers, but it should give pause to the mid-market and smaller enterprise businesses that make up the bulk of the market for Field Service Management software.  Companies of this size invest in Field Service Management solutions to improve the productivity of field service operations and improve customer service in order to drive more revenue and increased profitability. The potential of IoT solutions is indeed great, but in order to realize these benefits, a ServiceMax customer is going to need an IT organization or consulting resources able to develop and manage two platforms – the Force.com platform (on which ServiceMax is based) as well as Predix.  If they want to incorporate accounting or ERP data and functionality, then that would mean managing and integrating a third platform, since neither Force.com or Predix support any major ERP software.

    A multi-platform solution based on best-of-breed components is manageable for General Dynamics or Boeing.  Force.com, Predix, SAP and Oracle, why not?  But for mid-market companies – or even multi-billion dollar (as opposed to multi-hundred billion dollars) enterprises, the costs and complexity of a multi-platform solution can be overwhelming.  CFO’s and CIO’s have been driving towards standardization for years in order to improve efficiencies and drive down costs – one of the big value propositions of Dynamics 365 Field Service.

    Microsoft Dynamics 365 is Microsoft’s new approach to end-to-end intelligent business applications in the cloud. Dynamics 365 unifies ERP and CRM into one cloud service with new purpose-built apps to manage all your core business functions, including Sales, Customer Service, Finance, Field Service, Operations, Marketing and Project Service Automation. It uses a common data model with deep integrations to Office 365 to seamlessly connect business apps with collaboration and productivity tools like email, spreadsheets and word processing documents. With built-in intelligence tools and a flexible, extensible platform, Dynamics 365 enables companies to stay nimble, adapt and innovate in real time.

    Dynamics 365 for Field Service empowers companies to deliver predictive and proactive service to improve customer satisfaction, first-time fix rates and resource productivity through advanced scheduling, resource optimization, and mobile enablement. As with all Dynamics 365 applications, Field Service is purpose-built, productive, intelligent, and adaptable. This means your organization can leverage end-to-end field service capabilities from day one and add other functionalities as needed.

    With Dynamics 365, Field Service, IoT, Sales, Project Service Automation, SA, and Accounting are all on one platform, with a unified database and built-in business intelligence tools – so IT staff only need to be trained on Microsoft technologies to manage, configure, or extend business systems.

    With over 800 professional services customers across the US and Canada, SBS Group is the leader in Microsoft solutions for services and project-based businesses.  If you are interested in learning more about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 or other Microsoft solutions, please email us info@sbsgroupusa.com or call 888.725.2555.


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