ServiceChannel
Transforming Conventional Field Servicethrough Transparency

It wasn’t a pleasant early morning for Mr. X—who manages an NY-based global retailer—when he received the news of a problem that had occurred in the scheduled maintenance of facilities at a store located a thousand miles away in Iowa. After struggling for hours, he somehow got connected to a local Iowa contractor who could fix the issue. However, while sending a request to someone he had never met in person, it became impossible to ensure if the person possessed the right certification, background checks, and insurance to come to his store without putting it at risk. Mr. X also lacked the visibility into the entire process wherein he could confirm if the issue was fixed at the predetermined cost estimate. “The biggest problem here is transparency. You can’t see or measure that transaction from a thousand miles away. This is what our solution makes possible,” begins Tom Buiocchi, CEO of ServiceChannel. Enabling fundamental restructuring of the conventional field service model for multi-site customers, ServiceChannel offers a modern, cloud-based service automation and reporting platform, allowing businesses of all sizes to connect, collaborate, and drive business performance through transparency.

ServiceChannel’s Service Automation platform completely automates the service delivery process and enables clients to manage their contractors, work orders, preventive maintenance, assets, invoices, payments, compliance, risk, and sourcing— all from a single dashboard or mobile device. The SaaS solution takes an Uber-like approach in providing unparalleled visibility for facilities managers across their entire chain, with multiple vendors and locations simultaneously. Driving true ubiquity, the solution assists both contractors and facility managers to intercommunicate while maintaining vital digital records of jobs being performed and allows them to issue and track service requests and work progress in real-time.

The Service Automation software provides real-time GPS tracking to track key information such as the contractor’s arrival and departure time that helps to determine the overall cost and service level compliance. The solution also focuses on the safety and security aspect of the customers and displays the contractor’s basic information including name, number, and ETAs. “Our goal is to provide more transparency, measurements, certainty, and the best deal,” says Buiocchi.

Our goal is to provide more transparency, measurements, certainty, and the best deal

Having worked on over 75 million transactions, ServiceChannel applies various machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms on its large datasets to identify the “standard” time and costs of a particular job based on the location, and tracks the success rate of the independent contractors who operate on its platform. They also leverage IoT for proactive monitoring of organizational assets such as elevators, refrigerators, and air conditioners. ServiceChannel also helps COOs, as well as CFOs and finance professionals in meeting regulatory compliance by maintaining a precise digital copy and time stamp of every transaction.

Buiocchi cites an example wherein ServiceChannel supported Charlotte Russe, a San Diego-based clothing retail chain store, to reduce costs and streamline operations across the company. Limited visibility and transparency in operations and slower vendor response times for work orders posed as the key challenges. Service Automation’s Analytics module was implemented for tracking of essential data such as KPIs such as spending. It’s Contractor Scorecards module was used for quarterly performance reviews with vendors, and it’s Compliance Manager for automating the tracking of contractor compliance and documentation. ServiceChannel enabled the client to save more than $1.5 million in just light bulb replacement costs by enforcing procurement policies, eliminating more than 60 hours per week of invoice and payment processing work, and reduce full work order resolution time by 54 percent.

ServiceChannel is currently embedding more predictive and proactive analytics into their Decision Engine offering to help customers save even more time and money. They are also working on enhancing their Site Access functionality, which will enhance store safety by requiring each contractor to present details such as picture and a barcode for identity and background confirmation. The company is also investing in IoT and AI to provide asset tagging that will help clients to monitor individual device behavior.