Coresystems wants to do for on-demand field service employment what Uber has done for the ride-hailing business: allow qualified workers to participate in projects where and when they choose to do so.
As a result, the 10-year-old web-services provider has introduced something called the Project Management Module, a major new addition to its original field-service software platform that has seen extensive use in Europe for the last decade.
With the new offering, introduced March 7 for global availability, Coresystems is enabling its customers to crowd source their field-service operations through a new “crowd-service” delivery model that ostensibly reduces operational expenditure and risk, yet increases customer satisfaction and revenue.
Coresystems’ automated mobile and cloud-based field-service management software optimizes service processes such as workforce management, scheduling and dispatching, field parts and inventory management and team collaboration. This enables enterprises and small businesses to deliver dependable real-time customer service in the field.
Connects Qualified Technicians with Jobs
Using Coresystems’ crowd service, organizations can connect all of the qualified field service technicians for a certain service requested by a customer, and those technicians will then be instantly available to the field service organization. The Project Management Module enables this by providing easy-to-use functionality to help customers build project structures with phases, activities, dependencies and skills; an artificial intelligence engine to automatically assign the project activities to the required qualification/skills and dependencies; and an overview of the current execution of each project.
The Windisch, Switzerland-based company assists enterprises in the machine, medical and energy industries as well as small and medium-sized businesses in a variety of industries, such as communications, oil and gas, retail and wholesale, lower field service costs and increase customer satisfaction. It maintains a large database that keeps all registrants organized according to their skills, locations and availabilities.
Workers who sign up for Coresystems can pick and choose where and when and what projects interest them. This mirrors Uber, whose drivers can work whenever and wherever they choose.
Key features of the Project Management Module include:
—management of project phases, activities, dependencies and related properties to help customers quickly establish project structures;
—the ability for customers to release their projects to the crowd with automatic assignment to the right technician; and
—a comprehensive overview of each project execution.
More than 155,000 global users deploy this service in their daily field-service routine. Coresystems features connectors for SAP Business One, SAP ECC, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics AX & NAV, Oracle, abas ERP, and ProAlpha, the company said.
Can Find Workers for All Levels of Projects
Crowd Service enables companies to extend their workforces by crowd-sourcing throughout an enterprise’s ecosystem, from subcontractors to partners and down to freelancers, CEO and founder Manuel Grenacher told eWEEK.
“We’re using artificial intelligence to schedule people with the right skills at the right time to achieve the best customer-service experience,” Grenacher said. “What we’ve learned over time in dealing with large companies (especially with telcos), is that their customers expect service delivered on demand in real time. But large companies have struggled to go after this trend because they don’t have enough workforce, and of course, it’s really expensive.”
With the continuing trend toward mobility in lifestyle and workstyle, the on-demand work world appears to be on an upward swing. “An estimated 7 million people are now working in the on-demand work world,” Grenacher said. “High-skilled people, especially in the engineering area, development, arts—so the on-demand world is becoming a really important thing.”