Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Simon Cooper, CIO of ServicePower (Part 1)

The field service industry is heavily impacted by cloud computing. Here’s a short conversation with one of the players.

Sramana Mitra: Simon, let’s introduce our audience to you as well as to ServicePower.

Simon Cooper: My name is Simon Cooper. I’m the CIO of ServicePower. ServicePower has been in the field service management space since the early ‘90s. Originally, we were funded from a research project in Europe as part of ICL Fujitsu to develop artificial intelligence-based algorithms to solve complex scheduling problems. From there, we’ve evolved into a field service management leader.

We specialize in providing a software platform to a variety of clients in a number of industry verticals from insurance, technical service, and utilities to residential service. We provide them with the ability to manage their fieldwork force processes in a centralized platform.

That breaks down into three specific areas of where you want to place work. Some of our clients have captive staff that is out in the field managing a variety of work throughout the day. We have a scheduling product that optimizes and manages their routes. We also have another product that aligns with clients that may use a network of independent third-party contractors. As those contractors are not necessarily dedicated, they use the software platform to search for availability and book work in that open availability, manage the whole labor parts, and even warranty claims processing through it. The third component deals with the marketplace that allows users to place work into an open platform where third-parties could come in and bid on that work in terms of date, scope requirements, or price. Think of that as the reverse of eBay as service.

We also have mobile applications to mobilize those workers in the field providing them with the day-to-day needs of the actual device that they’re using. We have a device diagnostic mobile platform. We also have business intelligence platform that aggregates all of the core data together for our clients and allows them to get a 360-degree view of their business data and drill into more detail in terms of their level of service, compliance, fraudulent detection, as well as general business analysis. We also have a ratings platform that enables us to collect data and reviews and publish those reviews on third-party service providers across a wide number of industries. Essentially, we provide consumers and job providers with detailed five-star rating information about the quality of work, price, and other factors that you’d expect to see in a rating system. In a nutshell, that’s the whole platform.

Sramana Mitra: How big is the company?

Simon Cooper: We’re around 100 people spread between the UK and the US.

Sramana Mitra: And the revenue range?

Simon Cooper: Range is about $20 million.

Sramana Mitra: You are a UK-headquartered company?

Simon Cooper: Yes, we’re headquartered in Stockport, just outside of Manchester.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s take some of your customers. Are your customers mostly enterprise customers?

Simon Cooper: Although we do have some products, which are targeted towards the SMB space, enterprise customers are our main focus.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Simon Cooper, CIO of ServicePower
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