Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Simon Cooper, CIO of ServicePower (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about two or three customers and really double-click down into how they’re using your product.

Simon Cooper: If we look at the US, we have a Tier One retailer that uses the application. They have quite a substantial field service workforce that is out on the road every day. They use the scheduling tool, GPS tracking tool, and business intelligence tool to manage that workforce. They also use our third-party tool to place work into and extract out of that third-party space. They can act both as a job provider and a service provider, on both sides of that equation. That allows them to basically manage their workload. They can obviously fill-up less staff with the work they’re receiving directly.

Sramana Mitra: Does that mean that this retailer is in electronics or something that requires field service?

Simon Cooper: One of their core lines of business is appliances, electronics, and fitness equipment.

Sramana Mitra: Any other segments that stand out besides appliance and electronic retailer?

Simon Cooper: Another segment where we’ve done very well is in the insurance industry where there are claims adjusters and other types of claims file handler entities that are processing data. If you think about the residential insurance space, claims adjuster will be scheduled to come out and look at that property. Also, if you take this insurance step a phase further, we have a number of companies interested in using that platform once the claim has been adjusted and completed. There’s the actual repair portion of that. If your basement is flooded, you then need a number of trades to come in and perform the repairs or demolition work to put that basement back to how it was. Again, the platform supports that whole process as well.

Sramana Mitra: Would that be more or less representative of the segments that you cater to or is there anything else that you’d want to discuss?

Simon Cooper: There are two core segments to our business. We’ve obviously got some other area that we support around utilities and telecommunications. We also do a fair amount in the UK with smart metering, social housing projects, as well as the RSPCA in the UK. We are working with their field agents who are working for the welfare of animals.

Sramana Mitra: What are the trends that you’re seeing vis-à-vis cloud computing in your industry?

Simon Cooper: I would say that recently, our prospective and current clients have been focusing more on shifting away from nearly on-premise software to managed service – not only encompassing cloud-based infrastructure but also the management services around that in terms of tuning the application, creating additional integration or data points, providing insights and changes to accelerate ROI or productivity gains that they may be looking for.

Sramana Mitra: If you double-click into the field service space, what other stuff can you discuss?

Simon Cooper: When you look at this large, complex field organization with all the different systems that they use coupled with all of the back-office elements that may run with an independent contractor, being able to centralize all of that data and have it pass through a singular integration point becomes a critical element. If one chain breaks in that link, it can cause many issues for some of these large clients and manufacturers. We’ve been building a cloud-based integration layer to support all of these things and provide the connection points in. We are taking on the complexity of some of these SMB business platforms that are out there and merging that in, so that the appliance has just a single integration point to deal with.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Simon Cooper, CIO of ServicePower
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