Defining Service Lifecycle Management (1 of 3)

Defining Service Lifecycle Management (1 of 3)

Hello, my name is Bill Pollock. I’m the President and Chief Research Officer of the Service Council.

I’m here today with Bill Berutti, who’s the EVP of Service Lifecycle Management segment at PTC. And, Bill and I would like to share some of our thoughts on the Service Lifecycle Management market and the greater services community.

First question that I wanted to ask is a question that we’ve heard from some of the users in the marketplace and that is what is the true definition of SLM, Service Lifecycle Management, and how does that benefit them? How does that help their approach to running a service organization?

Berutti: Running a service organization today, Bill, as you know, is a big challenge. Service organizations are becoming more and more important to manufacturing companies and to their ability to achieve their goals for revenue, profit, and customer service. And the true definition of Service Lifecycle Management is to help an OEM or their service network create a complete understanding of the processes and information that flow throughout the service lifecycle; all the way from the time that a product is designed for service and introduce into service through its entire life in the marketplace: knowing what service occurred knowing what service might need to occur before it occurs, what parts to replace, what skills are require to be able to do that job, what parts are required to do that job, what training and information is necessary to do the job. Having all of that flow through one consistent process and one source of up-to-date and accurate information is the definition of Service Lifecycle Management in my mind. And this is a really important capability that an OEM and their service network needs in order to maximize profit, revenue, and customer satisfaction.

Pollock: PTC has acquired Servigistics and with that new capability what I am hearing from the marketplace is that there are new functionalities, new offerings, new value propositions that PTC is able to offer with respect with its SLM offering. How do you see PTC with its new resources going out to the marketplace? What do you have to offer to the marketplace that they would see as a true competitive advantage, a marketing advantage to them in dealing with their customers?

Berutti: The acquisition of Servigistics is an important milestone is PTC’s investment and service lifecycle management. What PTC did before Servigistics was cover things like technical information, parts information, and the warranty and contract management processes, which are all very critical, but our portfolio was really incomplete. We didn’t go far enough into the execution realm of service lifecycle management. Servigistics brings us that complete portfolio of capabilities. So that we can say with confidence that we now cover the complete product lifecycle for service. And as an example of that, Servigistics of course is the the leader in part’s management and planning, Servigistics has a field service solution. These and many other solutions from Servigistics complete the lifecycle of service support that PTC can now provide.

Pollock: So, in order words, now with the resources of Servigistics within the PTC family you now have the capability of providing the end-to-end service lifecycle management solution to OEMs.

That’s correct, Bill. We’ve always had a vision of completing the service lifecycle support, but without Servigistics we really couldn’t do it. And it's more than just being a single provider; it’s having the ability, as I said earlier, to leverage that information across the entire lifecycle, throughout the entire lifecycle of service. So, for instance, the field service application for Servigistics, in combination with their other solutions and ours, can now provide a field service technician not only with their daily work orders and an optimized route for where to go and when, but to provide them with the parts required to do the job. Where are the parts and are they available? What technical information, training, and skills are required for them to be able to be able to do the job when they get there? What is the service history of the product that they are going to support? That and much more information is now available within the combination of solutions that PTC provides to address Service Lifecycle Management.

Pollock: And, in combination with some of the other resources that you either built of acquired over the past several years, you’re among the leader, what we’re hearing from the marketplace, in terms of contract management; in terms of parts and planning and management. And now with the Servigistics capabilities, it gives you full, intent solutions to provide.

Berutti: It does and we think this is important to OEMs and their service networks because of the ability to support that end-to-end lifecycle is the key to being able to optimize revenue, profit opportunity, and to maximize customer satisfaction. We en

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