Blogs Service Lifecycle Management Made Simple: Product Updates, Enhancements & Upgrades

Service Lifecycle Management Made Simple: Product Updates, Enhancements & Upgrades

July 10, 2024

ServiceMax Asset & Equipment Service Management Software provides an easy, simple, and effective way to manage your complex equipment assets over their lifetime.  ServiceMax places asset information at the core of everything we do.  Every maintenance activity, from installation and commissioning to end-of-life removal and final disposition, is captured, dated and time stamped.  Simply put, the configuration of your assets is tracked and automatically kept current just by utilizing the system to administer maintenance tasks and work order execution.

How does technology enable product updates, enhancements and upgrades?

How do we do this? Upon receipt of your asset, and entry of its “as received” or “as shipped” bill of materials (BOM) in your ERP system, ServiceMax – through integration with your ERP – records the “as shipped” BOM within our asset object along with its asset hierarchy, current configuration, and any options included with the asset.  This “birth certificate” becomes what we call the “as maintained” BOM.  From that point on ServiceMax will capture and record every maintenance activity which impacts that as maintained BOM.  If your technicians complete a repair and replace some parts, those parts and part numbers are automatically updated in the as maintained BOM.  If a subassembly is replaced, the new subassembly with its associated serial number is inserted into the as maintained BOM and asset hierarchy. In this way, at any given time, your asset as maintained BOM is current and accurate.

What are the benefits of ‘as maintained’ asset data?

Imagine you have thousands of assets in the field.  They have been added over decades.  As time goes by, their configurations and ‘as maintained BOMs’ change as new parts, assemblies, and subassemblies are added.  What frequently occurs is a change is required. A safety letter, part recall, or field change order is released instructing maintenance to replace a specific make or model of component utilized in these assets.  In the past, without ServiceMax, this would be a huge undertaking.  The ERP only holds the BOM as shipped or received.  It does not have any information on what has happened to these assets in the ensuing years.  This would require days, weeks, and months of investigation, spreadsheets, and manual investigation to track down that particular part and in which assets it is installed.  This can be a real nightmare and is very difficult to manage and execute.  With ServiceMax, this is as simple as a few keystrokes.

What’s the benefit of field change orders (FCOs)?

Our Field Change Order (FCO) process allows maintenance staff to enter a search criteria (make, model, part number range, lot number range, etc.), select an action to take (open a Service Request, create a repair Work Order, etc.), and push a button to query the entire installed base for that particular part or range of parts in question. The system not only returns a list of the assets containing that part, but also automatically creates the requested outcome – Service Requests or Work Orders – to take the desired action for that request.  In addition, those FCO Service Requests or Work Orders can be tracked and managed by dashboards to allow management to see how quickly they are executed and to allow them to manage the exceptions to completion.  This is a game changer.

When is a Field Change Order (FCO) process useful?

This FCO process, or Equipment Service Campaign, can be utilized for much more than field change orders, safety letters, or recalls.  If a product enhancement is announced from the manufacturer and a service organization wants to know if customers are interested in purchasing this enhancement, they can utilize this functionality to target those customers who own those assets that can take advantage of the enhancement and, instead of creating a Service Request or Work Order, they can have the system create an Opportunity and email those customers with information about the enhancement.  They can also track those customer outreach efforts, monitor conversion metrics, and create work orders to install/implement those enhancements - easily, quickly, accurately, and profitably.

What business improvements can companies make with asset data?

Say a service organization wanted to target customers, whose assets are aging out with opportunities, to sell their assets back and buy new equipment as replacements?  This feature can run a query to identify assets over a specific age, hours of operation, or maintenance spend and provide offers to replace/upgrade/refurbish those assets.  Or imagine that those thousands of assets in the field have had a poor attach rate of extended warranties or service contracts at the point of sale.  A simple query can tell inside sales who is currently under warranty, when it is set to expire, and those customers that haven’t purchased an extended warranty or service agreement. Inside sales could also use this technology to mine for “Bronze” contracts to upsell to “Silver”, “Gold”, or “Platinum”.

The ability to know your assets in real time is fundamental to being able to manage those assets over their entire lifecycle.  Having knowledge of their current configuration, options, and coverages are all opportunities to maintain them better, improve their performance, keep them operating safely, and drive revenue growth through targeted upsell/cross sell of enhancements, extended warranties, and service agreements.  This is how ServiceMax Asset & Equipment Service Management Software provides an easy, simple, and effective way to manage your complex equipment assets over their lifetime.   

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Joe Kenny Joe Kenny, VP of Global Customer Transformation at ServiceMax, a PTC Technology, has over 30 years of experience in operations, sales, product development, marketing, and field service. Starting as a mainframe computer technician with the U.S. Naval Security Group Command, he has worked in Asia, the U.S., and Europe. Joe excels in customer relationship management, focusing on clear metrics and exceeding expectations, driving business growth and client retention.

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