Imagine a world where you can deliver new service models to your customers and outshine the competition because you have the right access to data.
Imagine a world where you can design and build products for serviceability, profitability, and sustainability because you have the right access to critical information.
And imagine a world where you can empower your people, at every level, with the right information and content so they can go out there and deliver for your business and make a difference for your customers.
You don’t have to imagine any more – you can make it happen. With the right technology partner and expertise, this vision is becoming a reality.
At LiveWorx 2023, Neil Barua, former CEO of ServiceMax and now PTC President of Service Lifecycle Management, outlined this vision for how companies deliver best-in-class service and offered insight into how he sees PTC’s role evolve in the future of service delivery.
“This is what you’ve been waiting for. This is the journey that your consultants and advisors have been talking to you about. This is the vision, and we are the partner to make it a reality,” Barua said. “We are the only company that is actively bringing these critical technologies together.”
[Watch Neil Barua’s full presentation “A New Vision for Service” on LiveWorx On Demand]
To back up a bit, about six months ago, PTC acquired ServiceMax, the leading provider of solutions for field service management and asset-centric service work execution. With this acquisition, PTC has significantly bolstered its service capabilities and is now able to fully support the product lifecycle.
On the main stage at LiveWorx, Barua discussed the closed-loop digital thread and how ServiceMax and several other PTC products support much of the ‘physical’ part of the product lifecycle once it is out in the real world.
“Service is a very critical part of the world; all of the world depends on service getting it right,” Barua said. From utilities to hospitals, ensuring the uptime of critical equipment is of utmost importance. “At PTC, we’re building solutions and technology to support those who build, design, and ultimately service critical machines.”
Asset-centric view
With PTC’s strength in supporting digital transformation and ServiceMax’s asset-centric service footprint, business leaders now have access to complete model-based digital thread, one that extends across the entire product lifecycle.
Why does this matter?
First, it extends the reliability of your assets. The reliability of a product is innately tied to a company’s reliability as a partner; the two go hand in hand. If you cannot service a critical asset in a timely and efficient manner, the customer will look elsewhere for their next purchase.
Second, gaining visibility into the product in the field allows companies to develop and build new equipment-as-a-service models and create more opportunities for engagement with the customer.
Lastly, there are increasing demands and regulations to understand the environmental impact of your assets across their lifecycles to address your ESG footprint. The only way to get a full picture of your product’s impact is to have a complete model-based digital thread.
All these executive-level initiatives require the digital thread to be acted on profitably. Because ServiceMax is built on Salesforce, customers can bring together the customer definition, the digital product definition, and the service record.
“This is why our customers have been extremely positive about ServiceMax’s inclusion in the PTC portfolio. To them, they’ve seen a natural link for years, and they have already been using data to bring business functions and business solutions together,” said Barua.
Phillip Greene, IT Director at Alcon Vision, shared that his company is already employing this connectivity in practice to bring more value to customers. Alcon develops innovative vision products to help people see better and uptime of their surgical and other products is of critical importance to eye care providers across the globe. Greene said they’re actively looking for ways to deliver more service and value to customers that will ultimately enhance care for patients.
“It’s about what we can do with data. In the IoT world, we can capture untold amounts of data coming off the instrument or the software we are now offering. We’ve recently launched SMARTCataract – a software that is connected to our diagnostic equipment in the clinic, where the doctor evaluates your eye for potential surgery. We can capture that information and aggregate it to see trends, not only with the biology of our patients’ eyes, but with our instruments as well,” Greene said.
They’re also using that data to perform predictive and preventive maintenance and to feed into R&D for product improvements in spare parts—a great example of the closed-loop digital thread at work.
Jean-Pierre Samilo, Vice President, Services Digital Experience, at Schneider Electric, said that asset-centricity is at the core of their services business. Like many other companies, they consider service a strategic lever for growth and have an ambition to grow services two times faster than the group average.
With digital capabilities on top of installed base data, they’re able to drive growth and provide an enhanced digital experience to customers with online access to their installed base and service data. Then, through IoT, they’re able to connect their products and deliver digitally enabled services.
“It’s about breaking down walls in the organization to bring improved value to your customers and deliver to your employees, and your shareholders. To do this, the ethos of service must move back into the DNA of the product and eventually into the DNA of the entire organization,” Barua said.
Final Thoughts
Throughout LiveWorx, there was excitement around the future of service at PTC. There is potential for customers of both PTC and ServiceMax to accelerate and enhance their digital thread initiatives, now under one comprehensive umbrella.
“PTC has truly put together the most comprehensive service capabilities and expertise, all under one roof,” Barua said.
Head over to LiveWorx On Demand to see Barua’s full presentation and other recorded sessions from the event.
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