ServiceChannel Fixes an Entire Industry With Analytical Insight

Adding Insight Transforms Facilities Management

Facilities management is an industry that keeps people, processes, and buildings working. Currently, more than 200 global brands use the ServiceChannel Service Automation platform to manage more than 100K external locations.

But what is ServiceChannel exactly? Think of it as a larger version of Angie’s List for facilities management. ServiceChannel runs a single SaaS platform to source, procure, manage, and pay for maintenance services from commercial contractors. The complete source-to-settle solution combines both web and mobile-based work order management of everything from finding qualified contractors to managing labor and supplies, straight through to final payment.

“Our platform lets you initiate and validate work performed in the field,” explains Sid Shetty, Vice President, Global Services at ServiceChannel. “Facilities can have one solution that manages all service requests, all proposals, and all invoices across all trades, categories, and locations.”

But ServiceChannel wanted to do more. Knowing that advanced analytics and benchmark results would help its multi-site customers optimize their businesses, it decided to up the ante.

“We wanted to give our information-hungry customers a way to unlock the power of our enormous amount of data,” says Shetty. “But we wanted to concentrate on building a world-class facilities management platform, not manage a BI solution.” In a game-changing, strategic decision, ServiceChannel chose to equip customers with insight powered by GoodData. Using GoodData, ServiceChannel was able to embed advanced analytics within its service offering in less than 90 days.

Empowering Facilities with Self-Service Analytics

ServiceChannel now enables facilities managers, finance/procurement professionals, and senior management worldwide to better understand their operations, reduce costs, and improve efficiencies. Additionally, it enables external contractors to win more business by leveraging the insights they receive from the Contractor Scorecard.

By enriching its platform, ServiceChannel can now equip its clients with scorecards and dashboards that track contractor performance and deliver cost clarity across the entire enterprise.

According to Paul Walsh, Former Gap, Inc. Director of Strategic Sourcing, “ServiceChannel is transforming the facilities management industry, assisting companies to better understand and run operations and their external service providers to better compete.”

As Myriah Kingen, Facilities Director for Burlington Coat Factory, explains, “The biggest opportunity is the visibility and accountability it brings to both the store level and to the contractors — allowing us to better manage our spend across the board.”

Helping Contractors Compete More Strategically

Contractors also benefit from insights provided by GoodData. With visibility into how they compare with other vendors based on ServiceChannel benchmarks on costs, turnaround time, and invoicing workflow, they can optimize operations by making data-driven decisions about how to improve resource allocation and better meet customer needs.

“ServiceChannel allows us to do a better job managing our customers’ service and maintenance,” said Ron Praeger, COO of HVAC company Brinco. “With its new Contractor Console, we have a more graphical view of all of our client information — so we never miss anything important. And with the MyScorecard feature, we can flag any SLA problems before the client calls, and show clients and prospects how we’re exceeding expectations.”

ServiceChannel helps keep contractors accountable for work they perform by providing unbiased, independent data on contractor performance.

Since GoodData works with unlimited data sources, ServiceChannel is testing the boundaries of what data can be used to empower its clients with weather data and prescriptive analytics.

“With GoodData, we’re able to continually innovate, improving our business along with our clients’ results,” says Shetty. “As we expand our offering and add more analytics into the workflow of ServiceChannel itself, we can effectively increase our clients’ arsenal of BI insight while simultaneously creating new revenue sources for ourselves.”