Conny Berghald, CEO of Remotex, says the obvious benefit of Remote ServAd is reduced administration; he illustrates this by talking about what the system has meant for one of its biggest clients, a facility management company with more than 25,000 employees. "When they introduced the system to their facility management division, the goal was to reduce administration by 25 percent in the first year,” he says. “Six months later, they had more than doubled that figure to 67 percent."


Another benefit is the opportunity for companies to keep track of their business performance. "It's very difficult to run a company where 95 percent of the workforce is only at the office for half an hour each day," Berghald says. "But our system offers a range of management tools that, for instance, measure key performance indicators and look at what margins the company has in terms of material, hours spent on assignments and so on."

Remote ServAd also benefits customers' customers who receive regular updates about the status of a job. Berghald says that, when a service technician enters on his mobile phone that he has started working on an assignment or purchased material for a job, the customer is notified one minute later. "This extremely fast feedback process means they don't have to call for updates, resulting in less administration for everyone involved and a reduced bill,” he says.

Berghald says sales of Remote ServAd were slow to pick up when it was first introduced in 2001, mainly because of expensive mobile phones. But thanks to the huge technical advances made over the past six years, it has become an attractive investment for companies. Today, Remotex is one of Sweden’s fastest-growing companies, with 80 customers and more than 2000 subscribers.

Remotex hosts the system for subscribers for a monthly fee of about SEK 600 per user. Berghald says companies never have to worry about not making a good return on their investment. "Most repairmen and electricians charge SEK 350 for an hour's work, which means a company only has to save two hours on administration every month to cover the cost. Any additional hours it saves will only improve the overall company result."

Berghald is optimistic about the future and says he thinks all companies with field-service staff will eventually buy Remote ServAd or another similar system. "In the long run, those companies that are not investing in such systems will not be able to compete in the market," he says, referring to a report by US marketing research company Gartner last year that predicted sales of service-management systems with mobility features would explode in the future.

"The reason is that the return on investment is, in principle, better than in all other similar applications,” Berghald says. “Providing mobile tools to a field-service core means enormous advantages in terms of revenue and reduced administration."

The next step for Remotex is to launch Remote ServAd globally, which will happen during 2007. Berghald knows that the competition is a lot tougher on the international market but says he is not worried. "If there are talented competitors out there, we just have to make sure we are even better," he says.

Torunn Hansen-Tangen