By Jim Lundy
While others have tried, this week ServiceMax disrupted the service market by taking a leap and buying Team Collaboration provider Zinc. Zinc provides Team Collaboration capabilities similar to Slack and Microsoft but they offer more of a complete focus on the mobile worker.
Disrupting Salesforce and ServiceNow
Salesforce and ServiceNow both have Collaboration offerings that have tended to focus on Communities. Salesforce did acquire Boston-based HeyWire in 2016, but the product was still new and so was the market. Zinc has developed a solid customer base and differentiated use cases, which are perfect for service and support people. It helps to bridge the gap—making it easy for service people to collaborate on the go.
Service people get better work done when they collaborate.
Service People Solve Problems by Collaborating
Years ago, when I was at Xerox, Xerox Parc did an experiment with Service Districts. They found that the best districts with the best track record of helping customers had regular get-togethers where service technicians collaborated and told stories about how they solved an issue with a machine. Today, Team Collaboration software can get technicians and support people collaborating in a quick and easy manner.
From Service Scheduling to Engagement
The challenge for service and support teams are not just scheduling —it is about communication and collaboration. Many UCC providers offer solutions to solve this, but most are horizontal.
This is why we think ServiceMax is disrupting Salesforce and ServiceNow. We’d note that Salesforce is not standing still. That said, Einstein Voice is still a work in progress. All of this means that the field service market is shifting from scheduling to engagement.
The Future of Service is Collaboration-based Work Hubs
Combined with Zinc, ServiceMax can how offer a service work hub that helps people get work done. It is not just about automating service, it is about enabling service teams to do better work by making it easier to collaborate. The service market is changing and with this move, ServiceMax put all of their competitors on notice.