Zuper has been recognized by APAC CIOOutlook Magazine as the recipient of “Top Field Services Solution Companies,” based on our proprietary methodology, reflecting its position in the industry. This profile has been developed by the APAC CIOOutlook research and editorial team based on insights from an interview with Karthik.

Zuper
Redefining Connected Field Workforce Management with AI and Cloud

Karthik, Director

In the year 2015, Tamil Nadu, India witnessed one of the most destructive floods of its kind; the hard-hit areas and after effects included property destructions and valuable data loss. “During this catastrophe, one thing that caught our attention was many small and medium-sized service businesses lost years of business history and contacts that were maintained in papers,” says Karthik, Director of Zuper. Karthik and his team realized that these businesses were not digitized in terms of managing their portfolio and there germinated the idea of Zuper. The founders stepped into the water to provide service industries and other businesses that thrive on field workforce, a platform to efficiently manage the operations, business processes, and interactions with the field workforces. Currently offering its solutions in India and Singapore, Zuper is an enterprise mobility platform that enables organizations to manage, modernize, and transform field and remote workforce.

Going by Karthik’s words, with the uberization of businesses, providing the best experience to the customers have become crucial than ever. However, in case of field workforce, organizations are still struggling to provide the best customers experience and to keep up with the customer demand. This is because there are multiple challenges that the organizations are facing while dealing with field workforce. Firms don’t have the visibility on the field workforce utilization resulting in low first-time fix rate and frequent repeat visits. There are no KPIs, analytics and performance metrics to run operations effectively. Organizations use multiple disparate tools to run service businesses which results in loss of critical information and audit trails. And finally, there is no collaboration between field workforce and with backoffice resulting in low quality jobs, and missed SLAs.

With all these challenges and issues, there is lack of clarity and disconnect at all levels of the organization dealing with field workforces resulting in poor customer experience and frustrated customers. Today, customers expect up-to-the-minute information about events, wants to be notified when the technician is on the way, what time the technician will arrive and how long it will take to complete the job. And, most importantly the confidence that the job will get done right on the first job.

Our goal is to coin Zuper as a verb in the field workforce management industry and enable organizations “Zuperise” the field workforce and ensure the right person is at the right place with the right knowledge and the right tool at the right time, every time

“As per industry experts, it is huge 30 billion dollar market opportunity with no clear leaders,” adds Karthik. Growing close to be a leader, Zuper brings an end-to-end platform that combines the power of AI, Big Data, Cloud, and IoT to manage field and remote workforce efficiently reducing the operating cost, customer churn and improving customer loyalty.

Zuper offers the most comprehensive and modern field service management platform. It is a mobile first, cloud first B2B Software as a Service (SaaS) offering for organizations irrespective of shape, size and number of users.

The platform is modularized and offers plug and play of the modules. Offer rich analytics and reporting enabling organizations to transform data into intelligent decisions and actions. One of the most popular modules is remote timesheet management with facial and voice biometrics. Other than the timesheet scenarios, the biometrics capabilities are deeply embedded with the rest of the workflow allowing organizations to perform real-time identity verification to ensure the right employee is at the right customer location. In a market like India, we got into situations where the user’s productivity was impacted due to flaky network connectivity. To counter this issue, we offer offline mode support for the most critical operations to eliminate the dependency on network connectivity and the users can perform most of the tasks in a full offline environment on a mobile device of their choice.

Zuper also offer integrations with major CRM, ERPs, Payment Solutions, IoT devices, Smart Home Appliances, Cloud Telephony etc. The platform can essentially integrate with any applications, devices and tools to ensure the companies have a full 360-degree view of their field originations and can operate at the highest level of efficiency and productivity. With all these capabilities, Zuper’s goal is to enable organizations to “Zuperise” field workforce and dispatch the right field person to the right place at the right time with the right knowledge and tools. Transform customer experience and business with connected field workforce. Improve SLAs, first-time fix rate and maximize the utilization of the mobile workforce. Organizations using Zuper have increased workforce utilization by over 50 percent, reduced service turnaround time by over 35 percent, increased customer adoption and profitability by over 45 percent, operating more efficiently and reduced costs by over 30 percent.

The future of field workforce management is IoT enabled, connected devices, and smart homes. Realizing this, Zuper’s goal is to offer a truly connected platform that not only connects but also automates all points of interaction across different functions to enable organizations to operate at the highest level of efficiency. “We are actively working on enhancing the platform to enable Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality capabilities to offer an immersive and powerful experience for enterprise customers to ensure they can provide the most powerful tech to their field and remote employees to be the best in their business,” concludes Karthik.

Zuper News

Zuper and Zendesk Collaborate to Help Organizations Transform Customer Service Experience

SEATTLE - Zuper, a platform for intelligent workforce management, today announced its integration with Zendesk Inc. (NYSE: ZEN). This integration will enable organizations to better align their customer support and field service teams to provide the best possible customer experience. Zuper is already working with thousands of customers worldwide and has handled over Two million work orders.
As a Zendesk Technology Alliances Partner, the Zuper Workforce Management Solution is now available in the Zendesk marketplace. Zuper has built the world's most comprehensive field service management platform which helps organizations to provide exceptional Customer Experience. Zuper integration with Zendesk empowers the customer support agent to directly schedule, dispatch and allocate the ticket to a mobile workforce to improve productivity, efficiency and offer the best experience to the customers.
"Zuper for Zendesk is a great solution for organizations looking to seamlessly connect their customer support and field service teams," said Jerome Agnola, Director of Technology Alliances at Zendesk. "Zuper's simple and scalable remote workforce management platform helps automate many complex tasks such as creating a service dispatch directly from a Zendesk ticket, or publishing status of a work order into Zendesk."
"Service businesses are working diligently to keep pace with customer expectations that have changed dramatically during the COVID pandemic. One of the most critical challenges is to ensure that support and service teams are tightly aligned. This integration enables organizations to leverage Zuper and Zendesk in a customized fashion that is optimal for business success," said Anand Subbaraj, CEO of Zuper Inc. "Our partnership with Zendesk is an important milestone to empower global organizations to provide the best customer experience."
Zuper's AI-powered, intelligent workforce management platform helps service organizations manage, modernize and transform the field and remote workforce. The enterprises and midsized businesses using Zuper across thousands of employees have benefited from significant operational advantages including a 50% increase in workforce utilization, 35% reduction in service turnaround time, 45% increase in customer adoption and profitability, and 30% reduction in costs.

Service Businesses with Field Operations Navigate Economic Challenges Yet Remain Optimistic About Tech-Enabled Growth, According to Blumberg Advisory Group

SEATTLE: Zuper, a leading solutions provider to scale and modernize fast-growing businesses with field operations, today released an industry report together with Blumberg Advisory Group. The report sheds light on some of the biggest current growth opportunities and obstacles for service businesses including macroeconomic conditions and technology adoption.

The report is based on survey data from 200 respondents involved in field service management and related business operations within their organization. Per the survey, 64% of companies currently use an enterprise Field Service Management (FSM) solution, 34% perform between 1,001 to 4,000 service events annually, and 57% have a total revenue of less than $500 million.

Supply chain constraints, a shrinking labor pool, and declining profit margins continue to challenge many businesses. However, most companies (87%) remain optimistic about growth opportunities over the next 12 months. Solutions such as scheduling/dispatching software and workflow automation underpin this optimism and empower businesses to improve resource allocation and provide proactive and positive customer experiences.

“The resilience of service businesses with field operations in this current economic climate aligns closely with what we are seeing with increased demand for our FSM software at the mid-sized to enterprise level,” said Anand Subbaraj, CEO of Zuper. “Technology is a double-edged sword in that it increases competition, and the organizations that take steps to build a strategic tech stack across CRM, ERP and FSM solutions will be best positioned to drive long-term customer loyalty and employee satisfaction.”

While optimism in the industry remains high, the survey also revealed challenges that smaller companies with field operations may face with digital transformation and implementing new technology. This indicates that businesses are looking for positive ROI from automation with FSM technology including emerging use cases for artificial intelligence/machine learning.

Other key findings from the survey respondents include:

Cause of growing field service costs:

• 75% saw an increase in field service operating costs over the past 12 months.

• 25% cite labor supply for W2 and 1099 employees as the most significant factor impacting operating costs.

• 23% cite the rising cost of materials/tools/parts.

Adoption of technology to improve operating efficiency and increase profitability:

• 48% adopted technology to equip service employees with customer and job details in real-time to improve employee productivity, accuracy and service delivery.

• 42% adopted technology to schedule and dispatch field teams, as well as to optimize routes to eliminate inefficiencies.

• 42% automated workflows around work order management and accounting processes.

Factors that impact positive or negative customer satisfaction:

• 48% report rising labor and/or spare part costs as the leading factor for changing customer satisfaction.

• 42% report technicians’ skill sets and capabilities.

• 33% report responsiveness of service organization.

AI/ML’s impact on the future of field service operations:

• 52% believe AI and ML will most directly impact call center operations and customer service chatbots.

• 43% predict AI will enhance route optimization.

• 39% predict AI will optimize job prioritization.