German Software firm SAP has partnered with PwC to jointly go-to-market with next-generation field service solutions specifically for India. Developed on top of SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (C4C), the solution will provide companies with end-to-end field service management, back-end integration with SAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) and front-end applications for the mobilephones of field service agents.
SAP Hybris is one of the large business units within SAP and is also the fastest growing division. While globally, the division is growing by over 50 per cent year-on-year, the company expects it to grow at twice the rate in India.
“In India, many companies still run manual processes, which gives us an immense opportunity to grow here. We expect to grow our SAP Hybris C4C business here by over 100 per cent year over year for at least the next couple of years,” Sam Alkharrat, Global Chief Operating Officer for SAP Hybris, told
“Our collaboration with PwC on SAP Hybris C4C aims to innovate our offerings and improve customer satisfaction through superior field service solutions.”
He said the market field service solutions segment is growing at over 38 per cent annually, and the company expects to grow at least 2-3 times faster than the market here, which is currently pegged at about $120 million a year.
The rise of digitisation in recent years has fundamentally impacted how consumers communicate, learn about products and make purchase decisions. This has led to increased efforts towards improving field service solutions to drive greater customer satisfaction and thereby, revenue growth and profitability. A recent PwC research shows that a world-class field service organisation has a direct impact on the bottom-line of companies. Great experience delivered by a great field service organisation creates customer advocates by increasing the Net Promotor Score (NPS) by 25 per cent.
PwC, which has over 2,800 people working in technology practice, already has about 1,000 people contributing to the development, consultancy and sales of SAP Hybris C4C.
Arnab Basu, Partner and Leader, Tech Consulting, PwC India, said: “The solution has been built by PwC bringing in customer as well as technology insights provided by SAP Hybris C4C. We have designed and implemented the solution at Tata Chemicals, Daikin, D’Decor, among 25 other customers in India.”
SAP and PwC have activated these solutions locally in sectors such as consumer durables, real estate, auto ancillary, textiles and manufacturing. For Daikin for example, PwC has built a combined solution of SAP Cloud for Service (C4C) and a custom mobility app to cater to more than 2,000-plus dealers and over 10,000 service technicians. The solution also covers processes such as product registration, warranty check, field service operations, AMC tracking and renewal, routine service maintenance scheduling, dealer claims and spare part visibility. This was one of the biggest service transformation projects of SAP C4C in India, the company said.