Schneider Electric Is Making Visibility and Optimization a Field Service Priority

04/02/2020

Brought to you by WBR Insights



As the field service industry continues to evolve at an alarming pace, the need for improvements across all sections of the business is growing. To provide the kinds of services modern clients expect field service brands need to upgrade every aspect of their offerings.

Optimization is a big part of this as it allows field services to be provided in a more convenient and streamlined fashion. This improves the experience at the client level and allows engineers to perform their roles faster, with greater degrees of accuracy.

Another piece of the puzzle is visibility. To make effective decisions, all levels of the business must be able to access the information they need. For this to occur, it needs to be concise, brief, and straightforward. Ideally, access to job status, location information, customer information, and notifications should be in the palms of their hands.

One brand which understands the importance of these factors is Schneider Electric and has been busy introducing innovative ways to achieve it.

Schneider Electric

The innovation in question was developed by Schneider Electric in partnership with BASF and has been drawing significant attention ever since it was granted the award for the IT Optimisation Product of the Year category at the 2019 Networking Computing Awards.



Dubbed the EcoStruxure IT Expert, the platform is the first cloud-based data center infrastructure management solution the industry has seen and is designed to offer secure, vendor agnostic, monitoring and visibility of all IoT-enabled physical infrastructure assets, available from any connected device, wherever the person accessing it happens to be in the world.

"I'm delighted to accept this award on behalf of Schneider Electric," said Schneider UK & Ireland Secure Power Division Vice President, Marc Garner. "EcoStruxure IT Expert addresses customer's need to simplify how they manage data centres, distributed IT and local edge environments. By harnessing real-time data from connected physical infrastructure assets such as power and cooling equipment, IT Expert provides alarm management and proactive service recommendations to significantly improve system availability and resiliency."

The platform works seamlessly in tandem with all IoT based physical infrastructure assets and is designed to reduce downtime and mitigate risk. Available through an innovative smartphone application, the platform includes such benefits as:

  • Ease of deployment to reduce the complexity of registering, downloading and implementing the solution across distributed IT infrastructure
  • Vendor-neutral data capture of device information, smart alarms, and monitoring of all connected devices through an open system
  • Benchmarking of devices to see how well assets are performing in comparison to others
  • Assessments for centralized visibility and consolidated alarms notifications with recommendations to aid decision-making
  • Subscription model provides a pay-as-you-go approach to deployment for predictable, flexible costs for any size IT or data center environment
  • 24/7 remote monitoring options through APC by Schneider Electric Channel partners with EcoStruxure IT for Partners or through the Schneider Electric Service Bureau with EcoStruxure Asset Advisor.

However, Schneider Electric isn't stopping there and has recently introduced yet another platform to the EcoStruxure family.

Field Service Visibility

The next step in the EcoStruxure project is called EcoStruxure Asset Advisor and uses condition-based monitoring and predictive analytics to help Schneider Electric customers, technicians, and engineers achieve proactive maintenance.

The platform measures and computes over 100 variables and uses the data to monitor the ongoing health of new substation assets and presents the information through a unique customer dashboard. The customer can then receive bespoke advice and recommendations which they can use to construct their maintenance and service strategy.

"We are helping them change the way they operate through continuous monitoring that allows them to see the current health of their critical equipment and determine if there are operational anomalies that need to be addressed," said Segment Sales Manager for EcoStruxure Asset Advisor in North America, Alfredo Arriola. "This is the future of predictive maintenance and an opportunity for BASF to advance beyond preventive maintenance intervals defined by the industry."

Lee Perry, Electrical Design Engineer at BASF added, "EcoStruxure Asset Advisor increases operational efficiency. It's getting the right data at the right time. And in the end, data is value. Our focus on data-driven services demonstrates that we are a forward-looking, early adopter of leveraging IIoT-enabled, data-driven services to gain insight into our critical electrical distribution assets."

Final Thoughts

Achieving new levels of optimization and visibility should be a top priority for all field service brands operating in 2020. Thanks to the opportunity presented by digital technology, we now have more tools and methods of achieving this than ever before.

You can hear Schneider Electric's Head of IT Customer Solutions, Amanda Moore, speak at Field Service Amelia Island 2020, taking place in August at The Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island, FL.

Download the agenda today for more information and insights.



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