Empowering Service Organizations to Embrace New Business Models: Astea International

As service operations have become more complex, and more critical to the enterprise bottom line, field service automation has evolved into robust, comprehensive offerings called full-service lifecycle management solutions. These solutions allow service to become critical to a company’s profitability and long-term value, not just a cost center. Simultaneously, a mega trend disrupting manufacturers’ traditional CapEx business model is the growing demand for new “Product-as-a-Service” consumption models. This disruptive trend is forcing service organizations to re-think how they meet growing customer demands—such as a faster ROI—and how they increase revenue while maintaining a competitive position in this new industrial revolution.

This is where Astea International shows its value: helping many Fortune 1000 companies and global service organizations embrace new service paradigms to drive even higher levels of customer satisfaction, revenue and profitability. Astea is a global provider of end-to-end service management software solutions that offer all the cornerstones of service lifecycle management, including customer management, depot repair, service management, asset management, warranty management, forward and reverse logistics management and mobile workforce management and optimization. Astea’s solutions link processes, people, parts and data. They empower companies with knowledge and the agility required to quickly achieve a sustainable value-oriented business model that allows them to successfully compete in a global economy.

The trusted business partner for many service organizations

Astea’s solutions have evolved beyond simple field service automation, to become an extended, service-oriented ERP platform—with traditional ERPs focusing on financial, manufacturing or supply chain automation. As its platform evolved, so did the technology supporting it: computer software as well as emerging capabilities like remote diagnostics, remote monitoring and self-healing. Astea’s innovation was driven by feedback from users and their adoption; synergistic tools and capabilities that enhanced the core products; and competition. Recent innovations such as business intelligence, IoT, data mining and artificial intelligence are all integrated into its core platform, creating a comprehensive, cutting edge solution.

The deep understanding and appreciation for service delivery has driven the company to innovate and add extended capabilities into its product suite. Originally, Astea’s core platform, Alliance™, was targeted at Information Technology and Telecom. At the time, these two important markets felt the strongest pressure for automation. Since then, other industries such as building systems, medical instrumentation and industrial manufacturing felt similar pressure for automation. It became apparent that its platform must expand to encompass all service-oriented industries in which technology was quickly becoming a requirement.

Astea’s clients include the world’s biggest, most complex service companies with departments, customers, partners and vendors often spanning multiple continents. These companies leverage Astea’s platform to gain a holistic view of all of their operations, seamlessly connecting not only devices, but also people, processes, technology and information. Astea’s end users interact with its technology in convenient, flexible ways that drive adoption and ultimately faster ROI for the organization.

Factors that create a competitive advantage

• Entrepreneurial Excellence – The Astea team constantly seeks out new and creative ways to solve the problems that service-driven companies will face in the future.
• Thought Leadership – Working closely with industry analysts and forward-thinking service organizations, Astea helps shape the future of field service technology.
• Relentless Product Innovation – Astea understands the new service paradigm and helps companies embrace wholesale changes in strategy, such as moving from reactive to proactive support.
• Delivering the Most Comprehensive Field Service Solution – The Astea Alliance platform powers an entire service organization’s business and focuses all employees upon it. Unlike point solutions that only address certain aspects of the service lifecycle, Astea Alliance addresses all of them using a modular architecture: customer management, service management, asset management, forward and reverse logistics management and mobile workforce management and optimization.

The roadmap ahead

Astea is pushing the horizon of field service technology into a new frontier where all service stakeholders must adopt a predictive mindset—from smart-devices and data analytics preventing failures to customer service and empowered technicians predicting customer behaviors. The innovations in manufacturing, including automation and robotics, have profoundly changed the service industry, creating a new industrial revolution. This has driven field service platforms to quickly adopt their own set of automation tools and capabilities. Astea is placing significant emphasis on IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence and knowledge management to increase the productivity of service delivery.

The company stated, “Our focus is to innovate or die. Without innovation, technology becomes marginalized. Companies that understand and value innovation gravitate towards Astea because we have demonstrated for decades our ability to combine a strong expertise in service delivery excellence and a great appreciation for product innovation.”

Astea’s mission is to develop state-of-the-art service management technology for the 21st century, a time in which 5G networks, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, deep data mining, optimization and product refinement are all commonplace. It utilizes the world’s best creative talent to discern the emerging needs of the service industries and develop a technology that anticipates market demand.

New service models based on technologies such as IoT, the evolution from reactive “break-fix” mentality to predictive service, and the replacement of traditional time-and-material service contracts with managed support are all certainly promising, but they require a mental shift that many organizations will find too daunting. Astea is a critical partner that provides both the technology and the service acumen required to aid service organizations in overcoming the increasing demands and changes these new business paradigms represent.

Meet the visionaries behind Astea, CEO Zack B. Bergreen

Zack founded Astea in 1979, and continues to serve as president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board. Under his leadership, the Company has grown from a consulting firm specializing in field service applications to a dominant global provider of service-centric solutions, integrating all customer-facing business processes for companies that manage mission critical assets into one platform. In addition to setting corporate direction, Zack oversees product development and plays an active role in nurturing relationships with major customers, partners and investors worldwide. His reputation as an industry pioneer and visionary is the result of his extensive background in technology and professional services. Prior to Astea, Zack held senior executive positions with such leading companies as Gould Electronics, Bechtel Corporation and General Signal. He holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland.

David F. Giannetto, Chief Operating Officer

David joined Astea in August 2015 with extensive experience as a senior manager in technology-oriented professional service firms. He is a nationally respected thought-leader on how complex emerging technology and information-based initiatives can be leveraged by organizations to improve operational efficiency, financial results and strategic differentiation. David is the author of three books and a frequent speaker and columnist. He has led initiatives for many of today’s leading brands and has been named a business thought-leader by the American Management Association, Business Finance Magazine and Consumer Goods Technology Magazine. He earned his MBA from Rutgers University, is a former MBA professor and was a regular Army officer in the 10th Mountain Division.

“Astea continues to grow for several reasons, but first and foremost is the type of relationship we have with our customers. We are not simply a vendor; we are a long-term strategic business partner helping them overcome the significant changes their service organizations are facing.”