Item 1.

Business.

General

Astea International Inc. and subsidiaries (collectively "we," "us," "Astea" or the "Company") develop, market and support service management software solutions, which are licensed to companies that sell and service equipment, and/or sell and deliver professional services. Companies invest in Astea's software and services to automate enterprise business processes for purposes of revenue enhancement, cost containment, operational efficiency improvement, and the expansion of their awareness of operational performance through analytical reporting.  Customers' return on investment from implementing Astea's solutions is achieved through more efficient management of information, people, processes and cash flows, which we believe increases competitive advantage and customer satisfaction as well as top-line revenue and profitability.

Astea's solutions are used in industries such as information technology, medical devices and diagnostic systems, industrial controls and instrumentation, retail/point-of-sale equipment, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems ("HVAC"), office equipment, imaging systems, fire and security, gaming/leisure equipment, facilities management, telecommunications and other related industries with equipment sales and service requirements. Astea's strong focus on enterprise solutions for organizations that sell and deliver services is a unique industry differentiator that draws upon the Company's extensive industry experience and core expertise.

Founded in 1979, Astea is known throughout the industry, largely from its proven success as a provider of software solutions for field service management. Astea has since expanded its product portfolio to also include integrated management applications for sales, multi-channel customer contact centers, third party vendor management, workforce optimization, and professional services automation.

 

 

 

 

 

Astea offers all the cornerstones of service lifecycle management, including customer management; service management; asset management; complete forward and reverse logistics management; and mobile workforce management with enhanced scheduling optimization and actionable business intelligence.  We believe this comprehensive approach provides unmatched expertise in service lifecycle workflow and integration needs throughout the service continuum.  Astea's solutions empower companies by making more actionable data readily accessible, providing companies the agility needed to achieve sustainable value more quickly and to compete successfully in a global community.

Astea's software has been licensed to approximately 650 companies worldwide. Customers range from mid-size organizations to large, multinational corporations with geographically dispersed locations around the globe. The Company markets and supports its products through a worldwide network of direct and indirect sales and services offices with corporate headquarters in the United States and regional headquarters in the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan.  Sales partners include distributors (value-added resellers, system integrators and sales agents) and original equipment manufacturing partners ("OEM partners"). See Note 13 to the Consolidated Financial Statements Geographic Segment Data for revenues, income (loss) from operations and long lived assets related to each of the Company's geographic operating regions for the past two years.

In addition to its own product development that is conducted at Company facilities in the United States and Israel, Astea participates in contractual relationships with complementary technology companies in order to reduce time-to-market with new product capabilities and continually increase its value proposition to customers.   The Company's product strategies are developed from the collective feedback from customers, industry consultants, technology partners and sales partners, in addition to its internal product management, professional services, and development teams.  Astea also works with its active user community who closely advises and participates in ongoing product development efforts.

Astea provides customers with an array of professional consulting, training and customer support services to implement its products and integrate them with other corporate systems such as back-office financial and enterprise resource planning ( ERP) applications. Astea also maintains and supports its software over its installed life cycle. The Company's experience and domain expertise in service and sales management, distribution, logistics, finance, mobile technologies, internet applications and enterprise systems integration are made available to customers during their assessments of where and how their business processes can be improved.

The Company's sales and marketing efforts are primarily focused on new software licensing and support services for its latest generation of Astea Alliance and FieldCentrix products.

Industry Overview – Service Management

Service management is generally defined as a technician performing repair, installation, or regularly scheduled/preventive maintenance work at a customer site. It involves the management of incoming service requests, dispatching of service technicians, managing parts, managing contracts, prioritizing service based on service level agreements and severity of problems, and the repair, refurbishment and retirement process for a piece of equipment. Field service organizations vary greatly in size, industries and supported technologies.  Although every industry relies on field service to some degree, for certain industries field service is critical.  Equipment, ranging from computers and peripherals to building systems, office equipment and medical equipment depends on field service.  Sometimes, this equipment is the lifeblood of a company, and any downtime or service interruptions can significantly impair operations or even endanger human life and safety.

Managing today's service enterprise means planning and coordinating service on a global scale. It means delighting customers - and it calls for new technologies and business practices designed specifically to solve the service lifecycle management challenge. The benefits of implementing service management solutions are applicable in virtually every service organization, regardless of type, size, or geography served.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current Product Offerings

Astea Alliance

Astea Alliance is a service management offering consisting of software applications and services.  The software product consists of a series of applications.  The offering has been developed as a global solution from the ground up with multi-lingual and multi-currency capabilities.

Astea Alliance has been designed to address the complete service lifecycle, f rom lead generation and project quotation to service and billing through asset retirement.  It integrates and optimizes critical business processes for Campaigns, Call Center, Depot Repair, Field Service, Logistics, Projects and Sales and Order Processing applications.  Astea extends its application suite with mobile workforce management, dynamic scheduling optimization, third party vendor and customer self-service portals, and business intelligence.  In order to ensure customer satisfaction and quick return on investment, Astea also offers infrastructure tools and services.

 

 

 

 

 

In 2015, Astea issued two product releases, Astea Alliance 12.0 and 12.5, which deliver a number of noteworthy advancements that will help companies accelerate response times, improve the overall customer experience, and gain instant access to actionable intelligence. A summary of features released with Astea Alliance 12.0 and 12.5 are highlighted below. They include:

•              Visualization & Collaboration Tools –Astea's cutting-edge HTML5 mobile solution has been leveraged by global organizations to increase engineer productivity, reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction. Astea remains relentless in the pursuit of providing powerful capabilities to the mobile user without adding complexity to the user experience. These releases continue to build on that philosophy with optimized user navigation; the ability for a mobile user to work from multiple devices with complete synchronizations between devices; visualization tools to easily support self-dispatch; live chat connecting the field engineer with the back office; centralized parts order status view; and full bi-directional Microsoft Outlook synchronization. Astea's mobile solution provides the level of flexibility necessary that makes it easy for organizations to modify and adapt the solution, for different user profiles or businesses, without requiring development skillsets or adding additional costs.

•              Your Service Platform, Your Way – Astea knows that even with the deepest level of functionality in their platform, organizations will always want to have the flexibility to make modifications to adapt to their business dynamics. A couple of years ago, Astea introduced an innovative customization tool that gives organizations the control they need, without requiring coding, while still being able to take advantage of the latest and greatest Astea Alliance feature updates. Additionally, there are added capabilities to give non-technical users even more "do it yourself" tools, while Astea's framework actively governs these customizations making it easy to see what is custom and what is standard. Organizations can build new modules, as well as import and export customizations to different environments, when needed. All customizations work with the latest Astea Alliance product updates.

•              Drive Proactive Support and Continuous Process Improvement – For years, Astea has been providing tools and reporting capabilities that provide proactive service insight and intelligence at every level. Astea continues to further enhance its decision making visualization tools, to easily and quickly leverage insightful information for optimal process improvements, productivity and customer satisfaction.

•              Easily Manage and Support a Company's Entire Service Ecosystem – When it comes to optimizing a company's service ecosystem, visibility and control become mission critical requirements to manage and track all of the people, internal and external to the organization, and processes that have an impact on the overall service experience for the customer. Astea has added a new customer satisfaction tracking capability to make it easy to collect as well review customer feedback at any time. Astea also introduced a new, vibrant Customer Self-Service module which optimizes workflow and further enriches the end user experience. Additionally, Astea's new Service Manager Analytics App, makes relevant performance metrics instantly available to service managers and executives to quickly and easily monitor for optimal service outcomes. Astea continues to add enhancements to its scheduling optimization solution, leveraging the latest Microsoft technologies, to ensure optimal operational performance. Further enhancements have also been made in the area of Astea's Third Party Vendor Management, Contracts, Logistics, and Professional Services Automation (Projects).

ServiceAlliance and SalesAlliance, the earliest versions of Astea Alliance solutions, were the Company's initial technology offerings following a long and highly successful history with its DISPATCH-1 legacy system solutions.  Astea Alliance solutions have been licensed to over 300   customers worldwide. Market acceptance of Astea Alliance by   global and regional companies has continually increased since 2002 and the Company has aggressively pursued opportunities for larger system implementations with mid-size to large enterprises on a worldwide basis .

The current Astea Alliance offering consists of:

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Core Applications;

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Mobile Applications;

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Extended Portals;

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Reporting and Business Intelligence; and

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Tools.

 

 

 

 

 

Astea Alliance Core Applications:

Alliance Contact Center

Alliance Depot Repair

Alliance Field Service

Alliance Logistics

Alliance Order Processing

Alliance Professional Services

Alliance Sales

Alliance Dynamic Scheduling Engine

Alliance Workforce Planning

Astea Alliance Mobile Applications:

Alliance Mobile – Laptop/ Smartphones/Tablets

Alliance Third Party Vendor Mobile

Alliance 2-way Paging

Astea Alliance Extended Portals:

Alliance Customer Self-Service

Alliance Vendor & Third Party Management

Astea Alliance Reporting and Business Intelligence:

Alliance Reporting

Alliance Business Intelligence

Astea Alliance Tools:

Alliance Link

Alliance Knowledge Base

Astea Alliance Core Applications

The Alliance Contact Center application supports call centers, information desks, service hotlines, inside sales and telemarketing activities. Integrated multi-channel inbound/outbound capabilities enable customer service representatives to serve prospects and customers in their media of choice, including phone, fax, e-mail or Internet.  Integrated customer self-service portals with automated e-mail response, automated call escalation and interface to Computer Telephony Integration systems help streamline customer interaction processes. Work scheduling and demand balancing optimize staff utilization. Employee portals with access to comprehensive real-time customer data and decision support tools including intelligent knowledge management and scripting for problem resolution, drive higher staff productivity.  The objectives of Astea's Alliance Contact Center software are to reduce overhead through improved first-call resolution rates and shorter service-call handling times, as well as more efficient customer service and higher levels of customer satisfaction. A knowledge engine enhances the diagnostic tools available to contact center agents.  This knowledge engine is also available in other areas of the solution suite such as Depot Repair and Field Service.

Alliance Depot Repair

Alliance Depot Repair automates tracking of assets through equipment calibration and repair chains, including merchandise ownership, location, repair status and warranty coverage. Objectives are to gain real-time visibility of all repair chain activities, ensure compliance with warranty and contractual agreements, respond to customer inquiries with up-to-the-minute repair status, collect and analyze repair statistics for product design improvement, and reduce overhead such as inventory carrying costs. Applications support in-house, subcontractor and vendor calibration and repair; customer and vendor exchanges and advance exchanges; equipment on loan; change of ownership; merchandise shipments, cross shipments and pickups; consolidated repair orders; and, storage and refurbishment programs. Integration with other Astea Alliance modules allows repair orders and repair status queries to be initiated from customer contact centers, field service, field sales and warehouses as well as the repair depot.

 

 

 

 

 

Alliance Field Service

The Alliance Field Service core application delivers a set of automated capabilities intended to streamline and improve management of field service activities.  By automating workflow, field service representatives should be able to efficiently complete and document assignments, manage vehicle assets, capture expenses and generate revenue through add-on sales during a customer contact. Applications alert dispatchers to contractual minimum response times and expedite coordination of field force skills matching, scheduling, dispatch and repair parts logistics.  The use of the Dynamic Scheduling Engine should automate much of this process. The software supports all field service categories including equipment installations, break/fix, planned maintenance and meter reading. Applications can also be integrated with equipment diagnostic systems for fully automated solutions that initiate and prioritize service requests and dispatch assignments to field employees' smartphones, laptops or tablets without human intervention

Alliance Logistics

The Alliance Logistics core application is divided into three functional portals.  These are Supply Chain, Inventory Management and Reverse Supply Chain, reflecting the diversity of needs in this area.  Seamlessly integrated with sales and service applications, Alliance Logistics enables service organizations to control inventory costs, manage assets and implement proactive service management strategies.  Automated calculation of stock profiles based on usage eliminates overstocking and dramatically reduces costs associated with storing, depreciating, and insuring inventory.  The application supports parts and tools management for effective field service delivery and Service Level Agreements compliance.  We believe that improved cost management improves cash flow by streamlining and shortening the cycles from inventory to usage to billing.  Lower logistics costs open opportunities to recognize higher margins on products and services.  Key areas to apply Alliance Logistics include asset management, field service parts/tools management, demand fulfillment, and sales fulfillment.

Alliance Order Processing

The Alliance Order Processing module provides straightforward functionality for the management of quotations and order fulfillment.  Quotations can be created for the sale of products and the provision of field services.  Integration with the approvals process and the Logistics and Field Service modules should ensure efficient management control and sustainable promises for delivery.  This application is ideally suited to the sale of "consumable products" in association with the provision of equipment-based services, but can be equally applied to the supply of finished products resulting from up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

Alliance Professional Services

Alliance Professional Services supports management of knowledge workers, such as those deployed by professional services organizations and internal service departments of large organizations. Functionality focuses on planning, deploying and billing service engagements that can extend for days, weeks, months and years. Applications are expected to improve resource planning and allocation, workflow management, consultant time and expense reporting, subcontractor and vendor invoice processing, customer billing, and visibility of service engagements. Integration with other Astea Alliance modules delivers an end-to-end solution to market, sell, manage and bill professional services. Capabilities to share sales, service, project, and post-project field service data across the enterprise, generally enables professional services organizations to operate with less overhead, improved cash flow, higher profitability, and more competitive bidding.

Alliance Sales

Alliance Sales consolidates and streamlines the sales processes of an enterprise, from quote generation through order processing, at all points of customer contact including field sales, inside sales, contact center sales and field service sales. Lead-to-close sales process capabilities include integration with customer support and field service applications, leveraging all enterprise knowledge pools with the goal to increase sales opportunities, margins and close rates. Consolidated views of sales and service data also provide a clearer understanding of enterprise operations to drive strategic business decisions. Sales force automation application automates business rules and practices such as enterprise-defined sales methodologies, sales pipeline management, territory management, contact and opportunity management, forecasting, collaborative team selling and literature fulfillment. Other applications prompt customer support and service staff to up-sell and cross-sell during contact with customers.

Alliance Dynamic Scheduling Engine ("Alliance DSE")

Alliance DSE is the next level of field service scheduling solutions for a new era of service management.  It is a real-time scheduling solution designed to optimize and balance the tradeoffs between service cost and level of service.  It addresses the specific challenges of field service scheduling, while simultaneously calculating ways to increase efficiency, accuracy and profitability with the goal to help users sustain a competitive advantage in today's volatile environment. Astea has taken a scheduling engine that was developed to handle mission critical environments such as emergency response, where a response time determined life or death, adapted and embedded it into its core product.   We believe that Alliance DSE provides for maximum flexibility that enables companies to proactively drive, manage and monitor their technicians through demand forecasting, workforce profiling, and operational optimization.  Astea's Alliance DSE is designed to enhance productivity, improve business processes and maximize return on investment.

 

 

 

 

 

Alliance Workforce Planning

Workforce Planning assists in forecasting workforce requirements based on planned and unplanned orders and tracks actual results against the plan.  Multiple workforce plans can be created, and plans can be maintained for different groups of resources and/or different planning periods. The Workforce planning module is flexible and can be leveraged to create plans that are comprised of days dedicated to only unplanned work, or the workforce can be allocated a percentage of planned work to be accomplished. Workforce demands for service technicians are not always consistent from period to period or from branch to branch.  This creates a surplus of manpower in some locations and a shortage in others.  Based on an Alliance Workforce plan, personnel can be temporarily transferred to another branch or action group to take care of the workload. A workforce plan shows the daily available hours for labor, and compares these to the daily activities from both planned and unplanned selected sources, including PM schedules, field change orders, project demands, committed sales orders and unplanned work.  Plans can be frozen to compare actual time spent against the frozen plan to track performance.

Astea Alliance Mobile Applications

Astea's Alliance Mobility Suite consists of Alliance Mobile Select, which is Astea's original mobile solution supporting Windows Mobile devices and Windows laptops, Alliance Mobile Universal, and Alliance Third Party Vendor Mobile. Alliance Mobile Universal is optimized to operate with the latest devices in the market including Android smartphones and tablets, iPhones, and iPads.  Organizations can choose the device that works best for their environment and still be able to leverage the most powerful mobile solution designed specifically for the way field technicians work. Astea's Alliance Mobility Suite leverages the latest HTML5 technology to deliver a sleek and innovative user interface while still providing the ability for mobile workers to continue working whether they are in or out of wireless coverage. Field service technicians' days are transformed by receiving work orders which are automatically sent to the device, being able to view asset and service history; customer, account and job site information; contract and warranty information; receiving step-by-step guidance to complete the job; capturing customer signature; and completing work orders for invoicing. The real-time connectivity integrates field sales and service activity with automated front-office processes and eliminates the time, costs, procedural delays and errors of paper reporting. Expected benefits include reduced field administration costs; electronic data sharing among field and in-house personnel; improved speed, accuracy, content and compliance of field reporting; faster sales order processing and customer service invoicing; and other operational efficiencies.

Astea Alliance Extended Portals

Alliance Customer Portal

The Alliance Customer Portal is a secure, multi-level entry point that supports unattended e-business transactions for customer self-service and self-sales.  Alliance Customer Portal empowers customers as it lessens dependence on sales and service staff to conduct transactions that can be performed over the Internet. It reduces routine voice and fax calls to customer contact centers, freeing lines for customers whose critical needs do require assistance from a service representative.  The pre-defined Entry-Level, Standard and Enterprise profiles,  in connection with a security utility, are designed to ensure tight control on access to sensitive data and a range of features that can be enabled.  It also provides another channel to promote and sell more products and services to an existing customer base. The customer portal can delay or eliminate needs for contact center expansion and associated increases in facility, equipment and staffing costs.

Alliance Vendor & Third Party Management Portal

The Vendor & Third Party Management portal enables companies to manage their external vendors and third party service providers with a robust, secure and unified platform. This portal can now serve as their single point of information for all full-time and out-sourced stakeholders. As a result, they will have the necessary level of upstream and downstream visibility and accountability that is a critical stepping stone to better service network automation and optimizations. Whether that third party is an external service agent or a vendor that supplies parts, they will now be able to track and manage all of the parties that participate in your service supply chain. Their vendors and external service agents (SAs) will have access to a secure portal that allows them to enter, update and view pertinent information as it relates to a service order and logistics and reverse logistics functions. Service organizations are able to easily interconnect their entire service lifecycle ecosystem to eliminate redundant processes and drive ongoing efficiencies. Additionally, organizations benefit by increased visibility, collaboration and communication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Astea Alliance Reporting and Business Intelligence ("Alliance BI")

For proactive service management, Alliance BI provides highly visual, real-time analysis of business performance, focusing on key performance indicators - a tool that facilitates businesses' understanding of customer behavior. Alliance BI enables the viewing of information for the entire enterprise, increasing revenues and identifying new business opportunities.  Alliance BI has been designed to ensure that users of all kinds have immediate access to crucial information whenever it's needed. In the boardroom, at agent level, or even for customers, this tool effortlessly allows the viewing of performance data such as performance against service level agreements, contract profitability, product failure rate, repair turnaround times, customer satisfaction and engineer efficiency. Reports allow businesses to see how many orders have met their contractual service ETA and how many failed, which helps organizations better understand customer satisfaction.  Workloads show the available working hours at a specific location in contrast to the demand for workforce planning and optimization.

Astea Alliance Tools

Alliance Link

Alliance Link is an enterprise application integration product that interfaces Astea Alliance to other enterprise systems, such as back-office financial and ERP applications, remote equipment monitoring and diagnostic software, and wireless data transmission services. Alliance Link extends Astea Alliance's return on investment for customers by making all Alliance modules accessible to external software through web services and open, well defined, synchronous and asynchronous application programming interfaces that are eXtensible Markup Language ("XML") based.

Alliance Knowledge Base

Alliance Knowledge Base provides powerful and scalable enterprise search functionality for corporate content, across a network or on a portal, intranet or Internet site. Delivering single-point access to enterprise-wide data collections; full-text searches can be conducted quickly and easily across disparate data sources, improving knowledge retention and sharing across the organization. Alliance Knowledge Base offers advanced functionality for entering queries and results navigation to help users quickly find the information they need. Alliance Knowledge Base can provide user-friendly access to a vast range of information, including product manuals, technical support documentation, maintenance histories, repair notes, announcements, and much more. With search functionality, Alliance Knowledge Base becomes much more than simply an operations tool; it provides organizations the capability to share all sorts of information, improve problem resolution times, and improve the quality of decision-making across an organization.

FieldCentrix Enterprise Suite

The FieldCentrix Enterprise is a service management solution that runs on a wide range of mobile devices, and integrates seamlessly with popular customer relationship management (CRM) and ERP applications.  Add-on features include a web-based customer self-service portal, workforce management capabilities, and equipment-centric functionality.   FieldCentrix has licensed applications to companies in a wide range of sectors including HVAC, building and real estate services, manufacturing and process instruments and controls, and medical equipment.

The current FieldCentrix Enterprise offering consists of:

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FX Service Center;

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FX Mobile;

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FX e-Service;

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FX Fleet Manager;

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FX Interchange;

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FX Interchange for JD Edwards; and

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FX Mobility Express.

 

 

 

 

 

 

FX Service Center

FX Service Center is an Internet-based service management and dispatch solution that gives organizations command over their field service operation in order to more effectively manage call taking, entitlement verification, field personnel scheduling and dispatching, customer service, work orders, timesheets, service agreements, inventory and equipment tracking, pre-invoicing, and reporting. The software is intuitive, giving organizations graphical picture views of the scheduling board, work order lists, field service worker and site locations, and more.   Real-time drag-and-drop scheduling and re-scheduling take just a few mouse clicks, and pre-scheduling preventive maintenance calls are simple as well.  FX Service Center makes completed work order and timesheet information instantly available for export to an organization's accounting, ERP, or CRM system. They can integrate FX Service Center with an organization's accounting, ERP or CRM system for seamless information flow.  FX Resource Utilization is a strategic workforce modeling tool expected to accurately plan, track, and analyze service resources in real-time.  It provides an automated way to size, manage, and report on resource capacity and utilization across the enterprise to provide suggestions to deploy resources, cost-effectively balance workloads and service engineers, and still make sure all service level commitments are met and contracts remain profitable. By adding FX Resource Utilization as part of the Service Center module, organizations have a new tool that is designed to increase the productivity and efficiency of their work force and service operations through load balancing and optimized resource planning.

FX Mobile

FX Mobile is a workflow software product that uses wireless communications technology with smartphones, laptops, and tablets to automate field service processes and should help field service personnel do their jobs better and faster.  FX Mobile leverages the latest HTML5 technology, optimized for the latest devices such as Android, iPhone and iPad, to deliver a sleek and innovative user interface while still providing the ability for mobile workers to continue working whether they are in or out of wireless coverage.  With FieldCentrix's technology, field service workers are be able to complete their work, uninterrupted, regardless of wireless coverage.  Along with FX Service Center, FX Mobile eliminates the manual inefficiencies and paperwork that can overwhelm service technicians and an organization's business.  With FX Mobile, service technicians receive work orders electronically on their mobile devices.  It then guides them, screen by screen, through the job – prompting them to perform standard tasks, take notes, and even record future recommended repairs or activities.  With FX Mobile, field service personnel can now spend their time in the field, better serving customers, generating new business, and increasing organizations' bottom lines.  FX Mobile is an international offering that supports various languages, as well as currencies, measurement systems and time zones.

FX e-Service

FX e-Service is an extension of the FieldCentrix solution that provides a dynamic customer self-service portal that links directly from a customer's web site.  When integrated with FX Mobile software, it provides the unique capability to truly deliver real-time information from the point of service to your customers.   Working seamlessly with FX Service Center call center and dispatching software, FX e-Service gives an organization's customers the flexibility of submitting service requests, accessing work order information, and managing their account over the Internet.  Customers can receive an e-mail notification each time the status of a work order changes.  This allows them to know instantly when the request has been received, scheduled, is in progress and when it is complete – all without ever calling into the office, waiting on hold or taking up valuable CSR resource.

FX Fleet Manager

FX Fleet Manager is FieldCentrix's Global Positioning System offering to help customers manage their mobile resources more effectively. FX Fleet Manager gives companies control and management of their field operations with the expectation that they will make decisions that will increase profitability, reduce service costs, enhance customer responsiveness and satisfaction, and improve productivity and efficiency. With FX Fleet Manager, dispatchers and office personnel will always know where mobile resources are located — in real-time. Are they where they should be? Are they lost? Are they safe? There's an emergency service request — which resource is the closest with the right parts and skill sets? All this information and more should contribute to more efficiently managed mobile resources.

FX Interchange

FX Interchange software provides data transporting services that allow enterprises to quickly and easily integrate FieldCentrix Enterprise to existing legacy and business systems – that are expected to maximize value from field data.  FX Interchange converts data stored in FX Service Center knowledge base to XML or a Microsoft SQL Server database.  Once converted, the data is accessible to other systems for basic billing and payroll extraction, and bi-directional integration purposes that should support the needs of an accounting, call center, or service dispatch integrated solution.

 

 

 

 

 

FX Interchange for JD Edwards ^®

FieldCentrix field service automation software and JD Edwards ^® Enterprise and EnterpriseOne applications are integrated to provide medium to large companies with an easy-to-use, cost-effective way to streamline and automate field service operations. The systems are integrated through FX Interchange™ for JD Edwards.  This interface dynamically transfers key customer, work order, and accounting related information between the FieldCentrix and JD Edwards applications. This means the key functions that organizations need to run their business efficiently and cost-effectively are now seamless and completed electronically — without paper.

With the FieldCentrix and JD Edwards solution, service workers in the field access and enter all work order information using a mobile device at the job site. When the work is done, the service worker closes the work order and the completed information is sent wirelessly back to the office automatically. The electronic information is instantly accessible for processing by an organization's billing system so there's no data entry needed. Because you also no longer have to wait for the field service worker to bring in the paperwork before you can close the work order, customers can be billed quicker.

FX Mobility Express ™

For customers who want to mobilize their workforce without deploying a full field service automation solution, FieldCentrix offers a special mobilized application development toolkit called FX Mobility Express™. The FX Mobility Express toolkit is bundled with FieldCentrix's popular mobile middleware and allows organizations to quickly and easily build custom mobile applications that fully leverage FieldCentrix's robust and scalable mobile infrastructure and user-friendly interface.  Mobilizing applications with FX Mobility Express should provide organizations with a cost-effective way to create a solution that fits their unique business requirements on a platform built from years of mobile and wireless technology experience and used by thousands of users worldwide.

Astea Client Services

Professional Services

Astea's typical professional services engagement includes planning, prototyping and implementing Astea's products within the client's organization.  Some customers may require customization, but they are relatively insignificant.

During the initial planning phase of the engagement, Astea's professional services personnel work closely with representatives of the customer to prepare a detailed project plan that includes a timetable, resource requirements, milestones, in-house training programs, onsite business process training and demonstrations of Astea's product capabilities within the customer's organization.

The next phase of the Astea professional services engagement is the prototyping phase, in which Astea works closely with representatives of the customer to configure Astea's software solutions to the customer's specific business process requirements.

The next integral phase in the professional services engagement is the implementation phase, in which Astea's professional services personnel work with the client to develop detailed data mapping, conversions, interfaces and other technical and business processes necessary to integrate Astea's solutions into the customer's computing environment.  Ultimately, education plans are developed and executed to provide the customer with the process and system knowledge necessary to effectively utilize the software and fully implement the solution.  Professional services are generally charged on an hourly or daily basis.

The last phase of the engagement utilizes Astea's professional services personnel to assist in Go Live planning and the Go Live effort. Astea will assist in the planning for installation, initialization, data preparation, operational procedures, schedules and required resources. The initialization and creation of the production database is planned and prepared for the data history, open orders and all required data for go live processing.  During the cutover to the solution, Astea business resources are best utilized to assist new users with functionality/processes while Astea technical resources support the customer's IT staff.

Following go live, Astea's professional services team engages the customer in the Assessment Phase .  During this effort, the delivered system is assessed to validate benefits, analyze processes to measure key performance indicators, document and understand lessons learned.  To perform these assessments, Astea consultants collect and analyze the planned benefits, processes used to capture and report on the key performance indicators, and document the lessons learned from all phases of the implementation.  An action plan is then developed from the lessons learned and key performance indicators for use in future phases and/or releases.

 

 

 

 

Technical Services

Astea's technical services teams provide services related to installation, data verification, functional design, technical design, system infrastructure setup or changes, customizations, Quality Assurance (QA) activities, testing and go live support.  Initially, software and database installation resources are available to prepare the environment for the prototyping phase.

Data verification and feedback services can be provided for initial data verification analysis.  These efforts are conducted to determine the present state of information as far as type, conversions, data manipulation, location, frequency, method of interface (initial load, ongoing load, data export or data import) and data integrity.  Findings are documented and shared with the project team.

During the implementation phase, Astea's technical services team is often engaged to assist with the functional and/or technical design as related to customer desired system personalization, minor customization and interfaces, often referred to as 'gaps'.  Gap solutions are assessed and categorized into system, studio, customization or interface.  Utilizing the services of the customer project team, Astea professional services and Astea technical services create Business Requirement Documents ("BRDs") for all customizations and interfaces.  Astea technical services will provide specifications and a quote for the customization.  The customer and Astea agree on the outcome of the customization and all expected outputs prior to the actual development customization.  Following acceptance of the BRDs, code will be written as per design.  QA of the code with test data sets will complete these efforts.

Astea's technical services team will also provide testing and go live support, as required.

Customer Support

Astea's customer support organization provides customers with telephone and online technical support, as well as product enhancements, updates and new software releases.  The Company can provide 24X7 "follow-the-sun" support through its global support network.  Local representatives support all regions of Astea's worldwide operations. Astea personnel or a distributor's personnel familiar with local business customs and practices provide support in real-time and usually spoken in native languages. Typically, customer support fees are established as a fixed percentage of license fees and are invoiced to customers on an annual basis. Astea's customer support representatives are located in the United States, Europe, Israel, Japan and Australia.  In addition, Astea provides customer support 24X7 with its self-service portal.  The maintenance offering provides customers with support and help desk services, as well as software service packs and unspecified release upgrades for the modules they have purchased.

Education & Training

Application Training:

Key business owners responsible for the implementation of the core components will receive in-depth training designed to present the features, functionality and terminology of Astea's solutions. The objective of this training is to provide the audience with a working knowledge of these solutions.  This exposure to the system will enable project communication and add insight into specific business processes.

End-user training plans and documents are created during the implementation phase.  These plans and documentation are utilized to conduct end-user training sessions prior to go live.

Technical Training:

Software and database installation/creation training is provided, as required and/or recommended.

System Administration training provides the customer's IT staff pre-requisite knowledge to manipulate and manage administrative tasks associated with the Astea solutions.  Included within these tasks are:  Security, Batch Applications, Escalation, Import, etc.

Many customers are interested in performing their own personalization and minor customization to the system.  Training sessions are available to enhance customer understanding of available options for personalization and how to perform customizations.

 

 

 

 

 

Customers

The Company estimates that it has   sold   licenses to   approximately   650 customers ranging from small, rapidly growing companies to large, multinational corporations with geographically dispersed operations and remote offices. The broad applicability of the Company's products is demonstrated by the wide range of companies across many markets and industries that use one or more of Astea's products, including customers in information technology, medical devices and diagnostic systems, industrial controls and instrumentation, retail/point-of-sale systems equipment, HVAC, office automation equipment, imaging systems, fire and security, gaming/leisure equipment, facilities management, telecommunications and other related industries with equipment sales and service.  In 2015 there was one customer that accounted for 12% of total revenues and in 2014 there was no one customer that accounted for 10% or more of total revenues.

Sales and Marketing

The Company markets its products through a worldwide network of direct and indirect sales and services offices with corporate headquarters in the United States and regional headquarters in the United Kingdom (Europe, Middle East and Africa Operations), Japan and Australia (Asia Pacific Operations).  Sales partners include distributors (value-added resellers, system integrators and sales agents) and OEM partners.  The Company actively seeks to expand its reseller network and establish an international indirect distribution channel targeted at the mid-market tier.  See "Risk Factors — Need to Expand Indirect Sales."

Astea's direct sales force employs a consultative approach to selling, working closely with prospective clients to understand and define their needs and determine how such needs can be addressed by the Company's products.  These clients typically represent the mid- to high-end of the market.  A prospect development organization comprised of telemarketing representatives, who are engaged in outbound telemarketing and inbound inquiry response to a variety of marketing vehicles, develops and qualifies sales leads prior to referral to the direct sales staff.  Additional prospects are identified and qualified through the networking of direct sales staff and the Company's management as part of daily business activities.

The modular structure of Astea's software and its ongoing product development efforts provide opportunities for incremental sales of product modules and consulting services to existing accounts. See "Risk Factors — Continued Dependence on Large Contracts May Result in Lengthy Sales and Implementation Cycles and Impact Revenue Recognition and Cash Flow."

Astea's corporate marketing department is responsible for product marketing, lead generation and marketing communications, including the Company's corporate website, dialogue with high tech industry analysts, trade conferences, advertising, e-marketing, online and traditional seminars, direct mail, product collateral and public relations. Based on feedback from customers, analysts, business partners and market data, the marketing department provides input and direction for the Company's ongoing product development efforts and opportunities for professional services.    The Company also participates in an annual conference for users of Astea Alliance and FieldCentrix products.  Conference participants attend training sessions, workshops and presentations, and interact with other Astea product users, Astea management and staff, and technology partners, providing important input for future product direction.

Astea's international sales accounted for 35% of the Company's revenues in 2015 and 38% of the Company's revenues in 2014.  See "Risk Factors — Expansion of International Sales."

Product Development

Astea's product development strategy is to provide products that perform with exceptional depth and breadth of functionality and are easy to implement, use and maintain.  Products are designed to be flexible, modular and scalable, so that they can be implemented incrementally in phases and expanded to satisfy the evolving information requirements of Astea's clients and their customers.

The Company uses widely accepted commercially available application development tools from Microsoft Corporation. These software tools provide the Company's customers with the flexibility to deploy Astea's products across a variety of hardware platforms, operating systems and relational database management systems. The latest Astea Alliance solution suite is engineered for existing and emerging Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft.NET Framework, Visual Studio 2012, Windows Presentation Framework,  Internet Information Server, and supports Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 & 2012 R2, MS SQL 2012 & 2012 R2, MS SQL 2015, Oracle Databases 10 & 11, and BizTalk Server. Astea Alliance also supports deployments in both on-premise as well as cloud environments by leveraging a multi-tenant architecture. This multi-tenant architecture supports running the application using one set of hardware/software, serving multiple client organizations (tenants). The computing resources and application code are generally shared between all the tenants on a server. Each tenant has its own set of data that remains logically isolated from data that belongs to all other tenants.

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to product development that is conducted at Company facilities in the United States and Israel, Astea may participate in contractual relationships with complementary technology companies to reduce time-to-market with new product capabilities in order to continually increase its value proposition to existing and prospective customers.

The Company's expense for product development for the years ended December 31, 2015 and 2014 was $1,382,000 and $1,350,000, respectively. These expenses amounted to 6% and 7% of total revenues for 2015 and 2014, respectively.  The Company's capitalized software development costs were $2,407,000 and $2,532,000 in 2015 and 2014, respectively.  Total software development costs decreased $93,000 to $3,789,000 in 2015 compared to $3,882,000 in 2014. The Company anticipates that it will continue to allocate substantial resources to its development effort for the upgrade of its suite of products.  See "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Risk Factors — Need for Development of New Products."

Manufacturing

The Company's software products are distributed on CD ROMs and electronically via a client-server file transfer protocol.  Included with the software products are security keys (a software piracy protection) and documentation available on CD ROM and hard copy.  Historically, the Company has purchased media and duplicating and printing services for its product packaging from outside vendors.

Competition

The service management software market is intensely competitive and subject to rapid change.  To maintain or increase its position in the industry, the Company will need to continually enhance its current product offerings, introduce new products and features and maintain its professional services capabilities.  The Company currently competes on the basis of the depth and breadth of its integrated product features and functions, including the adaptability and scalability of its products to specific customer environments; the ability to deploy complex systems locally, regionally, nationally and internationally; product quality; ease-of-use; reliability and performance; breadth of professional services; integration of Astea's offerings with other enterprise applications; price; and the availability of Astea's products on popular operating systems, relational databases, Internet and communications platforms.

Competitors vary in size, scope and breadth of the products and services offered.  The Company encounters competition generally from a number of sources, including other software companies, third-party professional services organizations that develop custom software, and information systems departments of potential customers developing proprietary, custom software.  In the service management marketplace, the Company competes against publicly held companies and numerous smaller, privately held companies.  Some of the Company's competitors include SAP AG ("SAP"), Oracle Corporation ("Oracle"), and a number of smaller privately held companies.  See "Risk Factors — Competition in the CRM Software Market is Intense."

Licenses and Intellectual Property

Astea considers its software proprietary and licenses its products to its customers under written license agreements.  The Company also employs an encryption system that restricts a user's access to source code to further protect the Company's intellectual property.  Because the Company's products allow customers to use the software's built in features to customize their applications without altering the framework source code, the framework source code for the Company's products is typically neither licensed nor provided to customers.  The Company does, however, license source code from time to time and maintains certain third-party source code escrow arrangements.  See "— Customers" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations."

The Company seeks to protect its products through a combination of copyright, trademark, trade secret and fair business practice laws.  The Company also requires employees, consultants and third parties to sign nondisclosure agreements.  Despite these precautions, it may be possible for unauthorized parties to copy certain portions of the Company's products or reverse engineer or obtain and use information that the Company regards as proprietary.  The Company presently has no patents or patent applications pending.  See "Risk Factors — Dependence on Proprietary Technology."

 

Because the software development industry is characterized by rapid technological change, Astea believes that factors such as the technological and creative skills of its personnel, new product developments, frequent product enhancements, and reliable product maintenance are more important to establishing and maintaining a technology leadership position than current legal protections.

 

 

 

 

 

Employees

As of December 31, 2015, the Company, including its subsidiaries, had a total of 166 full-time employees worldwide, 83 in the United States, 15 in the United Kingdom, 3 in the Netherlands, 43 in Israel, 12 in Australia and 10 in Japan.  In addition, we have 5 part-time employees, 2 in the United States, and 3 in Israel.  The Company's future performance depends, in significant part, upon the continued service of its key technical and management personnel and its continuing ability to attract and retain highly qualified and motivated personnel in all areas of its operations.  See "Risk Factors — Dependence on Key Personnel; Competition for Employees." None of the Company's employees is represented by a labor union.  The Company has not experienced any work stoppages and considers its relationships with its employees to be good.

Corporate History

The Company was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1979 under the name Applied System Technologies, Inc.  In 1992, the Company changed its name to Astea International Inc.  Until 1986, the Company operated principally as a software-consulting firm, providing professional software consulting services on a fee for service and on a project basis.  In 1986, the Company introduced its DISPATCH-1 product.  In November 1991, the Company's sole stockholder acquired the outstanding stock of The DATA Group Corporation ("Data Group"), a provider of field service software and related professional services for the mainframe-computing environment.  Data Group was merged into the Company in January 1994.  In February 1995, the Company and its sole stockholder acquired the outstanding stock of Astea Service & Distribution Systems BV ("Astea BV"), the Company's distributor of DISPATCH-1 and related services in Europe.  In May 1995, the Company reincorporated in Delaware.  In July 1995, the Company completed its initial public offering of Common Stock.  In February 1996, the Company merged with Bendata, Inc.  In June 1996, the Company acquired Abalon AB.  In September 1998 (effective July 1, 1998), the Company sold Bendata, Inc.  In December 1998, the Company sold Abalon AB. In December 1997, the Company introduced ServiceAlliance and in October 1999, SalesAlliance.  Both products were subsequently re-engineered into components of the AllianceEnterprise suite which was introduced in 2001. Through 2001 and into 2002, the Company rebuilt its product functionality for Web-based applications and in August 2003 introduced Astea Alliance version 6.  The Company released a new system architecture based on Microsoft.NET during the third quarter of 2004.  On September 21, 2005, the Company acquired substantially all the assets and certain liabilities of FieldCentrix, Inc.   In the first quarter of 2010, the Company delivered Astea Alliance version 10.0. In 2011, Astea launched Alliance Mobile Universal to deliver enterprise functionality optimized for the latest devices such as Android, iPhone and iPad leveraging the latest HTML5 technology.  In 2013, the latest software version, Astea Alliance 11.0 was released. With this release, Astea introduced an abundance of new features and enhancements that were developed based on three primary concepts; optimizing and streamlining processes, enabling proactive service insight and intelligence at every level, and significantly increasing ease of use and customizations without technical skills. Accelerated revenue growth, proactive intelligence, productivity and process optimization, enriched employee interaction experience, and increased customer satisfaction are just a few of the advantages organizations will be able to achieve with this release. Astea Alliance is available either as an on-premise or cloud application, allowing every company to choose the right offering that aligns with their strategy and IT ecosystem. In 2014, Astea introduced Astea Alliance 11.5. This release introduced many new innovations such as third party vendor mobile app, advanced customization capabilities, additional reporting and dashboard capabilities, as well as extending reports and visual indicators to the mobile device.   With Astea's latest mobile release, organizations can create sales quotations, perform inventory cycle counts, support complex items with subcomponents, create and support different workflows/apps for different groups/types of work, and much more. Astea's mobile solution provides the level of flexibility necessary that makes it easy for organizations to modify and adapt the solution without needing development skillsets or adding additional costs. In February 2015, Astea released v12, and subsequently released v12.5 in September 2015. Astea Alliance Version 12.0 included scheduling enhancements, additional visualization and collaboration tools, optimized navigation, as well as numerous customer-driven features from around the globe. Astea Alliance 12.0 delivered a number of noteworthy advancements that help companies accelerate response times, improve the overall customer experience, and gain instant access to actionable intelligence. Astea Alliance Version 12.5 included a fresh, new Customer Self-Service Portal, a new Service Manager Analytics App, and many additional features designed to optimize service outcomes. Additional enhancements were also developed in the areas of scheduling optimization, knowledge management, mobile field service, and logistics.