Sungevity is a solar energy company that designs, installs, and finances solar electric systems for homes. To support its rapid growth, Sungevity implemented the ServiceMax field service management solution integrated with its Salesforce.com CRM platform. This provided Sungevity with a 360-degree view of customers, streamlined processes, and enabled scalability. Key benefits included increased transparency, improved customer satisfaction, and an industry-leading net promoter score. Moving forward, Sungevity plans to enhance customer self-service tools and expand the use of ServiceMax across its operations.

1. SHEDDING LIGHT ON A 360° VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
WRITTEN BY: JOHN CARROLL, CEO
FEBRUARY 2013
© 2012 The Service Council™ All rights reserved.

2. SHEDDING LIGHT ON A 360° VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
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Sungevity is the nation’s fastest growing residential solar company that designs, installs,
and finances its solar electric systems. Headquartered in Berkeley, California, the
company currently serves homeowners in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut,
Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. Its mission is to make
solar installation more accessible and affordable to the community by providing
education about solar energy, an online iQuote process that eliminates the hassle of
home visits, and various lease options to remove any financial burden for customers.
Sungevity has a unique approach to help consumers go solar: interested parties can
learn about solar energy and get a free, personalized iQuote for a lease on a system
within 24 hours – all online before any payment is required. The company uses satellite
images and aerial photography to assess the homeowner’s roof remotely, and
accurately determines the home's solar energy
potential. Unlike most traditional solar companies
(i.e., those that need to physically come to the
house to provide a quote) Sungevity and its
network of Preferred Installers save consumers
both time and money by bringing this process
entirely online.
Historically, the single greatest barrier to the
widespread adoption of residential solar power
has been the high upfront cost of getting a
system installed on the homeowner’s roof.
Approximately 90% of the lifetime cost of a
home solar system resulted from payments for
panels and installation.
To offset the burden of this initial investment,
Sungevity created its Solar Lease, which allows consumers to go solar without having
to foot the upfront cost. For no money down, the company will design and install a
system customized for each home, and then lease the panels for a low monthly rate.
This model has been very successful in enabling consumers to get started on a solar
energy program that will ultimately save them a great deal of money over an extended
period of time.
Service Management Challenges for a Growing Company in an Expanding Market
With its innovative practices generating record growth, Sungevity quickly realized it
needed field service operations that could scale. It also needed tools that were easily
used by their own technicians and by their partner network, as partner technicians

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often perform installations and provide service for many of their customers.
Among the greatest challenges faced by the company were the following:
• Undocumented business processes
• Unavailable data
• Departmentalized (i.e., siloed) data
• Cumbersome off-line tools (e.g., Excel spreadsheets were used to manage work
orders)
• Limited scalability of existing management tools
• Lack of data reporting capabilities
Service Management Goals and Objectives
Sungevity’s challenges were quickly translated into specific goals for the company.
Management also recognized that it was dealing in a high growth segment, and that
areas including system integration and scalability would represent major issues moving
forward. As a result, company management looked specifically for:
• Salesforce.com-based applications (i.e., its platform of choice), and
• A Field Service solution with device-agnostic mobile applications (i.e., one that
would support a BYOD, or bring your own device, environment)
One of management’s top goals was also to move to a single platform for service
operations, so there would be no future worries regarding integration. Since they were
already using the Salesforce.com platform, they preferred a Salesforce.com-based
solution.
Other service management goals included:
• Being able to digitize work orders
• Ability to provide data validation
• Making it easier for service techs to automate their activities
A more lofty and far-reaching goal for the company was to “blanket the U.S. and the
world with solar energy systems.” Panel prices had dropped as much as 60 percent in
the previous few years, and were now both less expensive to acquire and easier to
install. Finding the right solution, tools and resources to run its service operations would
allow it also leverage its presence in an increasingly accommodating (and receptive)
global market environment for solar energy-based systems.
Initiating the Solution and Vendor Selection Process

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The first step Sungevity management took to begin the selection process was to
establish a team to draft a forward-looking business process plan. Up until that time,
most of the company’s existing business had been “very, very organic.” Management
moved to hire a six-sigma consultant to provide some initial assistance, and then spent
approximately eight months to refine and coordinate its thoughts into a more detailed
plan of action. This initial portion of the process culminated in December 2011, resulting
in the preparation of a list of tools and resources that would be required – focusing
mostly on software.
By January 2012, Sungevity had selected Salesforce.com as their new CRM vendor,
mainly on the basis of its scalability, and the ability to support the company over its
long-term anticipated growth. As a result, the company’s selection and evaluation team
refined its search for a Field Service solution specifically tied to Salesforce.com.
However, what they learned fairly early on was that it was one thing to implement
Salesforce.com for internal use, only; but an entirely different thing to implement it in
support of a global partner network.
To address this issue, the team focused first on defining the functionality requirements
and return-on-investment (i.e., ROI) for the proposed solution so that it could provide a
compelling argument to senior management. To accomplish this, the team dealt with
each company executive, one-on-one, face-to-face, to assure that it could convince
management of the numerous merits – and practical necessity – of acquiring such a
solution and, ultimately, gaining full management buy-in and support.
The team started looking at a number of alternative Field Service Management solution
providers, and were quickly able to rule out about five or six vendors whose
functionality, it believed, was not yet developed enough to meet its documented needs.
For many, the biggest missing piece of the solution was the lack of a mobile workforce
application. Cost was generally not a factor – but the lack of a suitable mobile
application definitely was. A smart phone platform was highly desirable, as much of
Sungevity’s business is conducted in crawlspaces and attics, and only smart phones
can typically be used in such tight spaces – laptops and large tablets cannot.
After a rigorous selection and evaluation process, ServiceMax was selected as the
designated vendor, providing “a big win” for Sungevity. The ServiceMax solution
significantly reduced the time it was taking for Sungevity (and its partners) to perform its
service activities, there was more data availability (through Dataforce.com), it provided
the mobile applications the company was looking for, and there was total transparency
between and among processes companywide, as well as from department to
department.

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The ServiceMax solution came to Sungevity just in time, as in 2011, the company
entered into an official partnership with Lowes, the second largest home improvement
retailer in the world, with 2011 sales of over US$50 billion, and serving approximately
15 million customers a week at more than 1,745 home improvement stores in the United
States, Canada and Mexico. As a result, Sungevity had to make sure that it would be
able to launch the solution quickly; get all of its tools and resources in place; and be
prepared to scale rapidly to meet the new opportunity.
Sungevity went forward with ServiceMax in April 2012; and less than three months later,
in July 2012, it launched Salesforce.com companywide – and it has continued to
expand its use and reliance on the ServiceMax solution ever since.
Salesforce.com
• Sungevity’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform
• Ability to track customers from sales through installation
• Reinforcement of the 20-year customer service retention strategy
ServiceMax
• Management of all of Sungevity’s Field Service operations
• Provides an integrated, 360° view of the customer throughout the entire service
delivery chain
• Provides relevant and detailed field service data for both reporting and analytics
Principal Outcomes and Expected Returns
The principal benefits realized from the implementation of the ServiceMax solution may
be summarized as:
• Unifying scheduling companywide, and across all departments
• Streamlining partner contact through a partner portal
• Providing digital, data-validated work orders
• Extending data accessibility to the field techs through a mobile application
• Providing end-to-end product tracking and Return Management Authorization (RMA)
An early improvement as a result of the ServiceMax deployment was the ability to send
out PDF documents for print, sign and return – there would be no need for paper-based
signatures anymore! Built on the ServiceMax solution, Sungevity created a structured
internal and customer approval process that is expected to speed billing and save the
company between $15,000 and $20,000 through the use of digital signatures.

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Second, the company’s two largest departments: Project Management, which handles
installations; and Customer Service, which handles maintenance and repair work, had
previously depended on two separate scheduling tools to manage a single workforce.
Routinely, when one department would schedule calls for the workforce, the other
department would not have any visibility. As a result, in many cases, the same
technician would be scheduled for two calls at the same time due to the lack of
transparency. Consolidating all scheduling under a single umbrella was a “huge, huge
benefit” for Sungevity.
Third, the company’s installation process had been very manual and cumbersome. It
historically would start out by first sending the installation partner a text, and then
following-up with paper forms. However, with the ServiceMax solution, all information
and forms are provided directly through the partner portal – again, no paper is required.
Further, by using a single site (i.e., the partner portal) all communications regarding
installations, maintenance and repair have been streamlined, and there are no more
overlapping appointments or double booking. The new system even takes into account
field technician personal time, such as dentist appointments, when scheduling a
customer call.
Finally, Sungevity is now in the process of moving all of its parts, inventory and logistics
activities into the system. As a result, its entire field service organization will have real
360° visibility from sales, through shipments, installations, service, parts – everything. It
used to take between 10 and 15 tools to do all this – but everything is now moving onto
the ServiceMax solution.
In summary, the main outcomes of the ServiceMax implementation focus primarily
around:
• Greater data transparency and accuracy
• Better service delivery and increased customer satisfaction (which, in turn, drives
referrals)
• Streamlined interactions with its Preferred Installer Contractor Network
• Ability to attract higher quality Installers (i.e., at better prices per installed Watt)
• Scalability of the platform
• Increased capacity to accommodate expected increases in field service calls
• Ability to keep costs at the lowest possible levels
However, customer-focused benefits being realized are the most exciting. Sungevity
believes it has “jumped the shark” with respect to satisfying customers. They have
placed iPad-powered kiosks in Lowes retail outlets that enable consumers to obtain an
instant quote (i.e., iQuote) for a solar energy system that meets their specific and
unique requirements. Sungevity kiosks have already been installed at Lowes retail

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outlets in nine states, and the entire installation is expected to be completed in no more
than three to six months.
In addition, Sungevity’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), while historically high, all but went
through the roof as a result of the ServiceMax implementation. In fact, in Q4 2012, the
company’s NPS, at 74, was higher than that of Trader Joe’s, Amazon – and even the
Apple Store! Company management is now targeting an NPS of 80 moving forward.
What’s Next?
For the future, supported by the ServiceMax solution, Sungevity plans to enhance its
customer portal to include a number of additional customer self-support functionalities,
including:
• Quantification of the customer’s role in reducing its carbon footprint
• Summary of savings in overall energy (i.e., electricity) costs and consumption
• Number of gallons of fuel saved
Under its Generate Positive initiative, and with the help of the ServiceMax solution and
customer support team, Sungevity has great plans moving forward, including:
• Expanding the user base equipped with the ServiceMax platform
• Streamlining internal processes to make the best use of the ServiceMax products
• Develop parts logistics and RMA processes in ServiceMax
• Ability to track product and service performance from end-to-end, and over the
course of an entire solar energy project – a 20-year customer relationship!
Together, Sungevity and ServiceMax are truly working in partnership to shed their light
over a global customer base.

8. ABOUT THE SERVICE COUNCIL™
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© 2012 The Service Council™ All rights reserved.