Executive Summary

Field Service Emerging Providers

Field service delivery is one of the most complex and highly orchestrated functions of an enterprise’s customer-facing activities. It can also be one of the most expensive and difficult to automate. Sending a worker or technician to a customer’s site represents an investment of time, materials and labor that goes well beyond what it costs to respond to a customer by phone. When the customer is a business, and the object being serviced is a highly advanced piece of machinery or critical infrastructure, the stakes for that interaction go far beyond customer satisfaction or NPS scores.

The market for field service software has been fragmented by function—tools for fleet management over here, for technician communications over there—and is now consolidating into broad-based platforms that integrate multiple activities. The broader the platform, the easier it is to track and organize field service processes for maximum efficiency.

Change in this market is accelerating, due in part to advances in AI, but also because the field service environment has grown more complex. Workforce dynamics are shifting, assets are becoming more sophisticated and customer expectations for speed, uptime and transparency continue to rise. In response, enterprises are increasingly focused on gaining end-to-end visibility across the service lifecycle, from work-order creation and technician scheduling through service execution and incident closeout. Greater emphasis is placed on workforce optimization, including skills-based scheduling and the ability to adapt in real time to disruptions.

Workforce dynamics are shifting, assets are becoming more sophisticated and customer expectations for speed, uptime and transparency continue to rise.

ISG Research defines field service management (FSM) as the practice of delivering technical customer support at the customer’s site, as opposed to relying solely on remote communication channels such as phone or chat. To implement that practice, FSM software is defined as a digital platform that coordinates and optimizes all activities required to deploy, manage and support field technicians. This typically includes capabilities for scheduling and dispatching, work-order management, mobile workforce enablement, asset and inventory tracking, customer communication and real-time data capture. Together, these capabilities ensure that technicians have the right information, parts and tools to complete service tasks efficiently and consistently.

Emerging providers are not necessarily newer or more advanced, but are often smaller, long-standing software companies with limited investment capacity and slower product evolution compared to large platform providers. The differentiation typically lies in narrower functional scope, legacy customer bases or specialization in specific industries or geographies, rather than in current architecture, advanced analytics or AI-driven capabilities. As a result, the distinction is less about innovation velocity and more about scale, ecosystem maturity and the ability to support complex enterprise requirements. For many organizations, these providers remain relevant where requirements are narrower, deployments are regional or industry-specific, or where existing relationships and domain expertise outweigh the need for broad platform consolidation.

AI has proven particularly effective in optimizing technician dispatch and travel time as well as in coordinating the use of technical knowledge by both customers and technicians. Field service operations are also benefiting from the way broader FSM platforms support more comprehensive digitalization by connecting knowledge, scheduling, skills, asset tracking and performance measurement under a single software environment. This gives organizations clearer insight into service cost, faster response to changing conditions and more consistent communication across the service lifecycle.

AI has proven particularly effective in optimizing technician dispatch and travel time and in coordinating the use of technical knowledge.

The nature of the service experience for business customers differs significantly from that of consumers. Costs differ, as do expectations, particularly when service levels are governed by contractual SLAs. These differences influence how service organizations prioritize response times, technician skills and parts availability, and whether platforms emphasize customer communication, asset visibility or strict service-level enforcement.

The platformization of field service software is also enabling more predictive service models. When organizations can anticipate maintenance needs, they can schedule visits more efficiently or resolve issues without requiring an on-site visit. In practice, this shifts field service from reactive, break/fix approaches toward planned, data-driven interventions that reduce downtime and improve asset utilization. This shift also supports better alignment between service execution and business priorities, allowing organizations to balance cost, customer impact and operational risk more effectively.

FSM software and practices have progressed rapidly from digitized paper-based work orders to platforms that unify scheduling, work-order management and knowledge access. The adoption of smartphones and reliable mobile broadband enabled real-time technician connectivity, GPS-based routing and faster data capture. More recently, IoT, AI and machine learning have enabled remote monitoring, predictive maintenance and automated workflows. These capabilities have moved FSM toward more proactive service delivery models that improve uptime and customer experience. In some organizations, FSM is beginning to function as a strategic differentiator rather than a pure cost center.

Knowledge management illustrates how enterprises are using FSM platforms to connect functions that were previously isolated. When a single platform coordinates documentation across contact centers, customer portals and internal service teams, centralization becomes both practical and valuable. ISG predicts that by 2027, most field service technicians will have access to AI-boosted knowledge resources to accelerate on-site issue resolution. By 2028, two-thirds of enterprises will use AI to coordinate and optimize scheduling, dispatch and workflow management for field service teams.

Mobility remains central to field service operations. FSM platforms focus on controlling scheduling and communicating updates to all parties involved. Mobile applications provide technicians with access to technical documentation, product catalogs, customer histories and SLA information, while customers benefit from improved communication and, in some cases, media sharing or remote assistance.

FSM capabilities center on scheduling and dispatch optimization, mobile workforce enablement, work order lifecycle management, asset and inventory tracking, knowledge delivery, analytics and integration with the broader enterprise environment.

Enterprises should approach FSM adoption as a structured transformation rather than a single system deployment. Successful programs often begin with phased rollouts by region or asset class. Alignment across service, IT, operations and finance is essential to ensure shared accountability for outcomes such as SLA performance, cost control and asset up time.

FSM success is measured through metrics that reflect both efficiency and effectiveness, including first-time fix rate, mean time to repair, truck roll reduction, SLA compliance, technician utilization and inventory performance. Enterprises evaluating FSM providers should look beyond core scheduling and dispatch to assess integration depth, AI maturity, security and governance practices and alignment with long-term operational strategies.

The 2026 ISG Buyers Guide™ for Field Service Emerging Providers evaluates software providers in key areas, including mobile workforce management, scheduling and dispatch optimization, work order and asset management and related capabilities. This research evaluates the following software providers: Atheer, Dusk Mobile, Fieldcode, FSM Global, Frontu, Gomocha, GPS Insight, Innosoft, Kapture CX, KloudGin, Mobile Reach, MSI Data, Nomadia, Praxedo, Retriever Communications, ServicePower, Solvares Field Service, WennSoft and Zinier.

Buyers Guide Overview

ISG Research has conducted market research for over two decades across vertical industries, business applications, AI and IT. We have designed the ISG Buyers Guide™ to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of business and IT requirements. Utilization of our research methodology and decades of experience enables our Buyers Guide to be an effective method to assess and select software providers and products. The findings of this research provide a comprehensive approach to rating software providers and rank their ability to meet specific product and customer experience requirements.

ISG Research has designed the Buyers Guide to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of business and IT requirements.

The 2026 ISG Buyers Guide™ for Field Service Emerging Providers is the distillation of continuous market and product research. It is an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings address enterprises’ requirements for field service software. The Value Index methodology is structured to support a request for information (RFI) for a request for proposal (RFP) process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize and maintain relationships with software providers. The ISG Buyers Guide evaluates customer experience and the product experience in its capability and platform.

The structure of the research reflects our understanding that the effective evaluation of software providers and products involves far more than just examining product features, potential revenue or customers generated from a provider’s marketing and sales efforts. It can ensure the best long-term relationship and value achieved from a resource and financial investment We believe it is important to take a comprehensive, research-based approach, since making the wrong choice of field service software can raise the total cost of ownership, lower the return on investment and hamper an enterprise’s ability to reach its potential. In addition, this approach can reduce the project’s development and deployment time and eliminate the risk of relying on opinions or historical biases.

ISG Research believes that an objective review of existing and potential new software providers and products is a critical strategy for the adoption and implementation of field service software. An enterprise’s review should include an analysis of both what is possible and what is relevant. We urge enterprises to do a thorough job of evaluating field service software and offer this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these providers and as an evaluation methodology.

Key Takeaways

Field service delivery is becoming more platform-centric as enterprises seek tighter coordination across scheduling, execution and asset visibility. Workforce constraints, asset complexity and rising uptime expectations are increasing the operational stakes of on-site service. Within this environment, emerging providers remain relevant where requirements are narrower, regionally focused or shaped by legacy relationships rather than broad platform consolidation.

Software Provider Summary
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Field Service Emerging Providers evaluates 19 software providers offering products that support mobile workforce management, scheduling and dispatch optimization, work-order management and related field service capabilities. The research ranked the top three overall leaders as ServicePower, KloudGin and Praxedo. Providers were classified using weighted performance in Product Experience and Customer Experience for ISG quadrant placement. Dusk Mobile, Fieldcode, KloudGin and ServicePower were rated as Exemplary, with FSM Global, GPS Insight, Kapture CX, Nomadia, Praxedo and Zinier rated as Innovative. Frontu, Innosoft, Mobile Reach, MSI Data, Solvares Field Service and WennSoft were rated as Assurance, and Atheer, Gomocha and Retriever Communications were rated as Merit.

Product Experience Insights
Product Experience, representing 80% of the evaluation, focuses on Capability (40%) and Platform (40%), which includes adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability. ServicePower, Praxedo and KloudGin achieved the highest performance as Leaders in this category, supported by strengths in mobile workforce and work order execution breadth and platform-level adaptability for enterprise integration and configuration. Leaders demonstrated enterprise-grade platform capabilities across varied roles and contexts.

Customer Experience Value
Customer Experience, representing 20% of the evaluation, focuses on validation and TCO/ROI. Dusk Mobile, WennSoft and KloudGin were the Leaders in this category, showing strong customer advocacy and clear investment in success outcomes. Providers with lower performance often lacked publicly available customer validation or failed to demonstrate structured ROI measurement and proactive lifecycle engagement.

Strategic Recommendations
Enterprises should evaluate emerging field service providers based on fit-for-purpose scope and operational maturity rather than broad platform ambition. Buyers should prioritize software that integrates cleanly into existing service workflows and provides reliable mobile execution, dispatch discipline and measurable service outcomes. Governance, security and scalability requirements should be tested early to avoid hidden constraints as deployments expand across regions or asset classes. A structured rollout approach helps balance near-term service continuity with longer-term platform consolidation objectives.

How To Use This Buyers Guide

Evaluating Software Providers: The Process

We recommend using the Buyers Guide to assess and evaluate new or existing software providers for your enterprise. The market research can be used as an evaluation framework to assess existing approaches and software providers or establish a formal request for information from providers on products and customer experience and will shorten the cycle time when creating an RFI. The steps listed below provide a process that can facilitate best possible outcomes in the most efficient manner.

1. Define the business case and goals.
   Define the mission and business case for investment and the expected outcomes from your organizational and technological efforts.
2. Specify the business and IT needs.
   Defining the business and IT requirements helps identify what specific capabilities are required with respect to people, processes, information and technology.
3. Assess the required roles and responsibilities.
   Identify the individuals required for success at every level of the enterprise from executives to frontline workers and determine the needs of each.
4. Outline the project’s critical path.
   What needs to be done, in what order and who will do it? This outline should make clear the prior dependencies at each step of the project plan.
5. Ascertain the technology approach.
   Determine the business and technology approach that most closely aligns to your enterprise’s requirements.
6. Establish software provider evaluation criteria.
   Utilize the product experience: capability and platform with support for adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability, and the customer experience in TCO/ROI and Validation.
7. Evaluate and select the software provider and products properly.
   Apply a weighting the evaluation categories in the evaluation criteria to reflect your enterprise’s priorities to determine the short list of software providers and products.
8. Establish the business initiative team to start the project.
   Identify who will lead the project and the members of the team needed to plan and execute it with timelines, priorities and resources.

Using the ISG Buyers Guide and process provides enterprises a clear, structured approach to making smarter software and business investment decisions. It ensures alignment between strategy, people, processes and technology while reducing risk, saving time, and improving outcomes. The ISG approach promotes data-driven decision-making and collaboration, helping choose the right software providers for maximum value and return on investment.

The Findings

The software providers and products evaluated in the research provide product and customer experiences, but not everything offered is equally valuable to every enterprise or is needed to operate in business processes and use cases. Moreover, the existence of too many capabilities in products may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a more comprehensive set of capabilities in the product is important, and where they match your enterprise’s requirements.

An effective customer relationship with a software provider is vital to the success of any investment. The overall customer experience and the full lifecycle of engagement play a key role in ensuring satisfaction and long-term success. Providers with dedicated customer leadership, such as chief customer officers, tend to invest more deeply in these relationships and prioritize customer outcomes to TCO and ROI expectations. It is equally important that this commitment to customer success is clearly demonstrated throughout the provider’s website, buying process and customer journey.

Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories

The research finds ServicePower atop the list, followed by KloudGin and Praxedo. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. KloudGin and ServicePower and have done so in four categories, Praxedo in three and Frontu, Dusk Mobile, Kapture CX, WennSoft, and Zinier in one category.

The overall representation of the research below places the rating of the Product Experience and Customer Experience on the x and y axes, respectively, to provide a visual representation and classification of the software providers. Those providers whose Product Experience have above median weighted performance to the axis in aggregate of the two product categories place farther to the right, while the performance and weighting for the Customer Experience category determines placement on the vertical axis. In short, software providers that place closer to the upper-right on this chart performed better than those closer to the lower-left.

The research categorizes and rates software providers into one of four categories: Assurance, Exemplary, Merit or Innovative. This representation of software providers’ weighted performance in meeting the requirements in product and customer experience.

Exemplary: This rating (upper right) represents those that performed above median in Product and Customer Experience requirements. The providers rated Exemplary are: Dusk Mobile, Fieldcode, KloudGin and ServicePower.

Innovative: This rating (lower right) represents those that performed above median in Product Experience but not in Customer Experience. The providers rated Innovative are: FSM Global, GPS Insight, Kapture CX, Nomadia, Praxedo and Zinier.

Assurance: This rating (upper left) represents those that performed above median in Customer Experience but not in Product Experience. The providers rated Assurance are: Frontu, Innosoft, Mobile Reach, MSI Data, Solvares Field Service and WennSoft.

Merit: This rating (lower left) represents those that did not surpass the median in Customer or Product Experience. The providers rated Merit are: Atheer, Gomocha and Retriever Communications.

We advise enterprises to use this research as a supplement to their own evaluations, recognizing that ratings or rankings do not solely represent the value of a provider nor indicate universal suitability of a set of products.

Product Experience

The process of researching products to address an enterprise’s needs should be comprehensive and evaluate specific capabilities and the underlying platform to the product experience. Our evaluation of the Product Experience examines the lifecycle of onboarding, configuration, operations, usage and maintenance. Too often, software providers are not evaluated for the entirety of the product; instead, they are evaluated on market execution and vision of the future.

The research results in Product Experience are ranked at 80%, or four-fifths, using the underlying weighted performance. Importance was placed on the categories as follows: Capability (40%) and Platform (40%). ServicePower, Praxedo and KloudGin were designated Product Experience Leaders.

Customer Experience

The importance of a customer relationship with a software provider is essential to the actual success of the products and technology. The evaluation of the Customer Experience and the entire lifecycle an enterprise has with its software provider is critical for ensuring satisfaction in working with that provider. The ISG Buyers Guide examines a software provider’s customer commitment, viability, customer success, sales and onboarding, product roadmap and services with partners and support. The customer experience category also investigates the TCO/ROI and how well a software provider demonstrates the product’s overall value, cost and benefits, including the tools and resources to evaluate these factors.

The research results in Customer Experience are ranked at 20%, or one-fifth of the 100% index, and represent the underlying provider validation and TCO/ROI requirements as they relate to the framework of commitment and value to the software provider-customer relationship.

The software providers that evaluated the highest in the Customer Experience category are Dusk Mobile, WennSoft and KloudGin. These category leaders best communicate commitment and dedication to customer needs. While not Leaders, Frontu and Fieldcode were also found to meet a broad range of enterprise customer experience requirements.

Software providers that did not perform well in this category were unable to provide or make sufficient information readily available to demonstrate success or articulate their commitment to customer experience. The use of a software provider requires continuous investment, so a holistic evaluation must include examination of how they support their customer experience.

Appendix: Software Provider Inclusion

For inclusion in the 2026 ISG Buyers Guide™ for Field Service Emerging Providers, a software provider must be in good standing financially and ethically, have at most $50 million in annual or projected revenue verified using independent sources, sell products and provide support on at least two continents and have at least 25 customers. The principal source of the relevant business unit’s revenue must be software-related, and there must have been at least one major software release in the past 12 months.

Tools evaluated must include support for proactive communication, real-time updates and remote troubleshooting. Tools for customer engagement must be fully integrated with core FSM processes such as scheduling, dispatching and asset management. Tools evaluated must focus on physical, on-site interactions that are unique to field service environments.

The research is designed to be independent of the specifics of software provider packaging and pricing. To represent the real-world environment in which businesses operate, we include providers that offer suites or packages of products that may include relevant individual modules or applications. If a software provider is actively marketing, selling and developing a product for the general market and it is reflected on the provider’s website that the product is within the scope of the research, that provider is automatically evaluated for inclusion.

All software providers that offer relevant field service products and meet the inclusion requirements were invited to participate in the evaluation process at no cost to them.

Software providers that meet our inclusion criteria but did not completely participate in our Buyers Guide were assessed solely on publicly available information. As this could have a significant impact on classification and ratings, we recommend additional scrutiny when evaluating those providers.

Products Evaluated