How to grow revenue beyond break-fix: Full webinar recap and transcript

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Rising costs, limited labor, and increasing customer expectations are putting pressure on the traditional break-fix business model. For field service organizations, building more predictable revenue starts with understanding the assets they service and making better use of the information collected during every job.

In this webinar, XOi Sales Engineer Charles Brower explores how connected asset intelligence helps service organizations identify opportunities beyond immediate repairs. By combining asset specifications, service history, technician observations, and real-world performance data, teams can uncover recurring issues, prioritize maintenance and replacement needs, and provide customers with clearer recommendations.

The discussion covers the business impact of reactive service, the importance of consistent field data capture, and how proactive maintenance agreements can support stable revenue and stronger customer relationships. Charles also demonstrates how XOi helps organizations assess asset portfolios, identify risk, and build data-backed capital plans.

A real-world example illustrates the impact: a customer managing 14,000 assets had spent six months developing a capital plan. Using the asset information already collected, XOi demonstrated how a plan could be generated in minutes.

The session concludes with audience questions covering Field Service Management (FSM) integrations, refrigerant compliance, artificial intelligence (AI), asset coverage, and ways to bring existing asset inventories into XOi.

Key takeaway: Every service visit creates information that can help organizations plan future work. Connecting that information across the asset lifecycle helps teams build more proactive customer relationships, support recurring revenue, and make better decisions about asset uptime.

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Transcription: How to grow revenue beyond break-fix

Webinar host: Amanda Harp, Director of Go-to-Market, XOi
Presenter: Charles (Charlie) Brower, Sales Engineer, XOi

Introduction

Amanda Harp: Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. My name is Amanda Harp, and I'm the Director of Go-to-Market here at XOi.

I've been working closely with Charlie to bring this webinar to you. We're excited about today's discussion because it's particularly relevant to what we're seeing across the industry.

We are recording this session and will send the recording to everyone who attended. If you find today's discussion helpful, you'll be able to share it with the rest of your team.

Charlie, we appreciate you taking the lead today. I'll turn it over to you.

Charlie Brower: Excellent. Thanks, Amanda.

Hey, everyone. I'm Charlie Brower, a sales engineer here at XOi. Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to join us.

Today, we're going to talk about how service organizations can use what they learn in the field to plan for what comes next.

Break-fix work will always be part of the business. The opportunity is to make better use of each service visit so teams can see beyond the immediate repair.

The pressures facing the break-fix business model

Charlie Brower: The break-fix mentality is under pressure.

We're seeing tighter margins driven by increased competition and rising costs. We're also facing limited labor due to the shortage of new technicians and the retirement of veteran technicians.

I can't tell you how many times I've been on a call where someone asks, "How can we download our veteran technicians' knowledge before they retire and transfer that knowledge to our newer technicians?"

It's a huge challenge, and it makes the break-fix business more difficult.

Customer expectations are also evolving. Customers want increased visibility and justification for the work being performed. Every dollar billed needs to be supported, and we're seeing that expectation consistently.

Field service providers that led the industry in the past may face new challenges in the future. When your growth depends on the break-fix model, creating predictable, recurring revenue becomes difficult.

I want to do a quick poll. Which of these pressures feels most familiar to you? Is it the labor shortage, margin pressure, customers asking for more information, or all three?

Amanda Harp: We're seeing the responses come in. It looks like several attendees are experiencing all three challenges.

Quite a few people identified cost pressure and tighter margins as their top concern, with limited labor and unpredictable call volume coming in close behind.

Overall, cost pressure and tighter margins appear to be the biggest challenges among today's attendees.

Charlie Brower: That's helpful to understand. Costs, margins, competition, and the difficulty of justifying rising expenses to customers are all important considerations.

The service industry has operated around the break-fix model for more than 40 years. One figure we cited is that 49% of vendors make service decisions reactively rather than proactively.

Break-fix work remains an important part of service delivery. However, relying on it as the primary economic driver creates unpredictable demand and volatile revenue streams.

When an organization's financial success depends on asset failure instead of uptime, revenue forecasting, resource allocation, scheduling, and parts inventory become ongoing challenges.

We also see a gap in the use of information to guide decisions. Only 26% of field service providers are using real-time dashboards to support strategy and decision-making, according to the figures presented here.

The aim is to give teams better context when deciding where to focus their attention.

On paper, emergency service calls can appear lucrative because contractors can command higher margins for urgent repairs. But when performance depends on asset failures, core operational planning becomes a constant struggle.

Staffing appropriately is difficult when call volumes spike unpredictably. Inventory management remains reactive, which can leave capital tied up in parts or create shortages when failures occur.

Maintenance agreements generally have lower per-contract margins than emergency repairs, with some of those savings passed to the customer. But the value of those contracts is stable, and recurring agreements can compound over time.

According to Siemens' 2024 True Cost of Downtime analysis of the world's 500 largest companies, unplanned downtime represented approximately 11% of annual revenue, with an estimated impact of $1.4 trillion.

For service organizations, there's also the issue of weather and seasonality.

If your business depends on rain, hail, storms, extreme heat, or seasonal spikes to generate calls, a mild season can put revenue under pressure.

The goal is to build a business that can plan around asset needs and uptime rather than depend entirely on unpredictable failures.

Closing the field service data gap

Charlie Brower: To make that transition, service organizations need to solve the data gap.

Historically, the industry invested heavily in back-office systems such as Field Service Management (FSM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to manage billing, dispatch, and other operational functions.

Meanwhile, jobsite information remained fragmented and heavily dependent on the knowledge of individual technicians.

Today, service organizations often have useful information, but it lives in different places.

Field data might be captured in one system. Manufacturer specifications are somewhere else. Service history is held in another location, while financial information is maintained separately.

That information often doesn't move effectively between the field and office.

When someone needs to make a decision, they have to bring those pieces together manually. That makes it difficult to identify what has changed or determine which assets deserve attention.

We hear examples of this all the time.

A technician calls dispatch to understand an asset's service history. Dispatch then contacts another technician to find out what work was performed and what issues were encountered.

The organization is spending time moving between disconnected sources when that information could be available directly to the technician in the field.

To support a more proactive business, every service visit needs to inform what happens next.

A single work order captures one moment in time. A connected history allows teams to look across multiple visits, spot changes, and identify where attention is needed.

Recurring failures can point to larger asset needs. More frequent service visits may signal changing conditions. Unresolved issues can indicate future risk or investment requirements.

That information is already being created in the field. Connecting it over time makes it useful for better decisions.

When data flows through a single source, service organizations can scale their business within their existing customer base, maintain centralized records, bid work more accurately, pursue new opportunities, and plan proactively for future maintenance and failures.

Asset condition data can reveal opportunities for increased maintenance, immediate repairs, and long-term replacements.

An older asset may be operating reliably and require only routine maintenance. A newer asset experiencing repeated failures may need immediate attention.

Age alone cannot reveal that distinction. Neither can the most recent work order.

Understanding an asset requires connecting its specifications with its real-world performance over time.

This allows capital planning to become an evolving strategy. Every new service event contributes information that can help update priorities and forecasts as asset conditions change.

Building recurring revenue through proactive service

Charlie Brower: Capital planning gives service providers an opportunity to take a consultative approach with customers.

It allows you to understand their budgets and investment needs while developing greater visibility into your own future revenue.

Transitioning toward a proactive model changes the cash flow equation.

Maintenance agreements generally produce lower margins per contract than emergency repairs, but the overall financial return can be more resilient.

There are several important benefits.

First, recurring agreements establish a stable revenue baseline. Contract renewals and additional agreements create opportunities to build on that revenue year after year.

Second, servicing assets on a planned schedule helps smooth technician workloads and inventory requirements.

Third, focusing customer conversations on asset condition and uptime helps build stronger long-term partnerships.

There are also potential benefits for customers. The Department of Energy figures cited in this presentation suggest proactive maintenance can reduce energy costs by approximately 12% to 15% and lower failure rates by 35% to 45%.

The service provider becomes a consultant who helps customers understand their assets, anticipate needs, and make better decisions.

That relationship allows the provider to protect existing revenue while developing additional opportunities over time.

Moving toward comprehensive service and intelligent maintenance agreements requires an understanding of how assets perform under specific conditions.

With that information, providers can compete based on the quality of their work, the evidence behind their recommendations, and the uptime they help customers achieve.

Connecting sales, service, and asset intelligence

Charlie Brower: The providers pulling ahead share an important characteristic: they understand their customers' assets at the level of real-world performance.

They know what's installed, how it's configured, how it behaves in its environment, and where risk may be developing.

That foundation of asset data reveals opportunities for a more proactive business strategy.

XOi was built to put real-world field data to work.

We connect asset information, service activity, and technician insights with an enriched data foundation that supports better decisions.

The potential outcomes are lower operational costs, additional revenue opportunities, and stronger relationships with customers who depend on those assets.

We talk to organizations every day where sales teams are working with photos and spreadsheets that never make their way into the broader business.

Service teams may be working with paper forms, independent workflow solutions, or information inside their FSM that is difficult for technicians to access or update.

XOi connects sales and service through a shared asset intelligence foundation.

Teams can view, manage, and organize assets in one place, use enriched information to create multi-year forecasts and replacement timelines, and support better customer uptime.

Audience Q&A: What should technicians capture?

Charlie Brower: I'll pause here to see whether we have any questions.

Amanda Harp: We have one that I think is interesting.

What should technicians capture so we can start to spot patterns across service visits?

Charlie Brower: That's a great question.

Typically, organizations capture photos and general notes. What they often lack is structured information that can be analyzed consistently.

One of the most impactful things to capture is the specific issue being addressed.

What happened? What component was affected? What did the technician observe?

Having that information in a consistent format lets us count and identify recurring problems.

For example, if a compressor has been involved in two or three service visits, that may indicate it's time to discuss replacing the compressor.

Visual documentation is also important. Photos give teams evidence of the issues found during service.

Operating status is another valuable data point. Was the asset operating when the technician arrived? Was it operating when the technician departed?

That information helps distinguish reactive repair visits from routine maintenance.

Asset condition is particularly important.

Technicians are some of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to observing how an asset is performing in its actual environment.

When technicians consistently document condition, that information becomes valuable for capital planning and future maintenance decisions.

Those are a few of the most important areas to start with.

How XOi captures and connects field information

Charlie Brower: XOi has long supported customizable and configurable technician workflows.

Those workflows include smart dataplate capture using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). We've also incorporated artificial intelligence to improve the consistency of identifying manufacturer, model, and serial information.

We're seeing a 94% return rate on that capture process, helping establish reliable information for asset enrichment.

Guided workflows help technicians document items such as operating status on arrival, operating status on departure, and asset condition.

They can also capture photos, videos, and notes that provide additional context for identifying trends.

Our workflows give technicians access to a knowledge base that includes service history tied to the individual asset.

That helps reduce the need to contact dispatch or another technician to understand what happened during a previous visit.

Technicians can also access relevant PDF resources and manufacturer documentation.

At the end of the job, XOi can generate an AI-supported work summary using the information collected throughout the service visit. This creates a more consistent, customer-ready explanation of the work performed.

We've also heard from sales teams that their workflows are different from those of technicians.

A salesperson may be walking through a facility with a building engineer and need to capture information quickly, without completing a detailed technician workflow.

That's where our Smart Capture experience comes in.

The sales representative takes a photo of the asset dataplate, and XOi identifies the manufacturer, model, and serial number.

During the visit, the representative, building engineer, or maintenance team can speak naturally into the device. AI transcribes that information into usable notes.

Additional photos can be captured to document the asset and its condition.

XOi then enriches the asset information with manufacturer-sourced specifications.

That can include details such as refrigerant type, refrigerant charge, filter sizes and quantities, belt specifications, drive configuration, and other relevant attributes.

The sales team can spend more time understanding customer needs and less time researching basic asset details.

The result is a more efficient site survey, faster quoting, and stronger information to support the customer relationship.

The XOi asset intelligence foundation

Charlie Brower: Whether information comes from a technician's service visit or a salesperson's site survey, XOi connects it through a centralized asset intelligence foundation.

XOi maintains a substantial collection of verified asset information.

At the time of this presentation, our data includes more than 90,000 unique equipment models, more than 100 asset-level attributes, and information standardized across over 150 manufacturers.

That data is supported by patented technology and manufacturer specification documentation.

We aren't relying on AI to guess these details. We've built a structured data foundation to identify, classify, and organize information across different asset types.

The value comes from the consistency of the information and its connection to real-world field observations.

We cover attributes such as asset lifecycle, filter specifications, refrigerant types and charge, electrical configurations, belts, heating and cooling capacities, coils, and much more.

When you combine that intelligence with verified information from your technicians and sales teams, you establish a stronger foundation for proactive service.

It gives your organization a deeper understanding of customers' assets and helps build the credibility needed to become a trusted advisor.

Turning asset intelligence into actionable insights

Charlie Brower: Having the data is only the beginning. Teams need a way to put that information to work.

XOi has traditionally provided customizable, customer-specific reporting.

Organizations can analyze information such as diagnostic findings, asset condition, first-time fix rates, operating status on arrival and departure, refrigerant added, callbacks, and potential sales opportunities.

When data is captured through a workflow, teams can use reporting and dashboards to identify trends.

We've now expanded those capabilities with Portfolio Assessment, which uses enriched asset intelligence to provide a clearer view of investment needs and risk.

Portfolio Assessment turns complex asset information into visual insights so organizations can prioritize where attention and investment matter most.

One example is manufacturer-based reporting.

Understanding which manufacturers are represented across a customer's portfolio can inform manufacturer relationships, parts inventory, and technician certification priorities.

Another example is asset age.

Age-based reporting helps teams understand replacement timelines and prioritize potential investments.

However, age by itself provides limited context. Age relative to expected useful life is more informative.

Condition ratings add another layer.

When age-based and condition-based assessments disagree, the technician's observed condition rating should generally carry significant weight.

That rating reflects real-world wear and performance, rather than relying entirely on a statistical assumption.

Refrigerant information is another important factor.

Knowing which assets use particular refrigerants can help teams evaluate regulatory considerations, maintenance needs, and operating expense risks.

For example, older assets using R-22 refrigerant may have different service and replacement considerations, particularly when major components fail.

With Portfolio Assessment, operations, sales, and finance teams can work from a shared, evidence-based view of the customer's assets.

That helps them build stronger business cases and make more confident repair, replacement, and investment decisions.

Making capital planning available to more customers

Charlie Brower: One of the strongest ways to partner with customers is through capital planning and budgeting conversations.

Historically, we've seen organizations create capital plans primarily for their largest customers.

Think about customers with thousands of assets across many facilities.

Those are important accounts, but there's also an opportunity to bring the same level of planning to local hospital systems, school districts, and smaller customers.

In the past, creating those plans was tedious.

Teams had to pull information together from several sources. The amount of time required often made the process impractical for smaller accounts.

With XOi Planner, teams can combine asset intelligence with current field observations to develop capital plans in minutes rather than spending days, weeks, or months compiling information.

Planner is configurable.

Organizations can establish assumptions that reflect their business and adjust the planning duration, cost escalation, and expected useful life of assets.

Those adjustments can account for geographic location, asset utilization, refrigerant type, heating configuration, observed condition, and percentage of lifecycle remaining.

This makes capital planning more accessible across the customer base.

You can support your largest accounts while also providing strategic guidance to customers with smaller portfolios.

We recently worked with a customer managing approximately 14,000 assets.

Their account manager had spent six months producing a capital plan.

Using the asset information they had already collected, we demonstrated how XOi could generate a capital plan in minutes.

That was impactful because the customer could receive the information sooner, and the service provider could take a more consultative role in planning future investments.

Discussion: Where could better visibility change a decision?

Charlie Brower: I want everyone to consider where better visibility could change a decision for your organization.

Maybe you have an asset generating repeat service calls. Maybe there's an upcoming repair or replacement need that's difficult to identify.

Perhaps there are customers who would benefit from planned maintenance or a more structured capital plan.

Think about which of those areas is most relevant to your business.

We'll open the discussion for questions. If we can't answer something today, we can follow up afterward.

Audience Q&A: Integrations with existing systems

Amanda Harp: We have a question about integrations.

Do you integrate with our Field Service Management system? We use Jonas.

Charlie Brower: That's a question we hear often.

XOi was built around the technician experience, and we've added an asset intelligence foundation that supports information across the organization.

We've always maintained an open Application Programming Interface (API).

We have approximately 15 to 20 out-of-the-box integrations, and Jonas is one of those integrations.

When a customer comes on board, we can typically begin seeing data flow between connected platforms within a few weeks.

Our open API also allows us to connect with other business solutions, including proprietary systems.

If an integration isn't already available, we can work with the customer's team to develop it, depending on the capabilities of their IT organization.

We provide API documentation to guide that process.

The broader challenge in the industry has been that organizations invested heavily in FSM and ERP capabilities while the mobile technician experience received less attention.

Many systems provide some mobile functionality, but collecting complete, consistent asset information can still be difficult.

We focus on making that jobsite information accessible and usable across the business.

Audience Q&A: Refrigerant compliance

Amanda Harp: Here's another question that's particularly relevant to current industry conditions.

How does the data XOi provides support some of the compliance changes we're seeing?

Charlie Brower: Great question.

We've been paying close attention to changing market and regulatory conditions.

In January, we identified a significant change involving refrigerant circuit thresholds, from 50 pounds to 15 pounds, which brings more assets into consideration for certain requirements.

Through asset enrichment, we can identify attributes such as refrigerant type and refrigerant charge by circuit.

That lets teams report on assets that may fall within relevant regulatory requirements.

We can also connect that information with the technician workflow.

For example, we can ask whether refrigerant was added, which cylinder was used, and how much refrigerant was added.

Those details can be reported together to help organizations support their customers' compliance processes.

This is an important area of focus for XOi, and we continue to develop capabilities that support changing requirements.

Audience Q&A: How XOi uses artificial intelligence

Amanda Harp: Another question: Where does AI come into your workflows? Are you using any customer-facing agentic capabilities?

Charlie Brower: AI plays several roles within XOi.

The first is in the manufacturer, model, and serial number capture process.

OCR provides the first layer of identification. We then use one of our AI large language models to help validate that the OCR output is correct.

That additional validation supports more accurate asset identification.

AI also plays a role in the technician experience.

When we configure workflows, we can determine which steps and information will feed into the work summary.

At the end of the job, the technician can use the information already captured instead of rewriting notes.

That helps create a consistent customer deliverable.

I often use an example of two different technicians.

One technician writes, "I did the job."

Another technician writes a seven-page explanation.

Neither creates an ideal experience for the customer. One lacks context, while the other requires too much time to review.

Our AI work summary uses the information collected throughout the guided workflow to create a more consistent explanation of the work performed.

We also use AI in the Smart Capture experience for sales teams.

It helps identify manufacturer, model, and serial numbers while transcribing spoken observations into structured notes.

That information is combined with asset enrichment.

Our enrichment is based on our established asset database, which is separate from the generative AI process.

We're also exploring AI agents for report creation and trend analysis. Those capabilities are part of our future development plans.

Audience Q&A: Asset classes and refrigeration coverage

Amanda Harp: We have a follow-up question.

HVAC was an initial asset focus for XOi. What other asset classes do you support, and where are you with refrigeration assets?

Charlie Brower: That's correct. HVAC was our original focus, and it was also an important part of our acquisition of Specifx.

Those enrichment capabilities are now part of XOi.

Our mature HVAC coverage includes asset types such as air handling units, boilers, blower coil units, chillers, condensing units, coils, fan coil units, furnaces, mini-split systems, packaged units, and packaged terminal air conditioning units.

We've also expanded into water heaters for plumbing applications.

In our growing categories, we're supporting additional assets such as fryers, freezers, grills, merchandisers, ovens, ranges, and refrigerators.

We have enrichment capabilities in those areas, and we're continuing to expand them.

Additional categories on our roadmap include fans, motors, and pumps.

Refrigeration is also a significant focus for continued expansion over the next several quarters.

Audience Q&A: Which AI capabilities are available now?

Amanda Harp: Another follow-up question about AI.

Are the capabilities you've described already available in XOi, or are they coming later? And what does that timeline look like?

Charlie Brower: Everything I've described regarding AI-assisted dataplate capture, work summaries, and Smart Capture is available to customers today.

Those capabilities are already being used in day-to-day workflows.

The future development we're discussing is primarily around AI-powered reporting and deeper analysis directly within XOi.

We expect to continue expanding those capabilities over the coming quarters.

Audience Q&A: Importing an existing asset inventory

Amanda Harp: Here's another question.

If a customer provides an asset list, how do we bring that information into XOi so we can use the reporting capabilities?

Charlie Brower: That's a great question.

Historically, customers could add assets through manufacturer, model, and serial number capture during a technician workflow.

We then added the Smart Capture experience for site surveys and sales teams.

There are also two additional ways to bring asset information into XOi.

The first is through a Comma-Separated Values (CSV) file upload.

You can upload up to 10,000 assets at one time.

XOi then enriches those assets and provides feedback on the information that was successfully enriched and the data available.

The fourth method is a single-asset decode.

If you have the manufacturer, model, and serial number associated with a customer and location, you can enter that information manually to retrieve the relevant asset details.

These four methods allow organizations to bring asset data into XOi and begin using enrichment, Portfolio Assessment, and capital planning capabilities.

Closing discussion: Plan for uptime

Amanda Harp: We're not seeing any additional questions right now.

Charlie, is there anything else you'd like to cover before we wrap up?

Charlie Brower: I think the final point is an important one: Plan for uptime. Don't wait for the failure.

If you'd like to discuss how XOi fits into your organization, my contact information is available on the slide.

I spend a lot of time speaking with customers and prospective customers about their existing systems, their challenges, and the direction of the industry.

I'm happy to have those conversations and help you understand where XOi can provide value within your ecosystem.

Final audience Q&A: Smart Capture availability and pricing

Amanda Harp: We have one more question.

Is there an extra fee for Smart Capture, or where can customers find it?

Charlie Brower: Good question.

Historically, XOi's technician workflow experience has been part of our offering.

Today, our broader platform includes the Smart Capture and Site Survey experience, along with Equipment Manager, where we manage and enrich asset information.

That shared asset foundation connects to additional experiences such as Portfolio Assessment and Planner.

There isn't a separate additional fee specifically for the Smart Capture site survey experience under the platform structure I'm describing.

Our account executives can explain the current pricing structure and what's included.

We want customers to have a clear understanding of the capabilities available to them.

Webinar conclusion

Amanda Harp: Great.

Charlie, thank you so much for today. This has been a really interesting discussion, and we've had some excellent questions.

Thank you to everyone who joined us.

We'll send a recording of the session to attendees, and if you're interested in receiving the presentation slides, please let us know.

We appreciate your time.

Charlie Brower: Thanks, everyone.

Amanda Harp: Bye, everyone.

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