Organizations are predicting major changes in their service workforce over the next five years, according to a new global Forrester Consulting study¹, commissioned by ServiceMax.

Seventy two percent of companies say within just five years, asset equipment will outlive the working life of the engineers who service them, and sixty two percent say technology will completely automate service technician dispatch, replacing call centre and customer service centre staff.

The Forrester Consulting study, From Grease To Code: What Drives Digital Service Transformation, surveyed 675 digital transformation decision makers across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, that are currently undergoing or have already completed significant portions of their digital transformation. Respondents are in infrastructure roles at global industrial enterprises, including the manufacturing, healthcare, utilities and telecommunications industries.

“The next five years will bring disruptive and major changes to service workforces globally,” said Sumair Dutta, Director of Global Customer Transformation at ServiceMax. “With the rise of more digital products in installed bases, simply replicating lost talent will not be sufficient due to the pace of digital skills requirements. Digital transformation demands that organizational workforce strategy should not be independent of a company’s service data strategy.”

Eighty five percent of respondents surveyed say that self-healing equipment and remote monitoring will enable field service technicians to focus on more complex specialist tasks. As a result, fifty four percent of firms are already investing or planning to invest in condition-based maintenance within the next two to three years.

“In a world that is becoming increasingly reliant and commercially focused on service delivery, a company’s service talent strategy must map to its installed base strategy,” added Dutta. “As service data continues to mature in organizations, companies are able to make better operational decisions around predictive maintenance and customer service. Likewise, the ability to extend the working life of capital equipment through better service data, combined with the shift to as-a-service delivery models are reframing how businesses best schedule, dispatch and maximize the value from their precious technical service talent.”

[1] From Grease To Code: What Drives Digital Service Transformation, a September 2019 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of ServiceMax