AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Bill Pollock

Research conducted by Bill Pollock, president and principal consulting analyst at Strategies For GrowthSM (SFGSM) reveals that selecting a Field Service Management (FSM) solution often requires months – if not years – of due diligence to reduce the “long list” of potential vendors and solutions down to a carefully selected “short list” of possibilities...

Making a decision based on your own research is often a daunting task, collating and interpreting RFP information and sorting live demonstration ‘vaporware’ from actual, live software capabilities.

The following provides an additional set of information that your peers in the industry consider fundamental to the decision – data your team can use to make a final, intelligent choice that grows with your business into the future.

The results from SFGSM’s 2017 Field Service Management Benchmark Survey clearly identify four specific factors cited by half (or nearly half) of the survey respondent base when making their respective FSM vendor and solution decisions, namely:

• 50% Prefer a solution that interfaces with Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• 47% Prefer to work with a single provider of Field Service functionality
• 47% Prefer a solution that is intuitive and easy to train on
•  45% Prefer to invest in a solution that fosters Sales and Service collaboration

Another 35% also cite their preference for a solution that rolls out quickly.

While each (or all) of these factors may have contributed in some way to your decision-making process, your final decision is likely to rely more on how the FSM solution you choose will address your greatest challenges, provide the greatest opportunities and benefits for services delivery improvement, and allow you to compete head-to-head against your strongest competitors.

Compounding the importance of your selection, the chosen solution must also provide the ability to improve existing customer satisfaction levels, and increase the services organisation’s contribution to the company’s bottom line. Quite an undertaking, to be sure; but certainly doable – but, only with the most effective and robust FSM solution in place, and a full complement of vendor resources to support it over time.

Functionalities to Look For When Selecting & Evaluating an FSM Vendor/Solution

Gartner cites six categories of FSM enablement that should be included in any (i.e., every) FSM solution – at least every FSM solution that is strong enough to run the entire organisation’s services business. They are:

1. Demand Management – including customer portals, multichannel customer communications, IoT integration, triage support, field work order/appointment request, field quoting, field parts sourcing, ticketing system integration and long-cycle work requests.
2. Work Planning – including forecasting, scheduling optimisation, parts demand planning, purchasing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) integration, customer communications and third-party service enablement.
3. Technician Enablement (Mobile) – including Global Positioning System (GPS) integration, routing, equipment history/site details, social collaboration, customer communications, knowledge base/work instructions, purchasing & quoting/sales and tool management.
4. Work Order Debrief – including work order financial information, customer forms, site evidence, equipment updates, recommendations, payment collection and customer surveys.
5. Operations – including invoicing and price books, installed equipment manager, maintenance agreement management, maintenance plans and quoting, warranty management & warranty claims management, revenue recognition enablement, reverse logistics management, depot repair, equipment supersession, engineering change requests and fleet management.
6. Analytics and Integration – including field service performance management; cross-functional predictive analytics; alerts, notifications and gamification; and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and GPS integration.

While most vendors will say they offer all of these functionalities within their FSM solution offerings, it is more than likely that there will be significant gaps in key categories such as work planning, technician enablement, and analytics and integration (among others).

However, each of these areas will be critical to the overall enablement that your FSM solution is needed to provide and, therefore, must be included in the FSM solution that is ultimately selected and implemented.

Marne Martin, CEO, ServicePower, a leading provider of field service and hybrid mobile workforce management solutions, agrees that all six of these areas must be addressed in any FSM solution, noting “For organisations looking for a single vendor, end-to-end solution with an easy integration process to existing CRM or ERP packages, ServicePower is a great fit.”

“ServicePower supports a seamless integration mechanism to any CRM, including the launch of an App for the Salesforce AppExchange and new prebuilt connectors to most major software packages.”

 

“Our solution provides a full complement of mobile workforce management functionality, from consumer entitlement, to schedule optimisation and contractor dispatching, work order management, enterprise mobility, asset, inventory and contract management, and 360° BI (i.e., Business Intelligence).”

She further adds that, “While most FSM vendors also offer ‘scheduling’, ServicePower’s solution is the only one on the market designed to improve the customer experience though real time AI (i.e., Artificial Intelligence) and robust mobile functionality, while streamlining service operations with integrated hybrid workforce management functionality.

SFGSM’s survey results validate the effort ServicePower has expended in extending our solution to include the full spectrum of functionality required to manage a mobile operation, from entitlement through a plug and play intelligent consumer portal to warranty management and BI.”

Making the Final Decision – It’s Time to Decide!

The Cloud has normalised the playing field for most FSM vendors and their customers.

The options are many, the costs have come down (i.e., through the proliferation of the subscription basis model) and the FSM solution alternatives are “all over the place” with respect to the comparative breadth and depth of product functionality, strategic partnerships, FSM vendor acquisitions, “new” product roll-outs and the like.

However, in deciding which is the best fit for your field service operation, today and for the long term, one thing remains clear – the field service operations at your organisation will remain the central focus of your role and responsibility.

Why would you want to go with a vendor that doesn’t provide it all?

 

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"Bill Pollock, President Strategies for GrowthSM takes a look at some of the findings of their 2017 Field Service Management Benchmark Survey to explore the degree to which UK Field Service Organisations are  investing in new technologies and analytics…”

Each year, Strategies For Growth^SM (SFG^SM) conducts a series of Benchmark Surveys directed to the global services community. The preliminary results of the 2017 Field Service Management (FSM) Benchmark Survey clearly reflect that UK/Europe Field Service Organisations (FSOs) are continuing their focus on addressing the top market drivers that impact their geographic marketplace – and in many cases, at a significantly higher rate than their global respondent counterparts!

For example, UK/Europe FSOs currently place their greatest emphasis on dealing with such key market drivers as:

1. Customer demand for quicker response time;
2. Internal mandate to drive increased service revenues;
3. Need to improve workforce utilisation and productivity; and
4. Need to improve service process efficiencies.[/ordered_list]

In fact, the 2017 results clearly show the increased importance of making process improvements compared to just one year earlier when process efficiencies did not even place among the top three market drivers. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that UK/Europe FSOs are continuing to invest more in new technologies – most notably, the Internet of Things, or IoT, and mobile tools – in support of their respective field forces.

Susannah Richardson, Account Director, mplsystems, concurs with these findings stating that, “We’ve seen our customers increasingly asking about what further functionality they can add into mobile applications to improve effectiveness of their field force.It’s no longer simply about field technicians being at the right place at the right time with the right parts, but also about them being empowered to excel in the service that they offer and to provide additional services.”

 

“We’re also seeing organisations looking at ways to better manage the planning of their workforce in real-time. Typically planners spend lots of time managing exceptions, such as: emergency jobs; customer changes or job overruns and delays; even if they have scheduling in place, too often these are not flexible enough to handle live situations. We are seeing lots of interest in our new scheduling algorithms to handle real-time changes and IoT feeds (AESOP) and so improve efficiency in both planning teams and the field workforce.”

However, one of the greatest differences reflected in the UK/Europe survey results is in the percent of services organisations that are currently developing and/or improving the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) they use to measure service performance; (i.e., cited as a top strategic action by 65% of UK/Europe respondents, compared to only 47% overall.

Richardson agrees that, “Business analytics are a large part of all of our customers’ field services and business operations, which is why it is such an integral component of our solution offerings. Traditional measures don’t offer service performance, as they are operationally focused and don’t reflect customer experience. However, now we’re seeing our clients using our analytic tools to develop their own dashboards as they have become increasingly focused around KPIs specific to the service and experience that they are delivering to their customers.”

Another key factor that may be used to explain the heightened focus of UK/Europe FSOs for stepping up to improve their lot is that they continue to lag slightly behind their global counterparts with respect to service profitability (mean average of 35%, or slightly lower than the 38% attained among the overall respondent base, both in 2015/16 and 2017 surveys).

In addition, at a mean average of 81%, UK/Europe FSOs are also currently falling somewhat below the global survey population with respect to attaining desired levels of customer satisfaction (i.e., 83%). However, the research also strongly suggests that the market recognises the importance of stepping up to the challenge of improving their performance for these two key metrics.

Based on these survey findings, and other corroborating research, it is not surprising that the UK/Europe field services community also recognises that it will need to increase its investments in mobile tools and new technologies to compete effectively in an expanding global marketplace. In addition, it also understands the importance of building an effective Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), or metrics, program to measure the impact that its strategic actions, technology investments and resource acquisitions will actually have on the organisation’s performance moving forward.

 

While UK/Europe services organisations cite current investments in mobile tools to support field technicians as somewhat lower (27%) than the overall survey base (40%), future plans (i.e., over the next 12 months) for integrating new technologies are reported virtually at par with the rest of the world (i.e., 35% in the UK/Europe, compared with 37% for the global survey base). Accordingly, these data suggest that the adoption of new technologies in the UK/Europe may be roughly only one year behind that reflected by the general survey population (which is mainly comprised of respondents from the Americas).

Planned strategic actions by UK/Europe services organisations through 2017 reflect an even more dynamic, rather than static, approach to the field services marketplace. For example, 54% of respondents plan to develop and/or improve their use of field service KPIs, or metrics; and just as many plan to improve planning and forecasting activities with respect to field operations (54%).

What these data primarily show is that the UK/Europe field services community recognises the need to take specific strategic actions to enhance and improve existing service processes and operations, and that these actions begin first and foremost with the need to develop and/or improve the use of service metrics and KPIs.

These actions are then complemented by the need to invest in the right mobile tools and technologies to empower their resources both in the field, and in the back office;, to improve existing processes; to meet the growing needs of customers; and make greater contributions to the organisation’s bottom line.

 

However, the greatest impact on the future of Field Service Management is most likely to come as a result of the growing acceptance of Cloud-based technology. Among those UK/Europe organisations currently planning an FSM implementation in the next 12 months (or considering doing so in the next 12 to 24 months), a Cloud-based solution is preferred by 40% of respondents, compared to only 20% citing a preference for Premise-based – basically, a 2:1 ratio in favour of Cloud.

However, roughly two-out-of-five respondents (40%) remain undecided at this time (compared to only 33% for the general survey population). Still, Cloud-based FSM solutions appear to be the dominant preference, regardless of global geography.

In 2017 and beyond, the focus will likely be even stronger on the customer in terms of striving to meet (and exceed) their demands, preferences and expectations – or “back to the basics”. UK/Europe FSOs will continue to plan to accomplish this mainly by improving the processes they use for delivering their services; the KPIs they use to monitor their improved performance over time; investing in new tools to support both field technicians and customers; and integrating new technologies into their existing FSM or Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) systems.

 

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Richardson and the team will be attending Field Service Management Expo next week where mplsystems will be unveiling a new genetic algorithm based scheduling tool, to find out more visit them on stand N650 and for those unavailable to attend you ca contact Richardson directly at susannah.richardson@mplsystems.co.uk

 

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Bill Pollock, President Strategies for GrowthSM takes a look at some of the findings of their 2017 Field Service Management Benchmark Survey to explore exactly what the impact of IoT is set to be in 2017...

There have been myriad times in recent years when a new technology seems to control the conversation in the business world – and, particularly, in the services sector. And, field service is typically one of the first areas where customers and users catch their first glimpse and initial understanding of what each of these “new” technologies can do for the industry.

However, it usually takes a while longer before they truly understand what these new technologies can do specifically for their respective organisations.

Many of these new technologies enter the mainstream of the business world – and the global services community – after some initial fanfare, trade press, blogs, tweets and white papers, etc.

However, most of them will actually take years to be fully accepted and deployed via a more staggered and drawn-out basis over a lengthy period of time.

 

For example, 10 to 15 years ago, RFIDs were all the rage, with seemingly every article and white paper talking about the potential use of RFIDs for everything from tracking parts shipments, to identifying personal items that consumers send to the dry cleaner for laundering.

The evolution of RFIDs, however, was fairly steady to the point of almost being modestly linear over the next decade and a half.

But, fast forward to 2017, and Tesla Inc. founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has recently announced the formation a new company, Neuralink Corp., which The Wall Street Journal describes as a “medical research” company that plans to build technology “through which computers could merge with human brains”, essentially using embedded chips to upload and download thoughts directly from humans. In less than a couple of decades, RFIDs went from the “talk of the town”; to a backdrop of steady (albeit non-glitzy) market adoption and deployment; to a virtual science fiction-like catalyst between the technology of today and the advanced future.

That is why the introduction and accelerating proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) in field service is such a big deal. Because, as most industry analysts tend to agree, the projected growth path for the full integration and convergence of the IoT into the global services community – particularly in field service – are stunning!

While some new technologies start out like “gangbusters”, many quickly turn into fads, or segment specific applications, as only a small percent actually do become “game-changers”. And this is where the convergence of field service and the IoT seems to be so much different than the rest.

 

As technology companies actively tout the capabilities (and supposed uniqueness) of their respective IoT-based applications, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution providers tend to focus on how their embedded Field Service Management (FSM) solutions are also bolstered by the IoT. And, then, there’s Augmented Reality (AR) – which could not exist in its present form without the functionality of the IoT. In fact, many services industry analysts have stated that there could be no servitization – at all – without the IoT.

Maybe so; maybe not. There certainly could be no Augmented Reality (AR) without the IoT. And AR is already one of the “shining lights” among the “new” technologies that has staked its claim as the “next big thing” in field service.

However, even as the services community continues to talk about the gradual introduction of AR into their field service operations, the technology is already morphing and converging with other related technologies, most notably, Virtual Reality (VR). This “new” new technology is already being brandished as “Mixed”, or “Merged Reality” (MR) among the global technology leaders (i.e., depending on which one of the leading technology providers you follow).

Still, the results of Strategies For GrowthSM‘s (SFGSM) 2017 Field Service Management Benchmark Survey reveal that while “new” technologies provide a host of specific benefits for Field Services Organisations (FSOs), most are still not ready to embrace the full potential of all they can ultimately offer.

However, both the need – and the perceived benefits – are there.

For example, the top opportunities, or benefits, of acquiring and integrating new technology are cited as:

• 44% Ability to run a more efficient field service operation by eliminating silos, etc.
• 39% Improve customer satisfaction
• 35% Ability to provide customers with an end-to-end engagement relationship
• 30% Establish a competitive advantage
• 26% Improve field technician utilisation and productivity
• 25% Reduce Total Cost of Operations (TCO)

However, as boldly as these opportunities and benefits are cited, less than 10% of respondents presently claim to be leveraging Augmented Reality (AR) into their field service operations – although 18% say they would be either “very” or “extremely likely” to do so in the next 12 months.

Still, there are twice as many respondents (37%) who say they are “not likely” to do so, compared with 18% of the more progressive respondents who will be moving forward with AR.

 

The survey reveals similar findings with respect to VR – perhaps the advent of “Mixed” or “Merged Reality (MR) will move the market somewhat more forward during what seems likely to be a period of accelerating growth in acceptance.

As reported in the SFGSM survey, it is still somewhat comforting that the respective levels of interest in acquiring these new, IoT-powered, technologies continues to grow:

• 31% Are currently integrating new technologies into existing field service operations
• 37% Plan to integrate new technologies into existing field service operations in the next 12 months
• 36% Are interested in learning more about the IoT and AR

Once again, the impact of the convergence of field service and the IoT looks to have an increasingly strong acceptance for the foreseeable future.

 

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Bill Pollock, President, Strategies for GrowthSM guides us through how he sees the future of our industry shaping up in the next few years...

As we enter the uncharted waters of 2017, it becomes increasingly important for Field Service Organisations (FSOs) to understand the specific impact that the next 12 months (and beyond) will have on the quality of their field service operations.

In fact, the future state of Field Service Management (FSM) will depend largely on what strategic actions global FSOs plan to take in the next 12 months or so.

Since these actions will be directly linked to the multitude of drivers that are most likely to influence decision making within the global services community, this would be a good place to start.

 

The results of Strategies For GrowthSM‘s (SFGSM) 2016/17 Field Service Management Benchmark Survey reveal that the top drivers cited as influencing FSOs today may be categorised into three main areas:

1. Customer demand and/or preferences
2. Need to improve service workforce utilisation, productivity and efficiencies
3. Internal mandate to drive increased service revenues

When asked to cite the top three drivers currently influencing their ability to effectively manage field services operations, 56% of respondents cite customer demand for quicker response time, and nearly one-third (32%) cite customer demand for improved asset availability.

However, the need to improve workforce utilisation and productivity is also cited by a majority (51%) of respondents as a top driver, followed by the need to improve service process efficiencies (39%).

An internal mandate to drive increased service revenues is then cited by 31% of respondents as one of their top three drivers.

Once the key market drivers are firmly identified, FSOs need to create – and implement – the most effective strategic planning actions to address them head-on.

As reported in the SFGSM survey, the most commonly implemented strategic actions, currently, are:

• 48% Develop and/or improve KPIs used to measure field service performance
• 40% Invest in mobile tools to support field technicians
• 36% Automate existing manual field service processes and activities
• 31% Integrate new technologies into existing field service operations
• 30% Provide additional training to field service technicians and dispatchers
• 26% Improve planning and forecasting with respect to field operations
• 25% Increase customer involvement in Web-based service process
• 24% Provide enterprise-wide access to important field-collected data

These data strongly suggest that there is a pattern of synergy among the top four cited strategic actions that builds a foundation for all of the other actions that will ultimately be taken by the organisation; that is, that nearly half of the FSOs comprising the global services community already recognise the need to build and/or improve their KPI ¬-measurement program – this is essential!

This is the first step!

However, along with the development and/or improvement of a KPI program, nearly as many organisations also recognise the need to invest in state-of-the-art mobile tools to support their technicians in the field, while concurrently, automating their existing manual field service processes and activities to provide an enterprise-wide foundation for collecting data and information, and disseminating this process to field technicians (and, in many cases, to their customers) on an as-needed basis.

Further, about one-third of FSOs recognise the need to integrate new technologies into existing field service operations to make it all come together.

 

This synergy is built on, first, ensuring that there is an effective KPI measurement program in place, and using that program to establish a benchmark, or baseline, for measuring the organisation’s current field service performance.

Second, there needs to be a comprehensive internal effort to bring the technical aspects of services operations into the current (and future) timeframe – this can be done mainly by investing in an effective package of mobile tools to support the field force.

Finally, it will be the integration of these new technologies (e.g., mobility applications, the IoT, wearables, 3D printing, Augmented Reality (AR), etc.) into the overall mix of resources and tools deployed by FSOs that will empower the field force do their jobs more productively and efficiently.

The desired results, of course, would be the improvement of service delivery performance and the resultant improvements in the levels of customer satisfaction (and retention). Even the concept of Servitization, or the “transformation process in which a manufacturer shifts from a product-based business model to a services-based business mode”, could not exist in its present form without the power of the IoT behind it. In fact, it may be argued that there would be no Servitization without the IoT!

Among the many benefits that an IoT-powered Servitization model brings to the table are:

• Provides a competitive advantage with respect to the organisation’s ability to offer a state-of-the-art, differentiated, services offering that may also be “branded”, thereby providing an additional means for marketing and promoting its services to a hungry-for technology services marketplace.
• Yields increased margins for the services organisation, resulting both from improvements made on the supply side (e.g., by cutting the costs of delivering services through remote means) and the demand side (e.g., the ability to charge a premium price for premium services); etc.
• Provides the ability to more evenly forecast, predict and realise revenue streams through the implementation of remote diagnostics and predictive modeling.
• Fosters more meaningful partner relationships with customers through the sharing of equipment service data/ information, and allowing customers to be more proactive in the ultimate service and support of their installed base of equipment (e.g., initiating service calls, ordering parts, tracking problem resolution, etc.).[/unordered_list]

The future looks particularly bright for the global services community! How do we know that?

Because the future is already here – especially among the more progressive – and aggressive – FSOs that will likely lead the rest of us through these uncharted waters in 2017 and beyond.

It just looks like now may be the time for all of us to follow their lead!

 

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Augmented Reality (AR) allows field technicians to “see” how to make a repair, rather than having to “read” about how to do it writes Bill Pollock, President, Strategies for GrowthSM...

It seems that for forever, field technicians have been forced to carry around hundreds of pages of paper in their cars or vans detailing and explaining repair processes, service guidelines and product schematics, etc.

Then, once at the customer site, they still need to flip through those hundreds of pages to find exactly what they are looking for in order to perform the onsite repair – particularly when it involves dealing with a piece of equipment that they may not have seen in years – if ever!

We’ve all heard the expression “Seeing is believing!” But, what really should stand out fairly clearly is that the fact that the phrase does not say, “Reading is believing!” This is the main premise that supports the applicability of Augmented Reality (AR) for the field services segment, in that it is more helpful for the field technician to “see” how to repair a piece of equipment, rather than having to “read up” on how to repair the equipment.

 

Further, while the former can take place in real time, the latter may often require several minutes – or more – of looking up chapters or indices, finding the appropriate pages, writing down notes, and otherwise “wasting” time – at least from the perspectives of both the technician and the customer!

Some companies, like PTC, had long been aware of these concerns. In PTC’s case, they made the move earlier in the year to acquire Vuforia, “a mobile vision platform that enables applications, or ‘apps’, ‘to see and connect the physical world with digital experiences that demand attention, drive engagement, and deliver value’.”

In fact, it is through the use of this AR technology that Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) providers can now empower their customers to leverage two of the most disruptive of transformational technology trends – the Internet of Things (IoT) and Augmented Reality (AR) – to deliver a new class of products that merge the digital and physical worlds.

The benefits to the field force can be substantial as, by adopting an AR-based strategy, Field Service Organizations (FSOs) can:

• Completely eliminate the maintenance, repair and service manuals in their present, cumbersome, print copy (or, even, digital) form;
• Streamline (and/or eliminate) formal, individual, maintenance and repair training for service technicians; and
• Introduce new IoT- and AR-based Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) business models.

In a 2016 Fortune article, the magazine reported that, “More and more we see products that are part physical and part digital – and we see new models wanting to be part physical and part digital. The idea of being able to project a digital experience onto a physical product to figure out how to service it or show operating metrics … is a killer idea.”

One of the examples cited suggested, “imagine pointing your smartphone at your car and being able to see visual warnings that your wiper fluid was running low or your tire pressure was sub-optimal on a rear tire. That’s possible as information gathered by the car’s sensors can be pushed to the Cloud, then retrieved and shown in a visual format on the phone. That same format could also offer simple to follow directions on how to fix the problems”.

 

In other words, not only does “Seeing is believing” hold true for those field technicians supported by an AR platform, but if “a picture is worth a thousand words”, then being able to “see” how to repair the equipment via Augmented Reality must expand upon that equation by another thousand-fold!

AR doesn’t create a “new” virtual reality; but, rather, it enhances the perceptual reality that the viewer is able to visualise while looking at a piece of equipment. This is exactly how AR will be able to assist FSOs in an SLM environment; that is, to provide the field technician (who may not ever have been called upon to service a particular piece of equipment) to still be able to perform the repair by “overlaying” an enhanced (again, augmented) reality – in 3D motion – over and above what he or she would otherwise be able to visualise, in order to make a quick, clean and complete fix.

The ability to “see” this Augmented Reality – in 3D motion – with accompanying instructive text, metrics and repair parameters overlaid and easily articulated will undoubtedly provide, at the very least, an extra measure of comfort to the technician, as well as access to a readily available tutorial for performing the repair as quickly, accurately and safely as possible.

 

However, merely talking about Augmented Reality – rather than actually seeing it in action – is like trying to tell a Southerner how cold the Northern Winters are – in words. It’s just not possible! That’s why AR is best understood by actually seeing a demonstration of it in action.

 

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Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for Growth^SM states the case for Augmented Reality being the next transformational technology in field service...

At a UK Field Services Summit earlier this year, I was asked to cite what I believe would be the “next big thing” in field service. I suggested “Augmented Reality”, or AR. Why? Because we, as an industry, really cannot do things any quicker than in real time; and we can’t make repair tutorials any smaller, more compact and/or transportable than they already are.

What we can do, however, is make it easier for the field technician to “see” what needs to be done, in real time, and with an “augmented” view of what reality alone cannot, and does not, necessarily provide.

Companies like PTC, a global leader in Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) through its strategic partnership with ServiceMax believe that by leveraging the combination of “two transformational technology trends – Internet of Things (IoT) and Augmented Reality (AR)”, it can now deliver “a new class of products that merge the digital and physical worlds.”

The company further cites that when coupled with the IoT and analytics platforms, AR “unlocks a world of possibilities for creating new ways to design products, to monitor and control products, and to instruct operators and technicians in the appropriate methods of use and service.”

Historically, AR had largely focused in applications for the gaming industry; that is, for recreational and entertainment use, rather than for use in a more traditional B2B environment.

 

However, as more and more Millennials begin to enter the global field technician workforce, they bring along with them not only the skills required to take full advantage of the “new” technology, but also a full appreciation – and affinity for – the technology that has been powering their gaming activities for the last several years.

Even for the existing field technician workforce, the technology is eminently easy to learn, easy to use and fairly intuitive, as well.

According to Jim Heppelmann, CEO at PTC, AR is “a technology that superimposes computer-generated images on top of real world objects, ranging from video game characters to data fields” and, as such, a technology that “can extend a variety of experiences into new arenas as well as provide useful information to consumers” – and customers. Heppelmann further stated that “I think a lot of companies who make and service [products] want to be able to pass information downstream to consumers. [But] rather than a big PDF file, they [now] can say let me augment everything you need to know and nothing more” – and only through AR, is there a means for both explaining the need for service, as well as the actual procedures for performing the “fix”.

There is presently a great deal of “untapped potential for AR in B2B,” and Heppelmann believes that by “using an AR-assisted tool, users of a medical equipment device, for example, would be able to do a routine service inspection themselves, saving the time and cost of sending a service person out on a call (which can run thousands of dollars).”

In fact, “because of what IoT is enabling, more and more products are now a mixture of digital and part physical content. So, naturally, the ways in which we interact with these products will evolve toward a mixed-reality model that blends physical and digital interactions.”

 

But, isn’t this the same foundation upon which the gaming industry has built itself on over the last generation (i.e., Generation X) and beyond? The concept is really nothing very new – and the technology has already been available for a quite a while.

So, why not apply the same technology to a practical business application as well? In other words, why should the technology be restricted primarily to gamers primarily for recreational purposes?

Basically, AR works in conjunction with the digital twin concept “to enable a new generation of predictive and prescriptive analytics that bring about new business models where the equipment OEMs will retain ownership of its equipment and provide continuous and optimised service on a subscription-based model”.

Once in place, these capabilities can then be used to support the next generations of Augmented Reality applications as they emerge over time.

There is no question that AR will be able to assist in an SLM environment; that is, to provide the field technician (who may not ever have been called upon to service a particular piece of equipment) to still be able to perform the repair by “overlaying” an enhanced (again, augmented) reality – in 3D motion – over and above what he or she would otherwise be able to visualise, in order to make a quick, clean and complete fix. In fact, AR is already being used for these and myriad other purposes in the field.

Major global brands, including Band-Aid, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Mattel and Pepsi have already been using AR for some time. Other major users include Bumble Bee tuna, Guinness Book of World Records, Hyundai, John Deere, KTM Bike, Schneider Electric and Sysmex, etc.

For many field services organisations, AR is now routinely being used to assist field technicians in their ability to perform repairs on equipment they may not have been exposed to previously; have not had any formal, or individual, training or instruction on how to repair; and/or do not readily have access to product specs, schematics, repair manuals or service histories.

Augmented Reality has already made it easier to follow – and understand – otherwise complicated gaming scenarios and sports events for the millions of individuals that have been using the technology for years.

Isn’t time that it was also used to make it easier to perform field service activities? Based on what I have already seen (i.e., and you really do have to see it to believe it!) the answer is resoundingly, “Yes” – and the view from the bridge (i.e., between real-time and Augmented Reality) appears to be breathtaking

 

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Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for GrowthSM explains why the key to successful service sales lies within understanding your customers and their needs...

Most people would seem to agree that a physical product, like a copier, printer, or scanner, is the easiest thing to sell. Companies can include photographs and hardware specs for these types of products in their brochures and catalogs; photographs can be included in the company’s web site descriptions; and demos can be conducted right at the customer’s site, etc.

But, in many cases, selling a product can actually be one of the most difficult things to do, especially if you have never sold anything to a particular prospect in the past, or if they are not familiar with your company’s lines of copiers, printers, or scanners, etc. This is why we are suggesting that a maintenance agreement, or professional services, for an existing business imaging system (or any other type of equipment) may actually be easier to sell than the original product itself.

Let me explain.

Chances are, some of the accounts for whom you provide copier service and support purchase dozens, if not hundreds, of individual pieces of equipment every year. For most of your smaller accounts, any single equipment purchase is, in a relative sense, a major consideration for them, both from an absolute and a financial perspective.

However, once they have made the decision to purchase a particular piece of equipment, they have already “bitten the bullet” with respect to its importance to their business operations, and they have accepted all of the financial considerations that will be tied to its acquisition and use.

 

You may have already heard the expression “total cost of ownership”, or TCO; what this means is that, in real life, there is usually more to the “total cost” of an individual piece of equipment than just the price that was paid for its acquisition.

In addition to the specific purchase price, there is also the cost of ongoing hardware and software maintenance support, replacement parts, help desk support, consumables (like paper, toner, etc.)and many, many others.

For some, the acquisition of new equipment also requires moves or changes to their physical facility to create space for a new business imaging system or copier machine, as well as additional training for the individuals who may be tasked with various internal maintenance and/or administrative responsibilities. The general rule of thumb with respect to TCO is that, over the course of several years, the “actual” cost of ownership for any particular piece of equipment may be up to twice the initial purchase price (or more).

As such, it is easy to imagine that any one of your accounts that has already planned to purchase a major piece of capital equipment such as a copier, scanner, or printer would have already examined the anticipated TCO for that unit, and would have budgeted accordingly. However, even the most sophisticated business planners may sometimes misjudge what the ultimate TCO will be for an individual piece of equipment (or not forecast it at all).

For example, they may have only anticipated requiring warranty service for one year or so following acquisition, without planning for any further post-warranty support that, if provided on a time and materials basis, would end up being quite expensive. Some may not have anticipated losing the staff that was originally trained on a particular piece of equipment, and may ultimately find themselves in a situation where new hires may need “fresh” training for an existing business imaging system. These are both classic cases where your existing accounts may already be clamouring for enhanced maintenance, or warranty agreements, or for various other types of professional services that your company may already offer (i.e., user training, train-the-trainers assistance, custom documentation, etc.).

 

Whether any of your existing accounts have either mis-planned - or didn’t plan at all - when they made their initial purchase decision, they have one thing in common: at some point, they will recognise that they need additional support over and above what they initially received when they purchased the equipment, and that this support will typically manifest itself in either the need for an enhanced maintenance agreement, specific professional services, or both.

If you have been observing and monitoring your accounts all along the way, you probably can already pick out which ones are “ripe” for selling maintenance agreements or professional services.

If you have also been keeping up-to-date with your company’s product and service support offerings, you are also ready to speak to those accounts with respect to what you believe will make their ultimate “total cost of ownership” less in the long run. Armed with this information, you will find yourself in the perfect position to make the sale of maintenance agreements and professional services as easy as possible - certainly easier than making a “cold” sales call to a new prospect.

All you really need is the understanding of what your customers require, matched against the products and services your company offers, and many of these prospective “sales” will simply be waiting there for you to “close” them.

 

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Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for GrowthSM explains the importance of understanding your customers. How they differ from each other, how they are the same and most importantly how they use your products, in order to understand how best to serve them...

Every day you deal with a multitude of customers that may vary by type, size, installed base, usage, personality and everything else that ultimately differentiates one customer from another.

However, one thing always remains constant – their business systems and equipment are extremely important to their day-to-day operations.

Even if the equipment you support is not necessarily the most important piece of equipment in their facility, it will generally always be of significant importance to your primary customer contact, as it will typically be their direct responsibility to “manage” the internal availability and operation of the equipment to all of the users at their facility.

 

In many cases, your customer contact is the primary individual through whom all other users at the facility must obtain permission to use the equipment (i.e., via employee passwords, or ID/key cards, or the like).

They may also be integrally involved in the monitoring of machine usage on a daily, weekly, and other periodic basis – either from manual observation, or through the availability of remotely-generated reports.

They are typically the “gatekeepers” for access to the equipment, and it is generally their responsibility to manage, monitor and control its usage over time.

Accordingly, they are very important within their own organisations – and you are very important to them.

However, despite this common thread that runs through virtually all of the customers whose equipment you support, it is also important to remember that each customer account may also be different in terms of:

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• The various types, brands, models, and numbers of equipment they have installed at their respective facilities;
• The ages of the individual devices that are covered under warranty, service contracts, extended warranties, or on a time-and materials basis;
• The usage patterns of the equipment at each of their individual locations (i.e., continuous vs. intermittent use; single vs. multiple shifts; simple vs. complex applications; etc.);
• The volume or throughput they regularly execute; and
• Any other unique and/or specific differentiators that may distinguish one customer from another.

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However, at the end of the day, the one common denominator among all of the customers you support is the fact that they all depend on the continuous availability, operation, and usage of the business systems and equipment they have installed at their facility – and your primary customer contact is generally the one that shoulders most – if not all – of the internal responsibility to ensure that it is always running, and that there are no significant occurrences (or even worse, recurrences) of equipment downtime.

The single most effective means for gaining a full appreciation of your customers’ reliance on their business systems and equipment is to first understand how they use it.

For some, the equipment is an integral component of what they do on a day-to-day basis. Customers in the manufacturing, financial, medical, aerospace, legal, government (and many other) segments will tell you that their business systems and equipment are “essential” to their business operations – that when the system is down, their production is severely impacted, leading to serious financial, safety and personnel consequences.

Although some of the customers in these segments may have multiple and/or redundant machines in operation, when even one goes down, they feel it – and they want it back up and running as soon as possible.

For example, a retail establishment’s Point-of-Sale (POS) system may be the only means they have for providing their respective customers with a receipt, order confirmation, coupons or other important transaction-generated documents.

 

When their system is down, they may be unable to serve their own customers and, as a result, may find themselves temporarily “out of business” (i.e., think when the POS system goes down in a boutique clothing shop, or a McDonalds, etc.)

For these, the reliance on the equipment you support may be perceived as being even more critical (at least on a relative basis).

However, regardless of the specific industry segment or type of customer you support, there will always be a basic – and corresponding – level of reliance on the business systems and equipment they have installed at their facility.

As such, it will always be in your – and their – best interests to fully understand the extent to which they rely on the equipment you support so you will always be prepared to work from a stronger base of understanding with respect to exactly what your customers are dealing with, when they’re dealing with an equipment failure.

 

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Field service engineers are the unsung heroes that keep our world moving writes Bill Pollock, Strategies for GrowthSM...

In most cases, the customer relies heavily on its business systems and equipment and, in turn, your customer contact will rely heavily on your field technicians – personally – to make sure that the equipment is always up-and-running as expected.

In fact, you can safely assume that the customer is not nearly as interested in the technical nature of the equipment as it is in the solution it provides for his or her tasks-at-hand – that is, namely, performing the tasks, functions and operations that it is relied upon to keep the business up-and-running – with as little downtime as possible, and with no disruption to ongoing business processes.

As such, it is important to recognise that, in the customer’s mind, if the equipment is not working optimally – regardless of the technology that may have been built into it – it is “worthless”.

There is just so much that the customer itself will either be inclined – or permitted – to do in order to get the equipment back in working order following a failure. In most cases, the field technician will be the sole entity that the customer will be able to count on to make that happen – and this should deservedly carry along with it a great deal of responsibility and accountability. Just to put things in perspective, think of the case where a customer uses an ATM machine to withdraw cash – virtually anywhere, or anytime of day.

When the machine is down, they generally do not care whether it is due to a hardware failure, a software glitch, a network problem, or simply that it’s out of cash or paper tape for the receipt. All they know is that they needed cash, and the machine couldn’t deliver. Regardless of the specific reason, there was a failure, and the failure was duly noted in their minds. The same situation also occurs in the office environment, where the customer is also a “consumer” of your company’s products and services.

 

Customers will typically not care whether the reason their copy machine went down was due to a hardware or software failure, a paper jam, or anything else – or whether the cause was the machine’s fault, their fault, or nobody’s fault in particular. Again, all they know is that they needed to make a copy, and the machine didn’t work. That’s where the services provider comes into the picture.

And, based on how your field technicians enter the frame, you can either be perceived as a “knight in shining armour” – or as a part of the problem – depending on how you have been able to position yourself in the minds of your customers throughout the course of your relationship – i.e., Customer Relationship Management, or  CRM.

For example, if you have continually shown your customers that they can depend on your technicians to support both them and their equipment – and that you always have their best interests in mind – then, you will have established a type of bond that suggests that you are working as their “partner” to keep their systems up and running.

However, if you have consistently given them the impression that you do not have their best interests in mind – because your technicians have been repeatedly arriving late at their site, at the last minute, or that they always have a “lame” excuse for why the equipment failed again – then you will have positioned yourself outside of any real partner relationship, and have staked out, instead, a position on the “them” side of the “us vs. them” equation.

 

Remember, in the customer’s mind, it is generally the totality of the value that the equipment provides that is most important – not just the technology, nor the reliability of the equipment, nor the service level agreement that provides ongoing support coverage.

Customers continually look at any and all aspects relating to the systems and equipment they use, and their respective applications and functionality.

And your organisation’s field technicians typically represent the only “real” physical manifestations of the service and support that keeps it up and running.

Customers may rely heavily on their systems and equipment to support their day-to-day business operations – but they rely on you even more to ensure that the equipment can continually do what it is supposed to do.

 

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