AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Field Service News

In a landmark agreement between Volvo Trucks and Norwegian mining company Brønnøy Kalk AS, six autonomous Volvo FH trucks will transport limestone over a five-kilometre stretch in a mine. Tests of this solution have been carried out successfully and will continue throughout 2018 to become fully operational by the end of 2019.

The deal represents Volvo Trucks’ first commercial autonomous transport solution that will run in a real operation. It is a new solution whereby the customer buys a transport service where Volvo Trucks takes full responsibility for the delivery of the limestone to the crusher.

Whilst we may be still some way from seeing autonomous vehicles being used in service logistics, this is an interesting and possibly pivotal new development.

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Artificial Intelligence has increasingly become a key discussion in all industries and its impact in field service management is predicted to be hugely significant, but how should field service organisations leverage this powerful twenty-first-century technology? In the first of a two-part feature, Marne Martin, President Service Management IFS, offers her expert insight... 

 

 

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) will impact every industry and every business discipline—including field service management. But how quickly will practical solutions be available that enable the typical medium to large field service organization to take advantage of AI? And by practical solutions, I mean AI that delivers knowledge efficiently, processes solutions to complex data sets, and automates repetitive activities to allow human workers to focus on personalized service, solving complex problems and escalations, i.e. what people do best.

In some cases, these easily applied solutions are still on their way to market. In three specific areas, however, practical AI applications for field service are already commercially available as proven, commercial off-the-shelf software delivering real business value.

 

AI For Customer Interaction

First impressions matter. And unfortunately, the first interaction a customer has with your service organization often involves several missteps. Chief among these are long wait times on hold due to high call volumes. And then, as a customer attempts to reach out through multiple channels including email, chat and phone, the resulting data stream goes into separate siloes that are disconnected from each other, resulting in disjointed communication.

 

"Today, AI solutions can solve both these problems, but it requires more than “just” chatbots..."

 

Today, AI solutions can solve both these problems, but it requires more than “just” chatbots. Commercially available AI software that ties into chatbots is capable of learning which answers posed in a chat are appropriate for each question and automating a significant majority of chat interactions. A chatbot can be taught to answer commonly encountered questions, like inquiries about when a technician is scheduled to arrive. Of course, at some point, the AI chatbot may get stuck when personalized service is required, and a human agent takes over the discussion thread without missing a beat. This should be seamless not only to the customer but for the internal customer service, ticketing and support systems as well. The chatbot—regardless of whether driven at a given moment by AI or a human agent—should update the same customer record as other channels including social media, phone and email.

And from interactions, the AI functionality learns from answers provided by human agents and gets better and better at answering questions through learning processes. A truly advanced AI chatbot will also seamlessly hand off the chat to a human agent when the extent of its learning is overtaken. Only then can the entire customer experience be unified and consistent, even with a static number of agents handling a rapidly growing fluctuating volume of customer interactions.

AI-based chatbots, for instance, can enable a good agent to handle up to five or more chats at a time. It can capture Facebook messages and tweets and direct them to an agent or to AI for intervention. AI alone can handle, typically, between 50 and 60 percent of requests, freeing up human capacity or lowering staffing levels required to handle a given volume of activity.

 

Enables Management By Exception

In the case of AI applications for the service organization, a primary driver for ROI is that it enables humans to manage by exception. A high volume of activity can be automated, and humans intervene primarily when a situation falls outside the business rules or logic built into service management software. AI doesn’t eliminate the need for human interaction—it makes the human interaction more focused on what humans do best—handle escalations and complex decision making for unique cases.

At one IFS customer, an AI chatbot handles about 50 percent of interactions— primarily those reaching out to cancel their service after a free three-month trial period. Interactions cancelling a free subscription are handled entirely through automation. But if a longer-standing customer is cancelling their service, the interaction gets routed to an agent dedicated to saving the account.

Some interactions are by default easily handled by AI. If 30 percent of inbound contacts are requesting information on the arrival time of a field service technician, it may be possible to automate 90 percent of that 30 percent of contacts. But it is also important to consider the demographics of the customer base. Millennials are more likely to communicate via chat or social media, so if a significant percentage of customers are under 40, heavier reliance on chatbots and AI may help you increase engagement by streamlining your customers’ preferred method of interaction.

 

"Management by exception is also more successful when an AI application has access to extensive information about each customer..."

 

Management by exception is also more successful when an AI application has access to extensive information about each customer. So full integration with enterprise resource planning, field service management and other enterprise tools is essential. AI tools can be more effective if they have more rather than less information on the status of the customer’s account, including their maintenance or service history and warranty or service level agreement entitlements.

Integration between an AI chatbot, email, voice, social and enterprise applications is important for another reason. It enables one version of the customer record. Lacking this, a customer can send an email, and get no response. They send a direct message through Twitter. Then call and sit on hold. Then initiate a chat. All these interactions may not appear in a central customer record, but there have been three attempts to contact the company. Right from the first contact by email, the clock started ticking on a service level agreement.

Full integration can also enable a customer service team, once a customer request is resolved, to close off all queuing activations at the same time for the various contact methods associated with a customer case. Failing this, a service organization may spend a significant amount of time chasing customer requests that have already been resolved.

 

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The number of active fleet management systems deployed in commercial vehicle fleets in Europe was 7.7 million in Q4-2017, according to a new research report from the IoT analyst firm Berg Insight.

Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.2 percent, this number is expected to reach 15.6 million by 2022. The top-15 vendors have today more than 100,000 active units in Europe. TomTom’s subscriber base has grown both organically and by acquisitions during the past years and the company is the clear market leader on the European market and reached an installed base of about 708,000 units at year-end 2017. Masternaut is still in second place and had achieved an installed base of an estimated 250,000 units.

Berg Insight ranks Verizon Connect as the third largest player in terms of active installed base with around 235,000 units. ABAX, Microlise, Gurtam, Viasat, Bornemann, Teletrac Navman, Trimble, Transics and OCEAN (Orange) also have more than 100,000 active devices in the field. The HCV manufacturers are now growing their subscriber bases considerably in Europe thanks to standard line fitment of fleet management solutions. Dynafleet by Volvo, FleetBoard by Daimler and Scania Fleet Management are the most successful with active subscriber bases of 117,000 units, 108,000 units and 219,000 units respectively as of Q4-2017.

The consolidation trend on this market continued in 2018. “Thirteen major mergers and acquisitions have taken place in the past twelve months among the vendors of fleet management systems in Europe”, said Johan Fagerberg, Principal Analyst, Berg Insight. ORBCOMM acquired Blue Tree Systems in October 2017. The acquisition of Blue Tree solidifies ORBCOMM’s transportation portfolio by adding truck in-cab and refrigerated fleet vehicle solutions to ORBCOMM’s cargo solutions. In December, ABAX acquired Danish Fleetfinder. The acquisition added approximately 7,000 vehicle subscriptions to ABAX Group’s existing subscription base.

Later in December, Viasat Group acquired a majority stake (51 percent) in Locster based in France. January of 2018 started with two acquisitions. EcoFleet was acquired by Fleet Complete and Verizon Connect moreover continued its European expansion with the acquisition of Movildata in Spain. Coyote acquired a 70 percent stake in Traqueur in February 2018. Later in April, Trackunit acquired UK-based telematics provider Satrak. GSGroup purchased Care4all based in Denmark in July 2018. Vehco was acquired by AddSecure in May 2018, which gave Vehco the structure and financial strength to further expand within fleet management. Vehco’s third acquisition followed in August 2018 when the company took over the ownership of Groeneveld ICT Solutions. AROBS Transilvania Software acquired SAS Grup in September.

The latest two transactions were done in September and October when Viasat Group acquired Detector in Spain as well as 60 percent of the shares in TrackIT Consulting in Portugal. Mr. Fagerberg anticipates that the market consolidation of the still overcrowded industry will continue in 2018–2019.

Download report brochure: Fleet Management in Europe

 

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In the age of the industrial internet of things (IIoT), the speed of data analysis is key to effective operation. Edge computing accelerates this process, allowing for industrial data analysis to be performed at the point of collection. 

Here, George Walker, managing director of industrial control and automation provider Novotek UK and Ireland, explains the core benefits of edge computing.

Edge computing is the term for when process data is collected, processed and analysed in a local device, as opposed to being transmitted to a centralised system. Supported by local cloud networks and IIoT platforms like GE Digital’s Predix, systems that support edge computing are proving increasingly popular as a means of streamlining the effectiveness of IIoT networks.

For plant and utility managers, this presents a range of opportunities to not only improve the efficiency of operations but to also overcome some of the limitations of centralised IIoT networks. In fact, there are the three main ways that edge computing drives value in businesses.

 

Greater operational efficiency

Traditional analysis is undergone by transferring data externally, which can delay decision-making as errors take longer to be found. With edge computing capable systems, large parts of the analysis can be carried out by the devices collecting the data.

The benefits of this are two-fold. For one, this can allow plant managers to access partial deep analysis in real time without waiting on lengthy analysis to be carried out externally. This means action can be taken earlier, streamlining the decision-making process.

The second benefit is that the IIoT platform, such as GE digitals Predix, can automatically respond to operational data. The system will be able to automatically adjust processes in real-time. In effect, this would allow for a self-correcting system that is able to maximise uptime and reduce the need for manual maintenance.

 

Overcoming network latency and bottlenecks

Traditionally, data analysis is carried out by having smart sensors send all their data to a remote location where it is analysed and processed. This is data intensive and can create problems if a network is not robust enough.

Channelling large amounts can cause network latency, which interrupts working within the plant as there will be a delay with transferring messages that run through the same network.

This is particularly problematic for applications where a system needs to act rapidly to a problem, such as in an industrial oven control system in a food production plant, where even a temporary dip in the temperature can result in a batch being unsuitable for market.

In addition to this, the sheer volume of raw data that can be generated in an industrial or utility plant is also likely to cause data bottlenecks in the wider network.

By using edge computing systems and a machine-learning IIoT platform, systems can respond to changes in real-time to prevent problems, while also having edge computers in place to compress the data and reduce network impact.

 

Lower operating costs

Due to the amount of information being produced, the cost of data storage is becoming a growing concern for companies. Edge computing and its ability to process data without transmitting it, lightens the load put on the network.

Processed data is also less substantial than raw data as calculations can be made that allow the raw data to be compressed, thus reducing file sizes. As such, industrial companies are able to make more economical use of their cloud servers. By minimising storage requirements and the number of storage upgrades required, edge computing can allow for a lower overall operating cost.

It’s clear that there are many benefits to edge computing, both from a financial and operational perspective. Whether a business is still considering adopting IIoT technology or is already making use of such systems, edge computing marks a step forward for businesses looking to streamline processes for efficiency and effectiveness.

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City Technical Services, a leading provider of green energy servicing, maintenance and installation solutions, has adopted an advanced telematics system from Ctrack, an Inseego company. Ctrack Plug & Play, a self-installed tracking solution, will be used to monitor a fleet of 133 vans used by City Technical Services’ nationwide network of engineers. This will enable the company to make best use of mobile resources while ensuring vehicles are driven in a safe and efficient manner.

“As a green company, with over 10 years of experience in the renewables and energy efficiency industry, our focus is to cut emissions and save energy both for customers and within the business,” explained Kenny Henderson, Managing Director of City Technical Services. “Ctrack Plug & Play will help us operate responsibly and minimise our environmental impact by reducing mileage and fuel usage, as well as support our strong commitment to health and safety.”

Ctrack Plug & Play connects directly to the OBD II diagnostic port, so can be installed in a matter of seconds and quickly switched between vehicles when required. The tracking solution will provide City Technical Services with real-time visibility of its mobile assets, along with vehicle specific information from the on-board systems, driver behaviour monitoring and crash detection.

In addition to targeting efficiency and safety improvements, City Technical Services will use the tracking solution to enhance customer response times, especially for its emergency repairs service, by identifying the nearest, available engineer to an incoming job. The company will also take advantage of a comprehensive suite of reports to better understand fleet performance. It will use this added insight to address speeding and driving violations, identify excessive fuel usage and verify timesheets.

Steve Thomas, Managing Director of Ctrack commented: “The Ctrack Plug & Play solution is one of a wide range of telematics options we supply that also includes hardwired and long-life battery units.  All of these different unit types report back to a common interface allowing our customers to mix and match their hardware deployments to meet individual fleet and business requirements.”

 

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Fujitsu Limited and Ericsson have entered an agreement to deliver end-to-end 5G network solutions and related services under a strategic partnership. The two companies are joining forces to develop this based on their combined portfolios – spanning radio access and core network – for the dynamic 5G market in Japan, connecting communications service providers to the global 5G ecosystem.

The two companies aim to initially provide systems and solutions for the Japanese market, and seek to further expand their collaboration to other customers globally.

In the 5G era, mobile communications service providers anticipate the ability to provide highly scalable, and intelligent services through open and globally standardised technology for core and radio access network for more efficient network operations.

Ericsson and Fujitsu’s strength in research and development will ensure the best path for bringing global 5G solutions to Japan, as well as exploring a wider global market.[/quote]As a leading network technology provider, Fujitsu is making concerted efforts to support open standards activities driven by major telecommunications providers and aims to achieve broad interoperability for its radio access products in global markets.

As a world leader in 5G, Ericsson has worked closely with mobile operators around the world in the development of 5G, through standardization, trials, and prototyping.

Ericsson and Fujitsu’s strength in research and development will ensure the best path for bringing global 5G solutions to Japan, as well as exploring a wider global market.

Tango Matsumoto, Executive Vice President, Head of Network Business Group at Fujitsu, says: "Through this partnership with Ericsson, we will provide flexible 5G network systems that are open and standard compliant, and will leverage our expertise in wireless technologies and network integration to a wide range of customers in and outside of Japan. From mobile broadband, expected to be the first widespread use case of 5G, to the Internet of Things (IoT) and beyond, this partnership holds out the promise of exciting new business opportunities."

Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Business Area Networks at Ericsson says: “Our global expertise in 5G combined with our understanding of the local market puts us in an excellent position to support the introduction of 5G in Japan. By working closely with operators and partners, we are creating solutions that will bring successful use cases and applications to the market. With Fujitsu we get an excellent partner to accelerate this development.”

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In this, the latest edition of the Field Service Podcast, Kris Oldland, Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief, is joined by Marne Martin, CEO of WorkWave and president of Service Management for IFS about her new role with IFS as well as discussing whether the time has come to finally recognised Field Service Management systems as a standalone category such as CRM or ERP [hr]

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WorkWave, a leading provider of software solutions for the field service and last-mile delivery industries, recently announced its aim to reestablish its focus on customer experience, both through initiatives that further its position as a strategic partner to its customers, as well as with new features and functionality to promote better end-user engagement. As WorkWave’s customers are looking to not only run their businesses with ease but also grow and expand, WorkWave is committed to providing the tools and insight to enable their customers to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

Along with its reestablished commitment to customers across multiple fronts, WorkWave is rolling out updated features that have a fresh, new look and feel, as well as new WorkWave PestPac® branding.

“WorkWave solutions have always enabled pest control companies to run seamlessly through its end-to-end platforms,” said Marne Martin, CEO of WorkWave. “Based on our experience and leadership in the space, we are now in a position to take our relationships to the next level and not only be a solution, but also a strategic partner enabling our customers to grow their businesses and provide the best possible service to their end customers.”

In an effort to increase WorkWave PestPac’s focus on bolstering the value it provides to its customers, WorkWave is holding an Executive Advisory Board during PestWorld. This meeting includes senior leadership from the top 15 pest control companies in the world, allowing WorkWave to have access to constructive feedback and industry insight, staying ahead of where the customer needs it to be. WorkWave also put in place its new Customer Success teams and initiatives, which combine customer relationship management and intricate product knowledge to help create and sustain solid relationships with its customers.

To help its customers differentiate themselves against the competition, WorkWave PestPac also unveiled a number of new features that are geared toward the end user, ensuring that they are receiving timely and quality service, and keeping them coming back for more.

These features include:

 

• Sales Assistant: A convenient way for customers to select, schedule and pay for services right through a pest control operator’s website. Sales assistant provides 24/7 customer accessibility to a business online.
• Route Op: Includes a new visual optimization tool that allows the user to make subtle adjustments to routes, as well as a new flexible workday calendar to add custom dates or holiday schedules. With Route Op, users have the ability to compare cost statistics, view drive time and mileage from each stop, and edit constraints right from the map.
• CustomerConnect Portal: Features a dashboard that provides convenient access to important documents and bills through targeted communications.
• EPay: A simplified payment process where the customer will receive their invoice via text or email, allowing for payment right through the link with no login.

 

These new features enable pest control companies to put the customer first and provide ways to ensure differentiation between their business and the competition. This not only enables pest control companies to succeed in the marketplace but also to expand and grow.

 

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The blend of GPS, real-time traffic information and latest workforce scheduling can yield previously unknown levels of efficiency for field service delivery. Jeremy Squire, Managing Directo, FLS, Fast Lean Smart explains how... 

The convergence between field force scheduling and vehicle tracking is not something on the horizon, it has already arrived - and with precise arrival times now offered by private car hire and delivery companies such as Uber, DPD, IKEA and Amazon, customers are already expecting the same for field service appointments and anything less may be perceived as poor service. It is fast becoming a necessity for field service companies to both realise and embrace this as essential to achieve.

At FLS, Fast Lean Smart, we specialise in scheduling and route optimisation solutions and our customers are increasingly interested in this convergence of technologies. I believe it is vital for most field service companies to consider this and let’s take a moment to look at both how and why you should be doing likewise.

If live GPS location coordinates are provided to FLS VISITOUR, our leading scheduling technology, we can re-plan your engineer job schedules based on exactly where they are in their current route rather than wait until a confirmation of arrival from their mobile app.

The system could be configured to automatically re-optimise the rest of the day ‘real-time’ for engineers based on the location updates. This might enable additional jobs, highlight where an SLA or appointment slot will be missed and optionally remove lower priority jobs from the schedule unless overtime is approved.

[quote float="left"]With the convergence of these technologies and capabilities, there really has been no better opportunity to enrich the profitability of your business whilst achieving happier engineers and happier customers[/quote]Many service operations, however, decide against this level of fluidity for their engineer’s day and therefore might choose to lock the next jobs or even the whole day and only make changes in exceptional circumstances and under the control of a planner. This is particularly true for tasks which require the engineer to have parts or for appointments that require preparation.

What is certain, however, is that knowing issues with the current plan in the back office is key for customer service and engineer welfare, therefore the more accurate this is the better. The driving durations used by the scheduling algorithm are also very important to achieve this objective and at FLS we use actual average drive speeds for each road segment according to time of day for pre-planning. Variable traffic congestion is a severe issue in some areas, therefore, we also use a real-time feed of current traffic to optimise during the day. With this combination, drive durations are as accurate as we have all become accustomed to when using TomTom Live or Google Navigation on our smartphones.

It requires this high level of accuracy to enable reliable automated messaging to customers with the refined time of arrival for engineers. However, combining GPS location data in the FLS VISITOUR scheduling system also enables our FLS Customer Portal which can be accessed via a URL in the arrival time message and for your customers to track the arrival of the engineer from the previous job on a map, Uber style! (no more ’Where’s my engineer?’ calls.)

This capability has now become the goal of almost every field service provider we speak with, not just  B2C, and whilst currently a USP we can expect it will increasingly become the norm.

Of course, all this has terrific benefits for the service provider as well as the customer.

Maximising productivity and minimising cost in the field whilst giving good service (right engineer with the right parts etc) is a standard desire for everyone, however, with the convergence of these technologies and capabilities, there really has been no better opportunity to enrich the profitability of your business whilst achieving happier engineers and happier customers.

To deliver this level of performance and customer excellence, integrating engineer tracking is essential and there is an answer for every circumstance; a vehicle telematics system, a low-cost GPS cigarette lighter tracker or a phone/tablet app such as FLS MOBILE.

The days of customers waiting blindly for an engineer to arrive are on the way out and field service companies must adapt to these new expectations swiftly to avoid being seen as outdated and uncompetitive. The good news is that the solutions are already available - it is just a case of connecting the dots - and FLS VISITOUR is a solution that allows you to do just that.

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