AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Kris Oldland

Resource Type: eBook
Published by: Advanced Field Solutions
Title: The 2014 Service Manager Handbook
About: One of the most detailed and comprehensive resources to be published for the field service industry this year. This excellent eBook covers an exhaustive range of topics to help you get to grips with managing your mobile workforce, improving productivity, increasing efficiency and improving your bottom line.
Download: Download the white paper by clicking here

Overview:

The field service industry is subject to constant change and it’s vital to keep an ear to the ground on the latest hot topics to embrace the changing business landscape and keep up with the competition.

Intelligence on your business and its status, not to mention the highest levels of customer service, is absolutely pivotal to survival in tough trading times and even the savviest players need to ensure they have the right tools in play to keep up with their rivals.

To remain successful and dynamic, service managers need to be resilient to change and have the ability ‘to think outside of the box’ to ensure their organisation is best placed to drive their business forward.

They need to keep their finger on the pulse on many different aspects of the running of the organisation from innovating ideas, investing in IT, and seeking and exploring opportunities for further growing the business.

Having the power to access critical data across all areas of your service business, make informed instant decisions and manage your operation – from the first inception of the call all the way to its happy conclusion – will highlight the strong players from the weak.

If you want to make your business stand out from the crowd in 2014 and beyond, having the correct systems and processes in place will need to be a high priority on your agenda.

This essential handbook takes a glimpse at the key areas that all service managers need to address to give your organisation the power to evolve from ‘field service burnout’ to ‘best-inbreed’…

Topics include:

Modelling the perfect profitable client - In an effort to maintain business viability – and keep your engineers working out in the field – some field service businesses may be tempted to take on clients with narrow profit margins.

However, to build a sustainable business, you need to focus on the jobs, contracts and clients that
are most profitable, rather than trying to be all things to all clients. So it’s worth stepping back and analysing your client base.

Turning work away is never easy to do, but it can also free up your expensive resources to focus
on where they can bring best return. Your service management solution should give you the
advantage of arming you with the evidence and information you need.

Scheduling Challenges - Scheduling your field engineers is undoubtedly one of your core key performance indicators (KPIs), central to your business profitability, and a key target on which your staff are measured.

But it’s a delicate balance between meeting the needs of both your staff and the business. Get it right and the chances are the business will be highly successful. Get it wrong and the consequences can be disastrous.

However many UK service businesses find big savings, both in terms of costs and time, simply through getting the properly skilled technician to the job with the minimum of fuss. So when scheduling your field resources, it is key to get it right.

Empowering your workforce - Your engineers are the public face of your business. In many cases, they may be the only representative of your company that the customer ever sees.

Your reputation, spread by word of mouth or increasingly through social media and online reviews, is founded on the experience your customers have of your engineers.

Consider ways to free your service team from the routine dross that saps their time and motivation, and empower them to be more productive and efficient.

Reviewing your customer service strategy - It’s a given that the customer is your number one priority, however, to satisfy and retain your clients, field service companies need to repeatedly provide a professional service.

Typically, customer service is impacted by a combination of factors that result in the customer not getting what they want, when they want it.

So what can service businesses do to really ensure that what you are delivering is adding genuine value to your clients? And what can you do to ensure your value-add is fully recognised by the client?

Setting realistic budgets and timescales - Today’s customers are flexing their buying muscles and putting increasing pressure on suppliers to meet their strict SLA.

To establish your reputation as a customer service leader and gain full control over your job profitability, it’s vital to gain full visibility over your contracts and tighten controls over your SLA management.

Having access to accurate information on the actual cost of similar past projects, contracts and large installations helps to ensure that future bid costs and resource requirements are accurately assessed.

There are many factors that will determine the price of the bid to the client. This is quite often the main focus when putting the estimate together, with the cost and resources that are needed to deliver the contract not always being fully considered at the bid stage. Without formal systems in place, many service organisations find it difficult, time consuming, if not impossible to compile this historical information.

Unleashing cash flow - To maintain a healthy cash flow, it is important not to tie up cash unnecessarily in stock. Getting a hold on your stock is a sure-fire way of gaining significant savings in cost and time.

If your organisation handles stock, you will be all too aware of the dangers of stock piling.

Having cash tied up in stock is a dangerous tactic when cash flow is so important. Rather than relying on a ‘crystal ball’, organisations should automate the stock forecasting process so that sales and usage of stock can be predicted, avoiding the pitfall of holding more stock than required.

Your service management systems should give you the power to analyse stock history, so you can recognise trends and fluctuations to ensure that stock levels fall within the desired optimum range and anticipate demand at peak times.

Turning data into insight - Having distinct performance mechanisms in place enables management to recognise and react to emerging trends, whether positive or negative. Without these, performance may be overlooked in areas that could be optimised and yield greater return.

The importance of the KPI - KPIs are a vital performance tool for all service organisations of all sizes. To effectively track, monitor and evaluate success to ensure your business is growing in a sustained way, a best practice method needs to be adopted.

It is vital to identify which KPIs align to your business success. Standard service management KPIs include: first time fix rates, SLA adherence, engineer productivity, job costing, call rates, net profit margin, stock value and customer satisfaction/retention.

Without pro-actively monitoring KPIs, service management businesses are vulnerable to problems that can seriously undermine both performance and profitability. For example, a company that does not regularly monitor sales margins could discover at year-end a repeated mistake that has cost thousands.

 

Get your copy of this resource now!

 

Part Five of an exclusive Field Service News interview with Dave Gordon, Rolls Royce.

Here Dave speaks about the challenges of sharing data between supplier and customer, however if these challenges can be overcome the relationships can become much more holistic and the service can become as close to seamless as is possible...

Missed part one of this excellent series? Find it here

Missed part two of this excellent series? Find it here

Missed part three of this excellent series? Find it here

Missed part four of this excellent series? Find it here
 
Want to see more? Subscribe to Field Service News by clicking this link and get access to download the full video in full.  

 

Our exclusive series on applying change management in field service continues as we look at the fourth of five key steps outlined by Sharon Moura, VP of IT Transformation and Strategy with Tyco as she moved the company to ServiceMax’s field service management platform…

So far in this series we have covered the key concepts of change management, then looked closer at the 5-step approach Moura herself took. These were assessing the change ,engaging the head and the heart and then in our most recent feature, building a change agent network.

There is also a white paper that accompanies this series, which you can download here.

As we mentioned earlier in this series the goal of a successful change management program should not be to completely eradicate resistance to change, as this is an almost impossible task that will take far too much energy.  However we must focus on reducing the impact of resistance, and overcoming it as quickly as possible to move the change management project from concept to full adoption as swiftly as possible.

A key element therefore in a successful change management program is minimising the impact of resistance in your workforce and to achieve this we must understand the types of resistance we are likely to encounter. According to Moura these will come in three broad categories.

1. I don’t get it
2. I don’t like (or trust) you
3. I don’t like it

So let’s take a look at each of these in turn.

I don’t get it.

This is an intellectual where there is a lack of understanding of the reason for your change management program. This is one area where it truly pays to become a broken record. If your cannot comprehend the change or are confused by why your change management project is being undertaken then getting their buy-in is going to be impossible to achieve.

[quote float ="left"]It is vitally important that you communicate across multiple different channels – not just resending the same memo over and over.

Therefore it is vitally important that you communicate across multiple different channels – not just resending the same memo over and over. The content here is critical, before you dive straight into the ‘how’ things will be changing you need to make sure you have fully addressed the ‘why’ and again as we have mentioned in previous features position yourself in your employees shoes and outline why it is beneficial to them not just to the company as whole.

 

Also remember that change management is about people and people are different, and they adapt to change at different speeds. So whilst one member of staff might grasp the reason for the change when they receive that first memo it may take a different member of staff a little longer to fully get behind the change. Again repeating the message across multiple channels is crucial, to ensure you are getting the message across and understood by all of your team. Try to think of as many ways as possible you can make the case and remember the golden rule – once is not enough!

I don’t like (or trust) you

This is an emotional response and therefore perhaps potentially a little trickier to overcome. Ultimately this comes down to trust, and whether your workforce trusts you to lead them to a good future state. Perhaps they recall something that happened in the past that they didn’t like? Maybe the company wasn’t as upfront with them as they should have been when changes were made in the past? Why should they trust you this time around when you let them down in the past?The only way to overcome this type of resistance is to acknowledge it head on. Now is the time for rebuilding broken relationships and tending to neglected ones.

At the very beginning of the planning process of your change management program you should have assessed what the impact of this change should be on the various different stakeholders within your organisation. However, it is not enough to just assess how big impact is.  You must also be able to manage that impact and evaluating your relationships with these differing groups will be a core part in how you do so.

 

If there is damage to be fixed then taking responsibility for the mistakes of the past whilst simultaneously being seen to deliver on promises today is the only true way you can gain trust. However, as with the whole change management project itself establishing an effective change agent network can really help you get on track much faster and make the process of winning back trust much smoother.

I don’t like it

Firstly, if something is genuinely difficult to use, if it is clunky and unintuitive or overly complicated then this is going to be an issue. We cannot overlook the usability of any new technology when we look to invest in modernising our workflow.

So once again we return to a point we have already made within this series – bring in your field engineers, the guys that are going to be using this tech on a day to day basis, into the decision making process. By doing this and then effectively using a change agent network you can side step this issue and build genuine excitement amongst the staff for the new tools you are investing in for them.

[quote]You need to remove as much fear as possible about the new devices or applications whilst increasing the excitement around the change

And here in lies the key to overcoming this type of resistance. You need to remove as much fear as possible about the new devices or applications whilst increasing the excitement around the change by once again reaffirming what is in it for your workforce.

 

As we discussed when looking at engaging the head and the heart, our natural reaction to change is not the positive understanding of this being good for the organisation on some level. No, the first question we will ask will be “what exactly is this going to mean to me?”

If they feel they have been represented in not only in the selection, but also the configuration, deployment and roll out stages of the change management program then they will feel that their needs will have been considered, so once again we see the value of the change agent network.

Finally if you do see potential challenges in the short term then the only way to face these is head on. Work with your end-users and your provider to identify these challenges and how best to overcome them. Once more by bringing your field engineers into this process you will not only be overcoming challenges but also gaining trust throughout the process also. Meaning the next change management program you undertake will be that much easier!

 
Click here to download the white paper that accompanies this series

This series is sponsored by: 

Crystal Collections, the UK’s premier responsible debt servicing company to the motor and asset finance industry, has improved driver safety with in-depth feedback provided by Masternaut’s intelligent telematics system. By improving the understanding of its fleet of recovery vehicles and trucks, Crystal Collections has made a 20% saving on fuel expenditure.

Masternaut’s telematics solution has enabled Crystal Collections’ drivers to use the software’s powerful routing capabilities to find the quickest way to a job. Likewise, fleet managers have a real-time view of the fleet at any time and can dispatch the closest driver to a job, whilst managing client expectations by giving them up to date information on when drivers will arrive.

In understanding how its fleet is driving on an ongoing basis, Crystal Collections has managed to reduce instances of idling, speeding and aggressive handling.

These aspects contributed to Crystal Collection being recognised for its social impact, with the company winning the Wales Responsible Small Business of the Year Award in 2013.

Business Development Director at Crystal Collections, Rhys Hellen, said Masternaut has helped fleet managers achieve their goal of ensuring drivers’ hours and conditions are monitored accurately in accordance with health and safety legislation, and to better understand and improve driver behaviour to create a safer working environment for staff and other road users.

[quote]“With excellent customer service and social responsibility at the heart of our offering, it was vital for us to have a solution that can help us provide better feedback to customers and improve driver safety,”

“With excellent customer service and social responsibility at the heart of our offering, it was vital for us to have a solution that can help us provide better feedback to customers and improve driver safety,” said Mr Hellen.

 

“The reports and data provided by Masternaut has provided us with the means to monitor and improve driver behaviour, whilst simultaneously reducing the amount spent on fuel. The solution has helped us to go the extra mile for our clients, with our customer service team able to give detailed feedback to our clients. Having this level of detail to provide our clients has really helped us to improve satisfaction.”

Martin Hiscox, CEO of Masternaut, added “Crystal Collections’ is a great example of how telematics can be used for much more than vehicle tracking. The company has used telematics to create a safer experience for drivers and other road users, with the end result being a drop in fuel use. We’re delighted to have been able to help them achieve this and to have contributed in helping Crystal Collections to win a prestigious award in the process for its social impact.”

 

As Field Service News Editor, Kris Oldland continues our exclusive series looking at Change Management we move onto the third major consideration when undertaking a change management program, establishing a change agent network...

There is also a corresponding white paper on this subject, which you can access by clicking this link and completing the brief registration form.

First of all lets have a quick recap. This series is focussed on managing change within your organisation and is based around the approach Sharon Moura, VP of IT Transformation and Strategy with Tyco took when the fire and safety giant moved to the ServiceMax field service management system.

Part one of the series explored some of the key principals of Change Management, including a look at some of the well-known approaches such as Kotter, Prosci and Lewin as well as looking at the five step approach which Moura took and which we are looking at in more detail in this series. In the following features we looked firstly at “Assessing the Change” and then the third feature of this Change Management series looked at “Engaging the Head & Heart”.

Now in this fourth instalment in our Change Management series we look at an area, which personally I believe to be perhaps, the most integral element to ensuring any change management program you undertake is a success. This is what Moura defines as building a change agent network. So lets look at this concept in a little more detail…

Understanding what a Change Agent is and why they are key to Change Management:

Well another term for a Change Agents would be Peer advocates and Gartner’s Elise Olding neatly sums up the approach stating,

“Change resistance is a myth. Employees support enterprise goals when they understand what needs to be done. Peer advocates put a face on change and leverage trusted informal leaders to create understanding among employees and influence organisational change”

In simplest terms when we are facing a change to our daily working lives, it’s not some distant figure from the boardroom that will convince us that this change has our interest at heart, it’s the people sat around us, those who we work with on a daily basis, our colleagues, our direct supervisors, our peers.

Indeed studies undertaken by change management specialists Prosci identified that the most effective communicators of change by a hefty margin were an employee’s immediate supervisor. However it is often the case that this tier of middle management is often left out of the change management process, more often than not because their primary role within the company absorbs of all their time. However. This is definitely not the way a successful change management program should flow.

 

These middle managers are absolutely key to establishing your change agent network and enabling the success of your change management program.

As Moura herself comments “If you are going to bring that level of middle management into the change management process at all, which of course you need to do, then they need to make sure change management is their number one area they should be spending their time on”

However, it is not just those in middle management that can form part of your change agent network. We touched on an example in the last feature within this series on change management to highlight some of the tools of persuasion that can be used to engage with employees on an emotional level. That example was for us to take a selection of end user employees such as field engineers and to bring them into the decision making process when selecting the new hardware to roll out to the field.

This is in effect building a change network in itself as you can almost guarantee if this group will feel both empowered and obligated to push through the change amongst their peers. Some of them may be supervisors and mid-level management; however, they could equally be regular employees.

What is important for your change management project is that they are (or have the potential to be) leaders and influencers amongst their peers. Active mouthpieces for why the change is a benefit to their peers on the individual level, so these are the audience you need to convince first. Show them that they will see and feel the benefit of your change management program and they will help spread the gospel amongst the wider staff.

Another key aspect of this approach is that by creating a change agent network your are opening up additional layers of information to assess how your change management program is being accepted and adopted as you move through the roll out. Feedback from your project team as to how you are progressing is of course important and expected. However, feedback from the employees is equally important as you can amend and adapt your strategy where necessary in response to what’s being well received and what is not.

 

As we mentioned in a previous feature within this series Change Management is an on-going process of evaluation and alteration, not a one shot effort. Similarly you must remember that change management is not about hard and fast rules that will work every time. Change management is about people and therefore different factions of your workforce, may adapt quicker than others. Certainly there is no “one-size-fits-all’ approach to either change management itself or the way you communicate it.

What makes a good Change Agent:

So who in your organisation would make a good change agent? A few suggestions as to what makes a good change agent are:

• A willingness to embrace change
• The desire to participate
• Good team players
• Mature responsible attitude
• Effective communicators
• Credible at grass roots level[/unordered_list]

Deploying your Change agent network:

Finally it’s worth taking time to consider how you will structure your change agent network. One of the most efficient means of doing so would likely be to distribute your change agent network within streams that each relate to a specific division within the business. For example, field engineers, dispatch, sales etc. In fact this is the approach that Moura took when rolling out ServiceMax to her team at Tyco.

“We created change agents by work streams” she explains “then we put change agent leaders in place in those work streams.”

“The responsibilities of those leaders was to anticipate issues, act as a sounding board for the organisation, provide suggestions and recommendations as to how we address the change, and of course communicating the change to the end users.”

This last point i.e. communicating the change is of course the primary reason for their endeavours and where they truly come into their own.

Simply ‘translating’ the reason your organisation is going through this change management process from corporate speak and into the workers language and outlining what is in it for them will take you a long way towards a successful change management project. Having that translation come from trusted and respected members of their work force will take it even farther.

Remember the lesson from the previous feature… change management is about people and people like people like them.

Therefore establishing a change agent network is absolutely integral to the success of your change management program. 

Download the white paper that accompanies this series

This series on Change Management is sponsored by:

Part Four of an exclusive Field Service News interview with Dave Gordon, Rolls Royce.

Here Dave speaks about the importance of being customer driven when it comes to developing excellence and innovating to achieve this, how they evolved their processes through collaboration with their clients, and finally why one size does not fit all when it comes to service delivery.....

Missed part one of this excellent series? Find it here

Missed part two of this excellent series? Find it here

Missed part three of this excellent series? Find it here

Want to see more? Subscribe to Field Service News by clicking this link and get access to download the full video in full.

As we continue our series on end-to-end field service we're pleased to bring you an excellent interview with Field Aware's Shirlene Spillers that first appeared on findaccountingsoftware.com

The link between a mobile workforce empowered by digital technology and delivering service excellence has become well and truly proven over the last few years, there still remain a great number of variables when it comes to ensuring that the choice of mobile device is the right one for your company.

Lets face facts, there are plenty of questions to grapple with before we make the right choice of mobile device that will benefit your mobile workforce most effectively.

Should we be looking at tablets, laptops or smartphones?  What OS to select? Rugged devices or consumer grade devices? Should we consider BYOD? Should we deploy mobile web or mobile apps?

The team at findaccountingsoftware.com recently took the opportunity to put some of these questions to Shirlene Spillers, Vice President of Product Management with software provider Field Aware.

Given Spillers position developing software for the field service industry she is able to provide great insight into what the hardware will work best for companies looking to bring their mobile workforce into the digital revolution, whether they are upgrading legacy systems or taking their first steps away from out-dated manual processes.

We’re pleased to be able to share this interview with you courtesy of findaccountingsoftware.com

What’s the best way to go: smartphones, tablets, or laptops?

We recommend that companies purchase smartphones when:

• Technicians use the smartphone as a true phone most of the time
• Send a limited number of email messages
• Are not required to enter large amounts of data (point and click applications)
• Require access to web-based information intermittently
• Do not use downloaded video for training and troubleshooting
• Require limited amounts of data downloaded from the company and/or suppliers/unordered_list]

We recommend tablets when technicians:

• Make very few voice calls
• Send multiple email messages every day
• Enter significant amounts of data (where a larger keyboard would save time)
• Use the web to acquire and download company and/or supplier data
• Use video for training, troubleshooting and communication (ex: Apple’s FaceTime video)[/unordered_list]

Laptops are only necessary when technicians often have limited or no access to a network and require access to data intensive office applications (i.e. Microsoft Word, Excel, Adobe products, etc.) Use of laptops is rapidly declining.

Do you recommend Android, iOS, or Windows operating system devices?

We recommend Android or iOS simply because they are the most prevalent operating systems – and therefore most familiar to the majority of field workers (reduced training requirements).

For organizations thinking about a bring-your-own-device approach (BYOD), what are the most important considerations?

Employees often want to use their personal devices at work-–and for work-–as well. This provides both possible benefits and real dangers as well. It’s important that enterprises understand the challenges that BYOD creates and the policies and systems that should be in place before field technician-owned devices are incorporated into an organization’s technical ecosystem.

We actually wrote a white paper on the subject but, generally, companies need to look at four major areas of consideration: security, regulatory compliance, device support and end user support. Once the decision is made to allow personal devices to be used for company work, BYOD policies have to be developed and it usually makes sense to bring in some kind of mobile device management system (depending on the size of the company).

When are “ruggedised” devices worth the extra investment?

Most of our customers use ruggedised tablets only when they work in hazardous chemical or gas environments that require Class 1 Division 2 devices. We’ve found that in other environments, standard tablets and smartphones with protective cases are just as effective and durable.

Do you suggest GPS hardware? What other hardware should service companies consider?

We do not recommend GPS hardware for vehicles. Tablet and smartphone apps (like Google Maps) are just as, if not more efficient, in proving navigation information and can easily be mounted (just like the GPS hardware) in the vehicle. Our suggestion is that the company chooses one device (smartphone or tablet) that serves multiple functions at a lower overall cost.

In terms of other hardware, there are some really simple things like batteries, USB vehicle chargers, stylii, cases that are highly protective and can “stand up” for easy data entry. Since our app supports signature capture on the device, we don’t feel signature pads are necessary.

Can you weigh in on the mobile web versus native mobile app usage debate?

We believe in native mobile apps for a couple of very simple reasons:

•  Better performance. They take advantage of the native capabilities of the operating system – making it easy to integrate capabilities like photo/video capture and voice recognition.
• Ability to work offline (can be done with HTML5 caching, but not as elegantly)
• User interfaces that are more user-friendly and engaging[/unordered_list]

Want to know more about end-to-end field service management. Field Service News Editor, Kris Oldland will be taking part in a panel debate on this subject live at Field Service Europe. Click here for more information

ClickSoftware have created this great infographic looking at the uses of Gamification within businesses and how it has evolved throughout the years.

Some key points highlighted include:

• By 2015, 40% of top 1000 companies by market value will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations
• IBM, AutoDesk and SAP are some of the companies who have successfully adopted Gamification
• Gamification is a key element In consumerisation of enterprise strategy in companies such as Cisco, Pearson and Salesforce

 

Field Service News Editor Kris Oldland, speaks exclusively to TomTom Telematics Director Giles Margerison about the challenges Field Service organisations are facing today, what tools field service managers are able to employ to overcome these and whether there is such a thing as an off the shelf solution in field service management solutions.

Find more videos, features and resources featuring  TomTom Telematics in the Field Service News Directory by clicking here