AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Kris Oldland

In part one of this exclusive interview we looked at Martin Summerhayes extraordinary career to date. Now in the concluding part Fujitsu's Head of Business Development talks about what drives him forward...  

Focussing on his current role again the passion for consistently delivering and improving the service he and his team deliver to their clients is undeniable when questioned on what he takes pride in and what frustrates him on a day-to-day basis.

“The thing that makes me go home smiling at the end of the day is delivering great service to customers, and what makes me tear my hair out is the politics that you have in any organisation big or small” he comments before adding “what can make me really frustrated is speed, the inability of people and organisations to change when markets and situations change”

It is in these frustrations that another layer of what makes Summerhayes tick is perhaps revealed. Whilst he is certainly approachable, he is clearly exceptionally quick when it comes to assessing and understanding the markets he operates in and comes across as a man that perhaps has to sometimes wait for others to catch up to his way of thinking. This could require a great deal of patience, or result in a great deal of frustration. More than likely there is probably a healthy portion of both.

Indeed his standards are set exceptionally high. Looking at what defines exceptional service he explains “It is when you delight your customers. Not when you meet their expectations, not when you exceed their expectations, it’s when you delight them. When your customer becomes the best advocate there is for your business and services”

These are the standards that Summerhayes expects as a consumer and these are the standards that he demands his team at Fujitsu strive for also.

A key to such service excellence he explains is to make customer interaction as smooth and simple as possible.

 “One thing that absolutely drives me nuts” he begins “is when a company makes me as the customer deal with their own organisational complexity. One of the things we got wrong at HP was we had three divisions at one stage, a hardware division, a software division and a warranty division. We mirrored that in the way we spoke to the customer.”

 

“We copied that structure right into the IDR, if it is a hardware problem press one etc… and I still see it today in companies. Are they designing from the customer experience in or from the organisational structure out?” He asks with a hint of irritation at how so many major service organisations miss the simple premise of putting the customer at the heart of the business.

“Whether it’s retail, hospitality, the medical profession, whatever we do we put our own organisational complexity in the face of our customers. Now, if you are a great company, an exceptional company, if you are there to delight your customers, you don’t do that.” He continues.

So how do we go about building our business to delight our customers? Do we need to look at our processes, our corporate culture or the technology that we use to deliver? Is it a blend of all three to get things right?

Summerhayes explains “The premise starts with thinking of the customer at the heart of everything. It starts with that. You have then got to put in place the culture, then the supporting processes and then finally the technology”

“You can’t turn around and say the technology will solve the problem. The technology is a reflection of your key business processes, your business processes are a reflection of your organisational construct, and your organisational construct drives your culture.”

Of course the importance of getting culture right first is a conversation that has been held many times before, and something we have explored in many an article on fieldservicenews.com yet it remains something that many companies end up getting wrong, and when they do so they can end up in a viscous circle with software that is either out-dated or worse that was never fit for purpose in the first place.

“Lets go right the way back to the point here” Summerhayes states “your engineer, the way he talks, the way he acts, the way he delivers the service is all a reflection of the culture of the organisation, the business processes that he has to follow and then the IT that enables him to do his job.”

With the trusted advisor status that the field engineer has, and his position on the frontline being one of your most powerful points of customer contact it is of course essential that he is as well prepared to succeed as is possible. Especially given that his success will be a direct reflection on your brand both in the short and long term.

As Summerhayes concludes ”having the customer at the heart of what you are doing is key because at the end of the day it is a service industry, you are there to serve”

Given his track record I’d suggest that taking Martin Summerhayes’ advice on this and focussing your service business from a ‘customer in’ perspective is very much the right thing to do.

Resource Type: White Paper
Title: Resource: 21st Century Field Service: The impact of the Internet of Things on Field Service
About: In our latest white paper 21^st Century field service: The impact of the Internet of Things, we look at how once again technology will reshape the way field service operates. The following is compiled from extracts of that white paper
Download: Download the white paper by clicking here    

We are living in the most exciting of times:

In the first decade of the twenty first century we saw technology change the way that field service operates.

When GPS arrived in the mid nineties devices such as TomTom’s GO & Garmin’s Street Pilot Range soon became commonplace and today just 5% of companies see routing software as an urgent purchase simply because the market has reached saturation.

The options for mapping software come in a number of options from one of which being on yet another device that has had a huge impact on field service technology – the smart phone.

The purpose of this brief jog along memory lane?

Just try and think of how your field engineers could function without either of these technologies today? Sure they got by, but these tools, along with a number of other breakthroughs made field service that much more efficient.

Thinking of how we worked in the early nineties seems like stepping back into the dark ages. Yet, the technological advances of the twenty first century and are set to be completely eclipsed as the evolution of field service moves ever onward.

In many experts eyes the biggest of these advances is the Internet of Things (IoT)

The benefits of IoT are clearly defined and tangible to field service, and whilst the concepts may seem futuristic in reality in many of the elements of IoT can be harnessed already using existing technologies.

Internet of Things 101

The term Internet of Things was first coined some 15 years ago having been proposed by British technology pioneer Kevin Ashton and largely does what it says on the tin. In a famous article for RFID Journal Ashcroft outlined the concept explaining:

“If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things—using data they gathered without any help from us—we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost.”

 The idea itself is fairly simple. If we give the ordinary items that surround us the ability to essentially communicate with the world without the need for human input, the world would run just that much smoother.

 

With RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) essentially the ability has existed for a while for such data transfer although other tracking technologies such as NFC (near field communications) digital watermarking, low powered Bluetooth, QR codes and their humbler, older cousin the barcode can also provide the same solution.

The Internet of Things in the consumer realm

In the past it was often enterprise level technology that led to a consumer counterpart, in the twenty first century we are beginning to see something of a reversal of that trend and in the world of IoT we are once again seeing this to perhaps be the case.

Major consumer grade electronics developers have entered the race to conquer the emerging ‘smart-home’ market this year with Samsung, Apple and Google all being connected with the increasing M&A activities in the ‘smart-home technology’ sector across recent times.

So with a competitive market place opening up it seems the futuristic smart home, one of the most tangible elements of IoT, could be with us much sooner than we think.

Now this is all well and good but what does it mean for field service?

Internet of Things and Field Service

There are obvious benefits for field service in a world where all of our household devices and business appliances are smart and able to communicate when their own parts are beginning to deteriorate or faults are beginning to appear.

This leads to proactive preventative maintenance, which will in turn see first time fix rates soar. Such solutions could also see the lines between product sales and service sales potentially blurring, as service becomes an intrinsic, built in function of all devices in the future.

Rolls Royce’s Power by the Hour:

However, this isn’t a necessarily new concept. A great example of such an approach is the way in which Rolls Royce pioneered their ‘Power by the Hour’ service solution. The British firm actually first coined the phrase way back in the 1960’s and the concept is essentially a simple one.

Their customers pay for the engines that power their aircraft measured by the time that the planes are actually in flight.

In practice this is a complex and sophisticated blend of contract that incorporates service and product seamlessly and today uses the latest technology available including Big Data and Machine to Machine (M2M) diagnostics to allow Rolls Royce to proactively monitor the status of each and every engine they have in operation and to be able to undertake proactive maintenance when and where required.

Essentially achieving everything that IoT based field service solutions promise to deliver.

Costa Coffee: Saving twenty first century offices from mediocre coffee

Another British company that are using the tools of the twenty first century is Whitbread’s Costa Coffee Chain, the second largest in the world and who recently announced the launch of their digital baristas.

Vending machines with IoT capabilities that can collate and interpret data that can be utilised both in service and sales.

Such an intelligent machine again offers many field service benefits like being able to predict when it needs maintenance, what the likely faults are, even what type of priority level it should be attributed given its predicted sales revenue.

The revolution is upon us...

Preparing for the IoT revolution is not a question of why, but more a question of when and as our white paper reveals the early stages of IoT adoption in field service are already underway, so surely the when needs to be now.

Download the white paper to find out more by clicking this link and completing the brief registration form.

City West Works was established as a subsidiary of City West Housing Trust in April 2013 and carries out maintenance works on the housing association’s 14,600 homes across West Salford.

In its first year, the City West Works carried out almost 50,000 repairs jobs and answered more than 150,000 calls in its service centre.

The challenge

City West Works has a range of tradesman from roofers to electricians working in their team, all playing key roles in maintaining strong customer relations and working to improve customer homes. With many tradesmen on the road daily, City West Works needed a solution that could not only track their location but help reduce CO2 emissions and rising fuel costs.

The solution

Masternaut offered City West Works a solution that could provide benefits above and beyond simple vehicle tracking. Masternaut’s solution can monitor for poor driving habits through a points system where drivers are scored against vehicle economy and driving behaviour, alerting them to any bad manoeuvres they make.

Co-ordination challenges were also minimised with at-a-glance visibility of vehicle whereabouts at any given time.

The outcome

Since implementing Masternaut’s solution, City West Works has seen economical improvements in employee driving habits.  The solution has been installed across 105 of City West Works’ vehicles, with a plan to extend the contract for another two years.

Managers receive weekly email reports that accurately monitor and record the behaviour of their drivers and determine those who are exhibiting the best driving performance. Poor driving habits such as harsh; cornering, breaking, acceleration and speeding are all measured and put forward in these reports. Managers can then approach drivers performing poorly and discuss ways of improving their driving with guidance from Masternaut. These reports not only helped the managers gain a good overview of their team’s driver behaviour but also aided with their KPIs.

The Masternaut solution also provides an additional HR benefit with managers being able to remotely monitor their employees’ location in real time therefore providing added security. The solution can also help provide evidence against claims where customers state a tradesman has not turned up to a job.

Commenting on the results John Ashworth, Facilities Officer at City West Works said:

“Cutting down CO2 emissions and reducing fuel costs have been high priorities for us. We’ve saved just short of £17,000 in fuel alone and reduced CO2 emissions by 40.6 tonnes thanks to Masternaut’s solution. The reports Masternaut provide us with allows managers to see how drivers are wasting fuel and put a stop to this. Since April last year we have also started receiving a second report from Masternaut on a month to month basis showing how much fuel and Co2 savings we have made.

We chose Masternaut following a full process and when compared against competitors, Masternaut was the overall better choice against other tenders.” 

 

Our third research project of the year is looking at basic field service standards. Kris Oldland, Editor of Field Service News explains why this is our focus. To enter the survey and enter the prize draw to win one of three £50 Amazon vouchers click here.

If you were to strip field service management down to it’s very most basic components the aims are essentially as simple as get the field service engineer to the right address at the time you’ve committed to, ensure that that field service engineer is the right man (or woman) for the job, and then make sure they have the tools to complete the job and the necessary administration as quickly as possible.

It’s as simple as that right?

As we all know whilst these may be the basic aims of service companies across the globe, the reality is that even achieving these simple tasks can prove challenging. Even if you think you have everything in hand, the odds are that someone somewhere is doing it more efficiently, with lower overheads and much greater productivity margins.

One of the great things about field service is that fundamentally people sit at the heart of our industry on both the customer and business side. Companies live and die by the quality of the service they deliver and there is no greater opportunity to entrench the customer relationship than through face-to-face interaction.

This gives field service companies a huge opportunity when it comes to cementing relationships, establishing on-going business and even seeking out new sales opportunities within an organisation.

However, all of these benefits can just as quickly become risks if your service standards fall below expectations. In today’s world information on you and your competitors is both quick and easy to find and everyone has an instant and far reaching voice via social media.

 

If your service standards fall below the expected norms your disgruntled customers can see how your competitors compare just as quickly as they can warn any prospective customers of then bad experience they’ve just had with you.

Getting it wrong today can be an incredibly costly mistake.

However, if we return to the three aims mentioned at the beginning, these core tenets of basic service standards, then there really is very little excuse in 2014 for not getting them right.

Field Service Management Software has become an increasingly competitive niche, which has resulted in constant product improvements against a backdrop of competitive pricing. Especially since the emergence of SaaS systems with easily managed monthly subscription models, highly sophisticated software solutions that can incorporate scheduling, job management, mobile apps and much more and now readily available even to the smallest of companies.

So surely most companies are getting these basics right?

We wanted to a put a definite answer on this and so we have put together a brief survey to find out what tools companies are using to get their engineers to the right jobs on time, what are the common challenges and how useful do the engineers themselves find the tools they are provided with as well.

The survey itself will take you less than two minutes to complete and is open to all field service professionals.

Everybody that responds will also receive a copy of an exclusive white paper  based on the survey results as well as being entered into a prize draw to win one of three £50 Amazon vouchers provided kindly by TomTom Telematics, our sponsor on this research project

Not bad for two minutes of your time eh?

Enter the survey now by clicking this link

As part of the analysis of our research project looking at the types of field service software being used today we have created this infographic to give you some of the key findings at a glance.

 

 

Welcome to the latest edition of the Field Service News podcast. This month we are joined by Paul Sparkes, Business Development Director with Advanced Field Service.

Paul has a long and varied background in the software side of our industry having worked in most areas of the industry including software engineering and product development and now in his current role as Business Development Director for Advanced Field Service he is working for an organisation with not only a wide number of long standing software offerings for the field service industry but also that is part of an even larger company in Advanced Business Solutions who can offer an even broader range of software solutions for the wider business.

Therefore we thought this was the perfect time to tackle the subject of End to End field service management, which appeared to be one of the buzz-phrases bandied around by the software providers at this years Service Management Expo.

So what exactly does 'End to End' field service mean?

 

 

 

Please note that that promotion of this download is a joint venture between Field Service News and Advanced Field Services and by downloading the podcast you agree to the fascinating terms and conditions which are available right here.

You can also find out more about Advanced Field Services in the Field Service News Directory by clicking here

A specialist time critical logistics provider in the UK is overcoming nightly battles against ongoing roadworks to record successful on-time delivery of goods from Europe into the UK...

Bespoke Distribution Aviation (BDA) which is based near to Coventry Airport is still managing to fulfil its orders and keep customers satisfied, despite ongoing disruption to its vital road network.

The roadworks, which are coming at a cost of £105m and won’t be completed until 2016, have caused major headaches to businesses and motorists alike, with some workers in the area complaining that they are extending their journey to and from work by up to two hours each day. BDA relies on its road network to meet critical delivery of spare parts and vital components for the automotive, media and agricultural sectors but is having to battle against the ongoing roadworks in order to deliver on time. The company recently arranged a private meeting with local MP Jim Cunningham to discuss the issue, during which it called for greater communication from the Highways Agency in order to minimise the risk of a knock-on effect to the global supply chain caused by late delivery of goods.

Although the company has implemented processes to help it overcome the disruption and is still successfully meeting delivery times, it stressed to Mr Cunningham the importance of the local road network to the freight companies in the area. Many of these operate during the night which is when disruption is at its peak.

BDA has eight gateway hubs for both air and road linehaul routes across Europe, including Germany, France, and Ireland. The firm flies freight into Coventry overnight in order to meet next-day delivery times. If this freight is then held up on the road network, it has a knock on effect on the wider supply chain. BDA is currently having to send numerous vans out on the road for deliveries in order to get the first vehicle onto the road earlier than normal.

European Managing Director Kevin Turner explained: “Many of the roadworks are taking place at night because there is an assumption that few people are using the road network at this time. We rely on the road network at night in order to deliver goods on time.

“We are still meeting our customers’ demands, we’re not losing any business and we’re still growing, but the night time temporary road closures - when we’re at our busiest - and constant diversions are costing us a lot of money, and this means we can’t employ more people. Some of the boxes we deliver contain time critical medical equipment and supplies that hospitals up and down the country rely on in order to treat their patients. If these aren’t delivered on time then this has a direct impact on people who are in desperate need of urgent medical care.

“The situation changes each day, and the major issue is a lack of communication between businesses and the Highways Agency and their contractors.”

Mr Cunningham felt that it wasn’t fair that businesses were being impacted in such a serious manner and stressed that the Highways Agency must do more to communicate with BDA and other businesses in the area.

He said: “Everybody understands that the roadworks have got to be completed, but we think there can be improvements in relation to flow of traffic - particularly at night time, when this company is doing business.

“With a bit of give and take we can mitigate some of the problems and it’s important that the Highways Agency have discussions with BDA and other companies in the area. We’re going to meet with them and put some of these points to them.”

To help customers monitor and manage their energy usage, British Gas is rolling out smart meters as standard to homes and businesses across Britain by 2020, as part of a Government mandate. A team of 1200 field engineers (known as Smart Energy Experts) are responsible for this task. To work efficiently, these Smart Energy Experts need appropriate IT devices to support them, but the existing tablet estate was aging, and at the limit of its designed capability....

Computacenter solution

British Gas partnered with Computacenter to help upgrade its tablet estate to Dell devices running Windows 8. Computacenter was responsible for sourcing, testing, pre-configuring and asset tagging the devices before delivering them as required to British Gas sites. The project was successfully completed on time to aggressive timescales.

Results

Smart Energy Experts use the new tablets to support every stage of the smart meter installation process. This includes receiving their jobs and updates through the day, workflow through different types of jobs, as well as the commissioning activities for smart gas and electricity meters. Using the new devices has simplified their day-to-day tasks, and improved employee satisfaction, productivity and customer service. This will help British Gas achieve its goal of ensuring the smart meter installation is a seamless experience for its customers.

Customer profile: Powering homes and business across the UK

British Gas is the UK's leading energy supplier, and serves around 12 million homes in Britain – nearly half the country's homes – as well as providing energy to one million UK businesses.  British Gas provides "value for money, dedicated customer service, innovative energy solutions and the highest quality Home Services expertise in the country."

Business challenge: Helping customers be smarter about energy usage

By 2020 smart meters will be rolled out as standard across the country as part of a Government initiative, replacing current gas and electricity meters. British Gas adopted a strategy to introduce smart meters early in order to bring the benefits to customers as soon as possible, and currently leads the industry with more than one million meters already installed in customers’ homes and businesses.

Each home receives a smart gas meter, a smart electricity meter and a smart energy monitor. Smart meters communicate how much energy is being used to a smart energy monitor so customers can see their energy use and its costs in pounds and pence in near real-time. The smart meters also record energy use at up to half-hourly intervals and send these readings back to the energy supplier, once a day, putting an end to estimated bills.

Alan Fairhurst, Technical Consulting Manager with British Gas Strategic Systems, explains: “British Gas has already installed over a million smart meters into homes and businesses, and the roll-out is gathering pace as we look towards the Government deadline of 2020.”

To ensure British Gas can achieve this goal and safeguard the quality of customer services, the Smart Energy Experts need to be equipped with the right tools. “The IT devices they use have a big impact on their productivity. We need them to be able to focus on their customers and the job in hand, without worrying about IT issues and downtime,” says Alan.

The team was using tablet devices that were originally selected for their toughness, but the devices lacked the features and ease of use needed to maximise productivity.

Computacenter solution: New Windows 8 tablets for 1200 Smart Energy Experts

British Gas partnered with Computacenter to upgrade the tablet estate. “We have worked with Computacenter for a number of years,” explains Alan. “Mass device change is not our core business, so when it comes to projects such as this, we need a partner with expertise and experience, such as Computacenter.”

Following an internal exercise to evaluate the devices available on the market, British Gas turned to Computacenter to help procure and build the selected Dell Latitude 10 tablets, which run the Windows 8 operating system.

Computacenter helped British Gas negotiate pricing with Dell, and from June 2013 took responsibility for building and delivering the new devices over a four-month period. “Computacenter managed the logistics of the project, which included monitoring and tracking shipments to ensure they arrived on assigned dates so we could meet our tight deployment deadlines,” comments Alan.

Following delivery at Computacenter’s Hatfield Configuration Centre, each device was BIOS-tested, pre-configured and asset tagged. They were then packed with accessories, including a ruggedised Griffin survivor case, and retained at Computacenter’s buy and store facilities until British Gas required delivery.

Results: Improved engineer satisfaction and customer experience

By partnering with Computacenter, British Gas was able to mitigate the risks associated with deploying such a large number of devices within a short timeframe. “It was quite an aggressive project where we had to get the new tablets out to our Smart Energy Experts quickly and get it right first time,” confirms Alan. “With Computacenter’s expertise and experience, we were able to successfully complete the project to deadline without having to invest in additional resources and space.”

As a result of working with Computacenter, British Gas has been able to:

Reduce project risks: Computacenter’s commitment to British Gas’s tight deadlines, vendor relationships and best practices helped ensure the project was a success.

Simplify the installation of smart meters: The British Gas Smart Energy Experts use the new tablets every day when installing smart meters. They receive full details of each property and task, and track the progress of every job, via the tablets. The devices are also used to take photos of the meters in location for future records.

Improve engineer productivity: The enterprise-grade Windows 8 tablets bridge the gap between the corporate and consumer world, combining the reliability of a corporate device with the ease-of-use of a consumer interface. This not only simplified training, but also maximises productivity on a daily basis.

Increase employee satisfaction: Although corporately owned, the devices are personally enabled so Smart Energy Experts have an incentive to look after the tablets. They also enable them to take advantage of a growing range of helpful apps.

Enhance customer service: As Smart Energy Experts can access all the details they need about each customer and site quickly and easily, they can provide a better informed and more efficient service.  They are also able to demonstrate a number of British Gas services and products whilst at the customer premises.

“With support from Computacenter, our Smart Energy Experts have the tools they need for the job. They are happier, more motivated and able to provide better customer service,” concludes Alan. “This will help us achieve our goal of installing smart meters as standard to homes and businesses across the country by 2020.”

 

In part one of this exclusive interview with rugged specialist manufacturer Getac's UK president Peter Molyneux we looked at how long we can expect a rugged device to last as well as whether Microsoft could return to power in the mobile arena. Now in the concluding part we look at how the rise of tablets has changed the landscape for rugged devices, whether there is still a future for rugged laptops and why Molyneux thinks that BYOD just won't work...

One of the major changes in mobile computing across the last decade has been the rise of tablets themselves. This has led to a number of Getac’s competitors, perhaps most notably Panasonic appearing to shift focus away from their traditional fare of rugged notebooks and laptops. However, this isn’t the case for Getac.

When pushed on whether there is still a market for the rugged laptops Molyneux reacted with a clear belief that there is still plenty of space in the market for laptops, tablets and of course their lovechild the convertible.

“We are very committed to continue to develop our fully rugged notebook range” he states effusively “The B110, B100 and the X500 all fully rugged and we are continuing to push them”

“We have just won a couple of large projects (with rugged laptops) in Europe but we’re finding that our main competitor are not doing the same. Now that may mean they are focussing on tablets as their primary offering from here on but we are continuing to develop our Android platforms, we will continue to develop our windows 7 and 8 platforms and we will continue to develop our Laptop platforms so we can keep that broadness open.”

“The question may be will we continue to support Win Mobile and ther I’d say probably. But certainly rugged notebooks and rugged tablets of all form factors and both OS’s we will continue to develop” Molyneux added

In fact Field Service News ran a feature earlier this year asking if we were seeing the Death of the Rugged Laptop and our conclusion was that whilst rugged tablets may well become the form of choice, there is still very much a need for rugged laptops especially when large amounts of data input is required. Molyneux echoed these sentiments alos.

“Although you are right to say there is still very much a market for rugged notebooks, tablets have certainly taken some of the fully rugged notebook market. However, the main impact will be on the 3.5” win mobile market. Even in transport logistics they’re thinking of tablets now. Frankly the performance and cost of tablets is much better compared to the older 3.5 inch mobile computer.”

Having touched earlier on the consumerisation of mobile workforce and now discussing perhaps the end of line of the handheld computer the conversation began to lead inevitably to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) which has been a topic of conversation for a number of years but has failed to materialise into the major trend it was anticipated to be.

 

“Openly speaking I have seen the subject around for the last three years.” opens Molyneux  “Maybe it’s because I’m slightly separate from that community but I have yet to come across an actual BYOD project. I do think it is an opportunity but in my mind the reliability, the replacement cycle, the insurance, the security risk I still think there is a lot of unanswered questions.”

He stops for a moment as if confirming his thought process before continuing “When you are looking at mainstream IT in the field, I think there could be a need for something in perhaps the lower demand area, something running on a  HTML5 basis where someone just needs to see something…” he says as he ponders the concept a moment before reaffirming his initial thoughts “…but in a critical working environment like delivering gas, water, electricity or delivering facilities management in a nuclear production plant I can’t see how BYOD can fit.”

“I’m open to be told I’m wrong,” he continues  “But I’ve seen this approach being presented and reviewed and a full BYOD deployment is a very tough call for an IT infrastructure.” He adds.

However, whilst BYOD might not be something Molyneux sees happening on a major scale anytime school there is a related trend that he does think we may see.

“Coming from the other side, we are hearing from a customer perspective, especially from local government that they are looking to roll out devices to their workforce that can be used for both business and pleasure.”

“There are many benefits to this…” he continues  “To cite an old statistic I heard when Blackberry first released launched, you would see an increase in 25% in productivity per user beause they takes the device home and work. It’s true and we all fell for that one! Have a Blackberry and work more and now it’s common practice to be at home working tapping away whether it’s on your iPhone or a rugged computer. Look at the way Microsoft are marketing their devices now – we all do it these days we all take our work home”

“Also of course another additional soft benefit is that is that the device is yours so you look after it more. Which is another major positive for businesses and one which I don’t think would be particularly hard to map in terms of seeing a tangible return on investment.”

So whilst Molyeux doesn’t see a future for BYOD he does see an exciting prospect in a similar concept but in reverse.

“Absolutely – reverse BYOD is definitely on the cards” he agrees “we just need to put our heads together to think of a decent new acronym now"