A few weeks ago, Scope AR and ServiceMax announced that they had established a partnership that would allow ScopeAR to be embedded into the workflow of ServiceMax users...

On the surface, it promises to be a powerful alliance and one that could provide the ease of deployment that has been a barrier for many field service organisations adopting Augmented Reality (AR) solutions as part of their field service deployment.

As we build towards the recovery, many are envisioning a world where on-site touchpoints are to be minimised and so the focus on first-time fix is greater than ever before. Therefore, how we approach service delivery and ensure we are empowering our engineers and technicians fully by giving them access to the information, they need when they need it. The most efficient manner of communicating such information is very much centred around AR, which is now sitting at the very heart of how best-in-class field service organisations are focusing their efforts.

As part of our Beyond the Headlines series of features we Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief Field Service News invited Gabriele Bodda, Vice President of Product Management, ServiceMax and Scott Montgomerie, CEO and Founder of Scope AR to join in him for a discussion on the Field Service News Digital Symposium.

 

"For a ServiceMax user to utilise and harness the power of Scope AR within our platform is going to be straightforward..."

- Gabrielle Bodda, ServiceMax

 

In the first of two excerpts from that session, we look at the practical side of the discussion and ask how seamless the experience of is using Scope AR within the ServiceMax platform?

"For a ServiceMax user to utilise and harness the power of Scope AR within our platform is going to be straightforward,” commented Bodda during the session.

“This is something that we put a lot of attention to when we worked through the partnership, as we do with every partnership,” he continued.

“It is not just about a go-to-market, it is not just about the mutual endorsement, it is about bringing to our customers an end-to-end experience, it is about bringing to the customers something that is ready to use.”

However, the fact that there is an ‘oven-ready’ version of the tool doesn’t mean that it cannot be customised to suit any given companies more specific requirements. As Bodda confirms, “customers can of course change it and adapt it but they also have something to start with that can be deployed very quickly.”

One point that is raised often in conversations around AR in field service is whether there is a need for additional hardware, such as smart glasses or head-mounted computers. However, having led the way with apps for technicians on Apple’s iOS platform, ServiceMax is almost synonymous with harnessing the power of the engineer’s existing device. Will Scope AR fit in with that approach or will the additional investment be required for companies that are to make the most of this partnership“There is no additional hardware necessarily required,” confirmed Montgomery when this question was put to him during the session. “For more complicated use cases, we do support a number of headsets, but for standard integration, iOS and Android are more than capable.”

 

"We really think of Augmented Reality as a way to enhance the knowledge transfer that’s needed between someone that is in the field that is the hands to solve the problem and expert that knows what to do..."

- Scott Montgomerie, Scope AR

 

So how seamless is the integration itself? According to both Bodda and Montgomerie in effect, the integration should function intuitively and holistically. This is crucial to the success of the collaboration.

“We really think of Augmented Reality as a way to enhance the knowledge transfer that’s needed between someone that is in the field that is the hands to solve the problem and expert that knows what to do,” explains Montgomerie.

“The integration we’ve built with ServiceMax is geared towards that ideal scenario where they [the field technician] is already within the work order where they can click on the procedure through a deep linking mechanism – it’s very seamless,” he concludes.

Look out for the second excerpt from this session where we look at the broader use cases of Augmented Reality in general. In that upcoming article, we get Bodda’s and Montgomerie’s insight into how the companies they are working with are leveraging the tools to navigate their way through the current crisis we are all facing.

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Further Reading:

• Learn more about how WorkLink seamlessly integrates with the ServiceMax FSM platform @  www.scopear.com/partners/servicemax/. 
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read more about Augmented Reality in Field Service  @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=Augmented+reality+
• Follow ScopeAR on twitter @ https://twitter.com/scopear
• Follow ServiceMax on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/ServiceMax
• Find out more about the services ServiceMax offer to field service companies @ www.servicemax.com/
• Find out more about the services ScopeAR offer to field service companies @www.scopear.com/

 

Last week Salesforce announced the next generation of their FSM solution, Salesforce Field Service, which was designed to equip field service organisations with the power of Artificial Intelligence-powered tools to deliver trusted mission-critical field service delivery. To find out more about this announcement Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News spoke exclusively with Paul Whitelam,VP of Product Strategy, Field Service Management, Salesforce.

The development of Salesforce as a powerhouse within the field service management sector has always been on the cards ever since they first announced their first foray into the world of Field Service Management (FSM) four years ago back in 2016. As the world's most dominant CRM platform, they had the muscle to grow in this aligned technological space rapidly and have done so at breakneck speed. However, in the last 12 months, their development has been given a turbo-boost with the acquisition of Click (formerly ClickSoftware.) Given that the original iteration of Salesforces' Field Service Lighting was developed using Click's technology, there was always something of an inevitability of the acquisition. Now just over a year after the intention to acquire Click was announced we are seeing the fulfilment of the promise of this more formal union emerge.

As Whitelam explained when I spoke to him just ahead of last week's announcement of the next generation of Salesforce Field Service (now minus the 'lightening' suffix) "we evolved particularly after the acquisition of Click in October last year it has given us an really unfair advantage in terms of accelerating the integration of the Click Intellectual Property into the Salesforce codebase."

 

"Click had hundreds of people with twenty years plus experience in the space which is now infused into the Salesforce ecosystem..."

- Paul Whitelam, Saleforce

 

However, it was not just the best-in-class technology that Click brought to the marriage. As a company that spent years at the fore of the FSM sector, they also brought a wealth of industry experience.

"It [the acquisition of Click] has also accelerated our growth in areas such as go to market implementation capabilities. Click had hundreds of people with twenty years plus experience in the space which is now infused into the Salesforce ecosystem," Whitelam explains.

So, what makes the new iteration of Salesforce Field Service so exciting? Well firstly, much has been made about the ability for companies on the platform to leverage Einstein, Salesforce's own powerful AI offering. Indeed this is something that underpins much of the tools that were central to Salesforce's initial wave of messaging that we saw across the industry trade journals across the last week or so. 

 

Understanding the New-Normal of Field Service Operations:

However, while this is an essential ingredient in the Salesforce mix, perhaps what was also apparent was how the solutions Salesforce have introduced show an increased maturity of understanding of the challenges field service organisations are now facing in a post-pandemic world

"A lot of people are now thinking about the context of what field service means in the face of today's pandemic-centric environment," comments Whitelam.

"The truth of the matter is that in terms of field service, the show must go on. These are mission-critical staff, of course in healthcare, but also elsewhere in industries such as utilities or communications that literally must continue being able to support the various infrastructures these organisations maintain.

"There are some typical ever present challenges field service companies face such as challenges around data being in disparate systems, not having a consolidated view of the history of what has taken place with an asset and information about the customer themselves," Whitelam continues.

 

"We have to ensure a task can be broken down, so that the points where there must be person to person interactions are minimised..."

- Paul Whitelam, Salesforce

 

"However, obviously there are new challenges that come from the pandemic. Safety requirements is a key issue for example. Companies need to be making sure they are not risking spreading the infection and doing everything to safeguard the safety of their staff and their customers alike."

This is at the heart of the dichotomy field service organisations now face. They must continue to deliver mission-critical maintenance, yet still some six months on from the initial lockdowns much of the exact details of the threat of COVID-19 remain uncertain. When dealing with so many unknowns, at the corporate level at least, it is essential to take every precaution possible to mitigate any potential risk while still being operationally effective.

The balancing act required to navigate this particular tightrope requires rethinking many fundamental processes within field service delivery.

"We have to ensure a task can be broken down," Whitelam suggests, "so that the points where there must be person to person interactions are minimised. Companies must do as much preparation for the job as possible in a remote environment. Also can the wrap up of the job be outside of that face to face environment?"

 

Finding a way to clear the backlog built up during lockdown:

While, finding a way to get back to work as quickly and safely as possible is the first and most obvious challenge that field service organisations face, the mountain of maintenance jobs that were put on hiatus during the height of the lockdowns also present another significant challenge.

"For me, I think [the backlog of work] has really put a new light from our perspective on the value of automation," comments Whitelam.

"What we have seen with our platform is that levels of engagement with our customers on our platform are 20% higher than it was before the pandemic. In field service at least, it is not so much a v-shaped recovery, but something more akin to a checkmark because we are simultaneously playing catch up on all of that maintenance activity as well. Companies are going to be best placed to address this new dynamic by automating as much as they can and having their dispatchers and specialists focus on exceptional cases. Automation is the surest way to free up the appropriate time to allow them to do that.

However, while automation will go a long way to helping remove much of the non-essential day-to-day tasks within the field service workflow, it may still not be enough alone to get things back on track.

 

"Elasticity in the workforce is another example of something that as we entered into 2020 was a best-in-class attribute, a nice to have, rather than a necessity. Now, it is essential..."

 

Put simply; there will still be a need for a human pair of hands to resolve issues, even in some of the most routine maintenance work. This is where the concept of the blended workforce must become more prevalent.

"Companies should be making sure they are deploying the full range of workers included badged employees, contract workers and third-party labour," agrees Whitelam when I put this motion forward to him.

"At Salesforce, we have a number of ways of engaging with those third parties. You can very easily set them up in the system and you can allocate work to them and gain visibility into that work progress. Being able to support that kind of work model and having a more elastic workforce is really important."

Elasticity in the workforce is another example of something that as we entered into 2020 was a best-in-class attribute, a nice to have, rather than a necessity. Now, it is essential. This is especially so when there is just such an unknown availability of resources generally.

"If suddenly your people can't come to work, which is still an issue we face as an industry and a society, you've got to be able to pivot and you've got to have alternative options," Whitelam asserts. "Having an elastic workforce to address these new challenges is critical," he adds.

Of course, while some jobs simply cannot be completed without an onsite field service technician, increasingly we have seen service organisations turn wherever possible to utilising remote service delivery as an alternative.

"There are a couple of aspects to this shift to remote service delivery," explains Whitelam.

"One is ensuring the field service technician has got access to knowledge when they are at the point of service. This involves recommending articles and best practices to resolve the problem or connect them with other experts within the field service organisation that have experience of the task at hand.

"However, I think in the future there is going to be more recognition of ways to serve the customer without necessarily rolling a truck. Salesforce has something of an advantage here in that the field service piece is part of the Service Cloud already.

"Field Service is one way to solve a problem, in some use cases it is going to be the only way to solve a problem. However, in many other use cases there may be alternative approaches to finding resolution. These could involve the call-centre, digital engagement tools, knowledge management and even self-service – the fact that you have all of these in one platform, that actually gives a lot of companies many advantages. They can solve a problem in one of many different ways depending on the cost profile and the nature of the issue," he adds.

Indeed, the challenges we as an industry face as we look towards the final months of 2020 and hopefully to a far less turbulent 2021 are many. However, the technologies and tools at our disposal can allow us to not only ride the tsunami of disruption caused by COVID-19 but to come out of this the other side more robust, more resilient and more responsive to our customers' needs.

With this latest iteration of their FSM solution, Salesforce have now absolutely established themselves as being at the vanguard of the organisations delivering these tools.

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Further Reading:

• Read the initial news report about the announcement of the latest iteration of Salesforce Field Service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/salesforce-announce-the-next-generation-of-field-service-ai-powered-tools-for-trusted-mission-critical-field-service
• Read more about digital transformation in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services
• Read more about the impact of COVID-19 on the field service sector @ www.fieldservicenews.com/en-gb/covid-19
• Read previous articles by Paul Whitelam @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/paul-whitelam
• Find out more about Salesforce Field Service @ www.salesforce.com/uk/products/service-cloud/field-service-lightning/
• Connect with Paul on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/paulwhitelam/
• Follow Salesforce on Twitter @ twitter.com/salesforce

It's been said in many corners of the field service industry and beyond, that COVID-19 has been the greatest disrupter of all time - what does this mean for the field service sector?

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The Short-Term & Long-Term Planning Field Service Companies Should Be Undertaking

Within the recent Field Service News Think Tank Session that was focused on the impact on the pandemic on the field service industry, it was also pointed out that it's also been the greatest accelerator for digital transformation amongst field service companies.

As Kevin Starr, ABB said one of our Digital Symposium live streams during the lockdowns commented, "our five year plan digital transformation plan got condensed to five weeks!"

Whilst Starr may have been being slightly hyperbolic; it remains a neat summary of how digital transformation projects in our industry have not just been accelerated but have been given a turbo boost.

However, while we have seen digital transformation become the single most pressing focus for the majority of field service companies in 2020, one thing that became apparent during the pandemic is that it is those companies that were already well down the path towards digitalization, and who had already begun to rethink their approach to service delivery as part of that process who were best positioned to adapt.

 

"While Cranny may have expressed the concept in his trademark pragmatic way ahead of the curve, he was not alone in sharing this vision of the future of field service..."

 

As Ged Cranny, Konica Minolta had explained during a Field Service Think Tank session, "one of the things that we realized four or five years ago was that machines are getting more reliable. Plus, we had an ageing workforce. I walked in the room and told everybody, I wanted to run the service department with no engineers. My management team looked at me as if I had gone mad."

It was a bold statement five years ago. Today, it is an uncannily prescient move that positions Konica Minolta well as they and all around them are forced to consider a world of zero-touch service delivery where possible. I said to them, if we achieve this everybody in the world, we'll look at what we're doing. Indeed, while Cranny may have expressed the concept in his trademark pragmatic way ahead of the curve, he was not alone in sharing this vision of the future of field service. Many other forward-thinking organizations were also considering the move to remote services. Yet, while the path was being laid it out, a remote-first approach remained for most a dot on the horizon.

"I think, if you look into the majority of service contracts were in existence, that they were already offering such services, Rajat Kakar, IBM had commented during the same Field Service News Think Tank Session. However, COVID-19 has pushed us much closer to that horizon in 2020 than anyone might have anticipated.

"I think the markets need to move a little bit faster in adapting to some of the tools we have," added Kakar. "If you launch an engineer is quite expensive. If you can reduce that cost by utilizing remote support. Then from the OEM standpoint, we should start thinking about self healing a lot more," Kakar had expanded.

 

"In the near term, you're looking at things around workforce, models for capacity needed when lockdowns are raised, identifying which workers can be brought back in and evaluating your cash situation..."

- Daniel Brabec, ServiceMax

 

It is such forward-thinking that sets apart the Think Tank discussions as some of the leading conversations happening today within our industry. A format that brings true industry leaders together with the freedom to bounce ideas off each other without constraint can lead to genuinely inspiring conversations.

As we worked through some of the salient points from the last quarter's Think Tank sessions, Daniel Brabec, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax neatly summarized the current thinking that we are seeing emerge.

"You've got the short term where you're keeping the business going, looking at your current field procedures to determine which steps can be reworked or bypassed, locating your critical parts, Brabec explained.

"In the near term, you're looking at things around workforce, models for capacity needed when lockdowns are raised, identifying which workers can be brought back in and evaluating your cash situation looking at the impact of pent up demand or deferred demand for installations and preventative maintenance visits.

"Then in the long term, you really want to start assessing and reevaluating how you're going to approach your whole structure of service moving forward, structuring the way forward and getting more remote support, even looking forwards to new concepts such as self healing. Having more connected devices and products and enabling your customers more is going to be the way of the future and I think COVID is really helping to accelerate all of them."

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Daniel Brabec and Coen Jeukens of Servicemax reflect on the financial impact of the global lockdowns on th efield service sector. 

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The Falling Dominos of the Field Service Supply Chain: 

There has been a lot of discussion about how the financial recovery may look since the pandemic hit. Initially, there was some optimism that as deep as the blow was to the global recovery we could see the economy bounce back in almost the same measure. Indeed, the economic analysts are largely predicting an upturn in US GDP of around 20% which would be the largest quarterly rise in history. Yet, this is positive momentum must of course be held up against a historic 33% contraction in the second quarter of 2020.

Perhaps the best description of how the economy may return to pre COVID levels is the ‘Nike Swoosh’ curve – a steep and steady drop followed by a more gradual and controlled return.

Ultimately, the impact of the global lockdowns has had a massive impact on economies across the world, and field service organisations have felt this challenge as much as any other industry, as the customer ecosystems that they operate within have been hugely effected. The domino effect of a crashing economy has hit service organisations hard.

Fundamentally, we all know that for the short to mid-term at least there is going to be a lot less there's going to be less cash in the market. However, the precedents of the past have shown that often in an economic downturn it is service delivery that will thrive as assets in the field are sweated that little bit longer – meaning the service and maintenance contracts required to keep those assets operating at full capacity become in greater demand.

 

"There's a whole knock on effect across all industries where companies are affected in being able to collect that revenue in line with the standard service the cash cycle..."

- Daniel Brabec, ServiceMax

 

“I think we have to look at a couple of pieces,” commented Daniel Brabec, Vice President, Globat Customer Transformation Services, ServiceMax during the last Field Service News Think Tank Quarterly Debrief.

“From the financial perspective, some companies such as those in med-tech sector are companies you would think are doing fantastic simply there's such a high need for their services at this time. However, you also have to consider whether or not their customers can pay them.

“There's a whole knock on effect across all industries where companies are affected in being able to collect that revenue in line with the standard service the cash cycle. So the question is what are these companies looking at in terms of bringing revenue back into the business to invest? I think Alec [Pinto, Leica Bio-Systems] really hit the nail on the head there in his in his comment about revenues being tied to fixed services.”

This is an important point and one that was discussed heavily during a Think Tank session that was centred around the initial impact of the pandemic. Will there be a requirement for rethinking the way we approach developing our service contracts and indeed our very service offerings as we try to adapt to the new normal?

“We need to see a shift and we will see a shift,” Brabec continues.

“I think for a lot of organizations if they want to thrive in the future the shift will be towards outcome based services. This is because you are working with a customer and end user and have a contract with them where you're guaranteeing certain levels, you still have that contract. It's not going to be impacted as much as a contract on a time and materials basis.

“Moving forward, I believe you're going to have a lot of organizations shift more toward that model out of pure necessity - they won't be able to survive if there were continued pandemics or any other issues that might arise in the future that could potentially limit their cash flow. So, companies will have to think of other ways to have that that recurring revenue that adds long term annuity streams that will help your business not only weather the storms but continue to thrive and grow into the future,” Brabec adds.

 

“I think this entire pandemic has showed us that we have a large vulnerability with the way we have set up our supply chains with a lot of manufacturing happening offshore..."

Coen Jeukens, ServiceMax

 

Of course, with the question of both customer supply chains and restricted funds within the market another big question we must address now is whether the service supply chain and spare parts logistics is robust enough to survive a second wave of lockdown should the pandemic rear its ugly head once again.

“I think this entire pandemic has showed us that we have a large vulnerability with the way we have set up our supply chains with a lot of manufacturing happening offshore,” reflected Coen Jeukens, Vice President, Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax during the debrief session.

“If we go back to our customer base, we see that customers have organized their supply chain in a certain way because that was the most efficient way under the legacy model, because we couldn't conceive something like this would happen. Now we know and Daniel already mentioned the business continuity plans, those continuity plans, couldn't even foresee this happening. I think that right now with these new insights, we will rethink our continuity plans, and we will start preparing for it,” Jeukens adds.

So, could this be the impetus for a more widespread adoption of 3D printing? Particularly within the spare parts arena?

“I do think that in certain cases, it is possible to use 3d printing to print spare parts - it is possible but for other parts I think we do have to rethink, maybe we have to go back to the CFO and say, ‘well, you had an inventory reduction program, but if we look at our recovery process, we might have to invest in additional stock.” Jeukens comments.

“Alternatively, it may be the other way around. Maybe you have sufficient stock but you have certain technicians are hoarding spare parts in case of another supply chain failure. For me it is essential that companies invest in the visibility in their own infrastructure to see what technician is ordering and who's consuming it.

“Then, even if you have a shortage of material, then you should rethink from a prioritization perspective. What particular break-fix type of situation really warrants you to use one of those very precious spare parts instead of just fixing a piece of equipment for a machine that doesn't really have a criticality in a customer context? I think that revisiting those business continuity plans, rethinking the supply chain, see in what areas 3D printing can alleviate the pain, is an important undertaking for service organisations at this moment,”

 

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At the beginning of 2020, the one technology predicted to finally be on the cusp of an industry-wide breakthrough this year was Augmented Reality (AR). Fast forward to the second half of the year, and that prediction has come true although for different reasons than those predicted.

With Covid-19 driving an urgent need for remote service delivery, suddenly AR almost overnight became a necessity rather than a mere nice-to-have technology. However, while the drive towards remote service delivery has been given turbo-boosters by the pandemic, the critical developments within the technology that we at Field Service News thought would be the catalyst for wider spread adoption of AR in field service.

That development was the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the field service focused AR. Here we look at how AI may well be the missing key to unlock AR’s potential

“The challenges posed by the current global situation and the related change in proximity logics are rapidly transforming many companies’ business processes and their approach to daily activities,” writes Francesco Benvenuto, Product Marketing Manager, OverIT

Having just combined the two technologies (AI and AR) in their 3.0 release of SPACE1 (OverIT’s dedicated AR solution to field service) demonstrated on the Field Service News Digital Symposium. The AI-enhanced version of SPACE1 was undoubtedly impressive with multiple potential time savings aspects that could help get trainee technicians out into the field, bringing value to the organization much, much faster.

However, the emergence of an AR solution underpinned by AI isn’t unique to SPACE1. It is the central premise of Augmentir’s solution. As Russ Fadel, CEO and Co-Founder, Augmentir outlined in an exclusive Field Service News feature where he explained why the next wave of AR implementations in our sector must harness Artificial Intelligence.

 

"What has been ignored is a real opportunity to create sustainable value throughout the organization – not only giving workers the ability to consume information and apply knowledge, but also augmenting the intelligence of the organization..."

- Russ Fadel, Augmentir

 

Writing in August 2019 Fadel had commented, “Despite some early momentum, Enterprise AR alone isn’t enough to deliver sustainable value in the field service sector.

“What has been ignored is a real opportunity to create sustainable value throughout the organization – not only giving workers the ability to consume information and apply knowledge, but also augmenting the intelligence of the organization relative to how it engages empowers, and continually improves its human workforce. At Augmentir, we are calling this Augmented Operations, and we believe that this will transform the service workforce of the future.”

Ultimately, at the heart of successful innovation in the industry is the harnessing of multiple technologies alongside each other.

As Bas De Vos, Vice President of IFS Labs, explains “Combining different technologies is the key to unlocking the full potential of any digital transformation/innovation projects.”

However, for DeVos, there is more that is needed for successful deployment of AR in field service than the introduction of AI.

“AI will certainly support the development of AR, but it’s not the only missing piece in its success,” De Vos suggests

“AI is a key ‘supportive’ technology, the use of AI in computer image processing and its unique learning abilities allows AR processes to develop to the next stage, to achieve the desired end goal and in doing so AI guides AR to new heights.

“However, to unlock the true value of AR’s potential, the world of head-mounted devices needs to accelerate. Today’s adoption speed is still lagging behind expectation which is mostly related to costs and the maturity of the hardware.

“The true value of AR shines best when combined with AI on a head mounted device, rather than a handheld device.”

The argument that De Vos makes undoubtedly holds some weight. Many would agree that the endpoint of AR in a field service environment would involve lightweight head-mounted computes. This allows the field service engineer to work hands-free, while still receiving vital information from either the asset itself via IoT connections, a remote expert or a knowledge management solution embedded into the AR/FSM solution.

However, it should equally be noted that the lack of affordable, field-ready solutions shouldn’t be seen as a barrier to adoption today.

Indeed, the majority of AR solutions today are available as cross-platform, solutions that can function well utilizing the existing technology in your field service technicians toolkit – namely either a smartphone or tablet.

In the Field Service News Digital Symposium presentation on SPACE1, there were multiple benefits of adopting such a tool, even if the implementation is based upon handheld devices.

For example, some of the benefits Benvenuto outlined during the presentation included:

• Maintenance: By providing support to field technicians during maintenance, inspection, and test activities, to enhance productivity, quality and safety, even in those situations with the low network coverage.
• Training: By introducing a new perspective in training activities, allowing users to collaborate everywhere and providing them with remote interaction and knowledge sharing tools.
• Presentation: By driving the way to cooperate to new heights, allowing to involve clients and suppliers from remote to propose products and share advanced contents in real-time, ensuring an unprecedented user experience.

However, what is catching the eye in many of the most impressive AR solutions is the further integration with Knowledge Management features, and this is increasingly reliant on harnessing the most advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies which allows for reshaping and sharing of collected data.

The future of AR in field service has finally begun, and AI will be a fundamental part of that future moving forward.

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about digital transformation in field service @ /www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read more about the use of Artificial Intelligence in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=artificial+intelligence
• Read more about the use of Augmented Reality in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=augmented+reality+
• Find out more about the solutions OverIT offer field service companies @ www.overit.it/en/
• Find out more about the solutions IFS offer field service companies @ www.ifs.com/uk/
• Find out more about the solutions Augmentir offer field service companies @ www.augmentir.com/

In this excerpt from the first Field Service News Think Tank Debrief Sessions, ServiceMax's Coen Jeukens & Kieran Notter expand on the difference between data, insight, action and value.

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Standing on top of a data mountain or drowning in a data lake? 

"I think for many organizations, it's [harnessing the power of the data wihtin their systems] very difficult," begins Coen Jeukens, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax.

"They have run their service organizations for many years in a particular paradigm and when they are confronted with new tools or technologies it's very difficult to get a kind of sneak preview or an idea of what those new tools could bring," Jeukens continues. 

"Of course, from a marketing perspective, we have great messages about IoT data. But what that has brought us a lot of data lakes. So what I really liked in the statement of Jan van Veen  during the Think Tanks was where he talks about about data and insights, and then he talks about value. However, there is one particular step in between. Data can be converted into insights, but the insights must then be converted into an action and the action itself provides the value."

"Sometimes you can create an action on an insight, but if that action doesn't provide any value should you could still continue collecting the data and the insights for it? By looking at and rationalizing that, by looking at things from a methodological perspective, not simply just jumping on the bandwagon of each new technology, but really having a clear understanding of what's the objective and then reverse engineering what you need.

"As for technology, well, it's a great driver, and it's an enabler at the same time, but then you can start making sense of things," Jeukens adds. 

 

"For me, it's about having a vision of what you want, and then measuring what you need to put that in place and then collecting that data.."

- Kieran Notter, ServiceMax

 

"One of the things I've seen all my years is there's there's there's a huge amount of desire to collect data," comments Kieran Notter, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax. 

"To speak to the point Jan was making during the Think Tank, there is not always a vision to understand what to do with that data. I think a lot of the times we try and put in a solution before before we actually understand what the problem is," Notter continues. 

"I think that is often the issue, companies must understand what the problem they are trying to solve is, or the outcome, or the value that they're trying to drive, and then only collect the data for that. 

"If you think about a technician in the workplace, which is either a scenario where you're utilizing the technician to collect the data, or you're utilizing connected products. If we look at that human element, the humans will stop collecting it with accuracy if they think it's not being used or utilized. So for me, it's about having a vision of what you want, and then measuring what you need to put that in place and then collecting that data.

"Don't drown yourself in data," Notter concludes

 

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In this excerpt of the first Field Service News Think Tank Debrief Sessions we hear from Daniel Brabec VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax as he discusses the deeper layers of value that can be found through digitalisation...

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The multiple touch points of a digital transformation project: 

One area that really came to the fore in this series of Think Tanks was that while at conferences and in the pages of trade journals such as Field Service News we often tend to primarily focus on the efficiencies and the improvements to the bottom line that digitalization can bring, or occasionally we may focus on the other end of the spectrum when we start looking at the various different potential revenue streams enabled by the use of tools such as remote assistance for example.

However, there are so many other areas of the business that digitalisation in the field service operation that connect disparate parts of the business to the field service operation such as marketing, R&D or sales.

As Jason Smith, Director of Field Service, EMEA, 3D Systems Corporation commented: 

"One thing that the embracing of digital and the flow of data that comes with that allows for is the coming together of all of these varous touch points that allows a business to operate as a much more effective whole.

“Everything has to be about data, so we need the best data coming off the machine through the customer to get the right diagnostic in place. Industry 4.0 and connectivity is really helping with that.

“However, we still have a culture amongst engineers where they need to recognise that they are also responsible for the solution. What they have found and how they build up their experience is empirical - they’ve been able to build on that knowledge and telling others, that knowledge capture is key to the whole thing. It’s not just what is wrong with the machine its what did you do to fix it and how can we put that back into a closed-loop cycle so we are constantly improving and evolving the solution.

“We’ve touched on some of the tools to do that and Artificial Intelligence is of course one such tool but making sure that you have that closed-loop in place and its not just one-way traffic is the key to that culture change and so making sure engineers are part of it and recognise it I think is going to be key to improvement.”

 

And Jan van Veen, Manging Director, MoreMomentum also commented: 

"Data is absolutely important; there is no doubt about that. But the value is not in the data; neither is it essentially in the insight.

"What we are seeing is a number of different mechanisms kicking in that are all related to digitalisation. There are several of these. There is the disruptive element in how we are working, but also in the markets we serve at large.

“Some companies will follow the curve, others will be entrants into the market that drive us as a sector to work in a better way, and others will be unable to keep up and will fall away.

“Also, at some point we begin to see a type of de-materialisation. So we get less products being involved as some are taken out of the equation. For example, we don’t have generally have a need for a camera or a calculator anymore as our phones can handle both those functions.

“Another phase we will see is demonetisation, where digital products become so prevalent that they become much cheaper and then finally alongside this we also see democratisation where digital services become available for everybody at an affordable price point.

“We are in the early phase today as we talk about data coming from equipment and what we can do with that. But I think the real challenge is how are we going to turn it into value. Not insight, but services and value propositions using the data.

It certainly seems evident that companies find more than one benefit when implementing some aspect of a digital transformation. However, do companies tend to go into these projects with one vision of what they they're trying to achieve and then actually discover new potential improvement opportunities on along the way or do they have already have a comprehensive understanding of the many facets of their digitalisation roadmap?

"It's a really interesting question," mused Daniel Brabec, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax during the debrief session. 

"If you think about where the actual change comes from, where the internal drive comes from, a lot of times, it'll be on some initiative that's been directed down via the executive team that doesn't necessarily have a touch with service. For example, the CFO might come back and say service is costing us too much money, we need to reduce x and y. And we need to make sure that we're cutting all of our costs here and there and to do that, we need to get our first time fixed rate up to X percent because it's currently at 53%."

 

"There's a lot of really quick wins for organizations to change and do things that are not hard for them in that digital transformation..."

- Daniel Brabec, ServiceMax

 

'What what we find when I work with a lot of these companies is because they're they're so archaic in nature, they don't have any digital tools, they may still be on on a whiteboard or pen and paper out in the field that they know they need to move the needle in one area. But as we start to discover they have a lot of opportunities in other areas that can make a huge impact on their business as well that they haven't even considered," Brabec continues.

"I think pulling all these different departments together to actually discuss some of the potential solutions is key to understanding you know, how they can collaborate and how they can actually enact some of those changes that we're starting to prescribe for them."

"In fact, one of the things that we do is to help our customers is called a maturity assessment," Brabec explains. 

"We'll work with various individuals in the organisation and get their take on where the service team is across various dimensions to to kind of understand as an organization, are they high or low and where can they really move the needle.

"There's a lot of really quick wins for organizations to change and do things that are not hard for them in that digital transformation. That can really move the needle for them as an organization and free up more opportunity to make more of those changes into the future."

 

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In this excerpt from the inaugral Think Tank Debrief Session, Kieran Notter, VP Global Customer Service, ServiceMax reflects on the conversations around whether knowledge is the key differentiator for OEMs when it comes to service delivery... 

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Is knowledge the key weapon in the OEM's arsenal?

During this conversation everyone around the table was an OEM, which allowed us to dig deeper into what the group thought were the key differentiators between OEMs and third party service providers when it comes to differentiating service.

While brand reputation does of course play its on part in the discussion, it was clear amongst the group that it was knowledge and experience that really allows an OEM to shine through.

Jason Smith, Director of Field Service, EMEA, 3D Systems Corporation commented: 

“In previous companies I’ve worked at, when we have tried to push advanced services out to the market, one of the major challenges we faced was that there was little value in trying to convince customers, who didn’t see the value in connected services as a solution. In fact, this is reflected in the approach we’ve adopted at 3D Systems. If a customer is on a maintenance contract and under warranty, then we will connect the machines for free.

As far as we are concerned, in terms of the connectivity, the hardware aspect of the equation, which is where people typically perceive as the value, actually has very little value.

What I discovered, certainly in my previous role, is that the value is in the data which is provided and the insight that provides - particularly when your offering is part of a system. Companies really have to separate the hardware from the knowledge because the value proposition is at opposite ends of the scale.

Hardware is worth a couple of thousand dollars, but the knowledge is where the real improvements are. One project we did in my last company based around such a premise yielded savings to the customer of €2.5M a year. It is in the data and the insight within that data - that is where the true value sits. However, it is only by having case studies and actual data that you can quantify and describe this value.”

Peter Deeming, Service Tools Manager, Varian commented: 

“Reflecting on the three models Jan outlined of ‘do it with us’, ‘do it for us’ or ‘we’ll do it ourselves’, I would add a fourth model into this in that a third-party service contractor could also do the service work as well.

“In terms of service we see third party service companies as competitors and one of the edges the data gives us is that we as an OEM can get data from our entire install base and a contractor cannot do that. This gives us a far greater depth of knowledge and insight that we can bring to the customer - something that gives us a distinct competitive advantage.

“This demonstrates that the value isn’t in the hardware, or even getting the data from one machine. But when you can get the data from all of your machines and exploring the trending and apply some AI and get all of the analysis, then you get some phenomenal insights, and that is where the true value lies.”

It was interesting to note as the conversation evolved during the Think Tank, how we started to see the groups thinking crystallise as agreement emerged that the true value an OEM service organisation can bring to the table is based on deep product knowledge and operational best practice.

This was a theme that occurred across a number of conversations during the Think Tank's held in this period but this definitely came to the fore in this session.

Reflecting on this point during the Debrief session Kieran Notter, VP Global Customer Transformation, commented:

"With knowledge, you can start to offer more things.Then with knowledge, you can also manage those things and set the expectations for your customers and yourself."

"We can talk about entitlements and SLA (service level agreements) but if you don't have the knowledge on how to manage them, then that's an empty promise, and therefore you're going to upset your customer," Notter adds.

 

"How many people beyond service realize that, that service data is really useful to them?"

- Kieran Notter, ServiceMax

 

"So to get to that movement of how you do your contract entitlements and SLAs, or even moving further into the outcome based world, you have to have the knowledge to understand fundamentally how you price it, how you make it into a business, but also how you can make your customer successful - because you need to create that partnership to be successful," Notter reflects. 

"Then there's also the secondary element as well, which is understanding of how to use that knowledge outside of service. Most people taking part in this Debrief session will have an idea of how they would like to use their data if they can harvest it and mining. Yet, how many people beyond service realize that that service data is really useful to them?"

"If you think about the supply chain and how service data can be used there to actually work hand in hand, to create a supply chain, rather than a demand chain. Also, if marketing have the data that's coming from these products, they can do targeted marketing - marketing, that is very specific to the customer and the products and the services that you're providing currently, which gives you the knowledge and ability to make up-sells and cross sells."

"Another aspect here is that there always seems to be a little bit of a push and pull between sales and service," Notter continues.

"Service was once called aftersales but we all understand nowadays that it's moving more into the forefront because you may sell the machine once, but then you maintain it for the next 10 to 20 years. When that maintenance is getting to a point that you need to upsell, then you have the data already. For example, you may know when the machine is being overused creating an opportunity to maybe sell another unit, or indeed it needs to be serviced.

All of this data works in so many different areas to drive different areas of growth and you can see that in Jason's statement of €2.5M savings a year. You can see where that value is actually coming from."

 

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In the first of our new quarterly Field Service News Think Tank Debrief Sessions, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News was joined by Kieran Notter, Coen Jeukens and Daniel Brabec as they reflected on the key points raised in the last three Think Tank sessions. In this first excerpt from the debrief session, Jeukens reflects on the conversations around the growing need for service companies to listen to the voice of their customers...

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An Emerging Need for Multiple Layers of Service Offerings: 

One of the things that makes the Field Service Think Tank Sessions is that when you bring together a small group of senior service leaders together to discuss the key issues our industry faces in an informal setting, often the conversation can evolve beyond the original agenda very quickly. 

That's exactly what happened on this first session of the series held in partnership with the team at ServiceMax and the conversation turned towards really digging deeper into where the the true value of data sits within the field service sector.

During the session we saw a real need for different levels of service offerings. This is an aspect of service delivery that appears to be rapidly evolving as service organisations become more aware that their customers have many differing needs.

As Patrick Jansen, Manager Field Service, VBR Turbine Partners commented during the session:

“If you look at our call-out services, some customers don’t even want people to pick up the phone immediately - they are happy to just accept a longer response time. 

“Other customers really have an essential piece of machinery that, for them, is critical to their production. So if they have a problem they want you to pick up the phone immediately. It is quite a broad service level that we offer for our clients and it is really custom made. But the thing is we don’t work with a huge amount of companies, and we serve a niche market. We are not a Samsung serving a million mobile phones, we serve smaller industry vertical within a complex niche sector, so our service towards them is also quite different from having to serve a lot of volume.”

Similarly Eddie Storan, Head of Global Services, Domino Printing Sciences commented: 

“As we operate across 5 different industries, we provide a range of different services and offerings based upon the complexity of our customers. For example, from large global customers to the other end of spectrum of smaller organisations where their production is seasonal with short production runs and high variation.

"These customers may not have the same infrastructure and maintenance teams as the larger organisations. However, like all customers 'uptime' is critical, and if there is an issue, they want it resolved instantaneously. That is where we see remote connectivity being utilised through our cloud-based connected services. These types of customers generally tend to be more focused on support.

"Our larger customers, in addition to remote support, look for data insights into their production lines across the different technologies we have installed in their plants.”

Coen Jeukens, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax was co-chair during this Think Tank discussion and during the debrief session he was able to reflect further on the importance of differing levels of service offerings, but also how the conversations had evolved throughout the backdrop of a global lockdown during the pandemic. 

"What I really find interesting, maybe as a general common for all the Think Tank sessions we held, was that this was the first session we held which was on March 22 - so I think that for most of the participants, it's was either the first or the second week of a lockdown. Many of us were still in denial of COVID. And if we go through all the different think tanks sessions, I saw them the opinions and the perspectives of the participants changing over time." Jeukens reflected

"To a certain extent, these think tanks sessions are also a timepiece. Now, if I look at the remarks on this particular slide itself, different service needs of different customers, the phrase which comes to mind for me that very much that sat behind this part of the conversation is 'the voice of the customer', This is at the heart of these two statements made by Patrick and Eddie." 

"In terms of the voice of the customer in the context of COVID, we really start to see that the voice of the customer is not a static thing, it changes over time and COVID really has shown us that the voice of the customer can change rapidly or in a very short period of time," Jeukens continued.

 

"The most important thing to understand here is the importance of listening to the voice of the customer..."

- Coen Jeukens, ServiceMax

 

"The most important thing to understand here is the importance of listening to the voice of the customer. This allows you to know if the products and services you are offering are critical for the customer - because you can imagine if you sell a product to a customer, and that product isn't critical at all, then how are you going to sell services for that piece of equipment? The more you know about the usage of your pieces of equipment out in the field, the more you know, the more you can use the voice of the customer to really tailor your service offerings."

"If we look at the statement of Patrick, he explains how they don't really have a huge install base, but many of those customers in their install base have a very different use patterns. Equally, as we see in the statement from Eddie, you could say arguably that a printer is just a printer, but in his business, it's not about the printer. It's about the context in which the printer is used and that context is different for every customer."

"Again, we see here that there is an important context brought about by listening to the voice of the customer. This allows for the criticality of moving from fixing the downtime to better understanding the uptime. Additionally, in that understanding, uptime focus can change, this is why I think we saw the voice of the customer really driving many of the conversations we had."

 

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