There are three key considerations that field service organizations must take into account when building a modern workforce, including the changing demographics from Baby Boomer to Millennial, the impact of technology on field service operations,...
AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Kris Oldland
About the Author:
Kris Oldland has been working in Business to Business Publishing for almost a decade. As a journalist he has covered a diverse range of industries from Fire Juggling through to Terrorism Insurance. Prior to this he was a Quality Services Manager with a globally recognised hospitality brand. An intimate understanding of what is important when it comes to Service and a passion for emerging technology means that in Field Service he has found an industry that excites him everyday.
Jul 30, 2019 • Features • Management • Ageing Workforce Crisis • workforce management • FIeld nation • field service • Blended Workforce • FieldNation
There are three key considerations that field service organizations must take into account when building a modern workforce, including the changing demographics from Baby Boomer to Millennial, the impact of technology on field service operations, and the growth of the ‘gig’ economy. In a new series run in partnership with FieldNation, we explore all three...
Jul 30, 2019 • health and safety • Managemenet • management • field service management • field service software • Technology Investment • Building a case for investment • HSO • Business Development
In this series, which is based around an exclusive white paper published by Field Service News in partnership with HSO, we are exploring three core arguments service directors can make to the board to secure investment in implementing or upgrading...
In this series, which is based around an exclusive white paper published by Field Service News in partnership with HSO, we are exploring three core arguments service directors can make to the board to secure investment in implementing or upgrading their field service management systems. In the second part of the series we look at how you can build a case based around health and safety...
Jul 30, 2019 • Paul Whitelam • field service • field service engineers • field service management • service engineers • Service Management • Uncategorized • Customer Satisfaction and Expectations
Paul Whitelam, VP Product Marketing, ClickSoftware, outlines why turning to look at how effective our customers’ are at dealing with issues can shine a light on your own performance and productivity...
Paul Whitelam, VP Product Marketing, ClickSoftware, outlines why turning to look at how effective our customers’ are at dealing with issues can shine a light on your own performance and productivity...
Whether trying to get more jobs done in a day, more jobs per technician per year, or more fixes achieved on the first try, there are plenty of time-tested ways to show improved field service performance through metrics.
But if you’re still not sure that your field service is delivering peak performance, it might be time to look in a surprising place for a new set of KPIs: your customers. How hard are they working? At a time when every business is obsessed with delighting their customers, many underestimate the role customer effort plays in determining the quality of the experience.
The Customer Effort Score is a new KPI that measures how much effort your customers put into getting an issue resolved. If retaining loyal customers is a priority for your business, read on.
When your customer goes to work
Today, you can order something online in a matter of seconds and get it the same day. You can even hail a ride in minutes at the click of a button. Companies like Amazon and Uber are making it effortless for customers to receive great service. These on-demand businesses have set a high standard for all service organizations.
Great customer experience can begin as soon as an issue arises. Great customer experience can begin as soon as an issue arisesIt can start with their first phone call, their visit to your appointment booking portal, or how they are notified of the technician’s ETA.
The same is true for bad experiences. To uncover all the ways you could ease your customer’s pain even before you fix their problem, consider every potential interaction with your business. Here are three ways field service organizations can reduce customer effort.
1. Enable true self-service
To some, self-service means troubleshooting and problem solving done by the customer. For others, the definition includes providing ongoing access to important information that helps the customer not only treat issues but continually get the most value from their product or service.
This also should be extended to include how easy it is for the customer to request help or information, book an appointment, or speak directly to a representative. Much of this can be accomplished with a well-designed and easy-to-navigate website, connected to a knowledge management system that shares information consistent with what your employees see.
2. Empower everyone involved
For every step of the service journey, you want customers to feel in control of the process and that you’re treating their time with respect. Dispensing confusing or incomplete information does not help.
Your front-line employees should also be empowered to do the best job they can. Will they have prior access to the customer’s case so they can arrive prepared? Will they be routed to a job site with the correct parts and equipment already in their vehicle? Can your call center and mobile employees make decisions based on flexible or well-defined policies to reach to a satisfying resolution faster?
Imagine a customer who needs to explain a problem to the newly-arrived technician after already doing so over the phone or online, and then is unable to get the problem fixed due to a missing part or lack of skills. Now they have to restart the process to make a new appointment. How would they rate their effort on a 1-5 scale?
3. Integrate, integrate, integrate
To enable the control, transparency, and empowerment customers want, tight cross-channel and cross-team integration is critical. While customers might prefer phone agents over automated chat bots or SMS, ultimately, they want the option that gets them the help they need as quickly as possible.
However many channels you offer for communication, ensure customers are easily transferred and that information is shared seamlesslyHowever many channels you offer for communication, ensure customers are easily transferred and that information is shared seamlessly. You want to minimize the times your customer is sent to another department. But if it’s unavoidable, you can send them along with all the relevant information so they don’t have to start over with the next person on the phone.
Similarly, the way your field service professional interacts with your customer should be standardized and consistent with your brand. Integrate your communication channels, your CRM, as well as your processes and policies, to consistently deliver service that minimizes customer effort.
High effort is inversely related to good experience
User experience designers who work on everything from smartphone apps to retail spaces understand that minimizing friction and effort is good for customer experience, retention, and repeat business. Research by Gartner and Forrester encourages businesses to focus on how they can lower customer effort to win hearts and minds. Making your customers feel that their time is valued and auditing for areas of improvement is a great starting point.
Besides boosting your workforce efficiency and productivity, examine where your organization can minimize customer effort. This creates seamless experiences from the moment the need for service arises. Your customers will thank you with their loyalty.
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Jul 30, 2019 • Features • Augmented Reality • future of field service • Software and Apps • Augmentir
The number of Augmented Reality companies focusing on the field service sector has dramatically increased over the last couple of years. Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News sat down with Chris Kuntz, VP of Marketing for one of the...
The number of Augmented Reality companies focusing on the field service sector has dramatically increased over the last couple of years. Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News sat down with Chris Kuntz, VP of Marketing for one of the newer organisations in the space Augmentir in California recently and came away impressed...
Augmentir is a relatively new startup in the growing Augmented Reality (AR) space that is focussing on the field service sector. Indeed this is a market that is becoming quite quickly crowded with AR vendors dominating industry conferences both in the US and Europe this summer in terms of the new entrants into the market.
However, three things, in particular, made Augmentir stand out from the crowd when I met with their VP of Marketing, Chris Kuntz, at the Field Service USA conference in Palm Springs recently. Firstly, there is much pedigree in this seemingly wet behind the ears startup.
The team that has put together Augmentir have been together for a long time on different projects which have included bringing the pioneering industrial IoT platform ThingWorx to market, as well as Wonderware, which was the first HMI interface in the manufacturing sector and is now in place in an estimated 60% of manufacturing plants worldwide.
So before we even start to look at the technology driving Augmentir, it’s fair to say that there is more than a good chance we shall potentially see another success story here.
However, the fact is that even without the well established pedigree, the vision behind Augmentir have taken a different yet thoroughly logical approach that sets them apart from many of their peers in the market.
As Kuntz, explained when I met with him in California, “We’re taking a different spin on what’s out there today. We’re the first software platform built on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the world of the augmented or connected worker. Historically, what’s happened in field service is roughly as follows: A new job is created when a customer reports a problem with a piece of equipment. This results in a worker getting dispatched, who then attends the job and either fixes the product or has to reschedule a second visit. Then at some point later, he updates a system with the notes outlining the actions he took,” Kuntz says recalling a scenario many of us in the sector recognise.
“However, the activities that happened from the time the engineer was dispatched to the time that that job is complete, remain a relative unknown, it’s a black box today. People don’t know what’s happening on the job site. Is that worker struggling with some of the steps? Does that worker speed through the repair procedure? Did the worker follow the right steps to meet health and safety requirements?”
There are all sorts of things happening. The problem then gets compounded for some companies who offer self-service or routines their dealer network or to their end customers. Now, you don’t know if they’re following the correct maintenance procedures or not. This, in turn, could affect the warranty status, and so on and so forth.”
"Augmentir have taken a different yet thoroughly logical approach..."
Of course, the result of the scenario Kuntz outlines is one many of us are familiar with. Companies have thus started to push technology down to the worker to make them better connected, to make them ‘augmented’.
This is at the heart of the current play for many AR providers, which in essence builds upon the case put forward for mobile a decade ago. Ultimately field service organisations are still attempting to solve the perennial question of “How can we give our engineers more information, give them more instructions on how to guide them through their process”.
“That’s all fine,” Kuntz states referring to the approach most of his peers are taking in resolving these issues, “But most companies aren’t collecting how their engineer’s work is performed. They’re just saying to the engineers, ‘Here are your instructions.’
“What we’re doing is taking that one step further. Firstly, we provide what we call ‘augmented work instruction’. By that, we mean work instructions that have information related to the case the engineer is doing, the piece of equipment they are working on and its work history that make the instructions interactive and personalised work instructions.
“If you’re an expert, that’s gone through this procedure a million times, you might get a more summarised view of the instructions, whereas if you’re a novice and this is the first time on a specific repair, our AI engine might provide you with a required training video along with a more detailed step-by-step guide. All to meet the goal of fix it right the first time …in the least amount of time.
“The next thing we do is we’re collecting all the granular data on how the workers performing their job and interacting with the instructions. We’re then using this data with our Artificial Intelligence engine in a way to help them become better at what they’re doing.
“Maybe an engineer is performing tasks slower than the average worker, is that an opportunity for training? Maybe they’re faster than the average worker? Is it an opportunity to tap into that person to say, how are you doing it? Have they found a more effective way of completing a task? Alternatively, maybe most of the workers are having trouble with a specific procedure/step – is there an opportunity to improve the instructions or associated training materials?”
Compliance is, of course, a crucial part of a field engineers role - both for legislative and internal efficiency purposes. However, often, it is the case that compliance steps happen after the fact.
One of the crucial aspects of digital transformation is making sure actions like these can now be electronically verified in real-time, in an interactive manner - and not just be an afterthought added to the notes a service engineer completes at the end of the job.
It is a small shift in a workflow that can have multiple big benefits, and the fact that Augmentir has baked such factors as this into their solution from the get-go does suggest they have a firm understanding of the field service engineers day to day workflow and the broader processes of the field service operation.
“This information can be used for compliance purposes, can be used for warranty purposes, it can be sent back to the customer to say, ‘this is a service procedure, this is exactly what happened,’ offer them a full inventory, step by step of what happened,” Kuntz explains: “We’re taking augmented reality, infusing it with artificial intelligence to collect the data, analyse it, and push it back to the organisation. Moreover, we’re doing it in a way that offers our enterprise software platform in a more modern approach.”
It is here we come across the third facet of Augmentir’s approach that also separates them from much of the pack - their route to market is equally accessible for the SMB sector as it is the large enterprise.
Kuntz continues: “If you think about how companies in this space adopt technology, Salesforce, Clicksoftware, ServiceMax; it’s a very lengthy process to implement any of these systems. Certainly, when it gets down to other AR solutions, it is no different and implementation can become even more time consuming. A pilot may take nine months; it could cost up to $150,000 to test out an AR solution.
“What we’re doing is trying to take a model that Slack, Atlassian and Dropbox have taken - make it easy to try, easy to buy, easy to own. The way people adopt Dropbox, the way people adopt Slack today is typical of how the modern world works, and we think we can apply that to the field service sector.
“What that allows us to do is not only work with the large enterprise companies, but also the small to mid-sized companies that don’t have the time and money to spend a large amount of money on implementing a large complex system."
This strategy really could be a game changer in the Field Service/Augmented Reality sector, which for a long time I have identified as one that has a vast potential to improve field service delivery, yet has ultimately struggled to truly take a prevalent hold in any meaningful way as yet.
SMBs are in prime position to benefit from many of the potential benefits, both in terms of reducing costs and increasing revenues that AR could yield. A solution that allows them to step into this world, virtually risk-free could become a massive gateway for widespread adoption on a mass scale.
The pedigree of Augmentir’s senior team, the intelligent well thought out use cases presented and a strategy that makes the solution easy to trial are three significant areas that can make them stand out from this increasingly busy pack.
However, the biggest reason I see Augmentir becoming an established provider within our sector is that I don’t actually think they are an AR provider at all. Instead, having spent some time with Kuntz looking at and discussing the solution, I believe they are best described as ‘an AI company that specialises in knowledge transfer and interpretation, who happen to have chosen AR as the primary interface for their solution'.
It might not roll off the tongue quite as easily, but it sure ticks a lot of boxes that many, many field service companies are looking at - and this may make Augmentir a key solution in the sector.
Augmentir is a relatively new startup in the growing Augmented Reality (AR) space that is focussing on the field service sector. Indeed this is a market that is becoming quite quickly crowded with AR vendors dominating industry conferences both in the US and Europe this summer in terms of the new entrants into the market.
However, three things, in particular, made Augmentir stand out from the crowd when I met with their VP of Marketing, Chris Kuntz, at the Field Service USA conference in Palm Springs recently. Firstly, there is much pedigree in this seemingly wet behind the ears startup.
The team that has put together Augmentir have been together for a long time on different projects which have included bringing the pioneering industrial IoT platform ThingWorx to market, as well as Wonderware, which was the first HMI interface in the manufacturing sector and is now in place in an estimated 60% of manufacturing plants worldwide.
So before we even start to look at the technology driving Augmentir, it’s fair to say that there is more than a good chance we shall potentially see another success story here.
However, the fact is that even without the well established pedigree, the vision behind Augmentir have taken a different yet thoroughly logical approach that sets them apart from many of their peers in the market.
As Kuntz, explained when I met with him in California, “We’re taking a different spin on what’s out there today. We’re the first software platform built on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the world of the augmented or connected worker. Historically, what’s happened in field service is roughly as follows: A new job is created when a customer reports a problem with a piece of equipment. This results in a worker getting dispatched, who then attends the job and either fixes the product or has to reschedule a second visit. Then at some point later, he updates a system with the notes outlining the actions he took,” Kuntz says recalling a scenario many of us in the sector recognise.
“However, the activities that happened from the time the engineer was dispatched to the time that that job is complete, remain a relative unknown, it’s a black box today. People don’t know what’s happening on the job site. Is that worker struggling with some of the steps? Does that worker speed through the repair procedure? Did the worker follow the right steps to meet health and safety requirements?”
There are all sorts of things happening. The problem then gets compounded for some companies who offer self-service or routines their dealer network or to their end customers. Now, you don’t know if they’re following the correct maintenance procedures or not. This, in turn, could affect the warranty status, and so on and so forth.”
"Augmentir have taken a different yet thoroughly logical approach..."
Of course, the result of the scenario Kuntz outlines is one many of us are familiar with. Companies have thus started to push technology down to the worker to make them better connected, to make them ‘augmented’.
This is at the heart of the current play for many AR providers, which in essence builds upon the case put forward for mobile a decade ago. Ultimately field service organisations are still attempting to solve the perennial question of “How can we give our engineers more information, give them more instructions on how to guide them through their process”.
“That’s all fine,” Kuntz states referring to the approach most of his peers are taking in resolving these issues, “But most companies aren’t collecting how their engineer’s work is performed. They’re just saying to the engineers, ‘Here are your instructions.’
“What we’re doing is taking that one step further. Firstly, we provide what we call ‘augmented work instruction’. By that, we mean work instructions that have information related to the case the engineer is doing, the piece of equipment they are working on and its work history that make the instructions interactive and personalised work instructions.
“If you’re an expert, that’s gone through this procedure a million times, you might get a more summarised view of the instructions, whereas if you’re a novice and this is the first time on a specific repair, our AI engine might provide you with a required training video along with a more detailed step-by-step guide. All to meet the goal of fix it right the first time …in the least amount of time.
“The next thing we do is we’re collecting all the granular data on how the workers performing their job and interacting with the instructions. We’re then using this data with our Artificial Intelligence engine in a way to help them become better at what they’re doing.
“Maybe an engineer is performing tasks slower than the average worker, is that an opportunity for training? Maybe they’re faster than the average worker? Is it an opportunity to tap into that person to say, how are you doing it? Have they found a more effective way of completing a task? Alternatively, maybe most of the workers are having trouble with a specific procedure/step – is there an opportunity to improve the instructions or associated training materials?”
Compliance is, of course, a crucial part of a field engineers role - both for legislative and internal efficiency purposes. However, often, it is the case that compliance steps happen after the fact.
One of the crucial aspects of digital transformation is making sure actions like these can now be electronically verified in real-time, in an interactive manner - and not just be an afterthought added to the notes a service engineer completes at the end of the job.
It is a small shift in a workflow that can have multiple big benefits, and the fact that Augmentir has baked such factors as this into their solution from the get-go does suggest they have a firm understanding of the field service engineers day to day workflow and the broader processes of the field service operation.
“This information can be used for compliance purposes, can be used for warranty purposes, it can be sent back to the customer to say, ‘this is a service procedure, this is exactly what happened,’ offer them a full inventory, step by step of what happened,” Kuntz explains: “We’re taking augmented reality, infusing it with artificial intelligence to collect the data, analyse it, and push it back to the organisation. Moreover, we’re doing it in a way that offers our enterprise software platform in a more modern approach.”
It is here we come across the third facet of Augmentir’s approach that also separates them from much of the pack - their route to market is equally accessible for the SMB sector as it is the large enterprise.
Kuntz continues: “If you think about how companies in this space adopt technology, Salesforce, Clicksoftware, ServiceMax; it’s a very lengthy process to implement any of these systems. Certainly, when it gets down to other AR solutions, it is no different and implementation can become even more time consuming. A pilot may take nine months; it could cost up to $150,000 to test out an AR solution.
“What we’re doing is trying to take a model that Slack, Atlassian and Dropbox have taken - make it easy to try, easy to buy, easy to own. The way people adopt Dropbox, the way people adopt Slack today is typical of how the modern world works, and we think we can apply that to the field service sector.
“What that allows us to do is not only work with the large enterprise companies, but also the small to mid-sized companies that don’t have the time and money to spend a large amount of money on implementing a large complex system."
This strategy really could be a game changer in the Field Service/Augmented Reality sector, which for a long time I have identified as one that has a vast potential to improve field service delivery, yet has ultimately struggled to truly take a prevalent hold in any meaningful way as yet.
SMBs are in prime position to benefit from many of the potential benefits, both in terms of reducing costs and increasing revenues that AR could yield. A solution that allows them to step into this world, virtually risk-free could become a massive gateway for widespread adoption on a mass scale.
The pedigree of Augmentir’s senior team, the intelligent well thought out use cases presented and a strategy that makes the solution easy to trial are three significant areas that can make them stand out from this increasingly busy pack.
However, the biggest reason I see Augmentir becoming an established provider within our sector is that I don’t actually think they are an AR provider at all. Instead, having spent some time with Kuntz looking at and discussing the solution, I believe they are best described as ‘an AI company that specialises in knowledge transfer and interpretation, who happen to have chosen AR as the primary interface for their solution'.
It might not roll off the tongue quite as easily, but it sure ticks a lot of boxes that many, many field service companies are looking at - and this may make Augmentir a key solution in the sector.
Jul 29, 2019 • Features • future of field service • Mergers and Acquisitions • servicemax • zinc
If it seems like only a few short years ago that GE Digital’s acquisition of ServiceMax, at an eye-watering price that exploded the market, was dominating headlines across and beyond the field service sector, that is because it was. Kris Oldland met...
If it seems like only a few short years ago that GE Digital’s acquisition of ServiceMax, at an eye-watering price that exploded the market, was dominating headlines across and beyond the field service sector, that is because it was. Kris Oldland met with their new CEO Neil Barua and President of newly acquired Zinc, Stacey Epstein to see if this time around the recently announced Silver Lake acquisition may prove to be more of a success.
I know many people at ServiceMax. Many good people. Heck, I even helped one or two of them get the job there. “It’s a good company, with a great ethos, that just really gets service,” I would say when people asked me for my honest appraisal of the company.
That was before they became acquired for close to a Billion dollars back in late 2016. Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that their ethos changed at that point or that they lost track of being a field service management software company that ‘really had their head around field service’. In fact, I’d say the transition from the independent company it was under former CEO and founder Dave Yarnold, to becoming part of the family at corporate giant GE, a transition led by then-new CEO Scott Berg – who had been Yarnold’s number two for many years, was just about as smooth as these things can be.
Indeed, the last time I spoke with Scott, whom I’ve known as long as I have Dave, there were still echoes of his former boss’ approach in his words and his vision. However, it was clear that that vision was now slowly becoming integrated with the bigger whole and wider picture that belonged to GE.
And then things did seem to go quiet for a while. ServiceMax in their first incarnation were constant innovators and boundary pushers. Sometimes they got it wrong like they did when they developed several apps for smartwatches and Google Glass. Sometimes they got it right, very right – like they did when the launched Connected Field Service and got the jump on all their peers in bringing IoT to the world of service.
They also had a knack for working with brands that matched their ambition. Companies like Elekta who were shipping their med-tech devices with 56K modems some thirty years before IoT was even the first concept of an idea that would become a ‘thing.’ Companies like Schneider Electric who somehow managed to fully roll out a new FSM and Mobility solution worldwide within just six months. Companies like Sony who were taking pioneering steps forward into servitization within the broadcast sector supplying one Spanish broadcaster with an entire news studio on a cost per use basis in Madrid in a complete industry first.
All pioneers, proudly empowered by ServiceMax.
“It will take time for them to become fully embedded before we see the real fruits of the union between ServiceMax and GE,” was the consensus as to why the noise that we were used to coming out of those offices in Pleasanton, California and London in the UK had quietened down significantly over the last year or so.
The problem was that by the time that integration was even close to happening, by the time the last person at ServiceMax had finally gotten their new business cards and at last become used to giving out their new GE email address, their acquisition by Private Equity (PE) firm Silver Lake had suddenly been announced.
In my experience this can be a great thing to happen to a company sometimes, PE firm EQT is doing a great job at the helm of IFS for example and driving that business forward. In other cases, which I shall not name and shame, but plenty do exist, PE acquisition can be a hellish scenario of asset stripping and cost-cutting to nightmarish proportions.
So which type of PE owner will Silver Lake be? Well, their track record is certainly impressive in the technology space, so that goes some ways to alleviating initial fears. However, understanding the new vision of the company, in this third iteration, was still at the top of my agenda when I sat down with Neil Barua, the new CEO of ServiceMax and Stacey Epstein, President of recent ServiceMax acquisition Zinc.
You see for me, a healthy ServiceMax is good for the market in general. Most industries, but field service especially, tend to go through ebbs and flows of consolidation, with periods of stagnation and innovation correlating closely to the number of strong players within the sector.
“In terms of how we think about companies, you can test out that with any of the companies that we own and have owned,” replies Barua when I question Silver Lake’s motives for acquiring ServiceMax in a manner vaguely akin to a father assessing suitors for his daughter. “It’s all around how you take a business and grow it. There are several flavours of PE, I’m sure you’ve covered PE owners in the past that come in and like to cut costs and maximise the P&L and cash flow. Others, like ourselves, prefer to grow a business and that’s where we’ve made our money and why we tend to buy assets of similar flavours.”
In many ways, it all does seem a little bit surreal, given the high publicity of the GE acquisition to be sitting here discussing yet another new chapter in the ServiceMax story just a few years on. However, as Barua explains, it was an unusual opportunity that Silver Lake was quick to spot and agile enough to take advantage of. “We shouldn’t have been able to buy it, GE should have retained it,” he comments. “They were going through their financial issues, and we picked up an asset that, as a standalone business we think, given our capabilities and the momentum the team already has, we can take to a whole different level.
“You’ve talked before about the technology and also the importance of understanding the customer as being something of a secret source here at ServiceMax. I think I also saw that, which is why I aggressively put my hand up to be part of this and to take on the role that I’m now currently in,” he adds.
"A healthy ServiceMax is good for the market in general..."
So does Barua think that the last few years with GE will have tainted the once glowing ServiceMax brand? The sheer high-profile nature of the original acquisition and the figures involved mean that selling so shortly after would indicate something of a failure in the deal, in perception terms at the very least.
“I actually think we’re way in the lead right now,” he replies when I put this to him, “I really don’t think things have gone negative in terms of going through the GE experience and in fact it made us stronger as a company. Now, as a standalone business, we’ve got the agility and the shareholder base to move quickly on behalf of our customers.”
Of course, we wouldn’t expect a newly appointed CEO of any company to say anything other than such. It is the standard, forward-looking, front foot standing statement that I would have expected from any new CEO. However, I must admit that Barua puts his message across with the type of swagger that was fairly prevalent at ServiceMax pre-GE. He’s certainly not your cookie cutter PE CEO, and I’ve come across a few in my time. There is an undercurrent of enthusiasm in his voice and mannerisms, which is both unexpected and infectious.
“Failure is not an option for this company. There’s an element of the legacy of this business and the history of this business and that’s part of the reason why I feel so great about the company, and why Silver Lake equally does,” he states.
Falling back on the legacy as our discussion rolls on, we trade some stories around the history of the business, which is one I have been close to for some time and have watched progress in its journey from the small rented office Dave Yarnold lovingly referred to as the ‘Beige Palace’ back in San Francisco right through to today.
“Dave and Scott were awesome guys,” Barua nods showing a great deal of respect for his predecessors. “The teams that they led, they made a difference to people. I just think that there is still so much more that we could do for that customer base and that’s the excitement that Silver Lake and I have now, and the strategy and the optimism around what this company can do is fascinating.”
Of course, solidifying that link to the past is Stacey Epstein, who in her role as President of newly acquired Zinc is the newest member of the ServiceMax executive board, yet as former CMO of ServiceMax has roots right back to the beginning. “I remember the first iPad app, and we were the only people that even thought about putting something on the iPad,” she recalls.
“There has been this tradition of ServiceMax leading the market. I think you look at some of our earliest peers, the likes of TOA or ClickSoftware; they were good software but were only focused in one area of field service, really hyper-focused on scheduling. ServiceMax was always innovative across the whole full-service lifecycle.
“Click was what Click was. They solved a problem, and they did it pretty well. TOA then came and did it in the cloud, but it was still kind of the same problem.Then ServiceMax came along and said, ‘let’s look at parts, let’s look at logistics, let’s look at warranties and time elements.’ We saw there was a bigger service life cycle, and that was what field service management grew into. I think now we have an opportunity with some of the really cool and exciting technologies that are coming on the scene to do what we call service execution management, which involves tools like Zinc, that deliver real-time communication.”
As the evening progressed, it dawned on me just how important the acquisition of Zinc and Epstein’s return to the fold was for ServiceMax. Yes, the technology within Zinc is fantastic, but more importantly, it is one of a handful of solutions that can fill a hole not just in the ServiceMax solution but in the industry at large as well. It is absolutely on point with the current trends towards ever increasing customer engagement and improving customer experience and in that sense, it is precisely the type of well thought out solution that traditionally ServiceMax would have developed and then championed.
It is an innovation that can lead an area of growth within the wider industry and is a hugely valuable acquisition from that point alone. However, equally, it is symbolic of something else, as it is perhaps the spark that could well reignite the fire in the bellies of the sleeping beast of marketleading innovation that made ServiceMax such an essential and dominant player in the FSM market in the first place.
Even Epstein herself is the perfect personification of the old and the new coming together in this latest iteration of ServiceMax. After the official interview period ends the three of us share some further stories across a glass or two of wine, and at this point, it becomes apparent to me just how strong a potential team Epstein and Barua could be.
There is a natural the rapport between the two and while it is little wonder that someone with such experience in our sector as Epstein should have an impressive depth of knowledge of field service operations, I must confess I was pleasantly surprised by just how genuine Barua’s passion for empowering great service actually was.
There is a good balance between the two with complimentary skill sets and approaches and I can genuinely see them forming a formidable leadership duo if things remain on the current path.
So while there is still a long way to go before I’m prepared to shout this from the rooftops - as experience tells me there may still be be some further twists and turns in this tale, I’ll say it once, just as a whisper to try it out…“I think ServiceMax are back.”
Jul 23, 2019 • Managemenet • management • return on investment • field service management • field service software • Technology Investment • Building a case for investment • HSO
In a new series based around an exclusive white paper published by Field Service News in partnership with HSO we look at three core arguments service directors can make to the board to secure investment in implementing or upgrading their field...
In a new series based around an exclusive white paper published by Field Service News in partnership with HSO we look at three core arguments service directors can make to the board to secure investment in implementing or upgrading their field service management systems. In the first part of this series we look at how you can build a case based around return on investment...
Jun 28, 2019 • Features • Cognito iQ • Data Analytics • Future of FIeld Service • Konica MInolta • David Bochenski • Dave Webb • Ged Cranny
It is often said that data will be the true currency of future businesses across all sectors, but have we already reached a point where the seamless flow of data within an organisation is now essential for effective service delivery?
It is often said that data will be the true currency of future businesses across all sectors, but have we already reached a point where the seamless flow of data within an organisation is now essential for effective service delivery?
Want to know more? There is a video with Konica Minolta's Head of Direct Service, Ged Cranny outlining how they have revolutionised their business through data analytics available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers on the link below...
sponsored by:
Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content...
In modern field service, it is impossible to ignore the power of data and its potential to drive businesses forward.
One company that has been able to harness that power effectively to push their own service delivery levels to new levels of efficiency, has been print and copy giant Konica Minolta and in a forthcoming exclusive Field Service News webcast we were joined by Ged Cranny, Head of Direct Service for Konica Minolta as well as Dave Bochenski and David Webb of Cognito iQ - the organisation providing Konica Minolta with the tools that have allowed them to fully embrace data-driven service.
Cranny often speaks about the importance of transparency that adopting such a data-centric approach has yielded and how such visibility has empowered important conversations around their service delivery in multiple layers across the organisation - and it is the seamless flow of data across an organisation that is crucial to being able to reach such levels of transparency across the various business units within an organisation.
So is this smooth movement of data across different divisions within an organisation the fundamental building block of modern service excellence?
Have we now reached a point where it is imperative for field service businesses to break down the data silos that often exist within their systems in order to remain competitive?
“I think transparency of data is important in the service world because service can often be viewed by the rest of the business as something of a dark art,” explains Cranny.
"Transparency of data is important in the service world because service can often be viewed by the rest of the business as something of a dark art.."
This is indeed true for a vast majority of organisations. Whilst for those of us engaged within the sector, we can absolutely see the key strategic importance of having an effective and efficient field service operation, which increasingly can become a significant contributor to overall revenues, the fact remains that within many organisations field service is all too often still viewed merely as a necessary evil and something that is a huge red line on the P&L sheets.
However, by being able to clearly outline the various complexities and benefits of a field service operation, supported by robust, accurate data that can be viewed in real-time, it is far easier to make the case as to why field service should be a key area of strategic focus within any customer-centric organisation.
“One of the most important things for me when we got the data from Cognito iQ during the trial phase, was that we were able to show it to our Financial Director and Managing Director and straight away they were able to see the value of that data across the business. Essentially it took away the ‘dark art’ element of what we do,” Cranny continues.
However, it is not just at the exec level that such visibility into the data can have an impact. Right across an organisation, there are wins to be had from being able to share data-led insights with various different stakeholders.
“We’ve actually opened up the data to anybody who wants to look into the top level figures within the business. For example, our CX manager can see the information relevant to customer satisfaction levels. In fact, anybody can see how we are performing on any given day, in terms of how well we are meeting our SLAs. That openness has led to much more informed questions to us in the service department, which in turn raises the level of both our service engineers and our service managers,” Cranny explains.
“It is absolutely key that service organisations are able to harness field service teams as a whole and that they really encourage collaboration around the data,” concurs Webb.
“I think that is the nature of the world that we are operating in now. It is no longer the preserve of the management teams to manage the customer experience, to manage the performance of the business and to worry about all the dimensions of success for an organisation - it is now down to all contributors.”
"Openness and transparency are key, but also the way in which you engage teams in the discussion around that performance is critical..."
Field Service engineers are the people that interact the most closely with the customers and the old adage of the customer advisor is absolutely true today. Therefore being able to share with the engineers the impact that their contribution is having on the overall performance of the operation, to ensure that you have that openness of communication is hugely important.”
“What I’ve seen Ged and his team at Konica Minolta do so effectively is to make that performance discussion about the process in the operation. It is far less about people and far more about their contribution to the process and identifying those aspects of a process that are failing or that could be improved.”
“So openness and transparency are key, but also the way in which you engage teams in the discussion around that performance is critical.”
“If you use good data badly, then you’ll only get to use it once, if you use it well then the reality is it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, you get to see a continuous performance improvement mindset emerging within your teams - which makes a huge difference to the overall business.”
This of course also frees up management teams who can then offer a huge amount of value in other areas of the business as well such as new business development, key account management and other more strategic aspects of the role.
Essentially by freeing these key personnel up from the day to day service delivery, they are able to focus purely on management by exception around the operation and then really focus on where the next business development role is coming from and how they can contribute - essentially making the service operation come alive for their business development colleagues when they are dealing with prospects and customers.
Of course, this is the optimal end goal. However, it is not necessarily a simple path for an organisation to follow. It is clear that the relationship between Konica Minolta and Cognito IQ is one which is well grounded in a level of trust and openness and there is a clear willingness from both sides to work in tandem to help Konica Minolta unlock the insights held within their data.
But how much weight falls on the shoulders of a solution provider to be able to guide their clients on that path, and how much responsibility does the field service organisation have for plotting their own path themselves?
“I think the answer ultimately here is that it really depends on the dynamics within the relationship in any given scenario and either can have contributions on that level,” comments Bochenski when the topic comes up.
"If you can harness the data then the rewards are absolutely there..."
”It is certainly true that data is the new arms race within business and being able to marshal and gain insights into that data is really what can drive benefits and opportunities for you to beat your competition. If you can harness the data then the rewards are absolutely there,” he adds.
“That then comes into the two sides. You can have some insights yourself, but it also helps to have someone from the outside also looking at things that perhaps you might not have seen within your own data - sometimes companies can become a bit tunnel visioned about their data without that external viewpoint.”
“I see the role of service providers being to help with platforms to bring that data into a place where meaningful insight can be drawn from it - to establish one place where companies can access all of their data through APIs etc.”
“Then, when we have that the flow of data from different parts of the business available, a solution provider can not only help you access it, but also glean additional insights that you might not have necessarily got yourself.”
“Another benefit is that the data is also available to other parts of the business and often I find that when you have established this kind of structure within your data, you have emergent things happen that you may not have initially anticipated.”
“Essentially, if you have two different people looking at the same piece of data, very often you can find something that neither of them would have seen were they only looking at the data on their own.”
This is a hugely salient point as often companies are able to unearth unexpected value within their data - sometimes that can help them improve their own processes, but equally it can be insight that is intrinsically valuable for their clients as well - leading to ways to further increase an organisations stickiness with their customers, or even opening up completely new revenue streams entirely.
Indeed, the benefit of breaking down information silos within a business does appear to be perhaps one of the most crucial tasks field service organisations must undertake in today’s world of data-led field service.
By working alongside CognitoiQ Konica Minolta certainly seem to be an excellent example of a company that has achieved that and they are now positioned to reap the rewards of that forward.
Want to know more? There is a video with Konica Minolta's Head of Direct Service, Ged Cranny outlining how they have revolutionised their business through data analytics available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers on the link below...
sponsored by:
Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content...
Jun 17, 2019 • Features • Management • future of field service • IoT
Whilst the Internet of Things is undoubtedly set to become a hugely prominent part of field service delivery in the coming years, it shouldn’t be viewed as a technology in isolation writes Kris Oldland...
Whilst the Internet of Things is undoubtedly set to become a hugely prominent part of field service delivery in the coming years, it shouldn’t be viewed as a technology in isolation writes Kris Oldland...
I’ve written and spoken about the importance of IoT in field service for many years now. In the past I’ve often compared it to the
mobile revolution, outlining my case for why I think IoT will ultimately have a far bigger impact in our sector than mobile. Now this is not to underplay the importance of mobile in field service.
Mobile was undoubtedly a huge leap forwards in terms of how field service companies were able to deliver efficient field service maintenance. The streamlining of workflows that mobile allowed has seen field service companies be able to do more with the same or even less field service technicians than they could have even imagined possible in the days of triplicate paper documentation and the mighty pen.
Equally, the introduction of increasingly intelligent mobile applications has given field service engineers greater insight into each job they undertake, better support options for when they face an unusual fix and the easy processing of job completion and on site customer feedback.
All of which have seen field service companies become able to truly leverage the often untapped potential of the field service technician as a genuine, trusted, brand ambassador. In many respects the introduction of mobile was a true revolution. That is until we compare it to the potential of IoT.
In this context, actually what mobile brought to the table was the ability to do the things that we always knew were important in terms of service efficiency and customer satisfaction, better. We didn’t revolutionise our fundamental approach to field service when we introduced mobile into the mix.
We just did things exponentially more efficiently. However, whilst the advent of IoT will bring even more efficiency gains, as our engineers become forearmed with the knowledge of exactly which parameters of the asset they are about to work upon are falling outside of acceptable norms, there is the opportunity for a much more radical shift in thinking that IoT presents in addition to this. This is of course, the shift away from traditional break-fix, service level agreement-based service contracts and into the brave new world of guarantees of uptime, truly predictive maintenance and advanced services. This is the true revolution.
However, IoT alone is not enough for us to harness the disruptive force of such a revolution. Much like Cloud before it, it is perhaps the foundational technology upon which we can build even greater innovations.
Machine Learning Is Crucial For Iot Success
One of the throw away phrases that you will invariably hear at conferences, read in articles and discuss in board rooms in pretty much any industry vertical right now ,is that ‘data is the new oil or gold’. I politely disagree with that assertion. Data, as an entity in it’s own right, is quite frankly almost worthless. It has no use-value.
It is without agency and it is without utility. Insight that can be found from mining such data however, is something of truly massive value. When people comment that data is the new currency, they are generally referring to insight. This is why the data scientist was widely posited to become the ‘rock star’ of the twentieth first century not too long ago.
The ability to not only know how to surface insight from data, but more importantly understand exactly which direction your interrogation of that data should go to discover insights that yields true competitive advantage , is a fairly uncommon skill set that blends the analytical and the creative thought processes into one holistic discipline. Yet, as machine learning matures, I see a world where the role of the data scientist will be much more of an initial consultant, someone to make sure a business understands the methodology of data science.
Someone who outlines to them, the whys and the hows, basically lining up the ducks into a row, before setting the AI to do it’s thing. The technology is improving so rapidly now that the actual implementation of such data interrogation programs is likely to sit with senior business execs, rather than senior IT execs driving it.
The value of the human input will not be within the data analysis itself, but in guiding what areas of the business performance should be being measured. The reality is that the sheer volume of data and the speed at which it is generated means that truly utilising and embracing IoT means simultaneously adopting a machine learning strategy at the same time.
Augmenting Augmented Reality
Another technology I have championed for some time now is Augmented Reality (AR) which offers up in the short term at least, a very realistic solution to both the ageing workforce crisis and also the need for field service organisations to reduce the time and costs of training new field service engineers and get them being productive parts of the field workforce as swiftly as possible.
For a long time I have posited the benefits of being able to hold onto the tribal knowledge of an older engineer by allowing them a more convenient support role where their experience can be ‘dialled into’ by the less experienced, newly qualified engineers. This ability to provide ‘see-what-I-see’ over the shoulder remote support is an obvious solution to the two issues I mention above, and I am somewhat surprised that as yet we haven’t seen as large a take up as I would have anticipated - although I do feel we are pushing at an open door in this regard and such developments will inevitably become common place eventually.
However, this I feel is just the very tip of the iceberg in terms of AR in field service and it is when we add into the system a feed of real-time data from an asset, that we will see AR truly flourish. Imagine a field service technician being able to simply look at a device and to get a visual overlay of how that device is performing in real time. The engineer would be able to identify fault, pull up asset history, and access a knowledge bank of the most suitable action for maintenance within just a few moments.
Comparative Analysis Across The Fleet
Perhaps one of the most exciting potential applications of IoT with respect to maintenance and service, is the ability to offer additional layers of advanced services, which could yield newly created revenue streams. One such example could be the application of asset data analysis across a fleet of assets to allow your organisation to provide corrective changes to settings either at the individual asset level, the individual component level or even at the macro level across the whole fleet.
Take this a step further and through the anonymisation of key data sets across an entire install base of your assets, and then the analysis of the operational performance of the install base as a whole - you could be in a position to offer your customers a solution update that could improve productivity by X%. Whilst, admittedly we are still getting our heads around the practical regulatory challenges and big questions around who owns what data, with the waters becoming infinitely more muddied by ill thought out and poorly defined legislation such as GDPR or the Californian Consumer Privacy Act, there are already examples of companies leveraging data from across their whole install base to be able to provide just such intelligence to their customers for an additional cost.
Such solutions are dependent on high level operational performance analytics, which have evolved from the world of Big Data. Don’t Forget To Make It Safe Of course, it is always more preferable to talk about opportunity, but it must be remembered that with whilst in every great challenge we can find opportunity, so to does every new opportunity present a new threat - and the biggest threat of all in a world of data-breaches and connected assets is cyber-security.
The shift to the Cloud reinvigorated the discussion of cyber-security hugely. Many were initially reluctant to make such a move despite all the various benefits of doing so, because the Cloud felt just so much more penetrable and vulnerable than an On Premise solution that had the advantage of being visible, tactile and ‘real’.
The truth is the amount of resources cloud providers like AWS, IBM and Microsoft spend on protecting their cloud offerings are so mind blowing that no on premise solution could be as risk free. Microsoft for example spend over a $1Billion dollars a year and operate 3,500 professional security engineers plus a highly sophisticated AI to thwart the incredible 1.5Million attacks they get every day.
For this reason, I’ve always felt comfortable with the Cloud as being as close as we can get to secure - whilst nothing is ever 100% safe, choosing any of the big three Cloud providers gives you as good protection as your likely to get. However, with IoT at the moment I would hesitate to be just so confident in my prediction. A large part of this is down to the technology still being in something of a ‘wild-west-phase’ with protocols still being ironed out and at the same time a huge surge in consumer appetite for IoT products has driven costs of components down, with many coming out of China which adds an additional question around security against the global geopolitical landscape we find ourselves in.
Not only can IoT components be a weak point of entry to gain access to a wider network, but should the unthinkable happen, they also pose a huge risk in terms of cyber terrorism. If a device can be hacked and it plays a role in wider ecosystem of a factory - could it be conceivable that a cyber criminal could hold a business to ransom shutting them down until they pay up? As with anything the pros and cons of a new solution need to be weighed up, and for me the benefits of IoT in field service do still outweigh the cons, but it is certainly worth putting security at the top of a list of priorities when scoping out the potential of any IoT strategy.
Rubbish In, Rubbish Out.
Finally, just a quick point on building such a strategy. As mentioned earlier, it is important to think of IoT not as an IT project and it is too engrained within business to be viewed in such a way. However, it should equally not be seen as solely as a business solution either. Digital transformation is a significant focus for many companies right now, and if done correctly this should be a platform for embracing IoT - so it is important that your IT leaders within the business also play a major part in such endeavours. But the one thought I would put at the top of any strategy planning meeting would be to ask - what is it we are trying to achieve? I would then go one level deeper and ask ‘What is it that our customers are trying to achieve?’ Then ask the most crucial question that any business has in its arsenal - why?
That should give you the right path to tread down and from there the various different layers of technology that are suitable for the goal you are trying to reach will become apparent and you can plan accordingly. Skip this process though and you may as well go right back to the old adage of the computer - put rubbish in, get rubbish out.
The IoT does offer true revolution within field service, but every revolution requires planning.
I’ve written and spoken about the importance of IoT in field service for many years now. In the past I’ve often compared it to the
mobile revolution, outlining my case for why I think IoT will ultimately have a far bigger impact in our sector than mobile. Now this is not to underplay the importance of mobile in field service.
Mobile was undoubtedly a huge leap forwards in terms of how field service companies were able to deliver efficient field service maintenance. The streamlining of workflows that mobile allowed has seen field service companies be able to do more with the same or even less field service technicians than they could have even imagined possible in the days of triplicate paper documentation and the mighty pen.
Equally, the introduction of increasingly intelligent mobile applications has given field service engineers greater insight into each job they undertake, better support options for when they face an unusual fix and the easy processing of job completion and on site customer feedback.
All of which have seen field service companies become able to truly leverage the often untapped potential of the field service technician as a genuine, trusted, brand ambassador. In many respects the introduction of mobile was a true revolution. That is until we compare it to the potential of IoT.
In this context, actually what mobile brought to the table was the ability to do the things that we always knew were important in terms of service efficiency and customer satisfaction, better. We didn’t revolutionise our fundamental approach to field service when we introduced mobile into the mix.
We just did things exponentially more efficiently. However, whilst the advent of IoT will bring even more efficiency gains, as our engineers become forearmed with the knowledge of exactly which parameters of the asset they are about to work upon are falling outside of acceptable norms, there is the opportunity for a much more radical shift in thinking that IoT presents in addition to this. This is of course, the shift away from traditional break-fix, service level agreement-based service contracts and into the brave new world of guarantees of uptime, truly predictive maintenance and advanced services. This is the true revolution.
However, IoT alone is not enough for us to harness the disruptive force of such a revolution. Much like Cloud before it, it is perhaps the foundational technology upon which we can build even greater innovations.
Machine Learning Is Crucial For Iot Success
One of the throw away phrases that you will invariably hear at conferences, read in articles and discuss in board rooms in pretty much any industry vertical right now ,is that ‘data is the new oil or gold’. I politely disagree with that assertion. Data, as an entity in it’s own right, is quite frankly almost worthless. It has no use-value.
It is without agency and it is without utility. Insight that can be found from mining such data however, is something of truly massive value. When people comment that data is the new currency, they are generally referring to insight. This is why the data scientist was widely posited to become the ‘rock star’ of the twentieth first century not too long ago.
The ability to not only know how to surface insight from data, but more importantly understand exactly which direction your interrogation of that data should go to discover insights that yields true competitive advantage , is a fairly uncommon skill set that blends the analytical and the creative thought processes into one holistic discipline. Yet, as machine learning matures, I see a world where the role of the data scientist will be much more of an initial consultant, someone to make sure a business understands the methodology of data science.
Someone who outlines to them, the whys and the hows, basically lining up the ducks into a row, before setting the AI to do it’s thing. The technology is improving so rapidly now that the actual implementation of such data interrogation programs is likely to sit with senior business execs, rather than senior IT execs driving it.
The value of the human input will not be within the data analysis itself, but in guiding what areas of the business performance should be being measured. The reality is that the sheer volume of data and the speed at which it is generated means that truly utilising and embracing IoT means simultaneously adopting a machine learning strategy at the same time.
Augmenting Augmented Reality
Another technology I have championed for some time now is Augmented Reality (AR) which offers up in the short term at least, a very realistic solution to both the ageing workforce crisis and also the need for field service organisations to reduce the time and costs of training new field service engineers and get them being productive parts of the field workforce as swiftly as possible.
For a long time I have posited the benefits of being able to hold onto the tribal knowledge of an older engineer by allowing them a more convenient support role where their experience can be ‘dialled into’ by the less experienced, newly qualified engineers. This ability to provide ‘see-what-I-see’ over the shoulder remote support is an obvious solution to the two issues I mention above, and I am somewhat surprised that as yet we haven’t seen as large a take up as I would have anticipated - although I do feel we are pushing at an open door in this regard and such developments will inevitably become common place eventually.
"When people comment that data is the new currency, they are generally referring to insight..."
However, this I feel is just the very tip of the iceberg in terms of AR in field service and it is when we add into the system a feed of real-time data from an asset, that we will see AR truly flourish. Imagine a field service technician being able to simply look at a device and to get a visual overlay of how that device is performing in real time. The engineer would be able to identify fault, pull up asset history, and access a knowledge bank of the most suitable action for maintenance within just a few moments.
Comparative Analysis Across The Fleet
Perhaps one of the most exciting potential applications of IoT with respect to maintenance and service, is the ability to offer additional layers of advanced services, which could yield newly created revenue streams. One such example could be the application of asset data analysis across a fleet of assets to allow your organisation to provide corrective changes to settings either at the individual asset level, the individual component level or even at the macro level across the whole fleet.
Take this a step further and through the anonymisation of key data sets across an entire install base of your assets, and then the analysis of the operational performance of the install base as a whole - you could be in a position to offer your customers a solution update that could improve productivity by X%. Whilst, admittedly we are still getting our heads around the practical regulatory challenges and big questions around who owns what data, with the waters becoming infinitely more muddied by ill thought out and poorly defined legislation such as GDPR or the Californian Consumer Privacy Act, there are already examples of companies leveraging data from across their whole install base to be able to provide just such intelligence to their customers for an additional cost.
Such solutions are dependent on high level operational performance analytics, which have evolved from the world of Big Data. Don’t Forget To Make It Safe Of course, it is always more preferable to talk about opportunity, but it must be remembered that with whilst in every great challenge we can find opportunity, so to does every new opportunity present a new threat - and the biggest threat of all in a world of data-breaches and connected assets is cyber-security.
The shift to the Cloud reinvigorated the discussion of cyber-security hugely. Many were initially reluctant to make such a move despite all the various benefits of doing so, because the Cloud felt just so much more penetrable and vulnerable than an On Premise solution that had the advantage of being visible, tactile and ‘real’.
The truth is the amount of resources cloud providers like AWS, IBM and Microsoft spend on protecting their cloud offerings are so mind blowing that no on premise solution could be as risk free. Microsoft for example spend over a $1Billion dollars a year and operate 3,500 professional security engineers plus a highly sophisticated AI to thwart the incredible 1.5Million attacks they get every day.
For this reason, I’ve always felt comfortable with the Cloud as being as close as we can get to secure - whilst nothing is ever 100% safe, choosing any of the big three Cloud providers gives you as good protection as your likely to get. However, with IoT at the moment I would hesitate to be just so confident in my prediction. A large part of this is down to the technology still being in something of a ‘wild-west-phase’ with protocols still being ironed out and at the same time a huge surge in consumer appetite for IoT products has driven costs of components down, with many coming out of China which adds an additional question around security against the global geopolitical landscape we find ourselves in.
Not only can IoT components be a weak point of entry to gain access to a wider network, but should the unthinkable happen, they also pose a huge risk in terms of cyber terrorism. If a device can be hacked and it plays a role in wider ecosystem of a factory - could it be conceivable that a cyber criminal could hold a business to ransom shutting them down until they pay up? As with anything the pros and cons of a new solution need to be weighed up, and for me the benefits of IoT in field service do still outweigh the cons, but it is certainly worth putting security at the top of a list of priorities when scoping out the potential of any IoT strategy.
Rubbish In, Rubbish Out.
Finally, just a quick point on building such a strategy. As mentioned earlier, it is important to think of IoT not as an IT project and it is too engrained within business to be viewed in such a way. However, it should equally not be seen as solely as a business solution either. Digital transformation is a significant focus for many companies right now, and if done correctly this should be a platform for embracing IoT - so it is important that your IT leaders within the business also play a major part in such endeavours. But the one thought I would put at the top of any strategy planning meeting would be to ask - what is it we are trying to achieve? I would then go one level deeper and ask ‘What is it that our customers are trying to achieve?’ Then ask the most crucial question that any business has in its arsenal - why?
That should give you the right path to tread down and from there the various different layers of technology that are suitable for the goal you are trying to reach will become apparent and you can plan accordingly. Skip this process though and you may as well go right back to the old adage of the computer - put rubbish in, get rubbish out.
The IoT does offer true revolution within field service, but every revolution requires planning.
Jun 13, 2019 • Features • future of field service • IoT • Servitization
The prevalence of IoT within field service, has put servitization within the reach of smaller companies and those that embracing it are capable of disrupting their sectors writes Kris Oldland...
The prevalence of IoT within field service, has put servitization within the reach of smaller companies and those that embracing it are capable of disrupting their sectors writes Kris Oldland...
“The world once seemed simple; manufacturers made things and services companies did things for us. Today, increasing numbers of manufacturers compete through a portfolio of integrated products and services.”
This is how Professor Tim Baines, someone I consider to be something of a mentor to me as well as a friend, and who also happens to be one of the worlds leading academics within the field of servitization once described servitization to me, having been asked to do so in basic terms that I as a lay person could comprehend.
Of course servitization is much more than simply adding services to existing products within a few large multi-national companies as Professor Baines went on to explain. “It’s about viewing the manufacturer as a service provider that sets out to improve the processes of its customers through a business model, rather than product-based, innovation. The manufacturer exploits its design and production competencies to deliver improvements in efficiency and effectiveness to the customer.”
In context of the traditional product-centric viewpoint of manufacturers, this is of course a radical and seismic shift. A fact that Baines himself can never be accused of underplaying, often referring to us as living through the fourth industrial paradigm - the previous three coming via mechanisation and steam power, followed by the mass production line, and then computing and automation.
The fourth paradigm that we are currently adapting to is a world of cyber-physical products. Or to put it in more familiar terms perhaps, a world of IoT and connected assets. If you have spent anything more than 5 minutes talking about servitization, then you will most likely already know that as the inventors of ‘powerby-the-hour’ some 57 years ago, Rolls Royce are something of a Poster Boy for the movement.
But wait! I here you cry. If Rolls Royce managed to pioneer their own brand of servitization so long ago, when we hadn’t even established an internet, let alone one built literally just for ‘things’, then how can you say IoT is fundamental to servitization? It is of course a hugely valid point.
Servitization has been demonstrably proven to be possible prior to the age of IoT. However, there are a few core factors shared amongst Rolls Royce and the other early pioneers of servitization such as Caterpillar, Alstom, and MAN UK. Firstly, there is a layer of innovation within their leadership and organisational DNA. This is true of all pioneers, some companies are prepared to take the greater risks and push boundaries past what is the current normal. However, in many cases, those servitization pioneers also had strong other revenue streams that gave them the opportunity to fail if needs be without sinking the whole business.
It is certainly a luxury that not all companies have but cross sector organisations such as Swiss heavy manufacturing giant ABB, have proven to be an excellent example of how to leverage reputation, cross industry learnings but also how having the additional breathing space of being a multi-vertical, mutli national organisation allowed them to drive their own servitization strategies.
But the one thing that almost all of these companies in the early vanguard of servitization also shared, was that they were relatively advanced in telematics and that they could see not only the potential value of the data they were able to take from their assets but also, more importantly how they could take that data and build it into meaningful insights for their customers.
Crucially, they understood they could utilise the information on how their assets were performing to help guide their customers to a far more effective understanding of their challenges, and then step in to offer further, more complex solutions that were specifically in line with their customers’ desired outcomes. They were able to take the data and become integral partners within their customers’ business ecosystems rather than just one of many transactional relationships - and whilst I am by no means an expert on the topic myself, I’ve spent enough time with Professor Baines and many of his academic peers over the last few years to understand that this is at the core of why servitization is such an attractive proposition for supplier and customer alike.
Deeper relationships provide greater output, stability and effectiveness for the customer and deeper customer loyalty, greater profits and longer term contracts for the supplier. And now as the IoT, and even more importantly it’s enterprise equivalent the Industrial Internet, begin to mature into something more meaningful than connected toasters, and as we begin to see companies start to at least acknowledge, if not yet truly harness the potential of IoT, what we are seeing is the democratization of servitization.
It is no longer just those companies who can afford to be innovative, that can now embrace servitization. It is not just those companies who already have access to, or deep enough pockets to be able to invest in connected assets that can explore the numerous advantages of adopting an advanced services strategy. It is also not just manufacturers either. In fact, the rapid rise of IoT has enabled many smaller, third party service providers to capitalise on gaps within original equipment manufacturers, or in some cases even utility providers, service offerings.
This has allowed them to carve out service-centric businesses that were frankly, missed opportunites for the slow to react enterprise organisations whose sector they disrupted. For example, there is the French start-up who were able to make significant inroads into the Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) hospitality sector by offering to fit their clients gas tanks with cheap but effective sensors so they could offer guarantees of uptime instead of the old model of a restaurant always buying surplus to avoid running out of gas mid shift. Or the company that provided sensors for heavy industrial bins, which allowed them to disrupt the refuse collection in their local market by offering a collection service based on need rather than schedule - again a start up that utilised outsourcing, innovation and IoT to disrupt an established market. Or the third party service provider that specialises in coffee vending machines that was able to create an additional revenue stream for their organisation by identifying buying trends within specific store locations and translating that data into insights for their customers who could in turn leverage local population preferences with focused promotional campaigns.
Each of these examples, were driven by use of and an understanding of how IoT can offer additional value to the end customer. Each of the above examples is also a demonstration of a company identifying the additional revenue for advanced services beyond the traditional scope of the service provider.
The essence here is that they are all based on an understanding of the desired outcomes of their customers. So whilst field service companies should absolutely be looking to explore how best they can improve the efficiency of their service delivery through IoT, the real gold is in understanding how you can improve your effectiveness in helping you customers achieve their goals.
That is in a nutshell is servitization and that is exactly where the greatest value of the IoT will surely exist.
“The world once seemed simple; manufacturers made things and services companies did things for us. Today, increasing numbers of manufacturers compete through a portfolio of integrated products and services.”
This is how Professor Tim Baines, someone I consider to be something of a mentor to me as well as a friend, and who also happens to be one of the worlds leading academics within the field of servitization once described servitization to me, having been asked to do so in basic terms that I as a lay person could comprehend.
Of course servitization is much more than simply adding services to existing products within a few large multi-national companies as Professor Baines went on to explain. “It’s about viewing the manufacturer as a service provider that sets out to improve the processes of its customers through a business model, rather than product-based, innovation. The manufacturer exploits its design and production competencies to deliver improvements in efficiency and effectiveness to the customer.”
In context of the traditional product-centric viewpoint of manufacturers, this is of course a radical and seismic shift. A fact that Baines himself can never be accused of underplaying, often referring to us as living through the fourth industrial paradigm - the previous three coming via mechanisation and steam power, followed by the mass production line, and then computing and automation.
The fourth paradigm that we are currently adapting to is a world of cyber-physical products. Or to put it in more familiar terms perhaps, a world of IoT and connected assets. If you have spent anything more than 5 minutes talking about servitization, then you will most likely already know that as the inventors of ‘powerby-the-hour’ some 57 years ago, Rolls Royce are something of a Poster Boy for the movement.
But wait! I here you cry. If Rolls Royce managed to pioneer their own brand of servitization so long ago, when we hadn’t even established an internet, let alone one built literally just for ‘things’, then how can you say IoT is fundamental to servitization? It is of course a hugely valid point.
Servitization has been demonstrably proven to be possible prior to the age of IoT. However, there are a few core factors shared amongst Rolls Royce and the other early pioneers of servitization such as Caterpillar, Alstom, and MAN UK. Firstly, there is a layer of innovation within their leadership and organisational DNA. This is true of all pioneers, some companies are prepared to take the greater risks and push boundaries past what is the current normal. However, in many cases, those servitization pioneers also had strong other revenue streams that gave them the opportunity to fail if needs be without sinking the whole business.
It is certainly a luxury that not all companies have but cross sector organisations such as Swiss heavy manufacturing giant ABB, have proven to be an excellent example of how to leverage reputation, cross industry learnings but also how having the additional breathing space of being a multi-vertical, mutli national organisation allowed them to drive their own servitization strategies.
But the one thing that almost all of these companies in the early vanguard of servitization also shared, was that they were relatively advanced in telematics and that they could see not only the potential value of the data they were able to take from their assets but also, more importantly how they could take that data and build it into meaningful insights for their customers.
Crucially, they understood they could utilise the information on how their assets were performing to help guide their customers to a far more effective understanding of their challenges, and then step in to offer further, more complex solutions that were specifically in line with their customers’ desired outcomes. They were able to take the data and become integral partners within their customers’ business ecosystems rather than just one of many transactional relationships - and whilst I am by no means an expert on the topic myself, I’ve spent enough time with Professor Baines and many of his academic peers over the last few years to understand that this is at the core of why servitization is such an attractive proposition for supplier and customer alike.
Deeper relationships provide greater output, stability and effectiveness for the customer and deeper customer loyalty, greater profits and longer term contracts for the supplier. And now as the IoT, and even more importantly it’s enterprise equivalent the Industrial Internet, begin to mature into something more meaningful than connected toasters, and as we begin to see companies start to at least acknowledge, if not yet truly harness the potential of IoT, what we are seeing is the democratization of servitization.
"Servitization has been demonstrably proven to be possible prior to the age of IoT..."
It is no longer just those companies who can afford to be innovative, that can now embrace servitization. It is not just those companies who already have access to, or deep enough pockets to be able to invest in connected assets that can explore the numerous advantages of adopting an advanced services strategy. It is also not just manufacturers either. In fact, the rapid rise of IoT has enabled many smaller, third party service providers to capitalise on gaps within original equipment manufacturers, or in some cases even utility providers, service offerings.
This has allowed them to carve out service-centric businesses that were frankly, missed opportunites for the slow to react enterprise organisations whose sector they disrupted. For example, there is the French start-up who were able to make significant inroads into the Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) hospitality sector by offering to fit their clients gas tanks with cheap but effective sensors so they could offer guarantees of uptime instead of the old model of a restaurant always buying surplus to avoid running out of gas mid shift. Or the company that provided sensors for heavy industrial bins, which allowed them to disrupt the refuse collection in their local market by offering a collection service based on need rather than schedule - again a start up that utilised outsourcing, innovation and IoT to disrupt an established market. Or the third party service provider that specialises in coffee vending machines that was able to create an additional revenue stream for their organisation by identifying buying trends within specific store locations and translating that data into insights for their customers who could in turn leverage local population preferences with focused promotional campaigns.
Each of these examples, were driven by use of and an understanding of how IoT can offer additional value to the end customer. Each of the above examples is also a demonstration of a company identifying the additional revenue for advanced services beyond the traditional scope of the service provider.
The essence here is that they are all based on an understanding of the desired outcomes of their customers. So whilst field service companies should absolutely be looking to explore how best they can improve the efficiency of their service delivery through IoT, the real gold is in understanding how you can improve your effectiveness in helping you customers achieve their goals.
That is in a nutshell is servitization and that is exactly where the greatest value of the IoT will surely exist.
Field Service News is published by 1927 Media Ltd, an independent publisher whose sole focus is on the field service sector. As such our entire resources are focused on helping drive the field service sector forwards and aiming to best serve our industry through honest, incisive and innovative media coverage of the global field service sector.
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