Resource Type: White Paper Published by: IFS Title: The IFS Digital Change Survey
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.
Nov 22, 2017 • Features • Future of FIeld Service • White Paper • White Papers & eBooks • Digital Transformation • IFS • Internet of Things • IoT
Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: IFS
Title: The IFS Digital Change Survey
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly.
(Please note that by applying for your subscription via this link you accept the terms and conditions here and a plain english version is available from our main subscriptions page here)
Synopsis:
When a car leaves a factory, this no longer signifies the end of the relationship between manufacturer and vehicle. The car goes into the next stage of its lifecycle, where it must be maintained and serviced. Businesses are realising that this servicing offers a significant revenue stream. For example, automotive manufacturer margins on new vehicle sales range from eight to 14 per cent, whereas servicing a brake disc carries around a 65 per cent margin.
As businesses become service-oriented, digital transformation gives them the tools to change.
By enabling visibility of an asset using the Internet of Things (IoT), the provider can better understand its use in the real world and feed that back into its research and development (R&D) process. Any issues from the manufacturing process that affect usage and failure rates of equipment can be managed via the IoT feedback loop. Data analysis using business intelligence or big data and analytical tools can derive value from that data.
Historically, companies have seen service as a cost centre and a necessary evil. Now, Digital Transformation is enabling more organisations to realise the potential that service has as a profit centre. Yet there is considerable variation in maturity across the sector globally. This exclusive white paper by IFS offers key insights into their research of Digital Transformation and how it is being implemented.
Overview:
Service: Leading the Way
Across many industries, manufacturing and products have become commoditised; service is now the differentiator. The winners in the service sector are those able to stand apart through their ability to support a product across its lifecycle, or support a client whose services they manage.
When set against other sectors, service organisations are leading the field in innovation and transformation
The top five factors behind digital transformation reflect this potential, with four of the five being sales, innovation and customer relationship-driven. Chief among these is ‘growth opportunities in new markets’. In reality, these growth opportunities are not new but have been expanding for some 20+ years. What is changing is recognition of these opportunities. Many organisations have been slow to recognise service as being a key driver to their overall business success.
A New Hope:
The service industry is reaching a critical point with its ageing workforce. An enormous level of knowledge, possessed by the veterans and gurus of the industry, is walking out of the door as these workers reach retirement, or are no longer effectively supported by the business. This can have more of an impact in service than anywhere else, as the level and quality of service on offer can be directly impacted by the individual that performs the service.
In developing and recruiting talent, DT has a significant role to play. Intelligent knowledge management systems can enable a six-month recruit to perform those maintenance or repair services that would have previously been the [quote float="right"]Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer
domain of a 10+ year veteran. Technologies such as augmented reality (in the form of Google Glass or Microsoft HoloLens), can be usedto virtually project onto the physical equipment an animated disassembly procedure for swapping out a part onto the physical equipment.
The greatest talent gaps reported by service providers are in the areas of business intelligence (BI) and cybersecurity, with the former particularly keenly felt in North America.
Big data/analytics and BI are crucial in supporting a quantifiable business, and unlike many other industries, service is very easy to measure. Metrics such as first-time fix rate, mean time to repair, mean time between services, and service level agreements are commonplace. It is crucial when marketing a service that the provider is able to cite a percentage level of service and agree that level with customers in their SLA.
Joining Forces:
The need for collaboration is higher in the services sector than in any other, based on the IFS cross-industry research. At a sector-wide level, the delta between desired levels of collaboration and actual levels of collaboration is 2.7 points on a ten-point scale, meaning there is a desire to increase levels of collaboration by 49 per cent.
Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer
The demand for close collaboration is not surprising – firms such as Dell have a fully outsourced service provision for their field technicians, which means a considerable source of potential revenue is in the hands of trusted third parties.
Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer, who is jointly judging the product and judging the service.
Given the delta, many firms are clearly still not optimised in their digital transformation and will need to achieve a stronger bond between their partners and their internal teams to realise the full value of servitization.
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly.
(Please note that by applying for your subscription via this link you accept the terms and conditions here and a plain english version is available from our main subscriptions page here)
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Nov 21, 2017 • Features • Management • Astro • FSN ThinkTank • Keith Wilkinson • Waters Inc • ClickSoftware • Darren Thomas • Steve Smith
In September this year Field Service News and ClickSoftware teamed up to launch the FSN Think Tank Sessions. The idea was simple to bring together a selection of senior field service professionals from different industries and and different company...
In September this year Field Service News and ClickSoftware teamed up to launch the FSN Think Tank Sessions. The idea was simple to bring together a selection of senior field service professionals from different industries and and different company sizes and give them the opportunity to discuss the pain points, the challenges and their vision of the future of service and see where the similarities lay.
Across the following few months there will be a series of articles that will help share the insights discussed at this inaugural Think Tank Session beginning with this opening series in which we discuss whether the importance of the Field Service Engineer's role is growing or diminishing in importance in a world of automation and digitisation...
There is also an exclusive Briefing Report from this session entitled Disruption, Development and Diversity in Field Service which is available for Field Service News subscribers.
If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly. Click here to apply for your subscription now! (by applying for your subscription via this link you accept the terms and conditions here and a plain english version is available from our main subscriptions page here)
One of the most interesting things about the field service sector is that whilst as a discipline it sits across a huge variety of wide and highly disparate industries there remains overwhelmingly the same fundamental challenges, pain points and goals for every organisation operating a field service division.
Whether you operate in the print/copy market or heavy manufacturing, whether your engineers and technicians fix vending machines or jumbo jet engines, you will invariably find more common ground with other service leaders from different industries to your own than you will find differences.
In many ways the same is true whether you have 10 engineers in your territory or 10,000.
Yes, some of the challenges of running a larger field service operation are more complicated, as are some of the tools you may use to do so - but the fundamental elements of what is great service and its growing role within industry remains in organisations of all sizes.
Given the focus of companies across all industries on Digital Transformation has the importance of field service calls become even more important in terms of Customer Satisfaction and Customer Experience - as increasingly, the field service visit is now the sole (or at least most frequent) face-to-face interaction between an organisation and their customer base?
Has the role of the field service engineer become more important in this age of automation where digital customer interaction touch points are now heavily outweighing personal face to face human interactions?
Opening the conversation on this topic Steve Smith, CTO with Astro Communications, explained that for him and the team at Astro, the importance of great service and the field engineers role in delivering a good customer experience is something that has always just been part and parcel of the job.
“I’m not sure it’s more important, I think it is has always been important, especially if you’re in a customer service business,” he began.
“The only thing we have to compete against anybody else is our standard of customer service.”
“For us I think on that front it’s all about the diversity of people we employ which has been an important factor. We even taken people from a hospitality background and then teach them the technical side of the business, putting them through training or apprenticeship. We have also taken on ex-military people as they have the right mind-set, although again not necessarily a technical background per se, but we find that they have the personal organisational skills, the self-management skills that are important for a technician.”
It is an interesting opening point and one that is increasingly being echoed in a number of different service organisations. There are far more skills to being a good field service engineer than just the technical - and often it is easier to train the technical skills than it is to train softer skills such as communications and organisational skills.
“Ultimately, it really does stand out when you have good customer service,” Smith continues.
“For example, the MD of one of our own clients, TGI Fridays, always says that when you get great customer service, you feel it’ and that sums up our ethos as well. I think that for us, that approach has always been important, but perhaps with increasing competition more of a spotlight is being placed on service as a differentiator today.”
For Darren Thomas, Head of Service in Northern Europe for Waters Corporation, the growing levels of automation and remote maintenance driven by the fundamental economics of field service means that the importance of the field service engineer has indeed increased dramatically.
“It’s costs a lot to send an engineer to repair a broken system so we are investing a lot in what we are calling an ‘Expert Centre,” he explains.
The idea is one that many organisations have also adopted, a central destination where customers can discuss the issue at hand and go through some diagnostic tests with an expert which in an ideal world could help the customer get back up and running faster, whilst avoiding the need for an expensive truck roll for Waters. One nice element of the Waters’ approach is that many of their experts split their time between the expert centre and out in the field - so the field and repair skills of the expert centre staff are kept as high as possible.
If one of our engineers comes across an issue that they haven’t faced before they are then tasked with writing up the resolution to that problem - which is then made available to all of our engineers and the Expert Centre, further helping us identify issues quickly - Darren Thomas, Waters
“The negative feedback that we get from our customers when they contact the knowledge centre is that we ask them to carry out a lot of tests before we can dispatch an engineer and that can be frustrating when we are asking an experienced person have you done x,y and z?” Thomas explains.
“However, the point is that for our organisation it is the primary interaction that is important. So if a customer calls the Expert Centre then we can affect a good diagnostic or even a remote fix - so we are investing in tools to do that where possible. We are currently implementing a global initiative which we are calling ‘Knowledge Centre Support’, where we are pooling all of the first-time- fix reports - whether it be via an engineer in China , Europe or the USA.”
“Essentially, if one of our engineers comes across an issue that they haven’t faced before they are then tasked with writing up the resolution to that problem - which is then made available to all of our engineers and the Expert Centre, further helping us identify issues quickly.”
“We really are dedicating ourselves to that first-time-fix via remote support.” He adds.
At first glance, this may appear to be driving less importance to the field service engineer role, yet whilst it may potentially reduce the number of service calls Waters needs to make, the flip side of the same coin is that when an engineer is actually dispatched it means that all other routes have been exhausted. In which case by the time the engineer arrives on site the issue has become even more important in the eyes of the customer.
It is therefore vital the Field Service Engineer is able to deliver in this scenario.
This is something that Thomas firmly agrees with.
“At the end of the day once the engineer is sent out to our clients he or she then becomes the ambassador for our company. They become really important in terms of ensuring the customer is fully satisfied,” he comments.
“I think their role is absolutely evolving in that sense.” He adds.
It is an interesting point for discussion and Keith Wilkinson, VP of Sales for ClickSoftware picks it up and carries the point further.
“We are all consumers of services whether it be from your bank, utilities providers , telco or media provider – we are all seeing this rise in automation and self-service, so you could look at it and ask – ultimately is that human touch point still important?”
“But what inevitably happens is that automation, that self-service aspect will ultimately go wrong at some point and when it does go wrong we then we have that one brief moment of truth where the engineer is sent out into the home or work place to not only just solve a problem, but also to make an impression on the customer.”
“The customer will likely have tried some levels of self-service or even to self-fix the device because they just want to get it back operational again so they can get on with their own job – so now the engineer has all their trust and faith in your company riding on their shoulders.”
“So that engineer, from a digitisation perspective, needs to have all the tools, all the knowledge and information possible at his disposal so he can be empowered - so he can become that brand ambassador. I think those scenarios it can make a huge impact on whether or not, when the time comes to renew that specific contract you actually do so or whether you think ‘I had an important issue that wasn’t really resolved effectively’ in which case your advocacy of renewing that service may be less assured.”
Want to know more? There is also an exclusive Briefing Report from this session entitled Disruption, Development and Diversity in Field Service available for Field Service News subscribers. If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly. Click here to apply for your subscription now!
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Nov 14, 2017 • News • Airbus • Gunther Boehner • Hennik Group • Nicholas Leeder • BMW Group • Events • Simon Bradley • SKF Group • Smart Factory Expo
Tomorrow's Smart Factory Expo is undoubtedly the UK’s biggest setting for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and will play host to more than 4,000 decision-makers and senior executives, with every single sector of the industry represented.
Tomorrow's Smart Factory Expo is undoubtedly the UK’s biggest setting for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and will play host to more than 4,000 decision-makers and senior executives, with every single sector of the industry represented.
Partnered with the government, major industry bodies, universities and over 100 exhibitors, the event will showcase the UK manufacturing industry’s world-class professionals and solution providers and gives exhibitors and attendees a platform to see the latest technological advances and discuss the ground-breaking innovations that are the driving force behind 4IR.
Over 100 of the top innovative industry leaders have signed up to exhibit, including Aptean, Cisco, Dell EMC, IBM, Proto Labs, Rockwell Automation, XMPRO and many more.
Solutions Theatres Spotlight
The Solution Theatres will provide conference-style learning where attendees will see over 90 free presentations from companies including: Rolls Royce, BAE Systems, BMW Group, Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Steel.
The Solution Theatres will be broken into four different technology zones:
- Digital Transformation
- Smart Factory
- Industrial Internet
- Industrial Automaton
The Leaders Conference
Running alongside Smart Factory Expo is the Leaders Conference, as with Smart Factory Expo, there are plenty of reasons to attend:
- Following the success of 2016, this is now the event to attend, established as the most comprehensive source of information within the sector.
- An ideal platform for attendees and teams to collaborate and focus their learning experience from experts in the precise area of their industry.
- Features over 120 of the manufacturing industry’s highest level leaders and gives attendees the chance to learn and network with top tier contributors and listen to manufacturing specialists.
Here are just a few of the top speakers presenting at Leaders Conference:
Simon Bradley, VP Global Head of Innovation & Cyber Security – Airbus
An internationally recognised technology leader and driver of innovation and transformation within global organisations, Simon brings a powerful blend of skills and proven capabilities to enable companies to drive forward with vision and deliver on the requirements of key stakeholders.
As Vice President, Head of Innovation Works Systems & Products and latterly as Head of Global Innovation Network within The Airbus Group, Simon has helped build a strong cohesive brand for Research & Technology strategy and development. The Airbus Group was named in the Thomson Reuters 100 Top Innovative Companies list and ranked #30 in the world for Research & Development in 2013 with a spend of 3.1Bn€. His portfolio within The Airbus Group for research covers a wide range of subjects and is global in its scope.
From System & Software Engineering, Virtual Reality & Simulation, Applied Mathematics, Information Technology & HPC, Big Data & Visual Analytics, Maintenance & Services through to Cyber & Homeland Security. In 2015 Simon took on his newest role as Vice President, Product & Cyber Security Program Directorate – helping to protect Airbus Group products, facilities, ICT equipment and people.
Nicholas Leeder, Director PLM and Standards – SKF Group
With the growth of digital opportunities and the new industrial revolution of Industry 4.0, many companies are struggling to understand what this means for them. Nick thrives at this new intersection of business & digital technology, exploiting his practical and professional experiences to drive business results. He is also an internationally recognised speaker around the challenges of these digital transformations.
He is a business and technology leader with a ‘Big 4’ pedigree & over 20 years of global management experience, work for and with some of the most innovative businesses in the world.
Nick operates at ‘C-Level’, accountable for complex operational transformations with enabling technology digital strategies, shaping & leading the delivery of these changes. He brings wide-ranging business & technology experience, as well as transferable industry insights, particularly from industrial, consumer products & high technology sectors. He is the Director of Product Lifecycle Management for SKF Group, having driven the transformations ranging from "Digital Twin", Industry 4.0 and "Smart" Data.
Gunther Boehner, Director of Assembly – BMW Group
His first role with the group was based in BMW Plant Munich as a Process Planner for the Assembly. Since joining the BMW Group Gunther gained experience in many roles including Group Leader Assembly line, involvement in the Quality Project “Zero Rework”, Supplier Quality Management, Leader Project VPS (Value Added Production Systems) BMW Assembly, General Manager for Assembly and General Manager for logistics both based in BMW Plant Regensburg.
In 2014 he moved to Oxford to take up the post of General Manager for Assembly where the MINI is produced. In January 2016 he became the Director of Assembly leading about 2500 associates to build approximately 1000 cars per day.
Gunther’s areas of speciality are extensive knowledge of Value Added Production Systems, and the Kaizen (Lean) Principles.
Before joining the BMW Group he was an Officer in the German Army for 10 years.
Advanced registration is closed but tickets are still available on the door for £45 Find out more @ www.tmsmartfactoryexpo.com
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Nov 14, 2017 • Features • Artic Building Services • Kevin McNally • Planned Lighting Maintenance • Case Studies • Software and Apps • Tracey Hughes • Asolvi
When Planned Lighting Maintenance (PLM) decided that its field service management system needed to be as smart as its lighting solutions, Tesseract came to light the way. Now Tesseract’s Service Centre 5.1 is brightening PLM’s days with super-fast...
When Planned Lighting Maintenance (PLM) decided that its field service management system needed to be as smart as its lighting solutions, Tesseract came to light the way. Now Tesseract’s Service Centre 5.1 is brightening PLM’s days with super-fast scheduling and dispatch, instantaneous invoicing, and an end to coffee-stained job sheets.
A big change before a big birthday
Established in 1968, PLM is a family business that designs, installs and maintains lighting solutions for commercial premises and leading UK retailers. This year, finding itself approaching the big 50 in an increasingly service-oriented economy, PLM realised it was time for a change. Specifically, an overhaul of its long-winded, labour-intensive service management system.
The software PLM had before Tesseract was very limited in what it could do. Over the years PLM built an intranet to try and fill in the gaps, but there was no automation and everything took a lot of time.
Manual processes became increasingly onerous as PLM tried to keep up with the demands of the modern customer and stay profitable
These manual processes became increasingly onerous as PLM tried to keep up with the demands of the modern customer and stay profitable. It was losing revenue because of paperwork-related delays, and had to employ more people each time it took on a new contract. The trigger was losing confidence in its financial reporting. PLM’s admin teams would be gathering information from two, three or four different places — normally a slew of human error-prone Excel spreadsheets — and would have to decide which source was accurate. They eventually lost faith in what the data was telling them.
PLM decided it needed something with more automation, more accuracy and more efficiency — and far less reliance on paper.
The search for a new solution
To investigate options, PLM’s IT manager went to the annual Field Service Management Expo in London and met with five different software providers. These five were whittled down to three, one of which was Tesseract. PLM received a series of presentations about Service Centre 5.1 from Tesseract’s, which were attended by a team of eight from PLM, including several of its engineers.
Hughes explains, “We really liked Kevin. His presentations were simple and easy to follow and we were impressed by how quickly he understood our business.
We then met with one of Tesseract’s clients, Artic Building Services. We were completely bowled over by how well they were doing and how much they’d grown thanks to Tesseract. They were very, very enthusiastic and literally all of their issues and problems prior to implementation were gone. We felt like they were exactly the same as us, but five years on.”
Convinced, PLM took a phased approach to implementing the full suite of software that Tesseract offers, including Call Control, Customer Assets, Parts Centre, Invoice Centre, and Remote Engineer Access (REA).
More control, more visibility, more time to spare
Tesseract’s service management software has provided PLM with an end-to-end workflow that is automated, integrated and optimised. As soon as a call is logged, the system sources the contact information for that customer and tells you what you can and can’t do. Then the information is transmitted automatically to the phone of the engineer who is closest to the customer’s site.
As soon as a call is logged, the system sources the contact information for that customer and tells you what you can and can’t do.
Hughes explains, “With Tesseract, there’s far less admin and data entry and we’ve managed to reduce the number of staff doing admin from seven to four. We have much better visibility of our engineers and their workloads, and can see what’s been completed and billed and what hasn’t without having to make a ton of phone calls. This lets us answer customer queries faster and easier because we’re able to see exactly what stage a job is at.”
Hughes adds, “We also have much faster turnaround on our invoicing. On the old system, it could take up to ten days because we had to wait for paperwork to come in from our engineers. Now that all the information we need is right there on the system, same-day invoicing is the new normal.”
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Nov 07, 2017 • Features • Nick Stokes • Case Studies • case study • Eagle Field Service • Excel Computer Systems • Software and Apps • software and apps
We take a look at how UK window and doors specialist SafeStyle UK improved their field service efficiency by turning to FSM provider Exel Computer Systems
We take a look at how UK window and doors specialist SafeStyle UK improved their field service efficiency by turning to FSM provider Exel Computer Systems
Business imperative
With 13 installation and 36 sales branches around the UK, and a 600-employee factory manufacturing over 6,000 doors and windows each week, Bradford-headquartered Safestyle is one of the country’s leading businesses in the replacement door and window market.
But by late 2013, the company recognised that it needed to update its aftersales customer service capabilities, which had become spread over three distinct systems, giving rise to inefficiencies and data duplication.
Challenge
The core system was a decade-old customer care system, directly fed from Safestyle’s ERP system, which handled maintenance work associated with the ten-year guarantee that Safestyle offers its customers.
In addition, any aftersales maintenance necessitated by customer complaints was handled by a second system. This did not benefit from a data feed from the ERP system, and so required manual data entry.
Finally, a specialist scheduling system handled service engineer scheduling and routing, creating the service engineers’ daily work programmes and vehicle routings.
While each system worked acceptably well when viewed in isolation, a very different picture emerged when they were viewed as a whole.
Service engineer visibility required enhancements to go to the next level, management reporting was limited, and opportunities for better scheduling were being missed.
In addition, adds Nick Stokes, Safestyle’s IT Change Manager, the whole process was overly reliant on paper, using printed work schedules against which service engineers would report progress by telephone, requiring headquarters staff to manually update the relevant system.
Clearly, schedules provided on tablet computers, and directly updated by the service engineers themselves, would be far more efficient, as well as providing real-time progress visibility.
Finally, adds Nick, the core legacy system was becoming both difficult and expensive to maintain.
“As a business, we’re passionate about customer service, and so retiring these various systems and replacing them with something that was both newer and better would be an obvious step forward,” he recalls.
The only question: replacing them with what, exactly?
Why Eagle Field Service?
Consequently, in early 2014, Safestyle began surveying the marketplace for field service management systems, and subsequently invited a number of suppliers to submit quotations for supplying a replacement system.
The clear winner: Exel Computer Systems’ Eagle Field Service solution.
“From a functional and ease-of-use perspective, it offered all the functionality that we were looking for,” recalls Nick, “in addition, although this hadn’t been a formal requirement, we could see that we might, in future, want to be able to use elements of Exel’s EFACS E/8 ERP system. So for a variety of reasons, going with Exel and Eagle Field Service made good sense.”
This is due to the fact that Eagle Field Service is an element of the EFACS E/8 ERP solution, utilising the functionality and modules required, such as Document Management and Workflow.
Should a client require the manufacturing functionality, licences are bought, the modules implemented and the staff trained.
Implementation
Implementation began in early 2015, with a goal of commencing a phased rollout by the third quarter of the year.
Customer service is important to us... it was better to be right, than rushed.”
“Customer service is important to us,” he stresses, “it was better to be right, than rushed.”
But with testing and training complete, rollout began as planned, and was completed within a few weeks.
Business benefits
The move to Eagle Field Service, relates Nick, has delivered a number of very distinct benefits. The user experience—both for headquarters staff, and service engineers—is far more intuitive, and enables people to work more efficiently.
“There’s no need to tab between different systems,” he explains, “all the information that people want is in one place.”
What’s more, in the case of Safestyle’s service engineers, that ‘one place’ is a simple and easy-to-use tablet interface—an interface that also provides real-time updates back to Safestyle’s headquarters, as jobs are completed.
The scheduling of service engineers isn’t just easier than before, it’s also more powerful
Roll it all together, and the combined effect of a reduction in paperwork, the elimination of duplication and data entry, and better engineer scheduling, has enabled a significant improvement in engineer utilisation, notes Nick.
Finally, the move to Eagle Field Service has delivered better reporting—reporting not just of metrics such as customer service levels and engineer efficiencies, but also the detailed reporting of faults and maintenance issues.
“By providing data on the underlying reasons for service calls, Eagle Field Service has given us an enhanced ability to perform root cause analysis, giving us much better visibility into particular parts that are subject to early failure, so that we can address this during design and manufacture.” concludes Nick.
“This has always been an objective—and now we have achieved it.”
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Nov 02, 2017 • News • Microsoft • Noventum • Research • IFS • servicemax
Noventum has released its FSM Solutions Reality Check report, a comprehensive overview of the leading Field Service Management (FSM) solutions to help organisations select the solutions best suited to their requirements.
Noventum has released its FSM Solutions Reality Check report, a comprehensive overview of the leading Field Service Management (FSM) solutions to help organisations select the solutions best suited to their requirements.
According to research and evaluations conducted by Noventum, Field Service Management solutions provided by ServiceMax, Microsoft and IFS are best positioned to provide maximum business benefits to service businesses while the potential risks and TCO are the lowest.
Noventum evaluated vendors and their products by assessing their functional and non-functional capabilities against the industry leading Service Capability & Performance (SCP) Standards to determine whether the solutions can support the key businesses capabilities service businesses need to be successful.
Service organisations that are planning to select a new FSM solution can benefit from the knowledge and data collected to select the best FSM solution for their specific needs and for their specific situation.
Through our extensive customer engagements, via product demos and customer references visits, Noventum validated the capabilities of service management solutions to ensure that they meet client’s needs in real world situations.
Visit Noventum’s website to request a copy of the report (http://noventum.eu/whitepaper/fsm-solutions-reality-check).
Join Noventum at Field Service Europe on 6-8 December 2017, with over 55 heads of service speakers.
You can register today http://fs-ne.ws/nCix30gid3o for Field Service, including the including the Service Industry Standards Day with a 20% discount (Service providers only) when you indicate the registration FSEU17FSN
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Nov 02, 2017 • Features • Integration • Inventory Management • KevinMcNally • KPI • Software and Apps • Asolvi • Parts Pricing and Logistics
In the first part of this feature, Tesseract’s Kevin McNally explored the importance of contract management and workforce scheduling within a field service management system. Now in the concluding part of this feature he looks at three other key...
In the first part of this feature, Tesseract’s Kevin McNally explored the importance of contract management and workforce scheduling within a field service management system. Now in the concluding part of this feature he looks at three other key elements of a modern FSM system...
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Want to know more? A white paper on this topic is available for Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may well qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you the white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!
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Mobile tools and communications:
It is fair to say that the biggest revolution in field service has come from the rapid explosion in mobile computing power. Today’s smartphones are capable of greater computing tasks than even the laptops of just a few years back.
For the field service organisation this is fantastic as it puts information at the field service engineers finger tips, empowers them to spend far more time on maintenance and repair and far less on activities such as paper work and enables them to deliver a far more effective and impressive service experience for the customer.
[quote float="left"]The real key to a FSM solution is the ability to keep a number of differing business units all on the same page at once, [/quote]The real key to a FSM solution is the ability to keep a number of differing business units all on the same page at once, and the mobile aspect is the key to ensuring the field service engineers – perhaps the most vital cog in the service operation wheel, are kept up to date (and are keeping their colleagues updated about their own progress) whilst working remotely.
For the field service engineer, his FSM app is perhaps now the most important tool in his belt, but if it is cumbersome to use its benefits may well be underused and much of its true value lost. Therefore, for those seeking a new FSM solution the mobile app is a key area for scrutiny. If you are already working with an FSM system it is worth considering getting some feedback on this aspect of the mobile app from your engineers and taking this back to your FSM provider – a good systems partner will always value such feedback and often if there are areas where you feel the solution can be improved, these will likely be felt by other companies using the same solution, so such changes may well surface in the not too distant future in a new update.
Parts & Inventory Management:
[quote]Part’s Management is a real fundamental piece of the puzzle that is overlooked by many companies – Kevin McNally, Tesseract[/quote]
Parts and Inventory management is perhaps an area that in the past has not received the focus and attention that it requires. It has often been the mantra of field service organisations that they are aiming to the get the right engineer to the right job, at the right time. But that all becomes moot if the right engineer doesn’t have the right parts to hand as well. Consistently at industry conferences parts management remains a hot button and a common pain point.
One area where many companies get themselves caught out is by thinking that they can use a system such as a financial system that is designed at best for companies whose stock resides in static places such as warehouses and stores.
However, field service is far more dynamic than that, with parts moving back and forth and in and out of locations constantly each and every day.
In no time at all a company that isn’t using a system designed with field service in mind will soon find themselves having to find workarounds to make their system work, which ultimately will mean a far less accurate understanding of stock levels, which can only ever lead to unnecessary spending and a negative impact on the bottom line.
But there are other less obvious impacts poor stock management can have as well.
[quote float="right"]Field service is far more dynamic than that, with parts moving back and forth and in and out of locations constantly each and every day.[/quote]For instance, in such a set up stock realistically can usually only be written off once it has been invoiced. However, in the dynamic world of field service that is of course too late. It could be quite conceivable that an engineer visit could be scheduled with a customer based on a specific part being in stock but in fact whilst there is one of those parts remaining in the inventory, the reality could be that it has already been fitted but just not written off yet as the job hasn’t been invoiced.
For example, lets say an engineer who is onsite is unable to complete a first time fix, but is able to identify a faulty component and then order it whilst still with the customer - giving them a confirmed date for a second appointment when the needed maintenance can be undertaken.
This is a far more powerful and commanding response compared to the negative situation we often find ourselves in where an engineer cannot find the right part – and he just heads off to his next job, leaving the first customer to wait for an unconfirmed rescheduled appointment whilst they try to track down the right part.
In one example we see an engineer empowered by his technology, the other he is hampered by the lack of it.
Integration:
We are living in a world of data lakes, data rivers, data mountains and all other types of data topography it seems! But all these vast swathes of data are meaningless unless you are able to draw insight from it, and quite often that means being able to let the data flow seamlessly from one set of business applications to another
[quote float="left"]We are seeing more and more companies offering ‘off the shelf’ or ‘out of the box’ integration with the leading CRM, ERP and even Telematics solutions.[/quote] Integration varies from provider to provider but often it is led by the integrations they have been asked to undertake, so if your current provider or a provider you have identified as being a good fit for your business don’t advertise integration with a specific system you are using – it is worth discussing the possibilities with them especially if it is a common platform so making their product work with it may be useful for other future clients also.
We are seeing more and more companies offering ‘off the shelf’ or ‘out of the box’ integration with the leading CRM, ERP and even Telematics solutions.
It is worth discussing with your providers how they are future proofing their products when it comes to integration – there is for example a large amount of proprietary technology centred around IoT at the moment and until accepted universal protocols are in place you want to make sure any technology you have invested in today is going to be of use tomorrow.
Tesseract is the leading service management software provider in Europe and have been in the Field Service Business for over 30 years. For further information contact Tesseract on 01494 465066 or www.tesseract.co.uk
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Oct 31, 2017 • Fleet Technology • News • Abbey Logistics • MIcrolise • fleet management • Fleet performance
Abbey Logistics Group, one of the UK’s largest bulk liquid and powder transport providers, is deploying a Microlise fleet management telematics solution to 350 tractors and 300 trailers in its fleet.
Abbey Logistics Group, one of the UK’s largest bulk liquid and powder transport providers, is deploying a Microlise fleet management telematics solution to 350 tractors and 300 trailers in its fleet.
Microlise Fleet Performance will provide Abbey Logistics with real-time visibility of its fleet and help it to improve driver performance and safety; while reducing fuel costs and environmental impact. It will replace three different tracking systems currently being used in the business as a result of contract wins and an acquisition.
Driver performance metrics, including A-G grades on a range of criteria, will be available via the Microlise Driver Performance Management (DPM) app. DPM is designed to empower drivers to improve with easy access to insights about their own performance.
We are also hoping to free up management time by removing many manual processes and focusing our resources where they are needed. All of this is aimed at delivering the best service for our customers -Steve Granite, Abbey Logistics Group CEO
The full suite of Fleet Performance reports will also be available via the Microlise web portal, giving detailed information about the fleet operation to enable the Abbey Logistics team to understand where improvements can be made.
In addition, Abbey Logistics will also be implementing Microlise Remote Digital Tachograph Download, which automates the collection of drivers’ hours on a regular basis, no matter where the vehicle is.
“The deployment of Microlise Fleet Performance will give us the visibility we need to make effective improvements quickly,” said Steve Granite, Abbey Logistics Group CEO. “We are also hoping to free up management time by removing many manual processes and focusing our resources where they are needed. All of this is aimed at delivering the best service for our customers.”
Abbey Logistics Group was bought in August 2016 by management with funding from a Manchester-based private equity firm. It has announced a string of award wins and nominations in 2017, as well as several large contract wins.
“There is great energy and enthusiasm at Abbey Logistics, along with an excellent company culture. The success it is seeing as a business is no accident. We’re pleased to be supporting the operations team with a telematics product to help identify and enact efficiency improvements,” said Nadeem Raza, Microlise Chief Executive Officer.
DPM runs on both Android and iOS devices, delivering increased driver engagement with telematics, whilst at the same time reducing management resource requirements.
For further information about Microlise Fleet Performance and DPM, visit www.microlise.com/products.
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Oct 27, 2017 • Features • Future of FIeld Service • Microsoft • Digital Twins • GE Digital • IoT • servicemax
This week GE unveiled expansions to its suite of edge-to-cloud technologies and industrial applications, designed to help its customers build a complete asset strategy.
This week GE unveiled expansions to its suite of edge-to-cloud technologies and industrial applications, designed to help its customers build a complete asset strategy.
These additions to the GE Digital portfolio complement the key software applications that drive industrial productivity and extend these benefits through Predix, the application development platform for the Industrial Internet.
To help industrial companies get the most out of their industrial assets and drive better business outcomes, GE Digital today introduced: Predix Edge technologies to accelerate computing at the edge; the Predix platform combined with Microsoft Azure, the cloud for enterprises; new Operations Performance Management software to bridge productivity from assets to operations; enhanced Field Service Management solutions to improve the customer experience; and new platform tools to simplify industrial app development.
Industrials that unlock data to master asset productivity will be positioned to lead
Edge-to-Cloud Intelligence on Any Industrial Asset, Anywhere
By 2022, Gartner predicts that 75 percent of enterprise data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud. The ability to compute and manage this information both at the edge and in the cloud are essential for industrial companies to truly optimise their operations.
To help customers accelerate their edge strategies and make any asset an intelligent asset, GE Digital is expanding its Predix Edge capabilities to help run analytics as close to the source of data as possible. Predix Edge gives customers with limited connectivity, latency limitations, regulatory or other constraints a way to deploy applications closer to the originating data – or at the edge.
Enhancements include:
[unordered_list style="bullet"]
- Predix Edge Manager allows customers to support large fleets of edge devices – up to 200,000 connected devices from a single console.
- Predix Machine enables microservice-based applications to run at the edge on customers’ virtualized data center infrastructure or on server-class hardware from GE or its partners. This also supports Predix Edge Manager, which was previously available only as a cloud service.
- Predix complex event processing (CEP) allows for faster and more efficient analytics and other event processing at extreme low latency, available at the edge in Q1 2018.[/unordered_list]
These edge solutions can help companies move from intelligent asset management to automation to insights-led machine learning across a distributed system. One example is EdgeLINC, a comprehensive edge-to-cloud solution from GE Transportation integrated with Predix Edge Manager, Predix Machine and Asset Performance Management applications. EdgeLINC enables efficient device management, configuration and streaming analytics even when machines, such as rail assets, are constantly moving in and out of communication.
Predix Platform on Microsoft Azure
GE Digital and Microsoft are bringing together the advanced industrial platform services of Predix with the flexible, enterprise-proven services of Microsoft Azure. Available in North America starting Q4 2017 and expanding globally in 2018, this partnership extends the accessibility of Predix to Microsoft’s global cloud footprint, including data sovereignty, hybrid capabilities and advanced developer and data services, enabling customers around the world to capture intelligence from their industrial assets.
While IT and OT have traditionally existed in silos, Microsoft and GE are bridging this gap
Advanced Applications to Make the Industrial Internet More Actionable
Understanding how an asset operates and its maintenance needs is critical to mitigating risk and improving productivity. Alongside its Asset Performance Management (APM) software, the core application deriving value from industrial assets, GE Digital introduced a complementary application that improves the operational performance of assets – like pumps, valves and heat exchangers – and drives a comprehensive asset management strategy.
This new Operations Performance Management (OPM) solution helps industrials increase revenue and margins, optimise the throughput of industrial processes and make their sites more profitable. OPM uses real-time and historical data – along with advanced analytics – to help customers make better operational decisions. The solution provides an early warning if industrial processes deviate from plan, arms operators with the information and time to troubleshoot operational issues and helps them take preventative actions to meet business goals.
GE Digital’s OPM software initially targets the mining industry and will expand to additional industries early next year.
The OPM solution has already helped customers achieve significant improvements to revenue and profit including:
[unordered_list style="bullet"]
- A platinum operator increased overall throughput by 10 percent, consistently reaching maximum design capacity and increasing recovery by 1.5 percent.
- A large mining company achieved a 5.5 percent increase in throughput while consuming 2 percent less power
- A gold producer realised a 1.5 percent increase in recovery while reducing equipment-related costs through improved process efficiency.
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Enhanced Field Service Management Solutions
With service technicians looking to embrace technology to improve their productivity and deliver a better experience for customers, ServiceMax from GE Digital, the leading field service management (FSM) solution, announced several enhancements to its FSM suite – enabling even greater efficiencies and bringing advanced analytics to service operations.
Artificial intelligence-enabled predictive service times now integrate the Apache Spark AI engine to improve service time estimates. Additionally, a new application integration solution enables service providers to launch and share FSM data with third-party mobile applications installed on the same device. New capabilities in schedule optimisation allow for dependent job scheduling between work orders for multiple visits aimed at improving first-time fix rates. As part of GE Digital’s FSM portfolio, these new features allow operators to minimise downtime, optimise costs, reduce risk and improve productivity for your services team.
Advanced App and Digital Twin Solutions
GE Digital also introduced Predix Studio to help companies build and scale their own industrial applications and extend its Asset Performance Management (APM) suite, Available in Q1 2018, Predix Studio simplifies the development process by giving customers the ability to extend applications and empower industrial subject matters experts – or citizen developers – to build apps in a low-code, high-productivity environment. A vital demographic, citizen developers comprise controls and reliability engineers, OT operators and line of business users with domain expertise but little or no coding experience. Using a mix of AI and machine learning, Predix Studio automates the heavy lifting of creating Industrial IoT apps – opening app development to an entirely new kind of developer.
GE’s experience in managing industrial assets has generated hundreds of millions of hours of machine data
The Analytics Workbench, currently a technology preview from GE Power, can be used to augment existing digital twins with new data streams. For example, power producers using drones to inspect wind turbine blades, pipelines or fuel reserves can integrate visual inspection data into the digital twins they already use to manage generation assets and grid infrastructure. The Analytics Workbench also helps users implement machine learning capabilities that allow those models to improve themselves over time.
Unveiled as part of GE’s Minds + Machines conference, these solutions from GE Digital are designed to help customers successfully advance their digital industrial transformation journeys while realizing real and immediate benefits to their bottom lines.
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