AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Kris Oldland

Resource Type: eBook
Published by:  Solarvista
Title: The top 10 “often forgotten” risks when selecting field service management software

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Synopsis:

Selecting the right solution to meet your field service software needs is crucial. This eBook explores 10 often overlooked risks that companies must consider when selecting a FSM solution that could save expense and time during and after implementation.

Overview

The eBook focusses on ten often overlooked considerations field service organisations should address when selecting a new field service management solution. As well as identifying pitfalls to be aware of the eBook also looks at means of overcoming them.

The areas of focus within the eBook include:

1. It won’t actually do what you need it to do:

This seems an obvious one and one that everyone is aware of, right? Well, not quite. Defining how any software works (and especially with field service software) is a difficult and abstract exercise and unless you work in IT as a professional (and even then you are likely to find it hard), it’s an almost impossible to be truly 100% sure that the software will do what you need it to do.

2. It’s hard to access on the devices that people really want to use:

Over the last few years, the march of new smartphone devices has exploded and of course everyone has a position about “which platform is best”.

In reality, they all have their pros and cons. Devices shouldn’t be the deciding factor. You should let people use the device they feel most comfortable with. Some might prefer iPhones, some might prefer Android etc., some Windows tablets etc.

3. It won’t connect well (or easily) to your existing systems:

Let’s face it, integration is the bug-bear of any project. Over the years, different approaches have surfaced, each one meant to “make it easy” and, whilst there has been some success, it’s mostly, by its nature, hard to get right.

It’s not so much the technology, as the process and its impact upon resulting products you may have.

4. You buy it against a fully “thought-through” RFP documents, demos and then you find out it cannot do a particular feature exactly as you need it:

This sounds like it shouldn’t happen; after all, you spent a lot of time asking every stakeholder what they needed. But so often in this scenario, we see a good 10-20% of functionality is forgotten about and it’s need is only encountered “in project”.

This causes significant scheduling, resources and budget issues. Where do you find the extra time or money to pay for such expansion of scope?

5. Once implemented, your processes and needs change, so the system becomes less relevant and/or effective:

In selecting a product and vendor, you need to make sure that the future is catered for. You are buying a future, not just for today. Your business will change and the software needs to change with it.

6. The system slows down once in heavy use and over time:

One of the key reasons for choosing a new system may be that you want a more responsive system than the current older one. The performance of software is hard to predict, especially on systems and networks used for other purposes too, such as in-house servers and networks.

To mitigate this risk, the best solution is the cloud. With cloud computing, you have virtually limitless CPU, database and network power at your disposal.

7. Your staff don’t embrace the tool enough or it doesn’t get used properly:

Let’s start by saying this isn’t a criticism. But it’s human nature (and proven dynamic) that products that are easy to use, get used the most. Field service management software falls into “complex ERP” and certainly some parts of all ERP software is complex. The users at greatest risk of this phenomenon are mobile users, such as field engineers & technicians.

8. Information isn’t connected together so getting business intelligence is difficult:

Any ERP solution will generate vast quantities of data. Getting real insight from all this data is, again, a tricky task. We see so many systems procured where the business intelligence (“BI”) is assumed to be something done AFTER the system is implemented.

9. The time it takes to implement is longer than envisaged:

We’ve already mentioned several reasons why predicting the duration of an implementation can be difficult. But by avoiding many of these mistakes, the risk to timeline can be reduced or even eliminated.

One good way we recommend to make sure you meet timelines desired (and perhaps more importantly, budget!) is to use “Agile Project” styles for both procurement and implementation.

10. You start well, but as staff leave and new people join, the use of the system degrades and it becomes less useful/relevant:

We often see this referred to as “death by a thousand cuts”. It’s more common than many think. And almost impossible to see happening unless you look closely. Slowly, over time, your people lose contact with the software, function by function, process by process.

 

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This eBook offers further details on each of the above challenges and how to overcome them.

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!

Click here to apply for your subscription now and we’ll send you this white paper to your inbox now instantly as a thank you for your time!

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to Professor Tim Baines of the Aston Centre for Servitization Research and Practice, about the key themes at their 2017 Spring Servitization Conference held in Lucerne and how Servitization is becoming a mainstream topic of conversation amongst manufacturers.

 

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With Article 50 triggered and Brexit negotiations underway Spencer Earp, Senior Vice President EMEA & APAC for ServiceMax, a GE company asks just how important can field services be for UK PLC...

The last place you would expect to find a microcosm of Britain’s proposed industrial strategy is in a cereal bowl. As iconic breakfast brand Weetabix announced plans to invest £30m to expand its UK manufacturing facilities, its Chinese owner Bright Foods was considering a sale and there are plenty of suitors.

Weetabix is apparently bucking a breakfast trend, growing its market share and creating jobs but it is far from Brexit-proof. Price hikes it says are expected.

Just a week earlier UK Prime Minister Theresa May outlined her proposals for a new industrial strategy for Britain and Weetabix is exhibiting the sort of dynamism May hopes to re-create.

But while it may serve as a valuable example in developing the right conditions for growth, it may prove an exception to the rule.

While UK GDP figures put in a strong finish to a turbulent 2016, the outlook remains uncertain.

This year will be dominated by trading negotiations and a fluctuating pound and we are expected to feel the start of a pricing pinch. The UK, says Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark at the launch of the Government’s green paper, “must close the gap between the most productive companies, industries, places and people and the rest; and ensure we are one of the most competitive places in the world to start and grow a business.”

 

Easier said than done. The focus will no doubt be on streamlining manufacturing processes, minimising costs, encouraging inward investment and using post-Brexit freedoms to use government subsidies to promote growth, such as targeted tax incentives and increased research and development grants. All good stuff but what can businesses do themselves?

How can the government proposals deliver ideas and strategies that touch all aspects of the supply chain, for example? How can a new business plan for Britain remove cost from the company and yet improve its attractiveness and productivity?

The analogies with the field service industry are startling. Field service has often suffered from under investment or derision. Businesses have regarded service as a cost to the business but this is changing.

New technology is turning everything on its head, with service increasingly seen as a critical business function. Business strategies are evolving along service lines, recognising that affordable sensors, automation and increased mobility are having a profound impact on how products are sold and of course supported. Brand reputations are rising or falling on the back of it and above all service led companies are increasingly profitable and efficient.

A recent report from Vanson Bourne revealed that 86% of execs surveyed said they expect field service to become a primary revenue driver in the next two years. Results from the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) Field Service benchmarking study also found that businesses “saw an improvement in renewal rates of up to seven points when field service engineers took the initiative to drive adoption versus engaging only in break/fix maintenance activities.”

In her speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos in January, Theresa May talked about facing up to change, redrawing the international image and making Britain truly internationalist.

The industrial strategy is part of this new thinking, but turning words into tangible actions will demand a cultural shift within organisations if the manufacturing sector is to be competitive and profitable.

 

It demands an automated, end-to-end field service management plan, one that empowers field service professionals in the business and recognises the value service can have to an industrial strategy.

Interestingly, GE drives more than 70 percent of its profits from the service business. It’s a strategy that works. Mobility and smart device technology are at the heart of this and something that will only accelerate rapidly with the advent of 5G networks.

In its Emerging Trends in Mobility report, the TSIA claimed that the rapid development of video conferencing, mobile knowledge management applications and wearables is rapidly creating an even greater positive impact on the service industry and business profitability.

It’s like a perfect storm and one that could and should carry UK manufacturing forward. It is this understanding of how the latest cloud-based technologies can underpin an industrial strategy that can help to drive differentiation and efficiency.

Not all manufacturers can do a Weetabix, but they can embrace ‘servitisation’. The industrialists and thinkers of Whitehall would do well to take note.

 

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The conversation around how driverless cars can be implemented in field service operations and the benefits they bring is an important one - however, one part of the conversation often overlooked is how autonomous vehicles could help field service organisations ensure their vehicles are being driven within legal limits.

Fortunately the good folks at Denmon Pearlman have put together an excellent infographic on the subject which should make interesting reading for field service and fleet management professionals alike...

 

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Kris Oldland talks to the team at XMReality whilst at Field Service USA and they give him a demonstration of how their Augmented Reality solution can help field service companies

 

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Want to know more about Augmented Reality and Field Service - check out our Big Discussion on the AR and Field Service here

 

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REWE Markt GmbH, with more than 3,000 REWE locations and 90,000 employees, ranks among the leading corporations in the German food retail business.

REWE is not only a big player as a brick and mortar retailer, but it is also a leading online pioneer with the establishment of an online supermarket which offers delivery services. Since its opening in 2011, it has grown to reach roughly 40 percent of German households. Those customers are served from 30 locations that deliver to more than 75 cities and their suburban areas.

The challenge

“We strive to offer our customers supreme service, regardless whether it is on site at the supermarket or online“ says Dr. Johannes Steegmann, Director of Marketing, Strategy and Ventures at REWE Digital GmbH. REWE delivery service offers a large selection of the products of the brick and mortar supermarkets. REWE’s mission as well as it’s challenge is to get the merchandise to the customer’s doorstep at peak quality and promptly within the requested delivery window.

The solution

To ensure and further improve customer satisfaction while growing and expanding service, REWE decided in 2015 to implement new software for planning the routes of their delivery vehicles. Its main objective is to optimise timely fulfilment within short delivery windows. For that purpose, the software must be able to consider real-time components such as heavy traffic or varying idleness in its planning. The technology must be flexible to be customised to REWE’s delivery service, specifically providing scalability as well as customisation and interfacing with other systems.

The decisive factors for choosing FLS, Fast Lean Smart, as their software partner were the flexibility of the FLS software solutions VISITOUR and FLS MOBILE as well as the performance of their PowerOpt algorithm and cost based calculations.

Customer friendly delivery windows

Customers make their purchase at the online shop on the website or with the REWE delivery service app, then they decide their delivery window which can be set up to 13 days in advance.  The choices are either short 2-hour delivery windows or half-day windows. The available appointments are provided via direct real-time interface with FLS VISITOUR.

FLS VISITOUR calculates an optimised virtual constellation route and instantly knows the relative cost of each possible time-slot given existing delivery commitments. REWE are able to provide not only high quality and reliable customer service, but also ensure a cost-efficient line-up of delivery appointments for the company. As soon as customers choose and confirm their delivery date and time, those appointments are added to the route planning, optimised with “what-if-when” considerations. FLS VISITOUR calculates routes in real-time and to street level detail and, despite the high user count and large offering of delivery slots, the software proves its enormous computing capacity.

Mobile App for real-time communication

Drivers receive their route data on their mobile app FLS MOBILE. Drivers then report their status back to FLS VISITOUR via the app and inform when deliveries have been completed. That way, central planning always has a real-time update on the status of all deliveries.

The benefits

“We are constantly developing new standards across all processes along the supply chain, as we aim to fulfil our customers’ requests even better “, says Jörg Unruh, Director of Logistics at REWE Digital. He is convinced: “The decision to use FLS VISITOUR and FLS MOBILE for scheduling and route planning was right on the mark. Furthermore, the software helps us as it simplifies processes and delivers consistent performance. Here, we can count on FLS as our reliable partner."

Awards for the online delivery service confirm that REWE keeps its promises to its customers. In 2015 the IT magazine “CHIP “named REWE delivery service “Best online delivery service” with significant lead ahead of the competition. In spring 2016 the “ComputerBild” magazine reached the same conclusion and to top it all REWE was crowned best multi-channel provider by the business press “Internet World Business” during their Shop Awards.

FLS has come to know the REWE delivery service as a nimble enterprise and this creates ideal conditions for partnership and to respond to the demands of the business model together with innovative solutions.

“On-line food retail is a high volume business and giving the best customer experience is key to brand loyalty. FLS VISITOUR real-time service optimisation technology has proven flexible to meet the needs of one of Europe’s largest retailers.”, commented Jeremy Squire, FLS UK Managing Director, “We enjoy an excellent partnership with REWE and have long term commitment to stretching the boundaries for customer service excellence in combination with operational efficiencies”

Highlights:

• Cost optimisation in route planning
• High scalability without sacrificing performance

Benefits:

• Considerable improvement of the appointment planning with simultaneous increase
  in cost efficiency
• Automation and simplification of route planning processes
• Ensuring the operative growth through transparency and continuous performance
• Seamless connection of the appointment portal for the customers and the operative
  route planning

 

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Evatic, a leading software vendor within Service Management, has acquired WinServ Software in Sweden.

Together Evatic and WinServ will have more than 800 customers in 30+ countries and be the leading European service management software supplier. WinServ Software has its main office in Stockholm.

“We are extremely happy to add WinServ to our product family” says Pål M. Rødseth, CEO of Evatic. “We have known Ronny, founder and CEO of WinServ, for years and we believe that the two organisations will be much stronger together when it comes to developing the service management software solutions for the future.

This is our second acquisition in less than a year, following our acquisition of Tesseract in the UK in September of 2016, and it is in line with our strategy to become the leading player within this space”.

 

“I believe that WS Software are in the best hands going forward”, says Ronny Fransson, founder and CEO of WS Software. “We have known Evatic for many years, and we are confident that the WinServ solution will be in the best hands going forward. Being part of a larger software group will add strength to the product development that is needed to be a service management solution provider in the future”.

Evatic is a leading European service management software company with the head office in Trondheim, Norway and offices in the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, Holland and Singapore. With a global reach and more than 800 customers in 30+ countries providing customers with service management solutions under the Evatic, Tesseract and WinServ umbrella, Evatic offers a broad product suit for companies that need to make their services profitable. Evatic is a private company owned by the founders and Viking Venture

 

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The New Driver of Business Success

Senior managers from all types of businesses in all types of industries are discovering that one role takes the spotlight in deepening key relationships—the field service engineer. No one has more potential impact on the success of the company and its key customers than the FSE...no one. High-performing field service pros are where the action is, orchestrating a superb customer experience, proactively preventing problems before they occur, and leveraging relationships to rock out customers and lock out the competition.¹

Research Validation: What Execs Say

Following are some executive comments taken from my research² that reveal the power of the stellar field service professional.

One senior executive from a huge telecommunications company talked about it in terms of competitive advantage: “Our lifeblood depends on the capabilities of our top field service personnel to differentiate our company from others in the industry. They understand our customers’ issues and are creative in developing solutions to address them. They have become evangelists for our products and solutions and are often used in presales situations to demonstrate our capabilities.”

A global head of services for a manufacturing company put it this way: “Our field engineers make one million customer calls per year. When they build deep relationships, our customer loyalty soars. We must maximize this opportunity.”

Obviously, this is a topic of significance to business leaders and an evolution/revolution worth pursuing!

FLASH POINT: Unleash your service brilliance!

The Attributes of the Brilliant Field Service Professional

OK, so you’re convinced. But you’re probably wondering: What does a brilliant FSE look like?

Brilliant service professionals are, well, brilliant, and their glow lights the way to stellar performance.

Figure 1 illustrates the attributes of the Brilliant FSE. Let’s review this diagram from right to left, starting with the results: repeatable, sustainable performance.

Repeatable, Sustainable Performance

When FSEs rock, the outputs are repeatable, sustainable, value-adding performance. The impact is huge: Loyal customers get phenomenal value from their investment in your company and sing your praises far and wide. Your company achieves strong, profitable growth, in both products and services, and locks out the competition. And you, the brilliant service pro, get the rewards and recognition befitting your contribution and your status. Sounds like a classic win-win-win to me!

Trust-Building Behaviours

Top performers get brilliant results by behaving differently from average service providers. They must do many things well, but the very best service pros act in ways that quickly build and maintain integrity. They ooze credibility as they proactively build trust.

Tools

The service rock star is a big believer in using tools. He enthusiastically embraces any checklist of required actions, set of practices, or relevant case study that can help him retain quality while doing his job faster and easier.

Competencies

Five competencies are integrated within the brilliant FSE:

#1 Value-creating mindset. The brilliant field services pro possesses a view of life based on creating value. He understands the big picture and collaborates with customers and colleagues to deliver business results and personal wins.

Here are what executives have said on this topic:

• “They build upon their credibility and relationship skills to find bigger customer needs and recommend appropriate solutions.”
• “They understand the big picture.”
• “Our top performers have a holistic viewpoint. They clearly see the importance and the fit of services and support as part of the overall solution when combined with hardware, software, and consumables. Our average performers fail to leverage the strength and diversity of our entire organisation.”
• “They have a program-level horizon instead of a project-level horizon.”
• “They look beyond their role with regard to ‘what would the CEO want to know?’”

#2 Customer acumen. The stellar FSEs knows a lot about his customers. He understands his customer’s industry, his customer’s markets, his company’s competitors, and his customer’s competitors. Furthermore, he is savvy about business in general.

Executive comments regarding customer acumen include:

• “They have knowledge of both the customer’s environment and our business. They take the trouble to understand more, and it pays off.”
• “They have a better grasp of overall business needs.”
• “They bring a rich portfolio of practical experiences and relationships with others, and they possess an understanding of business dynamics and market trends.”

#3 Relationship skills. The brilliant FSE knows that relationships are what matter in work and in all aspects of life. He is a master of the four core relationship skills of listening with intensity, probing with purpose, presenting powerfully, and acknowledging concerns.

Again, here are some direct quotes from my research participants that emphasise the criticality of these skills:

• “My top performers possess not just adequate or good communication skills, they have great communication skills.”
• “They communicate the invisible well.”
• “They display superior creativity in listening to customer issues and creating a solution strategy that clearly shows how it solves the problem quickly and thoroughly. The differentiator is their level of creativity, their understanding of issues, and the speed with which they react.”
•  “They are superb communicators with clients, team members, and management within our company.”
• “They find a way to outline options and pros and cons to the customer in such a way that this becomes the customer’s direction.”

#4 Engagement management. The very best understand the steps to getting things done, how problems are solved, and how to best interact with the customer. Internally, he uses the knowledge management system, follows procedures, uses prescribed tools, and provides accurate updates on all work in a timely fashion.

#5 Technical proficiency. The brilliant services pro knows enough about his technology, products, and services to get things done. Interestingly, deep technical know-how is not vital in most situations.

Here are some comments from my research that demonstrate this point:

• “My star performers are all good technically, however, most are not technical experts--they know when to bring in technical gurus when needed.”
• “Interestingly, many of my people who customers see as trusted advisors are only technically adequate. They deliver their value through helping customers connect the dots--showing how the best use of our solutions can have a big impact on that customer’s issues.”

If You Want It, You Can Have It

So there it is: Five competencies that are enhanced by tools and mobilized by trust-building behaviors that will yield the results that customers crave and executives yearn for. Like anything of value, it will take some work, but the good news is that the attributes are known, the skills determined, and the steps to success defined. If you want it, you can have it.

Endnotes

1. I talk in detail about the rising criticality of services within product companies and the opportunities and challenges it brings in my book Seriously Selling Services: How to Build a Profitable Services Business in Any Industry.
2. Alexander, James A. 2007. “Transitioning Technical Experts into Trusted Advisors.” St. James City, FL: Alexander Consulting.

 

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This article was adapted from The Brilliant Service Professional: Building Trust, Creating Value, Having Fun, by James “Alex” Alexander, and can be purchased on Amazon.com or the Alexander Consulting website.

 

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to Jeremy Squire of Fast Lean Smart about when a best-of-breed scheduling solution can be the right option over a broader, more generic Field Service Management platform as well as what types of field service companies will benefit from optimised scheduling.