AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Kris Oldland

Winterhalter Gastronom GmbH is a global leader in commercial dishwashing systems for the catering, hospitality, and hotel industry. With over 1,000 employees worldwide and revenue of €134 million in 2011, the owner-operated company ranks among the global players in the catering industry.

The company is headquartered in Meckenbeuren in the Bodensee district and has a second production facility in Endingen am Kaiserstuhl. Worldwide, Winterhalter has offices and partners in over 70 countries. Also part of the group is Winterhalter Gastronom AG, based in Rüthi, Switzerland.

From paper to IT-based scheduling

In order to provide customers from Winterhalter always with clean plates, glasses and utensils, hundreds of service engineers worldwide take care of the maintenance, repair and commissioning of the machines. Some 100,000 jobs are planned, controlled and handled per year.

In 2010 Winterhalter decided to introduce a field service management system in Germany in order to optimise the data processing and quality customer service and to ensure process reliability. Until this time, the resource planners used a SAP-MRP list. The service engineers received their orders by fax. Additional information about the customer or the machine could be obtained only by phone. The technicians completed their service reports on paper, which were checked by the back office team and then released for billing.

The decisive criteria for the selection of a solution were the integration in the existing SAP CS system and in the processes of Winterhalter as well as the internationality of the provider. In addition, the mobile client should run online and offline, and the ROI of the solution should be represented. The decision was made on mobileX-Dispatch, the solution for the graphical scheduling, and mobileX-MIP for Field Service, the mobile solution for the service technician.

 

Introductory project in Germany

In autumn 2011, the solution was implemented in Germany. The dispatchers now plan and control the service technicians in a rotation system. They are also responsible for customer contact, order acceptance and customer satisfaction surveys. The graphical scheduling in mobileX-Dispatch shows the dispatcher all resources and the SAP CS orders clearly on the Gantt chart as well as on a map display.

Based on the order type and the respective transaction mobileX-Dispatch automatically determines the necessary qualifications and draws up a list of suitable technicians. The route optimisation ensures that the service technicians get an ideal order of jobs and directions for handling of their jobs.

After the allocation by the dispatcher the service technician receives the jobs on his laptop in the mobile client mobileX-MIP for Field Service. He can therefore start directly from home for the first customer. Even in fringe areas - ie offline - he can access all order data, such as documents or the service history and prepare the feedback report. Once connected again, the data transfer takes place automatically in the background.

The material logistics is also connected to the mobile client. Depending on consumption, the technician orders spares one to two times per week. If necessary, urgent spare parts can also be delivered by overnight express. In addition, he can capture his vehicle stock level for the annual inventory or the periodic inventory correction in digital count lists. These are then sent back to SAP MM.

After repair or maintenance, the service technician creates his service report by click on a button. This can consist of modular times, travel expenses or other services and material consumption. The final service report is signed by the customer on the touch screen. Subsequently mobileX-MIP for Field Service automatically transfers the data to SAP CS. The office staff reviews the feedback in the mobileX-release monitor and then forwards it on to invoicing.

 

Meanwhile Winterhalter service technicians use mobileX-MIP for Field Service in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK.

Cost-benefit analysis

“At the beginning of the rollout, there was a certain mistrust of the new solution. But today, the colleagues cannot imagine working without the system. Data quality has improved dramatically with the field service management system. In addition, our personnel structure has changed in the customer service. While the number of our dispatchers has hardly changed, we now have a lot more service colleagues in the field. That is, we can provide more customers with a better and faster service.” commented Christian Schneider, Director Operations International at Winterhalter Gastronom GmbH

Outlook

The number of service technicians in customer service at Winterhalter rises from year to year with more and more customers. Even more countries will use the WFM solution in in future.

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Agricultural merchant Zantra is implementing Maxoptra dynamic route planning and scheduling software to manage deliveries of its crop protection solutions.

One of the largest independently owned agrochemical merchants in the UK, Zantra will use Maxoptra to optimise routes in order to reduce unnecessary mileage, control costs and minimise the environmental impact of its transport operations. Integrated with the company’s TomTom telematics solution for real time updates, Zantra believes Maxoptra Delivery will safeguard the company’s reputation for fast and efficient customer service, and help deliver further improvements.

“Put simply, if we fail to deliver the best advice and product selection, on time and in full, then we fail to deliver what our customers – and their crops – require,” commented Russell West, Logistics Manager at Zantra. “By introducing Maxoptra vehicle routing and scheduling, we can ensure our regional depots are fully stocked with the right products at the right time, and our delivery fleet is utilised to its maximum potential.”

Prior to the introduction of the Maxoptra platform, Zantra manually planned both depot and customer deliveries. Using orders exported from the company’s Customer Relationship Management software, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Zantra will now automatically schedule up to 200 deliveries a day in accordance with customers’ specific requirements.

 

“During April, our delivery fleet makes eight times more drops than it does in mid-winter, so it was important the solution we chose was flexible and easily scalable,” continued West. “Rather than tie us into long contracts, with large up front investments and crippling support fees, Maxoptra was willing to work with us to implement a solution that exactly met our current requirements and future needs.”

The farming-family owned business has grown substantially since it was established in 2003, mainly on the strength of its service and commitment to customers, and now operates a nationwide service supplying crop protection products, nutrients, fertilisers and seed from leading manufacturers. Based at Great Staughton, Cambridgeshire, Zantra maintains a network of strategically located, BASIS approved depots, including Doncaster in the north, Faversham and Winchester in the south and Telford in the west.

Stuart Brunger, Maxoptra Business Development Director added, “It is important to remember that one size does not fit all, which is why Maxoptra is the choice of businesses such as Zantra, which experience seasonal peaks and sustained growth.”

 

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Manuel Grenacher, CEO at coresystems looks at why the predicted boom of the field service management market is set to bring workforce challenges of its own and proposes that the crowd-sourcing of field service could be the solution to these issues...

According to a recent report from Markets and Markets, by 2020 the field service management (FSM) market will be worth $5.11 billion – nearly triple its size in 2015. Major drivers behind that projection include skyrocketing customer expectations, the ever-increasing demand for enhanced productivity, and the steady escalation of field service operation costs.

Furthermore, Gartner forecasted that by 2020, two out of three large field service organisations will equip field technicians with a mobile application that drives profitability by creating revenue streams, efficiency and customer satisfaction. This is a positive outlook for the FSM market, but there’s a problem with the traditional field service delivery model that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

The exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the real-time connectivity it enables has led to a massive spike in consumer expectations for instantaneous customer service. As a result, organisation of all sizes and across all industries have been forced to rethink their strategies for customer service delivery, including their workforce resources and supporting technologies. In doing so, many organisations are finding that they lack the technician specialists required to deliver real-time field service to their customers, and until now there has been no technology-based solution to help organisations find and deploy those specialists.

 

Compounding this resource availability problem is the fact that every day the number of IoT connected devices in circulation is increasing, which further adds to organisations’ backlogs of field service requests. But what if the field service industry were to adopt a new delivery model – one that could shift the balance of technology versus technicians back to a sustainable equilibrium for organisations?

This would be the tipping point that could help organisations leverage FSM to realise the true promise of the IoT. And the field service industry need look no further than some of the forward thinking companies that lead the way in the sharing economy, such as Uber and Airbnb.

By introducing technology that enables the crowdsourcing of field service to independent, for hire field service technicians (just like Uber does for drivers), FSM software providers would be able to help their customers find those field service technicians anywhere and anytime. This would check organisations’ critical box of providing real-time customer service.

[quote float="right"]The bottom line is that businesses today need to focus as much – if not more – on stellar customer service as they do on building innovative products

Furthermore, by utilising crowdsourced field service (or “crowd service”) for IoT-connected technologies, organisations will not only be able to deliver real-time customer support, but could also provide service and maintenance before those technologies suffer an outage. For larger organisations, we see two scenarios: a “public crowd” of crowdsourced freelance-technicians and a “private crowd” of technicians within your business ecosystem such as contractors, partners, subsidiaries and corporate professionals. Imagine that: through crowd service, organisations can proactively ensure that they never face the dreaded downtime that can end up costing millions of dollars per hour.

 

The bottom line is that businesses today need to focus as much – if not more – on stellar customer service as they do on building innovative products, but finding the time and resources required to meet rising consumer demands for real-time service has become increasingly difficult.

With crowd service, organisations can streamline their field service operations to deliver service as quickly as the same day the customer requests it, which delivers benefits from both a cost savings and customer satisfaction standpoint. Clearly, this crowd service model has the potential to be highly disruptive in the field service industry, but unlike many other technology based developments that are often lazily called disruptive, crowdsourced field service isn’t simply a nebulous concept.

 

FSM software providers are not only laying the groundwork for crowd service as we speak, but have customers deploying the technology in the real world – and many in the FSM industry, including Coresystems, expect crowd service to revolutionise the way that organisations service their customers in 2017 and beyond. So, as organisations look for a solution to the field service resourcing problem created by the IoT, they should turn to the crowd.

 

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Debbie Geiger, Global VP of Marketing for Astea International looks at the growing importance of outsourcing amongst field service and why connectivity is the key to maintaining service standards right across third party providers…

 

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There is also a white paper on this topic which is available to fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

If you are a field service professional then you can subscribe and get the white paper sent straight to your inbox by clicking here and completing the brief application form

 

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For many field service organisations, outsourcing part of their service delivery operations has been a necessity of how they operate for a long time.  Whether it be to help meet seasonal demand or deliver service on products sold in geographies far beyond their home market, outsourcing field service operations to a specialist third party is common practice and has been for many, many years.

What has changed recently however, is that in today’s age of digitalisation, where more and more frequently the field tech call may truly be the only 1-2-1 human interaction your customer’s have with your brand, we are no longer just outsourcing repair and maintenance work, we are now outsourcing a critical customer engagement opportunity as well.

 

And in this era of digitally empowered consumers, ready to tweet, post or blog every time they have an axe to grind, you want to make pretty darn sure your third party partners are not letting you down in the CSAT stakes.

It is now absolutely critical for service organisations to increase their visibility into outsourced service processes. However, the good news is that extending your service chain no longer means losing track of how well your customers’ needs are being met.

The technology exists to provide your partners’ techs the ability to capture customer, product, equipment, and work order information.

And this holds true even when we factor in that field service companies now also have more options available when it comes to structuring their outsourcing relationships, from traditional agreements where third parties agree to complete a set number of work orders, to more integrated scenarios where the third-party provider becomes a true extension of the service organisation and its’ brand.

A Changing Mix of Outsourcing Partners

It likely comes as no surprise to you that the majority of service companies (over three quarters according to research by The Service Council) are already outsourcing at least some of their field service operations. In fact, the same research also shows that when engaged, third parties usually undertake about a third of assignments on average.

However, the general nature of outsourced service is currently changing as new models, often driven themselves by technology, have begun to emerge.

In the past service organisations would hand handed some portion of their work load across to a third-party provider, maybe a managed dealer network. However, the rapid rise of the gig economy is beginning to challenge the existing status quo.

 

Independent contractors are likely to continue to expand their presence, and some third-party providers are emerging that actually pool these contractors and manage work assignments via online portals and other similar tools, which have proven to be hugely popular to date for contractors and service organisations alike.

And with many companies facing an ageing workforce crisis this trend is only set to continue, as volumes of work increase, whilst for many, just maintaining capacity could be a very real challenge.

Basically, if your company hasn’t yet thought about how to handle the use of third-party providers and independent contractors, my advice is to go start that process right now.

Connectivity is King

Of course choosing the right partner to outsource your work to is absolutely critical to your success. Remember, you are putting the strength of your brand in these folks hands. You have to be confident that they can not just meet your customer’s expectations but exceed them, and that they can do so on each and every service call.

You must demand your partners deliver the same levels of consistent, quality service you can expect form your own team – but this can be very difficult (if not impossible) to maintain if the right controls are not put into place.

Service organisations often complain about a loss of service quality when outsourcing work, so it is critical to establish ways to track processes and controls throughout the service supply chain.

 

For both parties sake, any agreements with your third-party providers must have total accountability clearly defined and the ability to monitor and manage performance is essential for such agreements to work.

That’s why connectivity is so crucial when working with third-party providers.

You must be able to quickly communicate information electronically to your partners and receive data back in near real-time to ensure you always have the visibility needed. Of course, connectivity is also very important for providing access for the third-party provider to schedule jobs efficiently, retrieve critical customer/asset data, and effectively communicate work order information back to you.

Technology: The Key to Successful Outsourcing

The good news is that the technology is in place today from Field Service Management (FSM) solution providers like us to make the seamless transition of data from one system to another so much simpler than it would have been even just five years ago.

However, such capabilities, whilst slowly becoming more common are far from ubiquitous amongst FSM solutions and dedicated support for managing third-party maintenance teams currently remains a specialist toolset.

Therefore, it is wise to do your research to understand what solution will work best for you, and ensure that it is a stipulated part of your agreement with any third party service organisation that the tools they use to empower their engineers are in harmony with your own choices.

It’s not that hard to get working with third party service providers right in this day and age - but at the same time it is more it is critical than ever that you don’t get it wrong.

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Jam-packed with some excellent and insightful statistics pulled from a number of extensive research projects this great infographic published by ClickSoftware outlines a roadmap to improving field service engagement.

Want to know more? There is an accompanying eBook to this infographic that explores the statistics featured below and more in further detail which is available for fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

 

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Click here to subscribe to Field Service News and get the eBook "A Roadmap to Field Service Engagement" sent directly to your inbox now

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Click here to subscribe to Field Service News and get the eBook "A Roadmap to Field Service Engagement" sent directly to your inbox now

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As the conversations continue to flow here at Field Service USA this year we move into the third day of the event and once again Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News highlights his three key picks of the day's must-see sessions...

 

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Using mobile and social for Knowledge Transfer

• When: 9.15 - 9.35
• Where: Desert Salon 8
• What's it all about: Greg Parker, Portfolio Director, Building Services for Trane discusses why knowledge transfer is moving from a nice-to-have tool to something that it is critical that field service organisations embrace and outlines how his organisation have undertaken the development of their own knowledge transfer systems, looking at the challenges and benefits.

 

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Global Service Excellence: Delivering high-value consistent service through independent dealers

• When: 14.25 to 14.45
• Where: Desert Salon 8
• What's it all about: Brian Uhlenhake, Department Manager, Global Service Excellence, Caterpillar will be exploring how to bring a more consistent level of service to your customers by looking at the attributes that result in customer loyalty to establish key metrics. The session will also focus on creating a formula to measure independent dealers on key metrics and raising the level of service delivery to a very high standard across your entire network.

 

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Driving aftermarket growth with customer connectivity

• When: 14.45 - 15.15
• Where: Desert Salon 8
• What's it all about: Are you comfortable with your level of visibility into your installed base? Do you have a firm grasp on the state of your deployed equipment? How about it's current state of repair - do you know the last time the equipment in question was serviced (by you or a competitor). Just as importantly, how can you correlate this to driving repeatable, predictable revenue from your installed base? This session aims to set out how companies driving service revenue are utilising aftermarket entitlement revenue to deliver meaningful results to both their top and bottom lines.

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Coresystems
Title: Understanding Crowd Service Solutions: The Evolution Of Field Service

 

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Synopsis:

Companies looking to stay ahead of the curve and adapt to the rapid advancement of digitalization in their respective industries have long been concerned with Field Service Management (FSM).

They have reimagined their business philosophies around the conviction that customer satisfaction is a major priority and that new innovations are also shifting customer demands. Innovative CEOs and service executives know that FSM software alone will not be enough to meet real-time service expectations and needs.

They are looking to something with the groundbreaking potential to revolutionise the services industry and customer experience. They are turning to crowd service solutions. What promises does crowd service offer the field services industry?

How can you use them to improve brand loyalty? Why will they be the only way forward in the age of IoT?

This white paper outlines the premise that the only way forward is to combine field service management with crowd service technology

Overview:

The white paper explores three key areas in establishing the case for a new crowd sourced approach to field service that leverages the growing 'gig-economy' in order to meet growing customer demands whilst reducing operational costs for field service organisations.

The Service Executive Bible: What Matters Most

It is only logical that service executives would be primarily concerned with optimising the customer experience.

In fact, a study conducted to determine key issues facing service executives in comparison to other business executives highlighted how much CSOs value customer satisfaction over other KPIs.

However, with the manpower currently available to them, CSOs are running up against a brick wall. In order to continue achieving their aim of consistent customer satisfaction improvement rates, they need a bigger team of technicians and experts who can keep up with the new pace being set by the latest innovations in technology. The trend is heading towards crowd services.

It will soon be the only way to meet the demands of a growing workload.

The Evolution Of Field Service

Just as the rise of machines gave rise to more advanced and capable machines, so to have field services evolved over the years. What used to be an analog process of collecting and sharing information about customers and devices, has now become automated, and in some cases completely digitalized.

This has in large part been the response to the need for more streamlined and efficient processes. FSM software ensures that everyone is on the same page: the company, the technicians, the customers.

The white paper explores the development of FSM in depth focussing on:

• The Way It Used To Be: The Analog Approach
• Today’s Standard: Field Service Management In The 21st Century
• Where We Are Headed: Crowd Service And Predictive Maintenance

Crowd Service Technology

A crowd service is a pool of skilled, freelance service technicians who are available to respond to service calls when needed. These crowd service technicians possess the necessary IT know-how to address various technical issues. Thanks to field service management software, they also have access to internal company manuals, tutorials and videos as well as to customer and device/machine specifics for getting the job done quickly and effectively.

 

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After a series of great workshop sessions on day 1 at Field Service USA the format across the next few days moves to a more traditional focus of presentations, panel discussions and case studies.

The agenda is jam-packed with a number of insightful sessions on all of the key challenges and trends within our industry, but Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News highlights his three key picks of the day's must-see sessions...

 

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Vision from the C-Suite

• When: 8.30 - 9.00
• Where: Desert Salon 8
• What's it all about: This fireside chat style interview with Frank Bibens, President, Global Services Vertiv aims to shed some light on the major initiaives of the C-Suite at Vertiv a company that has service as a top priority. With a focus on how service plays into competitive tactics through to macro-level business trends this session should present plenty of ideas to shape your future service and business strategy.

 

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Establishing the right technology to enable the wide use of digital services

• When: 10.40 to 11.00
• Where: Desert Salon 8
• What's it all about: Decisions on hardware, data structures, integrated services and services that will enable digitalization for customers while actually making your field service team more efficient are critical to industry leadership and even survival in some cases. Scott Day, EVP Product and Business Strategy Thyssenkrupp, will share how one of the most advanced companies in the field service arena have enabled their own digital services program

 

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Panel: Building a cohesive service parts logistics program that puts the right part in the right place at the right time

• When: 15:30 to 16.10
• Where: Springs Salon G
• What's it all about: Getting the right engineer to the right job at the right time has been a mantra for many a field service organisation for some time now but it's all a moot point if you cannot get them the parts they need to do the job. The fact that this panel session has five senior industry figures debating the topic adds testament that this is an important topic that has been somewhat overlooked for far too long. Panelists include: Stephen Abate, Service Director Americas, Edwards Vacuum, Blake Bolton, Director Global Logistics and Aftermarket Services, ViaSat, Steven Caldwell, VP Product Management PTC, Mike Ross, Diretor of Product Strategy, Baxter Planning Systems and Jorge Torres Harware Services Director, Global Strategic Programs. Global Services Operations, Ericsson.

 

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The topic of knowledge transfer and knowledge capture has been increasingly prominent within the field service sector, so the Field Service USA presentation on the topic by Greg Parker, building services portfolio director for Trane, is set to offer some well-timed guidance on best practice in this area this week at Field Service USA.

Kris Oldland spoke to him ahead of the event to get his thoughts on the topic.

“When we talk about knowledge transfer, we’re talking about how we bring information from where it is in one spot to where it needs to be,” Parker begins as we open the discussion.

“Not only that, it’s about can you get it there effectively and efficiently,” he continues. “I would say it’s like knowledge-on-demand.”

“As a technician in particular, many times you may be in a situation where you need to open your laptop or even look inside a manual and dig for information. Of course, the more seasoned, experienced techs are knowledgeable through years of experience, but those who don’t know everything – due to poor training or applying that information incorrectly – need to reference manuals for correct information.”

“So this knowledge or information-on-demand becomes ever more important as time goes along and the technique as to how we transfer this knowledge becomes even more important,” Parker adds.

Of course, with many companies facing a major crisis in replacing their ageing workforce has the importance of knowledge transfer programs grown from nice to have to critical?

 

“The short answer is yes,” Parker comments. “For some companies – depending on the environment and their customers and expectations – it could be essential today, for other companies it could be still just beneficial. At some point I’m sure we could all agree that whether it’s five years, ten years or even fifteen years down the road, it is going to become essential for everyone.”

Given the importance of knowledge transfer in terms of helping companies manage the transition from a workforce of baby boomers to millennials, is it important that these knowledge transfer programs embrace social media? Or is it more important that companies get into the mind-set and understanding that the way people absorb knowledge has changed when developing? Is it about embracing the technology, the culture or do the two just go hand in hand?

“People receive and process information differently today than they did five years ago and certainly different to how they did 20 years ago,” Parker comments. “I think the changing culture is part of it, but I also think technologies that allow people to receive and process technology will continue to evolve.”

“First there was Quattro Pro and Excel, then the Internet, now social media comes along and has continued to evolve to where we are today. What we are finding is a lot of different types of applications that someone, likely a millennial, is going to be using. For example, not everyone is using just Facebook or Twitter, they are using several different means of communication to get the information they need, from the daily news to how to fix their washer and drier.”

“If the question is how important is it to embrace social and mobile channels, I still believe it is important to understand what it means for you and your company. You need to ensure you are delighting your end user; the customer, then determine how you can best achieve that throughout the entire value chain,” Parker explains.

 

“You have to ask questions like ‘if my technician has informational demands would they do a better job?’ ‘Would a technician be more confident and portray better customer service because they are able to delight the customer?’ Keep in mind most times a technician is the face to the customer and the most trusted advisor.”

“Considering that, the next question is ‘how do we do that, and is embracing social and mobile a way to do that?’”

“What we learned eight or nine years ago, was technicians wanted to be able to communicate via social and mobile channels. Our approach was to foster and enable it. Recently, we took it to the next level where technicians could not only find the information that they needed, but they could comment and share as well.”

“We had to think about what were the pros and cons of this, and have we developed into a culture who is a more willing to share information now than several years ago?”

“The answer is yes, we are more liberal in the information we share and ultimately we are more transparent, but we want to be sure we can enable our workforce in the proper way to delight our customers.”

Having gone through the process himself, what exactly does Parker believe success looks like in terms of the implementation of knowledge transfer?

“I think success should be measured with a number of probes and not just one thing,” he begins.

“For us, how we look at this is both quantitative and qualitative. From a quantitative perspective we look at things such as how much information has been shared with the new tool, and can measure that far more than we ever could before,” Parker explained. “We will also look at a macro level to see if our customer service and customer satisfaction scores are improving.”

 

“From a quantitative perspective, we have seen a shift from technicians solely calling into the technical support line for help, to now leveraging the new social platforms which are faster, more validated and accurate.”

“However, it is not all about the metrics,” added Parker. “We wanted feedback from the technicians themselves to find out how well the new platforms were working, we used those testimonials to improve the organisation and determined what types of best practices were being shared using the knowledge transfer and social platform.”

So what advice does Parker have for companies looking to emulate the success Trane has had with their knowledge transfer programs?

“Look internally to your company, understand how your current communication process is working for your customers and what are their needs and wants,” Parker replied. “Are you meeting those needs as well as you want to or should be?”

“Every company has a different culture and different processes. You have to truly understand how your existing process is working, where you want it to be and then design a road map to get you there.”

 

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