AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Kris Oldland

Ahead of this years Field Service USA event in Palm Springs, The team at WBR have put together this great infographic which takes a look at some of the key areas that will be under the lens this year...

 

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Want to know more? There is also a more detailed white paper that accompanies this infographic which you can access by clicking here (note: external link with registration required) 

 

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Thinking of attending Field Service USA this year? Field Service News subscribers are entitled to a 25% discount to this and many other events across the USA, Europe and the Middle East!

Field service professionals can subscribe now for free here and then simply email the subscriber benefits team on subscriber.benefits@fieldservicenews.com to get your relevant discount codes!

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  ClickSoftware
Title: The Uberization of Service: A consumer and supplier view

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Synopsis:

With the advent of real-time communications and new technologies such as social media, wearables, IoT, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, there are countless opportunities for businesses to transform customer service. Key research from ClickSoftware presented in this white paper looks to the challenges of the near future of field service...

ClickSoftware, have commissioned a global industry and consumer research project to further understand consumer expectations when it comes to services being delivered to the home.

By comparing this with field service supplier plans to implement and enhance their offering and roll out new technologies, the survey set out to make comparisons between the two in a rapidly changing landscape, and uncover any discernable gaps or challenges in the provision of a great customer experience. The findings of this research are in this report.

Download this white paper published by ClickSoftware to find out:

• How the ‘Uberization of service’ is driving a more demanding, hard-to-satisfy, customer base
• Why 61% of all respondents globally have cited ‘customer satisfaction’ as a key priority
• Detailed analysis of Consumer vs. Supplier Findings and how the needs of customers and focus of suppliers marry

Overview:

The modern day consumer has a new perspective on customer service, and irrespective of sector or business, they expect and demand a level of real-time communication and visibility. Service levels provided from retailers, such as Amazon and Uber, are driving expectations across the board, forcing other industries to play catch up.

With this in mind, ClickSoftware, the leading provider of field service management software, commissioned global industry and consumer research to further understand consumer expectations when it comes to services being delivered to the home. By comparing this with field service supplier plans to implement and enhance their offering and roll out new technologies, the survey set out to make comparisons between the two in a rapidly changing landscape, and uncover any

With the advent of real-time communications and new technologies such as social media, wearables, IoT, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, there are countless opportunities for businesses to transform customer service. The research highlights the differences in expectations versus reality, critical in an age where organisations can no longer expect customers to accept the old way of operating.

 

It also points out one key difference: suppliers are focused on the delivery of new technologies rather than recognising that optimised, real-time communications and a transparency for service delivery are high on the customer agenda. The survey results also highlight some key differences in expectations and communications methods by geographic region, underscoring the complexity of running an international field service business, where end users in each region expect different things from customer service.

The white paper then moves into three key sections:

Executive Summaries: Consumer Survey

Overall, the survey responses show customer expectations are increasing across the board, with the ‘Uberization of service’ driving this and generating a more demanding, hard-to-satisfy, customer base. Essentially, customers know that the advent of technology now allows for engineer location tracking and up-to-the-minute communication, and they have come to expect this

Executive Summaries: Supplier Survey

When field service suppliers were asked which measure of field service management their organisation values most, an average of 61% of all respondents cited ‘customer satisfaction’ as the top field service measure, with as many as two-thirds of those polled in Australia selecting this answer.

Comparative Survey Analysis:

The final section of the white paper is the most detailed and insightful, bringing the data from these two essential pieces of research to identify the most important trends appearing on both sides of the service spectrum. With the data laid out in clear graphical formats accompanied by well thought out and intelligent analysis, it is advised reading for any senior field service professional.

 

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In his role as Director of IFS Labs Bas de Vos, is at the heart of driving innovation forward in our industry. So who better to talk to find out what technologies we should be eagerly awaiting and what is the process to take these technologies from cool ideas through to practical applications...

FSN: What are the three most exciting technologies that have yet to come fully to light that you and your team are currently working on?

BdV: Firstly it is augmented reality or mixed reality as I see it, secondly I would say that drones are still in there as well and the third one is something that we have been working on for some time that we keep coming back to - autonomous assistance. New ways of interacting with business applications - can I talk to my device? Can I chat with my device - it’s a very interesting subject. We have a prototype and we are going to researching and further developing that.

Whether it will be an IFS product one day, that is something that with Labs I can never say up front - but I see the development now in the consumer space with speech control like Siri and Cortana and on the other hand chat-bots for Facebook and Snap Chat etc it’s all very interesting, so we shall see.

FSN: Your team demonstrated a great example of Drones, IoT and FSM software all coming together at the last IFS World Conference - is that product ready to go or was it just a proof of concept demo?

BdV: Well, yes it is ready to go but it won’t be an actual IFS product - we won’t have the IFS drone product out in the market - definitely not.

No, what we wanted to do was demonstrate how companies who want to do stuff like this can do so through using our IoT business connector. Basically everything that we demonstrated at the World Conference in that session, the integration of drone technology, image capture and recognition and automated data analysis was made all possible through the IoT business connector.

FSN: How much of what you and your team do is about actually giving your customers the ideas of what is possible to allow them to innovate themselves?

BdV: If you look at the mission we have as IFS labs it is threefold. Firstly, we exist to guide, basically we do a lot of research. We don’t get to only do the cool stuff - so it’s not only playing with drones! We do a lot of proper research into database technologies etc. So we are there to guide the R&D teams on what we think they should be picking up and taking further.

Secondly, we are here to talk to influencers, to help explain to the wider world what we are doing at IFS and what the purposes of IFS Labs as a technology incubator is all about.

Then thirdly, and perhaps the most important part of the job for me is that we are here to inspire our clients to do more with their business applications. If you look at my work personally it’s an equal split across these core functions. 

FSN: In general do you ever feel an urgency to push a project out whilst it may be still in Beta or do you think it is better to wait until the product is fully refined and completely free of bugs?

BdV: That’s a very good question.

First of all do I feel pressure to deliver IFS products around any given technology? The answer is always no and the reason for that is fairly simple. We are not here to compete with say Microsoft HoloLens in terms of technology. We will not be providing the actual AR technology ourselves.

What we need to do -which is part of the mission of IFS labs is to make sure that our business application is ready for when these technologies do become viable products.

What I mean by that is we need to be able to have an app ready to go on HoloLens to take advantage of that technology, or any other similar new emerging technologies.

Are we the guys that will actually create the technology? No I don’t think that is our core business and to be honest I don’t think that we would have the skill set to do that as well as others who are focussed on that area.

Our task at labs is to keep on monitoring the market and being able to leverage these exciting technologies once they are industry ready.

 

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Field Service News Editor-in-Chief Kris Oldland takes the opportunity to catch up with Tomasz Sinkiewicz, Comarch at the recent Field Service Medical conference shortly after he'd given a great presentation about why connectivity and not mobility was the dominant buzz word currently in the medical sector.

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Field service professionals can subscribe now for free here and then simply email the subscriber benefits team on subscriber.benefits@fieldservicenews.com to get your discount code!

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Kris Oldland, talks to Lucio Golinelli, Senior Director of Service & Delivery with Sky Italia about the digital transformation they are undertaking and how it is helping to drive new profits....

There were a number of interesting case studies presented at the recent Maximize Europe event held by ServiceMax from companies across many different industry verticals.

However, one that really caught the eye was that of Sky Italia who worked closely with the field service management provider as part of an ambitious company wide digital transformation program.

As Europe’s largest Pay-TV company with dominant presence in the Pay TV sector across five European countries (UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy and Austria) Sky is a household name that resonates across the continent. However, the Pay-TV vertical has become increasingly competitive over the last few years and customer experience and satisfaction are two key differentiators in the sector.

So it was perhaps no surprise that improving customer experience through digital transformation was at the heart of the organisation’s move to dramatically change their business operating systems.

Indeed, Lucio Golinelli, a Senior Director of Service & Delivery with Sky Italia who has responsibility for both field services and the supply chain explained that the key benefits his organisation sought through the digital transformation - whereby they moved away from their traditional processes of field service delivery to a more digital centric process, were equally centred around both customer experience and financial KPIs.

However, from Golinelli’s side of the business this meant working closely with ServiceMax to find a solution that worked across their whole supply chain rather than simply adopting an off the shelf solution.

The main reason for this is that when it comes to installations, Sky Italia operate within the framework of an outsourced model.

“We have a multi level approach in that we have 400 company partners, which tend to be smaller companies or ‘entrepreneurs’ rather than large organisations - who then manage for Sky approximately 2500 installers,” Golinelli explained to me as he talked me through the challenges he faced throughout the transformation process.

“For Sky Italia, installation is not a revenue stream but a cost stream,” he continued. “Because for us the installation is just an enabler to provide the services to our customers.” So whilst traditional benefits of increased installer productivity may be a side effect of the implementation this was never an end-goal for Sky Italia.

Perhaps the biggest challenge Golinelli and his team faced was how to fully integrate their own needs - as an effectively B2B organisation dealing with the partner ecosystem, and their end users - who are a B2C market. Success here however, would provide Sky Italia with granular levels of information that can allow them to discover new up-sell opportunities.

 

In order to best achieve this Sky Italia simultaneously replaced their old FSM, CRM and marketing tools bringing them all together on one new Cloud based solution and working alongside ServiceMax to find a customised solution for their FSM tools.

Currently in the process of undertaking this transformation program, digital visibility will be built across the whole chain from Sky through to their end customers. This is vital as it means they are not just changing the way they interact with their customers, but even changing the interface with which they undertake such interactions.

Of course, the main challenge for any company that outsources its service is that they essentially need at least two flavours of the same solution. From a Global operation with a nationwide presence, Golinelli’s team will need different dashboards, KPIs and control rooms to those that the majority of their partners will require.

It has taken Sky Italia working directly with ServiceMax over two years to develop a solution that works across Sky themselves, their partners and their customers but it seems that all that effort is now beginning to reap it’s rewards.

They have already launched the initial phase of the development with almost 1,000 installers already on track - and Golinelli appears immensely proud to see his team flourishing.

“There are two aims, “Golinelli explains.

“Firstly, the real benefit of improved efficiency for us is less errors,and in particular less mistakes in administration - that has now been largely overcome and is being dramatically reduced.”

Secondly, it is also important that if Sky Italia’s new processes are to succeed, that the various new tools used in isolation.

“We moved from customised platform for CRM, custom FSM software, and a customised platform for marketing to a common cloud solution shared across all divisions,” Golinelli expands.

“Now we have all of the key operations based on the same cloud platform. This is very effective as the power of this system is the real-time exchange of information, from installer to an operator in a call centre or vice versa. We can also pick up a lot of anecdotal information from the installers and then feed that back to marketing, again in real-time.”

 

It is in this last concept that Sky Italia are truly seeing the largest benefit, the shared platform gives them a much better opportunity to upsell their products.

For example let’s say an installation is being undertaken and the installer can see there is a Manchester Utd flag. In real-time he can then check if the customer has the subscription for Sky Sports and can either try to make the upsell himself or feed that information straight back to his marketing department.

Although only mid-way through the process, the results so far have been impressive to say the least. The field service division is now responsible for generating more revenue than any other part of the business having seen a rise in the percentage of revenue generated by installers leap from 11% to 21%.

For Golinelli, the significant factor in their success so far is the easy movement of data from one business unit to the next. Meanwhile, for Sky Italia, the shift to a digital workflow is already beginning to reap it’s rewards as they move field service from a cost model to a cost + revenue model whilst customer satisfaction levels increase at the same time. Perfecto!

 

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The term closest competitors could have been coined for Xplore Technologies and Motion Computing. Whilst they both competed in the niche market place of rugged computing, physically they were even closer - both being based on the same stretch of road in Texas. So it was almost inevitable that the two would eventually merge, which they did in April 2015 - making them the world’s 2nd largest manufacturer of rugged tablets overnight.

But when something is inevitable it doesn’t always mean it’s easy. Kris Oldland spoke exclusively to Mark Holleran COO, Xplore Technologies to find out more about the recent past, the present and the near future of the Texan Rugged Specialists.

It is testament to Holleran’s hands on approach to managing Xplore Technologies and his resulting busy diary that it has taken the best part of three months of diary juggling on both sides of the Atlantic before we are finally able to schedule a call that actually worked for this interview.

With this in mind, ahead of the call I was expecting it to perhaps be a somewhat hurried affair, with Holleran spouting off some pre-scripted soundbites that most CEOs seem to usually have to hand - particularly when being questioned about M&A activity. Generic quotes about mutual respect, optimistic futures and grandiose visions of world domination that to put it politely aren’t never quite in tune with reality.

Fortunately, it turns out my instincts were wrong.

Whether it was a result of the legendary friendly nature of Texans so often commented on, Holleran’s genuine passion for his company and the industry at large (he has been with Xplore for over 13 years and in the tech space for over 30) or as is more likely a combination of both factors, Holleran proved to be both engaging and insightful during the hour and a bit that we spoke.

Indeed, he was not only prepared to take the time to answer the questions put to him with thoughtful and reasoned responses, but also with a level of straight honesty that is all too often missing in trade journal interviews today.

Often, the real insight within an interviewee’s responses can get buried under wave after wave of hyperbole and over exaggeration that often needs to be translated back from marketingspeak.

At the same time it seems that many trade journalists are frightened to ask anything too probing these days in case it upsets any commercial relationships.

Whilst as Editor-in-Chief, I have the ability to control at least one side of this set of challenges to help ensure we continue to publish content our readers value, I’ll readily admit that some interviewees make our lives as business journalists that much easier when they just speak from the heart and shoot from the hip.

 

Fortunately in Holleran, it seemed I had discovered a kindred spirit in someone that believes in the virtues of just saying it as it is and letting the story speak for itself.

That said, it does of course help when the story is as compelling as Xplore’s acquisition of Motion which suddenly catapulted them to being the world’s second largest manufacturer of rugged tablets, seemingly almost overnight.

As mentioned above the prospect of Xplore and Motion coming together at some point had a certain sense of inevitability about it.

However, most analysts would have predicted it would have been Motion who acquired Xplore rather than the other way around and the speed of Xplore’s acquisition of their rivals from up the road certainly took a few in the industry by surprise.

“I think Motion was foreclosed on Friday, on the Monday we bought the assets and the next Friday we had a BBQ where there was 53 people all together” Holleran explains when we discuss the speed at which everything was completed.

Indeed, the shared culture of the two companies that were literally based on the same road in Texas, was already firmly in place well before the acquisition happened.

Holleran recounts how at that inaugural group BBQ one very astute individual asked all those who had previously worked for both companies to stand up - about 40 people did so.

In fact, there had already been previous conversations about bringing the two companies together as Holleran explained.

“It was originally the Motion founders that approached Xplore, but my predecessor wasn’t receptive to that, we did talk and in the end we did try and help each other.”

“For me, did I think we would we eventually work out something – yes I’d like to think so. Then we took the opportunity when it came around and fortunately for us we were in the better financial health - so it was us who acquired them,” he adds.

What is particularly interesting however, is that despite both companies sitting in the rugged tablet space, being in the same location and as a result of that proximity even having an informal movement of personnel between one another, the product ranges were actually very complimentary and with very little overlap.

 

As Holleran explains “If you look at Xplore’s history we were in the Ultra Rugged tablets space, we made the most rugged PC in the world. Then about five years ago we decided to enter to the fully rugged space but we didn’t really compete with Motion, who would have been in what we viewed as the semi-rugged space. So we saw a unique opportunity to acquire an asset that was very complimentary, their products are 100% complimentary to ours. Their channel was also very complimentary with around 80-90%, distribution which was also something they did which we didn’t do, They were working on a dual tier model and we were working on a single tier  model,” he adds.

Basically, what Xplore did well, Motion was weaker at and vice versa and this also translated into vertical and geographical exposure.

“Some major companies and customers are now embracing our products more because Motion was number three in the market and we’ve got over 20 years experience,” Holleran asserts before making the bold, yet perfectly valid statement that with Motion and their product range brought into the Xplore fold they now “have the god given right now to expect to be on every major rugged tablet RFP.”

At this point we do need to address the elephant in the room. Namely the fact that the reason Xplore was able to acquire their bigger competitor was largely due to the fact that Motion had suffered from issues in the supply chain, that ultimately led to financial challenges.

Was this an issue that was now fully resolved?

“There are always issues in the supply chain but if you understand that and you work closely in the supply chain they can be overcome,” insists Holleran.

“Myself, I travel to Taipei once a quarter. And don’t forget we’ve been doing this longer than anyone else. We were there 14/15 years ago so we understand their culture and their history, we have long standing relationships over there and we have an excellent reputation there,” he adds.

Yet, supply chain challenges are not the only potential threats to the ongoing success of Xplore Technologies. Is the rugged tablet market itself in a healthy position?

It is all very well being the second largest maker of rugged tablets in the world- but should the market move away from tablets and embrace the newly emerged form factor of the convertible or detachable does that leave them exposed?

 

I was keen to get Holleran’s opinion on products such as the Panasonic CF-20 - a fully rugged detachable that offers the dual benefit of being both a laptop and tablet at the same time. Will we ever see a similar device from the Xplore team?

“We never say never but our speciality and history is in tablets and we consider ourselves the world experts on rugged tablets – we’ve been doing it for twenty years which is longer than Panasonic has,“ he replies when I put the question to him.

“We’re investigating that area – but I would say that basic physics says that you cannot build a notebook or a 2-in1 device as rugged as a tablet”

“It all depends on your needs – if you're really keyboard centric and data intensive then a 2-in-1 is for you, but as soon as you put a keyboard onto a device it is not a truly mobile device to use. You can carry it, but you can’t just pull it up within one hand and then use it, that’s only the function of a tablet. So if you need mobility, if you need to have one hand free to keep other things working – then you really do need a tablet,” he added.

Of course, another threat to rugged manufacturers is that of the consumer OEMs.

In the past the argument from rugged manufacturers was a fairly straight forward one. If you worked in an environment where your tablet could get a bit wet or accidentally knocked about then you really needed to go with something rugged.

However, with consumer manufacturers releasing products that are themselves becoming more rugged such as recent Samsung products being IP68 certified - are the lines between business-rugged, semi-rugged and rugged all blurring somewhat? If so why should we invest in devices from specialist rugged manufacturers such as Xplore?

“I would say that ruggedization has various hats,” Holleran begins.

 

“If you are looking at an IP rating, which means it is protected against dust and water that’s one thing, but you can’t use these devices in extreme temperatures, you can’t see them in the bright sun, you still can’t drop these devices,” he adds.

“There is a need for different types of devices but those devices are not enterprise class PCs. They’re basically for reading your emails, watching a video or game – if you want them for doing a dispatch, accessing your ERP or picking system for example then no – they’re not going to run.”

“Our market is not inside an office or going out occasionally. Our market is in nasty plants, outside, with rain, sleet, snow, hot, cold, vibrations from vehicles. So if anything we see it [competition from consumer brands] as good for us as it lends more credibility to the need for fully rugged devices.”

“It gives some people a better understanding of the fact that in different environments you’ll need different types of ruggedization and there are considerable degrees of ruggedization. There are different needs for different people of course.”

For Holleran it all comes down to a simple question of reliability, which given the often mission critical nature of both installation and maintenance work carried out in the field, is of course paramount for most field service organisations.

 

“Basically it’s simple – when the product is a tool for your job, in other words if your computer is not working then you cannot do your job – then you really need a rugged device. If you’ve got your dispatch system, your inventory systems, your schedule, your maps, your components then if that computer is not working you can’t do your job – so people in that scenario want a rugged device that’s going to last.”

“Our marketing strategy is quality; our products exceed our customer’s specs.”

“If you want a product that can stay in the field for three or four years, then you need a rugged device, you can’t put an enterprise device in – it just won’t last,” he concludes.

What about the sometimes mooted concept of just having a rack of pre-loaded cheap tablets, so when one device fails an engineer can just pick up a new one from HQ?

“The problem with this idea problem is how do you get to all your data?” Holleran retorts.

“If your computer breaks, that data has then got to be put on a new computer and then you have to make sure that the new computer has all the security protocols etc, so your talking about days - maybe even a week if there is a backlog. A week where nothing happens and a guy can’t work? Do they just get an extra vacation whilst you lose money?” He asks.

From our conversation it seemed clear to me that Holleran not only has a strong depth of knowledge about his own market and the wider sectors he operates in, but also has similar depth of knowledge in understanding his customers needs and their workflows. I was keen to discuss this further so asked him how prevalent was such knowledge of their customer’s workflows across the company and was this ingrained into the success of Xplore to date.

“That is very important to us – Xplore is very much a customer centric company,” he begins.

“We will even put features into a product for the customer if required. For example, in our Rugged Android D10 we have HDMI-in port which allows it to work as a Telco testing device. So yes, that is one of our core competencies, it’s critical to the company and is a foundation which the business has been built upon.“

Indeed, it seems that the future for Xplore Technologies is well plotted and in Holleran they have a leader who has a clear understanding of where their strengths lie and how they can leverage those to best serve the markets they operate within.

“We still have new products under development the XSLATE will be the brand. We will continue to be a premium supplier with innovative technology; we have some new innovations under development,” he asserts.

“We intend to be the world’s expert authority on rugged tablets and peripherals attached to that. I tell people if you really want to buy a rugged notebook go buy Panasonic.”

“If you want to buy a rugged tablet come to Xplore – that’s what we do and we are the world's best at it.”

 

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In a year full of M&A activity that will impact our sector in ways as yet unknown the biggest story of all was certainly GE Digital’s acquisition of industry leader ServiceMax. Kris Oldland spoke exclusively to Dave Yarnold, CEO ServiceMax the morning before one of the biggest press conferences of his life...

KO: Exciting day for you folks is probably a bit of an understatement?

DY: Yes, it’s a very exciting day for us. Today signals the completion of a truly remarkable cycle and the beginning of a new chapter. Although, we’ve been saying it’s a new chapter, but it feels like it’s a new book because what we have been through over the last 9 years has been a book in itself. So yes, very exciting.

KO: Having just sold the business for close to a Billion dollars after 9 years of determined effort and hard work - no one would blame you if you wanted to spend the rest of your days sitting on a beach in the Caribbean  sipping Margaritas - but that doesn’t quite sound like the Dave Yarnold way?

What’s the next step for you - are you going to be fully driving this next stage of the company’s evolution alongside the original team?

DY: Absolutely. I’m all in! 

We’ve talked in the past about how I think that this segment is incredibly important and financially why service is really significant for all industrial sectors.

In some respects there has been a challenge for us to get awareness at the CEO and CFO level of the significance of what we do and I think to get the amplification of what we do with the GE brand and the additional component of what GE Digital are also doing, that is going to open a lot of doors. I just can’t wait.

I was in a meeting the other day with the chairman of a top five Telecom company globally, so the opportunity to be with a company that can open doors like that, and to be able to tell our story and have an impact at that level - it’s really, really exciting.

I think about all the things that we have been talking about in terms of creating an operating system for service and I now believe we can create that operating system for the industrial sector as a whole. I think service plays a key component, a very central component of that. But also with the ability to access data, and IoT and analytics and performance management and who knows what else... I think we can build out a complete platform for industrial companies and that is very exciting to me.

 

KO: One of the things that made ServiceMax such a special company, and one that grew so rapidly within the sector, was that whilst the product was software, the company intrinsically understood field service. Have GE Digital bought into that ethos or is that something you are going to have to push internally?

DY: They are one of our great examples of one of our customers who is benefiting from that approach and they have been so profitable from that.

However, to be fair their initial thrust around GE Digital has been technology orientated so the Predix platform and the ability to access, ingest and  analyse data - that’s primarily what they have been about to date and that’s a technology play.

I think now that they have acquired Meridium and ServiceMax - the message will probably change and it will probably be a bit more solution oriented. At this stage I’m still guessing as well, but the fact is that they have just spent a Billion and a Half dollars to acquire two pretty significant applications.

 

I think all of their previous messaging was reflective of their existing technology in digital and now as we move forward my guess is that it will begin to change and evolve in line with their product portfolio.

KO: ServiceMax is of course your baby, and we’ve spoken at length in the past about the fact that it was an fundamental passion for service that separated you from many of your competitors. What was it that convinced you that GE Digital would be a good home for the company to go on and flourish?

DY: First off I didn’t want ServiceMax to end up as another portfolio component within one of the major software players. That was just too obvious and not really interesting for us as an end state.

What I loved about GE was the fact that they really do understand service, they have an appreciation for the importance of service and they drive the majority of their profits through service. 

So there is a shared core appreciation of service that is integral to both our companies, which is a great starting platform. But they are also a company full of smart folks, who can push us even further onwards. I genuinely think that together we can achieve some really, really great things.

 

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Oneserve, field service management software specialist based in Exeter, UK has announced a key strategic partnership with machine learning and predictive analytics specialist BiG Consultancy. The partnership will see the companies enhance and accelerate Oneserve Infinite, Oneserve’s Predictive Service Management offering.

Whilst many continue to talk around the prospects and future potential of machine learning and predictive analytics, this partnership make it a reality.

Chris Proctor, CEO at Oneserve,  who was listed in the Field Service News #FSN20 list of key influencers this year, explains more: “Today we live in a world where our cost palatability is decreasingly rapidly, whilst customer expectations of service delivery are increasing at a seismic pace, driven largely by technology and innovations in our ‘consumer’ lives.

“By looking outside the conventional confines of traditional field service principles, technologies and systems we have been able to learn and bring on board a number of solutions and make them accessible to our customers,” concluded Proctor.

 

Initially the Oneserve team looked into the potential of IoT, but found that whilst it provided a decent tool as an edge based trigger, essentially customers could be told that there was a problem without being able to do much about it; there was still going to be a significant downtime, but with perhaps just more time to try and work out how to manage it.

It was when in 2016 that Oneserve began to see what the alignment of a holy trinity of technologies, Big Data, IoT and Artificial Intelligence, could mean to customers that the true potential of a solution began to become clear.

“We’ve used Artificial Intelligence within our current scheduling engine for some time,” explained Proctor.

“However, combining the three provided the ability to look much wider and understand the relationships between failures and the contributing factor. This in turn, provided capabilities that could predict failure months in advance, a hugely significant step for us. In some industries, the costs associated with a responsive breakdown repair job can be as much as 20 times higher than the planned job.”

Partnering with BiG was a key part in Oneserve’s strategy to accelerate developments in this area and develop meaningful, real-world use cases where it could deliver significant advantages to customers. BiG has worked successfully with high profile customers in the past in this type of area including the likes of CrowdCube, The MoD, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme and Microsoft.

BiG co-founder, Gerry McNicol commented. “BiG is excited to be partnering with FSM leaders Oneserve on this innovative project. The combination of Predictive Asset Maintenance and Field Service Management is a fantastic example of how real benefit can be gained for both customer and supplier.

 

“It’s a superb use case for IoT and Machine Learning technology showing tangible and measureable benefits. Once you’ve seen it in action you wish you’d done this sooner,” McNicol concluded.

“So far we’ve been working to predict failures using our system to prevent them and to use deep learning within our existing product to optimise ‘job’ success,” commented Proctor. “Providing users with the ability to know when a given task is going to fail and why, allows for changes to be made pre-emptively. However, we have huge plans at harnessing the power of Oneserve Infinite and Deep Learning in an increasing number of ways and BiG will be critical part of that.”

Oneserve Infinite is able to provide customers with:

• A system that can autonomously recognise a ‘failure event’ with significantly more warning, ensuring that the relevant teams are notified and operatives are scheduled efficiently to undertake planned maintenance to prevent downtime.
• Detailed maintenance schedules of work that will be required over a given time
• ‘Asset Commercial Viability’ projections to help companies understand the remaining useful lifespan on their assets
• On a Service Management platform this technology transforms ‘Responsive Breakdown Repairs’ into ‘Planned Maintenance Events, offering customers, and indeed, theirs, with vast cost efficiencies and a level of service excellence that will set the benchmark for the future

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Trimble
Title: A Quick to Field Service Metrics

 

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Synopsis:

Field Service Managers face a big challenge balancing customer service with operational efficiency. It can be often hard to know how each important aspect is performing; and making changes in one area can affect the other. A successful Service Manager will leverage KPIs to gain visibility into their operations; helping them to manage both aspects of their business.

This White Paper published by Trimble Pulse takes a look at the some of the key considerations as to what metrics field service managers should be focussing on.

The white paper includes sections on:

• The importance of KPIs
• The top 5 field service KPIs
• A guide to benchmarking your own KPIs against best in-class field service organisations.

Overview:

Historically, field service organisations measured their success based upon the cost of service delivery and revenue generation. However, as competition in the industry heats up and customer expectations reach an all-time high, measuring additional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) has become critical to success.

Field service companies need to know what is working and what isn’t in their operations in order to make improvements. This is easier said than done.

With so much data flowing in from multiple sources, in various formats and through an array of tools, determining what is useful can be a minefield for service organisations. Nearly 30 per cent of field service managers believe their organisation is ineffective at using the data they collect and just 1 in 5 believe they get the information they need from field service data to help do their job.

 

Field Service Managers need to extract data from their operations in two ways.

Firstly, they need instant, accurate information on which they can make on-the-spot decisions and secondly, performance management analytics should also be gathered so they can benchmark performance trends and learn from  experiences.

Ultimately, you cannot improve on what is not already being measured.

Identifying KPIs, measuring them and setting goals for improving them will reap rewards for any service operation.

Importance of KPIs

In order for field service organisations to obtain and retain customers, they must have a solid understanding of how their field operations are performing at all times. When utilised well, KPIs keep the service team focused and, most importantly, identify where improvements in the business are needed.

The business dynamics of delivering field service have changed, and customers are demanding higher levels of service. Field service organisations need to adapt accordingly which often means empowering their technicians with the tools and knowledge to fix things the first time – every time.

KPIs can help measure how well an organisation is meeting this objective as well as provide data that will help improve the effectiveness of each technician in completing their job.

Top 5 field service KPIs

The white paper takes an in-depth look at the following KPIs

• Customer Satisfaction
• SLA compliance
• Technician Productivity
• Technician Utilisation
• First-time-fix rate

How do you compare

The white paper explores research by Trimble Pulse which highlights that there is a lot of room for field service organisations to improve upon when it comes to using field service data. The research surveyed field service managers to find how their organisations use KPIs and whether they are successful at leveraging KPIs to improve business productivity and efficiency.

Trimble asked a range of questions looking to establish what field service organisations perceive to be the top most important KPIs to how they use KPIs to inform business decision making, that’s if they use KPIs at all. Without this insight, how can you make decisions which enhance business productivity, cost efficiency and create loyal customers? Essentially, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

 

The final section of this white paper explores the findings of this research and outlines best-practice approaches to field service metrics.

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