AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Kris Oldland

Tablets have proven to be a huge success amongst field service companies providing a good mix of portability and processing power. However, when it comes to significant data input or powering particularly CPU intensive applications the laptop still remains king. Therefore the rise in prominence of the convertible laptop makes perfect sense in the world of industry. 

Here we look at Getac’s latest convertible model the V110...

What the manufacturers say...

The breakthrough design of the Getac V110 rugged convertible enables the computer to be amazingly strong while also being unbelievably light. It truly is a revolution in rugged computing.

At 1.98kg and 34mm thin, it’s 27% lighter and 30% thinner than the previous generation.

The V110 is built to perform, featuring a powerful 5th generation Intel® Core™ processor, flash storage and responsive graphics. It’s the fastest rugged convertible we’ve ever built. The V110’s dual batteries are 66% smaller and 57% lighter than previous generations, and the unique, hot-swappable dual-battery design allows for potentially infinite, uninterrupted battery life.

This enables you to remove one of the two rechargeable batteries and replace it with a fresh battery without ever shutting down apps or your Windows OS.

The V110 rugged convertible has been built using the highest quality materials to make it unflinchingly resilient.

The V110’s main chassis structure is precision cast using magnesium alloy, an incredibly strong structural metal that also happens to be one of the lightest in the world for its strength.

We combined that with an advanced rugged polymer in areas of less impact and rubberised absorption polymer at the main points of contact.

First impressions...

A quick look at the V110 and there is absolutely no mistaking this device for what it is - i.e. a heavy duty rugged device that can handle itself in the field.

In fact the V110 would look right at home in a modern war film set in the deserts of the Middle East such is its rugged outward appearance that reveal its manufacturer’s roots as a leading provider of rugged devices to the military sector.

However, up close and in hand the device is a lot smaller than one might imagine and certainly comes in a more compact form factor than some of its fully rugged convertible counterparts.

Weighing in at just 1.98kg the V110 is over 15% lighter than Panasonic’s C19 and over 20% lighter than Durabook’s U12Ci semi rugged convertible making it certainly one of if not the lightest device of it’s kind in the market currently.

This is largely to do with the V110’s slim depth which at a particularly sleek 34mm which is considerably smaller than other similar rugged convertible devices.

With all of it’s I/O ports tucked away behind lockable, rubberised seals it is perhaps a touch surprising that the V110 isn’t a fully submersible -  however, we shall touch on that a little later.

In terms of actually using the device, the full size keyboard is comfortable in hand, and both the touch screen and tracker pad are pleasingly responsive.

Meanwhile the 800 nits LumiBond® display with Getac sunlight readable technology, was certainly a match for the brightest British sunshine available during the testing period and there were no problems with using the device in the outdoors at any point.

Using the device in laptop mode, whilst it was obviously a more robust device than your average laptop, there was never a feeling of trading usability for ruggedity. However, this did change substantially when switching to tablet mode.

In fairness this isn’t particularly the fault of the V110 itself more so the ‘convertible’ form factor as a whole. In tablet mode comparisons will naturally be made with other rugged tablets such as the Xplore XSlate B10 which being just a tablet rather than a convertible, is of course a lighter, more portable rugged computing tool.

 

Essentially, if the sole reason you are considering a convertible is for a keyboard then a rugged tablet with a bluetooth keyboard would be a more slimline and mobile solution for your field service engineers.

However, the point remains of course that the biggest selling point of any laptop over its tablet rivals would be what kind of processing power, storage and optimised inputs and outputs can be squeezed into the extra space under the bonnet.

So let's take a closer look.....

Processing power

The V110 comes in four different processing power flavours with the top end specifications boasting an Intel Core i7 vPro Technology chip set with an Option Intel Core i7-5600U vPro Processor 2.6GHz Max. 3.2GHz with Intel Turbo Boost Technology and a 4MB Intel Smart Cache.

When it comes to storage the V110 has 4GB DDR3L which is can be expandable to 16GB and has storage options of a 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB solid state drive.

This gives the V110 enough processing power  handle almost any application that could be required of it within a field service environment.

In fact at its optimum configuration the V110 is pretty much at the top of the pile. The only other fully rugged convertible that can keep pace with the V110 is Panasonic’s CF19.

Operating system

Given the power the V110 holds under its bonnet it makes complete sense for the convertible to be on the Windows platform in order to support the more comprehensive applications that may be used by field service engineers who would require such a powerful tool.

However, what is an impressive inclusion is that in terms of OS the V110 is available in three different versions of Windows - Windows 7, 8 and 10.

This flexibility could be particularly useful for those companies that are making the transition from one iteration of the operating system to another with Windows 7 proving to be the XP of its generation in that is a reliable and robust platform which many companies are reluctant to move away from.

However, many of those that have made the switch to Windows 8 are keen to move on quickly to 10 due to some of the well documented flaws in its predecessor. And it is Windows 10 that shows off the full capabilities of the V110's flexibility as a convertible laptop with the OS being a perfect match for the V110's impressive specifications.

The Ins & Outs:

Aside from the obvious benefits of having a keyboard for data input, perhaps one of the biggest reasons for selecting any form of laptop over a tablet equivalent is the available I/Os - and in this regard the V110 certainly doesn’t disappoint.

As mentioned above all ports are protected within closable rubber sealed enclosures.

In total the V110 boasts:

• Serial port (9-pin; D-sub) x 1
• Headphone out / mic-in Combo x 1
• DC in Jack x 1
• USB 3.0 (9-pin) x 2
• USB 2.0 (4-pin) x 1
• LAN (RJ45) x 1
• HDMI x 1
• Docking connector (24-pin) x 1

Connectivity:

In terms of connectivity options the V110 comes with dual band Intel Wireless-AC 7265; 802.11ac meaning it should be able to take the maximum speed from any availableWi-Fi signal whether it be on the 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz frequency.

The V110 is also capable of supporting internet speeds of up-to 1000 mbits per second across an Ethernet connection which could be useful for the transfer of large files from the field back to HQ.

The convertible also comes with Bluetooth 4.0 which should provide reliable, stable and fast connectivity with mobile devices.

One area where the V110 is perhaps let down however, is when it comes to mobile internet.

Whilst the device does have the optional inclusion of Gobi mobile broadband, for field service engineers mobile broadband is absolutely essential for jobs where there may be no conveniently available wi-fi signal.

Similarly a dedicated GPS is only available as an optional extra also. Connectivity is an essential factor in selecting the right tool for our field service engineers and whilst the V110 is clearly capable of being able to deliver high end levels of mobile connectivity, given the importance of such tools for communications in the field one can’t help but feel these should perhaps be standard features rather than optional extras.

Ruggedity:

When it comes to the rugged specifications of the V110, Getac’s convertible is a pretty robust beast.

With an IP rating of 65 the V110 is fully protected from dust ingress making it an ideal device for more arid climates whilst it is also certified to survive protection against low pressure water jets from any direction so could be easily cleaned.

 

It is also well protected against water ingress and, as mentioned previously, all I/Os are protected by rubber seals. Also, the V110 also has an option Salt Fog feature that could make it an ideal device for wet locations such as oil rigs or offshore wind farms etc.

Whilst not fully water proofed, or capable of being fully submersed, the fact is that the device remains well protected from water means it is almost certainly able to cope in most wet environments just as long as you don’t drop it in the sea!

In terms of drop specs the device is certified to Mil-Std 810g (tested by an external third party), so it should be able to cope with almost all knocks and drops. It  also e-Mark certified for vehicle usage.

Battery Life:

In terms of battery life the V110 is again well provisioned with a dual battery system.

In fact the V110 is powered by 2 separate Li-Ion smart battery (11.1V, 2100mAh) which promise to deliver up to 13 hours of battery life and using the device during our test period we found that this was in fact achievable even with the device being used constantly throughout the day.

Getac also provide LifeSupport battery swappable technology which could theoretically extend the battery life forever although running on two fully charged batteries is likely to be sufficient for even the longest jobs.

Conclusion:

In conclusion the V110 is very clearly a well designed, highly specced piece of kit that sits right a the top of its tree when we look at the rugged convertible form factor.

In terms of processing power, rugged specifications, battery life, and I/Os the V110 is either as good as it gets or pretty darn close.

In the hand the device is light and comfortable and, as we saw earlier, compares favourably to similar competitor models in this respect also.

The one major criticism would be aimed not so much at the V110 but at the convertible form factor itself. Whilst they work well as laptops, as a tablet they feel that much more cumbersome and one can’t help but feel the convertible form factor is a stepping stone, towards fully detachable rugged devices that truly offer the best of both worlds.

That said, detachables are still a new concept and as such relatively untested whereas convertibles have been around that much longer and are perhaps the safer alternative currently in a mission critical environment such as field service.

And when it comes to convertibles the V110 is certainly a formidable tool for field service companies and an excellent option for those companies whose field engineers need more computing power than a tablet yet still want the reliability and robustness of a fully rugged device.

 

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Road transport specialist Pentalver is saving more than £50,000 a year by improving driver behaviour across its 107-strong Cannock truck fleet.

Following the introduction of a performance improvement programme underpinned by WEBFLEET, a Software-as-a-Service solution for businesses to increase fleet efficiency, the company has seen fuel efficiency soar from an average of 8.5 mpg to 9.6 mpg per vehicle.

OptiDrive 360, a key component of WEBFLEET, scores drivers on a range of performance indicators from fuel consumption, speeding and idling to driving events, gear shifting and constant speed.

Pentalver has incentivised improvement with drivers receiving a quarterly bonus if they hit agreed performance targets.

“WEBFLEET has given us the tools to introduce the bonus scheme and has empowered our drivers to optimise their mpg by giving them real-time feedback and advice,” said Nick Matthews, Pentalver, General Manager.

 

 “Idling time, in particular, has been cut dramatically since we introduced the initiative and we have been able to offer driving training support for those employees that have most needed it.”

Pentalver has also integrated WEBFLEET with container transport management system TOPS, enabling more accurate job planning, scheduling and customer service with full fleet and journey time visibility.

Pentalver’s investment in WEBFLEET was supported by TomTom Telematics partner, Auto Electrical Services (AES).

 

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With the launch of a dedicated field service application, enterprise mobility platform firm Kony has stepped firmly into the busy arena of FSM software providers. However, they bring with them a new set of thinking that could change the way the entire industry approaches app development in the future.

Kris Oldland spoke exclusively with Jonathan Best, VP EMEA at Kony to understand why they believe they are changing the game for the better...

As we sit down to discuss the new launch of Kony’s dedicated field service application I am genuinely intrigued.

The launch seems to fly in the face of the logic that has underpinned the success of Kony in many senses. Kony has established an enviable reputation for being a slick and intuitive platform that facilitates the ease of developing mobile apps.

Facilitating bespoke app design is what these guys do and they do it brilliantly. So surely an off-the-shelf, vanilla field service app goes against their very ethos?

However, my mistake here was thinking that the app stopped at being just plain old vanilla. Sure the base layer may be the same for everybody, but to continue the metaphor the ability to tailor this app is as open and as varied as the contents of a tin of hundreds and thousands.

“Principally what we have is a platform for the development of apps within enterprises. And that’s where most of our customers are investing,” explains Best

“But when we see the same app requested in multiple places rather than us doing custom built apps for every single client, it makes sense for us to provide at least a foundation that they can start from,” he adds.

 

And here in lies the rub.

Kony’s approach is very much centred on client empowerment and in the understanding that whilst there are core requirements across differing companies in differing verticals, ultimately no two businesses are identical, and therefore no two businesses will require an identical field service app.

“Probably the big difference between our apps and the more traditional field service app is that we are trying to provide a base level of functionality, that somebody can take out of the box and use if they don’t have a process or they just want to build something very quickly; but much more, what we are trying to provide is a base level functionality that people can build on top of and develop,” Best states.

“We are not trying to build a 100% solution but instead build a 60 to 80% solution that can then be tailored to meet your business process.”

 

This approach is something that Best and his colleagues don’t see in the FSM market currently and is an approach that could ultimately prove to be a genuinely disruptive influence within the sector.

“Our approach of course opposes what quite a lot of what the traditional apps have had, which is ‘this is a field service solution this is how it works.’ You can tweak around the edges a bit but really you must follow the processes as it is laid out in the core application.”

“And most of those field service applications that have been developed for mobile historically have come from some kind of core system provider be that a ClickSoftware or a SAP or an IBM, whoever, where it is a mobile part of wider solution.”

“What we are trying to say, as a mobile company, is lets look at the mobile process and then try and figure out all the ways that you connect that to whatever your back-end systems might be.”

“So what we are doing for customers is helping them to develop the mobile use case and connect that to their back-end systems. What we saw with field service is that lots of people wanted a field service capability - they either had one that they weren’t very happy with or they didn’t have one and they wanted to create one, and what they wanted was the capability to tie that into whatever their back-end systems were.”

“So they do not necessarily have to take SAP’s field service solution for example just because they use SAP’s systems on the back-end,”

 

Such flexibility to tailor a mobile application to truly fall in line with your own specific workflows is of course both an innovative and exciting approach. But it also sounds like an option that could require some heavy development and a bunch of spare programmers to undertake such work isn’t a resource every company has to hand.

So what exactly is the process of evolving the Kony app beyond the 60% out-of-the-box offering into a well tailored app designed for a specific company’s needs?

“It can be undertaken by the customer if the customer wants to do it,” replies Best.

“Or it can be Kony if the customer wants us to do it - we have a 600 person strong professional services organisation that we can bring to bear on these projects, but probably most commonly it is partners - the traditional model of us being the software provider, the customer being the driver of the demand and the expert in what the processes are; and a system integrator sits in between and takes the Kony technology and builds the app together with the client.”

Fundamentally what the Kony platform provides is an ability to plug into your existing systems and then provide a dedicated tool for mobile interaction with the data stored in those systems based around the needs of any given individual within the enterprise.

And as we enter more fully into an age where information and data is key, the free flow of data facilitated by deep level integrations is of course highly advantageous for the field engineer, enabling them to arrive on site fully prepped for the job they are about to do. However, such movement of data is of course a two way street and the amount of valuable data that is available to a field engineer could also be highly useful if fed into the right place, whether it be sales, R&D or even third party partners.

 

“There is a lot of good stuff in those back end systems that you want to be able to provide out to salespeople, that you want to be able to provide to service engineers and you probably want to be able to provide it to business partners as well,” Best begins.

“A lot of our customers have got a core field service organisation of their own but then they use a third party to fill in the gaps around peaks in demand etc. and they probably want to provide different amounts of information about assets and customers to a third party than you would do to your core sales force.”

“What Kony traditionally provides is the platform that allows you to say ‘we want this information to be available to this person on this device for this purpose.”

However, perhaps Kony’s greatest strength in coming to the field service sector is that they arrive less encumbered by the rules and formulae of any previous iterations of their product, meaning they can take a fresh pair of eyes, that are customer focussed, when it comes to what should or shouldn’t be included within a field service application.

“A lot of people say to us there are gaps in the field service solutions that are available on the market."

“Again, if you look at a lot of the typical field service solutions that are on the market, it’s difficult to extend them to have an additional capability or to add something new into the mix. For example if you look at IoT,” Best ventures.

 

“As people are putting more and more sensors in the capital equipment that is getting serviced, they want to be able to integrate it much more with the field service engineer and the system they are using but it’s very difficult in a lot of the traditional field service solutions that weren’t built with IoT in mind.”

“We are saying lets provide the core capability that allows you to do scheduling, that allows you to push jobs out to the field, allows you to do all the things that any field service person needs you to do. But lets do that on our platform which enables you to tie back into a much broader set of back-end systems than is probably the case in the offering that you are using today, and lets do that in a way that opens up the capability to integrate new things like IoT.”

Of course one of the most exciting factors of the field service industry right now is that it is in a state of almost constant beta, with new technologies being integrated and adopted every year.

With such a dynamic technology base at play future proofing any investment as much as possible is crucial. Which is another benefit of Kony’s approach to FSM app development.

“One of the reasons people are increasingly investing in Kony is because we provide that future proofing at both ends,” Best claims when the subject is brought up.

 

“Our capability to integrate into back-end systems is recognised as the best in the industry and our ability to support differing device types and OS that are getting produced is unparalleled.”

Another factor to be considered within the development of any enterprise app, whether it be for field service, or other areas, of the business is the User Interface. This is something Best is acutely aware of and believes the move to a platform based approach, will see user experience in business to enterprise apps improve vastly as costs of development become greatly reduced.

“One of the things that is happening in the current generation of apps is that people are paying much more attention to what can be done with the interface”

“A large driver for this is that now with Cordova and HTML5, and tools like Kony provide, we can produce native output at a much lower cost by using technology to create it and so there’s ‘this write once, run everywhere’ approach to building apps which has taken a lot of the cost out what previously used to be associated with glossy native development.”

Of course there is another benefit of the ‘write once, run everywhere’ approach as well. There is a growing demand amongst field service providers to be able to provide their own clients with applications that show information on their assets such as maintenance history, mean time to repair, current uptime availability and so on.

Such apps are powerful sales and marketing tools, and as such, a slick user experience here is an absolute must.

However, Best points out that whilst the idea is sound, outside of a platform such as Kony’s actually implementing such apps could be a significant resource strain. “Of course that sounds like a very logical business process to have,” he comments.

“But if you think of what it means logistically, you are going to push that out to the end customer where you can’t control what their devices are. Maybe they want to access it on an iPhone or an Android device; or, in the future who knows what else.”

“That means our customer, using our platform has to provide that app in whatever format their customer wants to consume it in, so they need that capability to provide apps for various OS or device agnostic apps and that’s one of the key capabilities that Kony provides.”

Whilst both the ability to provide customers access to service information as well as being able to tailor an app to meet your exact workflows both sound exciting, it is the potential of the Kony platform to enable field service companies to simply and intelligently expand the role of the service engineer that could be the potential game changer.

 

And as our conversation progressed Best was able to reveal a number of ways that this was already happening with their existing clients.

“The field service engineer is on the customer site and the customer says something about wanting assistance with a new project – that’s great sales data that you want that field service engineer to capture and pass to the right guy in the organisation to follow up with,” Best says outlining one such scenario.

“That functionality typically isn’t built into a field service engineer’s general workflow but of course its very easy to build that into an app. For example, if you have got a notes field and some sort of capability that says press a button here if you think the sales guy should give them a call and follow up.”

“Another example is a utility firm we are working with. They have a customer feedback form which they ask the customer to fill in to show how prompt were they, did they fix the issue, did they leave things neat and tidy after they left etc.”

“That’s a logical business process but when we dug in and looked at it we found that it was actually only about 1 in 12 customers who filled in the form. Then at the end of the month the engineer was supposed to have collected all this stuff up and mail it back to the head office.“

“So he had this massive pile of paper in the back of his van which he’s then got to pick up and put into an envelope and mail to HQ: and then there is somebody who’s job it is to go through each one.”

“It was a horrendous process and of course that guy is already there, with the customer, with a tablet doing his field service work – how much simpler to give that tablet to the customer at the end of the job with a brief survey?”

“In this case just 6 questions, each with a slider ranging from very happy to very dissatisfied at either end , and they don’t have to fill anything in because that is already captured from the job data. It takes them literally less than a minute.”

 

“The response rate went from 1 in 12 to 1 in 2. It gets immediately processed at HQ, there is no rekeying and then there is the cost saving - no paper, no postage, no wasted man hours...”

“So all of these business benefits came about but it’s not something anybody had ever thought of as a field service process. Yet it’s a completely logical add on for a field service capability.”

“It’s also something that no FSM system today provides but it’s the kind of thing that we can add on very simply because its just an extension to the app.”

I often comment that technology at its finest just makes things work better, and given the flexibility and ability to adapt and evolve applications on the fly, it seems the Kony platform could well go some way to helping companies achieve that.

Indeed the biggest change Kony’s arrival in the field service space may bring is in how we approach our service engineers’ workflows in an increasingly mature digital age.

 

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Murdock Builders Merchants, an independent family owned builders’ merchant group, has reduced fuel costs by 10% after implementing a telematics system from Masternaut.

Murdock Builders Merchants implemented Masternaut’s telematics system across its fleet of 44 commercial vehicles, enabling the business to effectively track its fleet across the country.

Since installation, Murdock Builders Merchants has seen a marked improvement in driving styles and saved 10% in fuel costs thanks to data provided by Masternaut’s telematics solution. The system has also been helping Murdock Builders Merchants to have complete visibility on fuel usage and driving style.

The system has also helped to provide an increase in driver efficiency, with managers now able to distribute tasks more effectively and increase the work done by all vehicles. The customer relationship has been further enhanced, with information provided to them, giving accurate delivery times and updates in case of traffic delays.

By monitoring vehicles, telematics has been helping managers keep track of the fleet, enabling them to record information like times and dates sites were visited. This provides cast iron clarity on delivery times for customers and helps fleet managers find the nearest driver to a job location.

 

Paul Sheppard, Group Fleet Manager, Murdock Builders Merchants said “Part of the experience we offer our customers is outstanding delivery with minimal fuss. We’re committed to providing excellent service to our customers and ensuring we hit our delivery times, and Masternaut provides a vital part of how we go about doing that. The system gives us 100% accurate times of delivery and the ability to update customers if there are unexpected delayed, and we’ve been able to make efficiency savings on fuel. Masternaut is a vital, supportive partner of ours and gives us an extra edge that we can offer our customers.”

Steve Towe, Chief Commercial Officer and UK Managing Director, Masternaut added, “For independent family businesses like Murdock Builders Merchants it is vital that they deliver the best services for their customers. Telematics can become a vital tool to ensure a company is able to meet high customer expectations, and at the same time improve on driver behaviour across the fleet. Telematics enables you to provide a duty of care to your staff and produces savings and safety improvements across the fleet, which is important to any business.”

 

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In our latest research project we’ve teamed up with rugged tablet manufacturer Xplore Technologies to find out what are the tools field service companies are investing in to ensure that they are giving their field service engineers every chance to ensure they are delivering service excellence.

In part one of this series we looked at the merging lines between rugged and consumer manufacturers and the rising trend for field service engineers to use more than one digital device when out in the field.

Now in this the second part of this series we look at the reasons companies select either consumer or rugged devices and the importance of Operating Systems upon device selection... 

 

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There is also an exclusive research report available for download that contains even further insight and analysis of these research findings. Download your copy of the findings here

 

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Consumer versus Rugged

This of course leads us on to perhaps the biggest question within the discussion around which tools are best suited for field service deployment - rugged or consumer.

In last years findings we saw that the market was largely dominated by consumer grade products with over two thirds (67%) of companies opting for consumer products over their ruggedized cousins.

Whilst this year’s survey does show a slightly greater leaning towards the rugged sector the shift is generally minimal with 59% of this years respondents still identifying that they are deploying consumer grade devices. This is in comparison to 16% who are deploying rugged devices and 20% who provide their field service engineers with a mix of both rugged and consumer devices.

So what are the drivers behind these decisions?

 

Well in terms of consumer devices being selected, the key over-riding factor as touched on a little earlier is simply the cost per unit.

In total well over two thirds (70%) of those companies who opted for consumer devices had done so because of the lower cost per unit.

The second most common reason cited was the faster potential user adoption via user familiarity, which was cited by just under a quarter (24%) of those respondents providing consumer devices.

Interestingly this figure rises to two thirds (33%) when we look at those companies that provide their field service engineers with mobile phones.

What is really interesting, however, is when we compare these findings with those who provide their engineers with rugged devices.

Essentially, we see the primary drivers for device selection completely reversed.

Whereas those that opted for consumer devices were driven primarily by the lower initial unit costs, those who opted for rugged devices were driven overwhelmingly by a need for reliability with over three quarters of companies (78%) providing rugged devices stating this was the driver behind their choice.

 

Also important to this group was the durability and longevity of the device which was identified by around a fifth of respondents (22%).

This set of results is particularly interesting when viewed in the context of the common TCO (total cost of ownership) argument put forward by rugged OEMs and their distributors.

The argument being that across the general accepted lifespan of an asset a rugged device will generally end up costing a lot less than its consumer counterpart (when factoring in breakages, downtime, lower reliability rates, etc etc).

Given the majority of companies still opt for consumer devices because the lower cost per unit there could be considerable savings made if companies began to adopt a more pragmatic and longer term approach to device selection perhaps?

This is of course great news for the rugged manufacturers but surely what makes for an even more compelling argument is the fact that of those companies that did opt for rugged, such long term cost reduction was only a side point with the benefits of reliability and durability being much more widely acknowledged as the driver for rugged adoption.

 

When we consider the mission-critical nature of field service, the need for reliability is of course likely to be anticipated.

However, given the TCO argument as well, it is perhaps surprising that in both this year’s and last year’s research, consumer products have remained so dominant.

Perhaps there is a need for further education amongst the industry on this topic?

The importance of OS

Of course one other factor that could play a part on the selection of devices is the operating system (OS) requirements of a field service management application that a company may have already in place.

Indeed: one respondent stated that his reason for selecting a consumer device was for ‘compliance with the field service management solution’.

Whilst many if not most dedicated field service management apps will be either device agnostic or available in a variety of native formats, this may not be the case if a company has developed their own system perhaps.

Certainly in the wider world of enterprise mobility, where the iPhone remains king having wrestled the crown from Research in Motion’s Blackberry some years ago, iOS is the de-facto choice for native designed apps.

However, whilst this is certainly a plausible theory the reality is that within the niche world of field service the Apple brand is far less powerful with in fact just 7% of our respondents stating their engineers use iOS.

Of course given the inclusion of laptops and tablets as key tools for field service engineers Windows operating systems fare well within our industry with 35% of companies stating this is their OS of choice, whilst Android’s dominance in the consumer markets is almost echoed amongst our respondents also with an impressive 42% of field service engineers using the Google owned OS.

But just how important is the availability of any given OS when it comes to device selection?

 

In fact, it is a fundamental part of the decision making process for almost all companies, it seems, with nearly nine out of ten (86%) of companies saying that the availability of an OS on a device is at least one consideration for them.

However, further to that, over half (52%) of field service companies in our survey group stated that it was very important and they ‘decided our choice of device based on the OS it supports.’

 

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Want to know more? Download the exclusive research report for further analysis and insight from these research findings

 

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Look out for the next part of this series where we look at the importance of connectivity in device selection...

 

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BrightHouse is the UK’s leading rent-to-own retailer providing high quality, branded consumer electronics, domestic appliances and furniture via affordable weekly payments. They have 3,000 employees in a growing network of over 300 stores.

BrightHouse has implemented Kirona’s Job Manager mobile application to connect their central team with their field-based Customer Agent Advisers. This ensures accurate, up to date information flows seamlessly and securely between the two, enabling real-time visibility and that processes are streamlined to significantly improve customer service.

As well as Kirona’s Job Manager application, BrightHouse are also benefiting from Kirona’s InfoSuite management information software, ensuring the business has real-time actionable insight.

Alasdair Skeoch, Head of Credit Operations at BrightHouse commented “Kirona’s Job Manager and InfoSuite software has enabled us to improve customer service and empower our Customer Agent Advisers. Job Manager provides our Customer Agent Advisers with accurate, secure customer information when they meet with our customers. They have the latest account information, credit agreements and customer data to hand enabling them to serve the customer efficiently.”

 

He explains further “We are delighted with the initial implementation of the software and are looking for continual enhancements including implementing Kirona’s Dynamic Resource Scheduler, their Analytics tool to gain further actionable insights as well as applying the software to wider areas of the business.”

Kirona is a leader in delivering software solutions that enable organisations to provide exceptional field-based services in the most cost-effective way possible by providing clients with a suite of software that enables them to manage their end-to-end service processes and to seamlessly link field-based workers with central functions. Not only does this improve the service delivery to their customers it also reduces costs and enable significant efficiency and productivity increases.

Neil Harvey, CTO at Kirona, added “It takes an exceptional retailer to achieve real success in these challenging times and BrightHouse has seen sustained growth by giving customers the means to access quality household goods, and doing it with fairness, honesty and integrity. Many people probably take it for granted that they buy a new TV or a washing machine if they need one. But for millions of people this is not an option.  Many hard-working people do not have the cash to buy household essentials and home comforts outright, and are often ignored by mainstream lenders. BrightHouse successfully offer a way to bridge this financial gap. BrightHouse approached Kirona with a vision of how they wanted their service to improve, and we worked with them to deliver their Customer Agent Advisers a mobile workforce solution to enable them to achieve this.”

 

Neil continued “BrightHouse now has streamlined processes that are achieved by implementing Job Manager. By eradicating paper work from the field and information collected in the field is automatically posted into the relevant systems and necessary follow-up actions are triggered. Their Customer Agents are empowered by providing them with all of the information they need to perform the required task, while the customer benefits from the service efficiency that Job Manager has enabled.”

Kirona’s innovative technology enables organisations with mobile field based workers to improve productivity, customer service, field based worker visibility, reporting, and reduce costs.

 

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As the industry wide adoption of IoT comes ever closer, now is the time for companies to focus on service-led processes and reducing SLAs or be at risk of falling behind their peers warns Tom Bowe, Global Field Service Specialist with IFS...

The 15 minute SLA may seem like an impossible task but in his presentation at Field Service Medical recently Tom Bowe, IFS, highlighted two separate examples of companies doing just that.

Further more it is just a stepping stone on the way to companies offering 100% uptime he believes.

The two great examples of companies hitting 15 minute SLAs Bowe cited were firstly IFS customers Cubic Transportation Systems who in San Francisco are hitting 15 minute SLAs on the local transportation system and are doing so with a 100% record.

Meanwhile on the other side of the country the NYPD are hitting 7 minutes response times for life threatening calls and 9 minutes for non life threatening calls which is quite frankly incredible.

Of course not every company can hit these heights but how close should your average company be trying to get towards these kinds of numbers?

“If you’re looking at it from a company perspective then it’s very much a road you need to take – a journey from where you are today to where you want to be in the future with a number of key points along the way.” Bowe explains

 

“The goal should be to improve 20% a year. I don’t think it can be incremental, like 3% productivity per year. It’s more significant than that.”

“A total transformation is unnecessary, but I think you have to realise change is coming fast – the train has left the station. So where is it going to end up? Personally, I think it is going to be in realtime.”

So why does Bowe foresee such dramatic sea change?

Well like many in our industry he sees the impending arrival of the IoT as a seismic game changer within the way field service will operate.

“I believe equipment will be able to self-monitor themselves and leverage intelligence in the cloud to perform decision analysis and determine what actions to take, and to do that before any kind of serious failure.”

Bowe pauses just briefly to highlight the magnitude of the change.

“It’s going to take the SLAs and collapse them down to a fraction of what they are today. People are talking ‘predictive this’ and ‘proactive that’ and listening to the marketing wizards out there so expectations are already building."

“Whether or not a business changes in advance of this will determine how much pain their business will go through when it actually becomes mandatory for them to massively reduce their SLAs.”

 

Bowe speaks with a passion and it is clearly a topic he has given a lot of thought to.

But realistically how at risk are those companies who don’t adapt? How much is hyperbole?

“If you have a choice between two service providers where one is responsive in days and the other one is guaranteeing zero down-time and monitors it all the time…who wins? Imagine if a service provider could remove the customers’ concerns by saying, Hey, we’ve got you covered, we’re always watching, we’re always monitoring.  What if they didn’t have to worry about anything?” He replies wryly

“I think it is a complete game changer. People will make different choice for that level of service.”

One of the other big take aways from Bowe’s presentation was that whilst IoT is already beginning to happen, for those companies that begin to embrace the change it is bringing it is not just about getting sensors on all of your assets in the field.

“If we literally have to wait until everything is sensored up, we are talking about a decade from now.” Bowe explains.

“Companies can’t wait that long. They are going to be way behind competitors who have taken that first step.”

“That first step is changing your service business in evolutionary ways and incorporating the IoT elements, the theory of the case. So even though you don’t have a machine learning algorithm right now, that’s OK because you can still significantly improve by leveraging what you already know through past history and service maintenance.”

“How many service calls did you get (by product)? Don’t you already have condition reports on each piece of equipment and take the readings, record measurements, generate log files and create cases?”

“You probably have customer complaint records, and your field engineers enter notes like ‘there was a buzzing sound’ or ‘we had to reset a bunch of times,’ right? Well these are all key observations.”

"So you already have all this data, and as a software guy, it’s pretty easy to make some calculations and put together a score based upon your current existing knowledge.”

"And that score can help you respond faster. Sure, maybe it’s rudimentary today, maybe it’s not even worth getting that excited about – but with the score and some new service processes around it, you can start evolving your business to fit the eventuality of the IoT model, which is then going to take that score and significantly amplify the meaning and importance of it.”

 

“The benefit short-term is that you’ve started to build the infrastructure, you’ve started to incorporate IoT into your business model and you start thinking around new service offerings.”

“It is important to get a head start and be in front of the wave.”

Indeed the way Bowe describes his thinking is almost like a prep-school for IoT, essentially creating an additional route for service companies to be adopting as they wait for the unified standards that will facilitate the mass adoption of IoT to arrive.

“At the end of the day it’s better to start sooner rather than later.” Bowe comments.

However, he also warns of jumping into the technology too quickly before the standards are settled.

“If you go too far down a proprietary route when the standards do come into play you may be locked into that technology and have built processes in around that technology.”

“Then it becomes problematic – you are stuck with a Betamax.”

So how does Bowe see these standards emerging?

“I think right now it is moving towards a utility. The big guys are investing heavily in dozens of IoT services. They are coming out with data lakes, event hubs and machine learning and underneath that is a massive amount of technology.”

“It’s going to be a utility because you can’t expect every company to have a bunch of PHDs in the back room trying to work this stuff out. So we’ve got to standardise in order to be efficient.”

The normal model in the software industry is to build things in layers and you typically start with a few infrastructure providers that everyone can leverage which I think will be the large Cloud providers as soon as we have some standards.”

 

“IoT needs standards to help everyone with flexibility, re-use, enormous data volumes, analysis, cost efficiency and achieving the original objectives.”

“Without those standards we are kind of stuck in this proprietary high-cost model, which is not scalable. Without standards, IoT won’t become a life-changing type of technology.”

It’s an interesting point. All too often we talk about IoT as though it has already arrived but in reality how far are we away from universal standards being adopted because these are the true final barriers to mass adoption?

“I wish I could say that a solution is right around the corner, but there are still competing bodies and some very large organisations have gotten behind three or four different standards,” bemoans Bowe.

“But they’ve got to work it out, the opportunity is extraordinary and when they do IFS will be ready for it. I can’t wait.”

 

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Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for GrowthSM explains why Big Data isn’t the holy grail, instead focus on the quality, accuracy, accessibility and application of the data you routinely collect...

While much of the ongoing discourse in the global Information Technology (IT) community nowadays seems to center around hot topics, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) or “Big Data”, research has shown that it is not necessarily the size of the database that matters; but, rather, the quality, accuracy, accessibility and application of the relevant data that is being routinely collected, analysed and shared throughout the organisation.

In other words, data does not necessarily need to be “big”; it simply needs to be relevant, accessible and actionable, in order to be useful.

However, this is an important distinction that is missed by many!

First, let’s talk about what the “big” in “big data” really is. According to IBM, every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – in fact, so much that 90% of the data resident in the world today has been created in just the last two years alone.

As a result, field service organisations now have access to an unprecedented amount of data about the performance of their technicians, their vehicles, the equipment they service and their business performance in general.

However, what differentiates the best practices organisations from all others is best expressed in terms of not only “how accessible is all this data?”, but, rather, “how can it be transformed into valuable information that contributes to increased revenue, reduced costs and improved customer satisfaction?”

 

Other questions are also bandied about, such as “how big is too big data?”, and “what constitutes “big enough” data?”

It is, typically, in their responses to these types of questions, where many field service organisations initially go wrong – that is, they incorrectly believe that since they have already collected mountains of data from multiple sources (i.e., service call activity records, closed call reports, technician generated utilisation and/or productivity reports, machine-to-machine communications; etc.) that they must use all of these data in as many scenarios as possible.

But, the rule of thumb is more a matter of focusing primarily on the data that you “need-to-know”,rather than collecting data that is only “nice-to-know”.

The difference between these two types of data may appear to be subtle at first glance, but it is an important distinction since data collection, in and of itself, requires a massive expenditure of time, resources and investment, both human and pound-wise; it must be gathered, analysed and disseminated through a highly organised and controlled process, with direct senior management oversight and accountability; and it must bridge virtually all areas within the organisation – both from the top-down, bottom-up, and all throughout.

This is what we call “business analytics” – not “big data”; but, rather, just “enough data”.

 

In fact, it is those services organisations that are most successful in managing their business analytics that can easily tell the difference between “big data” and “enough data”.

They are also the ones that can most easily recognise when the bar for data collection, analysis and sharing needs to be raised in order to accommodate anything from the normal evolution of the organisation’s evolving database needs, to more event-driven needs, such as to account for a new product/service launch; increases in the numbers of customers, installed base and/or field technicians; business mergers, acquisitions or consolidation; new strategic alliance partnerships; etc.).

So … how big does your data really need to be?

The answer is simple: Big enough to support the organisation’s ongoing business analytics needs and requirements in terms of the ability to collect, analyse and share all of the data that is deemed important (e.g., business-critical, or mission-critical, etc.); required as input into the organisation’s ongoing metrics, or Key Performance Indicator (KPI), program; as input to annual or other periodic planning and forecasting activities; and the like.

Whether your organisation finds itself “swimming” in a data lake of epic proportions, or simply maintaining a modest database that fully supports its front and back offices; its field technicians, customers, and partners; its management decision makers; strategic partners; or any other stakeholders within the organisation, it will still require a sound “data analytics” program in order to make it all work.

Once again, it does not need to be “big” – just “big enough”, relevant and actionable.

 

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