AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Kris Oldland

As we continue to bring you extracts from The Service Manager Handbook, published by Advanced Field Service here we look at three quick tips to help you manage your service P&L whilst keeping your field workers happy and motivated…

Download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

 

Mine your data to plan for the future

Today’s customers are flexing their buying muscles and exerting pressure on suppliers to fulfil ever more challenging SLAs. To stand a chance of meeting rising customer expectations, while maintaining profit levels, you need full visibility over your contracts and tighter control over your SLA management.

Setting realistic budgets and timescales

Having access to historical information on the actual cost of similar projects, contracts and large installations helps to ensure that future bid costs and resource requirements are accurately assessed and a realistic price proposed.

You want to win the contract but not at a cost that could break you!

There are many factors that will determine the price of the project to the client, but the cost and resources that are needed to deliver the contract are not always fully considered at the bid stage. Without formal systems in place, many service organisations find it difficult and time-consuming to compile this historical information.

 

As a result, bids are based on gut feel and best guess, running the risk of perpetuating profit-killing mistakes. With an accurate budget in place – covering all your materials, labour and subcontractor costs – managers will be able to track actuals against estimates and use this information for future planning.

Optimising parts management - Don’t tie up your cash 

If your organisation stores parts, you will be all too aware of the dangers of stockpiling when cash flow is so important. Rather than relying on best guess, automating the forecasting process to predict usage will avoid the pitfall of holding more parts than are required.

Your systems should give you the power to analyse your parts history, so you can recognise trends and fluctuations to ensure that levels fall within the desired optimum range and can anticipate demand at peak times. This will reduce the amount of cash held in unnecessary high numbers of parts, and reduce the overheads of managing your inventory, while ensuring that your engineers achieve maximum productivity by having the right parts at the right time.

Managing parts ‘on-the-move’

Your systems should also enable you to keep track of your van stock levels and usage, as well as automatically re-ordering and replenishing when nearing a minimum level.

A good service management solution can help to effectively manage your inventory of parts, enabling you to carry the right levels to meet customer demand, without restricting cash flow. Good planning will also help avoid overstocks by scheduling parts to arrive when you need them, and ensuring you are able to optimise fluctuations in demand and effectively manage

Monitoring and managing performance

KPIs are a vital tool for service organisations to effectively track, monitor and evaluate performance to achieve sustainable growth. It is vital to identify which KPIs align to your business success. Standard service management metrics include: [unordered_list style="bullet"]

• First-time fix rates
• SLA adherence
• Engineer productivity
• Job costing
• Call rates
• Net profit margin
• Stock value
• Customer satisfaction/retention

Without proactively monitoring KPIs, service businesses are vulnerable to problems that can seriously undermine both performance and profitability. For example, failure to regularly monitor sales margins could mean that a costly recurring mistake is discovered only at year-end.

Sharing achievements

All too often, key performance information is only available to managers and directors, with staff review periods that are too infrequent to proactively affect the outcome of future jobs.

 

Also, this information may only be available through a central source, which can lead to a feeling of ‘them and us’. Relevant information should be available to all members of the team. Simple, clear and targeted information – not complicated reports – will help them to take ownership of their utilisation, performance and deliverables.

Using systems that can provide this vital information in real-time, such as mobile or web-based reporting, allows field engineers to see if they are on track to deliver within the schedule allocated. If not, the issue can be raised at the earliest opportunity, the causes assessed and appropriate action taken.

Download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

 

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The great and the good of the service management industry came together at this years Service Management Expo held in London's Exel and Field Service News was at the hear of the action hosting the Field Service Solutions Zone.

Here we bring you a selection of the speakers from Day Two including: Daryl Dudey, IFS, Martin Summerhayes, Fujitsu and Mike Gosling of Cubic Transportation Systems

 

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As we continue our serialisation of the 40-page eBook The Service Manager Handbook published by Advanced Field Services we now look at what obstacles you must overcome and what plans you must put in place if you are to achieve service excellence.

Download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

It’s a given that the customer is your number one priority. Typically, service is affected by a combination of factors that result in the customer not getting what they want, when they want it.

However, there are crucial failures we see in many companies that can hamper them from even beginning to build a coherent strategy for achieving service excellence. These can of course vary from company to company but some of the most regular culprits in blocking a customer service strategy from ever becoming more than a tick box exercise include:

• A lack of integrated, real-time communication between the field engineer and the customer service representative - your engineers are the gateway to your customers, they are the ones who can make or break even the largest of commercial relationships. As such,  give them both the tools and the training in order to not only just do their job but to do it brilliantly to ensure your customers remain loyal with you for the long term
• Poor visibility of current stock levels across multiple systems and manual entry – you can have the best engineers in the world, they can be experts in their field and fantastic customer service folks as well. However, if they can’t access the right part for the right job, right away, even they are going to struggle to keep your customers happy as they see their downtime escalating due to your company's inefficiencies.
• Time-consuming manual processes hindered by unnecessary paperwork make it difficult to respond with agility to customer requirements. Nobody likes red-tape, your customers hate it, your engineers loathe it – they just want to get on and fix things, and in today’s age of mobile computing, endless paper work is simply unnecessary and a waste of your engineers' valuable time.
  • At the same time your engineers should also have all of the tools they need at their fingertips both to do their jobs as effectively as possible but also to keep your customers informed throughout any repair.
  • Field service engineers without the ability to quickly see and advise customers in advance that a part may be delayed, or without the ability to order a part quickly and easily themselves whilst on site are likely to face an uphill struggle in today's business environment.

However, whilst problems like the above can grow to become significant issues for some organisations, the good news is that the technology is in place to help support your business, allowing you to avoid such issues and firmly become part of your clients' on-going business operations.

Here are six steps we believe are crucial to field service management in today's market…

Keep the lines of communication open

Whether you operate in the B2B or consumer/domestic markets, you’ll need to consistently meet basic criteria, such as responding within a set timeframe or appointment window.

A field service solution helps you to deploy your engineers with maximum efficiency and equip them to do a proficient job.

Technology gives you the option to send the engineer’s estimated time of arrival – and alerts on any unexpected hold-ups – by SMS or email to the customer. They are more likely to tolerate a delay if they know the reasons why, along with the new ETA.

Capture live data onsite

The information your engineers enter remotely through their mobile devices should automatically feedback to your control centre and back-office reporting and billing systems.

Customers can be sent up-to-date compliance certification within minutes of job completion. Sending an invoice promptly while the job is still fresh in the customer’s mind will also avoid queries and delays further down the line. While not strictly speaking a customer service issue, having fast efficient billing processes reinforces your image as a professional service provider and helps speed up payments and improve cash flow.

Collect and analyse customer feedback

Without bombarding customers with survey requests, you can collect their feedback using standard forms on the engineer’s mobile device or schedule a survey to be emailed to them after the job is complete.

You’re showing you value their views and it’s an opportunity to capture valuable insight into your customers’ thinking and identify possible opportunities to upsell the contract and services, where appropriate.

Create a unified, shared view of the customer

A customer relationship management (CRM) solution, integrated with your service management software, will capture and share information across your whole business, giving managers access to critical information at all times while managing your sales pipeline and opportunities.

You’ll gather intelligence on your customers during the course of doing business with them. This will enable you to offer better service while providing your teams with organisational knowledge, information and the expertise to make complementary sales where appropriate.

“Due to circumstances beyond our control…”

Timely, consistent service delivery is essential. If anything impedes this, capturing data on the spot with time-stamped photos will protect you from becoming open to penalties and demands for refunds.

Improve service with self-service through a web-based customer portal

Many service organisations now approach many of their major clients as strategic partners, working in collaboration with them to build a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership.

A customer portal gives authorised representatives in the customer’s organisation the ability to create jobs, view their service history, access contract agreements and run interactive reports on their KPIs.

This type of self-service access will ensure your clients are kept firmly in the loop, cementing your status as a preferred service partner without adding to the workload of your service administrators. In fact, you free your call-handling and back-office staff to focus on the queries, issues and exceptions that genuinely need their skills and experience.

Download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

 

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Trimble Field Service Management's John Cameron takes a look at what intelligence means in field service today...

Today, a field service operation is characterised by the running of multiple technologies, from GPS and vehicle-tracking systems to telematics, fleet management and workforce management solutions.

Each of these technologies generates vast amounts of data and businesses are increasingly realising the importance of reviewing and monitoring their performance using the data they collect. However, being able to organise and analyse data in an effective, simple and reliable way is a major challenge and without the means of turning it in to something actionable, many businesses just don’t take advantage of it. Business analytics and reporting tools have come to the fore as a solution able to tackle this and empower field service organisation’s with the information they care about to make faster, better informed decisions.

Fostering business intelligence through business analytics and reporting tools

Understandably, no field service organisation has the same reporting requirements. Many have different metrics and performance indicators to manage, from driver behaviour to vehicle usage and maintenance to overall worker performance. Many also need to report on metrics relevant to their role eg: finance, risk, customer service and operations.

Advances in business analytics and reporting tools provide businesses with the ability to view all of their data in one place then configure and cross reference it in a simple, easy way. Businesses are then able to make better decisions and better decisions mean a more effective, efficient operation.

 

Many business analytics and reporting tools offer users the chance to view the information they want, when they want it. Using drag and drop metrics, dashboards can be constructed tailored to reporting needs, to show the most important metrics and represent those metrics in ways that users choose.

For example, productivity can be looked at alongside driver safety and vehicle performance to ensure that while SLAs around completed jobs are being met, safety isn’t being compromised.

The dashboards can be utilised to run on-demand reports from any number of metrics which can then be interrogated and filtered to the level needed for individual requirements. The purpose for this data is to then be distilled to generate concrete, actionable details, which can then be used to benchmark and identify trends which will in turn help businesses to determine which assets and employees are the most productive.

Immediate and long term benefits

Fleet and workforce management systems give managers the ability to review a day’s work and measure performance results against company standards.

With the use of business analytics and reporting tools, managers can extract the data from these solutions to identify top performers, determine which schedules and routes produce the best results, and compare results from one vehicle or worker against the entire fleet. Performance analysis can also help with job assignments, helping managers match the skills of field technicians to specific service calls. This increases the prospect of first-time case resolution.

Telematics solutions alike can capture a wealth of useful information, from mechanical and emissions to driver safety habits. With the use of reliable, analysed information, knowledge can lead to action.

A manager who knows which drivers have bad driving habits is better equipped to coach those drivers; up-to-date information on the health of vehicles leads to better maintenance, which in turn leads to safer vehicles, improved fuel consumption and less wear and tear.

 

These are some of the immediate benefits, but understanding data also brings long-term benefits, as companies engage in strategic planning based on historical patterns and predictive analysis.

For example, a company which focuses on repair could make use of its historical data to know when a specific part on a specific machine is likely to fail. This could lead to preventative maintenance by fixing or changing a part before it fails, helping to deliver excellent customer service, reduced downtime and significant cost savings. The work becomes less about being reactive and more about precise, well researched planning.

Analysis of operational trends and patterns also reveals what areas businesses need to target for improvement. Perhaps drivers are using shorter routes that actually take more time because of traffic patterns, or technicians are returning to customer sites because they lack the knowledge or part to complete the job, or vehicles are left too long on idle and wasting fuel. With intelligence and analytics tools, organisations can drill down into the data to benchmark and identify situations where problems are occurring.

For more information and insight into how you empower your field staff to make more intelligent business decisions, visit: www.trimble.com/fsm

 

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Cognito and Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS) have combined their respective flagship products to offer Cognito iQ’s Electronic Proof of Delivery (EPOD) capabilities as a fully integrated module for the latest release of K8, the KCS Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution.

This initiative further strengthens a long-standing partnership between the two firms.

For the many traders who still rely on paper-based proof of delivery and collection, upgrading to an EPOD system can have significant business benefits. Electronic manifests and signatures at point of delivery can greatly reduce invoice disputes and stock loss, and help to manage branch transfers and collections.

Pushing delivery schedules to drivers on handheld devices not only increases efficiency, but also gives them access to any information they or the customer may need, increasing satisfaction or even enabling them to up-sell.

 

Ian Bendelow, CEO at KCS says: “Cognito iQ’s EPOD capabilities are a great complement to K8, which is designed to help customers source effectively, stock efficiently, sell profitably and service competitively. We have worked very hard together to ensure that the integration is seamless, and we know that our joint customers in the distributive trades will be excited about the enhanced product.”

Cognito CEO, Laurent Othacéhé adds: “Our relationship has always been strong, and we share a culture of innovation and development expertise. This new offer reinforces our partnership and adds an important dimension to KCS’s ERP system, giving users access to vital delivery and collection information.”

As well as the integration of Cognito iQ, the latest version of K8 has more than 180 enhancements in several key areas. Notable changes include browser client functionality, an improved hire management application, superior graph and charting capabilities, additional facilities to handle returns and tools to streamline user management.

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“I think a lot of the fundamentals are the same in terms of business logic” Kowalkowski explained “but the problem with some of the business model concepts in general is that two key components are missing. One is culture and how to foster a service culture; that’s often much harder than just acquiring the necessary resources.”

“The other one would be leadership and how to really drive this because it is a change management process. How to motivate the employees at all levels within the organisation to form a strong coalition and to be able to show short term gain on this journey – because it’s a long journey” he added.

One of the interesting concepts Kowalkowski raised in his own presentation was that of ‘reverse servitization’ where some companies are offering advanced services and complex solutions, which they have been offering for many years, or even in some cases decades.

For these companies Kowalkowski asserts, the main challenge is not to come up with new complex solutions but rather to scale down those service initiatives, unbundling them and recombining service elements and providing  them in a more efficient and standardised manner.

 

Indeed Kowalkowski believes there are many companies that are operating on a business model very close to that of servitization without necessarily having ever planned to do so, who arrived there simply through adopting a highly customer centric business outlook.

Air France KLM

Indeed,  one very high profile company in attendance at the conference had done just that: Air France KLM are the oldest and second largest airline in the world.  Harman Lanser who heads up the product development and logistics division within the airline's maintenance and engineering division was another of the keynote speakers at the event.  During his presentation he outlined how he realised that the organisation was actually operating on a very similar system to servitization.

“Last year I was at a presentation where Tim Baines showed me the concept of servitization and I realised we were doing something similar to that, not knowing how close it was.  I have been going through the process of moving from component availability to total aircraft care to an integrated service support for the airline KLM.  Now I am exploring if this is something we can offer to customers”

“Doing it for the airline you work for is one thing doing it for an airline where you only do the service for, where your not responsible for the end product of the airline is different. What does it take to be able to give a completely integrated services product to a third party customer?"he asked.  “The trust you need, the reliability you need and the dependency you create between the companies.”

And herein lies perhaps one of the biggest keys to unlocking a successful servitization model. It is fundamental that there is trust built up over many years of good relationships with customers to get their understanding and buy-in of how and why you are proposing to move to an outcome-based business model.

“For these kind of services, you need at least ten years of working together, I would say,” confirmed Lanser “

 

Technology is an enabler

In addition to strong customer relationships, and the culture and leadership that Kowalkowski referred to, the other key enabler discussed at length during the conference was the technology.

Indeed, Kowalkowski believes that technology is the final key enabler that is allowing such companies to now make the final transition into being a fully servitized businesses.  “You can find academic papers that go back 90 years that talk about selling transportation instead of cars, selling mileage instead of tyres but back then you didn’t have the technology,” he explained. “Today with all the digitalisation you can do so many new things. Technology really is the key enabler”

With so many layers to discuss and in depth explorations of what is a truly exciting area, one that will of course have huge implications for the delivery of field service the more the movement gains pace, the Aston Spring Servitzation Conference proved to be an engaging two days for this vibrant global community.

"One of the things we’ve tried to do and have managed to do successfully is to try and keep the whole community together as we go through some forty presentations and to do that in one room over two days has been a very demanding thing to do but it’s been the right thing to do because we, as a community, debated these concepts”

“I’m delighted that we’ve demonstrated that we are moving forward in this space so overall it’s been a great two days, it’s been an exhausting two days but it’s been really worthwhile and next year…. we’re going to do it all again.”

 

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The shift from traditional manufacturer to fully fledged servitized business was a bold and revolutionary move when MAN Trucks UK made the transition but it ultimately led them to a huge growth spree when the rest of the market was in decline.

The man driving that change was Des Evans, former Managing Director of MAN UK and now an Honarary Professor at Aston Business School.

Evans was also one of the guest speakers at a recent Service Community event and Field Service News Editor, Kris Oldland caught up with him there to find out more about why and how MAN UK made the shift to becoming one of the great examples of servitization.

 

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The next Service Community event is being held on the 30th September and attendance is free for Field Service News subscribers. To register your place please send your contact details to TheServiceCommunity@gmail.com

 

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As we approach the half way point of our current research project being run in partnership with ServiceMax and PTC that is looking at how those in field service feel around the Internet of Things and it's likely impact on the field service industries Field Service News Editor-in-Chief takes a look at the findings so far and what are the initial emerging trends...

 

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Don't forget that you too can make your voice heard and have a chance to win ONE OF THREE £50 Amazon Vouchers. Click here to enter the survey now! 

 

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Reactive vs. Proactive

There has been a lot of discussion for quite some time around the need for field service companies to move towards a more pro-active model of working, moving towards a more preventative maintenance model instead of the traditional reactive break-fix -approach which has been adopted by service companies for decades.

By moving to a more preventative approach field service companies can of course begin to schedule in jobs to allow for optimum efficiency in terms of routing and planning. However, a regular planned maintenance schedule may mean a lot of wasted hours visiting sites where a device is perhaps underused and maintenance is unnecessary.

Therefore one of the big potential drivers of the Internet of Things in field service management is the ability to remotely monitor device performance and automate service requests from the device itself as soon as it begins operating outside of optimum parameters (but still within normal operating parameters so the device is showing the first signs of potential failure but is still functioning OK). This would allow for a much more effective planned maintenance approach delivering service far more efficiently.

 

To assess if this type of approach would be suitable in field service we first of all asked our respondents if they were working on a reactive basis or preventative or a mix of both. Our findings so far show that a mixture of both reactive and preventative call-outs is very much the way most companies operate with 36% of companies stating they “operate a proactive strategy where possible but are still mostly reactive” whilst the same amount state their “service is half proactive and half reactive”.

This would certainly suggest that one of the big drivers of utilising IoT in field service management is definitely, i.e. the trend towards preventative maintenance model of service delivery is already clearly identified as a means of improving efficiency within service delivery and so the potential introduction of IoT tools to improve this would likely be well received.

Underlying technology

In terms of field service management the Internet of Things is very much being talked about as the next big technology however for it to be utilised as effectively as possible it could be argued that it is imperative to have other underlying technologies in place. For example in the earlier section we looked at how moving to a preventative maintenance model could be really enhanced by IoT and we saw that indeed many companies are adopting this approach.

This would of course be further enhanced by dedicated field service management software to help ensure that those attending each job have the requisite qualifications for the device they are attending etc.

 

In fact the research supports the notion that IoT is part of a vanguard of new technologies being seen as the next generation of field service management tools which will be complimentary to and in addition to those technologies many companies having already invested in such as mobile computing, field service management solutions and telematics solutions which were being used by 63%, 51% and 25% respectively.

Views around IoT

Indeed the interim results of this research certainly seem to show a great deal of confidence in the Internet of Things as a field service management tool.

In fact 44% of companies think that the Internet of Things “will have the biggest impact on field service operations within the next five years?” whilst just half (49%) believe that “IoT will become a fundamental part of field service operations in the future.”

What is particularly interesting however is that having asked “When do you think IoT will become common place within field service operations” over two thirds of respondents (34%) said they felt it already is beginning to happen and also debunking the myth that IoT in field service management is the realm of only the largest enterprise companies, 68% of our respondents felt that the benefits of IoT could be felt by companies of all sizes.

Meanwhile almost a third of companies were planning an IoT strategy whilst a further 32% had either implemented or were implementing an IoT field service management strategy.

 

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In this the latest feature from our serialisation of the The Service Manager Handbook published by Advanced Field Service we look at the most important part of any field service operation, the field service engineers...

You are also able to download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

Your reputation, spread by word of mouth or increasingly through social media and online reviews, is founded on the experience your customers have of your engineers.

Unfortunately, customers seem more likely to broadcast a negative experience than a positive one, especially in the consumer or domestic service sector. Some disgruntled customers have even taken to posting video blogs of their experience of poor service. A video goes viral; word spreads like wildfire; and your reputation is permanently damaged. So how can you develop a service team committed to building your reputation?

Free engineers to do what they do best

A happy engineer more often than not results in happy customers. What motivates them best is using their time in deploying their skills rather than in endless form-filling. Consider ways to free your service team from the routine dross that saps their time and motivation, and empower them to be more productive and efficient.

Talk to your workforce

Holding regular face-to-face meetings between management and the workforce on the status of the business and sharing any development plans will all help build a team ethos, visibly improving productivity and enabling individuals to see the bigger picture. Whereas they might see the introduction of a new process or technology as a threat; you know it’s essential to the viability of the business.

Make your engineers your eyes and ears

With their close, on-the-ground contact with your customer base, even the most junior engineer can be a source of intelligence, such as feedback on how your customers regard your products and services: are they generally happy or are there murmurings about changing their supplier or service provider? Your field team is also a valuable channel for communicating your vision of quality and also for publicising forthcoming product updates or new services.

 

 

Encourage ‘self-monitoring’

Some service companies are using modern technology such as GPS tracking to weed out the worst instances of misconduct among their engineers. Others are adopting a more complementary method where their engineers choose their priorities and self-monitor their performance, an enlightened approach that can pay dividends.

Information: the vital tool in your engineers’ kit

As previously mentioned, engineers need the right tools for the job: their physical toolkit and information about the product, such as parts, diagrams, nature of the problem and known workarounds, as well as information about the customer, including their service history, plus, of course, essentials such as their contact details and location.

Be sure your engineers are fully aware of any recurring issues, such as a problem with a particular product, so that they can handle the situation with all due sensitivity. As previously mentioned, engineers need the right tools for the job: their physical toolkit and information about the product, such as parts, diagrams, nature of the problem and known workarounds, as well as information about the customer, including their service history, plus, of course, essentials such as their contact details and location.

 

Be sure your engineers are fully aware of any recurring issues, such as a problem with a particular product, so that they can handle the situation with all due sensitivity.

Mobilise your team

Information should also travel in the reverse direction: from the engineer back to base. Using their mobile device, engineers can send the customer’s sign-off back to the call control centre, along with any photographs or other supporting evidence, and details such as time to arrive on site and time to complete the job.

This information can be sent immediately to the contract manager to provide an instant report. A mobile solution is also a useful way to record exceptions to your usual high standards. In some cases, your engineer may be prevented from getting to the root of the problem. Was the equipment inaccessible due to a physical obstruction or the machine being unavailable for servicing?

A photo will provide supporting evidence should there be a query from the customer at a later date.

Room to grow

To maximise staff retention, it makes sense to create a rewarding work environment. A clear and defined development strategy and regular career mentoring are likely to encourage employees to stay. Pairing experienced engineers with new engineers will also speed up the learning curve and give individuals the opportunity to advance.

And those negative social media comments…?

Hopefully, the above tips will help to secure your reputation but if you do receive negative feedback online, you need to address it. If you respond courteously to comments – without being a pushover for compensation – you’ll be seen as a responsive, market-aware company.

Move the debate out of the public arena and offline as quickly as possible. You need to be vigilant but you can’t watch all social media channels all of the time. There are social media monitoring tools, such as Hootsuite, that will trawl the web for mentions of your company.

But once again, encourage your staff to report back on any negative social media they come across. Conversely, thanking customers for sharing a positive experience of your service is also well worth doing if you have the resources.

 

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Download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

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