AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Mark Glover

In the latest Field Service Podcast, Sarah Pettigrew, Head of Service Delivery at Thales UK, discusses the affect of an ageing workforce in service and what needs to be done to retain the knowledge lost when this demographic retires.

In this special episode, Field Service News' Deputy Editor Mark Glover, speaks to Sarah Pettigrew from Thales, ahead of her keynote address at Field Service Connect next month titled, Two worlds collide: How to build and retain a star team within an ageing workforce, whilst investing in the future workforce and driving the transfer of knowledge forwards.

Sarah suggests an investment across the entire workforce spectrum, as well as apprenticeship schemes and technology adoption can help to negate one of the biggest challenges facing the sector - an ageing workforce.

An essential listen!

You can find out more information about Field Service Connect which takes place on 15 and 16 May at Celtic Manor, South Wales here. 

 

Ericsson has launched Ericsson Industry Connect, an easy-to-use cellular connectivity solution to accelerate Industry 4.0 digital transformation.

Ericsson Industry Connect enables communication service providers to offer dedicated cellular networks at factories and warehouses starting with 4G/LTE, with a clear path to 5G.

The offering strengthens Ericsson’s private networks and IoT portfolios by making 4G and 5G technologies accessible to new industrial markets.

Purpose-built for industrial environments such as factories and warehouses, the dedicated cellular connectivity solution enables secure, reliable coverage with high device density and predictable latency.

With a network management experience designed to be easy to use and manage for information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) professionals, the solution aims to make cellular technology rapidly deployable for factory and warehouse staff.
With industrial-grade wireless connectivity, Ericsson Industry Connect can enable innovative Industry 4.0 use cases such as: digital twin inspection (a real-time digital replica of a physical entity) with massive amounts of sensors; mobility for human machine interface (HMI) instructions for workers; collision avoidance and remote control for autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs); and collaborative robotics for automated operations.

Åsa Tamsons, Senior Vice President, Head of Business Area Technologies and New Businesses, Ericsson, says: “Ericsson Industry Connect is built on design thinking to meet industrial customers’ requirements on speed, reliability and security, while being easy to install and manage. It helps enterprises to accelerate their automation and operational efficiency to the next level. It complements service providers’ offerings to enterprises with a solution that is easy to scale. Ericsson Industry Connect increases the relevance of cellular solutions in the high growing segment of industrial connectivity - leveraging Ericsson’s technology leadership, strength in connectivity, and R&D investments to date.”

Gary Jones from Service Geeni talks about how cloud-based field service technology can help tackle the problem of business silos.

Silos are a challenge for most organisations, with a silo mentality or infrastructure one of the biggest barriers to business success. Where different offices or departments don’t share information with others in the same company, both efficiency and productivity are diminished.
In response, management teams must do more to educate and equip their teams with everything needed to break them down. And, to do this, two things must happen.

A change in attitude
Silos occur when individuals, teams, offices or departments are unwilling to share resources or ideas with the larger organisation. These factions fail to see how cooperation can help them to work smarter and are often reluctant to share data or ideas for fear of negative scrutiny or consequences.

 

Quite often this culture is passed down from the top, with a lack of inter-departmental meetings, training sessions or information-sharing strategies. But, this attitude can cause damage to the organisation as a whole by wasting resources, stifling productivity and hampering the realisation of goals.

 

Naturally, different groups within a business often have different priorities. But regular meetings between teams (or at the very least team leaders) is a must if you want to create an open and collaborative culture. Not least because, by ensuring managers know what other departments are working on, opportunities for collaboration and business improvements will develop.

 

Breaking down silos also helps to stop the build-up of resentment, blame and frustration. Because once everyone knows what everyone else is doing, it is easier to identify solutions that will work.

 

To help to boost collaboration across your company, you should look to:

 

• Establish a united vision and set of goals at the heart of your organisation
• Make sure your leadership team is on board with this vision and goals
• Ensure your leadership team understands the damage that can be caused by silos, and the opportunities that exist when they are removed
• Ensure managers communicate these messages and approach to the wider business
• Implement training to help create and support a collaborative culture
• Incentivise managers and individuals who succeed in breaking down barriers
• Establish KPIs to help measure the success of your efforts (and to identify where more work is needed)
• Establish working practices and spaces that foster collaboration rather than hinder it
• Encourage constructive feedback.

 
A change in technology

 

Of course, merely being aware of the need for greater collaboration across a business isn’t enough. You also have to put the tools in place to enable this to happen.

 

In most cases, IT silos (where systems are unable to communicate resulting in an environment of disparate technology and practices) are not deliberate. They have simply evolved. For example, the customer support department within an organisation chose to invest in a specific system, while the sales department opted for another. Because each team had their own priorities, responsibilities and vision, neither thought about whether having two standalone systems would cause issues further down the line.

 

But as long as different departments continue to use separate databanks, without sharing this info (or even being aware of what the other is doing), the benefits of modern tech will never be fully exploited. So, not tackling historical silos is no longer an option. In 2019, you can’t have your call centre telling people one thing, while your marketing department is sharing opposing information.

 

Capable of creating a single, integrated infrastructure, the latest cloud-based software encourages the simplification and standardisation of business processes, while helping people across your organisation to work collaboratively with one another.

 

Even better, real-time collaboration is possible. So, when an employee in one place makes a change, that information is immediately available to others, regardless of where they are. 

 

For example, with everything available via the cloud, mobile employees can fill in electronic forms using smartphones or tablets, and this information automatically and immediately syncs with your back office systems. Indeed, SaaS applications are capable of performing a vast range of business tasks, while opening up unprecedented opportunities for enhanced collaboration.

 

Historically, if an organisation wanted to make a significant change to their IT, this would be a costly task. But cloud computing breaks this trend by providing access to enterprise-level software at an affordable price. And, because moving to the cloud tends to be a business decision rather than one made by IT departments in isolation, cloud-based field service software is a silo-busting investment from the off.

F-Secure calls for more response in managed detection and response solutions.

As the threat landscape continues to evolve, so does the need for organizations’ approaches to defending against the business impact of cyber attacks. In light of this trend, cyber security provider F-Secure is calling for greater emphasis on both the preparedness for a breach as well as fast and effective containment that covers the correct balance of people, process and technology.

“Cyber breaches are now a fact of life for many companies. It’s no longer a matter of ‘if’ a company will be breached, the question is ‘when’. And that calls for a shift in how organizations handle many aspects of security,” said F-Secure Countercept Managing Director Tim Orchard.

Research highlights one current area of weakness as the lack of investment in effective incident response strategies. 44 percent of respondents to a recent MWR InfoSecurity (acquired by F-Secure in 2018*) survey said they invested less in their response capabilities than in threat prediction, prevention, or detection. Only 12 percent said response was prioritized over their other security capabilities.

Continuous response, the art and science of having the right people in the right place at the right time armed with the information they need to take control of the situation, is an emerging concept in cyber security that’s central to boosting response capabilities. The aim is to combine elements of collaboration, context, and control into a fluid process. In practice, this could mean a single team of threat hunters, first responders, administrators and other personnel working together to actively identify and remediate potential threats before they escalate.

“Having the tools and techniques in place to quickly detect, contain and frustrate attacks as they unfold buys you time, and gives you an opportunity to understand the full picture about how attackers are exploiting your weaknesses and moving through your network. And they need to be sophisticated enough to avoid tipping off an attacker that you’re onto them, and prepared to evict them in one concerted push,” explained Orchard. “And it’s important to put these tools and techniques into the hands of the right team if you want them to work.” 

According to the Gartner’s Answers to Questions About 3 Emerging Security Technologies for Midsize Enterprises report, “MDR is about ’renting trained eyes’ you can’t find or afford to detect incidents that go undiscovered...It’s about finding the 10% of incidents that bypass traditional firewall and endpoint protection security.”

MDR solutions typically offer 24/7 threat monitoring, detection, and response services that leverage advanced analytics and threat intelligence to help protect organizations. Generally, MDR vendors deploy sensors (such as an endpoint agent or a network probe) to gather data from a client’s systems. The data is then analyzed for evidence of compromise and the client is notified when a potential incident is detected.

After detection, clients either respond on their own or bring in external IR teams and approaches, which can include local or remote investigations and forensics, as well as advice on a possible orchestrated technical response. But at best, response activities stop at isolating hosts using EDR agents or firewalling.

But effective solutions can potentially do much more. Treating response as a continuous activity means team members will be in constant communication and collaboration with one another, able to discuss suspicious events happening anywhere within their infrastructure. MDR solutions can facilitate this process, giving defenders the edge they need to stop, contain, and ultimately, eject an adversary.

“Finding a balanced MDR solution, regardless of whether its an in-house solution or outsourced, is key. I think our approach to preparing our clients to assume the breaches have already happened, and then help them hunt down those threats, is the essence of continuous response,” said Orchard. “Getting this right lets defenders evict attackers quickly on their first try, and prevent those adversaries from repeating their attack.”

Serve has announced the addition of Las Vegas to its list of cities now offering Serve’s service platform based on blockchain technology.

Piloting its software, business processes and transaction protocols, Serve will bring residents, visitors, and businesses more options by increasing access to the products and services, the firms says.

"We are excited to pilot the Serve platform in Las Vegas, Nevada’s most populated city and globally renowned tourist destination,” said Serve’s CEO Shahan Ohanessian. “By showcasing the potential of our unique technology, which increases transparency and decentralizes the on-demand economy, Serve aims to empower users, service providers, and enterprises of all sizes to conduct business on one cohesive platform in a manner that benefits all participants.”

Scott Berg to transition to Board Advisor.

ServiceMax has announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Neil Barua as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors.

Previously, Barua was CEO of IPC Systems and most recently served as an operating partner at Silver Lake. Barua’s appointment, effective immediately, concludes a thorough search for a successor to Scott Berg, who will become an advisor to ServiceMax’s Board.

“I’m thrilled to join ServiceMax at such an exciting period of change and innovation,” said Barua. “The team at ServiceMax has a passion for service and is an established leader in the Field Service Management software industry. Together we will help ServiceMax accelerate its growth, expand its product offerings and continue to deliver on the promise of service execution management through powerful outcomes for customers and partners.”

“It has been a privilege to lead ServiceMax, and I am enormously proud of what our team has accomplished together,” said Berg. “We have achieved growth that has outpaced the market over the past two years, expanded beyond ServiceMax’s leading Field Service Management capabilities, entered the Asset Service Management market, brought real-time communication to service technicians through the acquisition of Zinc and stood up the company as a standalone business. With Neil at the helm, I know the future of the company is in good hands, and I look forward to working with him to ensure a seamless transition.”

ECi Software Solutions have launched MobileTech software, a new native mobile app its e-automate^® users.

The app will streamline the process of managing service calls by providing service technicians with real-time, remote access to customer data and enabling them to create, view and address service calls from any location.

 

ECI's E-automate software centralises complex business processes, giving a holistic view into operations and helping eliminate redundancies. With MobileTech, dealers will now have access to a mobile app that is completely integrated with their ERP software, allowing them to give the best possible customer service from anywhere, at any time. Customer and equipment history will be available in its entirety, making it easy for technicians to look up past customer data.

The mobile app also includes a GPS feature so service technicians can map service call and tech activity; a search functionality to quickly look up part location and availability; a service call recording and time tracking capability; and a live chat feature allowing technicians to communicate with one another. As a result, technicians will be able to resolve even more calls per day, increasing customer satisfaction and ultimately saving time.

 

Verizon Connect has partnered with Iveco to provide customers with its comprehensive telematics and mobile workforce management software platform.

The Verizon Connect Fleet and Workforce offerings will provide vehicle and driver information that businesses of any size can use to optimize their mobile business. Iveco fleet management by Verizon Connect is available now in new Iveco Daily light commercial vehicles.

Iveco customers can select among three Verizon Connect plans at the time of purchase - Fleet Essential without tachograph driver hours, Fleet Essential with tachograph driver hours, and Fleet Enhanced with tachograph driver hours and tachograph remote download, which enables the timely download of driver cards and tachograph data according to legal requirements.

Verizon Connect Tachograph helps fleet managers stay informed of driver activity with weekly reports detailing driver and vehicle performance, fuel use and helps manage European tachograph regulation compliance. Verizon Connect’s mobile workforce management solution, Workforce Essential, is also available as an extension on all plans. 

“Integration of the Verizon Connect platform will extend value and benefits to Iveco customers beyond delivering an outstanding vehicle,” said Fabio Santiago, TCO services director at Iveco.  “By fitting Verizon Connect solutions in select new vehicles, we are able to help our customers run their businesses with better control of their operations.” “This level of customer services and benefits can only come with the deep integration that now exists between Verizon Connect and Iveco vehicles,” said Dan Levy, OEM business at Verizon Connect. “With Iveco fleet management by Verizon Connect, our common customers now have the solutions they require to help enhance the safety, productivity and efficiency of their fleets.”

Increasing competition and complexity of product selling put firms under pressure to add value, so many firms are moving towards delivering service solutions and outcomes. Traditional manufacturing companies are often strong with risk-management process on the product side, however they fail to grasp the complexity associated with managing risk on the service side, here Dr. Shaun West and Victoria Paytova of Lucerne University offer their insight into these challenges. 

 When a supplier decides to provide more than just product-related services it has to consider risk over the whole product life-cycle because the risk is no longer just a “warranty”.

Traditional manufacturing companies are often strong with risk-management process on the product side, however they fail to grasp the complexity associated with managing risk on the service side. Based on the interviews with fourteen companies operating globally and domestically in different fields: from power generation to food industry, this paper introduces their insights on risk awareness and evaluation in services.

Some companies produce high capital goods and services constitute the part of the product-service portfolio; others offer purely services; their annual revenues vary from millions to billions. Another aspect is that some of those are pioneers in service provision rather than others already have long experience in the service business. So, we can classify them by the percentage of service sales: three companies with service sales up to 25%, five companies indicate service sales between 25 and 40%, and four firms provide purely services (100%); also, two respondents present opinion on risk from the customer perspective.

Industrial feedback on risk in services revealed that service providers neither recognise risk as a competitive advantage nor actively implement risk management practices into service offer creation. This white paper provides guidance on how to understand and manage risk to create competitive advantage in a product service system environment.

Risks From An Asset Life-Cycle Perspective
Risk should be initially considered on an asset life-cycle perspective. (See Figure 1.)



Today a well-documented example is the Rolls-Royce Trent engine, the turbines of which fail to meet the operational performance due to poor design. The deterioration of turbine blades inside Rolls-Royce jet engines has required constant monitoring of the engines, urgent maintenance and repairs through 2022.

The problems have caused serious disruption to airlines — and they are proving costly to the engine-maker. Rolls-Royce reported an accounting charge of $315 million to cover ongoing repairs to two models of its jet engines it has supplied for more than 200 aircraft as well as compensation to airlines for planes taken out of service for the engine retrofits.

Which confirms the fact that issues at early stages cause significant risks and endanger not only product performance but also the reputation and financial stability of the service provider.

Service offering and embedded risks
In order to see what particular services industrial companies offer we analysed 14 firms. The analysis confirmed that in general there was risk transfer from the basic services to the more advanced services. A variety of services can be built-up in product-service portfolios depending on company’s ability and readiness to deliver good service, risk acceptance, as well as the type of relationships service provider wants to establish with a customer.

The analysis also showed that they provided three different levels of service: product services, operations support services, life cycle and asset support services. The typical services in each level are shown in Table 1 (below) and have been categories based on the service level.



I. Product services – represent services which are closely associated with a product or to help the customer to gain access to it, often mostly associated with the maintenance of the equipment.

II. Operations support services – represent services that support the operation of the equipment provided.

III. Life-cycle/asset support services – support the product over its life; they are designed to ensure good asset performance and to help to improve performance based on new technologies and market requirements. When building a portfolio of products and services, companies should consider risks over the product life no matter whether it is basic or advanced service
agreement.

The execution risks will continue to repeat unless effective control and improvement measures are put in place. The statistical information on the failure rates will support the understanding of the commercial risks ensuring that they reduce the negative impact.

Finally, if it is not tracked, how do you know where the problem is, the root cause and how to best solve it in future products?

Execution and Commercial risks
This white paper breaks risks into two closely related categories, the first is execution risk and the second is a commercial risk. Execution risk is the additional cost that the firm has due to execution failures and closely associated with service delivery, includes internal and external quality problems, late completion, or post service failures due.

For example, the late delivery of a small consumable item can mean that inspection work on the machine cannot be completed on time. This can then trigger commercial risk to come to play which could be many times larger than the cost of the consumable item.
The commercial risk can be made by the supplier at the contracting stage, such as unsuitable contract decisions, typically firms overpromise performance (delivery, availability etc.), or have unsuitable agreements for services. These are often related to the execution risk (e.g., late delivery) and can be significantly higher in value (e.g., liquidated damages resulting from the late delivery).

This is shown graphically in Figure 2 (below) where the supplier’s liquidated damages never cover the customer’s risk fully, this is because the customer’s business risk is typically orders of magnitude greater than those of the supplier.


Therefore, the customer needs to either self-insure and to buy insurance to cover their full consequential and business interruption costs. The supplier should always consider the full impact it can have on customer’s business because the liquidated damages will likely only cover a part of the customer’s losses.

The use of risk/reward-type performance commitments should incentivise the supplier to achieve the right outcome for their customer, it is not a replacement for insurance.

Understanding Risks
At each stage from the beginning, different risks may unstable internal processes, increase the time to the market and affect future performance of the product. For example, poor reliability of a part decreases the overall reliability of the product, consequently, the supplier under a basic after-market service holds minimum risk and only responsible for the replacement of the first failing part under warranty.

Under an advanced service agreement (performance/output-base) the supplier is responsible for removing and replacing the part as well as paying the liquidated damages for poor performance due to machine downtime because its customer has a revenue loss.
So, the supplier is not only exposed to execution risk but also to significant commercial risk: it has to pay the liquidated damages meaning customer is partly compensated for the loss of performance. Interviews confirmed that risks rise both at the service contracting stage and at the delivery stage, so they refer to commercial risk and operational (execution) risk.

It is common for manufacturing firms to have well defined contracts for new equipment sales whereas service contracts may be less appropriate for the service environment, being more applicable to the sale of basic rather than advanced services.
It is very challenging for contract or project managers identify and measure potential risks and create sort of standardised approach for risk assessment.

Their role is to determine the risks that customers expect them to take with service contracts as well as evaluate the critical risks that they finally accept. The deep understanding of the customer, awareness of your capabilities can decrease the lack of information and associated counterparty risks.

The supplier can actually create competitive advantage by building an active model for risk management. Understanding the risk implies that service provider can identify and measure the risk it transfers from the customer.

Calculating the Value at Risk
Only knowing the possibility of risk appearance does not solve the problem, more important is to know the frequency of events, its execution and commercial impact. Digitalization can help here in the form of data analysis of performance (e.g., lead times, number of failed starts, output), so the firm should create a database that allows the supplier to model and predict risks. By collecting and analysing data on product design or manufacturing issues, failure rates and time (logistics or maintenance completion), the supplier also knows what must be changed or improved as well as understanding the cost of mitigation. Statistical analysis helps service providers to understand better their capabilities and to control risks.


The Value at Risk (VaR) concept is defined as an expected maximum loss of the risk position and it is widely applied in the finance industry. For example, we take the planned maintenance and the issue would be late delivery of parts which was promised at 26 days.

From the past (data analysis), we have to find out what is our actual lead time and deviation from the ‘expected’ lead time. Form this we can calculate the expected execution cost and predict the commercial impact based on the lead time.

The total risk is the position valued at current prices, in our case is the total execution and commercial, from which we can define the expected maximum loss.

The higher the chosen confidence level is, the higher the potential maximum loss. From these principles and calculations results drawn from the concept, the VaR of individual risk position can be derived.

This analysis will help the supplier to decide on what delivery terms, performance commitments or other KPIs they can provide as well as calculate the commercial value of the contract with particular services.

Answers to these questions also will tell what liquidated damages to expect for availability, reliability, efficiency and late delivery if supplier choses terms that do not correspond to statistical analysis.

Pricing the risk
Now that we understand the value at risk, it is important to price the risk. This is because you are taking risk from the customer and you are therefore providing a valuable service for them. How can this additional service be priced? First, the price should be above the cost otherwise you are not getting a reward for taking the risk! Questions to ask yourself when estimating the ‘fairprice’ to charge:

• What are the customers critical performance measures or outcomes?
• How much would it cost the customer to take the risk themselves?
• How much pain are you really taking from the customer?
• Is the gain/pain sharing balanced?
• What do you think is their ‘willingness-to-pay’?

Do not accept to hold a risk where they cannot control or mitigate the risk, taking market risks is not a sure-fire way to go out of business. Finding a balance with the risks so that you are incentivised to improve performance and outcome for the customer is nevertheless difficult but something worth doing.

Learn from past experiences, the RR example with the Trent engine was predictable as were the costs. Recommendations Firms should consider how they assess risk for product service systems, this is practically important for advanced services. It is recommended to measure execution and commercial risks for every project.

Learning to track the events that cause both execution and commercial risks will help you to better understand the risks and the costs associated with them.

By being more proactive in risk management, industrial firms can turn the risk into commercial advantage.