Kris Oldland, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News announces the publishers's response to Corona Virus... In an open letter to Field Service News subscribers Kris Oldland has announced two key initiatives to bring the global field service community together during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Firstly, Field Service News will be hosting an 'Emergency Symposium' this Friday (20 March) at 16:00 hours GMT. There will be a panel of senior industry leaders brought together to discuss the potential impact of the pandemic as well as best-practices for field service companies at this time. 

Register to attend @ https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7852140705125027853

 

Fostering Ongoing Communication within the Field Service Sector

In addition to this, Oldland announced the launch of an ongoing 'Digital Symposium' to host industry presentations that have had to be either postponed or cancelled. Thus facilitating the continued sharing of industry knowledge and learning during this period of wide-scale isolation. Any industry practitioners who have presentations they wish to give to the wider audience at this time will be able to utilise the platform free of charge, whilst commercial solution providers to the field service industry will be able to claim significant discounts from the standard FSN Webinar rate throughout the duration of the pandemic.

Commenting Oldland said: "One of the things that I have always found quite incredible within the field service sector is the commitment to knowledge sharing at large within our community, on a global basis. As the leading voice for field service professionals within the world, I feel it is is simply the right thing to do for Field Service News to help facilitate this communication at a time of crisis and I am happy to bear the brunt of the costs in doing so. Field Service is the community we serve and this is just another we can do in that endeavour. 

"I am hugely proud that we are able to offer this facility to not only our subscriber community but also with those within the sector who have yet to become part of the FSN family. Together, I am sure that we will all be able to cope, adapt and then thrive in the face of adversity." 

Oldland's full email to the Field Service News subscriber base is below: 

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In light of the current situation we are all facing with the global pandemic of Covid-19, I would like to announce that Field Service News will be hosting an 'Emergency Symposium: Coronavirus and its potential impact on field service delivery' this Friday at 16.00 hours GMT.

I have already spoken with a number of key industry leaders who are prepared to give their time for free to join a panel for this session to discuss the potential challenges of the situation, as well as looking at best practice at this current time and also how we can utilise technology to help ensure any disruption to field service delivery is minimised.  

The session will be open and there will be opportunity for wider discussion with all attendees. For those of you who cannot make the live date, a recording of the session will automatically be sent out to all registrants - so please do register to attend on the link below. 

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7852140705125027853

In addition to this session on Friday we are also creating an ongoing 'Digital Symposium" which will be hosted on Field Service News. The thinking behind this is that as movement is becoming increasingly restricted whilst the virus is contained, we are acutely aware that many industry events, including customer days, conferences and seminars are unfortunately at risk of being postponed or cancelled entirely.

Whilst, this is the sensible route to follow, I appreciate just how much work and effort will have been put into many, many excellent presentations that can help drive our industry forwards together. Having worked with so many of you myself personally, I know just how valuable your insights can be to the industry at large and in times of crisis like this, it is through a continued sense of global community and support that we will be to help drive our sector forward.

Equally, I feel it is essential that we as an industry remain focused on the journey of continuous improvement that will allow us to achieve our common objective of delivering service excellence.

With this in mind I am pleased to offer completely free access to our 'Digital Symposium' to any field service management practitioners who have presentations that were scheduled to take place at any cancelled industry event, that may now not reach their full intended audience. 

If this could be of use to you, email me directly on kris@fieldservicenews.com

Additionally, I am also pleased to offer considerable discounts to any commercial solution providers who can also benefit from presenting on our 'Digital Symposium' and these discounted rates will be in place for the duration of the current pandemic related travel restrictions. 

If you are a commercial solutions provider looking to access the platform please contact Steve White onsteve@fieldservicenews.com

With regards to our own event, The Field Service Expo 2020...

As it is a Q4 event we currently do not anticipate any disruption to this going ahead, but we will of course be monitoring the situation and will keep both sponsors and attendees updated in an honest and transparent manner, as soon as possible should we see any potential issues. 

Finally, I would just draw your attention to the recent additions to our digital portfolio which include research.fieldservicenews.com, thinktanks.fieldservicenews.com and www.fieldservicenews.com/fsn20

These bring together some of the very best insight and intelligence from the global field service community and in addition to our industry leading news and analysis at fieldservicenews.com can provide a wealth of information for the field service manager and director alike, particularly if you are unable to make it to any industry events currently. 

As always, it is with great pride that we at Field Service News serve this excellent global industry and community and I thank you all for your continued support. 

Regards, 

Kris Oldland, 

Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News

 

 

 

Regular Field Service News' contributor Jan van Veen says surrounding yourself with those on the same wavelength can foster high performance, innovation and change.

Silicon Valley thrives as its own ecosystem exists on disruption. Each start-up flourishes with individuals all moving in the same direction; keen to change what's gone before. Each person has the same values, habits, goals and mindsets. As a collective it's no surprise this part of California is one of the most creative hubs in the world.

In this edition of the Field Service Podcast, moreMomentum's Founder and MD (and long-time Field Service News' Collaborator) Jan van Veen urges service leaders to choose their network wisely if they want to change the status quo. Citing the aforementioned Silicon Valley and high-performance judo athletes van Veen lays the foundations of a successful social environment for your business.

Also, for the first time this series, the podcast incorporates input from a LinkedIn discussion on this topic before the podcast was recorded. One of those who contributed to that discussion, Rohit Agarwal shared this diagram with us. It's handy to reference this image at the appropriate point of the podcast.

You can reach out to Jan on LinkedIn here and find out more information about moreMomentum here. 

F-Secure report documents ransomware getting more fearsome, but there’s reason for optimism...

Cyber criminals continued a barrage of attacks in 2019, spurred on by botnets of infected IoT devices and by attacker interest in the Eternal Blue vulnerability. A new report from cyber security provider F-Secure, Attack Landscape H2 2019, documents a steep increase in attack traffic in 2019 that was unmatched by previous years.

F-Secure's global network of honeypots saw 2.8 billion attack events in the second half of the year. After 2.9 billion in the first half of the year, the yearly total rings in at 5.7 billion attacks. For comparison, 2018 saw just over 1 billion attacks, while 2017 saw 792 million.

Traffic was dominated by attacks hitting the SMB protocol, indicating attackers are still very much interested in using worms and exploits related to Eternal Blue. Telnet traffic and attacks hitting SSH were also high, indicating continued, high attacker interest in IoT devices. Malware found in the honeypots was dominated by various versions of Mirai.

While ransomware spam was observed to have dropped during the course of the year, ransomware itself became more targeted and impactful, inflicting greater damage, targeting enterprises, and demanding sums in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Modular malware employed a range of tricks, one of which was dropping ransomware as a second stage payload.

The report also features a look back at the past ten years of information security, a decade marked by spates of breaches, the emergence of nation state malware, and devastating supply chain attacks. But going forward, there is reason for optimism, says Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure.

“The last decade was pretty bad for information security, but the next one will be better,” says Hypponen. “It doesn't always look like it, but we are getting better. In the middle of news on major breaches and data leaks, it might look like it's getting worse, but it isn't. If you look at the level of security tools we were using in 2010 and today, it's like night and day. We are going in the right direction.”

 

The Field Service News editorial team offer analysis on the stories circling in the service sector...

 

An investment injection from Salesforce is set to advance ServiceMax’s focus on assset-heavy industries such as manufacturing and utlities. Mark Glover spoke to CEO Neil Barua after the news broke...

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I initially wanted to use this space to focus on the much needed calls for drone advancement and how it has the potential to postively impact on last mile delivery.

However, news that ServiceMax had received a cool $80 million investment from their long-time platform partner Salesforce came to my attention and with that an opportunity to speak to CEO Neil Barua about the announcement.

“The money was probably the least important part of the news,” he told me. “It’s great to be able to fund our growth and development but it’s the strategeic partnership element and the acknowledgement by Salesforce [that] in asset-centric industries ServiceMax is the chosen leader and they’re supporting our innovation for our customers in those industries. It’s a very monumental time in the industry for that decision to have been made,” he said.

Rumours around ServiceMax’s relationship with Salesforce have been circulating for some time now, with some speculating the software firm were ready to show its platform supplier the door, however this news concretes their partnership.The funding injection, the firm says, will enable them to focus on asset-heavy sectors such as manufacturing, oil and gas and utilities.

But it’s the firm collaboration with Salesforce that Barua was keen to extoll and in particular its place at ServiceMax’s varied board room table. “So we have a very dynamic board structure here at ServiceMax including Silverlake participants, incuding GE partcicpants and we’re now going to add Salesforce to that,” he explained. “So the adults in the room can look at things from a board perspective and make sure the two companies are thinking about what’s best independently but most importantly what’s best for customers.”

We shall see ultimately if this windfall affect ServiceMax’s end-user. Next month however my news focus will be drone-based and how that industry could do with $80 million to propel its offering.

 

... and Field Service News’ Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland, also reflects on what the big stories in the news are for him...

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Having reviewed the big stories I think I am acrtually going to do the slightly crass thing and highlight our own involvement at the inaugral World Servitization Conference.

However, in my very best humble brag style, I’d really like to bring your attention to just how impressive the journey has been for my good friends at Aston University and the Advanced Services Group and just what an achievement launching the first World Conference is for Professor Baines and his excellent collection of colleagues.

I have had the honour of attending the Spring Servitization Conference for a number of years as both a guest of Aston University and latterly as a Media Partner for the Advanced Services Group and as such have been a first hand witness to just how the conference has grown over the years. I’ve had the pleasure of attending the conference in various pockets of Europe including Manchester, Copenhagen, Luzerne and its great to see it return home to Birmingham in its latest all grown up iteration.

The world of academia and industry really can flourish when they come together to search out solutions and drive each other forward and the Spring Servitization Conference has been an absolutley pioneering and pivotal point within the calendar where that meeting of minds has been able to take place.

And whilst it may sound like an increase in capacity going from the humble Spring Servitization Conference to the more grandly titled World Servitization Conference, the truth is that the name change should have happened a few years back as this annual meet up of the great and the good of the academic servitization community, increasingly being joined by larger and larger numbers of their industry colleagues, really does attract a global audience.

I for one am extremely proud that we are still strongly associated with the conference and am very much looking forward to working with TIm and the Aston team on this event and for many years to come. 

Initial product is a Street Macro base station that enables smooth, fast and cost-effective 5G deployments...

Ericsson's smart factory in Lewisville, Texas, has produced its first 5G base station. Announced last year, the factory will be one of the most advanced manufacturing facilities in the industry when it is fully operational later this year.

The first product manufactured at the factory is the millimeter-wave Street Macro solution, which is key to Ericsson’s 5G portfolio for its North American customers. All radio access components are housed in one lightweight enclosure, allowing service providers to rapidly grow 5G coverage in complex city environments.

The Street Macro solution, part of the Ericsson Radio System portfolio, is also helping to provide Ericsson’s 5G-enabled connectivity in the smart factory.

Erik Simonsson, Head of the USA 5G Smart Factory, Ericsson, says: “We’re excited to produce advanced 5G radio products for our U.S. customers, to meet the demand for next-generation 5G networks across the country. It’s also exciting to use our own 5G products in the factory for wireless connectivity to increase production efficiency. With the first 5G base stations now rolling off the production line, we are on target this year to have the most fully automated, sustainable 5G smart factory in the U.S.”

Ericsson’s fast and secure 5G connectivity will enable the smart factory with agile operations and flexible production, utilizing industrial solutions such as automated warehouses, connected logistics, automated assembly, packing, product handling and autonomous carts. Ericsson will initially employ approximately 100 people at the facility.

The new USA 5G Smart Factory complements Ericsson’s global supply strategy, which ensures the company is working close to its customers through its American, European and Asian operations, securing fast and agile deliveries to meet customer requirements.

In today’s digital economy, every company is now a service company. The winners are companies that meet customer’s ever-growing expectations; the losers leave openings for competitors to exploit. In this fight, field services have become a crucial battleground. But how can you turn something that has traditionally been a pain-point for many companies into an area of strategic source of value and differentiation? Jon Magson, Commercial Director at ByBox, joined us to help answer this question.
What’s changing about the field service landscape?

JM: ByBox has been in this industry for over

20 years now and we’ve always focused fundamentally on solving the customer’s pain points when it comes to field services. What we’re seeing is an ever-growing demand to not only offer a functional field service solution, but to turn field services into a real source of differentiation from competitors.

What’s brought this change about?

JM: Customer expectations have grown. Think about the kind of experiences you have with the final mile in other industries. It was only around ten years ago when it was the norm that shopping ordered online would arrive within three to five working days. Now anything less than next-day delivery is too slow.

Customers have the same level of expectations when they call for an engineer, but it isn’t just about being quick to react. Every service moment is an opportunity to solve problems, implement new solutions and ultimately delight the customer. In a world where people are getting used to amazing customer experiences, field services can’t afford to fall behind.

What’s harming companies’ ability to give customers a great experience?

JM: Companies are investing significantly in field services to modernise and optimise the people involved through technologies like engineer scheduling software or job logging systems. In 2019 the global investment in this area was£2.18bn and that’s expected to rise to £4.58bn in 2025. Where companies are falling short is, they are still using legacy inventory management systems and processes. So only part of the problem is fixed. It’s no good having the engineer on-site at the right time if the right part isn’t there also.

In our research, we found that 51% of first-time fix failures were due to the required parts being unavailable. Companies need to get this right. Far from delighting a customer, failing to fix something first time leaves the customer frustrated. The key question is would you run a finance department without visibility of all the figures? Or a procurement department without any certainty the products you buy will turn up. The answer should be no, so why do we accept this in field inventory? Field inventory needs to be modernised in order to offer customers the great experiences they deserve.

What’s the next step in modernising field services?

JM: We believe it starts with the Field Service Edge. How close can we get the parts that engineers need to the engineers or the job that needs them? This is a critical question, the less time an engineer is travelling or searching sites to pick up parts the more time they have to offer customers the kind of experience they have come to expect. This needs to be achieved without the use of expensive same-day deliveries, and it also need to be done just-in-time. If we want to see a strategic shift from field services being functional to becoming a source of value and differentiation within a company, it’s hard to make that argument while costs are inflated by moving parts using an expensive same day journey.

Finally, we must eliminate blind spots in field inventory management. Too often parts aren’t available, or inventory costs are bloated because plans were changed without having the right information. We want to encourage companies to always operate in a known space when it comes to inventory.

How does ByBox approach this problem?

JM: ByBox enables companies to turn any space into a secure site for staging critical parts at the field service edge, optimising inventory placement and delivery speed while eliminating premium delivery costs. ByBox intelligently orchestrates all inventory movements, with dynamic allocation and reallocation to minimise trapped capital, working in harmony with the customers engineer scheduling system.

We call this Field Service Inventory Modernisation. With ByBox, companies can operate with confidence because critical parts inventory is always in a known state and fully traceable across the whole field service lifecycle, ensuring pinpoint accuracy, predictability, and control.

To find out more, please contact Marketing@ ByBox.com to arrange a demo

Cash injection will be used to focus on asset-centric industries, firms says.

ServiceMax have announced $80 million in growth funding led by new investor Salesforce Ventures and existing investor Silver Lake. This additional funding is expected to fuel accelerated growth, deepen product development and support digital transformation and customer experience in verticals such as manufacturing, medical devices, energy, heavy equipment and other industrial markets.

It comes after ServiceMax has earned notable industry analyst recognition, including being named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management for four consecutive years, a Leader in the first IDC MarketScape Report for Field Service Management, and most recently named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape Report for Service Parts Management. The investment from Salesforce Ventures further enhances the commitment between Salesforce and ServiceMax, who are long-time partners, to develop innovative breakthrough technologies designed to help customers transform their businesses in field service.

"ServiceMax has been a force in equipment and asset-centric industries for over a decade," said Bill Patterson, EVP and GM of CRM Applications at Salesforce. "ServiceMax's solution on the Salesforce Platform has delivered great value for joint customers, and we look forward to further collaboration."

"We are excited to be joined by our partners at Salesforce Ventures in our investment in ServiceMax," said Ken Hao, Chairman and Managing Partner of Silver Lake. "The announcement validates the company's market position and follows a record-breaking year for ServiceMax, including the largest new customer deal closed and the biggest year in company history."

"Our mission is to help field service teams keep the world running, and the market to enable them with modern, innovative technology is a $34B opportunity," said Neil Barua, CEO of ServiceMax. "We're proud to continue to deliver the most innovative solutions available with ServiceMax's field service management solution, to ensure uptime on the world's most important assets."

 

 

Allison Connected Services now available as an Add-In on the Geotab Marketplace.

Geotab has announced its integration with Allison Transmission, the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial-duty automatic transmissions and a leader in electric hybrid propulsion systems. Now available on the Geotab Marketplace, Allison Connected Services provides fleet operators with real-time data and prognostics to support fourth and fifth-generation Allison transmissions.

Delivering critical transmission health information and prognosis, Allison Connected Services helps to extend the performance and safety of medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicles. Seamlessly integrating with Geotab’s award-winning platform, Allison Connected Services offers insights on diagnostic and maintenance information such as oil and filter life, clutch health and transmission information. Going one step further, drivers will receive recommendations from Allison Transmission on the appropriate next steps to address maintenance requirements, including guidance to the nearest Allison dealer to have maintenance items addressed quickly and efficiently.

“We are proud to launch our partnership with Geotab as part of an ongoing journey to provide fleets with actionable information to support their fourth and fifth-generation Allison transmissions back to model year 2006,” said Branden Harbin, Allison Transmission Managing Director, Global Marketing. “With a shared commitment to powering the global connected vehicle ecosystem by giving customers the insights they need to manage their fleets, we are able to better equip our customers with tools that ultimately help lead to increased productivity, safety and performance in the trucking industry and beyond.”

Allison Connected Services currently supports 1000 Series™, 2000 Series™, 3000 Series™, 4000 Series™ and H40/50 EP™ utilizing 4th Generation Controls software from 2009 through 2017 and currently available Allison 5th Generation Controls software.

“As a leading OEM, integration with Allison allows Geotab to provide a more comprehensive offering to medium- and heavy-duty commercial fleets through a world-class partner,” says Scott Sutarik, Geotab’s VP, Commercial Vehicle Solutions. “With a solution that eliminates the need for separate apps and web pages when viewing Allison data, together we are delivering the kind of trusted, best-in-class fleet management products and services our customers have come to expect.”