It's been said in many corners of the field service industry and beyond, that COVID-19 has been the greatest disrupter of all time - what does this mean for the field service sector?

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The Short-Term & Long-Term Planning Field Service Companies Should Be Undertaking

Within the recent Field Service News Think Tank Session that was focused on the impact on the pandemic on the field service industry, it was also pointed out that it's also been the greatest accelerator for digital transformation amongst field service companies.

As Kevin Starr, ABB said one of our Digital Symposium live streams during the lockdowns commented, "our five year plan digital transformation plan got condensed to five weeks!"

Whilst Starr may have been being slightly hyperbolic; it remains a neat summary of how digital transformation projects in our industry have not just been accelerated but have been given a turbo boost.

However, while we have seen digital transformation become the single most pressing focus for the majority of field service companies in 2020, one thing that became apparent during the pandemic is that it is those companies that were already well down the path towards digitalization, and who had already begun to rethink their approach to service delivery as part of that process who were best positioned to adapt.

"While Cranny may have expressed the concept in his trademark pragmatic way ahead of the curve, he was not alone in sharing this vision of the future of field service..."

As Ged Cranny, Konica Minolta had explained during a Field Service Think Tank session, "one of the things that we realized four or five years ago was that machines are getting more reliable. Plus, we had an ageing workforce. I walked in the room and told everybody, I wanted to run the service department with no engineers. My management team looked at me as if I had gone mad."

It was a bold statement five years ago. Today, it is an uncannily prescient move that positions Konica Minolta well as they and all around them are forced to consider a world of zero-touch service delivery where possible. I said to them, if we achieve this everybody in the world, we'll look at what we're doing. Indeed, while Cranny may have expressed the concept in his trademark pragmatic way ahead of the curve, he was not alone in sharing this vision of the future of field service. Many other forward-thinking organizations were also considering the move to remote services. Yet, while the path was being laid it out, a remote-first approach remained for most a dot on the horizon.

"I think, if you look into the majority of service contracts were in existence, that they were already offering such services, Rajat Kakar, IBM had commented during the same Field Service News Think Tank Session. However, COVID-19 has pushed us much closer to that horizon in 2020 than anyone might have anticipated.

"I think the markets need to move a little bit faster in adapting to some of the tools we have," added Kakar. "If you launch an engineer is quite expensive. If you can reduce that cost by utilizing remote support. Then from the OEM standpoint, we should start thinking about self healing a lot more," Kakar had expanded.

"In the near term, you're looking at things around workforce, models for capacity needed when lockdowns are raised, identifying which workers can be brought back in and evaluating your cash situation..."

- Daniel Brabec, ServiceMax

It is such forward-thinking that sets apart the Think Tank discussions as some of the leading conversations happening today within our industry. A format that brings true industry leaders together with the freedom to bounce ideas off each other without constraint can lead to genuinely inspiring conversations.

As we worked through some of the salient points from the last quarter's Think Tank sessions, Daniel Brabec, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax neatly summarized the current thinking that we are seeing emerge.

"You've got the short term where you're keeping the business going, looking at your current field procedures to determine which steps can be reworked or bypassed, locating your critical parts, Brabec explained.

"In the near term, you're looking at things around workforce, models for capacity needed when lockdowns are raised, identifying which workers can be brought back in and evaluating your cash situation looking at the impact of pent up demand or deferred demand for installations and preventative maintenance visits.

"Then in the long term, you really want to start assessing and reevaluating how you're going to approach your whole structure of service moving forward, structuring the way forward and getting more remote support, even looking forwards to new concepts such as self healing. Having more connected devices and products and enabling your customers more is going to be the way of the future and I think COVID is really helping to accelerate all of them."

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