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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to Prof. Tim Baines about the recent Spring Servitization Conference hosted by The Advanced Services Group and how the conversation around servitization is continuing to evolve as academia and industry come together to drive advanced services forwards...

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Kris Oldland talks to Felix Keiderling, General Manager responsible for Global Service Business Development and Product Management of ABB Turbocharging shortly after his presentation at the Spring Servitization Conference in Lucerne, to find out more about how ABB are approaching the introduction of an outcome based service offering for the merchant marine sector as well as for power plants.

KO: Having just given a fantastic presentation a little earlier this morning one of the things you highlighted was that you have an install base of 200,000 assets and you know exactly what is going on with each and every one of those assets.

How do you achieve that?

FK: Well, we do not have a real-time information about all turbochargers.

But basically, knowledge about the installed based is at the core of our business considering the long life cycles over which vessels and power plants are operated. In order to do this we have an intelligent product and service database for specific application data covering from cradle to grave the whole process. I.e. from day one how we manufacture with what materials, through to where it is installed, on which engines and then keeping track of the lifecycle of the asset - how we’ve serviced it, if there are any upgrades and also technical information such as the estimated running hours and scheduled maintenance.

All this information creates value in particular for our long-term customers as we can be available where and when the customer needs us, with the right parts and the right people, very effectively.

KO: The business model that you described today generated a significant chunk of the revenue from service, has that always been the case, i.e. has service always been a key element within your business model?

FK: Yes it has. From Day 1 on, if you look at the harsh operational environments these engines are operating in, of course our turbo chargers also face these environments - so wear and tear is always occurring and we have always had to do regular maintenance because of that.

Due to this, from the beginning service has been an important part of our business approach and our success.

KO: And has it also always been a driver for you strategically? Or was there a customer pull as well?

FK: In one sense, it was a clear strategic decision especially when we looked at how manufacturing was moving to Asia and the big growth in logistics that was coming along with that. The merchant marine sector that we support is also driving this demand for regular maintenance for turbochargers as well.

So whilst it was a strategic decision in that we saw this market developing and positioned ourselves accordingly, there was also the move to implement our service solutions globally which was in part a reaction to the changing demands of our customers.

 

KO: When you were speaking earlier on today you alluded to such change and that the shift in market forces had allowed to put yourselves in the position where you can begin to explore the potential of an outcome based solutions model - what exactly does that look like for your division in ABB and what is that appeals to you in such a model?

FK:We see certain things happening in the market- one is that uptake of service agreements is picking up in pure numbers, customers are increasingly willing to outsource their service needs to service providers, and in particular to the OEM.

Secondly, we see that there is an interest in customers engaging in much longer term service agreements because they see the leverage of reducing their total cost of ownership over the asset lifecycle by also outsourcing the associated risks.

 

Then thirdly, there is the customisation possibility that you have within the scope of these lifecycle agreements - customers are willing to engage if you can truly support their operations and are willing to adjust to their needs.

KO: Finally, one other area that was brought up in your presentation, was digital transformation, which is one of the buzz-terms of 2017 it seems, but what does digital transformation mean for ABB both company wide and in your division?

FK: From top down, ABB has recently announced ABB Ability as the platform where we plan to connect all Internet of Things related services, products and people into this one common platform to ultimately enable our customers to know more, do more, do better, together with us. Then talking about our own specific unit, we are of course part of that process and we are looking into blending our excellence in global service execution, with digital customer solutions to support customers’ operations to be most reliable and efficient.

These solutions are in the development and are yet to come to the market

 

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Ahead of this year’s Spring Servitization Conference, Dr Ali Ziaee Bigdeli explores three key reasons why companies should be considering a move towards servitization...

One of the questions that keeps coming up when I talk about servitization is “what are the key examples that really demonstrate the scope of this concept?” There are many examples in the B2B world, where the concept originally took hold, but increasingly examples are emerging in the B2C world, and I often find that these examples that touch people’s daily lives as consumers help to make the point.

Examples of servitization first emerged in the development and delivery of Business-to-Business (B2B) offerings. In this regard, debates almost invariably refer to Power by the Hour, the pioneering engine maintenance solution introduced by Rolls Royce in the early 1960s.

Necessitating extensive changes to processes, structures, technologies and personnel within Rolls Royce, this iconic service provides a perfect example of the experiences and ambitions of many manufacturers who embrace  a servitization-based business model. It also had a fundamental legacy in terms of altering the way that customers contract with the company, with a move away from the transactional purchase of equipment towards a 10-year contractual relationship.

More and more manufacturers are moving towards this initiative. Other B2B examples include Alstom’s TrainLife Services. In this, French group Alstom provides the train with a bundle of repair and maintenance services and charges the operators (such as VirginTrains) based on the miles travelled through 15-20 year contracts. Xerox’s Print Management system offers a services and copier bundle which charges customers based on the number of papers they have copied or printed, and MAN’s pay-per-kilometre programme does a similar thing based on the distance its trucks are driven.

Most of these are ‘classic’ and very well-known examples now, but just recently Goodyear announced the launch of Goodyear Proactive Solutions.

 

This will aim to use new technologies such as predictive analytics to help truck fleet managers better handle how their vehicles are used. The common thread is that the outcome is not the sale of a product, but capability delivered through the performance of the product.

The extension of servitization into a product like tyres, which on the face of it is a ‘simple’ and commoditised product, shows just how widely applicable the idea is.

As I mentioned in my introduction, the concept is also slowly-but-surely getting into the Business-to-Customer (B2C) level too, where it touches our everyday lives. You may have experienced something like it if you have ever gone for a new car on a Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) contract.

It is basically a leasing model, in which the car manufacturers charge their customers based on the estimated mileage for a fixed period, rather than just the price of the asset. Repair and maintenance are usually included in these  contracts, meaning that the customers would only need to fill the tank and enjoy the drive.

Other examples include Brompton, the British manufacturer of popular folding bikes, now rents the bikes via docks across the UK to provide a more hassle-free option; Daimler’s Mercedes Me platform which remotely notifies drivers if the car requires maintenance or repair work; and OTIS’s Remote Elevator Monitoring (REM), which provides safety and continence 24/7 through the data collected, recorded and analysed from the lift. In this, the manufacturer enables to detecting trapped passengers, collect  lift performance data, communicate lift performance data to Otisline, and establish a voice link from the lift car to the Otisline or another manned location.

These examples may lead to the question of why is it critical for manufacturing firms to move towards servitization? I can think of three principal reasons:

1. Growth and sustainability.

Through the development and delivery of advanced service offerings, the manufacturer enables its customers to achieve their key strategic aims. This focus on helping customers to achieve their own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is how these manufacturers are differentiated from competitors, and delivers business growth and sustainability for both themselves and their customers.

For manufacturers it generates long term contracts, closer relationships with customers, new business opportunities and revenue streams, and an enhanced image and market differentiation. The customer is able to realise greater value from its operations, better understand and predict its costs and financial profile, and potentially have the opportunity to scale-up operations.

2. Locking-out competitors.

Today, more and more technology-focused intermediaries are moving into the product manufacturing space and disrupting their value networks.

Indeed, significant disruptions are already happening in some sectors. For instance, the technology giant Uber is moving into the long-haul transport business with a new division called Uber Freight, in which the shipper directly connects with the truck, challenging the traditional business models of all stakeholders in this network from manufacturer through to user. Servitization strategies push manufacturers to move towards collaboration with other members of the network (e.g. distributors, suppliers, supplier of suppliers, technology vendors, and customers) and this will create a resilient barrier that inhibits the entry of new players.

3. Sharing risks of new technological innovation.

Manufacturing firms generally perceive implementation and adoption of advanced services as a high-risk strategy, perhaps due partly to a traditional product-based mind-set. The perceived risks are operational (e.g. capacity constraints, human resourcing and leadership issues), strategic (e.g. decline in competitiveness, reputational issues) and financial (e.g. direct negative impacts on profit, revenue and market share).

As with any new initiative, manufacturing firms that start to compete through services must internalise new risks. In this respect, the alignment of the incentive with other stakeholders in the value network enables risk sharing and mitigates unnecessary costs.

There are so many aspects to servitization; the benefits are quite well documented, but the challenges of adopting it are numerous, and our understanding- both as researchers and practitioners in industry trying to make an influence change- of how to overcome these is still developing.

This month I’ll be heading to Lucerne for the annual Spring Servitization Conference.

Over the past few years it’s become a key event in the calendar for researchers and thought leaders who want to share and progress their knowledge and understanding of how the theory of servitization can be applied in practice to manufacturing businesses around the world.

This year, I’m looking forward to the discussion on research topics such as: The impact of top management team composition and past performance on servitization; changing the revenue model for individual services; assessing your readiness for servitization with a diagnostic tool to measure service capacity, as well as industry keynotes from representatives of Sulzer Rotating Equipment Services, Testo Industrial Services, ABB Turbo Systems and Ali Group.

You can join the conversation by coming along to the conference, it’s running from 15th-17th May, and more details and registration are on the website https://www.advancedservicesgroup.co.uk/ssc2017w

 

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Hosted by Aston Business School and the Aston Centre for Servitization Research and Practice this conference which is being held across the 18th and 19th May 2015 at Aston Business School promises to be a showcase for current, relevant and innovative research in the study of Servitization...

Servitization can protect and enhance business performance, leading to long term growth and sustainability. Over the next 3 years, 65% of manufacturing businesses worldwide will turn towards offering services*. Set against this backdrop the annual Spring Servitization Conference as Aston Business School will showcase current. relevant and innovative research in the study of servitization.

Presentation themes for the conference include:

• Business model innovation for servitization
• Customer interaction and co creation through real time data and social media
• Techniques for the identification of service opportunities and design of services
• Organisational capabilities and environmental conditions required for successful servitization
• Digital technologies as service providers; connected products and the IoT
• Business ecosystems and co opetition for delivery of advanced services
• Implementation of servitization; the challenges, barriers and enablers
• The circular economy and environmental

About the conference: 

The Spring Servitization Conference 2015 returns for a third year, attracting a strong international gathering of academics working in the field of servitization research. The organising committee is pleased to announce a record number of research papers have been submitted this year, covering themes such as: business model innovation, the circular economy and environmental sustainability and digital technologies as service enablers.

Who should attend: 

This event is targeted at researchers working in the field of servitization, managers and directors from manufacturing companies both large and small, software producers and other technology innovators of all sizes.

Keynote speakers

• Professor Tim Baines, Director, Aston Centre for Servitization Research and Practice. Tim is an international authority on servitization and works extensively with manufacturers to transform their operations to compete through advanced services. He has published over 200 papers on management and engineering, and is amongst the most frequently-cited authors on servitization. His career started with a technician apprenticeship, and has progressed through a variety of industrial and academic positions. Read Tim Baines latest exclusive feature for Field Service News here 

• John Cullen, VP Services Marketing, Metso Corporation. John Cullen is VP Services Marketing at Metso Corporation. In this role John is responsible for productizing the service portfolio, transforming the business to value based solution selling as well as communications for this 1 Billion Euro plus mining services business. Previous to working for Metso, John had a long history in business development and sales working for global brands, such as Nokia and O2, as well as having his own successful business development and sales company. John has an Engineering Science degree from St Catherine's College, Oxford University.

• Harman Lanser, Product Development & Logistics Group Component Products for AIRFRANCEKLM Engineering & Maintenance Within his scope is development of new products within the Component Availability area, OEM strategy and Supply Chain Development. Before that Harmen was Director Component Management at KLM Engineering & Maintenance for five years after a period of 6 years in Purchasing at KLM E&M as Director and Vice President Strategic Purchasing. Harmen has an experience of 28 years within Engineering & Maintenance. Since the Air France/KLM merger in 2004 he is one of the key players in the alignment of the procurement and supply chain activities of Air France Industries and KLM E&M. Harmen has his BSc. in Aeronautics and an MBA in E-commerce

• Christian Kowalkowski Associate Professor of Industrial Marketing at Linköping University, Sweden & Assistant Professor of Marketing at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki. Christian Kowalkowski is His current research interests include servitization, solutions marketing, service innovation, relationship dynamics, and value-creation strategies. Christian has published extensively and serves as an Associate Editor of Journal of Services Marketing and is on the Editorial Board of Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, and Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing. Over the years, he has collaborated with companies such as ABB, Electrolux, Linde, Saab Group, Tetra Pak, Toyota Industries, Volvo Group, and Xylem and been invited speaker at research seminars, associations and practitioner-oriented conferences across Europe.

• Michael J. Provost MA (Cantab) PhD CEng FIMechE FIET MIAM Engineering Fellow, Asset Management and Business Intelligence Services at Intelligent Energy Ltd. Before t joining Loughborough, Michael spent twenty-seven years at Rolls-Royce, two years at a Rolls-Royce spin-off company, Data Systems & Solutions (working on applications of aerospace asset management techniques in other industries) and five years at Bombardier Transportation. He is currently advising on the development and roll-out of a range of asset management techniques across Intelligent Energy Ltd.'s automotive, consumer electronics and distributed power product lines. 

The Venue: 

Conference Aston, Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK, B4 7ET

Contacts:

Further details can be found at www.aston.ac.uk/ssc2015 

Telephone: Jill Forrest +44 (0) 121 204 3249 

Twitter @_servitization 

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The world of manufacturing is getting ready for one of the most significant changes since the industrial revolution. Servitization is coming and amongst those leading the charge is Professor Tim Baines of Aston University. We're pleased to welcome him to the list of field service news columnists and here in this first article he gives us an introduction to this complex yet fascinating and important topic... 

The world once seemed simple; manufacturers made things and services companies did things for us. Today, increasing numbers of manufacturers compete through a portfolio of integrated products and services.

This is a services-led competitive strategy, and the process through which it is achieved is commonly referred to as servitization. Celebrated exponents of such strategies include Rolls-Royce, Xerox and Alstom; all offer extended maintenance, repair and overhaul contracts where revenue generation is linked directly to asset availability, reliability and performance.

Servitization is much more than simply adding services to existing products within a few large multi-national companies. It’s about viewing the manufacturer as a service provider that sets out to improve the processes of its customers through a business model, rather than product-based, innovation. The manufacturer exploits its design and production competencies to deliver improvements in efficiency and effectiveness to the customer.

Manufacturers have traditionally focused their efforts on product innovation and cost reduction. Companies such as Porsche and Ferrari are celebrated for bringing new and exciting designs into the market, while companies such as Toyota are held in awe for their work with Lean production systems. These successes foster a perception that the only way for manufacturing to underpin competitiveness is through new materials and technologies, faster and more reliable automation, machining with more precision, waste reduction programmes, smoother flow of parts etc.

Competition through services

Services offer a third way to compete. This is not an ‘instead of’ or ‘easy option’ for companies that are struggling to succeed. Indeed, delivering advanced services can require technologies and practices that are every bit as demanding as those in production. Neither do they require the manufacturer to abandon its technology strengths; instead it can build on these to help to ensure long term and sustained benefits. Consequently, there is a growing realisation that such services hold high value potential.

Conventional manufacturers can struggle to appreciate the value of services, seeking such simple explanations of servitization that they fail to appreciate potential benefits. This is often the case with organisational rather than technological innovations. In the early 1980s it was difficult to imagine that ‘Just-in-time’ would endure, and yet today it’s hard to identify a single manufacturing company that has not been touched by Lean techniques in one way or another.

 

Servitization is a similar paradigm shift. The word ‘service’ can be used in different ways. It can refer to how well an action is performed – “that was good service” – or to an activity, like maintenance, spare parts provision and so on. Servitization relates to this second interpretation; activities that a manufacturer can perform to complement its products.

All manufacturers offer services to some extent, but some establish market differentiation through these, following services-led competitive strategies. Servitization is a term given to a transformation. It is about manufacturers increasingly offering services integrated with their products. Of these, some manufacturers choose to servitize by offering an extensive portfolio of relatively conventional services, while some move almost entirely into services, largely independent of their products, by providing offerings like general consulting. Others move to deliver advanced services.

Advanced services are core to servitization. Xerox’s ‘Managed Print Services’ is one example; rather than simply selling equipment, the company offers ‘document solutions’ to customers. For a typical customer, such as BA, Xerox provides project management, implementation of new technology, and management of third parties.

There are various types of advanced services, and a variety of terms is used across industry to describe these (e.g. availability contracting, performance contracting, managed services, solutions). However the outcome of these contracts is, invariably, a capability for a customer to perform a business function or process.

This is distinct from conventional services where the outcome is product ownership and maintenance of an asset’s condition. Particular contracting features are often coupled to advanced services.

There are four key features; the first three of which are relatively widespread: Pay-for-use revenue payment: pay-per click, pay-as-you-go, power-by-the-hour etc. are all terms used to refer to advanced services. For instance, in its contract with Xerox, Islington Borough Council receives a ‘click charge’ each time a document goes through a machine.

Long-term contracts: Contracts of fewer than two years are rare. The Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust has a ten year contract for its pathology laboratory facility, while in power generation, GDF Suez enters into contracts of 20 to 25 years. Risk management: The provider is responsible for ensuring asset availability, condition and performance. If an Alstom train is late, penalties of £600 per minute of delay are incurred if the fault is with the OEM. Commitment to on-going process improvement and cost saving: this features increasingly in advanced services contracts.

 

When these features are coupled with the principle of delivering a capability, contracts become sophisticated and demanding. Many existing contracts are relatively large, which is perhaps part of their appeal to OEMs. MAN Truck and Bus UK has 10,000 vehicles under contract, and expects this to grow by 50% over the next three to five years, to represent £200million of business. The Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust’s five-year contract in its pathology laboratory is valued at £20M per year.

Advanced services are however not only for large organisations. They can hold high-value for manufacturers big and small. They can help strengthen relationships, lock-out competitors, and grow revenues and profits and this is why servitization can be a sustainable business model for manufacturers of all sizes.

 

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Want to know more - why not attend the Servitization Spring Conference in May 18th - 19th Click here for more information

 

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At the recent AfterMarket conference in Amsterdam Field Service News Editor, Kris Oldland hosted a panel debate with three speakers key to servitization; Professor Tim Baines, Aston University a leading proponent of the movement, Brendan Viggers, Product and Sales Support for IFS Aerospace & Defence division who has worked closely with a number of companies such as Emirates on moving towards a servitization model and Koen D’Haeyer, Global Manager Service Development & Technical Services Lely who had been through the journey himself with Dutch Farm Technology company.

In the first part of this feature we looked at whether servitization was limited to just large size companies and how to manage the change involved in moving to such a radical new approach. Here in the final part of this feature the debate continues....

Kris Oldland: There is a point there that you touch on briefly about not just getting the buy in from the internal teams but also from the customer. Data can play a significant part in servitization and that presents a challenge in it’s own right, as data is very precious currently. How can we overcome that and encourage our customers to let us access their data?

Koen Dyaeyer: To start I’ll mention one thing, there is an aspect on this benchmarking data with your customers which is of course, that you are obliged to do this anonymously that is clear. You can tell the a customer ‘look this is your data this is the rest of the market and this is the variation’  but you cannot be open to all extents.

But the value is not in knowing exactly who is doing what, the value is in comparing yourself with others and knowing what to learn, and how to then improve.

On the other hand it is also true that you have to select your targets when your developing these value propositions. This approach may not fit every type of customer immediately. I would say twenty to thirty percent may adopt really quickly, really embrace it and are immeditely fond of the concept, another twenty to thirty percent will be lagging – it is not in their mindset and then the part in the middle is where you have to push. And when you have pushed and achieved the 80% mark then you can approach the laggards.  That is more or less how we approached it so we didn’t lose to much time and energy in developing it.

 

Brendan Viggers:  Certainly in the defence market the classic contracting model is performance based logistics where the OEM is providing a platform and then the through life support of the platform as well, so all the servicing that goes with it and they will then offer a SLA or guarantee the fleet availability for 80% of that time.

What we are finding is there is a need for partnership between the OEM and the customer. Because the OEM needs to know how the customer is driving that vehicle. If he is taking that tank and forcing it across a plain over the bounds of normal operational use then it’s going to cost that OEM more to service it. So can be a win-win but if you want that platform you need to be prepared to operate within acceptable bounds.

Koen Dyaeyer: To add to Brendan’s point there I would add that in our case we are looking for the win-win-win because we are in between but if we focusses on the win-win-wins we can really drive forward.

Tim Baines: This debate about ownership of data has been going on for over 10 years. To my mind its the use of the data that is important. I’ve seen it in Xerox’s case where they will turn around and say OK the contract price is this for an advanced services contract on print management but if you let us share that data and use that data it’ll come down to this.

Audience Question: What would you say are your most important KPIs to actually monitor and drive your service business today?

Koen Dyaeyer: The most important group of KPIs are the service profitability KPI’s we have data on overall revenues and data on cost indicators. We cannot always be exact with th eservice cost indicators to the penny but we know what it is likely to be. So the service profitability is a major KPI.

Then there is customer satisfaction. The first question we ask in every technical assessment is what type of customer do you think this is and also is he satisfied? So we link that data to understand the relationship of data to customer satisfaction.

 

Then for the operations we also have the performance KPIs of the product so mean time between failure, mean time between breakdown, some performance indicators specific to our industry so number of failed milkings for example that help us see if the farm management is running smoothly. So performance, customer satisfaction  and service profitability – these are the three main KPI group we use.

Kris Oldland: Have these KPIs evolved as you have moved through this process of servitization? Have they evolved as you gather more data and therefore Insight into your customers?

Koen Dyaeyer: Actually we started with maybe 8 or 10 basic KPIs and what we started to get excited about was the analysis we could do with them. We were able to look at the years of technical experience and see how that aligned to customer experience and service profitability. We learned a lot out of that initial process and then some new KPIs grew out of it .

Tim Baines: I may have seen something slightly different in some of the companies that I have looked at. A quote that comes to mind is by Henry Ford who said profit is a result of service. Therefore when I look at people like Alstom the number one KPI is around customer experience.

That means the customer experience, which in their instance would be the amount of time a customer is waiting because a train has failed to show up, that customer experience is the number one KPI.

For Alstom that’s key because it relates directly to the customers key core business process, which is about moving people. Then there are KPIs around the customer experience when somebody is onboard the train and so on. It’s the manufacturer that then translates those to mean time to failure etc.

What is very interesting to me coming from a world of production, where the main KPIs were cost, quality and  delivery and everything was around that then moving to the service world where KPIs are centred around the business processes of the customer, and because those customers differ so must those KPIs differ.

 

Audience Question: I am understanding this correctly that the fourth industrial revolution is about re using our IP and industrial assets to serve customers better?

Tim Baines: I think that we are looking at a very special form of organisation. What is particular about the technology innovators you see here is that if they have the internal procedures in place to capture how the product is performing in the field and then feedback to the design process so the product becomes better suited for application, then that innovation loop is what is distinctive about the manufacturing companies and is different to technology innovators.

Ultimately it means language like through life support  are actually a characteristic of the old product mentality, we’re talking about a capability being delivered. Indeed even the notion of After-sales service is a product based concept because we are thinking of the notion of  producing something selling it transactionally and then after sales.

Another point to make is that we talk about servitization from the point of view of a manufacturing company, a company that’s got technology innovation capabilities delivering advanced services. But we also have the phenomena of companies which are service companies, technology integrators, developing their ability to technology innovate.

So there are two ways that servitization can arise. Predominantly we talk about a move from manufacturers to manufacturers that deliver service but we can also talk about service providers developing their abilities to redesign products.

 

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Servitization is a key trend in that is rapidly on the rise in manufacturing realm and it's impact on Field Service could be game changing. But what exactly is servitization, how can it change the way we work and will it live up to the hype?

To find out more Field Service News Editor, Kris Oldland spoke to Professor Tim Baines one of the leading proponents of the servitization movement

 

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Across December and January we asked our readers to nominate candidates for the inaugural #FSN20, a list of the twenty most influential people in field service. We received nominations from across the globe through social media, email and even a phone call or two directly into the news-desk.

Armed with a list of candidates, a Field Service News panel selected the final list of twenty based on the number of nominations, their impact on the industry (past, present and future) and their sphere of influence in both the physical and digital world.

After much long deliberation, heartful debate (read arguing) and enormous amounts of coffee we managed to whittle our list down to a final twenty which we pleased to present to you here the inaugural edition of the #FSN20. You may not agree with our selection and if you don’t tell us, tell your friends, tell your colleagues, hell tell the world - because at the heart of it that’s what this list is all about, getting people talking about excellence in field service and raising the profile of those leading us to a better future.

We will be announcing who made the list in alphabetical order in four sections across the next four days. So without further ado we are pleased to bring you the first five of the #FSN20

Colin Brown, Managing Director, Tesseract

Every generation or so a company will pioneer a new approach and then when they start to get some traction everyone else follow’s suit. Service Management Software company Tesseract under Brown’s long standing direction happen to have been that company twice, being the first company to launch a Service Management solution firstly for Windows and secondly in the Cloud.

If they head off in a new direction again I’d suggest paying attention.

Follow Colin @tesseractuk

 

 

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Professer Tim Baines, Aston University

Co-Author of “Made to Serve” and also Director of the Aston Centre for Servitization Research and Practice, Baines is one of the leading figureheads for the servitization movement, which could have an incredible impact on how field service operates for companies that adopt this approach.

An engaging and passionate speaker, with unbridled passion for his topic, Baines is one of the most significant figures in what is potentially one of the most significant industrial concepts in the twenty-first century.

Follow Tim @ProfTimBaines

 

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John Carroll, CEO, The Service Council

As founder of The Service Council Carroll’s impact on the field service industries stretches far beyond their home shores of the U.S. and right across the globe.

Having rapidly evolved from a good idea to a community spanning across 6 continents and representation in more than 30 countries, Carroll finds himself spearheading one of the most influential groups dedicated to field service in the world.

Follow John @tservicecouncil

 

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Alastair Clifford-Jones, Managing Director, Leadent Solutions

For perhaps too long Leadent Solutions have been one of the industry’s best secrets as Clifford-Jones has quietly built his managing consultancy with a team that, unlike some of his better known competitors, is populated with people who have worked in similar roles for their clients –so they inherently ‘get it’.

Therefore, it is not surprising that they are putting together an enviable track record of working with some big names and I think soon many more are set to follow.

Follow Alastair @LeadentSolution

 

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Sumair Dutta, CCO, The Service Council

In his previous role with Aberdeen Dutta headed up the organisation’s Customer Experience and Service Management Group and was a significant key figure in the launch of Aberdeen’s Chief Service Officer Summit Series.

Now in his role as Chief Customer Officer for The Service Council Dutta is one of the most widely seen commentators on the industry.

He also has field service’s best avatar.

Follow Sumair @suma1r

 

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See the rest of the list here:Part Two, Part Three,  Part Four. 

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