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Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for GrowthSM explains why the key to successful service sales lies within understanding your customers and their needs...

Most people would seem to agree that a physical product, like a copier, printer, or scanner, is the easiest thing to sell. Companies can include photographs and hardware specs for these types of products in their brochures and catalogs; photographs can be included in the company’s web site descriptions; and demos can be conducted right at the customer’s site, etc.

But, in many cases, selling a product can actually be one of the most difficult things to do, especially if you have never sold anything to a particular prospect in the past, or if they are not familiar with your company’s lines of copiers, printers, or scanners, etc. This is why we are suggesting that a maintenance agreement, or professional services, for an existing business imaging system (or any other type of equipment) may actually be easier to sell than the original product itself.

Let me explain.

Chances are, some of the accounts for whom you provide copier service and support purchase dozens, if not hundreds, of individual pieces of equipment every year. For most of your smaller accounts, any single equipment purchase is, in a relative sense, a major consideration for them, both from an absolute and a financial perspective.

However, once they have made the decision to purchase a particular piece of equipment, they have already “bitten the bullet” with respect to its importance to their business operations, and they have accepted all of the financial considerations that will be tied to its acquisition and use.

 

You may have already heard the expression “total cost of ownership”, or TCO; what this means is that, in real life, there is usually more to the “total cost” of an individual piece of equipment than just the price that was paid for its acquisition.

In addition to the specific purchase price, there is also the cost of ongoing hardware and software maintenance support, replacement parts, help desk support, consumables (like paper, toner, etc.)and many, many others.

For some, the acquisition of new equipment also requires moves or changes to their physical facility to create space for a new business imaging system or copier machine, as well as additional training for the individuals who may be tasked with various internal maintenance and/or administrative responsibilities. The general rule of thumb with respect to TCO is that, over the course of several years, the “actual” cost of ownership for any particular piece of equipment may be up to twice the initial purchase price (or more).

As such, it is easy to imagine that any one of your accounts that has already planned to purchase a major piece of capital equipment such as a copier, scanner, or printer would have already examined the anticipated TCO for that unit, and would have budgeted accordingly. However, even the most sophisticated business planners may sometimes misjudge what the ultimate TCO will be for an individual piece of equipment (or not forecast it at all).

For example, they may have only anticipated requiring warranty service for one year or so following acquisition, without planning for any further post-warranty support that, if provided on a time and materials basis, would end up being quite expensive. Some may not have anticipated losing the staff that was originally trained on a particular piece of equipment, and may ultimately find themselves in a situation where new hires may need “fresh” training for an existing business imaging system. These are both classic cases where your existing accounts may already be clamouring for enhanced maintenance, or warranty agreements, or for various other types of professional services that your company may already offer (i.e., user training, train-the-trainers assistance, custom documentation, etc.).

 

Whether any of your existing accounts have either mis-planned - or didn’t plan at all - when they made their initial purchase decision, they have one thing in common: at some point, they will recognise that they need additional support over and above what they initially received when they purchased the equipment, and that this support will typically manifest itself in either the need for an enhanced maintenance agreement, specific professional services, or both.

If you have been observing and monitoring your accounts all along the way, you probably can already pick out which ones are “ripe” for selling maintenance agreements or professional services.

If you have also been keeping up-to-date with your company’s product and service support offerings, you are also ready to speak to those accounts with respect to what you believe will make their ultimate “total cost of ownership” less in the long run. Armed with this information, you will find yourself in the perfect position to make the sale of maintenance agreements and professional services as easy as possible - certainly easier than making a “cold” sales call to a new prospect.

All you really need is the understanding of what your customers require, matched against the products and services your company offers, and many of these prospective “sales” will simply be waiting there for you to “close” them.

 

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Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for GrowthSM explains why Big Data isn’t the holy grail, instead focus on the quality, accuracy, accessibility and application of the data you routinely collect...

While much of the ongoing discourse in the global Information Technology (IT) community nowadays seems to center around hot topics, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) or “Big Data”, research has shown that it is not necessarily the size of the database that matters; but, rather, the quality, accuracy, accessibility and application of the relevant data that is being routinely collected, analysed and shared throughout the organisation.

In other words, data does not necessarily need to be “big”; it simply needs to be relevant, accessible and actionable, in order to be useful.

However, this is an important distinction that is missed by many!

First, let’s talk about what the “big” in “big data” really is. According to IBM, every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – in fact, so much that 90% of the data resident in the world today has been created in just the last two years alone.

As a result, field service organisations now have access to an unprecedented amount of data about the performance of their technicians, their vehicles, the equipment they service and their business performance in general.

However, what differentiates the best practices organisations from all others is best expressed in terms of not only “how accessible is all this data?”, but, rather, “how can it be transformed into valuable information that contributes to increased revenue, reduced costs and improved customer satisfaction?”

 

Other questions are also bandied about, such as “how big is too big data?”, and “what constitutes “big enough” data?”

It is, typically, in their responses to these types of questions, where many field service organisations initially go wrong – that is, they incorrectly believe that since they have already collected mountains of data from multiple sources (i.e., service call activity records, closed call reports, technician generated utilisation and/or productivity reports, machine-to-machine communications; etc.) that they must use all of these data in as many scenarios as possible.

But, the rule of thumb is more a matter of focusing primarily on the data that you “need-to-know”,rather than collecting data that is only “nice-to-know”.

The difference between these two types of data may appear to be subtle at first glance, but it is an important distinction since data collection, in and of itself, requires a massive expenditure of time, resources and investment, both human and pound-wise; it must be gathered, analysed and disseminated through a highly organised and controlled process, with direct senior management oversight and accountability; and it must bridge virtually all areas within the organisation – both from the top-down, bottom-up, and all throughout.

This is what we call “business analytics” – not “big data”; but, rather, just “enough data”.

 

In fact, it is those services organisations that are most successful in managing their business analytics that can easily tell the difference between “big data” and “enough data”.

They are also the ones that can most easily recognise when the bar for data collection, analysis and sharing needs to be raised in order to accommodate anything from the normal evolution of the organisation’s evolving database needs, to more event-driven needs, such as to account for a new product/service launch; increases in the numbers of customers, installed base and/or field technicians; business mergers, acquisitions or consolidation; new strategic alliance partnerships; etc.).

So … how big does your data really need to be?

The answer is simple: Big enough to support the organisation’s ongoing business analytics needs and requirements in terms of the ability to collect, analyse and share all of the data that is deemed important (e.g., business-critical, or mission-critical, etc.); required as input into the organisation’s ongoing metrics, or Key Performance Indicator (KPI), program; as input to annual or other periodic planning and forecasting activities; and the like.

Whether your organisation finds itself “swimming” in a data lake of epic proportions, or simply maintaining a modest database that fully supports its front and back offices; its field technicians, customers, and partners; its management decision makers; strategic partners; or any other stakeholders within the organisation, it will still require a sound “data analytics” program in order to make it all work.

Once again, it does not need to be “big” – just “big enough”, relevant and actionable.

 

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The above infographic is based on the findings of the Strategies for GrowthSM 2015 benchmarking report. Click the image to see full screen version

 

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Want to know more? Download our webinar featuring an exclusive presentation of the findings of this benchmarking project from Bill Pollock plus how scheduling technology can help you achieve best-in-class service standards by Nick Shipton

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Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for GrowthSM explains the importance of understanding your customers. How they differ from each other, how they are the same and most importantly how they use your products, in order to understand how best to serve them...

Every day you deal with a multitude of customers that may vary by type, size, installed base, usage, personality and everything else that ultimately differentiates one customer from another.

However, one thing always remains constant – their business systems and equipment are extremely important to their day-to-day operations.

Even if the equipment you support is not necessarily the most important piece of equipment in their facility, it will generally always be of significant importance to your primary customer contact, as it will typically be their direct responsibility to “manage” the internal availability and operation of the equipment to all of the users at their facility.

 

In many cases, your customer contact is the primary individual through whom all other users at the facility must obtain permission to use the equipment (i.e., via employee passwords, or ID/key cards, or the like).

They may also be integrally involved in the monitoring of machine usage on a daily, weekly, and other periodic basis – either from manual observation, or through the availability of remotely-generated reports.

They are typically the “gatekeepers” for access to the equipment, and it is generally their responsibility to manage, monitor and control its usage over time.

Accordingly, they are very important within their own organisations – and you are very important to them.

However, despite this common thread that runs through virtually all of the customers whose equipment you support, it is also important to remember that each customer account may also be different in terms of:

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• The various types, brands, models, and numbers of equipment they have installed at their respective facilities;
• The ages of the individual devices that are covered under warranty, service contracts, extended warranties, or on a time-and materials basis;
• The usage patterns of the equipment at each of their individual locations (i.e., continuous vs. intermittent use; single vs. multiple shifts; simple vs. complex applications; etc.);
• The volume or throughput they regularly execute; and
• Any other unique and/or specific differentiators that may distinguish one customer from another.

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However, at the end of the day, the one common denominator among all of the customers you support is the fact that they all depend on the continuous availability, operation, and usage of the business systems and equipment they have installed at their facility – and your primary customer contact is generally the one that shoulders most – if not all – of the internal responsibility to ensure that it is always running, and that there are no significant occurrences (or even worse, recurrences) of equipment downtime.

The single most effective means for gaining a full appreciation of your customers’ reliance on their business systems and equipment is to first understand how they use it.

For some, the equipment is an integral component of what they do on a day-to-day basis. Customers in the manufacturing, financial, medical, aerospace, legal, government (and many other) segments will tell you that their business systems and equipment are “essential” to their business operations – that when the system is down, their production is severely impacted, leading to serious financial, safety and personnel consequences.

Although some of the customers in these segments may have multiple and/or redundant machines in operation, when even one goes down, they feel it – and they want it back up and running as soon as possible.

For example, a retail establishment’s Point-of-Sale (POS) system may be the only means they have for providing their respective customers with a receipt, order confirmation, coupons or other important transaction-generated documents.

 

When their system is down, they may be unable to serve their own customers and, as a result, may find themselves temporarily “out of business” (i.e., think when the POS system goes down in a boutique clothing shop, or a McDonalds, etc.)

For these, the reliance on the equipment you support may be perceived as being even more critical (at least on a relative basis).

However, regardless of the specific industry segment or type of customer you support, there will always be a basic – and corresponding – level of reliance on the business systems and equipment they have installed at their facility.

As such, it will always be in your – and their – best interests to fully understand the extent to which they rely on the equipment you support so you will always be prepared to work from a stronger base of understanding with respect to exactly what your customers are dealing with, when they’re dealing with an equipment failure.

 

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Field service engineers are the unsung heroes that keep our world moving writes Bill Pollock, Strategies for GrowthSM...

In most cases, the customer relies heavily on its business systems and equipment and, in turn, your customer contact will rely heavily on your field technicians – personally – to make sure that the equipment is always up-and-running as expected.

In fact, you can safely assume that the customer is not nearly as interested in the technical nature of the equipment as it is in the solution it provides for his or her tasks-at-hand – that is, namely, performing the tasks, functions and operations that it is relied upon to keep the business up-and-running – with as little downtime as possible, and with no disruption to ongoing business processes.

As such, it is important to recognise that, in the customer’s mind, if the equipment is not working optimally – regardless of the technology that may have been built into it – it is “worthless”.

There is just so much that the customer itself will either be inclined – or permitted – to do in order to get the equipment back in working order following a failure. In most cases, the field technician will be the sole entity that the customer will be able to count on to make that happen – and this should deservedly carry along with it a great deal of responsibility and accountability. Just to put things in perspective, think of the case where a customer uses an ATM machine to withdraw cash – virtually anywhere, or anytime of day.

When the machine is down, they generally do not care whether it is due to a hardware failure, a software glitch, a network problem, or simply that it’s out of cash or paper tape for the receipt. All they know is that they needed cash, and the machine couldn’t deliver. Regardless of the specific reason, there was a failure, and the failure was duly noted in their minds. The same situation also occurs in the office environment, where the customer is also a “consumer” of your company’s products and services.

 

Customers will typically not care whether the reason their copy machine went down was due to a hardware or software failure, a paper jam, or anything else – or whether the cause was the machine’s fault, their fault, or nobody’s fault in particular. Again, all they know is that they needed to make a copy, and the machine didn’t work. That’s where the services provider comes into the picture.

And, based on how your field technicians enter the frame, you can either be perceived as a “knight in shining armour” – or as a part of the problem – depending on how you have been able to position yourself in the minds of your customers throughout the course of your relationship – i.e., Customer Relationship Management, or  CRM.

For example, if you have continually shown your customers that they can depend on your technicians to support both them and their equipment – and that you always have their best interests in mind – then, you will have established a type of bond that suggests that you are working as their “partner” to keep their systems up and running.

However, if you have consistently given them the impression that you do not have their best interests in mind – because your technicians have been repeatedly arriving late at their site, at the last minute, or that they always have a “lame” excuse for why the equipment failed again – then you will have positioned yourself outside of any real partner relationship, and have staked out, instead, a position on the “them” side of the “us vs. them” equation.

 

Remember, in the customer’s mind, it is generally the totality of the value that the equipment provides that is most important – not just the technology, nor the reliability of the equipment, nor the service level agreement that provides ongoing support coverage.

Customers continually look at any and all aspects relating to the systems and equipment they use, and their respective applications and functionality.

And your organisation’s field technicians typically represent the only “real” physical manifestations of the service and support that keeps it up and running.

Customers may rely heavily on their systems and equipment to support their day-to-day business operations – but they rely on you even more to ensure that the equipment can continually do what it is supposed to do.

 

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Are UK field service companies keeping pace with the rest of the world?  In  Parts  One, Two and Three, of this exclusive four-part benchmarking report for Field Service News, Bill Pollock, President & Principal Consulting Analyst, Strategies for Growth SM, revealed the comparative performances of US and UK/European field service organisations, the key drivers influencing strategy for UK/Europe companies and KPI focus.  

Here, in Part Four, he reports on attitudes and trends regarding Cloud and On-Premise solutions. The publication of this research was sponsored by Kirona.

 

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Download the full report! Click here to download it now!

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By providing customers with the right mix of Web-enabled self-help capabilities, the leading UK/Europe organisations have essentially been able to run their respective services operations more effectively, while also increasing existing levels of satisfaction by allowing customers to become part of their own “support team”.

Self-help support capabilities, such as the ability to order parts, or view current work order status, saves customers – and FSOs – significant time in that an entire series of potential two-way vendor-customer status update calls can be avoided.

In addition, customers can create their own service tickets online, gain direct access to self-service resolution scenarios, receive real-time status update alerts, and track the shipping status of outstanding service parts orders themselves. Basically, the more power the customer has to perform any of these activities itself, the quicker service orders can be created, the quicker potential time-related problems can be identified and resolved, and the happier the customers will be with the services they are receiving from the provider.

By making the customer an integral part of the service delivery team, UK/Europe service organisations can continue to benefit from reduced time- and cost-related factors – while increasing existing levels of customer satisfaction. Customer access to online service order data and information is clearly a “win-win” scenario for all parties.

 

Growth in Cloud solutions

However, the greatest impact on the future of Field Service Management is most likely to come as a result of the growing acceptance of Cloud-based technology, as reflected in one particular series of questions included in SFG℠’s 2015 FSM survey questionnaire. Respondents were first divided into three (3) categories: those with existing FSM solutions already in place, those planning to implement in the next 12 months, and those considering an FSM implementation or upgrade in more than one year.

The results strongly suggest that we are currently in the midst of a fast-paced global sea change in the way FSM solutions are being marketed, sold and deployed.

Among those UK/Europe organisations currently planning an FSM implementation in the next 12 months (or considering doing so in the next 24 months), a Cloud-based solution is preferred by 29% of respondents, compared to only 14% citing a preference for Premise-based – a roughly 2:1 ratio in favour of Cloud.

However, more than half (57%) still remain undecided at this time (compared to only 26% for the general survey population). Still, Cloud-based FSM solutions appear to be the dominant preference. In less than three years since SFG℠’s previous FSM Benchmark Survey was conducted, this represents a sea-change from a market that has historically gone Premise-based for a majority of its FSM software solution needs.

However, the availability of Cloud-based FSM and SLM solutions now allows smaller UK/Europe FSOs to acquire the same types of functionality previously only available to larger organisations, thereby allowing them – in many cases for the first time – to compete directly against the historical market leaders.

 

Key Survey Takeaways

Based on the UK/Europe results of SFG℠’s 2015 Field Service Management Benchmark Survey, the key takeaways are: [ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. UK/Europe Field Services Organisations (FSOs) are driven to meet customer demands for quicker response; improve workforce utilisation, productivity and efficiencies; meet customer demand for improved asset availability, and increase service revenues
2.  A majority of UK/Europe FSOs are adding, expanding and/or refining the metrics, or KPIs, they use to measure service performance.
3. Over the next 12 months, more than three-quarters (79%) of UK/Europe FSOs will have invested in mobile tools to support their field technicians, and more than 53% will have integrated new technologies into existing field service operations.
4. UK/Europe Field Technicians are increasingly being provided with enhanced access to real-time data and information to support them in the field.
5. UK/Europe FSOs are providing customers with expanded Web-enabled self-help capabilities (i.e., to order parts, track the status of open calls, and create service tickets, etc.).
6. More than half of UK/Europe FSOs are not currently attaining their customer satisfaction or SLA compliance goals; and one-in-four are not achieving at least 20% services profitability (although services profitability, as a whole, appears to be improving).
7. Existing UK/Europe FSM platforms are reported as reflecting a more than 2:1 Premise-based over Cloud-based ratio; however, planned FSM implementations in the next 12 to 24 months are reported as more than 2:1 Cloud-based, or SaaS.

Historically, the primary factors cited as driving the UK/Europe – and global - services community to improve its operational efficiencies and service delivery performance have essentially been customer-driven; that is, with a focus primarily on meeting – and, even, exceeding – customer expectations for response time, first-time fix rate, mean-time-to-repair and the like.

However, the economic downturn of the past decade changed the way services organisations think by shifting their focus to ongoing rounds of cost cutting and downsizing (i.e., the denominator of the bottom line). However, this was quickly followed by a shift to the numerator, best represented by an all-out effort to increase service revenues, or turnover.

In 2016 and beyond, the focus will likely be even stronger on the customer in terms of striving to meet (and exceed) their demands, preferences and expectations – or “back to the basics”. UK/Europe FSOs will continue to plan to accomplish this mainly by developing and/or improving the KPIs they use to monitor their improved performance over time, investing in new tools to support both field technicians and customers, and integrating new technologies into their existing FSM or Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) systems.

 

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At 49%, the cited  current investments in mobile tools to support field technicians by UK/Europe services organisations is much higher than the overall survey base (44%),  yet current plans for integrating new technologies are still reported as significantly lower (i.e., only 20% in the UK/ Europe, compared with 34% for the global survey base).

However, plans for new technology integration over the next 12 months are significantly high at 33%, suggesting that the adoption of new services technologies in the UK/Europe may be roughly only one year behind that reflected by the general survey population (which is comprised of roughly 75% of respondents from the Americas).

Planned strategic actions by UK/Europe services organisations over the next 12-month period reflect a more dynamic, rather than static, approach to the field services marketplace.

For example, 51% of respondents plan to develop and/or improve their use of field service KPIs, or metrics, in the next 12 months; and nearly as many plan to improve planning and forecasting activities with respect to field operations (46%).

 

Automating existing manual field service processes and activities (40%) is also cited as a top planned strategic action.

Additional top planned strategic actions, cited by at least one-quarter (25%) of UK/ Europe respondents, include integrating new technologies into existing field service operations (33%), investing in mobile tools to support field technicians (30%) and providing enterprise-wide access to important field-collected data (26%).

Other key planned actions will be taken in areas relating to increasing customer involvement in Web-based service processes (23%); providing additional training to field technicians and dispatchers (19%); outsourcing some, or all, field service activities to partners and vendors (14%); and hiring additional field service technicians and/or dispatchers (11%).

What these data primarily show is that the UK/ Europe field services community recognises the need to take specific strategic actions to enhance and improve existing service operations, and that these actions begin first and foremost with the need to develop and/or improve the use of service metrics and KPIs in measuring and monitoring their service delivery performance.

In addition, it shows that UK/Europe FSOs also recognize the need to invest in the right mobile tools and technologies to empower their resources both in the field, and in the back office, to improve existing processes, meet the growing needs of customers, and make greater contributions to the bottom line.

Use of KPIs

The survey findings reveal that there are basically seven service performance metrics, or KPIs, presently being used by a majority of UK/Europe FSOs. They include:

• 78%  Customer Satisfaction
• 75%  Total Service Revenue
• 68%  Total Service Cost
• 53%  Field Technician Utilisation
• 53%  Percent of Total Revenue under SLA/ Contract
• 51%  Service Revenue, as a Percent of Total Company Revenues
• 51%  Service Revenue, per Field Technician

However, there are also an additional seven KPIs that are used by just under one-half of UK/ Europe FSOs to help them measure performance, including On-Site Response Time (49%), First Time Fix Rate (49%), Service Level Agreement (SLA) Compliance (49%), Field Technician Productivity (47%), Mean-Time-to-Repair (MTTR) (47%), Service Contract Attach Rate (47%) and Service Contract Renewal Rate (47%).

The fact that ±50% of all UK/Europe services organisations presently use up to 14 KPIs to measure service performance reflects a significantly high level of importance placed on the use of KPIs in the overall UK/Europe services community.

 

The survey findings also show that UK/Europe services organisations aspiring to attain Best Practices do not merely look at specific outcomes, such as improving the bottom line, or increasing customer satisfaction; they also look at ways in which to identify the root causes of major problems and leverage process improvement opportunities through the implementation of effective tools and technologies to support their resources both in the field and in the front and back offices that support them.

For example, a majority of UK/Europe FSOs currently support their field technicians with a variety of online capabilities, including the ability to initiate service orders (83%), ability to track and update the current status of work orders (77%), access to product schematics/ documentation (57%) and ability to provide customers with an Estimated Time for Arrival (ETA) (55%).

Other capabilities planned in the next 12 months by at least one-third (33%) of UK/Europe services organisations in support of their field technicians include: [unordered_list style="bullet"]

• 38% Access to problem resolution scenarios
• 35%  Access to customer/asset service history

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Whether it is access to data and information that represents the past (i.e., customer/ asset history), the present (i.e., current status of work orders), or the future (i.e., providing customers with an ETA), the leading UK/Europe FSOs clearly appear to recognize the importance of real-time data and information access.

However, the key to success for many services organisations is that they are also providing their customers with a comparable set of online tools to make both their – and their field technician’s – lives much easier.

 

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Do UK/Europe FSOs prefer Cloud or On-Premise solutions? Find out in Part 4 coming soon...

 

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Are UK field service companies keeping pace with the rest of the world? In Part One of this exclusive four-part benchmarking report for Field Service News, Bill Pollock, President & Principal Consulting Analyst, Strategies for Growth SM, revealed comparative performances and some of the differences between US and UK/European field service organisations.  Here, in Part Two,  he reports what  UK and European service companies say are the key drivers influencing strategy. The publication of this research is sponsored by Kirona.

 

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Download the full report! Click here to download it now!

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The key drivers that most influence UK/Europe organisations to improve the overall performance of their field service operations are similar to those cited by the overall respondent base, although, with a higher degree of intensity, and in a slightly different order – i.e., one that places somewhat more emphasis on customer demand and workforce utilisation, productivity and efficiency.

Nonetheless, the UK/Europe respondents have clearly identified the specific drivers that are pushing them to aspire to the attainment of higher levels of performance. For example, customer demand for quicker response time is cited by more than half of the respondent base (i.e., 56%) as the top driver their organisation currently focuses on with respect to optimising field service performance.

The need to improve workforce utilisation and productivity, and need to improve service process efficiencies are the next most highly cited at 47% of respondents, respectively.

From such data, it is clear that the main focus of UK/Europe services organisations remains squarely on the customer.

 

They have already recognised that a focus on the customer must be first and foremost with respect to driving their service operations, and that they could neither attain – nor maintain – a strong competitive status in the services community without having focused first on their customer’s needs and requirements; and, next, on improving the internal services operations necessary to meet their expectations.

As such, the common threads that tie all of these drivers together among UK/Europe services organisations may be best categorised into three groupings essentially comprising:

1. Customer demand for quicker response and improved asset availability;
2. Field technician utilisation, productivity and efficiency improvement; and
3. An internal mandate to drive service revenues – and profits.

We also believe that it is a mistake to dwell only on the “top” factors that are driving the market – and the organisation.

In fact, there are several other factors that respondents also cite as just “bubbling under the surface” with respect to their potential impact on the overall well-being of the organisation. These include:

 

• 22% Competitive pressures / need for market differentiation
• 14% Customer demand for more accurate service call scheduling
• 12% Escalating field service operations costs
• 8% Need to reduce dispatch-related errors

It is noted that UK/Europe organisations are far less likely to be driven by competitive pressures/ need for differentiation than the overall survey universe (i.e., only 22% for the UK/Europe, compared to 33% for the overall respondent base).

Also, while only 8% (i.e., or roughly 1-in-12) UK/ Europe respondents cite the need to reduce dispatch-related problems as a key factor, this driver is apparently still an important consideration to a significant number of organisations.

Another key influencing factor revealed through the analysis is that only 62% of the UK/Europe services organisations surveyed have experienced some improvement in year-over-year field technician productivity (i.e., measured in terms of average calls completed per day), compared to 67% among the overall respondents). Nearly as many (i.e., 61%) have experienced improvements in service revenue, per field technician during the same period.

A similar percentage (i.e., 60%) have also experienced improvements in their year-over-year service profitability.

In fact, these year-over-year increases have helped UK/Europe services organisations to attain a mean average of 35% service profitability in the most recent reporting period, only slightly lower than the 38% attained among the overall respondent base.

Customer satisfaction

At a mean average of 82%, UK services organisations are also currently falling somewhat below the global survey population with respect to attaining desired levels of customer satisfaction (i.e., 85%).

However, each of these respective levels of performance assure that most UK/Europe services organisations will likely retain their high standings in the global services community: first, through sheer momentum; and finally, by the fact that they also reflect among the survey universe’s highest levels of strategic actions – both current and planned – targeted to improve these key areas of performance over the next 12 months and beyond.

 

Based both on the survey findings and SFGSM’s ongoing follow-up research, it is not surprising that the UK/Europe field services community recognises that it will need to increase its investments in mobile tools and new technologies to compete effectively in an expanding global marketplace.

In addition, it also recognises the importance of building an effective Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), or metrics, program to measure the impact that its strategic actions, technology investments and resource acquisitions will actually have on the organisation’s performance moving forward.

Perhaps one of the most encouraging signs for the future success of UK/Europe services organisations is that nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents cite the development/improvement of the KPIs and metrics they use to measure, monitor and track their field service performance over time as their top strategic priority.

This figure is substantially higher than the 52% cited by the overall survey population – and even higher than the 52% cited by Best Practices organisations.

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Download the full report! Click here to download it now!

 

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Watch out for Part 3 , where Bill Pollock reports on KPI performance and what technologies companies plan to invest in from 2016 onwards.

 

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Are UK field service companies keeping pace with the rest of the world? In this exclusive four-part report for Field Service News,  Bill Pollock, President & Principal Consulting Analyst, Strategies for Growth SM, explores how UK companies compare with their global counterparts.  

 

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Download the full report! Click here to download it now!

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Each year, Strategies For Growth  (SFGSM) conducts a series of Benchmark Surveys among its global outreach community.  The content of this report is derived exclusively from the UK/Europe responses to our 2015 Field Service Management (FSM) Benchmark Survey and, thereby, represents a geographically-specific universe base from which to identify key FSM usage patterns and trends. The research coverage was sponsored by Kirona.

For example UK/Europe survey respondents identify the following as the top factors, or challenges, currently driving their desire to optimise field service performance (compared to the overall global results):

• 56% Customer demand for quicker response time (up from 52% overall)
• 47% Need to improve workforce utilisation & productivity (up from 43% overall)
• 47% Need to improve service process efficiencies (up from 40% overall)
• 41% Customer demand for improved asset availability (up from 35% overall)

Thus, the data clearly reflects that UK/Europe Field Service Organisations (FSOs) appear to place somewhat more emphasis on each of these key market drivers, focusing on customer demand and workforce utilisation, productivity and efficiency, than their worldwide respondent counterparts.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that they are also planning to invest more in mobile tools in support of their respective field forces than other global geographies represented in the overall survey universe.

However, in order to effectively address these key challenges – and strive to attain Best Practices status – UK/Europe respondents then cite the following as the top strategic actions they are currently taking:

• 64% Develop / improve metrics, or KPIs, used to measure field service performance (up from 52% overall)
• 49% Invest in mobile tools to provide field technicians with real-time access to required data and information in the field (up from 42% overall)
• 35% Integrate new technologies into existing field service operations (i.e., iPads, Tablets or other devices, etc. (up from 34% overall)

The big difference reflected in the UK/Europe survey results is in the percentage of services organisations that are currently developing and/ or improving the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) they use to measure performance -  cited as a top strategic action by 64% of UK/ Europe respondents, compared to only 52% overall.

 

In fact, the percentage of UK/Europe FSOs currently developing/improving their respective KPIs, at 64%, is higher than the 62% cited by the survey’s Best Practices respondents (i.e., those attaining at least 90% Customer Satisfaction and 30% Services Profitability).

The remainder of this report provides insight into each of these and other related areas that may be influencing your organisation’s quest to attain Best Practices, as well as highlighting those resources that the leading UK/Europe organisations already have in place – or are planning to implement in the next 12 months.

Field service as profit centres

The survey results reveal that 65% of UK/Europe respondent organisations currently operate service as an independent profit centre (or as a pure, third-party service company), similar to the 66% reflected among the overall survey respondents, but far fewer than the 81% cited among Best Practices organisations.

Even so, there are still more than a third (35%) that operate as cost centres in support of product sales.

While there appears to be some consistency or continuity in these percentages from other surveys conducted by SFG℠ over the past few years, this nearly 2:1 ratio strongly validates the fact that profit centres now represent the dominant business model within the UK/Europe services community and, based on responses from other questions in the survey, this trend is likely to grow even stronger over time.

It is noted, however, that the percentage of organisations running service as an independent profit centre varies – sometimes significantly – by size of organisation (based on annual revenue or turnover).

The overall survey findings indicate that US$1 billion-plus organisations come in at 74%, while SMBs (i.e., Small and Medium-sized Businesses) report only 55%.

 

Not surprisingly, organisations reporting total annual service profits of greater than 30% come in at 76% – one of the highest levels charted among all of the segments covered in the survey.

As such, they are not only operating service as a profit centre – they’re actually making a significant profit by doing so!

Bespoke or out-of-the-box

More importantly, the UK/Europe respondent base clearly confirms that the predominant mode of Field Service Management (FSM) solutions currently being deployed is mainly off-the-shelf, either with some customisation (53%; compared with only 37% overall), or basically right out-of-the-box with no customisation (2%; compared with 6% overall), comprising more than half (55%) of the respondent base in total.

This figure is 9% higher than that cited by global Best Practices organisations (i.e., 46%)

Roughly one-quarter of UK/Europe respondents are either using home-grown, or internally-developed automated systems (15%), or bespoke solutions developed by a systems integrator (9%).

As such, UK/Europe organisations are far less likely to deploy a bespoke solution either internally, or by a systems integrator, compared with the overall survey respondents, but are far more likely to deploy an off-the-shelf solution and, then, have the specific types of customisation they require built-in to tailor it to their organisation’s requirements.

However, the most perplexing statistic may be the fact that nearly one-in-four UK/Europe organisations (22%) are still running their field service operations basically via a series of manual processes (and spreadsheets) – higher than the 18% attributable to the overall respondent base!

 

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Download the full report! Click here to download it now!

 

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Watch out for Part 2 , where Bill Pollock reveals the key drivers for European and UK field service organisations.

 

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