Field service is a sector led by people who inherently understand operations, as such we often hear of companies ‘fine tuning’ their processes as they seek further efficiency gains. However, in today’s world service is also a significant revenue...
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Aug 01, 2019 • Features • Management • Business Improvement • Jim Baston • Business Development
Field service is a sector led by people who inherently understand operations, as such we often hear of companies ‘fine tuning’ their processes as they seek further efficiency gains. However, in today’s world service is also a significant revenue generator, so it is high time we turn to tuning up our business development skills as well writes Jim Baston...
As service providers, we are very much aware of the advantages of preventative maintenance programs and equipment tune-ups. Part of our job is to convince our customers of their merit so that we can help them reduce or eliminate unexpected failures, extend asset life and improve operational efficiencies.
If preventative maintenance and tune-ups provide such benefits for our customers, would it not make sense to apply the same logic for ourselves? When was the last time you conducted a tune-up on your initiative to engage your field service professionals in business development activities?
Engaging our field team in making proactive recommendations to our customers provides a valuable service. By identifying ways our customers can improve their business, our field team contributes to their ability to achieve their business goals. Our field service professionals, because of their knowledge of the technology and of the customer, are in a unique position to see opportunities that no one else can see. Therefore it makes sense that we maintain this initiative in a finely tuned condition so that our field team can perform this valuable service at the highest levels.
Here are four areas to focus our tune-up efforts to ensure that our field service team’s business development efforts are performing at their best:
1. Check the processes and systems that oversee opportunity capture and management to ensure they are working efficiently and without error.
Opportunity capture and management systems and processes are the backbone of the business development initiative. If the systems are not working smoothly, then opportunities get lost, field professionals get frustrated and customers become disappointed. Failure to maintain the processes and systems will be a sure way to bring the entire initiative to a grinding halt.
To keep systems and processes operating in tiptop condition, check to ensure that there is a clear and simple process to capture opportunities and that the process is clearly understood. Take proactive steps to simplify the process further. Check to ensure that there are no opportunities falling through the cracks. Ensure that management responds quickly to address any anomalies when problems in the process do occur.
2. Assess how familiar your team is with ALL of your services and capabilities.
Conducting maintenance in this area will contribute to the efficiency and consistence of the initiative. Teams that have a high awareness of your overall capabilities, will be in a better position to recognize opportunities where that capability will help the customer and be more comfortable in engaging the customer in a conversation about it. Evaluate how well your team understands the complete range of services that you provide.
Assess your strategy of bringing new members up to speed and ensuring that everyone is familiar with any new services you add. Evaluate whether your team recognizes the value of learning about your services and how it contributes to the overall benefit of your customers.
3. Evaluate your opportunity follow up strategy.
Not following up on recommendations will result in lost opportunities and contribute to the overall inefficiency and effectiveness of the initiative. Not following up will also have a negative impact on the customer. Many years ago I was asked to do some research for a service organization to gain insight into some specific actions that could be taken to improve their service delivery.
I met with several customers and one related a story to me that highlights the negative impact on the customer of not following up on recommendations. In this case, the field service professional made a recommendation to avoid an anticipated equipment failure.
The recommendation was not acted upon by the customer and several months later the failure did occur. The cost of responding to the resulting emergency situation was many times more that the cost of taking the recommended preventative action. The customer was angry with the service provider. It turns out that the customer had forgotten about the recommendation and the service provider did not follow up to remind him.
Evaluate your process for following up on opportunities. Is it clear who is to follow up? Are they provided with the information needed to do this in a timely manner? Are they following the process? What failsafe measures are in place to ensure that no follow-ups are missed? How well are these measures working?
4. Assess how well you and your management team are supporting the field team.
Management support is both the fuel and the lubricant of the initiative. Consistent and engaged management support will contribute to the efficiency and longevity of the efforts of your field service team. Initiatives that are poorly supported by management will never achieve the planned performance levels and will lose whatever momentum they have quickly.
As you assess management support, consider the following:
• How often do you speak of the initiative? Is it part of most conversations?
• Do you speak of it as part of the overall strategy to serve the customer? Are the proactive efforts of the field team referred to as a service to the customer?
• When was the last time you provided training to enable your team to perform capably and comfortably?
• Do you offer reminders and refreshers to keep the initiative fresh. Do you provide an opportunity like role-playing to let your field service professionals practice their customer conversations in a safe environment?
• Do you make time to regularly coach the team on the desired behaviours?
We provide a valuable service when we engage our technicians in business development by making proactive recommendations to our customers. In order to ensure that we are providing this service at the highest level, it is important that we maintain the effectiveness of the initiative through regular tune-ups.
If it works for our customers, then it will certainly work for us.
Jim Baston is President at BB Consulting Group.
As service providers, we are very much aware of the advantages of preventative maintenance programs and equipment tune-ups. Part of our job is to convince our customers of their merit so that we can help them reduce or eliminate unexpected failures, extend asset life and improve operational efficiencies.
If preventative maintenance and tune-ups provide such benefits for our customers, would it not make sense to apply the same logic for ourselves? When was the last time you conducted a tune-up on your initiative to engage your field service professionals in business development activities?
Engaging our field team in making proactive recommendations to our customers provides a valuable service. By identifying ways our customers can improve their business, our field team contributes to their ability to achieve their business goals. Our field service professionals, because of their knowledge of the technology and of the customer, are in a unique position to see opportunities that no one else can see. Therefore it makes sense that we maintain this initiative in a finely tuned condition so that our field team can perform this valuable service at the highest levels.
Here are four areas to focus our tune-up efforts to ensure that our field service team’s business development efforts are performing at their best:
1. Check the processes and systems that oversee opportunity capture and management to ensure they are working efficiently and without error.
Opportunity capture and management systems and processes are the backbone of the business development initiative. If the systems are not working smoothly, then opportunities get lost, field professionals get frustrated and customers become disappointed. Failure to maintain the processes and systems will be a sure way to bring the entire initiative to a grinding halt.
To keep systems and processes operating in tiptop condition, check to ensure that there is a clear and simple process to capture opportunities and that the process is clearly understood. Take proactive steps to simplify the process further. Check to ensure that there are no opportunities falling through the cracks. Ensure that management responds quickly to address any anomalies when problems in the process do occur.
2. Assess how familiar your team is with ALL of your services and capabilities.
Conducting maintenance in this area will contribute to the efficiency and consistence of the initiative. Teams that have a high awareness of your overall capabilities, will be in a better position to recognize opportunities where that capability will help the customer and be more comfortable in engaging the customer in a conversation about it. Evaluate how well your team understands the complete range of services that you provide.
Assess your strategy of bringing new members up to speed and ensuring that everyone is familiar with any new services you add. Evaluate whether your team recognizes the value of learning about your services and how it contributes to the overall benefit of your customers.
3. Evaluate your opportunity follow up strategy.
Not following up on recommendations will result in lost opportunities and contribute to the overall inefficiency and effectiveness of the initiative. Not following up will also have a negative impact on the customer. Many years ago I was asked to do some research for a service organization to gain insight into some specific actions that could be taken to improve their service delivery.
I met with several customers and one related a story to me that highlights the negative impact on the customer of not following up on recommendations. In this case, the field service professional made a recommendation to avoid an anticipated equipment failure.
The recommendation was not acted upon by the customer and several months later the failure did occur. The cost of responding to the resulting emergency situation was many times more that the cost of taking the recommended preventative action. The customer was angry with the service provider. It turns out that the customer had forgotten about the recommendation and the service provider did not follow up to remind him.
Evaluate your process for following up on opportunities. Is it clear who is to follow up? Are they provided with the information needed to do this in a timely manner? Are they following the process? What failsafe measures are in place to ensure that no follow-ups are missed? How well are these measures working?
4. Assess how well you and your management team are supporting the field team.
Management support is both the fuel and the lubricant of the initiative. Consistent and engaged management support will contribute to the efficiency and longevity of the efforts of your field service team. Initiatives that are poorly supported by management will never achieve the planned performance levels and will lose whatever momentum they have quickly.
As you assess management support, consider the following:
• How often do you speak of the initiative? Is it part of most conversations?
• Do you speak of it as part of the overall strategy to serve the customer? Are the proactive efforts of the field team referred to as a service to the customer?
• When was the last time you provided training to enable your team to perform capably and comfortably?
• Do you offer reminders and refreshers to keep the initiative fresh. Do you provide an opportunity like role-playing to let your field service professionals practice their customer conversations in a safe environment?
• Do you make time to regularly coach the team on the desired behaviours?
We provide a valuable service when we engage our technicians in business development by making proactive recommendations to our customers. In order to ensure that we are providing this service at the highest level, it is important that we maintain the effectiveness of the initiative through regular tune-ups.
If it works for our customers, then it will certainly work for us.
Jim Baston is President at BB Consulting Group.
Feb 17, 2018 • Features • Management • Jan Van Veen • management • moreMomentum • Motivation • Business Improvement • CHange Management • Service Innovation and Design
Jan Van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum, continues his exclusive series for Field Service News exploring the ‘4 Winning Habits of Long-Lasting Achievers in Service’ and looks at the importance of the third winning habit: Decision-making.
Jan Van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum, continues his exclusive series for Field Service News exploring the ‘4 Winning Habits of Long-Lasting Achievers in Service’ and looks at the importance of the third winning habit: Decision-making.
Common mistake: Dismissing employees to take ownership
During the last decades, if not centuries, it became a habit to have all important decisions in companies made at top management levels. The assumption traditionally is that this is where the skills, expertise and overview are to make the right decisions. The aim was to increase control, predictability and stability. This used to work fine in most sectors as they were fairly predictable and stable.
However, a lot has changed. Lifecycles of products, services and markets are shorter, changes are quicker, new trends and the future are less predictable, and the complexity of running a business has increased dramatically.
In more industries, companies are suffering from lack of adaptability and agility and falling behind the competition.
Here are a few symptoms we see from the traditional top-down management habits:
- Someone in the lower ranks who sees a threat or opportunity and wants to act on it first needs to discuss this with higher rank management to get their approval and buy-in/decision. There is a challenge that many initiatives face for the attention and favourable decisions from top management. These politics can be frustrating for employees.
- The time of decision-making by higher management is becoming scarce in the critical path for most initiatives. Necessary decisions are being delayed or being made without the attention required.
- The quality of decision-making suffers from inadequate information. Observations and information about threats and opportunities do not flow through the organisation quickly and accurately enough.[/unordered_list]
The solution: Unlock the huge decision-making power throughout the organisation
Leading companies have tremendous power, speed and responsiveness due to the following effective habits on decision-making:
- Top-down and bottom-up strategies and roadmaps
- Effective and efficient decision-making
- Full transparency
1. Top-down and bottom-up strategies and roadmaps
Maintain an overall strategy and roadmap
The overall strategy and roadmap defines the changes required in different phases to achieve the envisioned future. It clarifies the focus and ballpark figures on key metrics towards the envisioned future. This provides a clear picture of the direction required for all entities of the business to shape their own role, contribution and strategy.
Typically, the leading companies have competence centres for various topics which provide best practices, frameworks, benchmarks and advice to the entities in order to develop and execute their strategies.
Each entity has its own strategy and roadmap
Based on the overall strategy and roadmap, each division, subsidiary and department maintains and executes its own specific strategy and roadmap. They own their plan and are fully accountable for the progress and results.
Larger organisations have a cascade of several levels of sub-strategies, which can contain dozens or many more sub-strategies.
Focus on “new”
Within most successful companies, the strategy and roadmap is about moving towards the future. It’s about doing new things and doing things differently in order to achieve new performance levels and future success. An excel-sheet with numbers, for example, does not achieve this purpose on its own.
2. Effective and efficient decision making
Many business leaders fear that decentralized decision-making leads to chaos and that control mechanisms are needed to prevent this. Most companies still use traditional “plan & control” mechanisms which require complex, expensive and time-consuming coordination systems.
The following practices ensure that decentralized decision-making is powerful and secures performance;
Structure of decision making units
Every team fits in an overall structure of roles and responsibilities with clear objectives. Each team develops, maintains and follows their own strategy which contributes to the overall strategy and roadmap.
This provides clarity to everyone who decides on what, and how, decisions relate to each other.
Decision-making protocol
Every team follows a decision-making protocol which provides guiding principles and rules on;
- How autonomous the team is for the different domains that make decisions
- How to align with other stakeholders
- How to handle objections from stakeholders, depending on the impact this might have for other stakeholders and/or the organisation as a whole
- When decisions have to be handed over to other decision making units[/unordered_list]
Some decisions hardly have an impact on other teams and can therefore be made autonomously.
Other decisions have a minor impact on the work of other teams. These other teams are informed about the decision, how this will impact them and how they are expected to adjust. The other teams provide feedback and suggestions, however it remains up to the deciding team how they incorporate the feedback and suggestions.
Some decisions could have a major impact on other teams or the organisation as a whole. For these decisions, there is a protocol in which other stakeholders can raise objections that need to be processed adequately. In some cases the decision has to be handed over to another team who has the responsibility of the bigger picture.
3. Full transparency on performance and financials trigger crucial initiatives
In many organisations, the flow of information is limited because of lack of information systems, defensive behaviour, limited willingness to openly share and too little interest in the overall picture. As a result, people miss opportunities and make wrong decisions. This reduces collaboration and initiatives throughout the organisation and increases resistance.
Constructive and well informed dialogue, strategy development and decision-making require that everyone has the same, and adequate, information about results, failures, progress, opportunities, threats, trends and practices.
Leading companies are transparent about the following:
- Financial figures of the entire business, as well as the different entities
- Progress of projects and initiatives
- Challenges or issues they are facing, including failures
- Customer feedback
- Decisions
- Practices or processes[/unordered_list]
Benefits
The benefit of encouraging decision-making throughout the entire organisation is that, on all levels in the organisation, teams and employees have engagement and ownership. They aim higher, pursue more opportunities and achieve more. Decision-making is faster, more responsive, has higher quality and is executed quicker.
The result is that the business is more adaptable to changes and therefore performs better today and will also perform better tomorrow and further in the future.
The Essence
If we think that it’s about control, stability and predictability, then we’ve missed the point! It is about thriving in a changing and unpredictable world, full of opportunities that we need to discover. It’s about passionately exploring, developing, learning and discovering what works, and what doesn’t work.
‘Magic’ happens when you bring together business innovation and employee development and empowerment.
How well has your business adopted the 4 Winning Habits?
Discover your momentum for innovation and change with the online Momentum Scorecard find out more @ http://fs-ne.ws/mpKJ30ibWsb
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Feb 01, 2018 • Features • Management • Jan Van Veen • management • moreMomentum • Motivation • Business Improvement • CHange Management
Jan van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum continues his exclusive series of articles for Field Service News on ‘4 Winning Habits of Long-Lasting Achievers in Service’ this time turning his attention to the second winning habit: Dialogue...
Jan van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum continues his exclusive series of articles for Field Service News on ‘4 Winning Habits of Long-Lasting Achievers in Service’ this time turning his attention to the second winning habit: Dialogue...
A Common Mistake: Paralysis By Control
Recently I had an interesting conversation with a Service Leader from one of the leading printer and copier manufacturers about how to empower co-workers to drive change from the bottom up. They had already abandoned their outcome-oriented performance review system but nevertheless, their teams still find it difficult to drive change at a high pace.
An important reason is that dialogue between different management levels and operational specialists is rather infrequent and even then, most conversations are still about outcomes and targets. Even this informal pressure for results preserves feelings of insecurity and low confidence which blocks attempts to adopt and drive change.
Traditionally, many business leaders assumed that they needed strong control mechanisms to manage performance, a dated belief that is still common today. During the last few decades of relentlessly growing markets, the name of the game was rationalising processes and keeping the ability to scale up quickly enough. One of the challenges was control and predictability.
In today’s world, these traditional planning and control mechanisms do not work anymore. They limit teams’ ability to think and act collectively, to innovate their business and drive change. Planning & control mechanisms punish poor performance and setbacks. Employees sense a default unsafe environment and are pushed into a defensive, survival mode. It is safer to keep aspirations low, externalise challenges, blame others and limit ownership.
This results in a strong force to do more of the same and stick to the status-quo.
The solution: A forward-looking and constructive dialogue across all levels and functions
Our recent research clearly shows that winning and dynamic manufacturers have embedded practices and habits which empower employees to drive continuous, easy change from the inside. These modern mechanisms for dialogue across all levels and function are:
- Forward-looking objectives and priorities which drive change and collaboration
- Constructive reviews
- Forward-looking interventions
1. Promote change and collaboration with the right objectives and priorities
Continuous alignment of objectives and priorities: Winning companies focus on strategic objectives that build strong organisational capabilities for performance and continuous business innovation. Building and maintaining a fit and healthy organisation is the focus of (top) management. The most important objectives and targets are about the organisational capabilities, small changes and bigger innovations.
Aspirations, objectives, strategies, limitations, opportunities and pre-requisites are frequently discussed and adjusted when needed to ensure coherent and aligned actions and initiatives across all individuals, teams and departments.Aspirations, objectives, strategies, limitations, opportunities and pre-requisites are frequently discussed and adjusted when needed to ensure coherent and aligned actions and initiatives across all individuals, teams and departments.
Shared outcome targets: Teams and individuals share the same common objectives for results in operational performance and innovation. Their bonus schemes are based on the same indicators. They are all in the same boat, trying to achieve the same objectives. Each team and individual will be open and looking for ways to contribute to the overall targets. Instead of resisting or getting complacent, they all collaborate where needed.
Individual contribution targets: Each team and individual has full clarity on how they are expected to contribute to achieving the outcome. Think about maintaining and developing organisational capabilities, building personal competencies, collaborating with other teams and the level of effort required. For example, the financial department could contribute to the customer experience by improving invoicing (speed, accuracy, transparency, responsiveness to inquiries).
2. Build confidence & safety with constructive and forward-looking reviews
Positive feedback: Colleagues are open to candid feedback and provide constructive feedback to each other. Feedback is not about performance, but approach, activities, priorities, opportunities and threats and is intended to encourage them to adapt and improve. It is related to aspirations, the vision, the strategy.
Forward-looking: The focus is not on the fact that something went wrong, but on how to get it right. What can be learned from setbacks or issues, how can the approach be adjusted? What are new ideas and approaches? It doesn’t make sense to argue about the past.
Multiple stakeholders: Best practice is to include other stakeholders and experts in the reviews, by collecting their feedback, sharing feedback and asking for their view on the problem. This prevents unnecessary bias, reveals many more opportunities for improvement and will get more active support to easily and rapidly implement the interventions.
3. Solve from 1st principle
Root Cause Analysis: Leading companies make it a critical organisational habit to perform a root analysis for pretty much every issue or set-back. As many issues or opportunities affect more than one team or department, it is a good habit to follow through with a diverse group of people and teams who can contribute to the analysis as well as the solution.
What we see is that the winning companies have developed a routine and structure to document, communicate and decide on root cause analyses and interventions.What we see is that the winning companies have developed a routine and structure to document, communicate and decide on root cause analyses and interventions. Root causes and the success of new interventions are standard topics of meetings and conversations. “No time” is not seen a valid reason to skip the root cause analysis.
Structural solutions: Based on the root cause analysis, managers create long-term interventions that define the fundamental solutions and sustainable decision-criteria. They do not step into the trap of short-term, cost-oriented decisions that would let them fall back from fundamental solutions to symptom fighting.
Phased implementation: For complex and time-consuming solutions they define a phased implementation, where first steps can be low-hanging fruit or quick workarounds when the criticality is high. In such cases they ensure that the phased implementation continues after the first steps, to prevent falling back into symptom fighting.
Benefits
The big benefit of this ongoing and forward-looking dialogue across the entire organisation and all levels is to build an environment where everybody feels confident and safe. They feel they can take the initiative to solve issues and pursue opportunities, to come up with interventions when things go differently than expected and ensure coherence between all initiatives.
In psychology, it’s a well-known phenomenon that too much pressure on outcomes and performance kills learning and change.Employees are open and transparent about their successes and struggles, raise risks and problems, ask for help, provide help and simply do what is needed to perform and move forward for future success. Not because there is pressure from a burning platform, but because they want to.
In psychology, it’s a well-known phenomenon that too much pressure on outcomes and performance kills learning and change.
The Essence
We believe that this is not about better articulating the burning platform and creating a sense of urgency. It is about creating a constructive and forward-thinking environment where your colleagues want to, can and do take the right initiatives and bring them into practice.
Magic happens when you bring together business innovation on one hand and employee development and empowerment on the other.
Are you interested in these 4 winning habits and how to implement them?
Follow our articles and case studies over the coming months and join us for one of our Momentum Impulse Sessions through Europe. Reserve your seat @ http://fs-ne.ws/WQih30gRcev
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