ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘click-software’ CATEGORY

As the Uber blueprint disrupts the traditional service model, firms need to keep pace with the innovation or risk losing a customer-base who expect no less than exceptional. Click Software’s Ziv Barzilay, speaking to Mark Glover, explains why...

Aligning capacity planning with dynamic work order scheduling is the key to planning for tomorrow not just getting through today unscathed argues Click’s Paul Whitelam. Kris Oldland reports...

There has been much talk in field service circles, but particularly in the manufacturing space, with regards to the importance of moving away from the traditional break-fix approach to field service delivery. In the past, the relationship between the service provider and customer has always been one whose nature has been primarily transactional.

An asset breaks, the customer calls to request a repair, and the service provider delivers that service within a previously agreed SLAs or at a designated cost if the asset lies out of warranty. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it has been around in one way or another since service delivery itself, with the odd refinement here or there.

So why, all of a sudden, does it seem that field service companies of all stripes and sizes are prepared to walk away from the ‘old ways’ to embrace the new? The truth is what we’ve done in the past has been good enough, it doesn’t mean it is the best we can be. Moreover, as technology drives both customer expectations and service provider capabilities forwards simultaneously, the need for better’ has in many senses been thrust upon us from all angles.

It is of little surprise then that we are seeing field service companies begin to adopt a new approach which positions them more firmly within a business ecosystem built of partnerships between service providers and customers. Talk of servitization and outcome-based service delivery has moved from niche concept to mainstream discussion in a relatively short time, and an understanding of advanced services has, well, advanced.

However, this shift in thinking is also being seen in the way some field service management (FSM) solution providers are approaching how they design their offerings. More and more we see talk revert to technology stacks which harness best of breed solutions versus the platform. For a long time, it seemed that the platform was going to be the future of the FSM.

“If you take the high-level strategic view, you can be a platform, or you can be a specialist in field service management..."

However, as integration becomes almost effortless in the age of the API, we see once again a shift in the direction of best-of-breed solutions. Take, for example, ClickSoftware, a company who have for a long time been regarded as a leading specialist amongst scheduling providers, who remain a best-in-class specialist, having previously appearing to flirt with the idea of a platform approach, for a short time at least.

“If you take the high-level strategic view, you can be a platform, or you can be a specialist in field service management,” explains Paul Whitelam, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, when I caught up with him earlier this year at the Field Service USA conference in Palm Springs, California.

“There are some arguments about where are the boundaries on field service management because that boundary’s changing a little bit. It’s certainly true that if you listen to service managers, they’ll say that an integral part of field service management is work holder management. Technically it’s not, it is an integral part of work order management.

“However, it’s perfectly acceptable for an organisation to have a best of breed work order management or a work order management system within their CRM and then also have field service management as an adjunct.

“As a best-of-breed field service management player, we can differentiate on how strategic we are, and we can expand our addressable market vertically and horizontally - vertically both in terms of industries and then geographically.

“When I say we differentiate on the strategic nature of field service management, what I mean by that is that a lot of the implementations you’ll see around, are centred on the day of service. For example ‘I’ve got a task, I need to allocate it to someone, and I can put various degrees of automation around it.’ Our approach incorporates this, but also questions what you did six months ago or a year ago.

"Capacity planning has become a perennial challenge..."

“What moves did you make to make sure that you’ve got the right skills, you’ve got people who have trained appropriately with the appropriate parts in the proper geographies who speak the right languages to be able to support your broader business strategies?” he adds.

This approach is certainly in keeping with the current zeitgeist becoming prevalent within our sector as touched on above, where field service is taking a much more central role within the long-term planning of many organisations.

“We’re looking at a field service management organisation that is about more than just delivering transactionally on the day of service. It’s more about making sure that, that team is set up for success and they’ve got the right skills, they’re the correct size.” Whitelam explains. 

It is interesting to hear Whitelam talk about the longer-term strategic planning of field service organisations both on the industry vertical and geographical focus. Click has undoubtedly made some significant gains in specific industry sectors such as telcos and more recently, the insurance sector. However, when it comes to increasing geographical coverage, this is often at the core of the challenge for expanding field service operations for companies in all industries.

Capacity planning has become a perennial challenge, but it has been revolutionised since the advent of cloud computing which enabled dynamic scheduling engines like Click to leverage the higher computational power of the Cloud to make modelling of potential capacity requirements into new regions a far more straightforward task than it previously once was.

“Capacity planning is a big area where we’ve invested in the product side of things,” comments Whitelam. “The advantages for linking capacity planning to work order scheduling is that if you’ve got your day of service review on how you’re doing, having that hooked in real-time with capacity management is becoming essential. It makes an excellent argument for having a tightly coupled planning and execution engine.” 

With strategy in field service evolving, it is undoubtedly prudent to consider how you can leverage the tools you have, or what tools you might need to invest in, to support you, not just with the ongoing day of service operations, but in your strategic growth in the mid and long-term future.

Click Software’s Hilla Karni sat down with Field Service News’ Deputy Editor Mark Glover at Field Service Europe 2018 in Amsterdam, sharing thoughts on Augmented Reality, the gig economy and the importance of employee wellbeing.

Ten years is a long time in field service. Trends come thick and fast with some trends thicker than others, attaching like coral onto the industry and becoming an integral part of service progress. The worldwide web and mobile technology are probably the two best examples of this; both have been essential in pushing the industry forward. Would we cope without them today?

It’s fair to label these movements as revolutions; their impact has been immense but smaller changes while not as monumental are just as significant. Today though, focus is swinging from technology enablers and back to customer service.

“Mobile was many years ago, everyone expects to have it,” says Hilla Karni, VP of Product and Customer Marketing at Click Software. Karni has just finished hosting a roundtable at Field Service Europe and we’ve managed to find a quiet dining room post-lunch to talk. I settle my dictaphone among skewed butter knives and bread crumbs. Sipping coffee, Karli continues: “In recent years, the shift has moved from a service operation that is a cost-centre, to a service operation that is an opportunity to impact customer service.”

The roundtable titled: The Science Behind Service: Metrics that Matter, centred on KPIs affecting customer service. The fact such a round table was taking place affirms how the industry is focusing on the end-user. “Before you would never hear of this,” she says. “KPIs were always around productivity, travel cost, overtime; it was always cost.”

But what about those enablers such as AI, IoT or specifically Augmented Reality (AR)? What role does AR play in the new customer focus? “Everyone talks about AR. But why are they using it?” She asks, pausing slightly. “It’s for the remote diagnostics which enables a better first-time fix. A first-time fix rate is the metric that combines efficiency, productivity with customer experience.”

In order to achieve customer focus KPIs, Karni tells me, smaller trends such as employee wellbeing are taking on a greater significance. “There is a very clear correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction,” she
says. “When an employer is happy with his or her job then he or she will deliver excellent service. Now we are seeing different investments around making your employees happier. There is a very clear correlation between happy and engaged employees with customer satisfaction.”

This, refreshingly, ties in with a general shift in occupational wellbeing and a positive approach to mental health in general. From a business point of view, work-related stress affects staff absenteeism; in turn affecting productivity. One thread of wellbeing, prevalent in field service is the time an engineer might spend on the road. Tools around scheduling play an important part in employee engagement and buy-in. Some firms, Karni says are handing autonomy to their engineers to create their own timetable. “Some of our
customers like their technicians to make more decisions by themselves.” The increase in wellbeing can be loosely attributed to the flexible nature of the modern workforce.

“When an employer is happy with his or her job then he or she will deliver excellent service..."

Today, freelancers choose their workdays and hours to fit their lifestyle. The typical nine-to-five day still exists but the gig
economy – so-called as each piece of work being akin to a ‘gig’ - represents another shift in efficiency and cost. Karni suggests large contractors, with their large overheads, can fail to deliver the required standard of customer service, paving the way for freelancers. “This is where the workforce trend is to have more freelancers, the uber-like model, offering a better service but it must be connected, ultimately, to a better customer service.”

So, if customer focus is the new trends in field service what technology revolution does Karni see to compliment it? Firstly, she is keen to re-label the progress. “I think the next evolution – and it is an evolution, not a revolution – is more focused around prediction,” she affirms. “Having prediction within the service delivery life cycle changes a lot of things because it makes for more
accuracy and real-time decision making.

“Previously, we still made decisions, many decisions. Then we got mobile so were able to streamline the process. Then we had more optimisation and got artificial intelligence to improve productivity and efficiency. Now we are taking it to the next level and saying, ‘Okay, how can I predict better to ensure I make faster, smarter decisions on the day of service, on the minute of service?’”

Despite the influx of new disruptive technologies – such as AR – Karni is aware that the main beneficiary has to be the end-user, the customer. “Everyone talks about the current trend in field service, which is AR. But if you ask ‘why are we using this remote technology’, it is ultimately to create a better first-time fix. A first-time fix rate is the metric that combines efficiency and productivity with customer experience. “You’re not adopting something for the sake of the technology. You need to have a very strong business case with savings. This is what is unique about field service management applications is that it needs to find the balance between time and cost savings while creating better customer service. If it was only a one-way thing it would not be such a valuable asset,” she says.

I push Karni on the role of the asset: the wind turbine, the air conditioning unit, the washing machine. When does it become more important than the engineer? “There is no replacement for the human touch,” she pauses again. “There is, however, a replacement for the process.

“If you can fix something remotely and it’s not a problem and it will smoothly recover, then I don’t see why the customer wouldn’t be happy because the washing machine is fixed. Having said that, if you fix something sophisticated and there is a break-down, I believe there is no replacement for human experience.”

Finally, as waiters circle impatiently around us to prepare the table for the next coffee break, I ask Karni, who has been with Click Software over ten years, why she enjoys working in the field service sector. “As I said, everyone talks about machine learning and AR but,” she says. “But when it comes to field service it’s real. It’s actual technology that serves a use-case and a business value.”

She finishes her cappuccino. “We make a difference I think, and this is what I like about what I do.”

What should businesses consider when deciding whether an On-Premise or a Cloud solution is the best fit for their business?  In this two-part series, Sharon Clancy gets some advice from the experts.  First up, we explore the attractions of the Cloud... 

There's been a lot of publicity recently about cloud platforms: for enterprises it's been about whether you migrate legacy business functions to it; for SMEs and SMBs it's about using the Cloud to become more competitive. There's also been a lot of talk about browser-based field service management apps - software-as-a-service, or SaaS.

Is it all just noise, or something your company needs to get to grips with?

Let's start with defining what we are talking about: Cloud and SaaS can be used as  interchangeable terms, but there is a difference. A Cloud solution is when some or all of your IT requirements are hosted by a platform provider who takes care of all the necessary infrastructure, including security, server stability and maintenance, data storage and so on. SaaS is another layer on a Cloud platform.  A permutation that has been adopted by some field service organisations is to have on-premise legacy IT and ERP systems integrated with a Cloud-based service management SaaS solution. SMEs and SMBs, on the other hand, might use a Cloud  platform for all their business functions, including accounting, HR and service management software.

Be agile

One business trend is that companies of all sizes need to be more agile in responding to their customers' changing needs, and agility is one thing the Cloud delivers in spades.

"For SMEs, Cloud-based solutions give them access to great technology, making them more agile. For many, it also allows them to ramp up their operations, and grow the business quickly, even to International level," says Steve Mason, Vice President International Sales for StreetSmart, Click Software's web-based management app for SMEs and SMBs. "For larger organisations, a Cloud solution can liberating, allowing much faster reactions to changing business requirements."

 

On-premise can mean less agility, points out Neil Lewis, Consulting Director, EMEA Sales, ServiceMax."Deployments of new services and processes are slower. When an old business process needs to change or a new one introduced, it takes much longer to do it internally, from getting the project on the internal IT roadmap to actually developing the app. There are typically many layers of the on-premise architecture that need to be changed in order to implement the processes. This in turn has an adverse effect on the companies' abilities to introduce new products and services quickly."

In many sectors, the business model is changing from being based around product life-cycles to a servitization model and predictive rather than reactive service, he continues. "That transforms field service into a agile, responsive customer-focused operation which can have a real impact on the bottom-line."

The Cloud means smaller companies can now access affordable solutions without the overhead of enterprise class software, points out Paul Adams, Marketing and Development Director, Solarvista.

Outsourcing IT

Enterprises are now looking at moving their entire structure to the cloud because it eliminates the need to manage a large IT infrastructure in-house," says Mason.

"On-premise solutions demand investment in infrastructure upkeep including databases, applications, coding and system upgrades. In the Cloud, all these issues go away," points out Lewis.

SaaS: a perfect fit for service management

SaaS is actually a good practical fit for service management, says Colin Brown, Managing Director, Tesseract. "Most independent service companies have recurring revenue streams which actually fit neatly with renting the software. Relatively small companies can now compete with larger rivals."

 

A browser-based field service solution is essential, regardless of whether you opt for an on-premise or a cloud-based platform, advises Simon Spriggs, account manager at Exel Computer Systems. "This will future-proof your investment should you decide to move business activities to the cloud in future. It will also help eliminate many integration problems."

Don't be lured into thinking that a Cloud solution is the answer to everything, warns Spriggs.  "Key questions to ask include: what is the budget, what is the available IT resource and what is the reliability and bandwidth of the Internet connection."

Reliable broadband: not an optional extra

The reliability and bandwidth or your Internet connection is crucial for any Cloud implementation, our experts agreed. "Some companies have an unreliable or slow broadband connection and that impacts on delivering cloud-based services," points out Spriggs. "If the basic connection to the Internet fails, it doesn't matter what back-up the hosted platform provider has - you won't be able to communicate with your engineers, manage workflows or give customers real-time information."

 

Security

Most companies will conduct financial due diligence before choosing a Cloud partner. However, all the field service experts we spoke with emphasised that it is equally essential to thoroughly check the IT capabilities of the company hosting those cloud services. "You are outsourcing the running of your business systems to the Cloud, not abdicating responsibility for them, so make sure your provider is fully compliant with the latest security standards " urges Steve Mason. "A public cloud platform will give you baseline protection - indeed, the level of security is much higher than most individual companies could afford because the companies invest a huge amount and employ security experts to keep up to speed with the latest threats."

A public Cloud platform as other advantages says Mason. her "Business continuity is crucial for mission-critical apps such as field service. On a public Cloud, the infrastructure is multi-layered so there is built-in resilience should one site go down which in turn means there will be no impact on your business.

 

There is a natural nervousness about hosting FS apps externally, the need to keep confidential data in the cloud and also about the complexities of integrating those cloud-based apps with internal ERP systems, admits Lewis. "However these concerns are not relevant any more with the evidence of many large organisations globally who have strategically moved to the cloud in the last 5 to 10 years. These range from governmental organisations to large global banks.

The Cloud is, in effect, a hosted server platform, points out Colin Brown. "Cloud data centres handle all the expensive, complex fire walls and demilitarized zones that keep information safe. If you are concerned about resilience, our advice is to invest in back-up servers.

It's important to think about what happens if servers goes down, agrees Neil Lewis. "Smaller vendors may be able to host your app but check if there is seamless back-up to ensure workflows continue as normal? Indeed, is there any back-up at all?"

Resilience is critical for mission-critical operations such as field service. For SMEs, cloud solutions provides a sophisticated level of IT infrastructure management including backup, disaster recovery, security and environmental concerns that they could never achieve otherwise, points out Paul Adams.

 

Asking what IT roadmap your provider has will whittle out some of the less capable vendors, advises Lewis. "Smaller platform hosts may not have the resources to invest in platform development, so ask what their roadmap is - for example, to develop the platform to integrate with multiple ERP environments to handle new technology."

Finally, businesses shouldn't undervalue the support offered by SaaS providers, says Colin Brown.  "Access to the software is controlled by the supplier, so all the software upgrades are installed and installed correctly and often, as is the case for Tesseract customers, free-of-charge of charge. Furthermore, as the data as it is hosted remotely, employees are no longer able to “play” with it, which reduces system errors

Look out for Part 2, where we'll  exploring the benefits of on-premise solutions and how they  integrate with field service management solutions.

 

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Anglian Water is the largest water and waste water company in England and Wales by geographic area, operating 1,257 water and waste water treatment works, with over 112,000km of pipework across 27,500km.  Anglian Water services more than 6 million domestic and business customers in the East of England and Hartlepool.

Anglian Water had an established ClickSoftware Scheduling system in place. With more than 15,000 jobs per day being deployed to 1,300 Field Engineers, it was essential that the schedules were as optimised as possible. To ensure they were getting the most out of the system they turned to Leadent Solutions a management consulting company specialising in mobile workforce management.

Anglian Water’s senior managers were aware that they were not optimising their schedules, often seeing ‘white space’ on the Gantt – effectively idle time for Field Engineers.  System changes introduced over a seven year period had added complexity to the system to the point that it really didn’t appear to be working well.

 

With the benefit of hindsight it was clear that necessary change management rigour had not always been applied. Perceived poor performance led the scheduling staff to mistrust the automated scheduling functionality. Analytics showed that this had led to 70% of jobs being manually scheduled, which accounted for approximately 300 hours per week.

Previous investigations had highlighted issues with data, processes, and Scheduler behaviours.  The Operations Management Team took this feedback on board but also wanted to understand the level of integrity of the system set-up and configuration. As a long-standing partner of Anglian Water we were asked to draw on our niche expertise, and asked to undertake an independent review of the system.

Leadent undertook a 6 week programme of work to review the scheduling system.  Before focusing on technical issues they:

• Worked with the Operations Management Team to understand business needs and goals
• Spent time with the Scheduling Team to better understand their viewpoint and working practices

Their Technical Consultants then completed a detailed review of the system set-up and configuration.  Issues were shared with Scheduling Team to validate initial findings.

The full technical review showed that over time the system set up and configuration had become:

• misaligned to business goals and processes
• overly complex, often with conflicting elements

It was clear why the system was not performing optimally, explaining in part why confidence levels in the Scheduling Tool had reached rock bottom.

Emma Newman, Managing Consultant at Leadent Solutions who led the review said “taking time to understand the current position at Anglian Water opened up a series of questions that prompted the team to really start to re-focus and re-address what good looked like ‘today’. Not what was, or what has been, but what is needed now in order to ensure their system continued to support the organisation as effectively as possible, and was properly aligned to future business initiatives and objectives.

Best practice and process adoption is born out of confidence and trust in the solutions that are in place, which was something that was starting to diminish at Anglian Water.

 

We were able to clearly identify the current position, and have understood where the Anglian team want and need to be. Recommendations on how to get there meant that we could help to re-focus their minds on best practice and make sure that the system configuration became relevant to their day to day workforce planning operations.”

Richard Cartwright, Technical Consultant at Leadent Solutions said “Conducting an overall assessment of configuration and technical set up will always unearth the opportunity to make an improvement of some kind. Taking a proper look under the bonnet and making sure workforce management configuration is working to drive the correct business objectives is vital in making sure you are getting the most out of the tool you have invested so heavily in.

If your business changes, the technology has to be re-assessed to make sure it is still working for you and not against you, and in some cases with Anglian, configuration had ended up in a position where it was definitely going against the grain in some areas of the business.”

During our time on site at Anglian Water, we were able to take time to ensure that employees involved in scheduling activities were trained in best practice techniques, as well as up-skilling the third party IT service provider to ensure on-going support was in place.

At the end of the six weeks, a comprehensive report was compiled and presented back to Anglian Water.  The report enabled the business to understand the systems and business processes that were in place, how this compared against others in their sector and industry best practice.  The report also gave clear and specific advice on the remedial action required to maximise their investment and support their on-going strategic goals.

The recommendations made in the report were completely endorsed by the Operations Management Team.   Working with the Scheduling Team and broader business, we were asked to make all necessary changes to the system set-up and configuration.

Ian Rule, Head of Anglian Water’s Operational Management Centre said of the review: “Leadent Solutions have demonstrated their extensive expertise in both scheduling systems and workforce management.  The in-depth review and improvement plan has shown us that they not only understand the complex technical aspects, but also the business – its needs and goals.  Their no-nonsense approach has ensured that we have been given the right information to make essential decisions.  They have delivered where others have failed.”

 

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The Internet of Things is rapidly gaining momentum and is moving from hyperbole to reality. Gil Bouhnick, VP of Mobility at ClickSoftware looks at why IoT will become indispensable in the world of field service... perhaps sooner than we may think...

With the Internet of Things (IoT) virtually any object now can have the capability to either process, store or transmit data. From infrastructure to the human body, the connected world provides the opportunity to use sensors to generate information that can be monitored, analysed and acted upon. However, while the IoT is still finding its feet, there’s no denying the positive impact it can have moving forward – not just on businesses but for customers too.

For businesses, the potential is extensive and there are already many examples of connected devices that are set to revolutionise industries. The field service space is anticipated to be one of the early adopters, largely because it currently depends considerably on human mediation between machines, meters and managers.

 

With IoT the opportunities here are vast, ranging from devices that help the emergency services in search and rescue operations to energy companies using predictive technology and smart alerts to help identify problems as early as possible, even preventing them in some cases.

Machine-to-machine communication has been used in the field service industry for years. However, IoT has the capabilities to expand beyond this one-to-one level of communication, sending “smart alerts” to a whole network. For example, an alert may be triggered when a sensor exceeds its temperature threshold. Through this information, the sensor would be able to decide the next steps – whether this can be fixed remotely and if not, to allocate the most suitable worker for the job. The ‘smart’ alert would be able to advise what tools are needed for the job, the skills required, the estimated time it will take to fix and most importantly, how urgent it is.

Whereas smart alerts are essential for notifying workers to issues, the real value is predictive technology. With the IoT and cloud-based services, remote machines and equipment can send status updates, location information, and other condition-based, servicing data. This enables companies to locate machinery and figure out how to get to it with the correct replacement parts and the right technicians to resolve issues before failures occur.

 

An example of this is if a sensor identifies a crack in a waste-pipe and feeds this back to the control centre. By alerting that there are signs of erosion, a technician could get to the site and repair the pipe before it bursts. As well as this helping to prevent such issues occurring but it also cuts down the number of inspections that are needed meaning that workers can focus on more urgent repair work.

Not only does predictive technology benefit the business and technician, this also has a huge impact on the customer experience. For example, being able to lessen the number of power cuts or even keeping the customer updated on the progress of getting the power back on.

By identifying issues as early as possible and being able to allow resources to focus on more urgent areas can make a real difference to the overall experience. Customers have come to expect an instant response to potential issues and with the increased use of social media, a company’s reputation can suffer if they are not able to respond in an acceptable time, along with the consequences of missing any service level agreements in place. Pre-empting customer complaints is the next evolutionary stage in improving customer service and predictive, smart technology is one of the tools that can help businesses make that next step up and avoid potentially losing over a third of their customers due to poor service.

Driving the IoT, is the use of mobile and smart devices which have steadily become a key part of remote field service. The emergence of wearable technology has the tools capable of taking remote working, communication and convenience to a whole new level.

 

Combine that with IoT and status messages and updates can be sent directly between machines and the devices worn by technicians, all while they are on the move and keeping their hands free. No longer will technicians working in complex situations have to risk taking their phone out to read a new notification. Actions can now be sent straight to the wrist or smart glasses making them easier to read and act upon, increasing the experience for the worker.

While it is unclear what the scale of adoption of IoT will be, (Morgan Stanley has estimated the number of connected devices will reach 75 billion by 2020, whereas Gartner believes it will be much lower at 26 million), what we are seeing is significant investments in the technology. Take Germany for example, it has poured huge sums of money into what it calls ‘Smart Factories’ that are able to fetch and assemble components without further human inputs. At the same time, Google has paid $3.2 billion for Nest Labs which produces thermostats that can be remotely controlled by smartphones and other connected devices. Here in the UK, the roll-out of smart meters in homes is another step for IoT transitioning from theory to reality.

Whether it is changing how a field technician repairs something or how they work and communicate with people back at the office, the IoT is set to change how the person using devices and systems spend their day. It’s still early days for IoT but it seems to be only good news for the industry, bringing benefits for employees, businesses and the customer.

 

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Whilst there were not that many surprises emanating from Cupertino with the latest Apple announcement (a 5inch iPhone had already be confirmed by leaks from a manufacturing base in China, whilst the fact that Apple have been working on a wearable is probably the worst kept secret in technology history) the fact is that when the folks at Apple launched the first iPhone it changed field service and enterprise mobility solutions forever. So what does this latest iteration mean for field service? Click Software's Gil Bouhnick takes a look...

So, what can the new iPhone and Apple Watch do for the field service?

The answer is: it depends. You probably don’t need the duo immediately, but the features are such that for workers out in the field, especially those that work for utilities, communications service providers, capital equipment, or even traveling healthcare workers, the benefits will be a boost for both employee and employer.

Here are a few advantages that may prove useful for field service organisations:

Size

From a competitive standpoint we had been seeing a fair number of organisations move to Android devices for 2 reasons: cost and size. The new iPhone (the 6 coming in at 4.7” and the 6 Plus at 5.5”) address the size issues, giving workers in sometimes difficult environments more room to type, more text to read, bigger images, troubleshooting guides and all sorts of size-related advantages.

Durability and Readability

The device includes a new polariser in the glass that offers better bright sunlight readability. And Apple touts the new iPhone as being stronger and more durable. While it’s no Toughbook, the device is certainly moving away from its fragile beginnings and is now more compatible with the realities of life in the field.

Predictive Text

Predictive typing with Apple’s QuickType keyboard (in iOS8) is said to be smarter, more personalised and intelligently take context into account, such as who the recipient is. Understanding the way people communicate and providing contextual guidance improves the speed of communications between workers and the office, workers and each other, and workers and customers.

I’ve been a long fan of iOs keyboard, and the way it quickly learns new words. If indeed this is going to be better as promised (so far my tests with iOS 8 beta is inconclusive) – it’s going to be by far the best keyboard out there.

Camera

While Apple spoke at length about selfies, mobile workers, especially in complex or low-light environments, will benefit from the new 8MP image sensors the iPhone 6 cameras feature what Apple is calling Focus Pixels, which more quickly focuses and snaps a shot. The iPhone 6 Plus offers optical image stabilisation to help reduce image blur in low light — iPhone 6 offers only digital image stabilisation.

Wi-Fi Calling

While reportedly only available with a limited number of carriers right now, we anticipate more will follow soon. And when they do, this will be helpful for workers who may or may not have access to cell coverage.

Apple Watch

I’m cautiously optimistic that the Apple Watch will significantly enhance the employee experience in the field.  With the ability to respond, via voice or quick touch, to messages or alerts, the watch has the ability to take wearables from a “nice to have” object to a real everyday tool in the enterprise.

With the predictive features, availability of maps, and turn by turn directions, it may become the powerhouse piece of hardware that let’s workers do most of their work with the watch, and only need to pull out the phone when they need to larger screen environment for lengthy typing or to access large amounts of information.

Field employees often need to react quickly and respond to emergencies, notify their customers about their ETA, and report back to the back-office. Those are typically short interactions, and the Apple Watch may become the go-to device for such actions. In order for that to happen, the apps running on the watch must offer solid capabilities beyond notifications. I think Apple is almost there.

The HealthKit, which was touted for fitness junkies, also has real and impactful benefits in the field. With biometric feedback, heart rate detection and a host of other features, it will go a long way to adding to health and safety measures of workers in dangerous or remote locations. We’ve seen organisations ask about such capabilities (especially about simple wearables) and using apple’s HealthKit API’s, apps are now capable of providing these capabilities in that area.

Click Software's Gil Bouhnick, Vice President of Mobility looks at how how companies can use gamification in their organisations to improve efficiency....

Gaming has become a core part of our daily lives. Whether we’re sitting at home playing Candy Crush or trying to break that unbeatable Flappy Bird record on the way to work, people from all walks of life are beginning to play more games, ever more frequently. All you need to do is sit on a train and see men in suits, parents after the school run, teenagers, or people just enjoying a day of leisure – most of them will have a gaming app on their phone, and more often than not, will play it on a regular basis.

We work best when we are happy, and so smart companies are looking into how they can use the surge in popularity of both games and the smartphones they are played upon. Is there some way you can blend the two to make work that little bit easier? The answer is absolutely.

Gamification is a term that has been around for a while, but now we are really seeing it adopted by companies of all varieties for things such as helping them increase employee collaboration and motivation, to providing training and supporting change management. Essentially all the tasks that you know you have to do, but don’t always enjoy doing can have an amount of gamification woven into them. And in a way, this can be turned into a reward for employees who do these tasks on time and accurately. A small badge here, an unlockable picture there, small tokens that can make staff feel better for doing the administration.

Engaging employees of all levels and functions is a notoriously difficult thing to do, especially when it comes to adopting new processes. It often happens that employees are resistant to changes because they can’t understand the new processes nor do they see any personal benefit in adopting them. But having an engaged and motivated workforce is a crucial ingredient to a successful company, even more so when that company has a dispersed workforce.

In businesses where there is a core back office function and then a field team carrying out the tasks, it’s very easy to become split between these two fault lines. Unifying them and making sure they are all following the same procedures can be much more difficult than a business that is self-contained or less diversified in the roles and responsibilities of the staff.

Yet tapping into a common ground can be a great way of bringing a company together. This is where it’s hoped gamification will come into its own. Think about some of the tasks you need to do as part of your job – timesheets, expenses, logging tasks. It can be pretty boring stuff. But what if you livened it up a little bit and made it more compelling by adding a competitive element to what you are doing? And if you made your employee feel appreciated for doing such tasks?

We have begun to see businesses doing just that. Company-wide league tables charting who is best at one task, or which division is doing something better or faster than another. A little healthy competition goes a long way to bringing people together.

You can also apply this to customer service too. If the end customer has the option to directly feedback via a smart device, then suddenly it is even more critical for the technician, engineer, or salesman to make sure they do the best job possible. It provides a way to show how well they are doing by comparing the best in your company with each other and it also allows companies to reward their top employees for their outstanding results. It’s like the old sales charts companies used to have where at the end of the month, a salesman of the month would be announced. The concept is exactly the same, just digitising it and making it something that people from across the business can take part in.

At the foundation of any good gamification model is the goal to reward staff. This doesn’t necessarily mean holidays abroad, mountains of cash etc., it’s more about appreciation that they are doing a good job and are recognised across the business as such.  A good gamification model should be easy to embrace. The moment it becomes as complicated as the tasks it’s trying to replace, then you’ve lost sight of the reason of employing it.

Make it simple. Make it compelling. And make it as fun as possible. If you stick by these rules, then you should begin to reap the benefits pretty quickly. Benefits, such as a more engaged workforce, more accurate reporting and completion of administrative tasks, and ultimately a better customer experience. We are still in the early days of companies adopting true gamification policies, but with no end in sight for the adoption of smartphones, the technology is finding its way into more people’s hands, and that’s an opportunity businesses should be seriously considering in the years to come.

 

By implementing an advanced scheduling system and mobility technology from ClickSoftware, Carglass improves customer service and speed of on-location repairs and replacements

Servicing eight hundred thousand customers every year, Carglass, the leading vehicle glass repair and replacement company in Germany, relies on its branch and mobile technicians to provide top-notch service to its customers. Carglass has selected ClickSoftware’s mobile service optimisation suite to automate the scheduling of appointments and the resource management of technicians, enabling the company to quickly service customers on-location, resulting in faster, more efficient customer care.

After observing the fast and successful deployment of ClickSoftware’s solution at Belron in the UK, Carglass decided to roll out the scheduling system in Germany.

“We are always focused on improving our customers’ experience. By optimising our scheduling system with ClickSoftware, we will be able to better assign our technicians to remote job requests quickly and efficiently, saving our customers’ time, gas, money and frustration. Rather than our customers having to drive to one of our Service Centers, we are now able to send a mobile technician to their specific location,” said Ronald Hoff, Project Manager Operations at Carglass GmbH. “The ClickSoftware solution streamlines this process and the benefits will be realised from the business side down to the customers’ experience. Most importantly, we will be able to roll it out to technicians quickly to reap the benefits.”

In the old model, schedulers used manual charts to assign mobile technicians their job assignments each day. ClickSoftware’s established service chain optimisation algorithms will now allow Carglass to streamline business processes across its mobile technicians. If Carglass receives a request for an on-location repair, the scheduler can assign that job instantly to the mobile technician best suited for job requirements. If a second on-location repair request comes in, the scheduler can prompt that same mobile technician to next complete this new job or assign it to another mobile technician who may be closer to the location or have a more appropriate skillset. Concurrently, branch technicians at the Service Centers continue to service customers who need their cars fixed.

“The improved customer service that Carglass will now be able to provide by automating and optimising the scheduling system is significant and an important factor in keeping a competitive edge,” said Dr. Moshe BenBassat, Founder and CEO of ClickSoftware. “By matching individual mobile technician’s skills and location, Carglass will be able to increase the speed and number of mobile requests. We look forward to continuing to build our relationship with Carglass and Belron.”