Field Service News in partnership with RealWear, and OverIT have worked together to produce a detailed 22 page Essential Guide to Remote Service. In this second in a series of excerpts from that guide we continue to look at the benefits of an effective remote service solution...

In the last feature in this series we discussed improving health and safety, increasing geographical expansion opportunities and reducing the time it takes to get new engineers out into the field as three key benefits. Now we look at three more... 

 

Empowering the blended workforce

By moving your most experienced resources away from the field and onto a remote service platform there is also an opportunity for field service companies to begin to completely re-imagine the way they develop their field workforce.

One of the outcomes of the millennial generation replacing the baby boomer generation in the workplace is a fundamental difference in how they perceive careers. The baby-boomer workforce was, in many respects, simpler to handle.

The concept of a job for life was common, and the career ladder was just that, a vertical route upwards.

However, the millennial generation is a very different beast entirely.

Millennials statistically are far more transient within the workforce than their baby-boomer colleagues. For millennials, career progression spans not just many companies but also many industries. This consideration must be factored into the equation when we begin to look at the makeup of the modern field service workforce.

Many field service organisations are beginning to move towards having a ‘deskilled’ field workforce where the majority of field workers have a broad yet shallow skill set that allows them to handle most routine tasks across a wide spectrum of devices/assets in the fleet. These technicians are supported by subject matter experts who have a narrower, yet far deeper and more granular level of knowledge and expertise in specific areas. These subject matter experts are then available to offer guidance via remote service delivery tools.

Indeed, let’s take this one step further.

Such an approach also sits well within the blended workforce model (which is where the workforce comprises a mix of internal and third-party workers), potentially unleashing the largely untapped potential of the gig economy within the field service sector - again an approach that is better aligned to the societal changes we are seeing which impact workforce planning and structuring.

Additionally, we must now also consider that many field service companies are facing new challenges to overcome the vast amount of lost capacity throughout 2020 as a result of the pandemic. With the spectre of COVID still looming across 2021 resulting in ongoing potential fluctuations in capacity at any given time, the need is more significant than ever for third-party workers. It is therefore likely we will see even further adoption of external workers within the sector.

Those organisations with the capabilities already in place to ‘dial-in’ knowledge and expertise instantly and on-demand via remote service tools are far better placed to make such a transition to leveraging the blended workforce more effectively.

 

Embracing the tools for outcome-based services

Another important emerging trend within the field service sector is the shift towards outcome-based services and servitization.

Servitization is a complex topic; however, the most straightforward definition would be when product and service are sold holistically across an asset’s lifecycle.

Crucially in a servitized approach, the customer’s key metric is no longer SLA adherence, but instead meeting guarantees of uptime.

With this shift in focus, the weighting on mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) becomes an essential aspect of the service delivery program.

This is another area where remote service adoption at a sophisticated level, such as we have discussed in this paper, can have a considerable impact. In a world of remote service delivery, the service provider can turn to the closest available engineer, regardless of their level of expertise and still, in most instances, achieve a first-time-fix by having a remote expert with the knowledge and experience available instantly to guide them through the repair.

Indeed, alongside the connectivity of assets, remote service delivery is a fundamental layer of technology that can make the transition to a servitized approach possible. Field Service News Research recently outlined that currently, almost two-thirds of service organisations are introducing some advanced services into their portfolio.

Therefore, the importance of sophisticated technologies such as AR and head-mounted computers are likely to become increasingly commonplace within a field service setting as the move towards servitization continues.

 

Differentiating your service against that of your competition

As we commented on during the introduction, remote service as a service delivery method went from being utilised by a relatively small section of the industry, to being commonplace in 2020 as service companies scrambled to find a means of delivering service while under the restrictions of lockdowns.

With so many companies having simultaneously introduced some means of delivering service remotely, it is almost certain that both the service provider and their customers alike will be keen to harness the benefits of such an approach beyond the pandemic’s duration.

Research by Field Service News outlined that while nearly three-quarters of the field service companies had introduced remote service capabilities due to the pandemic, only a fifth of these were using sophisticated tools such as AR and head-mounted computers to do so.

This leads us to an interesting scenario and one where there could be a clear window of opportunity to gain a competitive advantage.

It is reasonable to assume that remote service delivery will be a significant part of the future. Yet currently the standards of delivery of remote service remain relatively low.

With so many companies suddenly arriving at the same place, it could well be that remote service may become a key battleground for competing service organisations.

Those who choose to adopt a more sophisticated approach to remote service delivery and who choose to leverage the latest technology within this space, are likely to be well-positioned when it comes to being able to differentiate on their ability to deliver service remotely.

 

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In the next article in this series we will look at three more benefits of remote service; empowering the blended workforce, embracing the tools for outcome-based services and differentiating your service against that of your competition...

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Further Reading:

This interview was undertaken as part of our development of our recently published Essential Guide to Remote Service. This guide offers insight into the important considerations field service companies need to be aware of when selecting remote service solutions suitable for their needs.

The guide looks at both the hardware and software considerations as well as containing a case study from Rail Cargo Group that looks at how they implemented such a solution which has revolutionised their industry.

This essential guide is currently available on our free-forever FSN Standard subscription tier for a limited time as well as being available to our FSN Premium subscribers and our FSN Elite members. If you are on any of these subscription/membership tiers you can access this guide by clicking the button below.

If you are not yet a subscriber, the button will take you to a dedicated registration page for FSN Standard that will give you instant access to this guide as well as access to the other Premium Resources currently available on this tier. 

 

 

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Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, OverIT and Realwear who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this report.  

Field Service News in partnership with RealWear, and OverIT have worked together to produce a detailed 22 page Essential Guide to Remote Service.

As part of the research into this Essential Guide, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News spoke with Alessandro Borzacchi, Senior Project Manager, Rail Cargo Group about their recent implementation of head-mounted computers and augmented reality-based remote service solution as part of our ongoing series of interview in the Field Service News Digital Symposium.

Here the two discuss what were the two key drivers behind RailCargo's decision to introduce remote service tools into their field service workflow.

 

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Want to know more?

FSN Premium subscribers and FSN Elite members can access the full length interview plus many, many more in the Field Service New Digital Symposium.  If you have an FSN Premium account you can access the video on the button below. If you are currently on our FSN Standard subscription tier you can upgrade your subscription by clicking the link below. 

If you are yet to subscribe you can join 30,0000 of your field service management peers by subscribing to FSN Standard for free to gain access to a monthly selection of premium content or select either FSN Premium or FSN Elite for even more resources. Click the button above to visit our subscription page to find out more. 

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Further Reading:

This interview was undertaken as part of our development of our recently published Essential Guide to Remote Service. This guide offers insight into the important considerations field service companies need to be aware of when selecting remote service solutions suitable for their needs.

The guide looks at both the hardware and software considerations as well as containing a case study from Rail Cargo Group that looks at how they implemented such a solution which has revolutionised their industry.

This essential guide is currently available on our free-forever FSN Standard subscription tier for a limited time as well as being available to our FSN Premium subscribers and our FSN Elite members. If you are on any of these subscription/membership tiers you can access this guide by clicking the button below.

If you are not yet a subscriber, the button will take you to a dedicated registration page for FSN Standard that will give you instant access to this guide as well as access to the other Premium Resources currently available on this tier. 

 

 

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Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, OverIT and Realwear who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this report.  

Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News is joined by Michael Kuebel, Michele Federici and Sassi Idan of Salesforce as they analyse the findings of a wide-reaching study into the growing use of remote services in the field service sector that has arisen since the pandemic.

In this final excerpt in the series the group discuss what service excellence looks like when it comes to remote service delivery

You can find further analysis of this research project at our dedicated research site research.fieldservicenews.com

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Want to know more?

FSN Premium or FSN Elite subscribers can access the full video report of this debrief session by clicking the button below.

If you are currently on our free FSN Standard subscription you can upgrade your subscription for as little as £299|€349| $399 a year and gain access to this report, plus over a hundred other premium resources from across the Field Service News Digital Ecosystem and exclusive access to the Field Service News Digital Symposium with new in-depth, long-form interviews being added every week. 

FSN Elite members also gain access to the Field Service News Masterclass Program, Think Tank and Collaboration real-time sessions and FSN Elite discussion boards for just £699|€789|$949 a year. 

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This Field Service News Research project was run in partnership with Salesforce, one of a select group of official Strategic Partners for Field Service News

Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News is joined by Michael Kuebel Michele Federici and Sassi Idan of Salesforce as they analyse the findings of a wide-reaching study into the growing use of remote services in the field service sector that has arisen since the pandemic.

In this segment, the group discuss how to overcome the biggest challenge outlined by respondents to the study - a lack of skills on the client-side when it comes maintaining assets even when being guided by a remote expert.

You can find further analysis of this research project at our dedicated research site research.fieldservicenews.com

---

Want to know more?

FSN Premium or FSN Elite subscribers can access the full video report of this debrief session by clicking the button below.

If you are currently on our free FSN Standard subscription you can upgrade your subscription for as little as £299|€349| $399 a year and gain access to this report, plus over a hundred other premium resources from across the Field Service News Digital Ecosystem and exclusive access to the Field Service News Digital Symposium with new in-depth, long-form interviews being added every week. 

FSN Elite members also gain access to the Field Service News Masterclass Program, Think Tank and Collaboration real-time sessions and FSN Elite discussion boards for just £699|€789|$949 a year. 

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This Field Service News Research project was run in partnership with Salesforce, one of a select group of official Strategic Partners for Field Service News

As part of our ongoing series of interviews in the Field Service News Digital Symposium Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News spoke with Dr. Chris Parkinson,, CTO and Founder, Realwear, about the important considerations field service companies must make when selecting head-worn devices that can give their engineers essential information about the assets they are working on while allowing them to work hands free.

In this excerpt from that interview, the two discuss how Realwear went from prototype to being one of the leading players within this space in just a matter of years and why major brands in multiple sectors are trusting Realwear devices to empower their field service teams.

 

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Want to know more?

FSN Premium subscribers and FSN Elite members can access the full length interview plus many, many more in the Field Service New Digital Symposium.  If you have an FSN Premium account you can access the video on the button below. If you are currently on our FSN Standard subscription tier you can upgrade your subscription by clicking the link below. 

If you are yet to subscribe you can join 30,0000 of your field service management peers by subscribing to FSN Standard for free to gain access to a monthly selection of premium content or select either FSN Premium or FSN Elite for even more resources. Click the button above to visit our subscription page to find out more. 

---

Further Reading:

This interview was undertaken as part of our development of our recently published Essential Guide to Remote Service. This guide offers insight into the important considerations field service companies need to be aware of when selecting remote service solutions suitable for their needs.

The guide looks at both the hardware and software considerations as well as containing a case study from Rail Cargo that looks at how they implemented such a solution which has revolutionised their industry.

This essential guide is currently available on our free-forever FSN Standard subscription tier for a limited time as well as being available to our FSN Premium subscribers and our FSN Elite members. If you are on any of these subscription/membership tiers you can access this guide by clicking the button below.

If you are not yet a subscriber, the button will take you to a dedicated registration page for FSN Standard that will give you instant access to this guide as well as access to the other Premium Resources currently available on this tier. 

 

 

---

Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, OverIT and Realwear who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this report.  

Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News is joined by Michael Kuebel Michele Federici and Sassi Idan of Salesforce as they analyse the findings of a wide-reaching study into the growing use of remote services in the field service sector that has arisen since the pandemic.

In this segment, the group take a look at the challenges and the opportunities of embracing remote service delivery

You can find further analysis of this research project at our dedicated research site research.fieldservicenews.com

---

Want to know more?

FSN Premium or FSN Elite subscribers can access the full video report of this debrief session by clicking the button below.

If you are currently on our free FSN Standard subscription you can upgrade your subscription for as little as £299|€349| $399 a year and gain access to this report, plus over a hundred other premium resources from across the Field Service News Digital Ecosystem and exclusive access to the Field Service News Digital Symposium with new in-depth, long-form interviews being added every week. 

FSN Elite members also gain access to the Field Service News Masterclass Program, Think Tank and Collaboration real-time sessions and FSN Elite discussion boards for just £699|€789|$949 a year. 

---

This Field Service News Research project was run in partnership with Salesforce, one of a select group of official Strategic Partners for Field Service News

Field Service News in partnership with RealWear, and OverIT have worked together to produce a detailed 22 page Essential Guide to Remote Service. In this first in a series of excerpts from that guide we will look at the benefits of an effective remote service solution...

The benefits of introducing remote-services into a wider service portfolio and why remote-service should be viewed as far more than a temporary solution to overcoming the challenges of the pandemic.

Improving Health and Safety

One of the most critical areas of responsibility a field service company has is a duty of care to its employees, contractors and communities within which they operate. This, of course, is a mantra that has been magnified and reemphasised since the pandemic, but it is a concept that is absolutely at the core of field service management.

Since the pandemic hit, an additional factor has undoubtedly been added to this equation. Field service organisations must also consider how they can limit their engineers’ face to face interaction with others, both for their own and their customers’ protection.

Indeed, improving health and safety aspects of field service delivery and minimising risk is one of the most critical areas in which modern remote service tools such as augmented reality and head-mounted computers can bring clearly identifiable benefits.

The first of these is that by enabling the technician on-site to work hands-free, we are instantly enhancing their ability to work both more efficiently and also more safely. However, the potential for improving health and safety via such tools goes far beyond this.

For example, we can see the introduction of digital safety advisory processes being introduced; this allows the engineer in the field to connect with a health and safety expert in real-time to access advisory support when needed. Not only does this place the safety expert where they are needed as soon as they are needed, but it also allows for the service organisation to refine the safety team in terms of size, structure and effectiveness.

Another method that can improve the health and safety aspect of field-based service work introduced when using such systems is to introduce a digitally enabled risk management solution.

 

"As we factor in the pandemic’s impact, the ability to dial in expertise is crucial as it means that service and maintenance can be delivered in a limited or even zero-touch manner, reducing the human-to-human contact required in issue resolution..."

 

Cameron Stevens, a Chartered Health and Safety Professional, Safety Technologist and Solutions Engineer at RealWear, Inc. has been working with global field service teams to help them conduct remote audit, assurance and critical risk activities. Stevens suggests that “real-time risk information offered with enterprise wearable assisted reality computing has the ability to step change safety performance and can digitally enhance all elements of a health and safety management system”.

Doing this allows the field service engineer to conduct health, safety and environmental field audits and assurance activities hands-free and generate real-time reports.

Software solutions such as SPACE1 can even be powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), automating processes vital to ensuring the engineer’s safety are followed every time. This also enables work processes to be analysed to uncover rich insights that have the potential to further improve future operational safety performance. Such an approach is crucial when we reflect that all too often, the most dangerous threat in an engineer’s day to day work is complacency.

Finally, as we factor in the pandemic’s impact, the ability to dial in expertise is crucial as it means that service and maintenance can be delivered in a limited or even zero-touch manner, reducing the human-to-human contact required in issue resolution.

Perhaps most importantly though, remote video collaboration in the work environment enables supervisors and managers to regularly check in on the mental health and well being of the field service workforce as they go about their jobs in relative isolation, dealing with the fatigue and uncertainty resulting from the pandemic.

 

Increasing Geographical Expansion Opportunities

As many field service management professionals will attest, the most significant impact on the service P&L is invariably always the truck-roll. As the old adage goes, if you have to send a service engineer -once then you are breaking even.

Every time you then send an engineer back out on the same job you are losing money.

For many companies, this fact means that geographical expansion can often be too cost-prohibitive to undertake. Ultimately getting expertise on the ground in a new territory can involve significant travel and accommodation overheads.

Alternatively, training up a local field service team with the necessary skills can be even more costly. Of course, it also takes time for such a new team to develop the experience required to stand on their own two feet.

However, when we start to look at some of the advanced tools for remote service delivery used by best-in-class companies such as Honeywell, Volkswagen and Mars, we can see an excellent opportunity for field service companies to bypass much of the cost of getting this experience on the ground.

Instead of the subject matter expert being required to be on-site, they can remotely guide a less experienced local engineer.

AR allows the remote expert to guide the on-site engineer step by step with annotations, information slides or hand gestures that appear ‘on-screen’ merged directly with what the on-site engineer sees in front of him. Add a head-mounted computer into the mix, and the remote expert can guide the engineer, with a clear view of what the on-site engineer is viewing, while that engineer has both hands free to undertake the work required.

Such solutions are the single most effective means of communicating and transferring knowledge and expertise in real-time. As such, it opens the doors for geographical expansion for service organisations which wouldn’t have been possible prior to the introduction of such technological advancements.

 

Reducing the time it takes to get new engineers out into the field

Another pervasive challenge we face in the field service sector is the ever present issue of an ageing workforce. This is a challenge faced by field service companies in all corners of the globe and all industries. It is quite simply one of the most significant challenges our industry collectively faces.

As the baby boomer generation enters its final decade of being within employment age, there is a veritable tsunami of workers heading for the exit door and ultimately not enough recruits coming in the other direction to replace them. We must also factor in the time it takes to move new recruits from the classroom to the field, which further adds to the severity of this potential crisis.

Again, the sophisticated tools used within remote service delivery can have a significant impact here. Indeed, the benefits can be seen in four distinct ways.

Firstly, with more engineers retiring than are being recruited, we will need our engineers to be more productive. Technician utilisation and first-time fix rates have always been essential metrics in the field service sector. However, they will become critical in an age with a dwindling supply of engineers By using tools such as AR and Head-mounted computers, a field service organisation can take their leading subject matter experts out of the field where the amount of customers they can help is limited by their travel time, and into a role where they can deal with far more issues from one remote location.

Additionally, these subject matter experts can be focused on providing insight where it is needed most, increasing first-time-fix rates even on more complex issues.

 

"By transitioning the experienced engineer from a life on the road to one of a remote expert, based in a central location, or even working from home, the chances of keeping that engineer in the organisation for longer are greatly improved..."

 

Secondly, such subject matter experts are more likely to be found within the older and more experienced population of a field workforce. For a more experienced engineer, the attraction of constant travel and time away from home may well diminish over time.

This is, as many in the industry will acknowledge, a significant factor of employee churn.

By transitioning the experienced engineer from a life on the road to one of a remote expert, based in a central location, or even working from home, the chances of keeping that engineer in the organisation for longer are greatly improved.

Thirdly, by being able to provide younger, less experienced engineers with an adequate support network, where a subject matter expert can be readily on hand to offer guidance and support whenever, and more importantly wherever needed, service organisations can dramatically reduce the time it takes to get new engineers out of the classroom and into the field where they are actively bringing value to the organisation.

Finally, one of the critical advantages of using technology in this manner is that each call can be recorded and archived. This allows for the ongoing contribution to a knowledge base featuring a wealth of practical learning material. The potential application of such a knowledge base can then be further magnified when paired with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution.

By aligning AI to remote assistance recordings, engineers can be automatically guided to the relevant support documentation and recordings of previous calls that outline resolution quickly and effectively, freeing up the subject matter experts even further.

Additionally, AI can identify and manually tag visual elements within the recording for classification and then use these tags to find correct supporting material in the knowledge base to help improve on-site triage. It is even possible to translate the call into foreign languages to allow for the roll-out of such a dynamically growing knowledge base across multiple regions.

All of which can help lead to a far more effective support network for new engineers, allowing them to leave the classroom and get into the field a lot quicker.

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In the next article in this series we will look at three more benefits of remote service; empowering the blended workforce, embracing the tools for outcome-based services and differentiating your service against that of your competition...

---

Further Reading:

This interview was undertaken as part of our development of our recently published Essential Guide to Remote Service. This guide offers insight into the important considerations field service companies need to be aware of when selecting remote service solutions suitable for their needs.

The guide looks at both the hardware and software considerations as well as containing a case study from Rail Cargo Group that looks at how they implemented such a solution which has revolutionised their industry.

This essential guide is currently available on our free-forever FSN Standard subscription tier for a limited time as well as being available to our FSN Premium subscribers and our FSN Elite members. If you are on any of these subscription/membership tiers you can access this guide by clicking the button below.

If you are not yet a subscriber, the button will take you to a dedicated registration page for FSN Standard that will give you instant access to this guide as well as access to the other Premium Resources currently available on this tier. 

 

 

---

Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, OverIT and Realwear who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this report.