ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘digitization’ CATEGORY

 

A new, independent survey of the highways industry has revealed that two-thirds of tech-enabled businesses reported a reduction in accidents or no accidents at all in the last 12 months – 50 per cent more than industry standard. 

The report highlights the influence that technology can have on the preventability of accidents, with over two-thirds (67 per cent) of businesses using paper-based processes reporting preventable accidents, compared to only 53 per cent of businesses using digital technology – a reduction of 26 per cent.

 

It also found that not a single business that uses software to enforce process, track job progress and analyse job performance reported an increase in accidents in the past year, compared to 11 per cent of other businesses.

 

Better safety training for workers, more detailed vehicle inspections and improved road quality were listed as the top measures to prevent accidents in future.

 

Graham Whistance, Managing Director of MyMobileWorkers, commissioners of the report, explained:

 

“With 39 million vehicles on the road in Great Britain, our network is being put under more strain than ever before, as are the businesses and workers that make up the sector. However, while maintaining our highways infrastructure is crucial, workforce safety must always be front of mind.

 

“There is no doubt a role for government legislation and regulation here, but what our research tells us that investment in digital technologies is giving businesses an opportunity to take extra control. By making the switch from paper-based to digital, highways companies are improving the safety of some 300,000 workers on the roads today, while also improving compliance, job performance and productivity.”

 

The new research also reveals that using digital software improves business results and productivity. Businesses in the highways sector that track the progress of their jobs using digital technology complete jobs in an average of 4.4 hours while vastly improving quality of work, over 50 per cent faster than those that use paper-based approaches.  

 

What’s more, over a fifth (21 per cent) of those using digital technology to track job progress are able to provide customer updates in real-time, almost double the number of those that don’t (11 per cent).

 

Herts Traffic Management has seen a 40 per cent increase in business efficiencies since switching from paper-based to digital. Richard Soanes, Managing Director, said: “The insights from the Driving Change report are telling. There is a big gap in the highways sector for more efficient and safer ways of working, so having this data to raise awareness and provide a clear solution is invaluable.

 

“Having switched from paper-based to digital ways of working, I have seen the significant business benefits first hand. Compliance and safety performance feel robust and we have seen a 40 per cent increase in business efficiencies through gathering data, accumulated in the office and out in the field.”

 

When it came to compliance, the majority (98 per cent) of those surveyed said they are fully compliant however, some standout challenges still remain. Most notably safeguarding all equipment, which was reported by 45 per cent of businesses. Ensuring all safety procedures are followed and staying up-to-date with new laws, regulation and policies were also cited as leading barriers to compliance in the sector.

 

“While most companies surveyed state they are fully compliant, this report tells us there is still a long list of issues to address,” Graham added. “Compliance is much more than simply filling out a tick-box form, it’s about making sure all areas of the business, from equipment, to employees and ways of working are all as robust as possible.”

A panel debate on the best digital tools for achieving top-end service, strayed from shortlisting technologies and focused more on the end-user impact. Field Service News’ Deputy Editor Mark Glover attended the session – part of Field Service Europe 2018 – and saw discussion range from strategy to data, but always swinging back to the customer.
Among the many highlights from Field Service Europe, held in Amsterdam before Christmas, was a debate attempting to shortlist digital tools that can contribute to a world-class service process.

Panellists included Miguel Angel Hernanz, VP Head of Global Service Delivery Transformation at Phillips Healthcare; Karen Mehal, VP Field Service Lightning at Salesforce and David Nedohin, President at Scope Augmented Reality.

Chairing the debate, Field Service News’ Editor-in-Chief Kris Oldland began by defining world-class service and more specifically what it means to customers used to high-end service delivery from the likes of Uber and Amazon. “Service is no longer how we compete with our direct competitors,” he told delegates. “We’re now constantly at competition with the best service experiences customers have ever had. We’re now moving into a world where customer satisfaction is perhaps no longer the right phrase anymore.    
"It has to be about customer experience and understanding what the experience is to the customer and working back from there. Only then can we really start thinking about what world class service is,” he posed.  

Oldland put it to the panel that technology and digitisation in service should be perceived as “one continuous eco-system that compliments and feeds off one-another" rather than separate tools. Hernanz, who recently oversaw a large B2B and B2C contact center service transformation at Phillips Healthcare, was keen to set the focus on strategy and away from the tools. “The different tools are enablers," he said. You should first of all take a look at your strategy and secondly re-define your processes end-to-end, then use the different solutions or tools that are available in the market to make it happen.”    

He continued: “The problem with digitisation and the variety of tools in the market is that you get overloaded with information; you find opportunities all over the place and you want it all and you want it now and that is a big mistake.    “You should start doing a proof of concept. You try it, you learn, you correct and you scale up; if it is scalable. Or you dismiss it and you try something else” he urged.    

Servicecloud’s Karen Mehal agreed: “If you don’t understand what your objective is, how do you know you’re getting there? she asked, going on to question the use of the term digitisation. “We digitised field service technicians with laptops 20 years ago, did we not? We gave them a laptop. That was digitisation."   

It's a good point. The industry can be guilty of getting swept up in buzzwords without fully understanding what they mean, and more importantly how they can impact on customer service. “What’s the objective?” Mehal continued, “Is it around your customer? Is digitisation serving your customer? If it isn’t, it really should be. Or are you just taking your ERP and digitising it?    

If the customer service is the end goal, then digital tools should be used to empower that process. Putting this theory to David Nedohin, the co-founder and president of an Augmented Reality company, Oldland asked how such a new and innovative technology such as Augmented Reality can cut through the excitement and intrigue to become a genuine ROI. “It’s about identifying what the problems are but to also make sure there are measurements to it,” Nehan explained. “For example, if you are currently sending out your field service team to help support your customer on a certain percentage of problems, what is that costing you right now? And if you could implement a technology that could help reduce a certain percentage of those, then what is the actual cost savings?    

“If they don’t have those numbers, we work with them to find out what those numbers are so there’s a business case that can be presented to management,” he says, before adding: “It’s a strategy they need to put together to understand exactly why they’re solving that problem. You have to start with the problem, you have to start with the use-case.”     

Concurring, Oldland suggested that technology should underpin a wider business plan of evolution. “Digitisation is not a one-off process,” he said. “In a sense, we’re talking about a continuous improvement journey, it’s just that the tools behind that evolve too.”    

“I see a lot of people get lost in that,” offered Mehan, who by her own admission is customer-facing, “They get lost in the shiny object, such as Augmented Reality. But if your strategy is around customer support, better customer service, wouldn’t it be better to use digitisation to look at someone’s asset now and fix it now, rather than scheduling someone to go out there and fix it?    

“Our world is no longer traditional. We’re not in a traditional world, we’re not in a traditional software world, we’re not in a traditional field service world. We should not be bound by EAPs or by software. We should by bound by what serves out the customer,” she argued. “My questions are: are you doing that with your digitisation. Are you really taking care of the customer when you’re doing your strategy?” She said.   

Philips’ Hernanz admitted working in large organisations ,where many different stakeholders have many ideas can be difficult. However, all these opinions come second to that of the most important stakeholder: the customer. “You need to put the customer at the centre and listen to them,” he said. “This is very important. You must find out what they need and then start building solutions which are suitable for today, but also for the future because the whole process is also an evolution.”   

 

"We're not in a traditional software world, we're not in a traditional field service world..." (Mehal)

 

 

One digital tool that has made a significant impression on this process is data and, in particular, big data. Filtering the most useful information remains the challenge, given the reams of information that smart assets churn out. “There’s no point in having data if it’s not providing the right insight,” Oldland said to the panel, all of whom agreed and acknowledged all the customer cares about is fixing what needs fixing.   

Referencing a client who made industrial cooking equipment for fast food restaurants including Burger King and Macdonald’s, Mehner told the audience that when their client's equipment – such as a bun toaster – produced a fault the restaurant would call out a contract worker ill-equipped to isolate and solve the issue. “This piece of equipment,” Nedohin explained, “now has 20 or 30 tickets associated with it because the technician doesn’t know how to diagnose the problem, let alone fix it. The message is clear: we need to find a better way of fixing the assets.”    

The restaurant now uses remote support tools to directly contact the manufacturer, who can identify the model, the fault, diagnose the problem and send the right technician with the correct parts and asset knowledge   “There is data with this such as preventative maintenance,” Nedohin said. “But the customer doesn’t care, all they care about is getting the equipment working. That data is important to somebody and that somebody is in the manufacturer's office.   “The person at the end just needs to know what to do,” he concluded, summing up a key take away from the debate.   

Enlightened delegates left the session without a list of digital tools but an idea of what to do before you choose them. Data collection, Augmented reality can all complement a process, but without a strategy that also encompasses your customer’s needs, those tools may as well be blunt.  

Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) who use vehicles are aware of digitisation benefits but many still rely on manual processes.

New research from TomTom Telematics shows fleet-based SMEs are turning to digitisation to improve productivity, communication and cost.

The study, which canvassed over a thousand companies across the EU and USA, revealed 81% of those decision makers surveyed said they could get more jobs done if they could digitise more of their workflow.

However, the majority of those questioned admitted taking a manual-paper heavy approach to every day tasks such as expense management, customer updates and quoting and invoicing.

Beverly Wise, TomTom Telematics' UK Sales Director said the survey highlighted two key areas. "First, SMEs are frustrated by the costliness, time ineffectiveness and potential for error explained when handling essential tasks manually," she explained. "And two, managers want digital solutions to take care of these jobs."

You can download the full here.

 

Sara Mueller, Field Service Portfolio Director, Program Development, Worldwide Business Research reflects on her research in building the program for this year’s Field Service USA conference and explores the growing connection between technology and customer experience...

Nurturing a customer-centric culture was a common 2017 priority expressed by service executives when I began researching the Field Service Fall program at the beginning of the year.

No matter what industry or how large the organisation was that I spoke to, no matter how much they were embracing digitization or mobile technologies, putting customers first was the common theme that weaved its way through the strategic vision of service organisations.

While this is a common theme, there are many different routes being taken to accomplish the goal of building a customer-centric culture. Each year service organisations are connecting more and more of their devices with the Internet of Things (IoT).

While IoT is being used to achieve greater operational efficiency and move from reactive to predictive service, service organisations are also exploring how they can use IoT data to build customer loyalty and competitive differentiation.

 

Most importantly perhaps is that IoT allows service organisations to monitor how customers use their products. They can tell when a machine is operating and whether or not certain features are being used properly or even at all.

This creates an opportunity for service organisations to step in and train their customer on better ways to use the equipment or how to take advantage of different capabilities that ensures they take full advantage of their product.

Technicians build rapport and are more likely to be viewed as the “trusted advisor,” what so many service organisations strive for. This also creates a doorway for discussing product or service upgrades depending on how the customer is using their product.

In order to nurture a culture that puts customers first, service organisations are shifting the conversations with their customers to be about buying results, rather than buying products.

With new business models and service contracts that allow customers to have options like only paying for up-time of equipment or discounts when equipment is not functioning properly, customers have more faith in what they are buying. It aligns the goals of the service organisation with that of their customers, and builds differentiation, customer loyalty, and even greater profitably when the right model and pricing is established.

In order to most efficiently serve customers in the field, many organisations are moving to a mixed-model field force: a mix of full-time and freelance or independent contractor employees. Service leaders are deciding which type of technician is best for remote locations or key accounts, for tier one calls or escalated issues. Once that balance has been established, service organisations are providing an appropriate level of transparency to both employees and freelancers to ensure service remains consistent no matter what type of technician shows up at the customer site. Proper freelance management systems and knowledge management tools are essential to support this shifting technician staffing model.

 

At the end of the day, in order to have a customer-centric culture, service organisations need to know what their customers think of them and what they are doing right and wrong. While customer satisfaction levels have long been an indicator of service organisation performance, many organisations are moving to embrace more strongly Net Promoter Score (NPS) programs.

What good are high customer satisfaction levels if your customers end up leaving out the back door?

Once an effective NPS or other standard metric program is in place, service leaders can take the knowledge gained to modify and evolve their customer offerings to line up with what their customers truly value.

Finally, perhaps the hottest buzz word used in field service today is the “uberizing” of service in order to put the customer first. Companies are continuing to monitor trailblazers like Amazon and Uber to put customer needs at the center of their operations. They are building or investing in telematics that can shorten the expected service delivery time window and offer features like a text message that lets the customer know when the technician is on his or her way or running late.

 

While this is a simple gesture, it’s been creating phenomenal results in customer satisfaction. Organisations are also creating processes and trainings that ensure employees have the authority and empowerment necessary to take the extra step to rectify a customer crisis that will result in raving fans.

As service organisations, customers have always been the reason for business. But by leveraging new technologies, committing to growth, and aligning business goals with that of their customers, service organisations will achieve the customer centricity goal driving their business this year.

 

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Ahead of giving a presentation on this topic at Field Service USA, Scott E. Day, Executive Vice President, Thyssenkrupp Elevator Corporation, gives us his insight on taking the right path on the journey to embracing digital services...

When we embark on a mission to digitalize our business processes, it’s easy to just jump in and assume that if we can get it done we will be more efficient and make more money.

While digitizing is a smart move – it is important to think about: data structure, data cost, hardware and access carefully.

The goal is to make sure your strategy is complete and ensure your customers need your services above all else. So, before jumping in to keep up with competitors, realise that data is not the only consideration.

What’s Your Business Model?

It’s important to know what your business model is and what you’re trying to accomplish with an Internet of Things (IoT) solution.

You might be seeking efficiencies, like those found by thyssenkrupp via our MAX solution (more on that later). Or you might have other ideas like Splunk’s CEO, Godfrey Sullivan did - using data to determine the likelihood of lease renewals and the health of tenant’s businesses based on the frequency of the elevator stops at each tenant’s floors.

Whatever your business model and reason for getting into IoT, this is the leading decision that drives the remaining components of the infrastructure you use.

Data

So let’s start with data. What data will your technicians consume and what data will your customers want? Many companies want all the data, which makes it easier to do analytics down the road.

However, if you are sending raw data from hundreds of thousands of complex machines, you’d better have deep pockets.

If this level of data is needed, data compression algorithms are widely available and should be considered critical in setting up schemas to get the data to the cloud and to the consumers.

Connectivity

If your project requires attaching hardware to equipment you service, it’s important to understand the full costs and trade-offs between a one-time hardware expenditure and long-term data costs.

Depending on the industry, choosing low-cost solutions like LoRa, a long range low power wireless platform, are great for low consumption applications. This is not the case for elevators, they require cellular connectivity because multiple processors are connected within a single unit each one sending massive amounts of data.

Cellular

If using cellular, consider if your customers, your call centres or your technicians will need realtime access to the state of the machine to find a balance between cost and performance. If you are sending massive amounts of data, compare the costs of 3G versus 4G/LTE services versus the time to transmit and the coverage of those technologies.

Keep in mind that 3G may appear to be cheaper, but it won’t be long before 4G/LTE services become the new norm and the piece of hardware you installed may need to be replaced or upgraded if you’ve rolled out with lower bandwidth and slower technology.

Make vs. Buy

When thinking about hardware beyond telecom, it’s important to weigh time to market against core competency.

Are you an engineering company that specialises in building microprocessor and telecom devices? And can they communicate serially and temporarily store data until the right condition is met to send it?

If not, it might be best to look for off-the-shelf hardware that will allow you to get the total solution adding value to the business and customers sooner.

Cloud Solutions and Predictive Analytics

For thyssenkrupp, this is the next frontier. We are moving our business into a more predictive, condition-based maintenance model.

This will allow our technicians to work on the right issues during every single visit to a customer’s location. This is where efficiency and customer value meet.

Fixing it right the first time, or using lifecycle models to predict and replace parts before they fail are key to a customer base that is looking for guaranteed up time and always-on performance.

Microsoft Azure, GE Predix, and IBM Watson are to name a few, and each have their niche in Industry 4.0.

Digitization to Digitalization

When planning the business benefits for IoT solutions, transparency of information is where digitization meets digitalization. As in the Splunk example, can you monetise the data?

Does making it more accessible to make your field workforce make them more efficient?

Many businesses have begun providing portals full of information to their customers. Our experience has been that many times this data sharing is overwhelming for customers who don’t necessarily have the time to read it.

To demonstrate value and monetise the solution, it’s got to be the data or services that the customer wants and will spend money for.

At thyssenkrupp, our vision is to provide technicians with access to a wide variety of information specific to the building which will help them service the elevator more effectively in turn improving the elevator experience for tenants.

This is possible, via access to live data from the elevator controller (brain) and to schematics and manuals.

At the same time, destination dispatch kiosks at every floor allow customers to not only select their desired floor, but to also see streaming services displaying things like weather, stock market and news feeds. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and NFC (Near Field Communication), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth applications make it easier to recognise people so the elevator system can place the call automatically for them.

So, what seemed like a simple case of connecting a machine to a cloud and making your technicians more efficient is really a more sustaining decision that requires a well thought out strategy.

Digitizing your current processes is the simple part, and many are doing it. The strategy needs to include how to turn digitization into digitalization through the right infrastructure.

 

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