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Marina Stedman, Director Global Field Marketing, ClickSoftware, takes a look at the technology shaping the next phase of field service evolution...

The term Internet of Things (IoT), describes the inter-networking of physical and smart devices, items such as vehicles and buildings and even technology services. Connected interoperability across many devices, applications and infrastructure presents an opportunity for the field service industry to raise the bar on two key areas of field service: operational costs and customer satisfaction.

Operational Costs:

Increased connectivity within a field service operation fosters a predictive model for addressing possible equipment, infrastructure, machine or device failures. The ability to diagnose and address issues and undertake preventive maintenance is essential to saving time (and money) on service calls, cutting the number of service requests made and improving the first-time-fix rate.

Take a building’s HVAC system for example. With today’s increasingly unpredictable weather, warm one day and freezing the next, IoT sensors can monitor temperatures and simultaneously use historical service and on-line data to predict maintenance requirements, failure rates and climate trends. This data can be used to manage service and operational tasks, for example making sure a system is serviced before parts fail and before the first freeze occurs, cutting the risk of breakdown and reducing the need for field service intervention.

Customer Satisfaction

Cost, asset management and effective communication are key components to achieving the ultimate goal: ensuring customer satisfaction.

Customers are unhappy when they have to wait a long time for a service visit, wait in all day for an engineer to arrive or make multiple calls to find out the status of their job. If multiple service visits are needed before a problem can be fixed because the information required for a first time fix is not available, both customer satisfaction and business profitability are impacted.

IoT sensors in devices or infrastructure, linked to real-time scheduling and dispatch solutions can detect potential service outages and make sure that issues are fixed before they become critical. For instance, IoT sensors in a food vendor’s freezers could identify a potential fault and notify the manufacturer that it’s due for a service before the freezer breaks and the food spoils. The manufacturer can quickly schedule an engineer to visit and rectify the issue before the freezer breaks down, saving time and money for everyone.

The IoT technology that we envisaged only five years ago bears no resemblance to what can be done today and it won’t be long before machines will automate decisions and launch actions without human intervention.

3D Printing

3D printers use Computer Aided Design plans to mould thin layers of melted plastic, aluminium, and powders together to form shapes. They started off making simple things like models and toys, but today’s devices have the sophistication and capability to form replacement parts. Why is it then, that few, if any field service organisations currently fulfil field-based replacement part requirements with 3D printed spares?

Maybe they don’t feel that the technology is safe and reliable enough at the moment? This won’t always be the case - here are two things to think about for the future:

Speeding Spare Parts Fulfilment

Apart from people costs, spare parts management is one of the biggest areas of cost for a field service organisation. Anticipating parts demand is challenging, even with the most sophisticated field service software solutions and the rarer the part, the less likely a field service engineer will have it available on-site when needed. 3D printing will make it as cheap to produce single items as it is to produce thousands and introduces the possibility of directly manufacturing finished components on site - reducing inventory costs and speeding up job completion.

Improving First-time Fix Rate

Not having their problem resolved in one visit is a constant source of irritation to field service customers and research has found a direct correlation between first-time fix rates and customer satisfaction. (*Aberdeen Group Fixing First Time Fix) .

As lack of parts to fix the problem is the main reason field technicians visit a customer site twice, field-based 3D printing facilities could enable parts to be printed on-demand, improving first-time fix rate and positively impacting customer satisfaction ratings.

Imagine the Future

IoT sensors in devices send messages to fulfilment and dispatch when a part is at risk of failing.

A 3D printer creates the part and the job is automatically scheduled. The service engineer fixes the problem before the customer is aware of the issue and without any disruption to business or personal life. Sounds like science fiction, it won’t be a few years from now.

Looking for more tips, trends, and future field service technology advice? Check out the Technology section of Field Service Matters.

 

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Laraine Geddes, Marketing Manager, Kirona explains how dynamic resource scheduling & mobile working can help you keep promises to customers...

Driving efficiencies in your organisation and ensuring the highest level of customer satisfaction do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Regardless of whether you are managing planned maintenance, reactive field based tasks or complex projects, efficiency comes from doing the right things, at the right time with the most appropriate resources. For the customer, what they want is exactly the same, for you to keep your promises, to perform and complete the task required when you say you will.

Kirona have outlined four ways in which organisations can deliver their promises to customers.

Setting expectations:

It is a careful balance to ensure that customer preferences for appointments are taken into account while also optimising resource utilisation and minimising travel time of operatives. When procuring dynamic resource scheduling software ensure it provides available appointment slots to be offered to customers, whilst highlighting the most efficient slots for the organisation in terms of resource utilisation and travel time.

Setting the right expectation & keeping promises can achieve Customer Satisfaction of 95% or higher.

Communicating with your customer:

One of the primary reasons for appointments being missed is no access to the property, often caused by the customer not being at home.

Kirona’s Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS) makes it easy to keep customers informed. Each appointment can be confirmed by email or SMS, with reminders being sent at time intervals such as 24 or 48 hours before the job is due. When an operative updates the job on their mobile device to say that they are en-route to the property, an SMS can be sent to remind the customer.

There will always be exceptions that occur.

Whether it is an unavoidable overrun of a previous job or delays caused by traffic, it is essential that the customer is kept informed. Through the seamless and real-time integration of DRS and Kirona’s Job Manager mobile workforce application, such delays can be proactively managed with a communication sent to the customer informing them that their operative has been delayed and resetting expectations of when they will arrive. Not only does this approach reduce the negative impact on customers, it can also reduce calls from customers to your contact centre chasing progress.

 

North Lanarkshire Council’s no access rate dropped from 40% to just 3% through use of Kirona’s DRS and Job Manager.

Dealing with the emerging day:

No two days can be the same and it is common for events in the day, including emergency work, to require changes to the schedule. The challenge is to cater for overrunning work or new work items while keeping customer promises and also ensuring that you continue to operate in the most optimum way.

By utilising Kirona’s Job Manager as your mobile working solution integrated into Dynamic Resource Scheduling, you gain full visibility of the work being performed in the field. You can see in real-time potential delays and the impact that this will have on your intra-day schedule Rather than having to hold back emergency slots in your schedule or allocating emergency work on a first availability basis, DRS enables you to take a more efficient approach. As changes in the day occur, DRS re-evaluates the day’s plan, adjusting work allocation to take into account the emerging work or availability to ensure you maintain the most optimum work schedule across all available operatives.

Delivering a first time fix:

Not all jobs run to plan. A job can simply take longer than expected. The efficient way to deal with this is to provide the operative with the time they need to complete the task. This avoids an additional appointment being required and ensures that your original promise to the customer is kept.

Step one to increasing the rate of first time fix is ensuring that for each job you have the right operative, resources and time allocated. Key to this is an effective triage process that ensures you can define the key parameters used for scheduling work. Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS) enables you to define different categories of skills and qualification of each operative and to align this to job requirements ensuring you always send the right operative.

 

When complications or work variations arise, the seamless integration of Job Manager (JM) and Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS), enables for this to be immediately notified to planners. With full visibility across all operatives of the day’s work and its progression, they are able to quickly sanction job variations and realign work items to ensure other customer commitments are met.

Augmented Reality (AR) allows field technicians to “see” how to make a repair, rather than having to “read” about how to do it writes Bill Pollock, President, Strategies for GrowthSM...

It seems that for forever, field technicians have been forced to carry around hundreds of pages of paper in their cars or vans detailing and explaining repair processes, service guidelines and product schematics, etc.

Then, once at the customer site, they still need to flip through those hundreds of pages to find exactly what they are looking for in order to perform the onsite repair – particularly when it involves dealing with a piece of equipment that they may not have seen in years – if ever!

We’ve all heard the expression “Seeing is believing!” But, what really should stand out fairly clearly is that the fact that the phrase does not say, “Reading is believing!” This is the main premise that supports the applicability of Augmented Reality (AR) for the field services segment, in that it is more helpful for the field technician to “see” how to repair a piece of equipment, rather than having to “read up” on how to repair the equipment.

 

Further, while the former can take place in real time, the latter may often require several minutes – or more – of looking up chapters or indices, finding the appropriate pages, writing down notes, and otherwise “wasting” time – at least from the perspectives of both the technician and the customer!

Some companies, like PTC, had long been aware of these concerns. In PTC’s case, they made the move earlier in the year to acquire Vuforia, “a mobile vision platform that enables applications, or ‘apps’, ‘to see and connect the physical world with digital experiences that demand attention, drive engagement, and deliver value’.”

In fact, it is through the use of this AR technology that Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) providers can now empower their customers to leverage two of the most disruptive of transformational technology trends – the Internet of Things (IoT) and Augmented Reality (AR) – to deliver a new class of products that merge the digital and physical worlds.

The benefits to the field force can be substantial as, by adopting an AR-based strategy, Field Service Organizations (FSOs) can:

• Completely eliminate the maintenance, repair and service manuals in their present, cumbersome, print copy (or, even, digital) form;
• Streamline (and/or eliminate) formal, individual, maintenance and repair training for service technicians; and
• Introduce new IoT- and AR-based Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) business models.

In a 2016 Fortune article, the magazine reported that, “More and more we see products that are part physical and part digital – and we see new models wanting to be part physical and part digital. The idea of being able to project a digital experience onto a physical product to figure out how to service it or show operating metrics … is a killer idea.”

One of the examples cited suggested, “imagine pointing your smartphone at your car and being able to see visual warnings that your wiper fluid was running low or your tire pressure was sub-optimal on a rear tire. That’s possible as information gathered by the car’s sensors can be pushed to the Cloud, then retrieved and shown in a visual format on the phone. That same format could also offer simple to follow directions on how to fix the problems”.

 

In other words, not only does “Seeing is believing” hold true for those field technicians supported by an AR platform, but if “a picture is worth a thousand words”, then being able to “see” how to repair the equipment via Augmented Reality must expand upon that equation by another thousand-fold!

AR doesn’t create a “new” virtual reality; but, rather, it enhances the perceptual reality that the viewer is able to visualise while looking at a piece of equipment. This is exactly how AR will be able to assist FSOs in an SLM environment; that is, to provide the field technician (who may not ever have been called upon to service a particular piece of equipment) to still be able to perform the repair by “overlaying” an enhanced (again, augmented) reality – in 3D motion – over and above what he or she would otherwise be able to visualise, in order to make a quick, clean and complete fix.

The ability to “see” this Augmented Reality – in 3D motion – with accompanying instructive text, metrics and repair parameters overlaid and easily articulated will undoubtedly provide, at the very least, an extra measure of comfort to the technician, as well as access to a readily available tutorial for performing the repair as quickly, accurately and safely as possible.

 

However, merely talking about Augmented Reality – rather than actually seeing it in action – is like trying to tell a Southerner how cold the Northern Winters are – in words. It’s just not possible! That’s why AR is best understood by actually seeing a demonstration of it in action.

 

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Nick Frank, founding partner at Si2 Partners outlines why the importance of people and culture cannot be overlooked when looking to instil a culture of continuous improvement and innovation...

The mistake many leaders in industry make, is to believe that defining a clear vision and strategy with ruthless follow up is the only recipe for success. This may indeed initiate change, but rarely do the results last. Often3-4 years later, the business will be addressing the very same issues, but under a new management team.

In todays increasingly digitized world this challenge is particularly relevant for leaders of service businesses, who feel they must react to new technology to avoid being left behind by their competitors. Maximizing the potential of these capabilities does not come from the technology or even adopting innovation processes, it must start with our own people.

The problem is that in their urgency to achieve results, many leaders breeze over the communication, incentives and cultural engagement necessary to achieve the required emotional buy-in from employees.

In their minds, treating change as a rational process makes it easier to determine key priorities, identify pitfalls and plot a roadmap with a beginning and end. But many initiatives fail, because employees and clients do not act as rationally as leaders assume. In fact people have been shown to be very unpredictable, making this part of change management more art than science.

 

Most managers will tell you, ensuring your people are engaged in what they are doing is the very lifeblood of a business. Some may use use fear, which gets things moving, but is only ever effective in the short term and does damage in the long term. Most agree that people have to be basically happy to sustain change over an extended time period. This ‘happiness’ is essentially influenced by the culture of the organisation, which evolves from the values displayed by leaders, their vision and the backing of stakeholders who own the business.

This is not new to experienced managers, yet so many focus on the well defined processes of moving from strategy to operational excellence. On reflection, profitable long-term profits are really generated by creating a culture that engages people to deliver excellent products or services that create customer value. This in turn drives customer loyalty, providing the opportunity to expand margins and increase profitability. This simple truth was re-confirmed to me in a recent workshop discussion, which included managers from Federal Express. They commented. ‘Our values drive us to start with our people and that the profits will come, never the other way round’

In todays world, where technology is rapidly changing the face of Field Service, many leaders would do well to focus more on the mind-set of their people that allows them to express themselves and have the confidence to try new ideas even if there is a risk of failure.

How can leaders inspire their teams to innovate and succeed?

We have seen successful leaders demonstrate five key attributes in creating a dynamic self learning organisation:

• Powerful story telling: One of the most powerful concepts leaders can use to turn dry strategy into an engaging vision is through story telling. Since the dawn of time, people have been captivated by stories. The role of leaders is to tell the story that inspires all the stakeholders in the ecosystem, not only employees, but also clients and shareholders.
• Walk the talk: Telling the story is not enough. Leaders have to live it and live to the values they espouse. Commitment is key to credibility!
• Common language: If story telling is the key to inspiration, creating a common language is the key to longevity. Language becomes a habit. It influences how people solve problems whether that be inside the organisation, or interacting with customers and partners. Creating a common language and view of the business is much more than words. It is creating a mind-set that influences how we articulate ourselves and conduct our everyday business.
• Relentless follow up: Changing culture is not an overnight process. It is often said that to integrate a new habit, one must repeat an activity 21 times. It is no different for developing culture within an organisation.
• Solution focused mindset: Discovering problems should be encouraged as they help bring clarity to our. However it is important not to dwell on the problem and who to blame. Solutions drive organisations forward!
• Think how many times something goes wrong in the business, which leads to significant shift in approach by senior management. To turn problems into opportunities, leaders need to be committed to creating self learning solution orientated organisations around them.

The message is not to wait until your CEO starts to talk about innovative self learning organisations. You can start ‘now’ developing a successful mind-set first for yourself and then your teams, that will allow you to take advantage of the amazing opportunities offered by the new technology’s around us.

Nick can be contacted on nick.frank@Si2partners.com. Si2 ON-Demand is a unique advisory and support service that enables top performing leaders to solve problems and get things done, quickly, easily and cost effectively.

 

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Value based pricing is a hot topic in industry today, but what exactly is it and why is everyone talking about it?

Is value based pricing simply about getting as much price from your customers as possible? Or is it about valuing your longer-term relationship with your customers, or perhaps improving your service? In fact it is each of these and potentially more. What is clear however, is that cost-plus pricing for services does not always offer the customer or the supplier the best value - yet there may now be options to combat this with value based pricing.

The following report co-authored by Dr Shaun West, Lucerne University and Dominik Kujawski, Arvik Bolting Solutions brings together good industry practices in a solid academic framework. The report provides business leaders with a guide on how to create a value based strategy to price B2B services - as such it is essential reading for all business leaders...

Why value based pricing?

During a conference we recently attended, a phrase that kept coming up in conversation was “We should all switch to value based pricing”. An increasingly topical statement in industry today, however, the approach of value based pricing is also one which is not being discussed any further. No one seems to be speaking about HOW to actually achieve this goal.

Pricing is not new- even Oscar Wilde said: “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing”

Companies need to focus on customer value in developing pricing strategies as pricing pressure in the industrial B2B market has been increasing as a result of changing customer buying behaviors. In this article we’ll delve deeper into why value based pricing can be challenging and why it has a huge impact on companies’ business.

Is pricing really a strategic capability?

Pricing is an important management tool to help achieve the firm’s objectives and has a huge impact on the financial results. It is a multi-departmental activity influenced by several functions within the firm that may attach different importance to pricing and the value drivers of the business.

Every business manager needs to be aware that pricing has an impact on customer satisfaction and that pricing is not only dependent on price itself.

Pricing of services is dependent on situations in which a customer finds themselves in and the jobs in which they need to do at that time.

This relation of pricing to customer engagement in this process includes three strategies:

• Cost plus strategy;
• Competition/market base strategy;
• Value based strategy.

Cost plus pricing

The process of cost plus pricing starts with the firm determining the scope of their service. Here, a unit cost is simply calculated and a pre-determined margin is applied to set the price. This margin reflects the desired profitability of the firm. The customers are then told what will be ultimately delivered in exchange for the set price

Competition/market based pricing

This process begins with pricing based both on the scope and the costs, then additionally on what the competition charges for a similar service. Setting the price here has an influence on the market situation. Large competitors tend to have a scale advantage over the smaller ones since their fixed costs are mostly lower due to a larger customer base. The last step of this process is presenting the customer with the value that is being offered through the service.

Remember that data is in your CRM system and in the market – keep track of it.

Value based pricing

The value based pricing approach is based on analyzing each customer’s needs, pains and gains, and their willingness to pay. It depends on the customer interest and acceptance of price for a provided value. Here, the price is set for the offered value, and later the scope of the service itself is determined.

Calculating the costs in this strategy is also necessary as they used to make a reality check and afterwards calculate the margin achieved.

Listen to your customers

The process of pricing in cost and competition based strategies suggests to ask the question “why is the customer situated at the end of the process if all of the companies always state that customers are the most important?”. A juxtaposition to the truth, you will always hear stated that companies involve their customers in the co-creation of service value from the very beginning, but how can this be actually possible with a cost plus and competition based pricing strategy?

Now, how do we turn this approach around and place focus back on the customer? Straight away, let’s forget about pure cost plus strategy.

This ‘simpler’ pricing strategy shows that the supplier can have a lack of understanding of the customer value and as a result the customer offering can be weak.

In addition to this, the competition/market base strategy, which is endorsed by many companies, indicates that pricing is controlled by the market. As such, this removes focus from the customer and indicates that the supplier does not entirely understand customer value, showing that the resultant value outlined by the firms offering can also be low.

So, how should service companies price in order to bring the customer into the focal point? The answer is quite straightforward; by aligning pricing objectives, strategies and tools according to the holistic strategy of the company.

Note: pricing needs to be strategic… it must not be left solely to Sales,

Production or Marketing departments. It needs to be driven by management and agreed by all the departments influenced by pricing Companies should create more customer focused objectives to choose pricing strategies that consider customer value.

This means that when pricing services, you as a firm need to firstly understand how your customer creates value and secondly, where you and your equipment fit into this process. You need to know that pricing tools used also need to support the objectives of pricing and the pricing strategies. For example, a pricing tool supporting customer oriented objectives can be bundling as it is a way for firms to present the scope/price negations, thereby providing a different approach to customer value discovery and leading to improved customer experiences.

Source of pricing power

Here, a B2B example is given, showing that the source or pricing power comes from customer need states. Let me take you through the example of a simple bolt used in industrial equipment. Bolts are widely present in everyday life and more specifically, they are present in almost every technologically advanced machine or construction, from compressor valves and turbines, to the foundations of wind mills.

So, what is the price of tightening a single bolt? The price of a single bolt varies from market-to-market, from machine-to-machine and from company to company.

The most significant result of bolting, however, is the residual load that a customer requires from the bolting supplier. Now, to show where the pricing power of services come from, let’s imagine a situation where you exchange a single bolt worth a couple of dollars, in a compressor valve which is worth hundreds of thousands or install one in an offshore wind turbine, worth even

more. How much should the tightening of one bolt be worth to keep the compressor running or the turbine safe on its foundation?

In this case, bolting provides safety and savings on a huge scale however, the value of the service to each customer varies depending on the scope of the project. Here, not all customers are the same, so they should also not be treated with the same approach.

Customer value connection based on colors

Customer value connection shows that companies need to do what their particular customer values. If the value proposition you offer creates no customer value, it is then only a purely basic cost to your customer.

It is time to use the “knowledge” about your customers to move to customer value propositions and find ways to deliver what is really valued. Hence, what they are really ready to pay for?

Firms need to consider what is core and what is standardized.

It is important to be aware that pricing can be different for different modules. This means that the customer can pay a different price based on the “menu” or “á la carte”, and shows that there are multiple pricing points for services but what is really interesting, is that its components don’t change. So what is changing?

It is the location and more importantly the type of service provision together with the customer need state. In the first mentioned case, the compressor valve is available in a workshop where the bolt can be tightened with use of onshore equipment, in a quite friendly environment.

However, the tightening of wind turbine requires going offshore to harsh conditions with special trainings and guaranteeing the customer that a bolt tightened worth a percentile of the whole wind mill will provide safety from failing the whole project.

This clearly shows that the customer gets usage, location and utility from the supplier. And if a firm is able to segment customer needs states and purposes for buying. It is also able to find the right pricing points for it.

This helps to identify margin and revenue opportunities available to a company.

This shows that that customer value identification process work for product based firms too.

Pricing waterfall for value based pricing

A prototype of pricing waterfall diagram provides guidance towards value based service pricing. It considers the most important aspects of pricing, starting from benchmarking competitors to considering the customers’ willingness to pay. As such, it helps you to triangulate on the value based price that your customer is willing to pay.

The pricing waterfall presents that single, inflexible offerings can limit companies to sharing limited value. Whereas, flexible offerings respond to customers’ changing needs.

Also, flexible pricing based on all important factors helps to increase customer value. Offering flexible service dimensions that support customer choices, together with flexible pricing strategies can provide the supplier with additional pricing dimensions that can have a positive margin increase impact. The pricing waterfall also highlights the importance of triangulation of pricing based on market analysis, internal value creation and customer value.

Final comments

This article presents that pricing is a strategic capability and needs to be kept in line with the company’s overall strategy. There is a great need to focus on customer value creation during service pricing, and aligning strategies and tools to support the objectives set by the company. Understanding customer value rather than simply relying on cost-plus or market-based approach, is a key to pricing industrial services. Another very important step in the process of pricing, is margin calculation based on the identified costs and value price offered. It is essential to calculate the margins in order to assess the correctness and validity of the price.

To summarise, consistency in pricing is of great importance and needs to be maintained across all pricing objectives, strategies and tools used to determine the final price of a service offering. So after reading this article, ask yourself again, “Should I switch to value based pricing?”. The answer is not always, but one can learn to determine situations, locations, needs and pains to price according to value.

 

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Michael Blumberg, President of Blumberg Advisory Group discusses the emerging hiring trends of the variable workforce and freelance management systems and looks at how these can be applied to help field service organisations balance staffing levels with workloads...

If you follow the business news, you have heard about hiring trends which are moving away from the traditional full time employee model. Having full time employees means a guarantee of wages, benefits, vacation time, sick time and paying additional federal wage taxes.

With the new labour laws coming into play regarding overtime, this can mean additional expenses as well. It also means paying the employee even when there is a lull in the business. For a service company there may be peaks and valleys in workflow and the need for field service personnel. And while so much can be done on a remote basis, there remain many times when someone just has to be onsite to fix the problem. Clients are no longer localised geographically so having technicians who can get there quickly becomes an additional challenge.

For all of these reasons, companies have increasingly turned to freelance workers, AKA a Variable Workforce. Freelancers have existed for decades in the form of writers, artists, administrative assistants and others who were not full time or part time employees, rather they worked and were paid as contactors. The idea of outsourcing work is not a new concept either. The difference is the increase in the number of and types of workers for hire on a part-time or project basis. In relationship to the Field Service Industry, there are now highly skilled, well trained, specialised Field Service Engineers who are available on an as needed or project basis. These individuals are normally highly motivated as they essentially run their own small business and generally have a strong work ethic.

 

For most people in the Variable Workforce, they work this way by choice, enjoying the flexibility that being your own boss can offer. This workforce can be found worldwide and can get to those emergency on-site calls fast. That speed satisfies the customer and saves the service company money.

Given changes in the way companies staff their businesses, a new system of managing this process is a natural extension. With the increased pool of a project based, part time workers has come the growth of Freelance Management Systems (FMS). These online cloud based systems allow those companies looking for qualified workers, including Field Service Engineers, to find them quickly and easily.

The FMS platform handles the billing and payment, scheduling, provides a searchable database with skill sets and geographical locations of the personnel all at the fingertips of the companies who seek workers and the workers themselves. The workforce can market themselves to hundreds of companies at once and manage their incoming payments all at the click of a button.

FMS provides companies with the opportunity to achieve significant cost savings over time and the ability to accelerate strategic or organic expansion resulting in new clients, new service offerings, and/or new sales territories.

So what is the actual experience of companies using a Variable Workforce and FMS platforms? Have they been able to achieve these benefits or is it just hype?

 

When faced with questions like this, what would a great management consultant do? A survey of course! So that is what we did. We created an online survey for the Field Service Industry to look at these staffing trends and how it is being manifested.

We wanted to reach a broad range of companies, reaching out to professionals who engage field service staff or make decisions about field service staffing requirements for companies with field service functions for technology equipment they sell and/or service.

We wanted to examine the benefits of Variable Workforce models, particularly FMS. In addition, we wanted to understand key objections or concerns about the Variable Workforce and FMS models. And in doing so, we could assess the key motivators for using FMS and evaluate the impact of FMS on critical Key Performance Indices.

Finally we could use this information to identify the best candidates for using FMS. This article addresses Variable Workforce and Field Management Systems in the Field Service Industry.

The survey which we conducted yielded 203 respondents. The types of companies included those participants represent include all areas of Field Service: Third Party Maintainers/Independent Service Organisations, Original Equipment Manufacturers, Value Added Resellers, Systems Integrators, and Self-Maintainers.

The companies range in size from over $500 million in annual revenue to less than $50 million. These companies also varied in size as there were those who manage less than 100 field service events per month up to more than 1000 field service events. These field service events included emergencies, installations, inspections, and preventative maintenance or calibration. And the types of technology supported included Information Technology, Network Connectivity, Printers, Point of Sale, Telecommunications, The Internet of Things, Security Equipment, ATM and Banking, and Retail Marketing Equipment. The companies also ran the range of how a Field Service Business is run – as a cost centre, as a profit centre, as a strategic line of business, or as a revenue contribution centre.

What we found was that of the respondents, over three-quarters (77%) were currently using some type of Variable Workforce Model. Also, the respondents were two-thirds Third Party Maintainers (TPM)/ Independent Service Organisations (ISOs) or Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

 

One of the most important data points we found was that on average, the Variable Workforce users support more types of technology than companies who do not use solely a Traditional Workforce.

That is, those companies who use Variable Workforce are able to support 4 types of technology versus only 1.8 types of technology for companies who do not utilise Variable Workforce.

This piece of information reinforces the idea that those companies using a Variable Workforce can expand their service offerings not only geographically, but also to include more types of service by utilising the highly skilled specially trained technicians they can reach utilising this model.

The top three reasons that companies made the move to a Variable Workforce were:

• The ability to be agile and scale their workforce based on customer demands.
• Over half agreed that “We didn’t have enough work in selected geographies to justify hiring a full time Field Service Engineer.”
• Almost all said that controlling labor costs was a significant motivator.

Once making the decision to utilise the Variable Workforce, companies needed to find tools to help build and manage the staffing. Nearly two-thirds of those companies use a Freelance Management System. Others used and in-house team or 3rd party provider or staffing company.

Of the Freelance Management System users, almost all have been using it for at least one year and 60% for three years or more. Approximately two thirds of these companies are Third Party Maintainers/ Independent Service Organisations or Value Added Resellers.

What type of labor do they contract labour? The number one answer is project based work - an overwhelming 81% of the respondents. Not only do companies who use a Variable Workforce support more technologies than non-users, but also FMS users tend to support more types of technology. On average the companies who use FMS support 4.3 types of technology versus only 2.8 types of technology for non-users. This is most likely due to the ability to have more types of specialised engineers available to the FMS users.

As is the case with most changes, companies considering using the Variable Workforce and FMS to support that staffing model had concerns about moving the impact it would have on their business.

 

These concerns included a fear of a negative impact on customers, how would this change impact the customer and their relationship?

What did they know about the reliability and technical capabilities of the workforce they were hiring and how could they really know who these people were? And would the savings they thought they would get in the long run really be enough to justify the cost of making this change?

The companies we surveyed told us that ultimately the most compelling reason to make the switch was that the FMS platform is agile, giving companies the ability to scale up quickly to meet seasonal, cyclical and short term demands. In fact, 71% of users found this to be the case.

The benefits of FMS and the Variable Workforce these companies have realised include the ability to cover a greater geographic region, increased service coverage, increased flexibility, and lower overhead.

FMS adopters have been able to gain more business and have been able to increase their field service work.

They have experienced such success that 76% of them reported an increased demand for FMS just in this past year. In fact, most of those have increased their use by at least 15%.

 

The increased usage stems from the positive results of New Service Lines, New Customers, and Increased Geographic Coverage. The results show that the very reasons they considered making the move to FMS is now leading them to utilise this model to an even greater extent.

Taking all of the survey results into account, we feel confident that the need for and usage of Freelance Management Systems for the Variable Workforce in Field Service will continue to increase over the next year as well.

Companies of all sizes adopted this model have found the results to be overwhelmingly positive. A decrease in overhead combined with an increase in the ability to serve customers equals increased success. As one survey participant summed it up, “Increased revenue and additional customers [are] driving volumes!”

 

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Marne Martin, CEO, ServicePower talks us through a variety of different scheduling solutions and how they can turbo charge service delivery...

When I think of a ‘turbo boost’, a few images pop into my head. From Superman to a luxury car that eats up the track, a turbo boost ‘supercharges’ an action, with apparent ease, whether that’s saving the innocents or posting the fastest lap times.

In relation to mobile workforce management, a turbo boost to scheduling operations can be just what’s required to achieve the next level performance to drive customer satisfaction, retention and future sales and that turbo boost can only be found in true optimisation that places the power of cognitive computing and big data at your fingertips.

The automation, calculation speed, and schedule quality inherent in true artificial intelligence (AI) based optimisation engines maximises the productivity and efficiency of mobile workforces, while reducing costs and ultimately improving the customer experience.

 

Despite stories from the industry about prolonged deployments, platforms which require heavy development and customisation, engines which can’t process large volumes of work without failing or batching unprocessed job, real AI based schedule optimisation can boost your operation, and it does so with ease.

What does Scheduling Mean?

Mobile workforce management solutions (MWFM), have at their core typically ‘scheduling’, functionality which is used to manage mobile workers and at its most basic includes job scheduling, job dispatch and mobility software.

There are generally 3 kinds of scheduling solutions available which offer varying degrees of benefits, from white board / no optimisation solutions to the real, intra-day AI optimisation that enable your business to be much more productive and scalable.

Types of Scheduling

Basic Scheduling

Basic scheduling software requires building and managing a schedule manually. It’s labourintensive, doesn’t consider travel time, and doesn’t apply any computer logic to scheduling decisions, exception handling or schedule changes.

Most of these vendors offer something similar to Microsoft Outlook with drag-and-schedule functionality. Basic scheduling isn’t scalable, and doesn’t support any kind of complexity or manage large volumes of work well.

There is no turbo boost in this option; it’s more like a bicycle.

Automated, Rules-Based Scheduling

Larger volumes and complexity can’t be handled by basic scheduling. It’s too much and too hard for manual processes. It’s inefficient, costly and inaccurate.

Software which offers simple computer logic is the next option. Vendors often call these rules based computer programs ‘optimised scheduling’, but they aren’t.

Some of them do automatically build a schedule using technician skills, availability, and service level agreements, so these are a better option than basic manual scheduling. However, if these packages can’t use a simple rule based on the skill, availability, and SLA, they can’t schedule the jobs.

These really only fill white spaces. Filling a white spot on a schedule is not optimisation.

There’s no real turbo boost here either. This is like a scooter; there’s some power, but you’re not going very far or very fast.

Artificial Intelligence based Intelligent Scheduling

True route and schedule optimisation, such as ServiceScheduling from ServicePower, uses artificial intelligence algorithms, like Simulated Annealing, and our latest algorithm, Quantum Annealing, to intelligently schedule jobs using hard and soft rules in conjunction with configurable parameters to minimise overall costs, maximise service delivery margins, and reduce response times.

Real schedule optimisation packages select the best mobile worker for each job based on skills, geography, and existing jobs, while also considering required response time, and other configured parameters. They continuously reshuffle the schedule to create the most efficient, least costly version possible, all the while automatically accounting for schedule changes and exceptions.

 

Scheduling optimisation isn’t about manually scheduling jobs, or filling white space based on some basic, hard rules. Real-time or intraday schedule optimisation is about intelligent automation and is absolutely necessary for complex field service operations.

ServiceScheduling, and our Optimisation on DemandTM product, have been proven by our customers to yield:

[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• 15-50% productivity improvement of mobile workers based on intelligently, continuously optimising the schedule for decreased response times to customers
• Up to 45% increase in SLA compliance because the optimisation algorithms can account for required response time in the scheduling decision in real time
• Between 25-50% increase in mobile worker efficiency, including decreased cycle time and reduced travel time yielding improved customer satisfaction and service delivery margins

• Ability to process IoT alerts without manual intervention [/unordered_list]

   

What’s more important to understand about real algorithm based schedule optimisation?

It’s intelligent!

The algorithms give your team the power of ‘big data analytics’. It’s using your data, creating schedules and learning throughout the process, continuously re-crunching the data, continuously re-optimising, continuously improving the schedules, productivity and efficiency, without your team spending hours manually analysing and manually decided how the data impacts your operations.

Artificial intelligence based schedule optimisation is the turbo boost that your organisation needs to get around that curve fastest, at the least cost, to win, for your customer!

See Through the Smoke Though 

Given the obvious benefits to artificial intelligence based schedule optimisation, like ServiceScheduling, why aren’t all organisations, no matter the size or complexity, using the technology?

Good question...

There are several misconceptions worth addressing. Schedule Optimisation is hard to implement. No, schedule optimisation is not hard to implement. It can absolutely be deployed on time and on budget and maintain a long term return on investment.

What’s critical is working with a vendor that understands your operations, as well as what it takes to manage a mobile workforce themselves.

Development is required to support you unique business requirements.

Development is expensive and take a long time. The software should be configurable; it shouldn’t require development to deploy and it absolutely shouldn’t require IT resources to maintain basic changes in the business going forward.

Cloud first.

The software should be available in the cloud, to reduce costs and streamline security, or on premise if your security and privacy policies dictate an on premise deployment.

No software is future proof.

Software should support the evolution of your business. It needs to seamlessly and intelligently support scheduling and dispatching of any mobile worker, employed or contracted. It should support full mobilisation of processes, even those that differ by job or customer.

 

It should integrate the latest technologies like the Internet of Things (IOT) and M2M, to support new business opportunities such as proactive or outcomes based service offerings. ServicePower combined out entire platform in one easy to deploy, easy to pay for model, ServicePower Unity, for exactly this reason. It enables your team to use functionality as and when it’s needed by the business.

It’s hard to change vendors.

It doesn’t matter if you already use software to manage your mobile workforce. Safe passage programs exist, and schedule optimisation should be capable of being used in a plug and play model, to provide that turbo boost missing from existing software systems such as ServiceMax, Salesforce,  MS Dynamics or SAP.

ServiceScheduling and Optimisation on DemandTM can be used in conjunction with these software packages to improve the schedule  optimisation (or lack thereof) of what your team has already deployed.

A complete change out isn’t required.

ServicePower has architected its platform so that it can be deployed alongside industry standard CRM and ERP packages, improving the schedules generated such that you, too, can supercharge your field operations.

As an example, one of our clients, already on another FSM platform, was able to generate a 24% increase in productivity and a 29% return on investment by implementing ServiceScheduling. Our team at ServicePower has worked tirelessly to create a mobile workforce management software platform which ‘turbo boosts’ our client’s mobile workforce operations- maximising productivity and customer satisfaction, and achieving real ROI, easily, and quickly. It produces real results regardless of what other software our product must work in conjunction with to achieve those ]results.

We guarantee it.

 

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For many field service directors the opportunity to develop a brand new service organisation would sound like a fantastic opportunity to be relished. Ian Cockett of Cygnet Texkimp, who is in the process of doing just that, tells us what the process is like in reality...

Ian Cockett, Product Director, Spares, Service and Maintenance holds up a blank piece of paper. This is the opportunity I was presented with he says.

An opportunity to build a service operation completely from scratch. How could I resist?

Cockett is talking to a room full of around 50 field service managers and directors at a service community gathering and looking around the room at the nodding heads and wry smiles as he begins his presentation, it is clear that a number of those in the audience not only undersood the challenge Cockett was facing but also the lure of such a proposition.

Having spent some thirty years working in service, primarily within the domestic heating market, Cockett certainly has the pedigree for such an undertaking. He spent many years working for Bosch, one of the most respected organisations in the sector, having direct responsibility for the aftermarket team in the UK with responsibility for around 300 field service engineers, a contact centre of 80 people working 7 days a week and a technical support team of around 40 people.

 

More recently Cockett was Service Director for Domino Printing Sciences a company providing equipment used in print processes within the production environment. Here service was in constant high demand as if a printer goes down then production facilities are not working - so their clients would be directly losing a lot of money and therefore needed a highly efficient service operation to keep them onside.

However, just over two years ago Cockett moved to his current role with Cygnet Texkimp - a business involved in technical fibre processing.

A family owned company that has been in operation since 1974, Cygnet Texkimp operate in the fibre processing industry and design, manufacture, install and now maintain equipment that goes into technical fibre processing servicing sectors as diverse as carpet manufacturing through to aerospace and the automotive sector.

Having experienced significant growth within the last ten years the company now comprises of six main areas with a view to offering a complete turnkey solution for their sector - including the aftersales division which Cockett has been tasked with developing.

However, it hasn’t all been plain sailing as Cockett has looked to introduce the concept and culture of a service oriented organisation into an organisation focused on delivering high quality engineering solutions but without the service support structure or established KPI’s and processes that an established service organisation may take for granted.

“It has had more challenges than I thought we would have. When starting a service organisation from scratch in an established organisation, the challenges are broader than just generating a service business.” Cockett explains.

 

“I am used to organisations where you’ve got a service team that’s an inherent service team, with KPIs in place, with scheduling systems in place, and with engineers all across the UK - so I was there to manage that team and then to drive continuous improvement.”

“This is a completely different beast I’ve found and it’s definitely given me some personal challenges, but nevertheless it’s an exciting opportunity we can work with and hopefully help the business to grow through delivery of excellent service.”

The challenges that Cockett faces are split into two main areas. The first is actual business development and the second is around developing a culture within the organisation that compliments an aftersales division.

The key challenge is that, as with many similar sized companies, whilst the business is growing it is all too easy to focus solely on the here and now, on delivering custom solutions for clients that meet expectations but without a forward vision of how these solutions can be maintained efficiently via a service division that is yet to even exist.

 

As Cockett explains “We are moving to standardise on our products more and more where this is possible and implement process improvement across the organisation as the business continually develops.”

Another additional challenge Cockett faces is that Cygnet Texkimp operates as a matrix structured business.

“In one sense it’s s great “ Cockett comments “it’s good for the business in terms of flexing through peaks and troughs and that is great in terms of the business and providing a stable platform.”

“The challenge I’m faced with on a service basis however, is that I have to go begging, pleading and robbing to get people to provide service support.

I’ve gone form 300 service engineers at Bosch to 1 here. We do have other organisations that we own which we can utilise – for example mechanical and electrical installation and service companies that we are part of so we can draw on that resource but because it’s not my resource the challenge I have is getting the right person at the right time to go attend a service call.”

In addition to this the other significant challenge Cockett faces is that most of their business is outside of the UK where they are based.

With no service team as such just where does Cockett start in order to begin building a service operation that can become a profitable element of the company?

“We have recently recruited a COO, which is now bringing in some of the structure, process and procedure that we need and also some standardisation to allow us to continue to drive through business and continue the growth pattern we are going on.”

“For example, one of our challenges associated with our progress with product standardisation is that of spare part naming and numbering conventions, which historically have been project led.”

“The challenge I face, is we have all these different bits of kit and same widget may appear with a different name or part number when used in lots of different pieces of equipment. So trying to manage that from an aftersales perspective will give you some real challenges, as anyone involved with service businesses will agree.”

 

In order to overcome this hurdle Cockett is now working with design teams going right back to the design process to organise things in a structured way.

“Now our electrical and mechanical design team both use the same language, we all structure the parts in the same way and if we have a part we have used before we give it the same name and part number as before.”

Although it may seem an obvious step it is a crucial one and Cygnet Texkimp won’t be alone in having overlooked such steps as they evolved at rapid pace.

However, as Cockett begins working with his colleagues across the wider business putting these foundations in place, he is able to see the service operation and the company as a whole moving forward.

This in turn has allowed him the opportunity to begin addressing his other key challenge - of developing service business.

“The opportunity is of course the legacy stuff - the equipment that’s already fitted and out there across the world - that’s my opportunity to go and sell spares and service.” he explains.

 

“It’s about getting the right service, to the right customers and we need to have people in the right places to do that,” he concludes.

However, the one thing that comes across clearly having listened to Cockett’s presentation is that he is a man that not only has the experience to know what service excellence looks like, he also is able to take the wider business view to ensure that service doesn’t just get added as a business unit in isolation, but is a central driver for the way the company evolves moving forward.

And whilst the challenges Cockett and the management team at Cygnet Texkimp remain numerous, there remains a genuine feeling that nothing is insurmountable.

The development of a service department is the natural evolution for Cygnet Texkimp and Cockett strikes me as a man that will ultimately deliver.

 

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Field Service News hosted a series of Chatham House rules roundtables in Amsterdam earlier this year to get a feel for attitudes towards Augmented Reality amongst service executives.

This is what the people had to say...

 

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On Augmented Reality as a threat to the labour force:

“That’s kind of the nature of technology in general - for example the big concern with robotics was you build robots and now humans on the assembly line are losing their jobs. But that’s the nature of technology - it does displace people but then it opens up other avenues -now technicians are fixing and programming the robots.”

 

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On AR as a means of delivering remote guided self maintenance and repair:

“We’re chasing vessels all over the world, oil tankers, luxury yachts etc but very often we have to send very skilled people to do very basic manoeuvres of our mechanical systems so I see a big, big advantage for us if we were able to get that installed. The problem I’m seeing is getting the camera there is as hard as getting a skilled technician there, so the question I have is what can we do with the vessels own employees and a smart phone?”

 

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On the transition to utilising Augmented Reality in our workflow:

“I remember when the automotive industry started putting computers in cars and everybody was saying that there would be no more mechanics, you just plug in a computer and it tells you what’s wrong - well all the mechanics are still here. I think this will be the same - it will be an adaptation, a transition and an improvement.”

 

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On Augmented Reality as a training tool:

“We spend a lot of money flying our top guys all over the world to give training to technicians but it would be nice to reverse it where you could do demonstrations where people are dialling in remotely.”

 

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On the power of Augmented Reality being magnified by other technologies:

“I really think we should be using all of these new emerging technologies such as Big Data, IoT, Augmented Reality in harmony”

 

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On the big barriers to Augmented Reality:

“My biggest problem is the connectivity side of things. Connectivity is probably the number one barrier”

 

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On Augmented Reality as a practical tool for hitting one of the most common KPIs in field service:

“I really look at the big advantage of Augmented Reality as improving the first time fixed rates. We’re still going to need really skilled technicians because our equipment has been designed in a way where it is extremely complicated to grasp, but it would help us to be able to fix it the first time and that would be worth it by itself.”

 

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On Augmented Reality entering into R&D thoughts already:

“ I’m starting to think ‘how do we build it into our product?’”

 

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On how Augmented Reality can completely change our approach to service delivery:

“What I’m tasked with is trying to improve efficiency in the field and I’m very keen [on AR] - in fact over ten years ago I had the vision of the engineer going to the site with some sort of camera, projecting that back to the network operations centre and then having all of the competency housed in that hub, de-skilling the field and allowing them to be able to just fix anything but by having the competence built into the remote assistance.”

 

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On the challenge of raising awareness of Augmented Reality at board level:

“We started some trials with Google Glass but it was a waste of time, but everybody thought something was going to happen and it didn’t and now the problem is getting the buy-in again and separating this out from those failed trials.”

 

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On Augmented Reality becoming a mainstream field service tool:

“Ease of use and implementations - look at the iPhone - it’s really easy to use, it’s not cheap but it is really easy to use. So for me it’s going to be who can deliver an AR product to the market with the simplest ease of use proposition.”

 

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