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Continuing our series of interviews with industry leaders, Kris Oldland speaks with John Cooper, Head of IT and Workflow Solutions in Sony’s Professional Solutions unit in Europe. 

John Cooper is man with not just one division to oversee but many. Each has particularly demanding service challenges and, of course, due to the high technology industries that Sony inhabit, each is also an ever evolving sector.

With a pan European team of around 110 field engineers working alongside other members of the wider Sony workforce and various third parties, Cooper’s responsibilities are essentially across the entirety of the non-consumer portfolio of the tech giant, and it seems service is an increasingly important part of the wider business strategies and plans.

The areas that fall under Cooper’s remit also each have their own unique service challenges.

Firstly there is Sony’s healthcare solutions unit which has evolved from simply producing medical printers to now working on much more adventurous projects with hospitals and surgeons such as transmitting operations as part of a training program and even potentially aiming towards remote surgery by utilising a mix of cameras, high quality displays and 3D technologies.  Of course in such an environment, uptime is essential. “As a service challenge it’s quite an interesting one as you don’t want anything to fail mid-cut as it were” Cooper comments wryly.

Another of the divisions in Cooper’s area of the business is the theatre solutions division, which is focused on digital cinema. Here the products include high-end 4K cinema projectors and the clients the likes of Vue and Everyman.

 

And whilst the pressure on the service operation here is perhaps not a matter of life and death as it is in Healthcare, it certainly still exists. Quite simply the clients in this division are reliant on the technology functioning for them to make any money at all, so if the projectors fail, then they don’t pay.

And of course then there is the Classic AV/Media side of the business, the largest of Cooper’s divisions and a key area for Sony as a whole. Again the pressure to deliver reliable uptime is paramount.

With high profile clients including the unusual (Sony is responsible for the archiving and recording solutions for Vatican City) to the more standard broadcast clients such as UK terrestrial provider ITV and Spain’s Telemadrid, there is an expectancy for the products and solutions they provide to be wholly reliable.

As Cooper states “if you think about News and just TV broadcast generally that whole industry was built around reliability. It’s so rare for the screen to go black and so it’s [100% uptime] an expectation.

Challenges of service complexity

To deliver these expectations Cooper’s team is comprised of a number of differing elements within the service -chain focused on maintaining the various different technologies at play. Firstly there is a service management team that focuses separately on those technologies with a team of field engineers with the requisite skills based in and around Europe. Then there are the other equally important components of Sony’s service delivery such as centralised repair locations, where they pull all sorts of technology back to a select number of places across the continent to get fast turnround time.

Essentially,  part of their service operation is in the field, part of it is remotely placed in terms of repair and then in addition to this they also employ a number of remote technologies that allow them to log in to systems quickly to make initial diagnosis.

And in the midst of all that there is an ever increasing complexity within their product set which in turn adds further complexities to the organisational structure, making the smooth handling of operations even harder.

Cooper outlined three facets to this complexity.  One is the increasing challenge of potentially lots of different partners in the service chain. “IT workflow solutions for example, might well have an oracle database plus harmonic storage and we have to look at the whole piece,"  he explains

Then there is the issue of Sony’s customers reducing their own internal expertise with many shedding engineers, particularly as engineers retire and aren’t necessarily replaced. In the theatre business, for example, there is no need for a highly skilled projectionist who in the days of analogue might have had a greater understanding of the machines he worked with and the ability to potentially undertake maintenance himself or at least provide a detailed overview of the fault when reporting it.

 

In a modern cinema the technology is much simpler to operate so that skillset is lost on the client side, adding further emphasis on Cooper’s team to be able to work at optimum efficiency.  As Cooper asserts:  “Our ability to diagnose has to be very good because the fault diagnostics aren’t always fantastic as you might imagine.”

Finally, there is the fact that Sony themselves are also facing their own price pressures.  The price of a high end broadcast cameras for example, have fallen dramatically in the last ten years and this hit to the bottom line also is of course felt by the service division. “We used to be able to, in certain instances, give some of our service elements away for free because it was built into the margin, that’s no longer possible," Cooper concedes.

Bespoke service offering

And it is these challenges that have ultimately led to Sony having to adopt a much more focussed approach to their service.

“In order to protect our customers and to deliver the levels of service that we want to be recognised for, we give a fairly high level of service at point of sale but then we sell our additional service contract offerings up to any level including up to full bespoke.” Cooper explains

Add to this the growing trend of servitization, which for Sony at the moment is currently something of a pull market with their customers more and more frequently seeking to engage with Sony on a pay-per-usage basis.

 

A perfect example of this is a new system Sony have just implemented for Telemadrid.  Replacing a previous Sony system which was over a decade old, the suite contains the latest technology and is provided on a pay-per-usage basis. “It’s a fully managed system, and in that instance it’s all about the service - the technology is just an enabler.” Cooper explains. “And we are starting to see the pressures on the broadcasters, big lumps of cash are harder to come by, many are now starting to ask about pay per usage. Then it’s all about service delivery, ” he adds.

With such significant shifts in business principals, service is quite rightly becoming a much more fundamental part of Sony’s wider business strategy.

As a result of these shifts however, Cooper and his colleagues needed to revisit their existing service infrastructure, with a view to replacing their 15-year-old legacy system with something better suited to the growing complexity of their service organisation. “We used to be able to, in certain instances, give some of our service elements away for free because it was built into the margin, that’s no longer possible,“ Cooper concedes.

And it is these challenges that have ultimately led to Sony having to adopt a much more focused approach to their service. “In order to protect our customers and to deliver the levels of service that we want to be recognised for, we give a fairly high level of service at point of sale but then we sell our additional service contract offerings up to any level including up to full bespoke,” Cooper explains

Add to this the growing trend of servitization, which for Sony at the moment is currently something of a pull market with their customers more and more frequently seeking to engage with Sony on pay-per-usage basis.

As a result of these shifts however, Cooper and his colleagues needed to revisit their existing service infrastructure, with a view to replacing their 15-year-old legacy system with something better suited to the growing complexity of their service organisation.

 

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Look out for Part 2 of this interview, when Cooper will talk about how he and his team reviewed both off-the-shelf systems and customised solutions to determine which was fit-for-purpose, their reasons for making the choice they did and the impact on the service operation.

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Field Service News (sponsored by Exel Computer Systems)
Title: Poor Relations: why you maybe overlooking profit if you overlook your service CRM 
Download: Click here to download the white paper

By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here

Synopsis:

It’s been written many times, but the further we enter into the twenty first century the closer the relationship between business and technology becomes. For the largest enterprise level companies technology is driving innovation and efficiency in equal measure across all verticals.

At the other end of the spectrum technology is empowering small and medium sized businesses to thrive, with developments such as vastly increased mobile connectivity and the power and prevalence of the devices utilising it, enabling them to be on a truly level playing field with larger more established companies for the first time in history.

And for those companies with a field service division that link between technology and operations is perhaps even closer still.

Yet one area that is overlooked is Service CRM, an often neglected cousin of the traditional CRM that is a tool primarily for the sales division.

In this white paper we will look at why overlooking Service CRM is such a potentially dangerous mistake and why it is vital your Service CRM is fully integrated into your wider system infrastructure.

Overview:

Looking at some of the key technologies being used in field service this white paper helps clarify the role of a Service SCRM in bringing sales and service closer together and opening the doors to potential missing revenue streams. Sections in this white paper, written by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Cheif, Field Service News include:

ERP: ERP forms the bedrock of most companies system infrastructure and will typically include a number of integrated applications that a company can use to store, manage and interpret data from a variety of differing business activities, such as production planning, manufacturing, marketing, sales, inventory management and payment processing.

It is this very ability to integrate such a breadth of organisational systems and tools that made ERP systems such a vital and important tool within the enterprise.

CRM: If an ERP system is what powers the back end operations of a company, allowing it to meet the demands of existing business with optimum efficiency, then it is CRM that allows the front facing, revenue generating salesforce to perform to their maximum potential.

As with ERP, the rise of CRM came to prominence in the nineties as companies began to fully embrace the importance of both collecting and utilising customer data, thanks in part to the technology emerging to be able to do so.

MOBILE: Without question the biggest single technology to push forward the efficiency productivity of field service engineers within the last decade, potentially ever, is the dramatic rise of the smart phone and mobile computing in general.

Within the last decade smartphones have become an ever present part of our lives.

 

In field service in particular they have revolutionised the way many companies work. Mobile apps can include a whole plethora of productivity tools, from job notifications, through to knowledge sharing and perhaps most importantly job completion tools that can dramatically reduce a field engineer’s time spent on administrative duties.

CLOUD & GREATER CONNECTIVITY: However the benefits of a modern field service solution in terms of improving efficiency and productivity of our mobile workforce are not solely the result of advances in mobile computing.

Another highly significant technology that has emerged as a key enabler within modern field service systems is that of Cloud computing.

Research by Field Service News revealed that whilst currently around a quarter of field service companies were using the Cloud for their field service operations, over half of those companies that were currently still using an on premise system indicated that their next iteration of field service software would indeed be Cloud based.

DATA, DATA EVERYWHERE: So, via mobile devices we are able to give engineers the ability to easily collect vast amounts of data that they have at their fingertips, data which otherwise may go no further than the engineer’s own heads.

Meanwhile, due to the aforementioned real-time data transfer to the back office we are able to take that data and instantly have access to it across the business for further interrogation leading to greater insight.

Whether it be data that helps Research & Development teams refine their product development by identifying common device faults, or data that helps sales teams easily identify new business opportunities, the data that our field engineers are able to capture when on site is absolutely vital to a companies ability to thrive in the modern business world.

THE SERVICE CRM: And it is when we look at systems that can play an instrumental part in the distribution of this data that the often overlooked and underused Service CRM can actually play a hugely significant role.

One which in turn can be the difference between a moderately well run organisation to being best-in-class with the profit margins and revenue growth to show for it.

 

“It’s all about joining up the processes” explained Simon Spriggs, of Exel Computer Systems in a recent Field Service News podcast “Historically, many processes such as the manufacturing process and the service process were divorced.”

“If you think about a joined up process it’s all about getting these process not just as lean as possible but also as efficient as possible and that’s where a modern field service solution can really drive a business forwards” he added.

Indeed Spriggs is a man with a long history working with field service solutions and for him Service CRM is an absolutely vital tool that we should not be overlooking and in the latter half of this white paper we bring you more from Spriggs on why Service CRM is such a key tool to any field service company.

 

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Click here and complete the brief registration form to access this exclusive field service news white paper now

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Click here to find out more about Exel Computer Systems in the Field Service News directory

 

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This excellent infographic from ServiceMax highlights some of the key facts you need to know about the Internet of things.

How is IoT impacting upon your business? Is it something you are even considering? Do you think connected devices will change the face of field operations as we know it? Is this still tomorrows technology or is it something we should be implementing today?

Take our brief survey and help us build a picture of how IoT will impact field service and you could win one of three £50 Amazon vouchers...

 

Today’s world of industry is evolving at a faster pace than ever before. Agility is key to surviving and thriving in this modern era and agility in service can be the difference between you and your competitors writes Tom Bowe of IFS.

At IFS we talk a lot about business agility, because we believe organisations that are able to respond rapidly to internal and external environmental changes without losing momentum or vision will be game-changers in their field. Why is being adaptable and flexible so important in today’s business world? The world is changing at an exponential rate. The youngest generation of the workforce is further removed from those leaving the workforce than ever before.

Then, of course, you have the learning lessons of those businesses that failed to respond effectively to the rapidly changing technological landscape. Nokia failed to recognise evolving customer demands in the smartphone market and ultimately were destroyed by Apple and Android’s fast paced R&D and delivery cycles. They were the world’s dominant mobile-phone maker but by the time Microsoft bought them in 2013, they claimed just three percent of the global smartphone market. The New Yorker put it aptly, stating; “Nokia’s failure resulted at least in part from an institutional reluctance to transition into a new era.”

Agility is something that will not only allow your business to survive and keep up with an ever evolving market, but it will also give your organisation a competitive edge, particularly in the service sector. This flexibility must be driven internally with a scalable approach. The buy-in must be company-wide, and one place to start is with your processes and systems. The implementation and application of ERP software is most often considered traditional, rigid development, but that is not necessarily the case. ERP software from IFS is built with an architecture that lets you pick and choose what you need for your business. It is optimised to be the best option for service organisations, it is user-friendly, and developmentally adaptable and scalable.

 

Imagine having this flexibility and usability across your organisation, driving your service as a profit centre. An integrated service management platform gives you the consistency, reliability and speed to react in real-time to real-world events. It is an enabler for agility. An integrated solution is provided all on the same platform, so changes to business processes and workflows don’t need to be implemented across multiple systems. This means that processes and workflows are applied seamlessly across the organisation, ensuring efficiency, productivity and accuracy of information. Implementations of multiple systems take time, are tied to prohibitive costs, and are fraught with risk. With one fully integrated system rather than multiple systems connected together, you as an organisation benefit from speed of change, ease of change, reduced costs, and less risk.

Having a fully integrated system gives your organisation true visibility into not only operations, but the field as well. From call intake to financials, the entire process is documented, tracked, and easily accessed at any point during the entire service life-cycle. This gives an organisation visibility of day-to-day activity, and business intelligence needed to forecast accurately for the future. Imagine a flexible system that automatically applies certain determined processes to specific workflows, that identifies parts needed for specific jobs and then instructs technicians on what procedures need to take place during certain projects.

An agile system provides automation and optimisation, coupled with complete configurability and usability, allowing you to operate on a level that continually ensures success. Business agility is particularly important when it comes to service. Customer demands are at an all-time high, thanks to social media and the instant gratification culture created by having things available, immediately, at our fingertips. Service organisations must meet, or better yet, exceed, these expectations.

 

Agility in service not only drives speed-to-market, but also speed-to-delivery, which creates a competitive edge. So what can you do to achieve this agility when it comes to your software solutions and business processes? Evaluate the challenges and failings you have in relation to your current systems and delivery. Consider replacing your current back end system with something that will give you flexibility as your organisation grows internally and externally.

Often with larger, monolithic systems, internal change is static or too complicated to be effective. IFS Applications 9 is able to provide a business edge when it comes to visibility with perhaps the industry’s first user-configurable role-specific interfaces in IFS Lobby, enhanced usability within existing mobile service management tools and strategic customer relationship management (CRM) embedded directly in the applications for real-time visibility and control over the customer lifecycle.

Change the game by approaching the market with a system that will give you the visibility and flexibility needed to truly operate in the fast changing service industry. By making this fundamental change to integrated service management, you will be more prepared for external change, including trends like IoT, share economy, drones, and more. With a foundation based on agility, your organisation is guaranteed to adapt, no matter the situation.

 

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New levels of customer service performance are now the norm and it’s about time we all realised this,  writes Bill Pollock, President, Strategies for Growth

Until only recently, the Services Lifecycle Management (SLM) solutions purchase/acquisition cycle was a fairly closed-loop, highly structured, and oftentimes formal process. Potential users obtained most of their decision-making data and informational input directly from the vendors, sought the recommendations of published buyer’s guides and directories, and picked up on the latest “buzz” at industry trade shows or via services trade publications – all historically serving as powerful and rich resources.

This was the way SLM solution decisions had been supported and made for decades. But then, the LinkedIn, blogs and social media changed everything – including the means by which information is gathered, reviewed, and analysed; how potential vendors are evaluated and selected; and even the way in which customers position themselves as potential buyers in a largely buyer’s market.

The White House Office of Consumer Affairs has reported that dissatisfied customers will tell between nine and 15 people about their negative experience, with roughly 13 percent (i.e., or about one-in-eight) telling more than 20 people. Satisfied customers, on the other hand, will only tell about four to six people about their positive experience.

 

Therefore, according to the report, customer service failures are likely to be communicated two-and-a-half times more often than customer service successes. As a result, services organisations need to maintain a ratio of roughly 2.5-to-1 satisfied vs. dissatisfied customers just to break even in terms of word-of-mouth customer service feedback.

In all likelihood, customers will become even more critical – and communicative – about their service experiences in the future, based on the widespread usage of social media tools and technology devices. This presents a new front for services organisations to address in an increasingly social media-influenced marketplace; however, there are still many other challenges that must also be addressed.

The three most uniquely daunting challenges faced by services organisations over the past few decades have included the following:

 

• Transforming themselves from manufacturer/OEM cost centers to strategic lines of business (i.e., with their own executive-level management and P&L responsibility).
• Shifting their operational focus from company-centric to customer-centric, whereby the customer represents the focal point of their universe.
• Learning how to treat their business-to-business (B2B) accounts with the same high level of service and support that other vendors use to treat their business-to-consumer (B2C) customers.

Surely there have been other equally daunting challenges facing the services industry throughout this period, as well, including:

• The globalization of business operations.
• An uncertain cycle of volatile economic upturns and downturns.
• The proliferation of new technologies and applications.
• The continuing shakeout of marginal performers, and the resultant consolidation within the supply side sectors.
• The widespread growth of social media for business purposes.

However, while each of these business game-changers ultimately impacts all business segments, the three challenges outlined in the top list above focus uniquely on the services sector.

 

It is no longer good enough to tell your customers that your organisation is “no worse” than any of its competitors (the “like-company” comparison); because, if you do, you will risk hearing something in return such as, “I understand that. But what I don’t understand is why you can’t process my order as accurately as Amazon.com or QVC, or handle my return – and process my credit – as quickly as American Express!”

Companies like Amazon.com and QVC are maximizing their use of the Internet’s communications capabilities by making not only the purchasing process easy – but the returns process as well. For example, you might purchase an item from one of these vendors via telephone, laptop, iPhone, tablet or other handheld device. Once you obtain a customer number, it’s all very easy to place an order.

The overall customer experience is then heightened even further by the high level of communications provided to the consumer (i.e., the receipt of a near-instant e-mail confirmation of the order; the subsequent follow-up e-mails when the item is shipped; notification of when an item is on backorder; etc.). Even the return process is easy: if the item isn’t what you thought it would be (e.g., wrong color or size, you already got one for your birthday – whatever!) you can simply return it in the same packaging used for the initial shipping along with the supplied return mailing label, and a return receipt and credit notification will be forwarded to you (typically) in a matter of days – if not hours! By comparison, can your organisation match these industry-leading practices with respect to its parts sales?

By simply delivering (or promising) the same-old, same-old treatment to your existing customers, you are guaranteed to continue treating them as “just another business account” (i.e., the “B” in B2B). However, your customers are quickly becoming accustomed to being treated better as “C’s” by some of the most successful B2C vendors. They are also increasingly being empowered by the Internet; a seemingly unending number of new technologies, apps and devices; and the ongoing explosion of social media tools.

The time has come for your organisation to recognize that these “new” levels of customer delivery performance are now the norm – and that its customers will increasingly settle for nothing less than the best.

 

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Texas is home to two of the biggest names in rugged computing and earlier this year they came together when Xplore Technologies acquired Motion Computing. It's good news for field service companies, says Ian Davies, Country Manager, Northern Europe, for Motion, in this interview with  Field Service News Editor, Sharon Clancy.

SC: Where do the two product ranges sit in the rugged PC sector?
ID: Both companies sit at the top of the rugged PC sector. Xplore is the number one vendor in the ultra-rugged PC sector, while Motion claims second place in the rugged tablet space. Motion has a more mature and stronger presence outside the USA, with 50% of sales to European customers. The majority of Xplore's customers (80%) are in North America.

This give us plenty of opportunity to grow our customer base. The Motion brand will be retained, with the product being called Motion by Xplore.  Xplore has said it sees the acquisition of Motion as consistent with its goal to establish the best and broadest line of rugged tablets for the enterprise market and a one-stop shop for rugged devices.

As part of Xplore Technologies, Motion is in a stronger, more secure position financially.

SC: Will there be any rationalisation of the product ranges?
ID: In the long-term there might be some, but for the immediate future, no. In my working life, I've experienced several acquisitions and appreciate customers are naturally nervous about how long availability and support for existing products will continue. They have invested in devices that have a lifespan of at least five years, sometimes seven or even longer, and they're being used for mission-critical tasks. They want reassurance.

 

There's actually very little overlap in the product range because of the different sectors the two brands are focused on. Xplore is very active in large-scale deployments in sensitive sectors where security is a paramount: energy, public safety, telecoms and cables and the military. Motion has a broader customer base, active in utilities, healthcare, retail, construction and the emergency services.

There is some overlap is on the technology front, but we make no apologies for that: customers benefit from our using best-in-class components. Earlier this year, our processor supplier Intel, named Xplore as its Mobile Platform Partner of 2015.

SC: Both Xplore and Motion have adopted the indirect channel sales route. Will that continue?
ID: Yes. There should be no integration issues as far as channel partners are concerned.
Our partners have different strengths: some are hardware specialist, others are independent software vendors. What they have in common is a commitment to the customer. At this end of the market, buyers are interested ensuring tablets have the functionality for their workflows. It's why we work closely with IT departments and our channel partners: you are not just selling a piece of hardware but everything that goes with that. It will need customising for the workflow and configured for integration with back-office systems, for example.

Never underestimate the value of a great partner: our Motion Valued Partner eco system recognises the important role they play. Our partners need to be consistent and have integrity: they are our face to the customer and the first port of call for support. In return, we believe in long-term partners: we won't pull the run from under their feet and we won't change the rules down the line.

 

SC: Motion has stayed loyal to Microsoft Windows, even when the clamour for Google's Android OS was at its highest. Why was that?
ID: Continuity is important to us and our customers. We have been advocates of Windows because our enterprise customers prefer a back-office compatible OS and they want their mobile workers to be able to switch smoothly from the office and into the vehicle and field via their tablet PC, including for those advanced tasks that are proving a challenge on other mobile devices.

All Motion tablets currently ship with Windows 8 and are capable of supporting Windows 10. Windows 10 combines the best of Windows 7 and 8 and its arrival is good news for those companies who decided to skip Windows 8 and have been patiently waiting for the next incarnation.

 

However, there is now a big market for Android OS and it is on the technology roadmap for the Motion range.There is customer demand in some vertical industries with unique application and workflow needs, and we acknowledge that. Android OS gives them with greater flexibility and a wider access to more apps. Xplore's Ranger X tablet already ships with Android OS.

SC: Finally, will the trend for consumer tablets in field service impact on future sales for the group?
ID: I believe that field service companies recognise the value in enterprise-grade rugged tablets and understand Total-cost-of-ownership. There's little demand from enterprises or their workers for consumer devices. Companies understand the risks on mission-critical operations of breaking the tablet and losing data and the affect device reliability and that field workers who don't trust the device, won't use it as intended, will leave it in the vehicle, adding or retrieving data when they return, all of which has a direct affect on productivity.

One often overlooked aspect of the consumer v rugged debate is the critical role supporting peripherals accessories and additional modules play smoothing workflows.

Both Motion and Xplore understand that the ease of charging, mounting, carrying and storing tablets is key for user acceptance and that enterprises may need a variety of data capture and communications modules to maximise productivity - none of which is usually available on a consumer tablet.

 

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The field service industry never stands still: new technology, new market conditions, new entrants, new customer requirements…they all make it essential to keep a watching brief on the changing business and technology landscape...

To help field service professionals keep up to date with these ever shifting sands Advanced Field Service have produced their Service Manager Handbook, and Field Service News will be bringing you a selection of features from this excellent resource for Service Managers working in all verticals, for companies big and small, across the next few months.

You can also download the complete edition of The Service Manager Handbook by clicking here and completing the brief registration form.

It’s an interesting time to be in field service. We are on the cusp of exciting new technology becoming an integral part of the way business is conducted.

At the same time, field service companies still face pressures to achieve more, at less cost, on a day-to-day basis. Advanced Field Service believe that when we reflect on 2015/2016, we will see that it is a time of consolidation, in which managers concentrate on improving efficiency and productivity levels using their existing processes and optimising their existing technology, rather than rushing to adopt leading-edge solutions. In the second edition of the Service Manager Handbook from Advanced Field Service, is therefore focused on optimising your processes and making your systems work harder for your business.

 

It shows how gaining insight into every corner of your business equips you to identify and understand those areas that are under-performing and to uncover and model best practice within your organisation.

Having the power to access critical data across all areas of your service business, make informed instant decisions and manage your operation – from the time the customer logs a call to a satisfactory conclusion – will keep you at the front of a highly competitive field. In this the first part of this new series we take a look at the most important part of any service business… the customer. We’ve all heard the old adage that the customer is always right, but that only holds true if they are the right customer. 

Modelling your ideal customers

In an effort to maintain business viability – and keep your engineers working out in the field – it can be tempting to take on low-margin clients. If business is thin on the ground, this is understandable. However, to build a sustainable business, you need to focus your resources on the jobs, contracts and clients that have most potential for profit, rather than trying to be all things to all clients.

Furthermore, all the following whittle away at your profit margins, and you can probably think of other time and resource wasters:

• Scope creep, where the job is bigger than first appeared
• Doing favours for clients (“While you’re here, can you just look at this…”)
• Providing free credit to late payers who go beyond your payment terms
• Providing an ‘archiving’ service, whereby customers call you to find out when a service or repair was last done[unordered_list] 

It’s worth stepping back and analysing your client base to identify: Clients who are already profitable: 

• How can you quantify for them the work that you do, so that it is recognised and suitably remunerated?
• How can you keep these clients ‘locked in’ by delivering service beyond the agreed service level agreement (SLA) but without draining your resources and revenues?

Clients who could become more profitable:

• How could you better manage the time you spend on their projects?
• Can you identify where you are providing more than you agreed within the contract and budget?
• Do you have an evidence base that will support you in negotiating with clients to pay more or expect less?
• Can you let them self-serve on their documentation through a customer portal to reduce calls on administration matters?

Clients who are unlikely to ever become sustainably profitable: 

• How could you readdress the balance and bring these clients back within acceptable parameters?
• If the evidence shows these clients are always going to be an excessive drain on resources, do you need to make the difficult decision to agree to go your separate ways in order to free up your engineers’ valuable time for more profitable jobs?

 

By gaining a better understanding of every client’s worth to the business, you’ll be well placed to decide where to invest your resources for optimum return, both in retaining clients and pursuing new business.  

Want to know more? To download the full 40 page eBook edition of The Service Managers Handbook 2015 instantly click here and completing the brief registration form.

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Implementing mobile apps alongside developing a good understanding of your customers can pave the way to harnessing the power of IoT, writes consultant Nick Frank.

The key to monetising the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data is not to focus on the technology itself, but the impact on customers’ business processes and business model. However, many companies do not find it easy to imagine how their business model might change. Many are lost in the technical jargon and the abstract nature of data and analytics.

Mobile apps present a pragmatic way forward for industrial companies to understand how connectivity technologies and data can make a difference to their business. By their very nature, mobile apps affect how people “do stuff” and so the business rationale is often easier to define and quantify. As managers and leaders become savvier about apps, their imagination starts to kick in and they see the possibilities new technologies can have on their customers’ business success.

But what exactly is a mobile app? A mobile app is a software programme designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. They can be relatively simple such as the weather app on your phone, or they can be tremendously complex such as running a VMI business with its own databases, analytics, integrating a number of legacy systems. Gartner a leading technology research and advisory company, expects that by 2017 mobile apps will be downloaded more than 268 billion times and mobile apps users will provide personalised data streams to more than 100 apps and services every day. Mobile apps have already become truly integrated into most people’s lives. Although the same is not yet true of business, perceptions are rapidly changing. Undoubtedly driven by their everyday life experiences, managers are starting to imagine the value apps can bring to their own business by linking people with processes and systems more effectively.

Talk to leading providers of mobile apps and they will tell you it is not a case of building an app that replaces an existing process. Yes, the app is something new, but if it does not make that process more efficient, then it has minimal value. Often the mistake many companies make is that they see mobile apps as a separate marketing tool or feature. Companies who successfully implement mobile applications take a more strategic perspective and see the app as being embedded within the business processes. These companies first examine their existing workflows in detail to uncover improvement opportunities. Then, they identify the business benefits they expect to receive from the solution and create the metrics that demonstrate value after the rollout. And finally, these organisations pay attention to the deployment in terms of end-user acceptance, testing, implementation and change management.

 

One such app developer, Lextech, even coined ROA, or “Return on App,” as a tool for measuring the value of the mobile app versus the investment in it. To make sure app projects are worthwhile, Lextech helps their clients find apps that provide a 100% ROA within 12 months or less. It is this emphasis on understanding what the mobile app can do for the business that is critical to success. This success can be measured in terms of cost saving, new revenues, customer satisfaction or even employee satisfaction.

The great thing about mobile apps is that they provide solutions to make life easier for employees on the move. Whether that be to automate a process or have access to relevant data, these solutions use the internet/telecoms infrastructure to increase the flexibility and effectiveness of people while they are outside the normal company IT infrastructure. These efficiencies can be easily quantified within the operation and when multiplied across many people, can have a significant financial impact. This makes building the investment plan and decision making much easier to push through than more intangible IoT/strategy/business model projects.

 

Often companies start with automating the workflow because clear time savings can be demonstrated and measured. For example, SKF, the leading worldwide manufacturer and supplier of precision bearings, spindles and seals, knew that their factory inspectors recorded huge quantities of information on paper forms and clipboards. They replaced their paper based inspection processes with an intuitive app that enabled data to be collected and automatically downloaded into the factories reporting systems, thus reducing the reporting time by 70%. But often there are many other benefits that are not anticipated. In this case, nearly real-time inspection enabled faster decision-making on quality issues, which in the end translated to better margins. Highly skilled employees were able to focus on adding value rather than administration. (Source: Lextech)

For example an industrial services company with over 100,000 employees in 150 countries had field workers who often needed to order materials for their clients that could range from cleaning supplies to HVAC systems. When they reviewed their workflow, it was apparent that the process was complex and inconsistent as it involved a mix of email, PDF attachments and phone calls. They defined a very clear metric, which was to reduce the turnaround time for a PO. Their solution was to replace the existing legacy system by developing a dedicated app that enabled the field worker to directly enter the relevant details, submit the request, and the manager to be alerted to approve the PO. By dramatically speeding up the PO process, not only has customer frustration declined, but cash flow has improved through faster invoicing.

 

But if we step back from these examples, what do we see? Companies are learning how to effectively use data and technology to improve their internal business processes. This journey is more cultural than technological. It is about companies and people not getting overly excited by technology for technology’s sake, but keeping their focus on the users and the business outcomes. Switch this same emphasis to their customers’ business, and they will be much better positioned to monetize the new technologies entering our everyday work environment at an exponential rate.

This change in mind-set is very real, even for companies that have already integrated data and intelligence into their own business model. For example in a recent FSN interview, Dave Gordon from Rolls Royce’s Defence business described how, even in a very sophisticated data driven business, the design of a fuel management app had a deeper impact on the business than he first imagined. The app itself came from a desire to better utilise the vast quantities of information being generated from their service contracts, which told them how efficiently their aircraft were being flown. Fuel consumption is a huge part of the total operating costs for all their defence customers, so designing a mobile app which ‘brought to life’ this data could help their customers significantly reduce their fuel bills. By using mobile app technology, they were able to work outside the existing IT architecture, which allowed greater creativity without losing out on security. Finally, the practical nature of the app caught the imagination of the Board of Directors, who appreciated the opportunities that data analytics and connectivity could bring to their customers.

 

The mobile app is just the tip of the iceberg. The amount of information and know-how successful industrial companies possess cannot be underestimated. One reason industrial brands are so robust is because they have delivered value, knowledge and outcomes over many years. For many businesses, the growth of digital services around mobile apps and IoT is a strategic imperative. Especially in industries that have complex supply chains requiring large quantities of technical information, the opportunity to gain competitive advantage through a knowledge platform that supports the supply chain ecosystem is significant.

 

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Filippo Zingariello, Director of Global Strategic Development at SKF described how their SKF Insight programme is critical to delivering value to customers in mission critical applications. This programme has a specific goal, “Bearing Health Management will make it simpler and more convenient for customers to conduct condition monitoring and increase reliability, simplify maintenance, extend bearing life and cut total life cycle costs.” SKF has developed 45 different iPad apps that enable customers to access the data and intelligence of their assets. With over a half million machines connected to the SKF cloud, mobile apps are one of the enabling technologies for a new SKF business models based on outcomes and intelligence.

Through these examples, we have seen how mobile apps are initially used by businesses to connect their employees to their business systems so they can deliver value more effectively. As that insight into the customer’s business model grows, so mobile apps become an important enabler for customers to connect with its products and services. In this way mobile apps are not just an interesting little icon on a screen. Rather, they are an important enabler for mind-set changes that will enable companies to harness the power of the IoT and analytics technologies.

 

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The great and the good of the telematics industry arrived in Amsterdam for the TomTom Telematics' Developers Conference and left with a new vision of what telematics may look like in the not so distant future...

It’s a strange quirk of fate at the moment that almost every other event in the European field service calendar seems to be held in the wonderful city of Amsterdam. The Dutch capital has become something of a European hub for field service in recent years and another event to add to that list was this year’s TomTom Telematics’ Developers Conference.

However, given that the telematics giant have their headquarters in Amsterdam, perhaps the decision to host their annual conference in the City too, was more about taking advantage of being on home turf. The one-day conference was held at the De Hallen centre, a former tram depot. What better place then for members of the telematics industry to come together to discuss both the latest trends in technology and how they can help in overcoming the seemingly perennial challenges of reducing fuel costs, improving driver behaviour and of course getting field engineers to the right place, on time, everytime?

And whether it was a reflection of the sense of community in the area we found ourselves in or the ongoing effort of TomTom to bring those operating in various pockets of the telematics world together, there was a true sense of community across the day’s event.

It was fantastic to see developers, providers and end users from all across the continent and beyond – even as far as Malaysia and Morocco - all coming together to discuss best practices and new ideas across the break out sessions and in the networking zone throughout the day.

 

It would have been easy for TomTom to attempt to shoe-horn a number of sales pitches in throughout the day but instead the sessions were focused much more on problem solving, emerging technologies or case studies of how companies are using telematics to improve their workflow, including an excellent session with the Rotterdam Fire Service, which really brought home just how important a role technology can play for an organisation for whom getting to their next job on time really is a matter of life and death.

Platform-as-a-Service

Of those sessions that did focus on TomTom and their own offerings there was a very clear message that came through. TomTom Telematics is evolving, they are doing so rapidly and they are quite possibly going to change the way we view telematics forever as they do so.

A big statement? Perhaps but whilst the core technologies of vehicle tracking and routing of course remain a strong element of what TomTom Telematics offer, they can no longer be considered as simply a pure play telematics provider. Instead they have grown and developed, becoming very much a fully fledged Platform-as-a-Service provider within the telematics space in a move seemingly modeled on Salesforce’s approach to CRM.

It is a move that has been gaining momentum for a while: last year in an exclusive interview with Field Service News, Giles Margerison talked at length about the importance of their focus on establishing three separate APIs to make connectivity to the TomTom Telematics platform as simple as possible.

 

The TomTom app store

However, the momentum has now really kicked in with TomTom using the Developer Conference to officially launch their new app store. Even at launch this was full of various  apps provided by both the numerous developers attending and demonstrating their solutions at the conference, and the many, many more out in the wider TomTom ecosystem.

George De Boer, International Alliance Manager at TomTom Telematics commented: “We started out as a telematics company making sure fleet managers could manage their fleet but as soon as we introduced the connected navigation, together with telematics it soon became a solution that you could use for optimising your business processes.” “So we went from purely managing fuel and savings on the wear and tear on the vehicle to becoming an end-to-end manufacturer and supplier of a solution that could be used throughout the whole business process.”

Whilst TomTom have now placed themselves firmly at the heart of this telematics revolution, the responsibility for driving the technology forward seems to be very much shared between TomTom themselves, their developer partners and, most importantly, their customers.

 

The customer role

One such customer which has worked closely with TomTom in a relationship that sees both companies driving the use of telematics forward as they work alongside each other, is UK utilities company Scotia Gas Networks (SGN).

With a remit to maintain 74,000km of gas main pipe within the UK, and a fleet of over 2,000 vehicles, plus SLAs that include response times of just one hour, keeping track of the fleet is absolutely vital for SGN.

Having originally implemented the TomTom Telematics system for just point-to-point referencing - knowing where the vehicle is, and using the system for time sheet validation and so on - SGN soon realised that they could achieve much more with the WebFleet system.

“Straight away I knew what TomTom could do for us” recalls Chris Stone, SGN Head of Finance. “We’ve evolved now into a relationship where we are trying to do more and more. In fact we are pioneering a lot of what TomTom do and what they can do,” he adds

 

Indeed Stone, and SGN’s open approach to working closely with TomTom on their new developments is yielding far greater dividends than a more hands-off approach might. “I like to get two or three benefits out of a system I invest in.” states Stone “Yes we can put a tracking system in our vehicles and we can track them but what else can we get out of it? Well we can get driver behaviour, fuel efficiency, economy…. there are all these other bolt-ons”

However, whilst there are clear benefits for establishing such a close working relationship with your technology partners and adopting a leading edge appetite for utilising new technology, to continuously enhance your service standards and improve margins, it is not an approach all companies can take. After all, not every company has the influence of a utilities company with a fleet of  2,000.

However, the emergence of TomTom as a platform provider is big news for companies of all sizes.

Look out for Part 2 of our report, where we’ll hear more about TomTom’s new App Store. Is it set to revolutionise the way we build our telematics solutions in the not too distant future? What will be its role in the emergence of the connected vehicle?

 

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