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Whilst the trend towards Servitization is rapidly becoming increasingly important for manufacturers and one that will have a significant impact on how field services operate, it is often viewed as a complex subject.

However, one man who has been involved with the movement since its early beginnings is Dr Michael Provost. His excellent book “Everything Works Wonderfully: an Overview of Servitization and Physical Asset Management” (www.everythingworkswonderfully.com) is a distillation of his knowledge and experience in this area built up over nearly four decades, making it a much more accessible topic.

As an introduction, Mike opens his book with an excellent short story that neatly summarises the concept of Servitization. Field Service News is pleased to be able to share it with you here…

A Short Story

Anna Edwards* was a very happy woman. It was her last day as Managing Director of Precision Powerplants* and she was looking forward to a few months of rest and relaxation on the sunny Côte d’Azur with her husband Chris* while she pondered her next move. She knew that she was leaving the company in good shape for her successor (whoever that happened to be: there were several candidates from both inside and outside the organisation who were being put through the on-going ‘beauty contest’) and felt very satisfied with the progress that the organisation had made on her watch and the transformation that she had overseen.

How different from the situation a decade ago, when she had taken over from the previous incumbent (now long forgotten) who really hadn’t understood the business and was forced to retire early. Sales and profits were falling, the share price had flat-lined for several years while the rest of the market soared and the City was muttering that the company had lost its way. A scathing analyst report entitled Always Jam Tomorrow: Beware of Perpetual Promises had ruffled a few feathers and made the Finance Director really angry. Competitors were offering deals that even the company’s most loyal customers couldn’t refuse and the organisation’s reputation for well-engineered power units just wasn’t being reflected in profitable sales. Great products (as even the writer of ‘that’ analyst report had acknowledged) but a lousy business, competing on nothing but price… Anna had taken on the job knowing that she was placing her professional reputation on the line. What should she do? She was starting to get worried.

 

She decided to bring in Peter Carpenter*, an old friend from university whom Anna admired for his out-of-the-box thinking, no-nonsense tell-it-how-it-is approach and excellent people and communication skills. She sent Peter home to have a ‘big think’, telling him to stay away from HQ and the alpha gorillas all trying to outdo each other with short-term slash-and-burn fixes which Anna felt were the painful road to corporate oblivion. Peter’s brief was simple: produce a plan for getting out of the ‘commodity trap’ that the company had fallen into and do it quickly before the inevitable crisis came and the whole organisation would be brought to its knees.

Peter had been musing about how to save the company for a few weeks when Sara* burst in to his study as he was casually doodling on a notepad. “The boiler’s broken yet again, Peter!” she fumed. “I’ll have to cancel my day in town while I wait for the man to turn up to fix it. I bet he won’t even have the right parts in his van either! Why couldn’t the thing let me know that it was going to break, so I could arrange the repair at my convenience? Why can’t it tell the repair man what’s wrong? I don’t give a damn about boilers: all I want is hot water and a warm house! Looking after it is nothing but hassle!” She stormed out, clearly not at all pleased.

Just then, Peter had his ‘eureka moment’. Were customers thinking like this about power units? After all, they had businesses to run and their own customers to serve and didn’t want to worry at all about power sources. Were the units that they had bought just an irritating distraction to them, requiring time, effort and expertise to look after that they really didn’t have? What if Precision Powerplants used its expertise to look after the units it made (after all, the company had designed and built them, so no-one else should know them better) and charged for the power delivered, not the physical units? Would this idea get the company out of its death spiral?

Peter’s mind began racing as his thoughts kept flowing. Customers would probably be happier making regular payments for guaranteed power, which would smooth out ‘lumpy’ cash flows and could add up over time to more than anyone would pay for ‘bare’ units. The company could shut out the ‘cowboy’ sales and service providers who were beginning to eat into its aftermarket business. It could also build up expertise that could be used to make the next generation of power units currently under development more attractive to the market. The organisation might even be able to offer this service to the owners and operators of competing products (after all, the laws of physics were identical for everybody and there were plenty of staff that the company had ‘poached’ with experience of competitor offerings) and thus eat its competitors’ lunches as well. After a few sleepless nights, Peter had even come up with a name for his new initiative: Megawatts, when and where wanted, or MW4 for short. Perhaps Helen*, who had just graduated from that incredibly expensive art college in Venice, could help him design a logo…

 

Peter began to ask questions and research his idea in more detail and discovered that many of the capabilities needed were already in place: they just weren’t being brought together into a coherent whole. Peter found people in the organisation who had, despite some management objections and hostility from other co-workers, devised ways of mathematically modelling unit performance and creating actionable information from the data that could be gathered and transmitted from equipment in service: there were also experts in Spares and Repairs who knew how the units should be looked after. All this valuable and unique knowledge had been ignored by Engineering and Manufacturing who just wanted to design, make and sell units before pushing them out of the door ASAP. Something would have to be done to move the organisation from a product to a service mindset, Peter decided, if his idea was to succeed.
* Note: the company and characters are fictitious, but the scenarios are based on experience.

Look out for the second part of the story, coming soon!

Please note that this short story has been previously published in the following:-
Provost, M. (2014). Everything Works Wonderfully: an Overview of Servitization and Physical Asset Management - a Short Story. Asset Management and Maintenance Journal, Volume 27, Issue 5, September 2014, pp. 43-45. Mornington, Victoria, Australia: Engineering Information Transfer Pty Ltd.

 

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Businesses that ignore health and safety laws risk serious repercussions, warns  health and safety consultants Arinite.

In the UK compliance with Health and Safety laws are mandatory for every company and could result in huge fines, or even prison sentences, if ignored.

Despite this,  a common consensus is that health and safety checks are not a priority for many companies: they are expensive and offer no immediate profit. However, having appropriate systems to improve working conditions will make a company more trustworthy and respected in the industry and are a huge benefit in the long run.

The government doesn't take health and safety violations lightly, and you shouldn't either - 94% of all prosecutions resulted in convictions. Prosecution cases instituted by HSE and local authorities can result in fines, imprisonment and even immediate prohibition of the business.

When deciding on prosecution and penalties, the authorities take in the following into account:[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• The severity of offence
• The attitude and documentation of health safety management by the company
• What effect prosecution would have on the company financially
• If there is substantial evidence for a conviction
• If there will be a deterrent effect on other offenders[/unordered_list]

When fining companies after a prosecution, judges and the courts refer to sentencing and fine guidance, together with preceding similar cases (case law). Legal proceedings can be started by either the HSE or a local authority. Between 2009 to 2014, the average number of convictions by the HSE were 471 with the fines  being approximately £28,929. This   Infographic from Arinite reveals the  number of prosecutions in various sectors and the penalties incurred.

 

The services industry received the lowest number of convictions between 2009/14, but had  the second highest costs of fines, at £37,944 per claim. In the Utilities and Waste sector there were 22  convictions and an average fine of  £56,629. In Construction there were 166 convictions with fines averaging £18,602.

The services industry covered so many different forms of work there is a huge range of hazards that need to be considered – anything from dangerous electricity outlets to harmful substances, making the services industry safety one of the most critical areas to take care of.

Benefits of Health and Safety

Providing a safe environment for employees can be a challenge, especially when they are work involves being on other companies' premises and sites. Keeping up with standards and constant changes is not an activity to be taken lightly. A health and safely breach within the service industry could lead to serious harm or even a fatality.

Creating a good working environment doesn’t just benefit you in the long run, it can also work short term. Allowing staff to have more faith in the company boosts their happiness and productiveness, increasing profit. Having good health and safety also limits the number of sick days taken by employees.

 

Putting regulations in place has serious financial benefits; information from HSE shows that having the correct procedures in place results in average savings of £300 for minor injuries, £20,500 for serious injuries, and £200,000 for any permanent or life changing injuries.

How to avoid fines

It should be every company’s aim to reduce the health and safety risk as much as possible, though it is not possible to eliminate every hazard. Conducting a risk assessment is a great way to see what improvements your business needs: judging where the most life-threatening hazards are allows for extra precautions to be put in place.

Key methods to improve safety at work:

1. Always work to your risk assessment and report any accidents – keep detailed reports of any injuries (no matter how small) as this will allow you to minimise all potential risks.
2. Personal protective gear is essential - in the services industry, protective items should be provided by the employer as it helps limit the likelihood of injury.
3. Minimise any fire risk.
4. Electricity –if there is often a high chance of electrocution with the over use of power sockets and water hazards, aim to cut down on overcrowding sockets and reduce overheating.
5. Take time to be safe – it is important to be thorough with your inspections, to talk to your employees to find out if they have any health issues in the work environment.Place your list items here

Health and safety should be at the heart of your business and influence every decision about the work place that you make. Having a stable and reliable safety system is essential; the cost of putting these in place massively outweighs the uninsured expenses that occur in dealing with a work place incident.

 

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Servitization in some sectors and  for some companies is driven by market forces, not customer demand. In this exclusive interview with Field Service News, Des Evans, former Managing Director of MAN Truck and Bus UK and now Honorary  business professor at Aston University Business School, explains how the truck manufacturer transformed its business from a sales-led organisation to one focused on customer service. 

As we begin to hear more and more about servitization, often it is the same company names being held up as core examples of adopting this approach. What is interesting is that these companies often tend to be in very disparate industries, but what they all have in common is that they have been able to harness technology to allow themselves to become a disruptive influence within their sector.

For some companies - Rolls Royce, for example - the move to an advanced services model has been client driven.  For other companies such as truck manufacturer MAN Truck and Bus UK, however, the need to evolve has been very much market driven, as Des Evans explains.

“Over the past forty years truck volumes have almost halved, so you have to run a lot faster to stand still,” Evans begins “If you are not going to sell more vehicles, or gain more market share (which is expensive) then you have to divert your energies into service operations and into your installed customer base.”

“That was the real focus for us to develop the service business: talking to the installed base that was already in the market,” he continues.

In fact, via the Trucknology generation of trucks and buses,  MAN not only transformed their own company considerably, they also transformed the market for ever. Only now are some of their competitors beginning to catch up.

 

However, being a pioneer involves radical thinking and such thinking really needs to be driven from the top if it is to prove a success. For MAN, fortunately, it was an approach all of the senior executive team believed in.

“I think the organisation was a far more collegiate organisation than most and everything was very much a team effort,” Evans explains. “We had to focus on how we could not only sustain the business model but actually to maintain it. When faced with market volumes halving, whilst it is not exactly a burning bridge, we also knew we had to do something different. When we introduced the new truck model it was the trigger really to introduce the new business model as well.”

 

“The catalyst was the Trucknology generation which introduced electronic, digital vehicles as opposed to analogue, mechanical vehicles. It gave us the opportunity to present a completely new business case to the operator by including three years servicing as standard, not something you charge for. However, it required a completely different service organisation to deliver that and a completely different sales force.”

“The challenge was interesting. It did help us move our market share from 8% to 12%, albeit in a smaller market, but that was what we had to do. We had to increase volume, not necessarily by price cut but by some added-value service.”

Still, despite the new strategy being born out of necessity, it was still reliant on the technology, although the wider picture was also reliant on the culture within an organisation.

“The technology was the driver and the enabler,” points out Evans. “But the cultural environment that you created was the real reason whether it worked or it didn’t. You had to create the right culture. You weren’t able as an executive team to impose this: this was something where you had to first of all assess the state of readiness, within the organisation and then do a hell of a lot of communicating and explaining what it is you were doing and why you were doing it.

 

Yet despite the approach being both complex and ground breaking at the time, the premise at the heart of everything was in fact incredibly simple, it seems.  “The main message for the customer both internally and externally was we were going to improve the profitability of the customer,” Evans explains. “Because we saw first hand that not only was the truck market itself going down but also the profitability of the operators was going down too. Simply, we could no longer afford to sell to a customer base that couldn’t afford to buy our products or services.”

“It was a case of trying to make your customers more profitable, and by doing so you could secure our future business,” Evans concludes.

Whatever the business driver, what MAN Truck and Bus UK has achieved in recent years has been both impressive and intelligent. They have revolutionised their industry and put service back at the heart it.

 

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Tecalemit is a leading UK supplier of vehicle servicing equipment. It first began using Tesseract’s service management software in 1999 and has been pursuing increased automation, greater efficiency and better service ever since assisted by its growing and developing relationship with Tesseract.

Tecalemit Garage Equipment Company Ltd is one of the most recognised brands in the automotive industry, both in the UK and worldwide, and has been operating for nearly a century. The company and its partners design, manufacture, supply and maintain a huge range of vehicle servicing equipment and MOT testing equipment, such as roller brake testers, vehicle lifts and emissions testers.

In the UK, equipment is stocked in two main warehouses and sold to Tecalemit’s ever-expanding network of customers across the country. They range from small and independent vehicle garages and workshops to major national and international car and motorcycle companies.

Once the equipment is sold, Tecalemit have a team of  60 factory trained and accredited engineers in charge of maintaining the equipment, from planning maintenance and servicing to remedying faults and breakdowns.

The customer  service centre is based in Plymouth and handles 500 calls a day from more than 50,000 customer sites across the country. With such an extensive customer bases, it is important for  Tecalemit to have an efficient service management system in place.[quote float="left"]The customer service centre handles 500 calls a day from more than 50,000 customer sites across the country.

 

Tesseract: the early days

Back in 1999, the Millennium Bug was a popular fear for businesses relying on computers and software throughout the world and Tecalemit harboured growing concerns about their own Unix-based service management system. It was not particularly user-friendly or efficient and bore some functionality aches. The fear was that it was going to crash when the year 2000 hit. Therefore, Tecalemit opted to implement something new and browser-based, with much greater functionality and
flexibility.

Tesseract was shortlisted along with three other systems, and eventually selected on the basis of cost, user-friendliness and powerful functionality. Tecalemit incorporated Tesseract’s core system which managed the logging of calls, stored immediately accessible data, and gave Tecalemit the ability to generate countless reports, providing much greater visibility.

Moving into the 21st century

Development and evolution at Tesseract is constant and Tecalemit have benefited from evolving with them, regularly adding new software components. This development has been particular comprehensive in the last five years, with a move from paper-based systems to electronic ones.

For example, Tecalemit have replaced a paper-based diary system with Tesseract’s electronic diary. This gives them much greater visibility over what is going on with service activities, and receives regular upgrades. Another paper-based system that has been replaced with an electronic syustem is stock-taking, which is now faster and more accurate.

One of the most recent implementations is the Quote Centre, which enables and manages the generation of quotes and converts them easily into customer contracts.

Field service management overhaul

The biggest development, however, has been the overhaul of Tecalemit’s field service management system, thanks to the implementation of Tesseract’s Remote Engineer Access module (REA).

 

Tecalemit began using Remote Engineer Access (REA) in January 2014. Before this, Tecalemit's  allocation of jobs and deployment of  engineers to customer sites was a largely manual process. Tecalemit would receive a call, log it on the Tesseract system, and the office would fax, phone or post details of the job to the relevant engineer. Once a job was complete, the engineer would fill in a paper job sheet and post it to the office.  There was no visibility, no instant data, and processes such as parts ordering and invoicing took a lot longer.

“We wanted to streamline the system,” says David Monteith, the Service Office Supervisor for Tecalemit. “We wanted faster invoicing, faster ordering of parts, better visibility, and we wanted to be able to see jobs through to completion directly and with all the relevant information to hand. REA has totally delivered on all those counts.”

REA has allowed engineers to generate live reports, order parts, close down jobs and raise same-day invoices from their tablet devices. They can input their data into the Tesseract system – data which is then fed back to the office directly and instantaneously. In addition, REA has a useful offline function. This means engineers can input data even when they are working at sites with minimal or no communications signal: that data is sent through to Tecalemit as soon as the signal is restored.

Tecalemit has also started to use Tesseract's contract management system, which raises planned maintenance tasks for equipment that has been installed at customer sites. In total, the system raises approximately 500 planned maintenance tasks each month. These jobs are assigned to the engineers, who then use REA when carrying out and completing the job.

 

Next step: automatic job allocation

However, there is one undertaking that remains predominantly manual and is still part of this process, but it’s one that Tecalemit are looking to automate: deciding which engineer should attend to which job.  Currently the service controller decides who to assign, looking at skill set and geographical location, among other factors. The service controller then notifies the relevant engineer using the REA system. In all, this is a time consuming process with scope for human error.

Tecalemit are planning to incorporate Tesseract’s Diary Assist scheduling system to automate this task. It will assign engineers to particular jobs based on skill set, availability, travel time, work time and shift patterns, call response time and customer site cover times.[quote float="right"]We can see Diary Assist saving us a lot of time

 

“We can see it saving us a lot of time,” said David Monteith. “We plan to integrate it with our contract management system. That system will raise the calls, then Diary Assist will take over and allocate the call logically and geographically sensibly. Then we have REA to cover the job itself. It is just another step towards automating and streamlining what we do.”

The future is bright

Tecalemit have watched their processes develop, their efficiency rise and their service to customers improve since they welcomed Tesseract into the fold.

“We now have faster, more accurate information,” says Monteith. “We have cut down on admin, including paperwork and postage, and we can now respond to customers more efficiently. Our staff has better visibility as regards service history, what equipment they’ve got and what needs doing and,  with less admin requirements, can concentrate more on their overall role. We will continue to look at what Tesseract offers, too, because they are very good at driving change and there is always room for improvement.”

 

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In an exclusive interview with Field Service News, Alex Bill, Alstom Power explains to Kris Oldland how the servitization model works in the power generation industry.

For many the concept of servitization is both a new and challenging concept. Even the language around the movement can be confusing. Advanced Services, Outcome Based Solutions, Industrie 4.0 are all on the surface similar terms for the same thing.

At its bare bones it's a movement away from a one-off transaction based revenue stream to a more prolonged, long-tail service-focused revenue stream. Servitization is getting traction across the globe but for many it’s still in its infancy.

However, for a few companies it’s just the way they do business and has been for some time. One of those companies is across a number of their divisions including power generation and one man who has been right at the heart of this sector for some time is Alex Bill.

 

“For Alstom Power we have been doing these outcome-based services, or long-term service agreements since the early nineties and we’ve been very successful with these long-terms agreements, which we call operational service contracts. It’s something that we tie in with our upgrade packages,” Bill explains.

Of course the first challenge for a company trying to move towards such a solution is to answer what is often the customer's most important and usually most pressing question ‘What is in it for me?”

Continuous improvement

The way Alstom approach this equation is by continuously improving the service levels and outputs that they deliver to their client base.

“We do a lot of R&D and service R&D on improving the performance of our install- base products and then retrofitting that onto the install base” Bill explains.

Of course this R&D can feed not only the service division but also production of new solutions as well, Bill points out. “By doing this we are also making our new products better and then again tying that all together with long-term contracts which you could call outcome-based contracts.”

So from a customer perspective there could be a very compelling argument for moving to such a relationship. Rolls Royce, for example, is one of the other often-cited examples of a company pioneering an outcome-based solutions model, but it was driven by their customer American Airlines.

 

But what about from the service company's outlook?

“From my own personal perspective one of the key benefits is securing long-term business,” Bill asserts. “With an outcome-based contract you can secure business with a customer or a range of customers for ten to fifteen years.”

Such long-term financial security is of course the answer at the heart of the servitization argument. The aim is to move away from the one-hit transaction and by doing so both spreading and increasing profits over a longer period but, as Bill reveals, the beauty of such an approach is that it can become practically self-perpetuating.

“In exchange for that long-term security you have, of course, to guarantee certain outcomes but it’s thanks to that long-term security that you can invest in your service R&D. Suddenly you’ve got a business case to make which is in fact quite a profound one. By investing in those upgrades and bringing them to market essentially it becomes self-fulfilling,” Bill explains.

With his relaxed and conversational manner, the way Bill explains it makes it seem like child’s play. Of course the opposite is true. Establishing such a close relationship with your clients is key if you are going to be able to make such an approach work.

“If you look from contract to contract, you really have to be pretty good with customer intimacy and build the relationship with the customer at quite a few levels,” adds Bill.

 

“That relationship is a key differentiator for us. It begins when we sell the new product and from there we are with the customer from day one. We then need to build on it and improve it through the services we deliver.”

Having worked both on the manufacturing and services side of the fence Bill is also well placed to see the difference between the two sides of the customer relationship.

“The interesting part from coming from the manufacturing side of the business is the customer you don’t really see until you are coming to the end of the process,” Bill explains when asked about the difference in approaching both the new-build and then the long-term service contracts.

“In service the customer is there at the beginning, the middle, and the end. The variability between customers is also more apparent: in their processes, for example, and understanding their individual needs and so forth. It really does take a different mindset as that variability and the needs of customers can be quite different. That’s always an exciting challenge,” he concludes.

 

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Does your field service business need a customer portal? Yes, says Jenna Puckett, associate technology analyst at TechnologyAdvice.

Great field service management is the backbone of many businesses but in an increasingly connected and impatient world, it’s becoming harder to delight customers.

Consumers expect visibility and control when they interact with businesses, particularly when field service is involved. After all, in an age when customers can track the status of their pizza delivery from their smartphone, they expect to know when a technician will arrive at their home and how long they’ll be there.

Service companies must keep up with tech-savvy consumers in order to meet their ever changing demands. To keep pace with customer expectations, more and more businesses are adopting modern field service management software solutions.

 

Since FSM software varies greatly from vendor to vendor, it’s difficult to pinpoint which functionality can help your business the most. To many businesses, a customer portal may seem extraneous. But companies can experience myriad benefits by putting everything at the customer’s fingertips.

Let's examine why this FSM software feature is not just an extra but a necessity.[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Increase customer satisfaction
   Successful field service management operations play a critical role in customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customer portals can help increase customer satisfaction.
2. Add convenience
   A self-service portal allows customers to manage their account with your company. By logging into your website, consumers can perform a variety of tasks, such as:[unordered_list style="bullet"]
   • Request service and schedule appointments 24/7
   • Track repairs, as well as appointment details and status
   • Send messages directly to a technician
   • Review their service history
   • Find maintenance tips
   • Learn about product upgrades
   • View account info and manage payments
   • Get support for sales and product questionsPlace your list items here

   As traditional business hours become increasingly inopportune for communications, a self-service portal provides added convenience for customers. In fact, a CSG International study revealed that 86 percent of consumers would pay a premium off up to $25 for enhanced scheduling options, including the ability to choose a specific technician arrival time. By allowing customers to choose a time that fits their preferences you can distinguish your service from competitors.

3. Provide transparency
   Many customers have trouble staying apprised of FSM job details such as technician whereabouts. Providing consumers with a three to four hour arrival time window is becoming less and less acceptable.[quote float="right"]A portal that allows customers to see their technician can build trust.

    

   The same CSG study found that an overwhelming 89 percent of respondents prefer a tool that provides technician location and continually updated estimated arrival times. Over 70 percent also wanted the ability to see the technician's name and photo. A portal that allows customers to see their technician can build trust and provide transparency into your operations. And if technicians are running late, a courtesy call, email, or mobile alert shows your customers that you value their time.
4. Reduce confusion
   TechnologyAdvice’s recent field service customer satisfaction survey revealed 23 percent of respondents that had to pay for a visit were not told the amount during the visit. This can lead to confusion and frustration among consumers, who may feel inadequately informed or purposefully kept in the dark.To eliminate this confusion, businesses should focus on providing customers with any costs upfront through an online portal, or at least giving technicians access to back-office systems and customer account information. This avoids any surprise over the final amount due.
5. Improve resource allocation
   In addition to increasing customer satisfaction, a self-service portal can also help improve your business’s resource allocation. When a consumer request service or schedules an appointment, they fill out all the details online, which outlines the necessary skills and equipment for the job. These details can be used to determine the best technician for an onsite visit. Additionally, when customers choose their own appointment time, this information can be used to automatically schedule the rest of the technician’s route.
6. Reduce costs
   Best in class organizations are more likely than their peers to provide customers with the ability to accomplish the following via self-service portals:[unordered_list style="bullet"]
   • Create service tickets
   • Order service parts
   • Reschedule technician visit
   • Leave post-session feedback

   Not only do these self-service options increase customer engagement and loyalty, but they reduce administrative and overhead costs as well. When customers can manage their own account, your customer service department benefits from further reductions in routine tasks. Additionally, contact center inquiries regarding technician arrival time is decreased since
   customers are able to track the job each step of the way.

7. Boost revenue
   Customer portals aren’t just for customers. By providing online access to account information, field service business can communicate with customers in new ways. A self-service portal also opens the door for marketing strategies that can increase the bottom line. For example, in addition to bill pay and service help, FSM companies can use a customer portal to automatically alert consumers. These notifications are an opportunity to upsell through product upgrades and cross-selling.
8. Manage expectations
   

   Above all else, a customer portal is a way to set up customer expectations.

    

   The proliferation of the Internet means consumers expect a modern service experience. Simply sending an email is no longer enough. Customers want to login to their account, troubleshoot their own issues, view their warranty, review past services, and read about similar issues in a community forum. Supporting this journey leaves your customers feeling empowered. If they still require help, they can request, schedule, and track the entire process from the same place.Self-service portals benefit both customers and your business. FSM businesses should focus on customer communication preferences and providing visibility into relevant job information, including cost, procedures, and technician status. It’s getting increasingly difficult to meet customer expectations and outperform the competition. By helping customers help themselves, a self-service portal can be your secret weapon.[/ordered_list]

 

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Field service organisations must adapt in a rapidly changing world, says Tom Bowe, Industry Director, Enterprise Service Management, IFS.

Agility and adaptability were the overarching themes at the recent IFS customer conference in Boston.  More than 250 service-focused attendees came to hear user case studies about implementing and using IFS’s service software, watch industry experts apply new trends to real life, and to learn about what IFS is doing to take their service solutions to the next level.

Why? Because the world is changing, rapidly. According to Erik Qualman of Socialnomics fame, 40% of the Fortune 500 will be gone within 10 years. As PJ Jakovljevic of Technology Evaluation tweeted; “You have to be prepared to destroy your own business model before a kid in a dorm room does it for you.”
[quote float="left"]Monolithic legacy systems can no longer keep up with the changing market and customer demand.

So how do you future-proof yourself as a service organisation as the world changes, new technology evolves, and customer demands shift and increase? Addressing customer service vigilantly is vital to a service organisation’s success. Let your consumers drive the trends you adopt to ensure better return on investment. Flexibility and usability matter, especially in a consistently changing environment. Monolithic legacy systems can no longer keep up with the changing market and customer demand. Those organisations that don’t adapt will be replaced.

 

We have developed a sort of nine step program to help service organisations achieve service excellence and help them adapt to an ever-changing environment. Here are some of the things you should keep in mind when you are looking to make your service organisation more adaptable, and more successful:[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Know your business
   This may seem a bit obvious, and redundant, but in order to help your organisation streamline processes, maximise service margins, and increase customer satisfaction, you need to have a full understanding of your company’s goals, their future plans, their mission, and the vision. This will allow you to focus your efforts, systems, and processes on the right objectives
2. Excellence through insight
   The power of BI is never-ending. Use your collected data to drive more informed decisions, hone processes and affect change throughout your organisation. This should never be a static, one way function, BI should directly affect your future operations.
3. Accelerate service achievement
   A holistic view of not only your service organisation but your service value chain will accelerate service achievement. Bringing suppliers and other parties you collaborate with into the value chain adds value to them, you and ultimately your customers.
4. “Uberise” your service
   From the minute you order a car on Uber to when you arrive at your destination, Uber provides transparency from identifying the driver and license plate, to showing you on your route, to providing easy, secure payment options. Service businesses can use optimised, automated field service solutions (like IFS Field Service Management) to offer trust, security and reliability to their customers in a similar manner.
5. Delivery that delights you and your customers
   In the past, delivering superior customer service often meant accepting a reduced service margin. Now with powerful technology like M2M sensors, mobility solutions and automated processes, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Let your customers drive your initiatives and reap the benefit at the same time. Better organised internal processes often automatically improve external delivery.
6. Open up to new things
   New trends and technology in the service space can often be overwhelming, but don’t be closed off to what’s new and great in your space. Actively watch the market and evaluate which trends will affect your industry and your business the most. Sometimes this is customer driven. If a new trend can help meet a consumer demand, it is probably more than worthwhile to pursue.
7. Optimise your world
   Today, more people own a mobile device than a toothbrush (Socialnomics, 2014) and over one-third (36%) of consumers prefer using a company website or email to contact a business (2014 American Express Customer Service Barometer). Gone are the days when an excel spreadsheet, white board, or patched together legacy systems can handle customer demands and a mobile workforce effectively. Optimisation and automation allows for a seamless process from call intake to billing, reducing overhead costs, deviations, and errors.
8. Manage your future
   The future doesn’t have to be as unpredictable as it seems. Market research, watching trends, and utilising your business intelligence (and managing your big data effectively) will help give you a crystal ball into what’s coming and allow you to adapt faster, giving you a competitive edge.
9. Agile, ready for change
   If the past decade has shown the business world anything, it is that the most successful organisations are those that are two steps ahead of the game. The best way to future-proof yourself is to function as an agile, flexible operation. With the right systems and vision in place, the changing world will have nothing on you.

IFS Enterprise Service Management is continually investing in our solutions to support our goal of providing service organisations with dynamic scalability, mobile solutions, ease of deployment, and cloud and wearables flexibility.
We are future-proofing ourselves by helping you succeed at what you do best; delivering unrivaled service.

 

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Solarvista’s Paul Adams explains why pre-project preparation is perhaps the most important stage of any software implementation...

OK so you’ve made the case to your board that your field service operation will be more efficient and cost effective if you can move to a new software system. Finally you get the green light to go ahead select and your software and then before you know it your facing managing a huge change to the way your business operates.

Getting the implementation of this software right or wrong could be the difference between your company flourishing or floundering and if it was you that put the case together for this software, then the same may likely apply to your career as well!

So what are the biggest risks and most common pitfalls companies face with enterprise software implementation?

Well perhaps one of the biggest risks around the implementation of field service management software, or indeed any enterprise grade software, is simply understanding and managing expectations. What expectations do you have of your software supplier: i.e. are they just to supply the software or is there an element of change management to be undertaken by them as well?

Software providers can give as little or as much assistance and guidance as you need, but remember we have to know exactly what it is you need before we can agree to do it!

 

It’s absolutely key to discuss with your software provider exactly what your expectations are and through open and honest dialogue you and your provider will be able to agree clear goals and also make sure all expectations are both realistic and easily measured.

Often it is the work that goes on in the pre-project phase that will define how successful an implementation is. It may be natural for some companies, especially larger organisations, to be assessing their processes on a semi-ongoing basis.

However, for many, especially those companies that are going through a rapid period of growth or expansion, this may not be the case. Often the strategic, forward looking stuff can be tricky simply because the number one focus of satisfying customers dominates absolutely everything.

Understand your processes

However it is crucial that before even getting a software vendor involved you make the time to identify exactly what your current ‘as-is’ processes are. What do you and your team do at the ground level day in and day out?

Here it’s all about understanding those nuances and where efficiencies can be made. Understanding where bureaucratic processes have evolved into some monstrous beast and inefficient processes are not questioned simply because they’ve just always been done like that.

Really having a good understanding of your day-to-day business processes is something that any company can do and having this insight is one thing that will massively help further down the line.

When it comes to the actual implementation very rarely is software implementation project just a software implementation project.

Software is generally implemented to automate manual process, and by automating manual process you’re effectively doing someone’s job for them. Therefore it’s natural if you get a lot of fear at user level during such a project. If your team don’t know what is going on this can be even further exaggerated. There may be whispers around the office of forthcoming job cuts as systems become automated when more often than not the investment in software is a clear indication of the company’s future growth and prosperity.

 

So there is a massive element of change management to be considered as part of the wider project plan. Again setting expectations is key.

It’s vital you outline the reasoning for bringing in the new software, what that means in terms of changing processes and then what that in turn means for the individual end-users - how will the change will benefit them?

And whilst the responsibility for managing this process of course ultimately lies with your company, a software provider can certainly offer guidance and expertise in not just implementing software but also in implementing projects. We can help guide you through the transition and help you manage expectations of both the executive board and the user base.

At Solarvista we often play a big part in the project management as when implementing software we typically go through the business process analysis stages with our customers. We work alongside our customers to understand their processes so we can outline where automation can improve the workflow. In that sense a software provider becomes absolutely integral to the whole change management process, and again a clear understanding of where you are currently and where you see yourselves post implementation will make the whole project run much more efficiently

Ultimately the key factor is knowing your scope, knowing what you want and understanding your expectations. It’s an often-heard phrase in project management that people don’t know they want it until they’ve not got it.

Unless at the start of the process you know exactly what you want, your expectations may well be different from reality. This could then have a serious impact on the success of the project as it could potentially cause delays and additional costs.

Understanding the scope of the project at the outset and really getting to the nitty-gritty of that understanding is therefore key.

 

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Field Service News podcast. This month Field Service News Editor Kris Oldland and Paul Sparkes of Advanced Field Service discuss the findings of the latest Field Service News research which assessed the mobility tools being used by field service companies today.

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