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According to a Juniper Research report published in the latter half of 2014 in-vehicle apps are anticipated to reach almost 270 million within the next four five years. This increase, more than five fold on last year’s figures – is a clear indication that the hotly anticipated arrival of connected vehicles is here.

With smartphone major players Apple and Android both launched their vehicle specific version of their OS in the first quarter of last year, (CarPlay and AndroidAuto respectively) the report predicts uptake will be fairly rapid with report author commentating 

 

However, whilst in the consumer realm the usual suspects were sharing the headlines in the world of enterprise telematics there was one company that were storming ahead of the pack when it cames to integrating their technology into commercial vehicles. That company was Telogis.

Across the summer of last year Telogis were busy confirming and announcing a raft of key strategic partnerships including Hino Trucks, Volvo and Ford.

The Hino partnership resulted the HINO INSIGHT 2.0 which was developed as part of Hino’s ongoing strategy of building an offering that gives their customers a much improved total cost of ownership (TCO), including better vehicle uptime and user experiences and will be a standard fit on 2015MY Hino 195h and 195h-DC hybrid models, and as an option on the 195 and 195-DC models and the full conventional truck product line-up.

Indeed Telogis seemed to be on a mission to establish themselves as a part of the furniture in the road haulage industry, with the US based organisation now also bringing built-in compliance, telematics and navigation services to Volvo Trucks customers in North America.

Volvo customers are able to access Telogis’ services via smartphones and tablets, leveraging Volvo’s integrated connected vehicle hardware, standard on new Volvo-powered Volvo trucks.

In commercial trucking’s evolving legislative and regulatory landscape, Telogis’ offerings for Volvo Trucks help drivers and back office teams manage FMCSA compliance and keep drivers safer by delivering electronic log tools and routing information that is specifically designed commercial drivers.

“We’re pleased to collaborate with Telogis to deliver tremendous value to motor carriers seeking flexibility and the robust information needed to fine-tune their operations,” said Göran Nyberg, president, Volvo Trucks North American Sales & Marketing.

“Leveraging the connectivity of our vehicles to facilitate fleet management services represents a breakthrough for fleet managers, who are no longer captive to hardware. As part of our long-term strategic focus, we’ll look toward further integration of our vehicles with best-in-class fleet management solutions.”

 

And it is not just in the HGV arena that Telogis have been working, their agreement with Ford is related to their transit vans – the vehicle of choice for many a mobile worker.

Telogis are the exclusive technology provider behind Ford Crew Chief, the light-duty commercial telematics solution that comes factory-fit in Ford’s lineup of 2015 Transit vans as well as its complete line of commercial light-duty trucks.

As the agreement was announced Bill Frykman, manager, business and product development at Ford Motor Company commented

“Ford Crew Chief, another example of Transit’s smart features, complements the Transit line by helping customers save money through fuel management, and more effective route and work planning; keep their drivers safer by understanding and coaching driver behavior; and improving overall operations by getting a big-picture view of maintenance, location and productivity.” 

With many other manufacturers also implementing similar agreements to incorporate the latest technology into their vehicles in 2015 (Audi are including Android Auto whilst Mercedes and Volvo are committed to working with both Android Auto and CarPlay) it seems that the connected car is definitely on its way.

What may take a little longer but is continuing to develop along a steady path, is the driverless vehicle.

 

With Google having already demonstrated their prototype of a self-driving car which the technology giants described as ‘a vehicle without a steering wheel, gas or brake pedal - because they don’t need them’ the futuristic concept of robot cars is on it’s way.

While the current prototype can only go as fast as 25 mph, the promise for the future of fleet management could include better route and fuel efficiency, safer driving, and giving field service engineers the ability to answer email and work while on the road.

For urban fleets, the vehicle could even drop the field tech off at the service location, go find parking for itself and then be summoned to pick the tech up once the call is finished.

And to further speed up the development the University of Michigan is teaming up with top carmakers and tech companies to create the first closed test track in the United States for connected vehicle technology.

Dubbed "M City," the 32-acre testing facility is being built in Ann Arbor, Mich. to "test vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications in safe, realistic scenarios”

That's the first step in an ambitious plan by the university to "blanket all of Ann Arbor with a V2v and V2I network, including autonomous control,"

Whilst connecting the college town with enough infrastructure to allow self-driving cars to dominate the streets and roadways will take several years. The university and its partners are aiming to complete the transformation by 2021.

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Marne Martin, CEO of award winning software provider ServicePower takes a look at what the Field Service should look like in the not so distant future...

Today, field service organisations face increasing competition, changing customer dynamics, reduced margins and are increasingly challenged to achieve corporate metrics. Each must look toward technology that will improve its competitive edge and increase productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. Intelligent, integrated scheduling, mobile and business intelligence technologies must be deployed to:

• Intelligently schedule the best labour resource, whether that’s an employee in a company truck or a 3rd party contractor, to meet customer requirements
• Optimise employee schedules to achieve the greatest levels of productivity, efficiency and SLA compliance
• Fully mobilise onsite processes, ensuring the job is completed, to the customer’s satisfaction, in a single truck roll, driving down schedule costs and repeat trips
• Continuously analyse and fine tune the overall operation through real time, data driven decision making

All in a fully mobile way. Consumers, used to instant access to the web, expect field services to be provided now. They expect technicians to be provisioned with the necessary tools and technology to show up on time, access the parts and other resources needed.

Intelligent Scheduling

Only software solutions provide field service organization with the technology required to schedule field based resources to meet not only customer commitments but do so in such a way as to reduce its overcall costs through optimisation and intelligent deployment of both employed and third party labour.

Demand fluctuation caused by seasonality,for instance, creates unnecessary cost and dissatisfied customers if response time are extended. Additionally, parts, extra labor or helpers, and jobs which require compliance to strict SLAs can’t be efficiently scheduled without an intelligent scheduling application.

This is where intelligent software solutions are invaluable as they consider data and existing schedules to make the best scheduling decisions for the company.

Optimisation

Real time, or intra-day, optimisation is crucial to the achievement of the highest productivity and efficiency.

Manual scheduling, which relies on human capability and emotion, entails a user building and managing a schedule. It is labour intensive and rarely considers travel and cannot be automated to adapt to change or exception management. Manual scheduling just can’t scale for future growth.

 

Rules based scheduling automatically builds a schedule based on simple computer logic, filling an open schedule slot. However it does not continuously move previously scheduled jobs to ensure the least costly total schedule looking also at technician skills, parts availability or travel. Intelligent Scheduling, based on artificial intelligence, delivers true optimisation. In this scenario, schedules are created and continuously and automatically changed to achieve cost, margin, cycle time and customer satisfaction metrics. Priorities can also be dynamically adjusted to changing business needs or KPI goals using also real time mobile status reporting, GPS and other parts and job information.

Only solutions that offer true optimised scheduling including intelligent routing provide field service organisations with the technology to achieve its goals while improving satisfaction, building brand loyalty and positive social networks.

Real time, Data Driving Decision Making

Field service does not exist in a box where the environment never changes. Each operation must continuously collect data, from all parts of its service ecosystem, analyse that data, and use the data to fine tune operations. Field service is a continuously evolving entity that must adapt in order to compete and exceed customer expectations.

The Future is here. Right now. New technological innovations, such as connected machines, are driving further innovation within the within the field service industry.

For instance, sensor information (M2M data) from connected devices, like security systems, building systems and vending achines, can be used to initiate repairs based on a detected failure.

 

However, that same M2M data, as well as other information, such as manufacturing data, can be used to model and predict  equipment failure, enabling the field service organisation to predict the failure of an elevator or power generator, and send a technician to maintain it, before it breaks, minimising customer down time. New technologies are enabling an evolution from the

traditional break/fix repair model, to a proactive, preventative maintenance model, which reduces costs for the field service organisation through higher first time fix rates, and improves customer satisfaction and loyalty due to decreased down time.

ServicePower, named Visionary in the Gartner 2014 Magic Quadrant for Field Service and recipient of the 2014 M2M Evolution IoT Excellence Award provide connected mobile field services solutions that bring together all aspects of the field service value chain, including the customer and the dispatch center, technician, claims and warranty processes, parts, the contracted workforce, assets, mobility, business intelligence, and social collaboration.

Through continuous innovative, like M2M Connected Service, industry acknowledged optimisation technology and cutting edge mobility, our software accelerates business efficiency gains and customer satisfaction while reducing costs, on one underlying and consistent platform. We offer field service experts that have managed businesses and field teams understanding customer’s needs and pain points.

Don’t let your field service organisation be stuck in yesterday. Implement technology to meet your cost, margin, cycle time and customer satisfaction metrics today, and future proof your operation through deployment of the latest, continuously improved field service management technologies.

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Upgrading a service management system can be a challenge, but unifying and upgrading multiple systems across a continent? Here’s how Pitney Bowes approached the task…

Service management software has evolved and the benefits of moving to a modern next generation system are well documented. But what are the considerations that need to be factored in when changing systems? And what about companies that have evolved multiple systems across various regions?

One company who recently went through this process was Global Franking Machine giant Pitney Bowes as they sought to both standardise and upgrade their systems across the whole of Europe.

"We started with different service systems across Europe that had become built up across the years which that didn’t talk to each other” Andy Beer, Director of Service & Postal Market Development explained at a recent Service Community event.

Of course this is an issue for any organisation that operates across multiple divisions, with differing centres of operations. And whilst it may not be impossible, it certainly makes it harder to identify company wide trends, swiftly enough to act on them with any great effect.

“We had six or seven different systems that we had built up across Europe and in fact in the Nordics we were still using a paper based model similar to when I started with Pitney Bowes in the 80’s” continued Beer before describing the Nordic system “whereby our engineers would come into the office in the morning, go to a big rolodex and pull out their cards for the day, come back and write it all up.”

With such disparity it was clear for Pitney Bowes the direction they needed to take.

“Our number one goal was to give us one platform across Europe so we could then report on our key performance metrics, whatever that may be and do it on an international level.” Beer explained

“We looked at our existing systems and to upgrade us from the platform we were on and to add in other companies we needed, would have required and investment in a little over a million dollars, so it wasn’t a decision that we were going to take lightly.  We weren’t going to just say give us the upgrade, give us version 2. We wanted something more for that.”

Quite rightly so as at level of cost whilst the right solution could lead to significant added insight into the operation of the company and ultimately large potential savings, get it wrong and it would be a costly mistake. As it turned out even this level of investment would have failed to deliver the requirements that Pitney Bowes had identified as key to their needs.

As Beer explained further “even with that investment we still wouldn’t have a web front end, which we were looking for, and we would still be beholden on either the suppliers of that system or our own internal IT department to help us write reports.”

“We felt we were looking in our rear view mirror an awful lot and it wasn’t just what was immediately behind us that we were looking for, it was sometimes looking months behind us before we could actually start to get reasonable reporting, so we definitely needed to change”

With field service experts from all quarters exalting the importance of data this was another area that Pitney Bowes were acutely aware that their current system wasn’t empowering them as much as it should be.

“Data is important but when you have tons of it and you can’t sift through it, when you can’t find an easy way to get meaning from the data, then you’re just hamstrung by it.” Beer outlined before adding further

“When I say about looking in the rear view mirror, visibility of particular production or productivity metrics were very low and it was then very difficult to manage either individual engineers, based on their metrics, or build that up into a team of engineers, or into a country, let alone build that up across a European view.”

“The pain we went through to change reports, even just to tweak things slightly” Beer recalls before pausing a moment with a wry smile.  “ When your running the operation, you want to be able to see everything at a whim, you don’t want to have to be beholden to an IT group or a vendor to be able to give you something you think you might need. “

This is perhaps the fundamental difference between, the last generation of service management software and current systems. In this data driven age non-technical people are used to accessing highly customised reports with ease, and often depend on this ability to do their job.

As Beer points out “The thing is, as operational people we think we need to see an awful lot of stuff but then may stop and look at it and think ‘Do I really need that after all?’ but we need to see it first to make that call.”

Other considerations that were key for Pitney Bowes were that their new solution had to be able to integrate with Salesforce, as this was their chosen CRM and also that it to be Cloud based.

Outlining their thought process Beer added “Our existing systems wasn’t cloud based and we absolutely knew that our prime need was to move to the cloud, we didn’t want to have the hassle of owning the system, we wanted instant upgrades where available and instant fixes where available. “

“Essentially we wanted to future proof our investment.”

With the plethora of service management solutions on the market selecting finding a solution to meet their needs was always going to be possible, although dependent on a robust evaluation process. However, selecting a solution to meet these needs was one thing, implementing a solution across such a complex mix of territories another.

The approach required needed to involve all of the key stakeholders.

“We knew we were beholden to IT in our previous systems, we didn’t want to be in that position now but we also knew that they couldn’t not be involved.” Beer explains

“So we had two phases of the project, the first one was business and operations led. We picked a team of people from across Europe that came together and then spent five or six months getting really deep into what we had and what we thought we needed moving forward, and putting together a plan to get to from one to the other. Once we had that we engaged with IT”

“We wanted to the establish how we could integrate what we had into other systems, interfacing with the vendor and outlining what we saw as our business and operational requirements and then asked how readily available those were.

“We took this approach knowing that the more you fiddle around the edges of what your vendor can offer you the harder it comes to manage going forward”

Beer further expands on the practical and pragmatic approach by adding

“Nirvana is to take something off the shelf in PC World, type your code in and bang the following morning you’ve got a system, real life is not quite as beautiful as that, we know that, but the more you can avoid trying to tweak the edges of a vendors system and what it does to try and make it fit with your processes the better.”

It is through taking such a measured approach of understanding not only needs and goals but also limitations, and building the flexibility to overcome any limitations through adapting processes, that Pitney Bowes have been achieve the massive challenge of unifying disparate systems across a continent, and it is an approach worth considering for any company considering upgrading their existing system.

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Establishing a knowledge base is a strategy that can yield numerous benefits for a field service organisation and once the initial pain of setting it up is accomplished it can become self-perpetuating. One company that have adopted this approach is medical device manufacturers Elekta...

The devices Elekta manufacture deliver radio therapy treatment for cancer care and are one of the leaders in the niche field of image guided radiotherapy. Devices such as a linear accelerator that delivers extremely accurate radiation used in sterotactic treatment for tumours are a core part of their product line. These devices capable of delivering are very high precision, sub millimetre accuracy radiation.

As you can imagine these are highly complicated devices with many modalities  and while they have many computer systems and software applications controlling the treatment planning systems and oncology information system, there are obviously a lot of electronics mechanics and pneumatics within the device as well as a vacuum system and of course a way of generating radioactivity in a very controlled way.

 

So Elekta’s field engineers tend to be extremely smart folks. Many of them are actually physicists, or bio-science graduates with PHDs and it takes a long time to train an engineer, from a relatively high level of knowledge in the first place, through to becoming competent engineers who can resolve all of the problems that might occur on such a sophisticated type of devices.

 

This of course means that training engineers can be a long and challenging process. This is becoming a particular challenge in the developing markets of Asia Pacific and Latin America, where unfortunately due to the prevalence of Cancer there is an on-going struggle to keep up with developing enough engineers in order to be able to support the growth of product sales.

Especially in rapidly growing markets like China and Brazil.

Of course for a company in such a situation the efficient training support of the engineers, becomes extremely important.

“An important challenge for Elekta has been around the tackling the questions ‘how do we share knowledge around the whole service organisation?’” revealed Elekta Senior Vice President of Service, Martin Gilday during a recent presentation at a meeting hosted by UK non-profit group the Service Community.

It was clear that this issue had to be addressed and having recently implemented a new service management application, Gilday and the team at Elekta took the opportunity to establish an automated knowledge management solution.

“Prior to deploying that system we did have a number of ways of sharing knowledge which the engineers basically developed themselves but it wasn’t truly shared. It may have been shared amongst smaller groups of engineers but it certainly wasn’t a solution that worked on a global basis.” Gilday admitted.

With the complex nature of some of the problems Elekta’s engineers face there is of course a huge amount of value in being able to share some of that analytical and corrective maintenance activity across the organisation. Fortunately for them, this was acknowledge amongst their engineers also and they were a big part in Elekta’s drive to share knowledge across the group on a more efficient and systematic level.

 

As Gilday explained “There was a real clear message from the field that the engineers wanted the opportunity to share information with their peers and to learn from other parts of the organisation, helping each other develop.”

 

This pull from the field engineers was a real plus for putting an effective means of sharing knowledge across what was not only a global workforce but also one with differing knowledge requirements.

Elekta’s service organisation’s maturity growth is closely aligned to that of the healthcare sector as a whole. The most mature area of the world being the United States, where devices tend to be top end machines, with maturity essentially declining somewhat as you go east.

In countries such as China, Malaysia, and India while they have a big need, the devices most commonly installed tend to at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of sophistication. This is partly because healthcare clients in these areas are often developing the skills for their own clinical teams.

So the aim for Elekta was to share the knowledge they could extract from those who were really experienced in seeing the more sophisticated problems and then be able to share that with other parts of the world.

“When we started looking at it there were many, many sources, which were all manual sources of knowledge across a different systems and not really achieving what we wanted.” Gilday explained

“So the objective was really to enable all of the Elekta service engineers to be able to access service knowledge for any particular product, at any time.”

No mean task, and one that was further compounded by the nature of the market they operate in.

 

Unlike many industries where there is a pull from the customer side for global consistency, i.e. international customers expect the same customer experience in the UK as they get in the US as they get in the Nordics. In healthcare this typically doesn’t happen.

 

Healthcare solutions are usually country based and a direct result of this was that Elekta  had three independent business units. So there first action needed to pull these together to form a global perspective.

“The first thing was to establish an overall project leader who was going to pull together a common way of doing things.” Gilday outlined

This involved establishing standard knowledge processes and also importantly the format of the knowledge articles themselves, essentially a one-page document that could be viewed electronically which really described what the problem was, and any advice that the knowledge provided. With this structure in place things could begin to move forward.

However, getting this right from the outset was a key ingredient in mitigating future issues according to Gilday.

“The format itself was pretty simple” he said “ What is the problem the knowledge articles are addressing, what is the solution or advise that is being given and what product is the article about. Pretty simple stuff you might think, but it is so important to get that right in order to share it with as many people as possible. “

“Bearing in mind we are dealing with engineers from all over the globe, we were really trying to take the knowledge available and put it into a standard format, a relatively simple format that could be used in all countries. Knowledge is only any good if people really see the benefit and want to pull that out and can use it easily. “ He added.

Look out for the second part of this feature where we look in detail at the logistics of how Elekta approached this task...

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Whilst technology can play a big part in improving the efficiency of a field service operation, nothing is as important as ensuring your field service managers are fully armed to do their job. With this in mind we have teamed up with specialist field service training organisation SGSA to bring this series that looks at some of the key concepts that make a good field service manager great. 

The topics included in this series, written by SGSA's Senior Consultant Steve Brand, are based around the content of SGSA's 4 and half day, university standard training course for field service managers and Field Service News readers are eligible for a discounted attendance. Further details, a discount code and links to registration are all included at the bottom of the page...

Field Service Managers often work their way up through the ranks and learn a management style through trial and error or from their managers and their managers’ manager.  Although ‘on-the-job’ training is useful when learning technical skills, it is a risky approach when training managers.  Managers need to be able to hit the ground running, i.e., they need to be competent managers as soon as they first have responsibility of leading other members of staff.  If not, new managers can unwittingly drive down employee productivity during the process of developing their management style.

Frederik Herzberg’s influential survey on employee motivation in 2003 found that the second greatest cause of employee dissatisfaction is how they are supervised.  Untrained managers are often oblivious to how their behaviours are driving down the motivation and commitment of good employees and can mistakenly believe that decreases in performance is an employee problem rather than a management problem.

Continuing our series of four articles, here are two more powerful management tips to help Field Service Managers improve working relationships with their engineers and increase productivity.

Concept #3: Use Fair Process

Employees want to be given the chance to speak their minds.  They need to know that their opinions are being considered and they have a degree of influence in what happens at work.

If managers want the team to be committed to the task then they have to use the three steps of fair process: the engagement of employees, the explanation of why the decision is what it is and clearly explaining what is expected from them as a result of that decision.  If employees are shown that the company’s decision making process has been considerate of their views then they are much more likely to give their full cooperation to a decision, even when they disagree with that decision.

The opposite is also true.  Without fair process, even a decision that benefits the engineers can be difficult to implement.  Fair process should be conducted at every level of the organisation; however, the reality is that managers are often asked to implement decisions that have been handed down to them without their input.

 

In such situations, and even when the rationale for such decisions is not understood, the management approach is to just pass the decision down to the engineers with the implicit command of Just Do It.  Managing staff in this way lowers trust and, as trust goes down, productivity decreases and costs increase (The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything, Stephen Covey, 2006).

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  The best practice is to get input into decisions from the engineers as early on in the process as possible.  Managers must find time to explain the business problem or other reason behind why a change is needed and then engage the team in finding the solution.  Even if the solution has already been decided, input should be sought from the engineers on how to implement the change with the least amount of impact on them personally.  Just as important, is providing feedback on how the decision was altered as a result of employee input.

If managers do not do this then employees are unlikely to volunteer their ideas the next time that they are asked.  Fair process does not need to be an onerous task; it can be achieved in one hour or one month depending on the size of the change being proposed.

Concept #4: Build a Values System

Given the huge number of correct and incorrect ways there are to behave at work, it would be an impossible and pointless task trying to teach them all to a team of field service engineers.

There is also the grey area of an acceptable behaviour in one company being considered unacceptable in another.  For example, going home when the last scheduled service call for the day has been completed may be acceptable in Company A.  However, in Company B, the field service engineer is expected to return to base until the end of the day.

The problem then arises when a new hire goes home after his last call because that’s what he’s always done.  He isn’t aware that his behaviour is unacceptable unless another field service engineer takes the time to helpfully explain ‘how it works here’.  In most cases employees know how to behave properly so repeatedly telling them what they should be doing makes the manager appear controlling and untrusting of employees’ intentions.

 

The values system provides a framework for the kinds of behaviour that are acceptable and unacceptable and also how people are expected to behave towards each other.

When implemented correctly it forms the base on which mutual trust can be established between managers and employees and also between the employees and each other.  The first key to building an effective values system is to keep it short and simple.

This allows it to be easily remembered and referred to.  An example of a simple but powerful value systems would be these guiding principles: Work Hard; Do What’s Right; Treat Others How They Want to Be Treated.  Everything that a field engineer does at work is likely to be a good, poor or indifferent example of one or more of these principles.

If someone is cherry-picking jobs then that isn’t working hard; if someone is consistently late then that that isn’t doing what’s right.  The manager’s responsibility is to lead by example and every time he sees a correct or incorrect behaviour, to inform the engineer which of the principles has been supported or violated. By acting in this way, field service engineers quickly learn what to do more and less of in a supportive manner and go on to use their common sense before making a decision about what they should or shouldn’t be doing.

 

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Could you or your colleagues benefit from attending the next SGSA Field Service Manager Course?

The Field Service Manager program is dynamic and interactive, with students frequently working in small groups, presenting findings and working on the course case study.

The program is four and a half days of course content and university-level instruction and learning that is focused on managing a field service operation.

If you want to see more information or register for the course you can do so by clicking here

PLUS! Field Service News subscribers receive a 10% discount on the course fee when quoting reference FSN0223.

Terms and conditions apply

 

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ServiceMax have been one of the undoubted success stories in field service software of recent years. Kris Oldland, Field Service News Editor spoke to Their COO Scott Berg to find out about the journey they have been on and what happens next....

It was a cold early morning in Paris towards the tail end of last year when I met with Scott Berg. For me having flown in late the night before the famous Parisian coffee brought the welcome caffeine boost required to focus my sleep deprived brain.

However, when Berg entered the room, looking fresh in a crisp suit and bounding with a relaxed and jovial energy, it was clear that for him no such shot of espresso was required. Despite what had been a pretty hectic schedule he was clearly the type of guy that gets up raring to go every morning. And why shouldn’t he be, as COO of ServiceMax he was clearly in a good place.

It seems that almost every other company I speak to at the minute has recently moved to their field service management platform. If that sounds like an exaggeration here’s some interesting statistics to consider.

 

They have just finished their sixth year with a 100% year on year growth so and added 125 customers to their roster within the last twelve months. They operate in a highly competitive market and as far a I am aware at least, nobody is making that kind of progress and taking that kind of volume.

As Berg himself acknowledges “We’ve won more business in the last year than some of our competitors have done in the last 15.”

And these customers come in all shapes and sizes, from all verticals across every corner of the globe.

“The really fun thing for us is to see the variety of companies that we are working with.” Berg begins in an enthusiastic manner “We recently ran a Chief Service Officers summit, the first event that we had ever tried like that and there were 6 Global Heads of Service with the likes of Coca-Cola and Becton Dickinson and so on there. So on one hand we were working with these massive companies and then on the other hand there are companies like Service2 which is a husband and wife owned company that have gone from having five technicians to 10 since they employed ServiceMax -  so it’s a kinda cool thrill a minute kind of energy in the market right now” he adds.

This has always been one of the fascinating things about field service, there are so many parallel challenges across disparate industries and this is something Berg elaborates on further as we talk.

 

“That was completely the case yesterday, there was the Head of Professional Services for the Sony group, the man in charge of service for everything except their consumer brands.  So movie theatre camera systems and BBC News and all of the big news network type of things “ he explains “and he had the same talent acquisition issues as everybody else, he had the same political challenges internally of getting a seat at the boardroom table to enable him to pursue some initiatives, even though he was the only growing part of the business.

“All day it was the same story and it didn’t matter whether you were curing cancer or showing the latest movie at the cinema, it was basically the same sets of conversations we were having with people.”

And it is easy to imagine Berg being able to hold such conversations with these Global Heads of Service or equally with an owner of a small SME such as Service2 who are just taking the first steps in growing their business. He comes across as an approachable and enthusiastic but there is also an earnestness about him as well.

However, it’s easy enough to talk about all the good things ServiceMax have achieved but what about the things that they haven’t. Is there anywhere that Berg felt remained a work in progress for what is lets not forget still a relatively young organisation in it’s market segment.

“I think we’ve done a phenomenal job when it comes to capitalising on the mobility space” he begins “We’ve developed our Android platform and we’ve revamped our iOS solution which has been positive. It’s been somewhat of a surprise in how ready and willing the market is to take on these high-end portable devices. “

 

“One of the things that still perplexes me though is how slow the uptake on Internet of Things, and machine to machine communication." he continues.

“It’s funny, I use solar panels on my house and from my phone I can tell you if they’re working and then through my Nest thermostat I can turn the heating up and down from my phone also. Yet here are these massive, powerful, hi-tech intellectual property companies and they can’t figure out how to get an Ethernet connector jack plug into their devices?” he adds with a laugh.

The thing is he has a point. Widespread adoption of IoT in field service is behind where it should be based on the technology available. And to be fair to ServiceMax for those clients that are set to take advantage of M2M connectivity they are pretty much ready to go .

 

“We are very eager to jump on this [IoT]” he comments “We do have some customers like Elekta who have a full offering which we call IntelMax for machine to machine connectivity and Johnson Controls made huge investments in the area but it still strikes me how hard its been for industry. I have a little hundred dollar consumer device on the wall of my home that can do it and yet industry can’t?”

So is the ServiceMax product all set to go for Internet of Things?” I ask “Is it just a case of waiting for the market to catch up?”

“I think it is” Berg replies ‘”There are certainly relationships we are trying to build. We’re in discussions with people like Cisco and others to try and bridge that last mile of connectivity and we’ve explored some of the Apple iBeacon technology sensing people, locations and the physicality with the device.”

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Motion Computing's Ian Davies returns to the question of what defines field service...

We have previously discussed the emerging differences between enterprise mobility and field service.  The underlying current of that discussion was which fish would eat the other.

In the cold light of day, it is clear that (from a market and technology perspective at least) field service management will live ‘within’ enterprise mobility.  But this overlooks a critical point of distinction - what does a field service definition of enterprise mobility look like?  What are the actual, tangible hallmarks of an FS deployment and what does this mean for selecting the right technology?

 

Firstly, don’t even look at the technology.  Look in the mirror.  If you are wearing a hard hat, chances are you are field service and much of the discussion around enterprise mobility may not apply to a great extent.

 

Of course, the same reason you are wearing such a fetching headpiece - safety - does need to be reflected in the choice of mobile technology.    This may mean the right IP ratings for ruggedness, the right protection of critical information or the right certifications for specific environments such as explosive atmospheres.

There are other clear hallmarks of a field service deployment, driven by the needs of the mobile worker.  Whilst these can be broadly grouped into connectivity, computing power and security, it is worth bearing in mind what each of these labels mean to the different vertical markets within field service.

Connectivity

Productivity in the field depends on being connected to other people and resources - be they colleagues at head office, other mobile technicians and engineers or databases thousands of miles away.  When a signal connection drops for a consumer on the high street it is an annoyance.  When a signal drops for an engineer on an oil rig, it can paralyse the operation of the whole drilling platform.

Elsewhere, many public safety and utility businesses operate within dense metropolitan areas where network saturation can impact wireless performance - especially 4G.

Not all enterprise-focused mobile devices are compatible with the latest 4G wireless technology, which means signal availability and data speeds can be unpredictable.

One of the arguments recently put forward has been to view the level of ruggedisation that a tablet needs not as a consequence of the environment in which it operates, but as a result of how critical the process enabled by the technology is, to the business.  The same goes for connectivity - if the connection to the back office or elsewhere is paramount to enabling a given task, it must be backed up with redundancy and alternative options.

Computing power

Software applications for use in the field grow ever more sophisticated, incorporating more and more data and handling increasingly complex processes.  At the same time the need for power efficiency (and the subsequent impact on battery life) remains top of the list of concerns for most deployments.

 

For example, the latest 5^th Gen Intel^® Core™ processors (Broadwell) including the i7 vPro™ chipset, provide the power to quickly move through computation-intensive applications, while increasing overall power efficiency. However, again applying the idea that the process, not the environment is the defining aspect of selection, it is important that such technology is paired with the ability to hot-swap the battery in the field.

 

Despite the fact field service is - by definition - away from the traditional desk environment, data processing needs remain the same. Devices must offer the same processing capabilities on devices such as tablets as they do on a desktop or laptop.

Security

From a security perspective, the net result of a more connected mobile workforce with access to increasingly sensitive information is greater vulnerability.  Stories of lost laptops still make the headlines and more endpoint devices offer more openings to malicious attacks on a corporate network.  Part of the answer here lies in greater training and better procedures for field service personnel.

 

 However, technology can also help - multi-factor authentication capabilities through a combination of password, fingerprint scanner and smart card readers for environments such as healthcare, public safety and manufacturing - are important considerations.  Likewise encryption is a vital component of an increased security profile, with remote management capabilities and kill switches necessary in some cases.

 

Of course, these three areas are neither exhaustive, nor the exclusive preserve of field service.  But they do give serious points for consideration to those procuring technology such as notebooks or tablet PCs for use out in the field.

The needs of the specific industry must also be taken into account (an aspect as equally applicable to hardware as software) if the field service personnel equipped with this technology are to achieve the productivity savings that drive so many field service and enterprise mobility deployments alike.

Key to these savings are the peripherals that will augment a tablet PC and enable it to fit into the workflows of field service personnel.  Vehicle mounts are a great example, as well as carry cases and charging docks.

These are not just additions that are “nice to have” - they form the bedrock of the tablet fitting in to the jobs being undertaken in the field and improving productivity.  They are also, like hard hats, a great indication that the field service teams have the right kit to get the job done.

 

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Strategies for Growth^SM  President and member of the #FSN20 Bill Pollock takes a look at what separates great customer service and good customer service....

Conceptually, the main difference between providing “good” customer service and delivering “great” customer service is that, in the former, you are probably only barely keeping your customers satisfied; while in the latter, you are not only keeping them satisfied – you are also keeping them loyal! This is a very important distinction – and one that many services providers do not always “get”.

For example, let’s say that, historically, your company – and you, as one of its personal “ambassadors” – have been working very hard to keep your customers happy.

You have striven to respond to all of their calls in a timely basis; you have arrived at their site within the contracted time in nearly all cases; you have carried the right parts with you to the service call (or have been able to obtain them as quickly as possible once the need has been identified); and you have followed up with a courtesy call whenever there has been time (and even when there has not).

 

While you may think that the sum of these activities, in and of itself, represents “superior” customer service on behalf of you and the company, some of your customers may think otherwise.

They are more likely to feel that all of these services are to be expected from their services providers – all of the time! In fact, you probably have more customers than not who think these activities constitute nothing more than “average” customer service and support, and not “great” support – and guess what? They might be right!

The companies that are generally acknowledged to be providers of “great”, rather than merely “good”, service are those that typically go the “extra mile” in the way they treat their customers.

This may include doing simple things like calling with an Estimated Time of Arrival (i.e., ETA) when they are approaching the limits of their normal on-site response times, or following-up after a service call to explain why an equipment failure may have occurred in the first place, and how to possibly avoid it from happening again in the future.

Thus, it may be that the only perceived difference between “good” and “great” customer service on the customer’s part is the way in which their service providers regularly communicate with them!

 

It is important to keep the customer “in the loop” at all times. If they are expecting you to arrive on-site to perform a repair, they also expect to know approximately when you will actually get there. If there is a problem with your arriving as scheduled, they’ll want to know as soon as possible when you will get there – they will not want any surprises!

It all becomes a matter of “ownership”; if the customer has to call you to find out where you are, when you’re going to be arriving on-site, or how long you think the machine will be down, the customer “owns” the service call.

However, if you can call the customer in advance with an ETA and, at the same time, provide him or her with some accompanying information, you “own” the call. And if you “own” the call, you also “own” the power to keep the customer informed, in line, and, ultimately, satisfied.

Service providers that merely offer “good” customer service are probably doing virtually all of the same things that those providing “great” customer service are doing. However, the single most important thing that distinguishes the “great” providers from the “good” providers, is that they also communicate better with their customers.

When the customer is happy because of you, they are more likely to stay happy with you.

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For nearly 40 years, Servequip have been in the business of supplying and maintaining foodservice equipment, with customers ranging from Prezzo and Frankie & Benny’s to celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay. Two years ago, they decided to improve their systems by incorporating Tesseract’s service management software.

Servequip have their fingers firmly on the pulse of the foodservice equipment industry. While they don’t actually manufacture the equipment, their parent company Jestic exclusively imports selected brands from Europe and the US and sells it to catering establishments within the UK. For example, Jestic exclusively sells Henny Penny cooking equipment to KFC. Servequip are then responsible for maintaining the equipment during the warranty period, although high customer satisfaction means they are often called upon to continue maintaining it post-expiry of the warranty.

The maintenance work undertaken by Servequip involves a team of over 30 engineers working all over the UK. Given that most of the equipment maintained by Servequip is premium, energy-saving and highly technical, these engineers have to be proficiently trained and factory approved. They can be called upon to deal with a variety of cooking equipment issues.

 

Servequip’s impressive first-time fix rate, currently at 88%, demonstrates how it important it is for them to be backed by an efficient service management system.

The old program

Pre-Tesseract, Servequip relied on an older, less user-friendly service management program. Stock management and service calls were controlled by separate systems, and stock management involved a degree of manual intervention. It was also difficult to see internally what all of the engineers were doing.

They had to look at each engineer individually, which took time and effort. As Servequip are determined to provide a first-rate service, fast response times and first-time fixes, they decided they wanted some consolidation and a greater degree of visibility and efficiency.

“The other problem was that the old program had started to creak and groan and occasionally fall over completely,” says Neill Pearson, Service Director of Servequip. “We wanted to future-proof ourselves by investing in a fresh, new and more adaptable system.”

Tesseract comes aboard

Servequip were aware that other similar companies were already using Tesseract, such as Manitowoc Foodservice, which also supplies and maintains kitchen equipment. In addition, Tesseract’s software was in operation at Jestic, a foodservice equipment company which bought Servequip in 2011.

Jestic is responsible for the distribution side of the business, while Servequip concentrate on the repair and maintenance of the equipment.

With that in mind, Servequip cast their eyes over 10 to 15 service management systems, although they only gave serious consideration to three, including Tesseract. Of those three, Tesseract came out on top.

 

“We looked at Tesseract in operation at other companies,” says Pearson. “It just seemed to do everything, from servicing and scheduling to parts ordering, stock control and invoicing, and it seemed to handle parts and stock a lot better than other systems we looked at. It was also much more user-friendly than our old system, and the fact that it really worked for a number of similar companies to ours led us to make the decision to go with them."

Servequip’s old program was internally installed on their own servers, and while Tesseract does offer centrally hosted, cloud-based software, known as SaaS, Servequip elected to implement the internal version of Tesseract’s service management system.

“We already had a good IT infrastructure, so we wanted Tesseract to integrate with that,” says Pearson. “The other advantage of an internal system is that you don’t have to rely on an internet connection, so if the internet goes down for any reason, we can carry on working.”

One of the numerous benefits of SaaS service software is that it is updated by the host or provider rather than the customer, and on a much more frequent basis than internal service management programs. “This isn’t a problem for us,” Pearson explains.

“Even though we don’t get automatic updates through the cloud, Tesseract is very good at regularly accessing and updating our system. So from our perspective there’s not much difference.”

How have things changed for Servequip?

Tesseract has been in place at Servequip for nearly two years now. Servequip make use of Tesseract’s Core Control Centre, Parts Centre, invoicing and customer asset tools, as well as its reporting service.

Furthermore, Servequip had a working financial system already in place when Tesseract came aboard. Thanks to Tesseract’s  inherent malleability, this was successfully integrated with the rest of the system. The majority of Servequip’s processes are now managed by one integrated system rather than several.

“Tesseract has improved our business by giving us much greater visibility,” says Pearson. “It has sharpened our business. While no business can claim to be perfect, Tesseract helps us to see our mistakes as soon as they are made. This puts us in a much better position than other companies.”

 

Tesseract has also helped improve efficiency and save time. Pearson explains, “Stock is much easier to order now, because the system guides us as to what to order and when. Parts go out a lot quicker to our engineers and the whole process is more reliable because we have cut out human intervention and therefore the risk of mistakes.”

What this means is that Tesseract is helping to have a direct impact on Servequip’s first-time fix rate, which continues to steadily increase and be something that Servequip take great pride in.

What does the future hold for Servequip?

Being a service business, Servequip are always looking for new ways to improve their efficiency and productivity. Currently  they are using Tesseract Service Centre Version 5 and they are looking to upgrade to Version 5.1 at some point in the near future.

They are particularly interested in  getting more usage out of Tesseract’s reporting tools, as they would like to be able to report directly to their customers.

“Our first priorities are to review the reporting side of things, incorporate some new features and upgrade to the latest version,”  says Pearson. “After that, we intend to look at what else Tesseract has to offer.”

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