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How do you optimise your service delivery and ensure an excellent service is provided to your customers? It’s a question that doesn’t have a single answer; there is no silver bullet solution. What’s more, every company is likely to take a slightly different approach and what works for one organisation may not necessarily work for another.

A key aim for every organisation, though, should be to operate as efficiently as possible. That’s why Oneserve’s latest white paper is designed to get people thinking about how they can improve the efficiency of their field operations (or mobile workforce).

Here are the four key components that we believe are essential to achieving efficient field operations:

• Cost optimisation
• Workforce performance
• Customer satisfaction
• Workflow rationalisation

Read on to find out how the components fit into an effective field service management strategy.

Cost optimisation

It’s said that cash flow is the lifeblood of every business; without positive cash flow, even profitable companies can fail. That’s why getting value for money should be, and usually is, a primary aim for businesses. For this reason, cost optimisation is of great importance.

There are a number of ways in which field service organisations can optimise costs. Three of these are:

1. Ensure effective stock control and procurement – the key to managing stock is visibility; it lessens the chance of over-ordering while allowing you to ensure you have enough stock at any one time. You can also use data collected over a period of time to analyse your requirements and forecast future requirements, potentially giving you the opportunity to negotiate better rates with suppliers.
2. ]Improve first-time fix rates – in order to achieve high first-time fix rates you need to send an engineer with the right skillset to each job. They also need the right parts and tools with them, while their proximity to the job should also be considered if you want to keep costs down. If you can get all of these things right, your first-time fix rate will improve and costs should be reduced.
3. Remote resolution and preventative initiatives – although not necessarily suitable for all types of field service businesses, remote resolution and preventative initiatives can help to reduce costs. Remote resolution could involve the use of machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, which allows assets to be monitored remotely. Preventative maintenance initiatives can help to reduce the number of emergency call-outs and allow costs to be managed more effectively.

Workforce performance

Your people are the key asset of your organisation. An engaged and motivated workforce will be capable of achievements well beyond simply boosting productivity.

They could provide recommendations for improvements to current, inefficient working practices and even come up with innovative new business ideas if given the chance. They’re also the face of your company, so it’s important they are conveying the right message about it. Happy employees are more likely to portray a positive image of your company and deliver a great service to your customers.

So, it goes without saying that it is important to try and keep your workforce motivated. This is not always easy when they are all working in different places, as the nature of field service dictates they often will be.

There are however a few things that can be done to keep staff engaged and motivated:

• Make sure each field worker can easily contact their line manager, and that line managers regularly meet with employees in person.
• Encourage internal collaboration so people feel comfortable asking colleagues for advice. This will also help them to build relationships between each other and work better together.
• Set goals for each member of staff so they have targets to aim for (as long as they are achievable; unrealistic targets could lead to employees becoming demoralised).
• Invest in improvement programmes and allow your staff to share suggestions on how processes can be improved.
• Maintain training programmes for your staff and remember to keep them updated with changes in the business so they don’t feel as if they’re working in a silo.

Customer satisfaction

In today’s competitive business world, keeping customers happy is more important than ever. As we revealed in arecent blog, a 10% increase in customer retention levels results in a 30% increase in company value. So, while it’s natural to go out and try to win new business, the needs of your existing customers should be kept front of mind at all times.

However, customers expect more from their service providers these days. They have greater choice and information is a click away. As a result, they are more impatient and expect issues to be resolved quickly. Meeting customer expectations is undoubtedly becoming more and more of a challenge.

Gone are the days when customers were willing to sit in and wait for a visit at some point during the day. They want to know exactly when an engineer will arrive and fix their issue. So, precise schedules must be built for all your field staff. And that’s just the first challenge – next you need to ensure these schedules are met. To do this, accurate initial diagnosis of the issue is required, as this allows you to estimate the time required for each job and take this into account when scheduling your field staff.

Another key expectation of customers these days is excellent communication. They expect to be able to contact companies in a number of ways – phone, email and social media to name a few. Therefore, try to make it as easy as possible for customer to contact you, and clearly highlight the ways in which they are able to.

Workflow rationalisation

In a recent report from The Service Council, 38% of organisations indicated that they could save 30 or more minutes per day, per technician with a basic change in process. For these organisations, this could lead to average annual cost savings of £525,000.

This statistic demonstrates the value that can be found in optimising your workflows. After all, they keep field service organisations ticking over, enabling staff to carry out their daily routines and meet the expectations of customers.

Any organisation that wants to become more efficient should review its workflows. They’re difficult to perfect but over time you should be able to identify ways in which they can be improved and streamlined.

To conduct an effective workflow review, you will need to collect as much data as possible from your existing processes and then analyse it to root out inefficiencies. For example, you can look at how many jobs per day are completed on average by your engineers and see if this matches with your expectations and targets. If it’s lower than expected, it would indicate a process review is required.

Analysing your data is key here. If you run into difficulties at this stage, you’ve already identified a way in which your processes can be improved. Consider firstly how data is collected – do you have a service management system in place that collects it automatically or are you relying on manual processes to do this? Secondly, do you have a system that allows you to analyse this data effectively through dashboards and reports? If not, it’s worth considering a service management solution that does have this capability.

You can find out more by downloading the Oneserve Guide to Efficiency which covers everything discussed here and much more.

The services sector has traditionally been guided by a succession of rules, regulations and policies that, hopefully, make us all better at supporting our customers and the global business economy, as a whole argues Strategies For Growth℠’s (SFG℠) President, Bill Pollock...

Many of these guidelines mirror other aspects of our lives as well, such as “Mind your Manners”, “Mind your Own Business” and – of course, “Mind the Gap!” However, no guideline may be as important to the services community as “Mind the Metrics” – and this is particularly well evidenced in the UK & EMEA geographies.

In fact, a special cut of the results from Strategies For Growth℠’s (SFG℠) 2014 Field Service Management Benchmark Survey reveal that, for the UK/EMEA services community, “developing/improving the metrics, or KPIs, used to measure Field Service Performance” is the number one strategic action currently being taken, as cited by nearly two-thirds (i.e., 64%) of survey respondents (Figure 1). No other strategic actions are cited by as many as half of respondents, although “investing in mobile tools to support field technicians” rates fairly high at 49%, followed by “improving planning and forecasting with respect to field service operations” at just over one-third (i.e., 34%).

This is no surprise to Steve Alderson, Managing Director at Cognito, a leading, UK-based provider of mobile workforce management solutions to field service organisations, who corroborates that “This exactly reflects what we are hearing from the industry with service organisations facing intense pressure from competitors and rising customer expectations. These survey results confirm the strong sense in the market that getting a better understanding of field service metrics is critical to improving overall performance.”

The primary Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), or metrics, currently being used by a majority of UK/EMEA Field Services Organisations (FSOs) include:

• 78% Customer Satisfaction
• 75% Total Service Revenue/Turnover
• 68% Total Service Cost
• 53% Field Technician Utilisation (i.e., time spent performing repairs ÷ total hours)
• 53% Percent of Total Service Revenue under Service Level Agreement (SLA)
• 51% Service Revenue, as a Percent of Total Company Revenues
• 51% Service Revenue, per Field Technician

It is interesting to note, however, that most of the primary KPIs that were being used when many of us were just breaking into the business, while still important, are typically only used today by a minority of services organisations (i.e., on-site response time and first-time-fix-rate, each cited by 49%; SLA compliance and mean-time-to-repair/MTTR, each cited by 47%; and several others). However, what the data do not show is a diminution of importance among the old ‘tried and true’ KPIs, but, rather, an increased emphasis among those factors that are most influential today with respect to customer satisfaction, field tech utilisation and – oh, yes – the bottom line!

Most services industry analysts would also agree that you cannot – and should not – merely collect and tabulate the data – that is basically what a market research analyst firm does. Running a services organisation, however, is quite different, according to Alderson who suggests that, “Information without action is useless”. He continues, “As service organisations mature, and implement the next generation of mobile workforce management systems, sophisticated data gathering and analytical capabilities will be mandatory. However, the ability to act on the insights and knowledge gained, to improve field service performance, will be the key to thriving, not just surviving.”

But, why are KPIs so important to the overall well-being of the organisation? Because, for many, their service performance goals are simply not being met! For example, in the UK/EMEA services community:

• 32% of FSOs are not attaining at least 80% Customer Satisfaction

  (UK/EMEA average is 82% Customer Satisfaction)

• 28% of FSOs are not attaining at least 80% SLA Compliance

  (UK/EMEA average is 81% SLA Compliance)

•  26% of FSOs are not achieving at least 20% services profitability

  (UK/EMEA average is 35% Services Profitability)

For these reasons alone, between a quarter and a third (or more) of the UK/EMEA FSOs probably find themselves in the need for new and/or upgraded mobile workforce management technologies to run their organisations. Then, of course, they’ll still need to measure their performance along the way. It’s definitely time to “Mind the Metrics!”

Talarius, the market leaders in the arcade sector, have been using Tesseract Service Centre for the last year to manage their engineers. Feedback from Talarius is that, under Tesseract, efficiency has improved, visibility is greater and their engineers now do a better job in a quicker time.

Talarius are the largest arcade operators in the UK, and have 168 Adult Gaming Centres with more than 10,000 slot machines across the country. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tatts Group, one of the largest gaming companies in Australia. Talarius provide a service to both dedicated, regular gaming customers and those who enjoy a flutter on a night out, or at a motorway service station on a long journey.

However, slot machines are susceptible to faults and, with so many machines to look after, a fault generally occurs in at least one Talarius machine on a daily basis. A dirty note or bent coin is sometimes all it takes to cause an issue. The importance for Talarius has always been to uphold a tight maintenance regime and ensure all their machines are up and running again quickly and with minimal hassle. Just one malfunctioning slot machine is a perforation through which the company’s income will fall.

The paper method

Before Tesseract were welcomed into the fold, Talarius operated a much more manual system. If a fault occurred in one of their slot machines, staff at the venue would enter the fault in a logbook. Talarius’ engineers would attend each venue daily on a circuit, check the logbook and endeavour to fix any machines that needed their attention.

In terms of monitoring company efficiency in remedying problems, Talarius was reliant on calling each venue daily for an update as to any faults resolved or reported the previous day. They would then record this on a spreadsheet. In terms of monitoring the performance of the engineers and tracking parts required for repairs, Talarius relied on weekly emails and order forms from the engineers. The order forms specified what parts had been ordered and when. The emails detailed how many faults the engineer had repaired that week, how long each repair had taken, and how long the engineer had taken to get to the venue. In other words, monitoring depended solely on the subjective views of the engineers, conveyed through handwritten notes and tick boxes on bits of paper, rather than an objective, centralised, tech-based system.

 

“We decided we needed to be more efficient,” says Paul Monkman, Service Director of Talarius. “We are a service company after all. We wanted to make the way we operate the best it could be. If we did that, we could more easily make the service we provide to our customers the best it could be, too.”

Time for a change

Realising they needed to take a giant leap into the 21st century, Talarius put out a request for tender, looking for a service company to revolutionise their systems. Five companies bid for the contract, but Talarius chose Tesseract because they were willing to customise their service management software package to fit with Talarius’ systems and specific needs.

“Tesseract were the best fit,” says Monkman. “We operate slightly differently from other service companies, and Tesseract were willing to accommodate that and offer a tailored approach to our needs.”

These operational differences mainly concern the ordering of parts. Other companies have warehouses and parts centres from which they regularly order the parts they need, and supervisors in charge of the ordering process. But Talarius engineers are allowed to order their own parts from the most cost effective supplier. Tesseract have within their parts centre module a facility for the office to centrally control purchase orders based on field requirements. However, Talarius only wanted facilities to be able to track the parts ordered directly by the engineers. Tesseract were able to accommodate this, providing a system whereby a number is generated each time a part is ordered, allowing Talarius to track and monitor it.

How have things changed?

The way Talarius deploy their engineers has changed completely. What’s now in place is a browser-based web portal to which all of the gaming centre venues have access. When a fault occurs in one of the slot machines, the venue can log the fault online. Their engineers receive notification of these faults by way of an Android-based app on their mobile phones. Furthermore, the faults are graded in terms of priority, and the more profitable venues will get attention quicker.

Monkman says, “Instead of the logbook, which didn’t get seen until the engineers had done their rounds, now the venues can report faults online within ten seconds – which goes directly to the engineers. It’s very user-friendly and practically fool-proof! Perfect for a company that has a wide variety of computer skill levels.”

The new system is capable of cutting the standard delay that was an inevitable component of the old system; each venue would have to wait for their daily visit, coming at whatever stage that venue was placed on the engineer’s circuit. It also means engineers can get to the higher-priority sites quicker than the old circuit system would have allowed.

 

Regarding parts ordering, the engineers now use the apps on their phones to generate a part request number. The engineer will call their chosen supplier directly, and Talarius will use the part request number to track the item.

“We tried to implement a system whereby parts could be ordered automatically, but it proved problematic,” says Monkman. “It could get messy if our engineers needed to discuss the part they needed, or ask the supplier a question. Our engineers are happy to continue managing parts directly at their end, and we are happy at our end because we now have the facility to track the part.”

Rather than compiling weekly emails with estimates of their own timings and performance, the system is now based on entries made by the venue and engineers and will calculate the timings exactly. The new software gives the length of time between dispatch and attendance, timings for completion of repairs, whether any faults are recurring, and whether a machine is waiting for parts.

“We now have a system that’s both real-time and better at monitoring faults and engineer performance,” says Monkman. “We have streamlined the process, made it more efficient, and we now have information we never had before. Our engineers like it because it backs up their work and saves them paperwork.”

A better service

Talarius are in a much better position than they were before entering into a partnership with Tesseract. Tesseract’s service management software has given them enormous visibility. They now know what is going on at their venues and with their engineers without the time-lag of their old system. With a part, they know who ordered it, when it was ordered and dispatched, and when the part arrived. Profiling faults and remedying them on a priority basis means that the venues are better served and machine profits have gone up.

“We can now be more reactive to problems,” says Monkman. “The accuracy and visibility of the system also means our engineers do a better job, and do it quicker. Adding it all up, it means Talarius is able to offer a better, more efficient service to its customers.”

Want to know more about Tesseract? Click here to visit there page in the Field Service News directory...

Rolls Royce once reinvented service in the aerospace industry with ‘power by the hour’ they are about to do it again with ‘disruption based availability’ writes Field Service News Editor, Kris Oldland...

When it comes to creating real value through service and integrating your service offering and product into one holistic package that generates far greater value for your customers and far greater long-term revenue for yourselves, there is one company whose name is come across in almost every conversation.

One company who are the ultimate example of what getting it right looks like.

One company who revolutionised not only the way service operates in their industry but indeed how an entire industry operated.

That company is Rolls Royce Aerospace.

So when we were asked if we would head down to Bristol to record an interview with Dave Gordon, Program Director for Rolls Royce’s Defence Aviation division for a series of interviews for the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP) we leapt at the chance. And we were not disappointed.

Accompanied by Service Management Specialist Nick Frank we arrived at the Bristol Base, after submitting an array of additional paper work to allow us to film in what on the surface seemed a fairly regular corporate building, although the strict restrictions on where we could and couldn’t be and the detailed examination of our equipment relayed that this was still for all intense purposes an integral component in the Royal Air Force’s operations and therefore access was neither granted or to be taken lightly.

And as we met with Gordon he too carried this air of being somewhere between corporate and government official. As we got set up he spoke with a relaxed and comfortable manner of the experienced corporation man. Getting our coffees personally, making light-hearted small talk about a recent decision to have laser-eye surgery etc.

You felt this was a businessman who had sat in many meetings such as these before, that was calm, relaxed and in control. Yet when we begin the interview and talk about the role Gordon plays he speaks about the UK client, he touches on their engines performance in ‘extreme conditions’ and you suddenly realise just how much pressure he and his team must be under to deliver, when your customers are some of the worlds leading military forces and we live in troubled times where the air strikes in Syria, would be just one example of where both Gordon’s and Rolls Royce’s reputations are put to the test in life and death scenarios that will effect the lives of thousands.

 

Yet still one gets the impression that Gordon would remain the same calm and amiable figure fixing the coffees before the meeting begins, if he was a meeting with a group of RAF Air Marshalls, US Marine Core Generals or as in this instance a member of the trade press.

The other early observation is that he is clearly very proud and passionate about the work he and his team are doing for Rolls Royce.

“Rolls Royce within defence has been on a journey over the last ten to fifteen years, we were a fairly traditional provider of the service we sold a product, we sold a very time and material based service solution, it was very driven by the customer and their management of our product” Gordon begins

“However, it became clear to us that that wasn’t the best fit for our customers” he continues. And it is this attitude, this belief that they can stand in the face of a customer driven process and say ‘hold on, we think we should be doing all this a bit differently’ that has separated Rolls Royce from the rest of the pack in the sectors they operate in.

Although their famous power-by-the-hour service system that is at the heart of their success as a serviced provider required a leap of faith from another global player in the industry.

“There was a very strong pull from American Airlines, who approached Rolls Royce and said we would be far more interested in you providing a solution that kept your engine on wing and we incentivised you for doing that” Gordon explains

“So we worked very closely with that customer and developed a total care solution that very much focuses on that end-to-end need and during that process Rolls ourselves have gradually taken on more of the risks, more of the responsibilities for managing those assets”

And Gordon’s own department in defence have followed this path now themselves taking a strikingly similar journey forward with the those he refers to as ‘The UK Customer’

“Within defence we’ve taken some of those core tools and processes and embedded them into our own value offering to our customer and we particularly use the UK Customer as a testing house to work with them.” Gordon continues

“They themselves were going through a major transformation looking to downsize the scale of their operation and drive efficiency. We were very much up for that journey as well. Very much a collaboration we went about introducing a far more availability based solution, which has been very successful”

However yesterday’s revolution is today’s best practice. And the only true revolutionaries are those who continue to innovate, continue to push boundaries and continue to look for ways they can further improve tomorrow.

Both Gordon and Rolls Royce fit into this camp.

“As we look to the future, we’re starting to work with the customer to go beyond just an availability solution and say what’s really disrupting that customers operation? What is really stopping them doing their job?” Gordon comments before taking a moment to pause.

[quote float="right"]We want to get to a point where they are no longer thinking about my propulsion system they’re just focussed on prosecuting their operation. To do that we need to know a little bit about the nature of the disruption and what we can do to help

“We want to get to a point where they are no longer thinking about my propulsion system they’re just focussed on prosecuting their operation. To do that we need to know a little bit about the nature of the disruption and what we can do to help.” He adds with a definite hint of excitement of that future being within touching distance. It is this concept of ‘disruption based availability’ that Gordon and Rolls Royce clearly believe to be the next evolution of there service offering as they continue to lead the industry from the front.

 

“Disruption based availability is something that we been very focussed on”

“Disruption based availability, or sometimes we refer to it as project zero, as in zero disruption to the customer, is something that both us in Defence and our colleagues in Civil have been very focussed on.” Begins Gordon.

“Understanding that it’s not just about guaranteeing the engine time on wing but actually understanding when the engine does have an incident that causes some disruption to the customer, even something as minor as a delayed take off, still that clearly has a cost. What we have been trying to do is work with our customers to understand very clearly what that cost is.” He adds.

It is a bold vision of where the Aerospace giants next steps will be, yet at the same time it feels like a natural evolution from where they are today. It’s also an approach that will yield a number benefits both hard and soft according to Gordon.

“The benefits are both the tangible where we can build an offering around saying ‘We understand the impact around cost and therefore if we are able to reduce that we can develop that into a value proposition...  but also there is an intangible piece to this as well as it helps me to motivate my teams to understand the exact impact an event will have on a customer. To help them see the fact that there are repercussions way beyond a flight not being able to take off. It will feedback into the impact such an event has on the wider operation, the planning that went into it, the need for contingency planning, and so on…” Gordon explains with enthusiasm

“Understanding the whole eco-system that sits around not just my product, but the system it’s working in and how the customer is using it, and then understanding how we can reduce the impact, you can clearly demonstrate the value to the customer, and we’re working with them to do that….”

He takes the briefest of pauses, giving his next thought some consideration before committing to it.  But when he does it sums up exactly what both Gordon and Rolls Royce are all about

“It’s a real motivator for me as the team really starts to understand what customer service actually means.” He adds in an almost solemn tone.

And this for me is it, there is a point in any interview where you grasp the heart of the story, and you see your subject in their truest light. Dave Gordon and Rolls Royce are a perfect fit. Look at the DNA of both the man and the corporation and you’ll find service deeply entwined.

In the heart of each you’ll find a desire to innovate, to keep pushing the boundaries, and to keep on being revolutionary.

Which is why I expect both to succeed.

 

 

 

Recent independent research conducted by VDC found that the top criteria for evaluating mobile devices to support applications in the utilities sector are reliability / quality. Ian Davies of Motion Computing explains more...

By comparison, the issues of water / dust ingress protection and drop protection were third and sixth respectively, mixed with large scale issues such as security and specific features such as GPS performance.

The mobile hardware industry does tend to make a fetish of ruggedisation - and rightfully so. The fundamental difference between a consumer unit and an enterprise tablet PC is the need to perform in any given environment. Consequently, the ability to demonstrate the level of abuse these units can take is important and there is a need to know what precisely has and has not been tested in order to map hardware capabilities onto job demands.

But reliability is far bigger than ruggedisation and it is time to put the horse back in front of the cart instead of letting stress test ratings continually define how tablet PCs are understood in the workplace.

Reliability pulls ruggedisation into the wider issue of the units function, not just its features. This focuses attention on the unit being relied upon to do the job it was intended for, not just the ability to pass lab tests.

In the real world, utility workers need to perform these tasks consistently and efficiently, so the technology has to be a proven solution - the real-world definition of reliability is the trustworthiness of a unit to perform.

This includes far more than IP or MIL ratings. For example, features such as the mode of input choices, integration with back office systems, even something as simple as the outdoor visibility of the screen all contribute to the consistency and effectiveness of the unit. Battery life is another great example - it impacts directly on the reliability of a unit but is nothing to do with its ruggedisation - and research has shown that almost 2/3 of business users say that their tablet does not last a full shift.

 

In this context it is easy to see why QUALITY is linked so closely to RELIABILITY. Excellence in the utilities sector is the ability to consistently perform tasks out in the field. That excellence is based on the complete user experience, not just stress tests of the hardware.

Jon Regan, Head of SAP Competency Centre in Thames Water explained how this arose in their selection of tablet PCs: “Our trial included over 200 users and we tracked a range of factors, from general user perception, physical features and battery life to toughness, application usage and screen usability. Positive comments on the ergonomics, size, weight and design of the device, as well as the accuracy of the pen input, the photo editing application and the screen viewing angle were consistent across all users.”

According to VDC, 2014 mobility budgets are expected to increase by 11% over 2013 and it is this interaction of reliability and quality that explains WHY utilities want to deploy mobile technologies so eagerly. The same VDC research showed that improving worker productivity and lowering operational costs were the two top drivers. Whilst the improved productivity is driven by keenly aligned features it is the reliability that leads to consistent performance that can help reduce costs.

It is also worth remembering the sheer scale of this opportunity - the European mobile utility workforce is the fastest-growing workforce segment. It currently consists of 900,000 workers, and by the year 2018, it will reach 1.2 million. Developing a mature focus on a workflow based assessment of activities instead of a feature fetish and chasing ever increasing levels of ruggedisation, will be a hallmark of those companies that lead in this industry

The great BYOD debate is one that has been raging in field service for some time and it shows no sign of abating. Here Paul Adams of Solarvista takes a look at both sides of the discussion... 

The BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) debate is one that has received much coverage in recent months with some in the service sector as well as other industries arguing that BYOD is the only way forward for businesses looking to compete effectively and offer the most efficient customer service and increased employee satisfaction. But what is BYOD? What is the impact on the business, the workers, and the customers?

A complete move to BYOD is not going to be right for every business in every service sector, but a lot of businesses may already be partaking in some kind of BYOD scheme without even realising. For example, if employees have access to company emails on their personal mobile phone or tablet or another device then this is, in effect, BYOD. In fact research has found that globally 60% of full-time employees use BYOD to some extent. (Gabriel, 2013)

So what actually is BYOD?

Simply, “Bring Your Own Device” refers to employees having the ability to connect their own technical devices such as smart phones, laptops and tablets to the company’s network instead of using a device owned by the company. Recent years have seen an influx of workers bringing their own personal devices into their work environment and using them in their everyday jobs (Millard, 2011). In fact, 95% of employees have used their own device in work (Gens et al, 2013) and the majority already use their own personal device for a variety of work-related tasks, including communication, content creation and admin (Ellis et al, 2012).

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

There are a number of advantages to BYOD for both the user of the device and the company employing that user. However, the other side of the debate – the potential pitfalls that a company may face because of BYOD – tend to be less obvious. Below are some examples, but not an exhaustive list, both from the user and business perspective.

Advantages

• Personal choice
• Better work life balance
• Improved productivity
• No cost for equipment
• Decreased support and training costs

Disadvantages

• Financial responsibility
• “Always available”
• Loss, theft or damage
• Information and network security
• Increased support costs

[quote]58% of IT security and audit experts view employee-owned devices as a security risk to the enterprise.

 

Conclusion

BYOD represents the tipping point from corporate-led IT to consumer-driven IT; corporate IT now significantly lags behind the consumer market (Millard, 2011) and this has had a dramatic effect on the desire of employees to use their own devices at work. It is a trend that is set to continue throughout 2014 and beyond.

Over the last couple of years, these devices have become integrated into everyday life for most people as result of the ‘always on’ nature of social media and the 24/7 online world. With the lightning speed at which technology is progressing it is maybe neither cost-effective nor practical for businesses to update their employees’ technological devices as often as both the company and the employee might wish. Therefore, BYOD has become the natural solution to this problem.

However, there are a number of key considerations when implementing any kind of BYOD scheme in the workplace. Most notably these are around security; of your company’s data and networks, of access to your systems and around confidentiality. The use of industrial-strength security approaches, such as Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory, is important to deliver this with confidence.

[quote]One size increasingly doesn’t fit all in terms of tools and technologies for work. The challenge is for the IT department to ensure their business is secure.

 

Also, there are a number of functionality and cost implications worth noting. If you need particular functionality from your devices that is only available on expensive corporate hardware, then BYOD may not even be applicable at the moment. Here at Solarvista, our new line of cross-device mobile apps offers a good feature set but it will be mid-2015 before the sheer volume of functionality is available on all platforms. There are big challenges ahead in ensuring the business remains secure whilst also adopting working methods that are becoming ever more prevalent and popular. It is important to know that BYOD, according to the experts, isn’t going anywhere. Therefore there should be no rush to implement it without giving proper consideration to all the ways it will affect your business, your employees and ultimately your customers.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Field Service News podcast. This month we are joined by Paul White, CEO of mplsystems as we revisit some exclusive research undertaken by Field Service News in partnership with mplsystems earlier this year.

The research set out to unlock exactly what technology is being used within the field service industries in 2014 and in this exclusive interview Paul and Field Service News Editor Kris Oldland discuss some of the most pertinent and surprising results and explore and extrapolate the meaning of these findings. Amongst the topics discussed are whether the ratio's of dispatchers to engineers in field service companies are actually lower than they should be, whether the smallest companies are getting short shrift from software providers and why mobile has changed the shape of the industry and whether it will continue to do so...

To download the full podcast just click here and complete the brief registration form!

Please note that that promotion of this download is a joint venture between Field Service News and mplsystems and by downloading the podcast you agree to the fascinating terms and conditions which are available right here.

You can also find out more about mplsystems in the Field Service News Directory by clicking here

 

 

As companies capture more data through mobile devices, remote sensors and telematics, the opportunity to increase the efficiency of field service operations has never been better argues coresystems CEO Phillip Emmenegger... 

This year, at tennis’ US Open, we got a glimpse of just how pervasive the idea has become of big data’s transformative power.

Thanks to cameras and remote sensors trained on the every move of the tennis players, we learned from the estimated 41 million data points collected how important it is for tennis players to return the ball to their opponent in the least amount of moves. Or, as the new “must-know” tennis stat that tracks the average distance a player travels on the court for each point is called, “Feet (meter) per point”.

It’s obvious that it’s better to expend less energy chasing down a ball, but now there’s tangible proof. The two men’s players to make the finals, Marin Cilic and Kei Nishikori, both despite their different styles of play, racked up the least amount of distance per point. Cilic averaged 42 feet per point; Nishikori, 52. In contrast, Roger Federer came in at 57 feet per point, and Andy Murray at 70 feet.

But what does the data crunching at the US Open have to do with field service? Just as in tennis, so in field service: those with the most efficient delivery win. Moreover, just as collecting the seemingly mundane data of the average distance a player ran per point is now being used by tennis coaches to re-examine their player’s games, so a company can now collect the most specific data to be transformed into meaningful analytics to eventually give companies an edge.

Indeed, according to the Aberdeen Group, companies have a strong belief that the proper use of big data will give them a competitive advantage. In the consultancy’s report, “Big Data Perspectives: Users vs. IT,” 43% of IT personnel believe that faster, more complex analytics will give them an edge over other companies.

 

Moreover, providing superior customer service has been show to impact a company’s bottom line. According to business consultancy the Aberdeen Group in its recent study, “Secrets to Optimize Field Service for Better Customer Experience,” those companies that hit a 90% + customer satisfaction were also able to achieve an annual 6.1% growth in service revenue, a 3.7% growth in overall revenue, and even more importantly, an 89% current level of customer retention.

But how can field service companies harness big data? And, what exactly is “big data”? Big data – as opposed to just data – usually refers to the entire process of capturing, storing, managing and analyzing massive amounts of various types of data, according to the Aberdeen Group. Typically, the amounts are in the terabytes or petabytes, stored in multiple formats, from both internal and external sources, and with strict demands for speed and complexity of analysis.

Here are three ways your company can get started:

Collect and Capture Data: Within field service, there are a number of ways big data can be used. The first place to start is to assess the data that your organisation already collects. Using a field service software solution will allow you to collect data quicker and more easily. A field engineer using a tablet-based solution could seamlessly collect the time the technician was dispatched, the time to fix the job, whether or not the job was fixed the first time, if a technician had to return, what reason they had to go back, and what part was needed. What other data does your company collect? Is there fleet management of telematics data available? Would placing remote sensors at certain locations to collect data make sense?

Analysing Data: Once you have captured the data, it’s time to make sense of it. You could compare it to historical data and analyse it for patterns. For example, real-time data from service engineers can show how long a job took on average, giving managers guidance on the right amount of time to assign future similar jobs. In turn, this would impact the accuracy of arrival times, and reduce the amount of jobs that have to be rescheduled, improving customer service.

 

The next place to look is across departments in your company. Could shared data from different departments lead to more efficiencies or opportunities? For example, could data shared between the field service department and the sales department end in more sales opportunities? Managers could also see if one particular area has a higher need for service technicians, and hire accordingly.

Predictive Analysis: More exciting examples could happen when companies get more sophisticated with remote sensors and machine-to-machine communications. The term “predictive analytics” is usually spoken of in marketing as the ability to track the behaviour of prospective buyers to help sellers understand the right time to engage them. But now we’re beginning to hear the term “predictive maintenance”, referring to the ability to foresee when a part or piece of equipment is near the end of its life span. With remote sensors, it would be possible to begin gathering data on whether a particular part is more prone to breaking down by monitoring a machine’s changes over time; or within a certain use case, and what its average life span is. The data could help predict the best time to schedule a pre-emptive service call.

It’s no secret that customer demand for better service has increased and that its success now contributes or takes away from a company’s bottom line. Ironically, as technology helps organizations deliver better customer service, the expectation for even better service just keeps rising. It’s up to companies to use every single tool they have, including the most minute details, to turn them into their own competitive advantage.

Looking to the future is not just about which technology you should be applying to your mobile workforce to ensure that you are beating productivity level KPIs, it is also about looking at how you can ensure sustained growth within the business.

A key part of this is of course staffing.

However, for many companies an ageing workforce could prove to be a significant hurdle to not only growing their business but also to simply maintaining their existing size and standards. One such company that is attempting to tackle the issue before it becomes irreversible is Siemens.

“We have a habit of looking a few years ahead and we are looking at where will we be in 2020” states Graeme Coyne, Business Development Manager, Siemens Customer Services

“Our particular department is about 200 people in the UK. Based on the growth of our department over the last few years, we believe that by 2020 we will need around 250 people.” on to Coyne explains before going highlight the gravity of the situation that the manufacturing giant faced.

“We had a problem. We have 200 employees now and we needed 250 in six years time but we estimated we were going to lose about 100 people through retirement by then also”

“We’ve got an ageing population. I’ve personally been in Siemens for 30 years; the oldest person in our service organisation is 75 years old. There is a big bulge of people who are aged between 45 and 55 and we are expecting many of them to go fairly soon.”

Siemens are certainly not alone in facing this issue. Indeed it is a problem mirrored in many other companies in many other verticals. So what can be done to resolve the problem and build a sustainable workforce for the future?

 

The idea of these technology centres is that on the one side you’ve got academia producing skilled engineers of many different types and on the other side you’ve got some very good manufacturers. Sometimes in between we lose things and the idea is that these catapult centres are sat there to help avoid this”

Well of course the first thing to do is to look to engage with the next generation, something that Siemens have done through both traditional and non-traditional routes.

“We’ve gone out to the universities to sponsor students, we’ve got about 1,500 sponsors throughout the UK – it something we have to do.” Begins Coyne. However, Siemens are not just targeting graduates, they have an apprenticeship scheme that means they won’t miss out on those bright young minds that for whatever reason don’t see academia as the right path to choose.

“The other thing that we have done is that we have got 400 apprentices in the UK.” Coyne continues,  “I am told this is not enough. We were talking about taking people from the age of 13, 14 15 – it is essential. So we are trying to do our bit, we’re investing a lot of time and effort into it and it is starting to show results.”

However, the Siemens recruitment machine is far more sophisticated than just supporting and developing training programs.

“We think we are doing an OK job recruiting people” Coyne admits, “What we have been doing is we have been investing in manufacturing technology centres. These are important, as they are specialist areas which are invested in by academia, by manufacturers and by government.”

These technology centres are key to solving both the Siemens problem and that of the wider industry. By sitting in between the gap between business and academia they allow smart young minds to connect with industry without the pressure that may come from a more formal environment.

As Coyne explains “The idea of these technology centres is that on the one side you’ve got academia producing skilled engineers of many different types and on the other side you’ve got some very good manufacturers. Sometimes in between we lose things and the idea is that these catapult centres are sat there to help avoid this”

However, these centres play a deeper role in the recruitment and retention of the next generation of field engineers. They are also important to ensure that that next generation of field engineers are ready for the next generation of technology as well.

“All of our new technology is moving on, we are moving to industry 4.0.” Coyne begins “basically all the things we are trying to do is so we can get engineers to fit where this next wave of manufacturing technology is going to be”

This approach is commendably, but necessarily long sighted.

“We are talking about something that is not yet ready. It’s going to be ready in maybe 20 years but parts of it are already there.” However, the manufacturing technology centres, being co-funded by industry, education and state provide opportunities for the next generation of field engineers to start understanding and utilising tomorrows tools today.

This has two-fold importance. It ensures you are not only attracting the best minds but also that they are being readily prepared for the future.

“We need engineers that are fresh faced, fresh minds that know all about the current technology,” states Coyne. “But I’ve been out and talked to some of our graduates and asked what do you want “they said they want experience, they want to do as much as possible, learn as many skills as possible and get trained so that they can do many different things”

Getting this balance between what you and your future employees want is not an easy road but it is companies like Siemens who are investing in the future heavily today that will almost certainly be set to reap the rewards tomorrow.