This third excerpt from a recent white paper published by Aquant we see an interesting snapshot of the distance that exists between the highest and lowest performers on an organizational level and the consequences of an imbalance of knowledge within each service team.

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Want to know more? Field Service News Subscribers can access a White Paper on this topic on the link below.

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Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content Aquant who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this white paper, as per the terms and conditions of your subscription agreement which you opted into in line with GDPR regulations and is an ongoing condition of subscription.

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the team snapshot: the distance between heroes and challengers within an organization

The following article by Michael Mendoza, Director of Industry Solutions and Field Service at Hitachi, provides an overview of why taking care of an issue the first time is crucial to your field service business and includes actionable ways to fix first-time fix rate issues.

When it comes to field service management, it’s essential to have the right technician for right the job. You not only want to make sure your technician is prepared with the appropriate equipment, you need the ability to easily and effectively schedule (or reschedule) your team.According to the Aberdeen Group, about 25% of service calls require at least one additional visit. Unfortunately, added appointments can be expensive, time-consuming (on both ends), and lead to an unsatisfactory customer experience.One of the best ways to manage these potential problems is to implement a field service management software that includes service locations, predictive maintenance, work order management, product inventory, scheduling — and more. Here’s how to use the latest technology to improve first-time fix rate challenges

8 COMMON REASONS WHY TECHNICIANS AREN'T ABLE TO FIX AN ISSUE THE FIRST TIME - AND HOW TO FIX THEM

1. Lack of the right spare parts. It’s important to ensure that field service technicians are well prepared with everything they need to complete the job. Even the absence of one part can delay fixing the issue, which would likely require at least one additional visit — and more of everyone’s time.Solution: Use the right software to organize service calls, diagnose what parts are needed, and check inventory to ensure that the right parts are in stock and available to get the job done the first time.

2. Depleted inventory and stock. It’s understandable that inventory may be depleted, but properly managing stock levels is an easy and efficient way to prevent a technician from being unprepared and having to reschedule or line up a second visit.Solution: Using data analytics, forecast which parts or tools you should restock.

3. Poor Planning and Communication inventory and stock. Clear, effective communication is crucial, no matter the business, organization, or industry — and field service technicians are no exception. Lapses in planning or communication can lead to ill-prepared technicians, rescheduling challenges, and inventory concerns about whether parts are in stock.Solution: It’s important to schedule the right technician for the right job, and be sure to know whether the parts are in stock and available. Keep tabs on your techs with GPS fleet tracking and other software to ensure that the visit won’t go over the allotted time or leave insufficient time to complete the next job.

4. Too much manual paperwork. According to the Service Council, 46% of field technicians say that paperwork and other administrative tasks are the most unfavorable parts of their daily responsibilities. Even though it’s required and essential, this part of the job can be inefficient and more time-consuming than needed.Solution: Digitize and automate as much of the paper-based process as you can so technicians can spend their time on other important responsibilities. Plus, creating a digital process can streamline procedures, create efficiencies within the workplace, and ensure that all the appropriate paperwork and files are organized and easily accessible.

5. Unanswered questions. A technician may have all the right tools, equipment, and inventory — but more information may be needed. How can you fully prepare field service technicians so they are equipped with the right answers?Solution: Connect technicians to the main office and provide them with real-time answers and updates, including the ability to look at Frequently Asked Questions on their devices so they can try and solve the issue by themselves.

6. Scheduling issues. It’s inevitable that calendars and agendas may need to be modified, but planning in advance and having the ability to easily adapt to last-minute changes is crucial.Solution: Provide your field service technicians with the ability to schedule future visits if they know something will need to be adjusted or replaced soon. This is important because it removes the need for technicians to call the office and have other employees schedule visits on their behalf. The right software will keep all schedules up to date to prevent double-booking.

7. Being unprepared. A basic customer expectation is that technicians are prepared. This means that you want someone to show up on time — and with the right parts and knowledge. Without any one of these components, an additional site visit is likely needed.

Solution: By using analytics, you can look into which technicians run into which issues. You can also determine which clients or jobs have a low percentage of first-time fixes. By analyzing the data, you can see if improvements are needed in inventory or scheduling — or if tech training could increase the first-time fix rates for clients across the board.

8. Inadequate software management training. The right knowledge, education, and training are essential for any expert or technician using management software. Without these, you will likely have to reschedule or add additional site visits, which will likely negatively impact scheduling, time, and budgets for everyone involved.Solution: Training techs to properly use field service management software is essential to fix any issues that may arise. If a technician doesn’t know how to use the tools, the job will likely not go well.

At the end of the day, it’s inevitable that issues may arise, but ensuring that you have the right field service management software will help effectively manage potential problems — which ultimately means more efficiency, productivity, and an overall happier customer service experience.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ www.fieldservicenews.com/managing-the-mobile-workforce
• Connect with Michael Mendoza on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/mikeoza/
• Find out more about Hitachi @ https://www.hitachi.us/
• Follow Hitachi on Twitter @ twitter.com/Hitachi_US

In this exclusive article for Field Service News, Craigh Greenhalgh, Research Analyst at Comparesoft, offers an analysis of field service management software available today and how businesses need to embrace digital transformation to gain a competitive edge.

We are at the peak of an evolutionary leap into the digital age with more than half of today’s businesses connected to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Entire industries are transforming to capitalise on the advances in field service management software and gain a competitive edge – increasing efficiency, slashing costs and meeting market demand for quicker and more comprehensive services.

Businesses still operating in the paper age must adapt soon if they are to survive the world’s transition into a brutal new age of cut-throat digital commerce.

Here’s how it all began, along with some insightful facts and figures on the shape of things to come in the immediate future of field service management.

how the internet of things came of age

The term Internet of Things (IoT) was introduced in 1999 by British technologist Kevin Ashton to describe networks and platforms which connect humans and the objects they interact with.Uptake was slow at first but increasing cross-industry dependence on intelligent software and smart devices has spurned explosive IoT growth over the past five years.

The number of publicly known IoT platforms has doubled to 620 since 2015, now connecting more than 22 billion devices around the world, according to data gathered at the end of 2019.That growth is expected to continue exponentially with increasing demand for smarter asset management, in the field and on factory floors, to help us humans make informed decisions from a distance – decisions that can save money and even lives.Market analysts say the trend is heading towards 50 billion devices connected to the IoT by 2030 with the total volume of data being stored and transferred in the region of 100 zettabytes (Zbs).

Iot roots blossom into a trillion-dollar market

As a result, worldwide spending on the hardware and software connecting the Internet of Things is projected to hit US$1.1 trillion by 2023.

A significant sign of the paradigm shift underway from old to new management tools is that even the worldwide agricultural IoT market accounts for a whopping $30-billion slice of that trillion-dollar pie.Consumer spending on smart home systems worldwide hit US$ 115 billion in 2020 and is expected to rise to at least $150 billion over the next two years.On top of that, the IoT analytics market is projected to be worth more than $500 billion in the same period.On the mobile hardware development front, Panasonic is one of the many manufacturers tapping into the industrial IoT market. As seen with the launch of mobile devices aimed specifically at supporting the field service management sector. The rugged handheld Android devices come with an ANSI rating for hazardous locations. They also feature barcode and magstripe readers.

how businesses are benefitting from better field service management software

These unprecedented advances in the abilities of artificial intelligence have given birth to legions of industry-specific software solutions created to capitalise on this interconnectivity of emerging technologies. Here’s how progressive businesses are benefiting from smarter field management software solutions:

Increasing Productivity

Workers using mobile devices connected to warehouse inventory management software are much more productive. Zebra Technologies Corporation is arming warehouse workers with wearable tech, including head-mounted displays and ring scanners, which is claimed to increase productivity by 24%.

Meeting Customer Expectations & Boosting Brand Loyalty

Customer demands are the same across the board – from retail consumers tracking delivery packages in their living rooms to engineers collaborating on industrial megaprojects. They all expect instant access to real-time information to make informed decisions.

Cutting Unnecessary Costs

Cost savings with fluid asset management is a hugely beneficial side effect of using field service management software solutions. You save time and labour costs with instant updates from assets in the field, which helps schedule preventative maintenance and mitigate future repair costs.

Improving Workplace Safety

Human error is reduced with artificial intelligence in charge. Managers can take preventative measures to drastically reduce risks of breakdowns and accidents based on data from real-time measurements and calculations made remotely in the field.

Streamlining Accounting

Software and apps that can learn about your accounting requirements help keep your operations in compliance with local and regional regulations. Instant accounting also means shorter billing cycles and better cash flow management.

What are your options for field service management?

Today’s field service management solutions are a combination of hardware and software that provide a virtual workspace with cloud computing that can be accessed by tens of thousands of users at the same time from almost any location.The range of solutions is vast and often confusing. Field service managers need to consider their options depending on their company’s unique needs, budget and existing infrastructure.Digital field service management solutions are usually packaged and labelled in one or more of the following three ways:

IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service

Hardwired hardware in the form of servers and digital data storage space. The hardware can be physically located at your offices as an ‘on-premise’ network. The off-premise alternative is to pay for the use of servers operated by third-party data centres that provide cloud services available over the Internet. Examples include Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, Rackspace and Windows Azure.Massive cost savings is the main advantage for field service managers opting to outsource IaaS as there is no initial outlay for expensive hardware, no excessive power costs and no need to employ a dedicated IT team round the clock at your own premises.

PaaS - Platform as a Service

Developers use IaaS data centres to build, operate and host computing platforms ‘in the cloud’ that are accessible to designated users. The platforms make software tools available over the internet for a broad spectrum of industries.Apps, interfaces and operating systems can be built and used on these platforms, which these days can handle a variety of computer languages to store, manipulate and display data on almost any device.

Popular platforms include AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Heroku, Force.com, Google App Engine and Apache Stratos

PaaS - Platform as a Service

Also referred to as ‘enterprise software’, SaaS solutions piggyback on the infrastructure and platforms as a service (IaaS and PaaS) mentioned above.Using third-party software as a service gives you a complete package of field service management solutions hosted in the cloud on remote servers and accessible over the internet.Everyday examples of SaaS in the virtual workplace include Google Apps, Dropbox, Salesforce, Cisco WebEx, Concur and GoToMeeting.The major advantage for managers using SaaS is not being responsible for any hardware or software maintenance, meaning massive cost savings and fewer headaches. The biggest challenge is deciding which software service to use that best suits your needs.

5 types of field service management software

Field service management software solutions fall into five broad categories, each helping organizations manage various types of ‘assets’, which could be anything supporting operations such as buildings, machinery, vehicles, warehouse stock, raw materials or even human resources.Advanced SaaS solutions also allow you to tie in accounting operations to help shorten billing cycles by creating core financial reports in real-time such as profit and loss accounts, balance sheets and cash flow statements.Each of the five types of field management software listed below was developed for industry-specific purposes but their functions frequently overlap.

1. Asset Management Software

Used for tracking, accounting, inventory management and scheduling for a wide range of assets, including properties and facilities, equipment and machinery, IT hardware, software tools and apps, infrastructure assets, fleet assets and so on

2. CMMS Software

Computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) are used to plan and schedule preventative and predictive maintenance as well as streamline reactive maintenance, especially for bespoke infrastructure and fleet operations.

3. Enterprise Asset Management Software

Enterprise asset management (EAM) software applications cover more aspects than maintenance schedules to maximise worker efficiency and minimise costs with features such as labour and materials management, access on mobile devices and work order management.

4. IT Asset Management Software

Software tools and apps in house and in the cloud to manage employee and IT department hardware.

5. Asset Tracking Software

Tracking the location and status of assets as well as information on who’s using them. Ideal for operations where assets are being moved about inside premises or in and out of premises.

survival of the fittest

The future success of field service management operations in 21st-century industries will be defined by how well they adapt to market demands. Only the fittest will survive by choosing the right tools to avoid becoming fossilised in a bygone era.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Connect with Craig Greenhalgh and Comparesoft on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/comparesoft
• Find out more about Comparesoft @ www.comparesoft.com
• Follow Comparesoft on Twitter @ twitter.com/comparesoft

 

In a new series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant we uncover how field service organisations and their workforce (really) measure up, and provide an analysis of how to use hidden KPI data to cut service costs and improve delivery...

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Want to know more? Field Service News Subscribers can access a White Paper on this topic on the link below.

If you have yet to subscribe click the button below to join 30K of your field service management professional peers and subscribe now to access this content and our entire premium content library now!

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WHAT KPI MEASUREMENT DOES AND DOESN'T TELL US

Post COVID-19 customers are looking for their equipment service providers to minimize their risks by deploying a touchless, or low touch, field service system.  Fortunately, a change like this can be quickly implemented and if you price and market them properly, you will likely enjoy higher revenue, profit, and customer satisfaction.  Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, makes his debut as a Field Service News associate columnist with an extensive look into the subject.  

I just finished participating in an IFS webinar titled “How COVID-19 Has Permanently Changed The Future Of Field Service” featuring Tom Paquin.  There was a great message on one of Tom’s early slides . 

It read: 

Yesterday: Your empowered customers demanded that you service them  

Today: Your empowered custoemrs are looking for the tools to serve themselves.  

I believe the message in Tom’s this slide is spot on and correctly describes the pre- and post- COVID challenges that Service Executives are and will be facing for years to come.

In this article we will look at the following:

• The high-level role of the service organization 
• The customer’s new challenge 
• Touchless support - how service delivery will change 
• How service marketing should respond to these changes 
• The impact of the new model on service revenue 

THE HIGH-LEVEL ROLE OF THE SERVICE ORGANIZATION

Think about why people buy a product or service. It's not because the product or service is cheap, looks cool, or they know someone who has one and loves it. No, they buy a product or service because they want the benefits they will get from using it. These are their desired business outcomes and what the customer value creation experts call “value from use.” 

Now, why do they buy from you instead of from someone else?  Easy.  They buy from you because you deliver the greatest value when compared to all other alternatives.  And value is defined in two ways: 

• The difference between what they get and what they pay, measured in money ($, €. £, or ¥). 
• Their internal quantification of intangible benefits like great service, peace of mind, and ego boosting. 

What is the role of customer or field service in this discussion?  Service’s role is to allow the buyer to continue to generate desired business outcomes plus the intangible benefits after they pay for the product and continue to use it during the complete product lifecycle. When service does this well, the customer will not change suppliers, will repurchase when they again have a need, and will buy add-ons that create additional incremental value. 

No matter how your service delivers on these outcomes, the end results must meet the customer’s expectation at the time of purchase. 

THE customer's new challenge

In March 2020, OEM’s services businesses starting hearing lots of new pushback:

• From the end user customers they heard “My XXX is down and I need to fix it but we cannot bring any outsiders into our facility”

• From customer Purchasing people they heard “WTF - Your travel costs are over the top plus you can’t get here for 3 days”

• From your company’s best salesperson they heard “Our key customer needs to find a way to service our products remotely and you have not come up with anything useful…”

• And from their service technicians they heard “I can’t go to that customer.  I hear they had 20 COVID-19 infections just this week and I have a sick grandparent that lives in my house.” 

Yes, customers are demanding a new way to service their equipment, and this will probably be the new normal when we come out of this current pandemic.

TOUCHLESS SUPPORT - HOW SERVICE DELIVERY WILL CHANGE

Almost all end users are looking for what the media calls “touchless support.”  This means no outsider must come into their facility to diagnose and repair any of their products.  And that is not such a strange concept considering the risk of bringing an outsider into what the customers believe is a controlled environment.  Also, these days everyone is risk adverse and is looking for ways to mitigate all future risks, no matter how unlikely they are.  However, please note that the end-users are fully aware that this kind of support has a price and they are prepared to pay a fair price if their value delivered exceeds their costs.

This means that customers want a form of enhanced self-service for break/fix service and possibly external help for scheduled events like preventative maintenance and upgrades.  Here is a quote from an August 2020 McKinsey and Company article From defense to offense: Digital B2B services in the next normal: 

Now let’s briefly look at each of the tools and technologies listed above. 

Simple knowledge base (FAQs)

Every product focused website should have at least these three types of separate FAQs for current customers:

• How do I work with the OEM? – This list covers subjects like reaching scheduling an installation, technical support, getting and RMA number, finding out the latest software and firmware versions, upgrading software and firmware, location of service centers, buying consumables and spare parts (with a link to your ecommerce site), and warranty terms. 
• For each product, answer the basic and medium complexity how do I…questions. In addition to answering questions, this section should contain links to manuals, training videos, checklists and other documents that can be downloaded, and parts lists and drawings. 
• For each product or application, answer questions about available service contracts with a chat feature or a link to service sales.

These simple knowledge bases have been around for many years and yet many businesses do not even have the most basic type of FAQ’s -the how do I work with the OEM? page.

Merged reality virtual assistance

Merged reality is the simplest digital application imaginable, which is why it so popular these days.  I know of one supplier that helped an OEM purchase and deploy a merged reality application for over 1000 field engineers in six days with no capital expenditure other than making sure these engineers have either a smartphone or a tablet.

In its simplest form, the field engineer and the tech support person each use their smartphone or tablet to stream a video image to the app.  The app them merges them together and send it back to both parties.  The field engineer’s video stream shows a view of the product being worked on and the support person shows either a finger, a tool, a meter, or something like that.  The support person places his finger to point at something he wants the field engineer to work on, which they both see.  And they also talk to each other while this is going on.  For example, the field engineer can transmit a picture of a control panel and the support can point to an adjustment knob and say, “turn this knob about ¼ turn clockwise.  There is no ambiguity about which knob to turn.

Another notable feature is that the whole session can be recorded and linked to the appropriate work order.  This is important since the videos can also be uploaded to either a YouTube channel or to a robust searchable knowledge base so other technicians or customer’s maintenance technicians can easily visualize the troubleshooting and repair process.

Of course, these applications have many other equally simple features. To learn more, I recommend that you look at either Help Lightning or Sightcall.  They have both made a major impact on field service delivery.

Remote computer support

Remote computer support has also been around for ages and once set up, it is as easy to use as merged reality virtual assistance.  Using something like LogMeIn Rescue, the support engineer can take over control of the client computer, run diagnostics, direct the computer operator to perform specific keystrokes and see what happens.  This makes troubleshooting desktop problem easy to handle remotely.

Other solutions come bundled into the computer itself.  For example, Google Chrome and Windows have remote control included while Apple technical support people can access Apple computers with the user only granting access during a support call.

Robust, and growing, multi-media knowledge base

For most products, it would be extremely difficult to store and list all troubleshooting and repair videos.  Just think about how difficult it would be to describe a problem the way a customer would.  That is why good knowledge bases are built with an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to instantly search a multimedia data base indexed with tabs and that works like Google search.  Yet that is what is needed when a qualified end user technician is trying to repair a system that has an intermittent fault she has never seen before.

This is why I said that the stored videos from a merged reality virtual assistance session can be so useful.  While these videos should be edited to eliminate standby time, repetitions, and side conversations, it is especially useful to go through all the trial and error troubleshooting since the same symptoms may have different causes and the more thorough the video, the more likely it will be that the system gets repair quickly. 

AnswerAnywhere is a database designed to be used by field technicians and appears to offer many of the capabilities I described above.  It is worth looking into as you start building out your robust service knowledge base.

Embedded diagnostics, Remote diagnostics, and Internet of things (IoT)

These are three variations of the basic data collection and transmission scenario.

Embedded diagnostics is used when the product has an onboard processor, sensors, and data transmission capabilities.  The embedded diagnostics look at information available inside the product and determine if it is working properly or has a fault.  We are all familiar with this from our cars.  When the air pressure inside our tire goes below a preset limit, the car displays an icon of a tire and a message.  When we travel more than a set limit without changing our engine oil (assuming we drive a car with an internal combustion engine), we get a “change oil” message.

In the mid-1980’s, I was the VP of Service for a data communications company.  Our product was nearly completely redundant, and our internal computer monitored the status of each module.  When any module sent an error message to the internal computer, it compared both like modules and if they differed by more than a set amount, it compared each module to the expected output.  When it determined which of the pair had faulted, it took that module off-line and notified the user.

Remote diagnostics is like embedded diagnostics only in reverse.  A remote computer interrogates sensors, on-board memory, and a devices control system to determine if the system is working properly. The advantage of remote diagnostics is that the computer is generally more powerful that the computer in the machine.  This means there is a good chance it can track accurately sensor outputs and detect any subtle changes.  The computer can also have AI software and perform machine learning (ML) so it can identify when a true failure is likely to occur.  It also may be able to determine the likely fix and so it can schedule a repair at an off-shift time when there is no substantial cost of downtime.

The diagnostics I just described are not easy to create and program and therefore are expensive.  But in the right circumstances, they can me unbelievably valuable.  Consider the case of the jet engines that power an Airbus A350 or a Boeing 787.  On a transatlantic flight, each engine can produce about 1Terabyte of data.  The data can be transmitted in real time to a central location when the software looks for anomalies and, when it finds one, can notify the repair people at the destination so the repair can be made (sometimes) in the turnaround period.  Not having a mid-flight engine failure can be priceless!

Internet of Things is like the remote diagnostics that I just described except that the IoT computer can easily import data from any other device or website to make a more robust calculation then just looking at one product.  In the jet engine example, an IoT system can also import weather data, flight parameters, airplane weight and balance data, and data from all the engines on the same route with all their related data and come up with a strong recommendation about what to fix and when.

Today’s technology for identifying equipment problems and solutions is getting both incredibly power and seriously expensive.  But, for the right product and use case, these software systems can save lives, lots of money, and jobs.

HOW SERVICE MARKETING SHOULD RESPONDE TO THESE CHANGES

Each of the technologies has a unique cost/benefits equation. That means that each implementation has a unique value proposition and should have a unique cost.  And when you combine multiple solutions the customer value can increase dramatically. This is where service marketing comes into play.  They should be charged with answering the following questions:

• How should our latest offers be structured? 
• What should we charge for each offer? 
• What happens went we replace a free offer (e.g., telephone support) with a higher value offer (telephone support + virtual assistant)?  Do we remove the free telephone support or charge for all non-warranty calls? 

• How do we sell the offers? 
• How do we get product sales on-board?  
• How do we train all out International channel partners? Do we charge them for supporting the customers? 
• What metrics do we want to use to evaluate our decisions?

This is when you will be glad you have a service marketing professional to help solve all these non-technical challenges.

THE IMPACT OF THE NEW MODEL ON SERVICE REVENUE

Of course, we all want to know how using these tools and technologies will impact our revenue and profit.  The simple answer is “It all depends.”  It depends on:

• What services you currently sell and which you do at no charge. 
• What services your customers are willing to pay for and you do not currently offer. 
• How much business you are losing or how much money you are earning because your field engineers must travel from a great and expensive distance. 
• How much growth the product side of your business will enjoy because you were able to best satisfy the needs of prospects. 

• How many contract truck rolls you can avoid while fixing a problem in a shorter time then when you dispatch a service technician.

Overall all, if you implement only the first three items on the list (simple knowledge base, merged reality virtual assistance, and remote computer support) and price and market them creatively, you will generate higher revenue, profit, and customer satisfaction.  Not a bad set of outcomes from investing in satisfying your customer’s desires for a touchless, or low touch, field service system.<

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Connect to Sam Klaidman @ www.linkedin.com/samklaidman
• Find out more about Middlesex Consulting @ www.middlesexconsulting.com
• Read more from Sam Klaidman @ middlesexconsulting.com/blog

 

Sarah Nicastro, IFS, reflect’s on the recently published Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management and the positive trends it shows for our industry...

The Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management is a highly-anticipated piece of research each year, both for the vendors hoping they’ve achieved a prominent placement and for those in the industry who rely on the Magic Quadrant to help steer their technology investments for the upcoming year(s).

As I read through the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, I was impressed by the progress the report illustrated not only as it relates to the technology provided by the vendors evaluated but by the statistics that painted a picture of significant progress by service organisations.

I’ve been interviewing service leaders from businesses across a wide variety of industries for more than twelve years. What has been clear to me over the past few years is the seismic shift taking place as service becomes a strategic differentiator for businesses in almost every industry. My personal collection of conversation after conversation reveals immense progress is reflected in some of the research shared in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management.  

OUTCOMES-BASED SERVICE TAKES HOLD

In Gartner’s strategic planning assumptions, shared at the beginning of the report, Gartner states that, “By 2025, over 50% of equipment manufacturers will offer outcomes-based service contracts that rely on access to digital twin data, up from less than 20% in 2019.”  

In a later section of the report that shares survey results from 84 customers of 14 vendors evaluated, Gartner reveals that, “One third of respondents are already using this model, up from 19%, and 34% intend to offer this model within the next 12 to 24 months.” We know that Servitization and outcomes-based service are the future – but we also know they are not easy evolutions and take time.  

SOFTWARE USE ADVANCES TO MEET SERVICE NEEDS

As service organisations continue on the path to outcomes-based service, more advanced technologies must enable the delivery of those outcomes. The software vendors featured on the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management have evolved quite a bit over the last couple with some of the solutions becoming simultaneously more sophisticated and simpler to use.  

Gartner shares two other strategic planning assumptions that reflect more advanced technology demands. First, “By 2025, 50% of field service management deployments will include mobile augmented reality collaboration and knowledge sharing tools – up from less than 10% in 2019.” We’ve seen even more enthusiastic adoption of AR since COVID-19 struck and I wouldn’t be surprised if the number in 2025 is even higher than 50%.  

In the survey of 84 customers from the 14 vendors, 64% of respondents are using or plan to use knowledge management within 12 months. Both AR and knowledge management hold great potential in a number of critical areas for field service organisations: improving customer experience, increasing productivity, more efficient training, and the prevention of loss of uncaptured knowledge as older workers retire.  

Gartner also shared that “algorithms and bots will schedule over two-thirds of field service work for field service providers dependent on automated schedule optimisation, up from less than 25% in 2019.” In the survey results, Gartner revealed that “Sixty-three percent of the respondents (up from 39%) indicated that they were already offering their customers a means to self-serve.”  

Moreover, the report states that “In 2017, Gartner predicted that, by 2020, 10% of emergency field service work would be both triaged and scheduled by AI, up from less than 1% in 2017. Of the surveyed reference customers this year, 23% indicated that they already schedule some work automatically.” Respondents also stated that “the overall average number of technicians handled by each dispatcher was 47, compared with the 21 reported by respondents to the survey conducted for the 2019 Magic Quadrant.”  

We see here an interest and readiness from field service organisations to leverage more advanced tools, which I believe stems from a recognition that doing so is essential in order to remain competitive and successful.  

It’s also interesting to keep in mind that much of the work for this report was completed prior to the real impact of COVID-19. While the challenges of the pandemic are vast, I do also believe that once we’ve recovered, we will see an acceleration of innovation among field service organisations because navigating the challenges has resulted in more openness to change, increased agility, and greater recognition of the importance of technology.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Gartner’s Benchmarking Work in the Field Service Sector @ www.gartner.com/field-service-management
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Connect with Sarah Nicastro @ www.linkedin.com/sarahhowland/
• Read more exclusive Field Service News articles from Sarah Nicastro @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sarah-nicastro
• Find out more about the services IFS offer to field service organisations @ https://www.ifs.com/uk/solutions/service-management/
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/IFSUK

Dave Hart is a hugely respected and incredibly well-known figure in the global field service community, in his debut article for Field Service News he offers an excellent moment of reflection field service managers would be wise to consider... 

Not being an avid blogger, I did what my two kids say to me with every question I pose to them these days. ‘Hey kids my internet is down any ideas?’ ‘Google it’ comes the reply. ‘Hey kids how do you change the background colour on a PowerPoint slide?’ ‘Err have you Googled it’ comes the now all too often response.

Ahh the joys of the internet and thinking for oneself, anyway back to my blogging prowess (or lack of it). I googled ‘how to make a blog interesting’ and one suggestion was put a picture of a supercar on your blog as that will draw the attention of men, but also women. Really, who could have guessed that?

Siri is not much better, ask Siri ‘what’s the height of the Eiffel tower’ and it will respond 324 metres to the top. Ask it a more open question such as ‘why is there social unrest in Belarus’ and you get the stock answer ‘OK, here are some websites you may find useful’. Really, I might find useful??

Thus my point here, information is literally everywhere, yet its nowhere. Searching for information can take you hours and get you nowhere.

Knowing what information is trustworthy is an art form and in life it could be argued that the more experience you have the more valuable that experience would become to any potential employer. A recent HBR article suggested that by 2025 a quarter of all employees in the US and UK would be over 55 years old and this demographic is the fastest growing in almost every country. 25% of all your employees over 55 with a wealth of experience that are contributing in ways we have little understanding of, as more often than not as they get older, we honour tradition by buying them a gold clock and wish them on their way to a long and happy retirement.

 

INFORMATION IS LITERALLY EVERYWHERE, YET IT'S NOWHERE

After I finished college, I worked in a TV repair shop (yes in the days where TV’s were repaired and not thrown away) and a customer brought in a TV he had for 12 years. It was a Sony portable that was quite expensive when he bought it, when he returned it to the shop, he had bought it from for repair, they had kept the TV for 2 weeks and told him it was irreparable. As a last resort he had brought it into our little TV repair shop. Jim (who ran the shop) had 40 years electronics experience asked him to wait, walked into the back of the shop and started to troubleshoot the issue; it was magical watching him. He instinctively knew where to look and within 10 minutes he had soldered a new transistor into the circuit board and the TV sprung into life. He turned to me and said, “now do I charge for the 10 minutes it took me to repair this TV or should I charge for the 40 that allowed me to fix it in 10 minutes.” That day has stuck in my memory as if it were yesterday - It was nearly 40 years ago.

In the field service industry these trends are increasingly worrying as we watch valuable resources with 30,40 years of experience with skills in abundance leave companies and with it their abundance of knowledge just walking out of the door with them.

I suggest four approaches:

1. Ask them to consider a part time role working from home and ask them to work the triage desk or indeed on technical support. This flexible approach means they can still keep their grey matter working, they can help customers and other engineers (which all engineers love to do)
2. Offer part time mentoring roles where older employees can take new engineers and show them the ropes thus increasing the rate of their learning curve exponentially
3. Consider a learning enablement platform where you can capture their experience in blogs, videos, articles and sketches so you capture all that goodness in one place. Searchable content that’s enriched with real life ‘how ’ can be a much richer experience than just knowledge articles.
4. Try and convince them that the next President of the United States will either be 74 or 77 years old and they are still working, why don’t they consider staying (not sure this will be a compelling argument but hey you have to try right?)

A few years ago, Mark Zuckerberg stated that ‘younger people are smarter’ but the science shows that this is just not the case. For most people, raw mental horsepower declines after the age of 30, but knowledge and expertise — the main predictors of job performance — keep increasing even beyond the age of 80.

Employers will do well to remember that fact and act now to save all of that experience goodness whilst they still can…

(PS if you read this far, the picture of the supercar worked!)

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Connect to Dave Hart @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-hart-049009b
• Read more exclusive Field Service News articles from Dave Hart @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/dave-hart
• Find out more about Field Service Associates @ https://fieldserviceassociates.com/
• Follow Dave Hart on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/DaveHartProfit

 

In the previous feature in this series of excerpts from an exclusive Field Service News White Paper, sponsored by Salesforce, we looked at the pros and cons of remote service delivery for the customer. Now in the final feature in the series we look at the pros and cons of remote service delivery for the field service organisation... 

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Want to know more? Field Service News Subscribers can access a White Paper on this topic on the link below.

If you have yet to subscribe click the button below to join 30K of your field service management professional peers and subscribe now to access this content and our entire premium content library now!

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Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content Salesforce who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this white paper, as per the terms and conditions of your subscription agreement which you opted into in line with GDPR regulations and is an ongoing condition of subscription.

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Understanding Good and Bad of Remote Service Delivery for Field Service Companies

Having looked at the considerations from the customers perspective, now let us take a look at the pros and cons from the position of the service provider...

 

Pro#1: Reducing the Cost of Service Delivery

Ultimately the most significant benefit for the service provider when it comes to delivering service remotely is that it reduces the single biggest cost line on a service P&L – the truck roll. Not only is there the expense of getting the service engineer to site, including man-hours, fuel and vehicle maintenance costs etc., but the sheer amount of ‘windscreen time’ each engineer spends significantly impacts one of the most critical KPIs that field service organisations measure – engineer utilisation.

The cost of on-site service delivery vs remote service delivery is quite simply astronomical. By adopting a remote-first approach to service delivery, the service organisation can instantly improve profit margins, while potentially offering a faster and more efficient service to the customer.

 

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Pro#2: Greater Geographical Coverage

Additionally, the adoption of remote services can allow the field service engineer to cover an infinite geographical spread essentially. Compare this to the average range of a field service engineer which, dependent on location, is usually viewed as a couple of hundred miles. In this respect, remote service delivery can offer a major benefit to the field service organisation.

Not only does it mean that there is greater flexibility in arranging and scheduling work calls as the restrictions of geographical regions are primarily removed, it can also potentially allow for further expansion of a service offering into an area that was previously physically impossible to access.

 

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Con#1: The Loss of Meaningful Interaction with the Customer:

As we touched on above when reviewing the pros and cons of remote service delivery for the customer, where there is a distinct advantage for the customer to have a trusted advisor on site, this is very much a two-way street. 

The on-site engineer is the ambassador of your business, and this is something that should not be overlooked. In an era of increasing digital touchpoints, the service engineer’s on-site visit is one of few, indeed potentially the only face to face interaction that your organisation may have with your customer. Statistically, we are, on average, 70% more likely to buy from someone we have met, and this is down to a matter of trust.

Having a real, physical presence when interacting with your customer is overwhelmingly more likely to lead to a more established, trust-based relationships than it will have a negative impact.

This is a massive aspect to be considered before adopting a remote-first approach.

 

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Con#2: The Loss of the Eyes and Ears of the Engineer On Site

For the service provider, often it is said that the service engineer is the best salesperson within a company. Not only do they have the highly valued, but equally hard to achieve trusted advisor status within the eyes of the customer, but they can act as the eyes and ears of the sales department as well.

An engineer on-site may be able to notice competitor assets that are near the end of their lifecycle, or that your service organisation has also incorporated into your service offering, providing an opportunity for cross-selling of a new service contract.

When we couple subject matter level expertise, a trust-based relationship with the customer and the ability to see what opportunities for upselling or cross-selling are available for the engineer, this can prove to be a potentially potent mix when it comes to seeking out further revenue opportunities.

 

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Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we explore the Pros and Cons of remote service delivery for the Field Service Provider...

Don't want to wait?  www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below. If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

 

 

 

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Further Reading:

• Read the initial news report about the announcement of the latest iteration of Salesforce Field Service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/salesforce-announce-the-next-generation-of-field-service-ai-powered-tools-for-trusted-mission-critical-field-service
• Read more about digital transformation in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services
• Read more about the impact of COVID-19 on the field service sector @ www.fieldservicenews.com/en-gb/covid-19
• Read previous articles by Paul Whitelam @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/paul-whitelam
• Find out more about Salesforce Field Service @ www.salesforce.com/uk/products/service-cloud/field-service-lightning/
• Connect with Paul on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/paulwhitelam/
• Follow Salesforce on Twitter @ twitter.com/salesforce

In a new series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant we uncover how field service organisations and their workforce (really) measure up, and provide an analysis of how to use hidden KPI data to cut service costs and improve delivery...

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Want to know more? Field Service News Subscribers can access a White Paper on this topic on the link below.

If you have yet to subscribe click the button below to join 30K of your field service management professional peers and subscribe now to access this content and our entire premium content library now!

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Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content Aquant who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this white paper, as per the terms and conditions of your subscription agreement which you opted into in line with GDPR regulations and is an ongoing condition of subscription.

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AQUANT BENCHMARK REPORT

Why Service Leaders Need To Think About Standards KPIs In New Ways:

Key Findings:

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Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we explore three more key technologies required for remote service delivery.

However, www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below. If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

 

 

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Aquant on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/aquant
• Find out more about Aquant @ www.aquant.io
• Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io