In the Big Discussion we bring together a panel of industry experts and focus on one key topic within the field service sector.
In the first of a new four part series, we turn our attention to dynamic scheduling where our panel includes FieldAware's Mark Tatarsky and Fast Lean Smart's Chris Welsh...

Given the increasing challenges of last-mile service delivery, how crucial is optimised scheduling for field service excellence?

Marc Tatarsky, SVP Marketing, FieldAware
As markets become hyper-competitive, service delivery has become a key differentiator in winning and retaining customers.
Delivering consistent, high-quality service in the last mile is essential. New sources of competition are entering from different verticals, and service organisations are required to support a broader range of products, service offerings, and customers across both metropolitan and rural regions.

These increasing competitive pressures have service organizations turning to optimized scheduling to improve the delivery of their service commitments. Optimized scheduling now encapsulates the workflows, decision-making processes, and the criteria service providers use to execute on the customer journey and create genuine differentiation consistently.  

Key to this approach is new generation optimisation engines. These modern optimisation tools provide the ability to configure “micro scheduling.” These new tools enable providers to uniquely configure optimisation capabilities to support different team sizes, multiple product lines, as well as regional and seasonality needs.

This approach of building business policies that reflect optimisation needs at an atomic level provides the basis for rapid time to value. Micro scheduling not only facilitates efficient execution of the initial implementation, but it also helps with the introduction of new service lines, products, and regions. It enables service providers to react to and create a competitive advantage based on changes in the market and seasonal demands.

Chris Welsh, Director, FLS – FAST LEAN SMART
Last mile service delivery has always relied on good scheduling for field service excellence. With increasing pressure to achieve more with less and time-window/SLA expectations shortening, it is harder than ever to achieve this well without a schedule optimiser.

The best scheduling technology will not only plan accurately but also have ability to dynamically react in real-time to the progress of travel and work changes on the day. Engineer job allocation will re-optimise automatically to ensure priorities, including emergency jobs, are best met within available resources, highlighting SLA’s or appointments that will be missed so a Planner can override by exception.

This dynamic operation does not suit all service businesses and the technology is flexible. For example, many appointment based companies want the schedule finalised and ‘fixed’ for engineers the night before.

In this case the system will display real-time progress and give accurate prediction of when appointment windows will not be met or the engineer late home. By exception, the company may then decide to reassign using system recommendations.

The further importance for optimised scheduling is the ability to provide auto notification of arrival times and Uber-style tracking the engineer’s arrival by the customer on their phone. FLS were ahead when we launched this with FLS Portal last year and the function is increasingly an expectation for field service. 

The second part of the big discussion will be published next week, when the panel are asked if optimised scheduling should be an accepted part of a wider FSM platform.

Well-implemented ‘customer first’ strategies open the door for fresh thinking, but are our teams change-ready? Do we ourselves ‘walk the talk’ in building a professional network that connects us with the latest developments in other sectors or markets? In a new strategic series, Paul Smedley looks at practical examples of successful change in all kinds of service operations.

Every service operation is challenged by digital servitisation. This includes the digital disruption of whole markets, with fierce competition and cost challenges. It requires rising to the challenges of changing customer expectations and the rapid pace of technology change. It means breaking down siloes within our organisations, between sales and operations for instance, as well as beyond, to our supply chain, distributors, outsourced services and other partnerships.

 

But are we too focussed on what we do and too little aware of trends or technologies that  are not  even on business radar? What should our priorities be in learning how to rise to these new challenges? Look  at it this way: will your organisation ever be in the fast lane if you are re-inventing the wheel because your team is not connected and up-to-date?
In this new series on strategy for Field Service News, I will look at a number of practical examples of how ‘customer first’ approaches bring fresh thinking, giving a reason for everyone to look at business decision making from the outside in. We will see the importance of picking up ideas and approaches from other sectors and from an effective professional network, using these experiences to help engage our own people in making the necessary changes happen in a connected way.

Customer First

The first step is putting service at the heart of our business decisions, in ways that get colleagues working together across the business. Award-wining work at British Engineering Services, for instance, has helped double sales and raise month-end service by 50 per cent.
Effective resource planning means they stand out from competitors on service reliability. What’s more, this information is used by sales and pricing; client-specific requirements can be incorporated with a clear view of costs and risks.

More broadly, many businesses now recognise the value that arises when service people become ‘trusted advisors’ and business joins together around a shared, overarching customer metric. As the Harvard Business Review reported, customers who receive the highest standards of service spend 140 per cent more than those with the poorest service. In business-to-business a  5 per cent uplift in customer retention will typically see profit increase of two to 95 per cent.

DIGITAL DISRUPTION

 

This illustrates why digital servitisation is transforming how manufacturers think and compete. An organisation that is truly focussed on service stands  out from the crowd in any market. Yet, the digital dimension of service growth requires purposeful and co-ordinated effort. This starts when we invest time   in understanding the winds of ‘unstoppable change’ and the factors that drive them.

 

What are the key trends and the latest ideas to watch out for? At a recent networking event for our members hosted by The Times in London, Chris Duncan, the media company's managing director explained that people came to visit them from every sector, because everyone is facing massive disruption and the media industry were early to experience this. In this 225-year-old newspaper, the  first ‘paying customer’ came in 2010, with the ‘paywall’ for digital subscribers. How many other organisations have traditionally worked only through distributors or seen the ‘aftermarket’ as a cost function, not value adding.

 

Data visibility and automation

Joined-up data means we can literally see issues and change business decision-making processes. We can understand the costs of providing a certain type or level of service or ‘downstream consequences’. What if we don’t have the right skill or equipment because our data is out of date? Or if we don’t identify issues that could cause future problems?

 

More than that, good use of technology can now increasingly automate routine, high-volume tasks – including joining up legacy systems or tracking workflow. Award-wining work at ADT Fire & Security  shows  demonstrates how making data on engineers’ worktime easy to access gave instant visibility.

 

The busy summer period was seen to be due to supply (many people off at the same time) rather than demand. It revealed individual’s utilisation and effective performance management started to build a culture in which everyone rose to the productivity challenge. Another powerful example is the growing use of mobile video to allow specialist support for engineers on the ground at the ‘moment of truth’.

culture: this is about people

These examples show how much change impact people, especially a mobile workforce used to being ‘on their own’. How many approaches have failed, because we haven’t engaged ‘hearts & minds’? One factor that is common to every member’s successful service transformation is this capacity to see the human angle – to understand ‘where numbers meet people’.

 

People need to feel they can still make personal judgements, but equally to see when it is better to be consistent or co-ordinated and to value    the support of others. Big productivity savings are common early in a transformation journey, but the real long-term win is engaging people. This translates into tangible benefits for colleagues, customers and the business: more time with customers (not on the road), turning up at a convenient time (when expected), fixing a bunch of issues (in a way that ensures the customer’s equipped stays fixed).

Invest in resource planning.

Crucially, field service companies will only stay in business if they deliver what the customer wants, when and how they want it. Well implemented mobile workforce management’ is  a key step and we’ve seen that successful implementations at members like Anglian Water and OpenReach have been achieved by directly involving  engineers in the change. 

Surprisingly perhaps, effective planning often means fewer people allocating jobs, but better long-term planning. There are some key steps here: create a capacity plan, understand the impact on everybody. In future articles I will share some vital pointers in this area and highlight pitfalls to avoid.build a ‘playbook’ to manage the impact of changes.

A joined-up vision

This takes us back to where we started. If the customer is truly at the heart   of everything you do, very soon no stone will be left unturned in the search for better solutions, technologies and operating models. More than that, our people will get it!

 

Twenty years ago, I founded professional networks and benchmarking for call centres, at a time of rapid transformation. Today, our members are looking at field service, branch operations and the back office, as well as the front office. They are taking learning from one area to apply in another. As people say: “there’s a whole technology or movement that is never flagged up in my business”, “we all face the same challenges” “there’s so much to learn”. I have found that success begins with the attitude we take ourselves. Do we ‘walk  the talk’ and get connected personally to look from the outside in?

 

Paul Smedley leads a best practice network for professionals in service operations across Europe – the Professional Planning Forum, established in Mach 2000. More information about the network can be found here. 

In today’s connected world everything from phones to fridges have become smart. In service logistics we are now seeing the smart locker coming to prominence. But how exactly do they work and what benefits do they bring to field service? Claudine Mosseri, General Manager, ByBox brings us up to speed...

We live in a time of smart everything, any one of us uses a number of smart devices daily. Chances are you own a smart phone or smart TV; maybe you have a smart watch, meter or even a smart home. Smart has become a ubiquitous word in the modern age, so it should come as no surprise that lockers have now received the ‘smart’ treatment. Having provided a field service distribution network based on locker tech for over 20 years, we consider ourselves experts on the matter. As technology has adapted, so have we and so have our lockers; now truly smart and app-based for a fully connected field service supply chain.

What makes something smart? Simply put, it’s the making of a device or object interactive with other connected devices or objects; enabling them to talk back to us and/or each other. Making otherwise inanimate things smart! For example, a house is just bricks and mortar but add an interactive camera, heating control from your phone, a home hub and so on, and then your house becomes ‘smart’. Now let’s consider what makes a big grey locker smart. Give it the right tech to interact with other systems via the cloud, enhanced Bluetooth rollingcode encryption, battery maintenance censors and mobile phone apps to obtain detailed transactions and it too becomes ‘smart’!

Here are a few areas that we believe give a Smart Locker its credentials…

Access control is key!

By their very nature all lockers need some sort of system to secure the goods inside. Often this will be a physical key or keypad. We too have used these methods to provide access to lockers. However, both key and keypads come with security and audit trail issues, as well as lacking closed-loop visibility of part movements. How many times have you or someone you know lost the keys to the house or car, even if it’s for a frantic half an hour while you search? Well, imagine managing a large volume of keys to an entire network or trusting your engineers – full-time or contracted – with their own set. And, what if they call in sick and access needs to be granted elsewhere?

Also, if an engineer is dismissed obtaining the key can prove difficult and slow down productivity. Furthermore, key entry lacks the true ability to run audit trails. In the same vain, pin codes for keypad entry systems carry very similar pain points. They are difficult to manage access control across your network, revoking access can be challenging and they lack audit trails as well as various security measures. Doing away with keys and pin codes, our cutting edge Smart Lockers favour secure Bluetooth access via an app; equipped with enhanced Bluetooth rolling-code encryption to ensure robust locker security.

"Smart Lockers offer the ability to scan items in and out using a mobile app that updates the operating platform in real-time..."

Our Thinventory^TM operating platform controls which engineers can access what doors; by using the app an engineer is given access to the right door. What’s more, when the part is delivered the engineer receives a message that it’s ready for collection, saving time and money. All this data is stored in the cloud, so customers know exactly what has been accessed and when.

Obtain end-to-end visibility

Never over order stock again due to a lack of visibility. Smart Lockers offer the ability to scan items in and out using a mobile app that updates the operating platform in real-time, giving you full access to what’s going on in your supply chain. In ByBox’s case the opening of the locker and the scanning of parts in and out is tied together, so it’s harder for mistakes to be made. With returns also made back into the locker, your engineer can select its condition – good, bad, repair, warranty – enabling you to speed up your returns process and better manage inventory. If stock isn’t returned, you can easily track where it is.

Smartly power up

A Smart Locker can’t be smart if it’s down and batteries play a fundamental part in keeping all this smart tech working! Using sensors to constantly monitor the performance of a battery and highlight any blips, means that the main ‘potential’ point of failure doesn’t become one as alerts are sent back to the operating system. So, while you may own a smart watch or smart TV, you can now own a smart field service locker network that gives you better functionality, process improvements and usable data.

Want to see our Smart Lockers in action? Email Marketing@ByBox.com and we’ll arrange a demo.

 

Laryssa Alexander, President of ECI's Field and IT Service Division explores how field service should be automating for success.

Managing customer relationships is critical to driving growth and securing repeat business for field service organisations. CFOs are making critical financial and risk management decisions based on data secured through manual processes which result in inaccurate reporting. This lack of information or equipment knowledge can lead to poor decision-making and can often result in selling contracts that are either over-priced in order to cover unknown costs resulting in a less than favourable position against competition; or under-priced which may help you win the business but is not profitable nor sustainable.

The Value of Data

Do you know how much data your business has at its fingertips? IDC (International Data Corporation) predicts that the collective sum of the world’s data will grow from 33 zettabytes (ZB) this year to a 174 ZB by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 61 percent. Amassing a huge amount of data is worthless if you don’t know what to do with it.  A complete business management solution enables you to have more insight to make smarter, data-driven decisions. In fact, that is exactly how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution is defined. In reality, it is so much more than that; it’s a solution that can dramatically simplify and streamline your operations so you can focus on your core business activities.  

Automating Contract Management

Service contracts are at the core of your business and right now, without a complete business management solution you may be using many different solutions, doing everything manually or some combination of the two. This is where automating contact management through an ERP can come in. We have identified 4 steps to improve contract management that can help drive efficiency and profitability:

1. Standardise your contract process

The solution is to eliminate the paper trail and consolidate systems into a single ERP. This will help you prevent bottlenecks by creating standard contracts with automated approvals, renewals, and billing that can be deployed to any number of customers. Data that is entered once flows through the system and is dispersed to the various teams and departments for accuracy, optimised workflow, and increased productivity.  Standardising the contract management process will result in 4 major benefits: stronger contracts, compliance and control, fast approvals and valuable business insight.

2. Provide a variety of service maintenance contract options

Once you have standardised your contract management process you can then easily allow for the inevitable variables that are unique to each customer and create more customised service contracts and options that ultimately are still profitable and fit within your desired business objectives. In most cases your customers will have complete service, support, and maintenance packages which you can easily monitor, manage, and maintain using automatic notifications and reporting. If, however they still want the option of hourly or per-service solutions you will be able to easily add them and let the system do the work so you can avoid hours of number crunching.

3. Continually monitor contract and performance

Having standardised service maintenance contracts in place doesn’t mean you can ‘sell it and forget it’ but having a robust business management solution will support every phase of the contract lifecycle from initial quoting to ongoing support and finally renewals. Ensure you enable continuous monitoring, generate regular profitability reporting and automate preventative maintenance calls at each of these stages. Additionally, at the equipment level within each service agreement you should be able to track serialised equipment on job sites, understand profitability by model or system and ensure your field technicians are fully optimising their time.

4. Be proactive with contract management

Proactive monitoring with flexible service contract arrangements allows you to protect your business from loss and address customers’ unforeseen needs and concerns as they arise. Automatically launch the renewal process with all the relevant contract performance data, accessible in one system which provides context for any negotiations or adjustments ensuring your team is prepared efficiently and effectively. This way the sales team can proactively re-engage with the customer, ward off potential competitive threats, and ideally increase customer satisfaction in the process.

Increased Visibility

Your teams don’t exist in silos, sales needs to know what service is doing and finance needs insight into both. The same is true for your business management solutions, if you’re running separate systems or working in multiple spreadsheets, you don’t have true insight in your operation. Having one integrated ERP solution means you can be confident in the data. At a glance, you will be able to know how your business is performing and will be able to make quick business decisions that will enable you to fight shrinking margins, beat your competition, and grow your business.

By collecting all data in one central place; increasing visibility and stardising the contract process with continual and automatic monitoring, field service organisations can ensure contracts are and remain profitable with limited manual intervention.

Laryssa Alexander, President of ECI's Field and IT Service Division

Augmented Reality has been widely predicted to become a fundamental aspect within field service delivery in the future. Here Jereme Pitts, COO, Librestream discusses how you can get a lead on your competitors and secure investment in AR for your field service operations today...

According to The Service Council, 70% of service companies stated that within 5-10 years they will face challenges due to the retiring workforce. This fact has created an industry wide need to capture and leverage knowledge, one of the top drivers for augmented reality (AR) technologies. Compounded with this challenge are the increasingly complex assets and operations that service teams face.
After deploying AR technologies, service operations have reported strong outcomes in worker safety, increased uptime, accelerated training, and knowledge retention, employee retention and productivity gains. Over our 15 years of delivering AR solutions, we’ve seen these outcomes across our customer base.
To successfully deploy and adopt AR within an enterprise, it is important to understand which use cases will drive the highest value across your operation. These use cases will determine which form of AR solution you should focus on first. Two of the most popular AR solutions in the industry are remote expert assistance and digital work instructions. Both solutions capture and leverage knowledge and are ready-to-deploy with strong proof points in the industry.
The first solution, remote expert assistance, is the ability to connect with virtual specialists immediately by sharing live video, audio, telestration and augmented content through wearable or smart devices. This solution is making way for just-in-time training, which is the concept of giving workers the tools they need to learn on the job at the scene of an event. With the growing turn-over rate of millennial workers, taking the time and money to train a new technician is a huge investment. Just-in-time training reduces the investment in time and money and instead trains the technician when it’s needed.

"Investing in AR is proving to combat the loss of expertise and growing complexity within the field service industry
The second highest growth AR solution is digital work instructions. Digital work instructions involve transforming paper processes into digital step-bystep workflows - accessible to technicians on their wearable or smart devices. This solution provides enterprises with the opportunity to streamline processes for consistency and better accuracy across their entire operations. Creating actionable data enterprises can use to create smarter and more effective business decisions. Here are examples of benefits and outcomes our industry-leading customers have reported since deploying these two AR solutions:
• 20% accelerated time to resolution and 50% faster support calls
• 33% faster training by mentoring field technicians with live video
• 5-10% reduction in return visits with improved first-time-fix rates
• 70% time saved in total productivity hours of technicians
• Improved worker safety statistics measured by indicators such as fewer miles travelled.
After selecting the highest value use cases and type of AR solution needed, the next step is often creating a successful business case. This step is crucial to gain consensus internally for a successful deployment of the AR solution. Over the years, we’ve worked with our leading customers to compile the main requirements they recommend in building this business case. Here are three important aspects to consider:
1. Name all the important stakeholders who should be involved from the beginning. For example, who are the executive sponsors, key team members, IT and security personnel?
2. Set benchmarks for success. Create a way to measure how well the solution is performing against the ‘old’ ways to help with determining the success of the project.
3. What are your formal KPIs? Make a list of your tangible and intangible benefits and how you will collect that data. These are just a few of the key thing to consider when building a successful business case for AR. To learn more, you can read the ‘Build a Business Case’ chapter in Librestream’s Industry guide on remote expertise.
This guide includes helpful content on the entire process from selecting an AR remote expert vendor to successfully deploying and gaining adoption. 
Investing in AR is proving to combat the loss of expertise and growing complexity within the field service industry. Choosing the right AR tools and creating a strong business case are vital to the success of the deployment. As a part of many companies’ digital transformation strategies, AR is becoming the new industry standard.

Francesco Benvenuto, OverIT gives us his expert insight on AR in field service...

In the Era of Digital Transformation most businesses have begun to be acquainted with the tremendous potential of Augmented Reality (AR). As more enterprise-focused case studies are emerging proving the effectiveness of such technology, today companies are increasingly implementing AR as a strategic part of their technology stack. Enterprises are deploying Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality across a variety of sectors, including maintenance, repair, manufacturing, field service, and training.

Whether converting paper instructions into digital AR workflows or quickly enabling a remote technician to get the expert support needed through an AR-enabled live collaboration call, an AR solution always delivers unprecedented levels of knowledge sharing. AR products lead to improved workforce efficiency and safety, as well as reduced errors and equipment downtime. But with so many possible use cases, how can field service organizations easily get started? Field Service Managers are looking for gaining competitive advantages by deploying AR, MR and VR solutions to improve key service metrics, such as first-time fix rates, average repair time, SLAs compliance, and equipment downtime.

BENEFITS

The value of AR in the workplace is not just claimed, but proven thanks to longitudinal data coming from actual deployments. At OverIT, thanks to the SPACE1 Extended Field Solution, we have seen our customers increase productivity by as much as 43% and decrease their error rates by as much as 30%. Benefits can be seen in terms of:

Knowledge Transfer

Experienced technicians with decades of institutional knowledge are reaching retirement age and many industries are coping with a lack of younger employees.The support of a remote expert through Virtual Collaboration can therefore facilitate and accelerate the process of transferring knowledge and know-how.

Increase in efficiency and productivity

Field Service technicians and engineers frequently need to consult technical documents and manuals. Allowing them to visualize pertinent information hands-free during all phases of the work order debriefing is a key element leading to a huge increase in productivity.

Increase in first-time fix

The availability of digital and work-related information allows the user to have immediate access to the documentation needed to solve the problem, both reducing the time required to access it and increasing first-time fix rate.

Lower disassembly time

Thanks to the ability to display Digital Twins and the related animations, the user can efficiently disassemble any assets. Error minimization - The availability of work instructions guiding the user step by step drastically reduces errors.

Accident prevention

For industrial operators performing complex tasks with both hands, the need for a hands-free experience is paramount. Visualizing workflows supporting them in the execution prevents accidents resulting from unnecessary and potentially dangerous activities. 
By viewing assets in 3D and configuring animations, enterprises are able to organize training sessions for employees in a safe environment. SPACE1 – Extended Field Solution goes beyond the conventional Field Service concept improving the efficiency of technicians by:

• Positively impacting recruitment, training, procedure documentation, knowledge management, resource allocation, and much more;

• Efficiently capturing and transferring service knowledge;

• Building and enhancing field operators’ knowledge and skills.

CHALLENGES

Although AR has proven benefits as well as an undiscussed potential across a wide variety of industries, there are still challenges to be addressed.

Hardware

Despite successful application, hardware volatility characterizes the AR market as new hardware emerges. Partnering with a provider who follows a hardware agnostic approach will empower your company to immediately deploy AR applications on the devices currently used.

Digital Content

In order to make the most of the full potential of AR, lots of digital content is required. The ideal product has easy-to-author workflows accessing data and content from existing integrated systems, as well as easy-tonavigate instructions allowing the video guidance and/or the remote mentor assistance. It captures the metadata related to the workflow execution, such as the technician who performed a step, the time when the step was performed and its duration, making such information accessible for Analytics and for measuring the execution compliance.

Integration

Choosing an integrated platform which is flexible and easy to connect with existing systems, such as ERP and IoT, will allow you to quickly get up and running with AR applications to start reaping the benefits such technology can offer. In order to successfully implement this game-changing technology, companies should rely on providers showing already valuable use cases and customers in their portfolio. Moreover, an experienced AR partner will always provide customers with features that are always in step with the latest technological innovations, safeguarding their investments.

THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE

AR, MR, VR are here to stay. Such technologies bring information to life and enable users in remote locations to feel like they are interacting with experts on the scene, thus helping field service companies to drive improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

OverIT is the pioneer of enterprise-class Augmented Reality, revolutionizing the way field service companies work and collaborate thanks to an integrated AR product providing more effective and efficient knowledge-sharing to conduct complex remote tasks, employee training, product and equipment assembly, maintenance and repair, field and customer support, and much more. Leading enterprises like Cobo Group, Nice, ABS, to name just a few are employing SPACE1 to quickly scale their use of AR

 

 

There are three key considerations that field service organisations must take into account when building a modern workforce, including the changing demographics from Baby Boomer to Millennial, the impact of technology on field service operations, and the growth of the ‘gig’ economy. In the first article in this series, run in partnership with FieldNation, we looked at why the field service landscape is changing, and in part two we discussed how you should approach building a modern field service workforce. We then turned our attention to the technology that underpins such transformation and now in the final article in this series we hear from two experts on the blended workforce to hear their insights...

Russ Fadel, CEO and Co-Founder, Augmentir outlines why the next wave of AR implementations in our sector must harness Artificial Intelligence as well...

Much has been said and written about Augmented Reality (AR) and its benefits n the field service arena – from improved field technician performance to reductions in field service operating costs. However, these early success stories masked the reality of Enterprise AR in the industrial sector – companies have been slow to adopt this technology and have had difficulty moving beyond the experimentation and pilot phase

The first wave of vendors in the Enterprise AR space were overly focused on wearable technology, believing the early predictions that there would be millions of sets of smart glasses deployed in the enterprise by 2018. This directed their efforts to getting work instructions running on a variety of wearables, and many also invested solely in using AR to present information to technicians in the field with rich content and 3D CAD overlays.

It has become clear that these investments have not delivered the value expected to the enterprise, which is reflected in the lack of mainstream adoption. What has been overlooked is the real opportunity of leveraging the new found connectivity to service workers to create sustainable value throughout the organization.  Not only by delivering personalized information to each worker, in the ideal format, but also using artificial intelligence and machine learning to augment the intelligence of the organization relative to how it engages, empowers, and continually improves its human workforce.

This is the beginning of a new era, an era not of Enterprise Augmented Reality, but of Augmented Operations where AR is but one of many ways to present data, support, and guide field workers. Augmented Operations has the opportunity to transform human worker productivity much like automation has done in the past 30 years.  

This transformation is driven by the combination of two key technology trends – Enterprise AR and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning.

 

Why is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Important?

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) has been around for a long time and has historically been applied against external data sets. A recent trend is to embed AI in software platforms, and have it act on the internal data, eliminating the estimated 80% of AI/ML project efforts around labelling and cleansing external data. This is frequently being applied to solutions focused on improving outcomes in business processes where the human worker is at the center. Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) is ideally suited to understanding patterns in the noisy data sets generated by humans workers.

At Augmentir, we are using our AI engine to identify patterns in the data generated by field technicians and highlight areas that can then be used to improve overall worker performance, as well as act in real-time to provide personalized procedures based on the proficiency of each worker. The AI engine is able to help continually deliver insights and recommendations based on that human worker data – this is valuable intelligence that can be used to help drive continuous improvement across the entire organization – from operations to training to quality. 

• AI can help each worker perform at their peak – dynamically changing the instruction to one that allows each worker to perform their job as fast as possible, while meeting quality and safety targets;

• AI understands the patterns and outliers in the vast instruction/job execution data to identify the largest capturable opportunities in the areas of: productivity,. worker effectiveness, training materials effectiveness, and instruction effectiveness – and provide insights and recommendations on how to capture these opportunities. This is the only way to deliver the actionable information required for industrial organizations to drive continuous improvement on a year-over-year basis;

• With AI, companies can optimize troubleshooting/ diagnostic procedures by observing the attempts and results of technicians in the field;

• With AI, companies will be able to capture tribal knowledge from participating in the interactions between Experts and frontline workers, over time making the expertise/tribal knowledge a scalable corporate asset.

With this concept of Augmented Operations (using AI/ML to deliver intelligence across the organization from your augmented workforce), we are seeing a step change in how organizations are making informed decisions, empowering workers, and improving the productivity of humans in the workplace.

Augmenting the Service Workforce of the Future

Despite some early momentum, Enterprise AR alone isn’t enough to deliver sustainable value in the field service sector.
What has been ignored is a real opportunity to create sustainable value throughout the organization – not only giving workers the ability to consume information and apply knowledge, but also augmenting the intelligence of the organization relative to how it engages empowers, and continually improves its human workforce. At Augmentir, we are calling this Augmented Operations, and we believe that this will transform the service workforce of the future.

Field Service in the early decades of the twenty-first century has become an increasingly tricky beast to tame. Customer expectations are hurtling forward at breakneck speed to what some companies view as almost impossible standards to reach. The customer of today is not only better informed than ever before, but via the widespread amplification of social media, more powerful also.

In this series, run in partnership with Localz, we look at precisely what these new challenges of modern field service are and how your organisation can adapt and thrive in this brave new world. Part one in the series explored the concept of Customer Expectations 4.0 and in part two we discussed a new approach to FSM systems. Here in part three we will take a look at three examples of companies embracing 'Uberization.'