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Whilst the Internet of Things is undoubtedly set to become a hugely prominent part of field service delivery in the coming years, it shouldn’t be viewed as a technology in isolation writes Kris Oldland...


I’ve written and spoken about the importance of IoT in field service for many years now. In the past I’ve often compared it to the
mobile revolution, outlining my case for why I think IoT will ultimately have a far bigger impact in our sector than mobile. Now this is not to underplay the importance of mobile in field service.

Mobile was undoubtedly a huge leap forwards in terms of how field service companies were able to deliver efficient field service maintenance. The streamlining of workflows that mobile allowed has seen field service companies be able to do more with the same or even less field service technicians than they could have even imagined possible in the days of triplicate paper documentation and the mighty pen.

Equally, the introduction of increasingly intelligent mobile applications has given field service engineers greater insight into each job they undertake, better support options for when they face an unusual fix and the easy processing of job completion and on site customer feedback.

All of which have seen field service companies become able to truly leverage the often untapped potential of the field service technician as a genuine, trusted, brand ambassador. In many respects the introduction of mobile was a true revolution. That is until we compare it to the potential of IoT.

In this context, actually what mobile brought to the table was the ability to do the things that we always knew were important in terms of service efficiency and customer satisfaction, better. We didn’t revolutionise our fundamental approach to field service when we introduced mobile into the mix.

We just did things exponentially more efficiently. However, whilst the advent of IoT will bring even more efficiency gains, as our engineers become forearmed with the knowledge of exactly which parameters of the asset they are about to work upon are falling outside of acceptable norms, there is the opportunity for a much more radical shift in thinking that IoT presents in addition to this. This is of course, the shift away from traditional break-fix, service level agreement-based service contracts and into the brave new world of guarantees of uptime, truly predictive maintenance and advanced services. This is the true revolution.

However, IoT alone is not enough for us to harness the disruptive force of such a revolution. Much like Cloud before it, it is perhaps the foundational technology upon which we can build even greater innovations.

Machine Learning Is Crucial For Iot Success
One of the throw away phrases that you will invariably hear at conferences, read in articles and discuss in board rooms in pretty much any industry vertical right now ,is that ‘data is the new oil or gold’. I politely disagree with that assertion. Data, as an entity in it’s own right, is quite frankly almost worthless. It has no use-value.

It is without agency and it is without utility. Insight that can be found from mining such data however, is something of truly massive value. When people comment that data is the new currency, they are generally referring to insight. This is why the data scientist was widely posited to become the ‘rock star’ of the twentieth first century not too long ago.

The ability to not only know how to surface insight from data, but more importantly understand exactly which direction your interrogation of that data should go to discover insights that yields true competitive advantage , is a fairly uncommon skill set that blends the analytical and the creative thought processes into one holistic discipline. Yet, as machine learning matures, I see a world where the role of the data scientist will be much more of an initial consultant, someone to make sure a business understands the methodology of data science.

Someone who outlines to them, the whys and the hows, basically lining up the ducks into a row, before setting the AI to do it’s thing. The technology is improving so rapidly now that the actual implementation of such data interrogation programs is likely to sit with senior business execs, rather than senior IT execs driving it.

The value of the human input will not be within the data analysis itself, but in guiding what areas of the business performance should be being measured. The reality is that the sheer volume of data and the speed at which it is generated means that truly utilising and embracing IoT means simultaneously adopting a machine learning strategy at the same time.

Augmenting Augmented Reality
Another technology I have championed for some time now is Augmented Reality (AR) which offers up in the short term at least, a very realistic solution to both the ageing workforce crisis and also the need for field service organisations to reduce the time and costs of training new field service engineers and get them being productive parts of the field workforce as swiftly as possible.

For a long time I have posited the benefits of being able to hold onto the tribal knowledge of an older engineer by allowing them a more convenient support role where their experience can be ‘dialled into’ by the less experienced, newly qualified engineers. This ability to provide ‘see-what-I-see’ over the shoulder remote support is an obvious solution to the two issues I mention above, and I am somewhat surprised that as yet we haven’t seen as large a take up as I would have anticipated - although I do feel we are pushing at an open door in this regard and such developments will inevitably become common place eventually.

"When people comment that data is the new currency, they are generally referring to insight..."

However, this I feel is just the very tip of the iceberg in terms of AR in field service and it is when we add into the system a feed of real-time data from an asset, that we will see AR truly flourish. Imagine a field service technician being able to simply look at a device and to get a visual overlay of how that device is performing in real time. The engineer would be able to identify fault, pull up asset history, and access a knowledge bank of the most suitable action for maintenance within just a few moments.

Comparative Analysis Across The Fleet
Perhaps one of the most exciting potential applications of IoT with respect to maintenance and service, is the ability to offer additional layers of advanced services, which could yield newly created revenue streams. One such example could be the application of asset data analysis across a fleet of assets to allow your organisation to provide corrective changes to settings either at the individual asset level, the individual component level or even at the macro level across the whole fleet.

Take this a step further and through the anonymisation of key data sets across an entire install base of your assets, and then the analysis of the operational performance of the install base as a whole - you could be in a position to offer your customers a solution update that could improve productivity by X%. Whilst, admittedly we are still getting our heads around the practical regulatory challenges and big questions around who owns what data, with the waters becoming infinitely more muddied by ill thought out and poorly defined legislation such as GDPR or the Californian Consumer Privacy Act, there are already examples of companies leveraging data from across their whole install base to be able to provide just such intelligence to their customers for an additional cost.

Such solutions are dependent on high level operational performance analytics, which have evolved from the world of Big Data. Don’t Forget To Make It Safe Of course, it is always more preferable to talk about opportunity, but it must be remembered that with whilst in every great challenge we can find opportunity, so to does every new opportunity present a new threat - and the biggest threat of all in a world of data-breaches and connected assets is cyber-security.

The shift to the Cloud reinvigorated the discussion of cyber-security hugely. Many were initially reluctant to make such a move despite all the various benefits of doing so, because the Cloud felt just so much more penetrable and vulnerable than an On Premise solution that had the advantage of being visible, tactile and ‘real’.

The truth is the amount of resources cloud providers like AWS, IBM and Microsoft spend on protecting their cloud offerings are so mind blowing that no on premise solution could be as risk free. Microsoft for example spend over a $1Billion dollars a year and operate 3,500 professional security engineers plus a highly sophisticated AI to thwart the incredible 1.5Million attacks they get every day.

For this reason, I’ve always felt comfortable with the Cloud as being as close as we can get to secure - whilst nothing is ever 100% safe, choosing any of the big three Cloud providers gives you as good protection as your likely to get. However, with IoT at the moment I would hesitate to be just so confident in my prediction. A large part of this is down to the technology still being in something of a ‘wild-west-phase’ with protocols still being ironed out and at the same time a huge surge in consumer appetite for IoT products has driven costs of components down, with many coming out of China which adds an additional question around security against the global geopolitical landscape we find ourselves in.

Not only can IoT components be a weak point of entry to gain access to a wider network, but should the unthinkable happen, they also pose a huge risk in terms of cyber terrorism. If a device can be hacked and it plays a role in wider ecosystem of a factory - could it be conceivable that a cyber criminal could hold a business to ransom shutting them down until they pay up? As with anything the pros and cons of a new solution need to be weighed up, and for me the benefits of IoT in field service do still outweigh the cons, but it is certainly worth putting security at the top of a list of priorities when scoping out the potential of any IoT strategy.

Rubbish In, Rubbish Out.
Finally, just a quick point on building such a strategy. As mentioned earlier, it is important to think of IoT not as an IT project and it is too engrained within business to be viewed in such a way. However, it should equally not be seen as solely as a business solution either. Digital transformation is a significant focus for many companies right now, and if done correctly this should be a platform for embracing IoT - so it is important that your IT leaders within the business also play a major part in such endeavours. But the one thought I would put at the top of any strategy planning meeting would be to ask - what is it we are trying to achieve? I would then go one level deeper and ask ‘What is it that our customers are trying to achieve?’ Then ask the most crucial question that any business has in its arsenal - why?

That should give you the right path to tread down and from there the various different layers of technology that are suitable for the goal you are trying to reach will become apparent and you can plan accordingly. Skip this process though and you may as well go right back to the old adage of the computer - put rubbish in, get rubbish out.

The IoT does offer true revolution within field service, but every revolution requires planning. 

 

The world of field service and the world of technology have been intertwined for a long time now. In today's world of IoT, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning it could be put forwards that Data is not the fundamental building block of field service excellence. Field Service News and Cognito iQ have explored this concept in a new series and here in this first instalment David Bochenski, CTO Cognito iQ outlines how field service companies can the data within the organisation and why they should be doing so.

 

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Want to know more? There is a video with Konica Minolta's Head of Direct Service, Ged Crannny outlining how they have revolutionised their business through data analytics available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers on the link below...

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"Being told these days by a provider that someone may arrive between 8 am and 6 pm and "by the way can you make sure someone will be around to let them in" is not even close to an acceptable level of service..."

"Field service companies were putting mobile devices into the hands of their engineers and receiving real-time data live from the field long before Steve Jobs, and Apple had put the Internet in everyone's hands.."

Want to know more? There is a video with Konica Minolta's Head of Direct Service, Ged Crannny outlining how they have revolutionised their business through data analytics available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers on the link below...

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sponsored by:

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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 who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content...

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Momentum is the missing ingredient that so many field service organisations overlook when planning for success writes Bill Pollock...

Field Service Management (FSM), just like any other major business initiative, requires a great deal of thought, time, planning, resources, energy, and money. But it also requires momentum to ensure that it maintains its relevance as the business evolves in an ever-changing marketplace.

That is why so many well-intentioned FSM initiatives tend to “fizzle out” over time, either in terms of commitment, use, or simply because they haven’t grown in functionality at the same pace as the business itself has grown. Whatever the reason, many organizations ultimately find themselves in a position where their FSM program just flat out isn’t as effective as it once was.

Many years ago, Fram oil filters utilized an advertising campaign that stated “You can either pay me now, or you can pay me later!” This referred to the fact that you could either check (and, if required, replace) your car’s oil filter on a routine basis (i.e., before a problem manifests itself), or wait until after a problem occurs, thereby costing you more money for a “fix” after-the-fact than it would have cost had you routinely changed your oil filter as part of a self-administered preventive maintenance program.

The same concept also applies to FSM: fixing (or correcting) your FSM program along the way will undoubtedly save your organisation much more time and money compared to the risk of having it stray off course over time. Experience has shown that once an FSM program strays off course – whether by alot, or a little – it is extremely difficult to easily get it back on track in terms of refocusing direction, reallocating resources, rechanneling team efforts, realigning processes, and in many cases, admitting that the program had gone off track in the first place!

For these reasons, it is critical to monitor the progress of any FSM initiative on an ongoing basis in order to avoid falling into a situation where you will need to make what NASA typically refers to as “a midcourse correction”. Taking the NASA example one step further, when a rocket is aimed at the Moon, sometimes a “mid-course correction” requires nothing more than a 10- or 20-second burst of steam released from the side of the spacecraft to ensure that its recalculated trajectory will send it to the desired landing spot on the surface.

In cases where the problem is identified well enough in advance, it may only take this 10- to 20-second effort to ensure that the rocket does not miss its target by thousands of miles. In relative NASA terms, this is neither a complicated nor expensive procedure to execute, and the return is enormous (i.e., avoiding a potential total failure, and ensuring that the original target will be hit).

However, in cases where a problem is not identified until much later, or other earlier attempts have been ineffectively executed along the way, the rocket may have to be entirely reprogrammed – literally, on the fly – possibly entailing a new trajectory that will require orbiting around the back side of the Moon several times, and selecting a new landing site – or worse – sending it out into space as a failed effort. While the former “correction” would save the entire effort at a relatively low cost, the latter would – at best – require a huge amount of resources (i.e., people, time, and money) for just the chance of being able to avoid failure.

We believe that the same alternatives also apply to FSM initiatives, and that planning in advance for the most likely “mid-course corrections” should also be a critical component of any FSM improvement effort. Hopefully, any required “mid-course corrections” will be “minor” (such as taking added steps to improve communications between internal customer support groups, improving management and process control, upgrading existing software to the latest releases, etc.).

However, some corrections may be more complicated, such as changing platforms or reengineering existing business processes midstream, or having to deal with other major FSM program-altering situations. Regardless of the level of correction that is required, one thing remains clear – an ineffective FSM program will provide – at best – an ineffective FSM solution! Further, while an effective FS≠M program can generally always be expected to provide a measurable return-on-investment (ROI), an ineffective program typically will not – regardless of the cost!

There are essentially six (6) key reasons why FSM programs fail. They are typically:

1. Lack of management vision and commitment – Executive involvement is critical to steer the project so that it is continually in alignment with the company’s strategic business objectives.

2. Lack of a complete business process analysis – Before embarking on an FSM solution program, there must first be a comprehensive analysis of the individual customer-focused business processes used by the organization – otherwise you will find yourself merely automating the existing “mess”, or still doing things incorrectly – only more quickly!

3. Selecting the software before the analysis is completed – Selecting software before the analysis is completed is a common – and oftentimes fatal – mistake. This is why melding the organisation’s workflows into the software’s functionality, in a customer-focused, streamlined (and possibly reengineered) business process is generally required before implementing an FSM solution.

4. Implementing a system without changing the way you do business – Simply applying a new FSM software solution over the organisation’s existing business processes will not get the job done. Many companies that have attempted to use FSM primarily as a tool for automating their historical business processes have seen their efforts lead to nothing more than a means for preserving their status quo while the marketplace evolves in another direction.

5. Not managing expectations – Managing expectations at all levels within the organisation is critical. Cultural considerations and expectations must be continually assessed, addressed and managed.

6. Becoming locked into a system that does not support the FSM initiative (Agile Adaptability) – Any organization’s FSM program must show quick progress and be able to adapt quickly to changing business processes. Only the built-in “agile adaptability” of the system will preclude the chances for failure.

The best way to avoid any of these eventualities is to address them head-on in your FSM program from the outset. All of your organisation’s major business initiatives should already have these types of contingency plans built-in – especially those that directly impact both the customer base and the bottom line (which is certainly the case with FSM)!

The key to ensuring that your FSM initiative has adequately addressed these issues is to create an ongoing process-monitoring and self-assessment mechanism that is well-defined and clearly delineated in the original plan; and to empower the appropriate internal teams to manage and monitor these functions effectively.

Some tips for ensuring that you are able to successfully avoid any of these potential FSM obstacles are:
• Incorporate internal and external communications as integral components of your FSM design, development and implementation plans.

• Develop “real” goals and metrics for evaluating and tracking performance over time.

• Build effective input and feedback processes (i.e., easy to use, properly managed, and responsive) into your FSM communications model that address all internal (i.e., employee), external (i.e., customers, prospects), and channel (i.e., partners, vendors, dealers, etc.) requirements.

• Build an ongoing monitoring, tracking, and assessment function into the plan, and designate an appropriate individual (and team) to manage it. Also, empower that team to conceptualize, articulate, and recommend appropriate corrective actions as needed. • Provide management with performance tracking reports on a regular basis.

• Keep current with the FSM community in terms of what platforms, applications, or functionality may be newly available; take advantage of your existing vendor’s regular upgrades, updates, and patches; and keep up-to-date on what some of the other leading industry practitioners are doing with respect to their own FSM initiatives (e.g., by tracking them on the Internet; networking; attending trade shows, seminars, and users groups; etc.).

• Plan ahead for tomorrow’s upgrades today by keeping a close watch on your present FSM system status; setting (and revising) your goals and targets on a dynamic (rather than static) basis; identifying alternative “what-if” scenarios for addressing changes in your customer base (e.g., growth), infrastructure (e.g., outdated hardware/ software platforms), or other organizational factors (e.g., restructuring, acquisitions/ mergers, etc.).

There are many ways in which an organization can forestall problems relating to their FSM initiative, or – hopefully – avoid them alltogether. However, in order to accomplish this, you must always plan ahead; address the most likely “what-if” scenarios in your contingency planning; monitor, measure, and track performance all along the way; and encourage and empower both your managers and their support staffs to get their jobs done effectively.

You regularly replace the oil filters in your car – don’t you? And you can always count on NASA to use numerous “mid-course corrections” to protect any of its space launches. Therefore, it should also make sense – both philosophical and economic – to ensure that your organization’s FSM initiative is always supported by these ongoing planning processes as well. 

Bill Pollock is President of Strategies for GrowthSM.

The prevalence of IoT within field service, has put servitization within the reach of smaller companies and those that embracing it are capable of disrupting their sectors writes Kris Oldland...


“The world once seemed simple; manufacturers made things and services companies did things for us. Today, increasing numbers of manufacturers compete through a portfolio of integrated products and services.”

This is how Professor Tim Baines, someone I consider to be something of a mentor to me as well as a friend, and who also happens to be one of the worlds leading academics within the field of servitization once described servitization to me, having been asked to do so in basic terms that I as a lay person could comprehend.

Of course servitization is much more than simply adding services to existing products within a few large multi-national companies as Professor Baines went on to explain. “It’s about viewing the manufacturer as a service provider that sets out to improve the processes of its customers through a business model, rather than product-based, innovation. The manufacturer exploits its design and production competencies to deliver improvements in efficiency and effectiveness to the customer.”

In context of the traditional product-centric viewpoint of manufacturers, this is of course a radical and seismic shift. A fact that Baines himself can never be accused of underplaying, often referring to us as living through the fourth industrial paradigm - the previous three coming via mechanisation and steam power, followed by the mass production line, and then computing and automation.

The fourth paradigm that we are currently adapting to is a world of cyber-physical products. Or to put it in more familiar terms perhaps, a world of IoT and connected assets. If you have spent anything more than 5 minutes talking about servitization, then you will most likely already know that as the inventors of ‘powerby-the-hour’ some 57 years ago, Rolls Royce are something of a Poster Boy for the movement.

But wait! I here you cry. If Rolls Royce managed to pioneer their own brand of servitization so long ago, when we hadn’t even established an internet, let alone one built literally just for ‘things’, then how can you say IoT is fundamental to servitization? It is of course a hugely valid point.

Servitization has been demonstrably proven to be possible prior to the age of IoT. However, there are a few core factors shared amongst Rolls Royce and the other early pioneers of servitization such as Caterpillar, Alstom, and MAN UK. Firstly, there is a layer of innovation within their leadership and organisational DNA. This is true of all pioneers, some companies are prepared to take the greater risks and push boundaries past what is the current normal. However, in many cases, those servitization pioneers also had strong other revenue streams that gave them the opportunity to fail if needs be without sinking the whole business.

It is certainly a luxury that not all companies have but cross sector organisations such as Swiss heavy manufacturing giant ABB, have proven to be an excellent example of how to leverage reputation, cross industry learnings but also how having the additional breathing space of being a multi-vertical, mutli national organisation allowed them to drive their own servitization strategies.

But the one thing that almost all of these companies in the early vanguard of servitization also shared, was that they were relatively advanced in telematics and that they could see not only the potential value of the data they were able to take from their assets but also, more importantly how they could take that data and build it into meaningful insights for their customers.

Crucially, they understood they could utilise the information on how their assets were performing to help guide their customers to a far more effective understanding of their challenges, and then step in to offer further, more complex solutions that were specifically in line with their customers’ desired outcomes. They were able to take the data and become integral partners within their customers’ business ecosystems rather than just one of many transactional relationships - and whilst I am by no means an expert on the topic myself, I’ve spent enough time with Professor Baines and many of his academic peers over the last few years to understand that this is at the core of why servitization is such an attractive proposition for supplier and customer alike.

Deeper relationships provide greater output, stability and effectiveness for the customer and deeper customer loyalty, greater profits and longer term contracts for the supplier. And now as the IoT, and even more importantly it’s enterprise equivalent the Industrial Internet, begin to mature into something more meaningful than connected toasters, and as we begin to see companies start to at least acknowledge, if not yet truly harness the potential of IoT, what we are seeing is the democratization of servitization.

"Servitization has been demonstrably proven to be possible prior to the age of IoT..."

It is no longer just those companies who can afford to be innovative, that can now embrace servitization. It is not just those companies who already have access to, or deep enough pockets to be able to invest in connected assets that can explore the numerous advantages of adopting an advanced services strategy. It is also not just manufacturers either. In fact, the rapid rise of IoT has enabled many smaller, third party service providers to capitalise on gaps within original equipment manufacturers, or in some cases even utility providers, service offerings.

This has allowed them to carve out service-centric businesses that were frankly, missed opportunites for the slow to react enterprise organisations whose sector they disrupted. For example, there is the French start-up who were able to make significant inroads into the Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) hospitality sector by offering to fit their clients gas tanks with cheap but effective sensors so they could offer guarantees of uptime instead of the old model of a restaurant always buying surplus to avoid running out of gas mid shift. Or the company that provided sensors for heavy industrial bins, which allowed them to disrupt the refuse collection in their local market by offering a collection service based on need rather than schedule - again a start up that utilised outsourcing, innovation and IoT to disrupt an established market. Or the third party service provider that specialises in coffee vending machines that was able to create an additional revenue stream for their organisation by identifying buying trends within specific store locations and translating that data into insights for their customers who could in turn leverage local population preferences with focused promotional campaigns.

Each of these examples, were driven by use of and an understanding of how IoT can offer additional value to the end customer. Each of the above examples is also a demonstration of a company identifying the additional revenue for advanced services beyond the traditional scope of the service provider.

The essence here is that they are all based on an understanding of the desired outcomes of their customers. So whilst field service companies should absolutely be looking to explore how best they can improve the efficiency of their service delivery through IoT, the real gold is in understanding how you can improve your effectiveness in helping you customers achieve their goals.

That is in a nutshell is servitization and that is exactly where the greatest value of the IoT will surely exist. 

Are we on the cusp of a revolution or are we experiencing evolution? We spoke to Paul Joesbury, Operations Manager at HomeServe and Chris Proctor, CEO at FSM Software provider Oneserve and got their thoughts on IoT, automation and the general attitude towards new technology adoption...


The impact of technology has been felt far beyond service. Homeserve’s Paul Joesbury worked in finance before joining the utility company “I look back and reflect on my time in finance,” he recalls, “many of the tasks were done manually, like ledger reconciliations, which are all automated now. Previously it would take a bank of humans that would take the best part of a week to reconcile something and now it’s pretty much done with the touch of a button.”

The Operation Manager continues, adamant that his current sector should benefit from the same progress “So why should service operations be different? The technology, I think, is pretty much already there. It’s how it can be applied in a cost-effective way which is going to be the challenge for organisations.”

Chris Proctor is another great believer in technology but he suggests firms should adopt technology for the right reasons. “A lot of companies are trialing new technology at the moment, but it comes down to when it is absolutely necessary, and at what point does the use-case become really tried and really tested.” However, the Oneserve CEO is concerned about the pace of adoption generally in the sector. “I might be lambasted for saying this but I don’t think there has been much innovation,” he says, aware of the statement’s brevity. “It’s disappointing that the last real innovation in field service management was moving to the cloud and even then, I don’t think everyone is fully there yet.”

It’s a bold claim, yet one that has substance. The industry has been accused before of lagging when it comes to embracing disruptive, digital technology. “I think one of the biggest problems the industry has is properly understanding the trajectory of new technology,” he explains. “There’s this concept of necessity being the mother of all inventions and I think there’s a really good point in that. A lot of industries and a lot of sectors are having to go through a lot of change. In the UK there’s so much uncertainty in so many pockets at the moment, trying to make big decisions on how you engage with new technologies is very difficult.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Joesbury who feels the role of technology will slowly phase out that of the engineer...but not quite yet. “I definitely think in five years’ time that there will still be humans around,” he ponders, “but I think we’ll be doing different roles, and I think the important aspect over the next five years is to learn to trust the technology and equally for the technology to work and we’ve got to embrace that. After that you’re on a journey searching for the next big leap of faith but where does it come from? I’m not sure if service operations is going to be the market leader in this space, but I definitely can see lots of value potential, I think we just have to open our hearts a little bit and embrace it.”

"The impact of technology has been felt far beyond service..."

The society that technology operates in can also influence how it is executed. We are on the cusp of a younger generation who expect everything to work first time. The way in which people communicate is also changing, to a point where digital messaging is superseding vocal interaction.

If the trend is to continue then service will have to adapt to this way of communicating and reflect that in its technology usage. Where does Proctor see the service sector heading? Will there be a fundamental shift in approach as more young people enter the arena? Servitization and the gig economy, he predicts, will have an impact on the way services are delivered. Most likely through a subscription-based model, complimented by disruptive innovations and delivered by freelancers who, in order to maintain their personal brand, deliver consistent service excellence. “I can see a world where most of your services are consumed on a subscription-type basis. You contact your service provider who then uses technology similar to programmatic advertising whereby contracts are tended and bid for and secured within seconds, all underpinned by blockchain.” he says.

The role of blockchain in IoT and its evolution will surely be an important one. As more devices connect with one another than security becomes more of an issue, however Blockchain could provide the ring fence Iot needs. However, Proctor, a passionate advocate for blockchain, wants quicker adoption. “I think there are lots and lots of limitations of how we are going to bring [blockchain] in,” he says. “In exactly the same way that iOT and AI is a technology set that people don’t fully understand. There is a lot of hype around how it can help service but when you scratch under the surface, it’s just a hypothesis,” he pauses, “it has the ability to be truly, truly game changing.”

Blockchain, IoT and AI are all huge potential disruptors in the service sector. IoT could, over the next few years, become something that pushes the boundaries of what we now see as traditional service. As Paul Joesbury said, it’s about “trusting and embracing what is available”. Perhaps then will we witness a number of game changing moments.

Game on! 

Knowledge retained by those retiring from the service industry is set to be one of the sector’s biggest concerns over the next five years. Mark Glover speaks to Sarah Pettigrew from Thales UK, who through investment in technology and apprenticeships – as well as a more positive approach to mental health – is hoping to plug the gap... 


According to research from Service Council, put together by Sumair Dutta, over 70 per cent of service outfits expressed fears around a retiring workforce. The study, called A Sustainable Field Service Workforce – Successfully Navigating the Retirement Crisis was published in April 2017, and some two years on it seems the crisis is in full flow.

Sarah Pettigrew is Head of Delivery Service at Thales UK and in a case-study, presented at Field Service Connect in May she suggested ways in which a service team can be built and retained while operating in the challenges an ageing workforce brings.

Part of that process, she says, is to accept and understand the situation that service finds itself in. “One of the first things to do is to acknowledge that it is actually an issue and it is a challenge for our business,” she tells me as a recent guest on the Field Service Podcast.

The challenge lies in plugging the knowledge gap, created by the retirement of long-serving employees, who were perhaps reluctant to adapt to digitization and content in paper-led processes. Citing one of her own projects, Sarah explains the sector’s failure to act on the issue despite being aware of the consequences is a reason why the industry is now chasing itself to make sure this knowledge is passed on. “One of the contracts I look after has been running for twenty years,” she says. “We’ve had staff on this for a very long time and they have key amounts of knowledge. One of the things we’ve lacked in field service is actual knowledge transfer which people have retained. They’ve gone out and done same job for a long, long time and we’ve encouraged them to do that.”

To negate the leak, Thales and other firms are making sure that internal workforce knowledge is archived digitally, transferred to worker’s smart devices. By using technology Sarah hopes that processes will become less paper-reliant. “This isn’t about writing really long documents that are going to sit on a shelf, this is about making it accessible,” she says. “We’re using wikis so the information is getting into the palm of their [the workers’] hands. That’s one of the things we’ve really taken on board and looking to grow this year.”

As well as investing in technology the company are focusing on apprenticeships in order to shake up the current demographic of employees, however with the industry also struggling to encourage new blood, I ask why should a school or college leaver view the sector as a valid vocation? “It’s about seeing field service as a career and where it can take you. We’ve seen people from apprenticeship programmes go all the way up to CEO level,” she offers.

"The challenge lies in plugging the knowledge gap, created by the retirement of long-serving employee..."

Of course, in any company, employees differ in their attitudes to work with some wanting to grow and advance in their career with others content to come in every day and do a good job, something Sarah has identified. “You can’t forget about the individual,” she says. “All of this is about getting to you know your people and getting to understand their needs, getting them engaged in these development conversations. “It’s really important that we actually engage folks into that element of the excitement of what they do and also thinking about the customer. For me, it’s all about the customer and that interaction with the customer and how we can actually nurture that relationship.

We discuss employers’ attitudes towards their workers’ wellbeing and how attitudes around mental health, for example, have changed positively and had a positive affect on the person and also the business. “When you think about field service staff, you don’t necessarily see them sitting down and having a conversation around mental health. The big thing for me is working with people, particularly in service. My people are the heart of what we do and sitting down and having a cup of tea with them a break on their shift is really important and engaging with them and understanding what their challenges are, because if I can do something to make their lives easier, it will also benefit the business throughout.”

She continues: “It’s a cliché - happy staff means happy customers – but it’s true. They [field staff] probably touch more of our customer base than we ever will. It’s about that interaction they have and how they take it forward.”

I ask Sarah what she enjoys about her role; what potential employees could expect on a day-to-day working at somewhere like Thales. “There’s great variety in the work we do; both in London for our London-centric clients and also across the UK,” she says. “I came from a project management background and have been with Thales for seven years. I came here because of the diversity in the challenge.”

And what about the knowledge gap challenge in service, the premise of this piece. What should firms keep sight of? “It’s all about our people and the ability for our people to go and deliver that service,” she says, “They’re all key to the way we take ourselves forward.” 

Spare parts, once the lifeblood of company’s service-centred ethos, is being challenged by the sector’s move to servitization. Will the next 12 months see firms cannibalise their spare parts programme or will the supply chain management see a new framework that combines a selection of cost-models? Mark Glover finds out more... 

How do you deliver the right part, at the right time and at the right price? If you work in supply chain management, then you’ve probably seen and wrestled with these questions. Historically, the spare part transaction was a simple one: a customer needed a component that had failed, they phoned up the company, ordered and paid for the part. Transaction complete.

However, the sector’s shift to a servitization model rather than the traditional transactional-based framework has seen many companies cut their losses and cannibilise their components to align with SLAs.

In the era of servitization, the cost associated with asset failure is having a substantial impact on balance sheets. Income from replacement part sales is now considerably less than the loss accrued from downtime. The priority now is to get an asset back running as quickly as possible and if parts are struck out in the process, then so be it; the numbers will eventually balance out.
It means that a cost-plus approach to spare-parts is losing validity.

The price of producing a part and adding the profit on top is being usurped by a more value-based approach - that is, a cost based on the ultimate value to the customer. Or as a firm enters another vertical – as is common in service – will they align with a different approach such as a market-based strategy?

In short, making money from selling parts is no longer the revenue stream it once was. As well as modifying itself to the shifting nature of the sector it serves, spare parts must contend with other factors that are disrupting the transactional sphere it has felt so comfortable operating in such as E-commerce and 3D Printing.

E-commerce, for example, works best in a market-based strategy. Here it can snuggle up to China, where parts are getting cheaper and the quality is getting better and provide credible components. Add to this the threat of online retailers such as Amazon entering the market and the future does look rather bleak. Meanwhile, looking hungrily into the arena, biding its time and waiting for the right moment, 3D printing could be the most disruptive threat to traditional supply chain management.

Also referred to as additive manufacturing, the ability to print components could quash the issue of time-affected delivery. Atanu Chaudhuri is Associate Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at Aalborg University and an expert in additive manufacturing and 3D Printing.

As a recent guest on The Field Service Podcast he told me that some industries have been quick to embrace the technology while others less so. “The forerunners of the adoption of these technologies have been the aerospace and automotive sectors,” he said. “However, there are a lot of other industrial manufacturers who are exploring this but are at different stages of adoption.”

Extolling its financial virtues, Chaudhuri affirmed why 3D printing is aligned with servitization and suggests those taking the long-view of the technology will see a positive return on investment. “If you take a more life cycle perspective,” he said, “and look beyond the cost on a part-to-part comparison or look at the usage of the part over a lifetime of the product, say 15 or twenty years, suddenly you will see a huge difference. You will not be having a lot of inventory, you reduce the inventory carrying costs and maybe the environment will benefit, you will use fewer materials and suddenly the business case looks much better.”

Another challenge the sector continues to face is counterfeit parts. Non-genuine components can compromise safety, the integrity of finished goods and bring reputational damage. It’s an issue that Chris Mitchell, Business Transformation Director at Software and Services company PTC, is all too aware of. He references outcome-based models as a contributing factor to the problem as firms try to gain an advantage in the market. “With industries becoming more service-orientated and more competitive, this issue of counterfeit parts from China, Turkey and other parts of the world creeps up more and more,” he says.

"Making money from selling parts is no longer the revenue stream it once was..."

OEMs spend heavily on research ensuring the quality of their parts, utilising specialist software to engineered products in the best possible way, making the components safe and durable. It’s the finances associated with asset upkeep that forces some firms to opt for a damaging short-cut. “When looking at the cost of individual repair or maintenance event, cost pressures and short-sightedness often lead to the wrong buying decision whereby the cheap counterfeit part is used,” Mitchell explains.

Storage and warehouse logistics remain a puzzle for firms. It’s commonplace to have one centralised hub where all stock is housed making it simpler for inventory management; while a collection of smaller, local warehouses allow for greater flexibility in regards to geographical logistics but requires careful management. Taking advantage of the malaise, initiatives around smart-IoT connected storage boxes, such as those offered by BT and ByBox are proving solutions to the logistics issue.

Strategically placed parts can be collected by engineers who through cloud-based software, can check where the nearest part to them might be. The very nature of field service is also having an affect on how firms place themselves in the sector. By this, I refer to the many verticals that service operates in. It means requirements round spare parts can differ from the medical sector, for example, which will have different behaviours and expectations than, say, the oil and gas market.

This has led to companies segmenting logistics depending on their customer silos. To elaborate, one industry may require a very rapid solution, so expectations will centre on availability and quick delivery meaning the provider’s logistic channel needs to be flexible enough to meet these expectations. Conversely, another industry could be more demanding of uptime and be more price sensitive when purchasing components. Unfortunately, there remains another factor that now firms can do very little about.

At the time of writing uncertainty with Brexit continues and urgent questions round its effect on the global supply chain remain unanswered. While the knock-on effect of political decisions remains out of our hands for now, perhaps it’s time to ask a question that we may have more control over. Will the transactional model disappear completely?

Going forward, I think there will be a place for all approaches and here the diversity of markets could be an advantage. There will always be customers who want to deal on a transactional basis. SKF and GE Healthcare for example, still have long-term contracts with clients who prefer to deal in this way. These are large multi-national corporations and their continued loyalty to traditional frameworks should offer encouragement to other firms.

Spare parts and supply chain management is broad enough to accommodate and embrace change, be it new technology, political uncertainty and a shift in customer buying habits. One far-reaching question however will always remain: How do you deliver the right part, at the right time and at the right price? Amidst the changing sands of supply chain management, it’s something we should continue to ask and also take comfort from. 

In a world of increasingly tough consumer devices it is easy to think that rugged tech could be surpassed by their less expensive consumer cousins – but short term savings do not always translate into long term value. Field Service News’ Editor Mark Glover finds out more... 

In the vast field service spectrum stacked full of diverse vertical industries, rugged hardware is a constant support holding up the many sectors with tough rubber membranes and indestructible screens. Within service, large and small field service firms all use hardware that is rugged, durable and able to withstand the wind and the rain and the drops and the knocks.

If we were to define what field service is – and it has many definitions – then we could agree that it is something that does not (necessarily) take place in a nice, warm and safe office where smooth I-pads and sleek smartphones flourish. Let’s also reflect on the impact field service has.

I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that business relies on quality service. It keeps processes flowing and simply put that keeps revenue  flowing in too. Today, delivering efficient field service is paramount and it’s an efficiency driven and empowered by technology – tough and robust technology.

In a servitization era, where the asset is no longer top dog, business models are created round long-term client-centred contracts attached to an evolving product. An effective service offering creates the framework for that product. Key here are the tools that enable engineers to carry out their work, tools that won’t let them down. Enter then, rugged devices: smartphones, tablets and laptops. Robust, tough and sturdy hardware that empowers an employee. But in the sea of rugged options that exists, how do we pick the right device for our needs and ultimately establish it’s fit-for purpose?

The sector is blessed with a range of cloud-based software solutions. Job scheduling, customer details and equipment data can all be accessed on a tablet or phone, but can your chosen rugged handset handle these software requirements and other industry specific applications? Can the processor and memory cope with running several required applications at once? Ease of use is also another factor to take into consideration.

We might be used to the Android or IoS platform from our own personal devices - and the majority of devices sit these (albeit a few versions behind) on top of their own operating systems – but the technicalities will differ slightly in terms of field-service use and it’s important to feel settled in this slightly different platform. Furthermore, like any cloud-based software, FSM applications can also be vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data-breaches. Seeking out protection is advised, and don’t forget to consider battery life.

Service engineers can also go days without charging their device. Fortunately, many rugged devices – unlike consumer devices – have removable batteries so spares can be carried around ensuring power is always on-hand. Engineers are often exposed to the elements so devices need to work in all weathers and their extremes. Rain is a given in most countries and getting an intricate piece of technology wet can lead to malfunctions very quickly. However, an engineer wants to focus on the job in hand rather than being concerned with keeping an ipad dry. Conversely, screen glare can also be a frustrating issue for engineers working out in the sun. And what about dropping the device?

Let’s be honest, engineers carry out repairs and maintenance in the most uncomfortable, inhospitable and awkward of environments. It’s inevitable that a drop of the hardware will take place at some point. Thankfully rugged manufacturers are savvy to these demands. Screens now come with tough, water-proof protection, putting engineers’ mind at ease that their tablet won’t show terminal error codes as the heavens open or the sun beats down. Tough, rubber membranes offer protection from drops at height, with rugged manufacturers systematically testing products for drop robustness.

"Engineers are often exposed to the elements so devices need to work in all weathers and their extremes..."

Forgive this article’s trend for comparison and scene-setting but when mentioning rugged, then the word consumer usually follows and our personal relationship with consumer mobile devices has never been closer. The tech in our smart-phone that never leaves our side and keeps us connected with the world as we set out for the day. The personal tablet that resides on the living room sofa picked-up by the whole family to play games, look up recipes, or book a flight is now ubiquitous as the TV remote. Smart devices now play a pivotal role in our daily lives.

However, when it comes to investing in rugged devices, our requirements will differ from that when we visit high-street phone shops. Primarily, decisions are made with a business case in mind. Portable, strong, weather-proof and intuitive units are the key tangible factors worth considering but what about its ROI? Drilling down, it’s useful to compare the rugged and consumer markets.

Where the lines between the two were once obvious, both markets are now beginning to converge. A major differentiator has always been the aesthetics. The phone in your pocket and your home-tablet show off their sleek lined and curved edges, casting disparaging looks at rugged’s Frankenstein laptops and rubber encased tablets. However, products from Getac, Xplore and Panasonic are now producing tablets, laptops and phones that are more pleasing on the eye, furthermore consumer phones such as Samsung’s Note9 and the iPhoneX incorporate rugged IP65 specifications such as being dustproof and waterproof.

The lines become further blurred as rugged commonly integrates the Android framework as an operating platform. As consumers, we tend to refresh our handsets every 12 to 18 months. Rugged tech, however can last for 36. It’s a time frame (and a market) that consumer manufacturers such as Samsung and Apple keep looking over to, poised perhaps to make a move. Given the high-cost of rugged devices, there is the very real possibility that service companies will opt for service-adapted consumer devices.

While the argument for consumer over rugged in field service is becoming a very valid one, the latter has a distinct financial advantage when comparing the savings gained through Total Cost of Ownerships (TCO). TCO is an estimate of all the direct and indirect costs involved in acquiring and operating a product or system over its lifetime and it’s a formula that rugged manufacturers have often waved in front of their consumer counterparts.

Generally, a rugged unit will last longer than a consumer-based device and in-looping back to the opening thoughts of this article, any downtime in service is a huge cost, damaging firms reputationally and of course financially. At the moment, consumer software will always be more vulnerable to faults in its average twoyear life-cycle. Rugged tech will always last longer which is fundamental to a sector that relies heavily on reliability, which is why enterprise IT deliberately has slower product cycles.

Like all adoptions of new technology, choosing the right solution for your team’s requirements is paramount. Rugged solution providers should be able to understand what you need and why you need it, tailoring a product to suit. And here lies the key – your engineer, Empowering him or her to carry out their tasks to the best of their ability is vital. Come rain or indeed sunshine.