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In this, the latest edition of the Field Service Podcast, Kris Oldland, Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief, is joined by Marne Martin, CEO of WorkWave and president of Service Management for IFS about her new role with IFS as well as discussing whether the time has come to finally recognised Field Service Management systems as a standalone category such as CRM or ERP [hr]

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We've been asking for some time now how Augmented Reality will fill its potential as a central fulcrum within the future of field service. For Nick Frank the key is for it AR to become entwined with Knowledge Management... 

The English philosopher Francis Bacon once said: “Knowledge is power,” In earlier times, knowledge was usually kept to oneself for personal gain. Today, it is the sharing of knowledge that leads companies to success, especially in times of increasing digitization.

This ‘sharing’ involves collecting data, transforming it into insight and then getting it to a place where people can use it to make a difference. Benefits are only seen when the ‘knowledge chain’ is completed and any break in the chain nullifies our efforts.

So when industry commentators tell you that a particular technology is the “silver bullet” to success, it really is an oversimplification!

The problem is that knowledge is often “hidden” in the various IT systems and applications, or lost in the heads of employees who leave the business. For field service, this problem is particularly severe as the service portfolio is significantly larger than the current product offers due to longer product lifecycles and ever faster new product introductions.

On the other hand, service knowledge must be immediately available, in a distributed fashion, to achieve quick solutions and to ensure customer satisfaction. For service, we should view the challenge as being to provide customers or field technicians with that extra piece of know how that will help them solve problems more efficiently. A kind of “Augmented Knowledge” for expand it and provide it in a targeted manner. Existing information stored in different systems is merged. This can be structured data such as parts lists and unstructured information such as service tickets or service reports.

 

"Unstructured knowledge – text or prose – is analysed using text mining tools and integrated with the structured data. Large amounts of data can then be digitised and used intelligently..."

 

Unstructured knowledge – text or prose – is analysed using text mining tools and integrated with the structured data. Large amounts of data can then be digitised and used intelligently.

Urgently needed information is provided easily and quickly. Being able to network across databases makes it possible to recognize contexts, to analyze causes of failures and to create transparency. By using the system and verifying or excluding results, users continuously enrich it with expert knowledge. The current problem may already be the solution for the next user.

A classic example is finding similar cases (or problems). If an engineer is looking for the cause of a failure, the system looks for similar case and offers potential solutions.

The source for this could be the targeted evaluation of completed service cases (e.g. service tickets). By analysing which solutions were chosen by the engineer, the associated repair instructions, and confirming them as successful (or not successful, as the case may be) after the repair – the system learns through this interaction.

In fact, this process can go further and develop new insights from existing information. By visualizing and recognizing patterns, correlations can be identified, and appropriate measures initiated. For example, as part of a maintenance action or repair, the system can recommend the maintenance or repair of other elements to avoid subsequent failures that have arisen in similar situations.

But how to get that information to the point of need?

Augmented Reality (AR) technology, with its capability to supplement a real object, such as a machine or a component, with additional digital content is an ideal tool for this. It is not just the traditional approach of an expert communicating with a technician, it is extending it to ‘’smart’ databases supplying answers to questions.

 

"There is much to learn about the ergonomics of Augmented Knowledge and how to integrate it into people’s working lives..."

 

For example, in addition to the live video image on a tablet, smartphone or smart glasses, information and instructions can be augmented to the display to help solve the problem. These may be created by an expert remotely or they may be rendered as step by step instructions by the knowledge management system.

The individual steps necessary to solve the problem are now available in the form of AR annotations and can be subsequently edited and saved. This is another advantage of the AR system: The repair process gets documented and can be used again for similar cases.

So, if the engineer encounters this problem again in the future, they can reuse the annotations of the first repair without having to consult the expert. In addition, the solution is also available to all other engineers.

This saves significant time and effort. The caveat is to be able to present information to users such that they can use it. There is much to learn about the ergonomics of Augmented Knowledge and how to integrate it into people’s working lives.

This is a good example of how by turning information into transportable and analysable data (some call this digitisation of their processes), it is possible to accelerate service delivery, saving time and money for both the service provider and the user of machines.

Our experience is that by breaking down Knowledge Management and Augmented Reality into smaller pilot projects, we learn how to provide Augmented Knowledge to the Technician. Not just the technology, but actually how people brains cope with having access to this additional insight.

This may seem as bit ScFi and daunting at first, but you would be surprised how much of this you already do. Our advice is don’t look to anyone technology being pushed at you as the unique solution to your problems. You must develop your Knowledge Management, Augmented Reality and People capability in parallel.

For more information on how to start this digital journey, you can contact authors at peter.maier@si2partners.com or nick.frank@si2partners.com

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Nick Frank, Managing Partner at Si2 Partners 

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In a recent episode of The Field Service Podcast, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News spoke with Simon Fahie, Managing Director of ByBox, and in what was a wide-ranging discussion the two touched on a number of key topics affecting field service organisations today...

Our industry is evolving rapidly. It seems like only yesterday when I first returned to the service sector and began writing about the key trends within field service, at the time for the now sadly departed Service Management magazine. In fact, that was some six or seven years ago now and crikey an awful lot has changed in that time.

Back then the over-riding discussions within the sector were around the practicalities and benefits of moving field service from its traditional position as a cost centre to becoming a profit centre.

Fast forward to today and the concept of field service as a core revenue-generating part of the business has become firnly established. Indeed, as we have covered extensively in Field Service News, more and more companies are becoming increasingly focused on delivering advanced services, a strategic shift in thinking that has become known as servitization.

Yet, whilst servitization promises to hold the key to increased profits, a greater share of customer wallets and deeper, longer term contracts that offer far greater financial stability, it is not a particularly easy nut to crack.

Perhaps the biggest shift in thinking from traditional break fix based centric service agreements and their servitized equivalent is the move away from service level agreements to guarantees of uptime. In an era of IoT and connected assets, the move towards predictive maintenance that such an approach requires could be deemed relatively easy to establish once the right processes and technologies are put in place.

The theory is relatively straight-forward. The asset feeds back real-time data, when it falls out of set acceptable parameters that have been determined to be indicators of probable forthcoming failure an engineer is dispatched to fix the fault ahead of the asset going down - giving the end customer a continuous service whilst allowing the service provider to schedule their field service operations far more efficiently.

 

"Whilst servitization promises to hold the key to increased profits, a greater share of customer wallets and deeper, longer-term contracts that offer far greater financial stability, it is not a particularly easy nut to crack..."

 

An obvious win-win all round - easy as that.

However, one of the obvious spanners that can be thrown into the works is the parts logistics aspect fo the equation. Getting the right engineer to the right place, at the right time has been the field service manager’s mantra for as long as I can remember. However, it all becomes a moot point if the engineer hasn’t got access to the right parts.

And in an age of increasing congestion, which can put a huge strain on service logistics - getting the right parts to an engineer can cause a huge problem for field service delivery, and when it comes to advanced services this issue becomes even more significant.

“I look at servitization and for me, it really exposes some of the weaknesses in a supply chain or the process of getting parts to the engineer,” explains Simon Fahie, Manging Director, ByBox when he joined me for a recent episode of the Field Service Podacst.

“Certainly, we are seeing conversations that are saying yesterday we could do a next day fix, now we are able to do a four hour fix. But it is not just fix-times that are open to discussion. Obviously, in a servitization scenario, you have lost revenues that are at stake,” he continued

“If the asset you are supplying is not working not only do you have a disgrunteled customer, you also have no revenues coming thorugh. In fact, in some instances, not being able to provide a fix stops the use of consumables as well.”

“So what we are seing as a growing trend is the need to position inventory actually on site, or very, very close, to be able to provide the very short fixtime that servitized contracts require.”

And this is exactly where ByBox come into the equation - with a network of lockers across the UK and Europe they offer an effective means of acheiving this - in the UK for example, Fahie states that most of their customers will have a locker within just a few miles of their location.

 

"If the asset you are supplying is not working not only do you have a disgruntled customer, you also have no revenues coming through..."

 

Yet their is more to the solution than just conveniently place lockers.

“The challenge is how do you control the parts?” Fahie asks retorically.

“How do you give secure access to them? How do you know that they are there? How do you know that they’ve gone out of stock? You can’t just hand over a cardboard box of parts and say leave that by the machine for the engineer when he comes. It is a lot more challenging than that.”

ByBox’s solution to these challenges is in many senses relatively simple, yet is hugely effective in overcoming exactly these problems. The lockers themselves are enabled with secure bluetooth functionality for delivering and removing parts which allows for the movement of parts to be logged - providing essentially visibility into the parts management process, which in turn opens up the doors to even greater streamlining possibilities as well.

“What this enables is the better efficiency of the field workforce,” explains Fahie.

“If you think about the scheduling challenge if a field worker has gone and got a part at 9 am they are then committed to that job that requires them and that part. However, if the part is available and can be collected at any time by anyone with the appropriate authorisation, the efficiency of the scheduling could be increased.”

“If we add into that mix the rise of the flexible or contingent workforce, now we are trying to get a part to a place that may be able difficult to deliver to, now we can have a part picked up and delivered by a person that you have never met before and may never meet again - but that is where the felxibility of the app base dcontrol comes into play - and it could lead to some really interesting new ways of improving the service supply chain that simply couldn’t have existed before.”

Indeed, given the increasing burden being felt within service logistics due to things like pedestrianisation of city centres and ever more congested roads, for servitization to thrive as it should, it is exactly such innovative ideas that field service companies will need to embrace.

Our industry is evolving rapidly, but fortunately, it appears we have the tools to hand to adapt with it.

 

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The blend of GPS, real-time traffic information and latest workforce scheduling can yield previously unknown levels of efficiency for field service delivery. Jeremy Squire, Managing Directo, FLS, Fast Lean Smart explains how... 

The convergence between field force scheduling and vehicle tracking is not something on the horizon, it has already arrived - and with precise arrival times now offered by private car hire and delivery companies such as Uber, DPD, IKEA and Amazon, customers are already expecting the same for field service appointments and anything less may be perceived as poor service. It is fast becoming a necessity for field service companies to both realise and embrace this as essential to achieve.

At FLS, Fast Lean Smart, we specialise in scheduling and route optimisation solutions and our customers are increasingly interested in this convergence of technologies. I believe it is vital for most field service companies to consider this and let’s take a moment to look at both how and why you should be doing likewise.

If live GPS location coordinates are provided to FLS VISITOUR, our leading scheduling technology, we can re-plan your engineer job schedules based on exactly where they are in their current route rather than wait until a confirmation of arrival from their mobile app.

The system could be configured to automatically re-optimise the rest of the day ‘real-time’ for engineers based on the location updates. This might enable additional jobs, highlight where an SLA or appointment slot will be missed and optionally remove lower priority jobs from the schedule unless overtime is approved.

[quote float="left"]With the convergence of these technologies and capabilities, there really has been no better opportunity to enrich the profitability of your business whilst achieving happier engineers and happier customers[/quote]Many service operations, however, decide against this level of fluidity for their engineer’s day and therefore might choose to lock the next jobs or even the whole day and only make changes in exceptional circumstances and under the control of a planner. This is particularly true for tasks which require the engineer to have parts or for appointments that require preparation.

What is certain, however, is that knowing issues with the current plan in the back office is key for customer service and engineer welfare, therefore the more accurate this is the better. The driving durations used by the scheduling algorithm are also very important to achieve this objective and at FLS we use actual average drive speeds for each road segment according to time of day for pre-planning. Variable traffic congestion is a severe issue in some areas, therefore, we also use a real-time feed of current traffic to optimise during the day. With this combination, drive durations are as accurate as we have all become accustomed to when using TomTom Live or Google Navigation on our smartphones.

It requires this high level of accuracy to enable reliable automated messaging to customers with the refined time of arrival for engineers. However, combining GPS location data in the FLS VISITOUR scheduling system also enables our FLS Customer Portal which can be accessed via a URL in the arrival time message and for your customers to track the arrival of the engineer from the previous job on a map, Uber style! (no more ’Where’s my engineer?’ calls.)

This capability has now become the goal of almost every field service provider we speak with, not just  B2C, and whilst currently a USP we can expect it will increasingly become the norm.

Of course, all this has terrific benefits for the service provider as well as the customer.

Maximising productivity and minimising cost in the field whilst giving good service (right engineer with the right parts etc) is a standard desire for everyone, however, with the convergence of these technologies and capabilities, there really has been no better opportunity to enrich the profitability of your business whilst achieving happier engineers and happier customers.

To deliver this level of performance and customer excellence, integrating engineer tracking is essential and there is an answer for every circumstance; a vehicle telematics system, a low-cost GPS cigarette lighter tracker or a phone/tablet app such as FLS MOBILE.

The days of customers waiting blindly for an engineer to arrive are on the way out and field service companies must adapt to these new expectations swiftly to avoid being seen as outdated and uncompetitive. The good news is that the solutions are already available - it is just a case of connecting the dots - and FLS VISITOUR is a solution that allows you to do just that.

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The advent of Cloud computing has had a profound effect on field service management.

Indeed, there is no denying that the emergence of Cloud computing has been a core driver in the ability for smaller and medium-sized field service companies to be able to compete with their larger competitors - and such competition has raised the bar for service delivery in all corners.

Anecdotally, how often have you heard someone comment (or indeed thought to yourself) ‘how is it that say my local florist is able to give me a detailed overview of where the flowers I have sent to my wife are at any given point within their delivery and are able to give me a 30 minute window for when they will arrive, yet the multi-national organisation that provides one of the key widgets that is essential to my businesses productivity can only tell me that an engineer will be with me at some point between 8 and 5?’

Of course, the truth is that the delivery of flowers is far less demanding of expertise than that expected of a highly qualified engineer capable of fixing said widget – which of course means that the scheduling requirements are also equally less complicated for the local florist.

In addition to this, the local florist will, largely by definition, only be serving a local area – whereas the B2B provider of the widget will almost certainly serve a national market, if not an international one.

So it is unfair perhaps to compare one to the other, accusations of seeking the similarities between apples and oranges are in this instance somewhat understandable. Yet, ultimately in today’s connected world, we must remember that we are no longer competing solely with those companies within our direct vertical sphere.

 

"Today, we are competing very simply against the best service experience our customers have ever had, whether that be within their consumer or their corporate lives..."

 

Today, we are competing very simply against the best service experience our customers have ever had, whether that be within their consumer or their corporate lives.

However, what this anecdotal example does highlight with true clarity is how smaller service organisations, be they florists, electricians, HVAC engineers or any of the other array of small entrepreneurial companies that help keep our day to day lives running, have been able to harness the power of modern FSM solutions.

This development is mostly the result of the introduction of SaaS-based subscription-style licensing which makes access to such systems possible. It seems like a long, long time ago that Tesseract, an Asolvi product became the first company in the world to offer their full FSM solution in the Cloud and on a SaaS model. Indeed, today almost all FSM providers now offer their solution in such a manner.

This means that smaller companies can have access to tools like scheduling, stock and parts management and mobile work management applications for their field-based staff to access via a mobile device. Yet, they also have the advantage of being more agile, more streamlined and less weighed down by legacy systems and processes that their larger peers undoubtedly face.

 

"In a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scenario keeping on top of MDM can sometimes feel like painting the Golden Gate Bridge – by the time you finish at one end it’s time to head back the other way and start all over!"

 

Many, many aspects of introducing an FSM solution can become more challenging the larger an organisation is.

Optimised scheduling engines need to be ‘taught’ the rules under which they are to operate – the larger the workforce and the more diverse the skill-sets within that workforce, the more ‘lessons’ that need to be fed into the scheduling system for it to operate as intended.

Also, let’s consider the devices that are being utilised by the field workers – mobile device management (MDM) is a challenge that few IT departments will relish.

In a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scenario keeping on top of MDM can sometimes feel like painting the Golden Gate Bridge – by the time you finish at one end it’s time to head back the other way and start all over!

Even in an environment where devices are provided by the organisation, there may be a mix of options within one company, with different devices being provided that meet specific roles within the organisation – such as rugged devices for field-based technicians.

This can result in a mix of iOS, Android and Windows operating systems (possibly even more) which all need to be factored into the MDM equation.

Again, this is a challenge that becomes magnified by the scale of the workforce in question.

Of course, another challenge magnified by the scale of the workforce is the simple fact that the introduction of any new business technology, including an FSM solution, is inherently a change management project – and as any change management consultant will inform you – good change management is about people. It is a simple equation to understand that more people mean more effort and complexity when undertaking such a task.

In terms of FSM solutions, the shift to the Cloud has absolutely changed the competitive dynamics within various industries in favour of those smaller companies who are savvy enough to embrace cloud-based FSM and unencumbered by challenges such as the above which larger companies may face.

This has given smaller organisations to flourish and thrive in the modern business eco-system, but this increased competition has resulted in huge organisations like Thyssenkrupp or ABB further driving innovation as we have showcased in these pages previously.

Our sector is going through a huge evolution with non-competing companies pushing each other to achieve more through service delivery and the cloud has played a major role in that allowing us to do so.

 

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John Hunt outlines why when it comes to digitalisation, the focus should be on the end goals, not the technology...

There is a common thread being pulled by executive boards across the globe at the moment both in the field service sector and far beyond.

That is, of course, digitalisation.

In my role here at Astea, it’s a topic that our customers and new prospects are keen to talk to us about – almost every company I’ve spoken to in the last 12 months has broached it in one form or another.

However, there is a fundamental point I believe is often being overlooked by companies as they dive head first into weaving the digitalisation thread into their strategy – that is that digitalisation itself should be seen as an on-going process continuously woven in your field service tapestry rather than a one-time project, or a mere stitch in time.

 

An opportunity to redefine workflows

To start, let’s look at what digitalisation shouldn’t be.

Digitalisation shouldn’t be simply taking all of the previous steps your field service engineers used to undertake manually with good old pen and paper and dumping them onto a mobile device. Digitalising their workflow is an opportunity to re-evaluate some of these processes, re-order some things, maybe even remove others entirely all in the spirit of making your customer ambassadors happier and more efficient and effective. That happiness, efficiency, and effectiveness translates into better top and bottom line performance and most importantly, happier and more loyal customers.

 

"Those companies that get the most success from the implementation of a Field Service Management (FSM) solution are those who bring a selection of their engineers into the implementation process..."

 

Invariably, those companies that get the most success from an implementation of a Field Service Management (FSM) solution are those who bring a selection of their engineers into the implementation process. Just like product marketers use focus groups of prospective customers to fine-tune their product offering to maximise demand, so should you leverage a similar approach with your customer ambassadors, also known as the engineers. For example, by speaking with your engineers to understand what elements of your FSM system’s mobile app they use the most frequently, you can ensure that access to the relevant parts of the solution need are easily surfaced within the app.

The same of course also goes for your scheduling solution – digitalisation should be an opportunity to put the information your team needs at their fingertips, quickly and seamlessly to improve both service triage and first-time-fix rates. So who better to ask what information should be where than the folks on the front line that need access to such information each and every day? The happiness through efficiency and effectiveness you will weave throughout the services organisation will pay big dividends not only in the traditional operational sense but also in employee retention and the all-important increased customer loyalty.

 

A journey of continuous improvement.

The concept of continuous improvement is one that many field service professionals are fully aware of, yet all too often it doesn’t get factored into discussions around digitalisation.

Facebook is famously always in ‘beta’ when it comes to its development, and whilst I wouldn’t recommend such a fluid approach to something as mission-critical as field service operations, digitalisation certainly allows us the opportunity to tweak things here and there to find those sometimes hidden incremental improvements that can yield seemingly small efficiencies that stack up hugely in the overall picture.

For example, I recall speaking with one service director earlier this year who explained to me that by implementing a simple keystroke study of his dispatch staff across 3 months they were able to identify some simple yet effective changes to the menu structure of their system which brought some frequently used options to the front of the solution when they were previously tucked away behind a couple of sub-menus.

On an individual basis these changes sped up the dispatcher’s role by just a few seconds each time. However, the overall net benefit to the service organisation was millions of dollars per year as those seconds began to add up across the entire workforce just like a snowball accumulating more and more snow as it rolls down the mountain.

Digitalisation allows us to not only make these changes quickly and easily across a large user base but also to understand how, why and where these changes should be made.

 

Build processes today with an eye on tomorrow.

One final piece of advice I would give to companies embarking on their own digitalisation journey is remember you don’t always need to boil the ocean; digitalisation should be an iterative process.

For example, IoT is the hot topic in field service right now and rightly so as it is set to play a huge role in the future of service delivery. Yet, for many companies a full IoT rollout is cost prohibitive and requires a gargantuan feat of logistical planning.

 

"I’d suggest you don’t even need one asset connected before you start building in the processes of identifying key data you wish to collect – what is to stop your engineers noting certain key data points when performing maintenance?"

 

However, do you need to have every asset in your install base connected before you can start pulling data for analysis to dig out some key trends and insights that could be of value to your organisation and perhaps even more importantly to your customers? Of course not!

In fact, I’d suggest you don’t even need one asset connected before you start building in the processes of identifying key data you wish to collect – what is to stop your engineers noting certain key data points when performing maintenance? You can build the processes and collect the data that would form the backbone of a digitalisation strategy before a single asset is connected, and then introduce automation for these new processes across a much more manageable timeframe.

In doing so you will have already begun to think beyond the realms of what is possible today and begun to consider what can we build now that will improve our service delivery tomorrow.

And this at its heart is what good digitalisation strategy should be all about. There are already some masterpiece tapestries with shiny digitalisation threads prominently featured in the field service world today reaping big rewards with their own teams and customers; these will continue to grow and outpace the industry. The best time to have begun your work of art was yesterday. The second best time is today, so gather your thread and your team to design it and start weaving!

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John Hunt, is Managing Director, EMEA, Astea, 

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Claudine Mosseri outlines how in an age of increasing consumer power it is critical field service engineers are able meet SLAs and explains how technology in service logistics is making that happen...

News headlines would suggest that the high street is fast heading to a retail graveyard, with longstanding titans like Debenhams and House of Fraser the latest to face tough times.

Yet only after a period of turmoil, only one in 10 shops is vacant.

Factors such as the need to try before you buy, instant gratification and the convenience of returns are just a few of the factors that keep consumers returning to the high street.

The most successful stores are not only driving e-commerce, but also optimising the in-store experience by implementing new technologies and interactive features for customers.

We are starting to see the emergence of brand leaders such as Amazon Go, whose model is being mimicked by Tesco in its cashless store trial.

Whistl also discovered that over half of shoppers prefer unmanned tills to deal with cashiers, as it’s faster. As retailers become ever bolder in their use of tech, they rely more heavily on those integrated devices working flawlessly.

But as the old adage says, the best-laid plans often go awry. At some point, technology will fail, whether it’s a shopper-facing device or the datacentres serving them. When this happens, problems result for both consumer and retailer.

 

"ByBox recently surveyed 1,000 shoppers, two-thirds reported they had experienced problems and breakdowns in-store. For one-third of these dissatisfied consumers, this meant they were unable to complete their purchase at all..."

 

ByBox recently surveyed 1,000 shoppers, two thirds reported they had experienced problems and breakdowns in-store. For one third of these dissatisfied consumers, this meant they were unable to complete their purchase at all.

What was designed to be a positive customer experience can quickly turn into a negative with long term consequences when the technology fails.

Over a third (38%) of shoppers told us they felt angry or irritated because of these breakdowns.

Over a fifth complained to store staff about nonfunctional devices. And for a very angry one in 10, their opinions of the store were damaged in the long term.

With revenue and reputation at risk, it is vital that retailers implement strategies to limit risk and ensure rapid response times when the inevitable does happen and their tech lets them down.

It starts with making sure service providers are equipped to manage speedy same-day fixes.

Ensuring this needs to be the norm when it comes to setting service-level agreements.

There are new technologies that can support this requirement. For example, creating micro-FSLs (forward stock locations) by combining sophisticated software and smart locker technology, means repair items can be prepositioned using overnight or through the day deliveries. Shortening the mean time to repair (MTTR) can also limit the risk to retailers.

The world of retail is moving at a swift technological pace – but this isn’t the only sector where the support services for connected devices must move with the times.

If networks and other background tech systems fail the entire customer experience is interrupted, and it’s often the front-end business which bears the brunt of customer dissatisfaction and lost revenue.

Modern retail is all about convenience and ease for the consumer, delivering the fastest way to shop in the most seamless and engaging way.

As we see one ‘rush’ to improve the shopping experience by implementing new technologies, retailers should prepare for another – maintaining these innovations.

This will keep the high street alive and kicking.

 

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Claudine Mosseri, is General Manager, ByBox 

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Rugged devices are a hugely important tools available to field service organisations to empower their engineers with mobile tools that are designed to survive the rigours of remote working environments. However, for the uninitiated, there can be a bewildering amount of terms used by rugged manufacturers (and increasingly their consumer-focused cousin) so let’s take a quick refresher of some of the key language used in the world of rugged...

 

Fit-for-purpose

With no shortage of devices to choose from, deciding what’s best for your service operation is no easy task. Fit-for-purpose should be the starting point for any deployment, say the experts.

Indeed, the first question any company should ask when looking for new devices for their engineers or technicians is “what tasks will the device be used for?”

Mobile devices in field service are mission-critical – they are not just “nice-to-have”, they are the lynchpin of your operations essential to the efficient running of the operation. Ease-of-use of can have a big effect on productivity and user-acceptance – would an integrated barcode scanner, for example, be better than a more fiddly-to-use camera?

 

"The mobile device is more than your service technician’s new pen and paper; it carries the job schedule, customer details and equipment data..."

 

Remember, once you’ve made the shift away from paper, there’s no going back – the mobile device is more than your service technician’s new pen and paper; it carries the job schedule, customer details and equipment data.

Your customers will become used to the higher service levels.

So, above all, the devices you equip your field workers with need to be reliable.

Can it survive the technician dropping it? Are the processor and memory up to running several apps at once if that’s required? Is the screen readable in strong light? Will the touchscreen work if it gets wet? Can it last a whole shift without recharging the battery?

Is it Fit-for-purpose?

 

MIL-STD810G

Almost every rugged device you see will proudly boast the magical code MIL-STD 810G somewhere in the specs but what exactly does it mean and why is it just so important?

Well as you may well have guessed MIL-STD is actually short for Military Standard. In fact, it is an American military standard that although has it’s origins with the US Air Force is now upheld in a tri-service agreement between the US Army, US Navy and US Air force. However, the standard is widely adopted amongst commercial products that need to be able to hold up to rigorous environmental tests.

The G if you were wondering, relates to the current revision of the certification document and we have been at G since 2008.

General Program Guidelines

The first part of the MIL-STD-810G is a set of general guidelines that describes management, engineering, and technical roles in the environmental design and test the tailoring process. It focuses on the process of tailoring design and test criteria to the specific environmental conditions an equipment item is likely to encounter during its service life.

Laboratory test methods

The second element of MIL-STD-810G is focussed on the environmental laboratory test methods to be applied using the test tailoring guidelines described outlined in the general program guidelines.

With the exception of Test Method 528 (Mechanical Vibrations of Shipboard Equipment), these methods are not mandatory, but rather the appropriate method is selected and tailored to generate the most relevant test data possible.

The tests themselves are varied across a range of different environmental stresses which include:

 

• Temperature ranges
• Shock
• Vibration
• Humidity

 

Tested to. Vs. Engineered to

One problem with MIL-STD 810G testing is that it can be very expensive and it’s important to remember that MIL-STD-810 is not a specification per se but a standard. A specification provides for absolute criteria which must be satisfied to “meet the spec”. MIL-STD-810 as a standard provides methods for testing material for use in various environments but provides no absolute environmental limits.

Therefore, some OEMs will skip the whole second part of MIL STD 810G (the actual testing part) yet still claim their devices are engineered to meet MIL-STD 810G standards.

Whilst such devices may well be more than capable of surviving the rigours of your field engineers toughest day, the simple fact is that they haven’t been actually tested to do so.

That said most of the dedicated rugged players within the space such as Janam, Getac, Panasonic and Xplore et al will all have their own internal testing facilities and will also often engage with a third party to validate their findings.

 

IP Ratings

IP environmental ratings along with MIL standards (MIL-STD) are perhaps the most widely recognised yet also perhaps the least fully understood of the standard definitions of what makes a mobile computer or tablet rugged.

What the IP figures mean

IP ratings are defined by International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards and tell you how well devices are sealed against dirt and moisture ingress and the level of protection components have against whatever is thrown at them.

IP ratings have two numbers: the first indicates the degree of protection against dust, dirt and foreign bodies entering the device while the second is about how resistant the device is to the ingress of fluid from drops, sprays and submersion. Ingress protection ratings can be affected by the number of ports on a device and whether they are sealed or open, by keyboard design and a number of other factors.

 

"If like me, you’ve ever spilt tea or coffee on a computer keyboard, you’ll know that water ingress can be the kiss of death to electronic components.."

 

For field service, the numbers to look out for on a rugged mobile device are “5” and “6” for dust protection and 4,5,6, or 7 for water or fluid ingress. (In comparison, consumer devices typically have a rating of IP42 or lower although high-end consumer mobile devices are frequently now seen to have IP67 ratings)

Both are important when assessing devices: if like me, you’ve ever spilt tea or coffee on a computer keyboard, you’ll know that water ingress can be the kiss of death to electronic components. Less dramatic but in the long term just as damaging are ingress of dust and dirt particles. They can cause keys to stick and generally penetrate causing damage to components.

While “6” is dust-proof, a “5” rating doesn’t mean the device will prove unreliable, just that it isn’t completely sealed against dust ingress. It’s worth noting, too, that complete sealing against water and dust ingress may increase internal temperatures which in turn might impact on processor performance.

There are more numbers for fluid or water ingress: a “4” rating signals protection from splashes, “5” against water from a nozzle, “6” will cope with more powerful water jets or sprays, while “7” means you can submerge the device in water and it will still survive.

Again, which is best for your operations depends on the working environment – for many field-service environments, a “5” rating and even possibly a ”4 “will be perfectly adequate.

 

Touchscreens:

In a world of smartphones and tablets touch-screens have become a universally understood means of interacting with a device.

Whether it is inputting data or simply navigating through an operating system, I would put a hefty wager on the fact that anyone reading this article is both familiar and comfortable with using a touch-screen device, such is the prevalence of the technology today.

Touch-screens are an important, even critical part of the user experience of almost all modern tablets and smartphones. Yet at the same time, the screen is of course the potential Achilles heel and an obvious weak spot in a rugged device. The balance therefore between delivering a screen that is sufficiently capable of withstanding drops and knocks, whilst maintaining high usability, is absolutely critical for a rugged device.

So let's look at some of the various options you may find in differing rugged devices when it comes to the screen and explore exactly what these options actually mean.

Almost certainly the biggest debate when it comes to screen choices in rugged devices is whether capacitive or resistive screens are better suited for the task. But what is the difference between the two?

The older of the two technologies is resistive which relies on pressure to register input. This pressure can be applied by your finger, a stylus or any other object – think of the handheld computers that many delivery companies use, often covered in ink because when the original stylus is lost, the delivery driver often just uses a regular pen to collect a signature instead.

Resistive touch screens consist of two flexible layers with an air gap in between and in order for the touch-screen to register input, you must press on the top layer using a small amount of pressure to make contact with the bottom layer. The touch-screen will then register the precise location of the touch.

Rather than relying on pressure, capacitive touch-screens instead sense conductivity to register input—usually from the skin on your fingertip but also from dedicated styluses.

 

"The biggest debate when it comes to screen choices in rugged devices is whether capacitive or resistive screens are better suited for the task. But what is the difference between the two?"

 

Because you don’t need to apply pressure, capacitive touch-screens are more responsive than resistive touch-screens. However, because they work by sensing conductivity, capacitive touch-screens can only be used with objects that have conductive properties, which includes your fingertip (which is ideal), and special styluses designed with a conductive tip.

Initially one of the big advantages of capacitive touch screens was that they enabled multi-finger gestures – perhaps the most obvious example is pinching or stretching a document to zoom in or out. However, resistive touch screens have also supported multi-finger input for about three or four years now also.

The big advantage resistive screens have over their capacitive counterparts is the fact that the operator can still use the devices whilst wearing gloves – as the input is dependent on pressure rather than the electrical current being completed through a conductive material such as a finger.

An additional benefit is that light touch, such as rain landing on the screen, won’t register so the devices are far better to suited to being used in the wet.

Both of these factors are of course particularly useful in a number of field service environments.

However, another key factor for rugged devices is of course reliability and durability and in this respect, capacitive touch screens have the advantage – especially in heavy use applications.

Resistive screens can have a tendency to eventually begin to wear down in frequently used areas. Such areas may be prone to becoming faded and may ultimately even become unresponsive. Also in terms of reliability, if a capacitive touch-screen does happen to become pierced or cracked it is still likely to function – think how many times you have seen someone using a smartphone with a cracked screen?

However, a break anywhere on a resistive touch-screen will often mean that it no longer works.

In terms of field service, this is a potentially huge advantage for capacitive screens as it allows for a field service technician to continue to utilise their device until they can get the screen repaired.

Ultimately, there are many different rugged devices available these days ranging from rugged smart-phone style handhelds through to fully rugged detachable laptops. As we mentioned at the beginning of this feature ensuring the devices you select are fit for purpose is crucial.

In order to do this, we advise getting a real understanding of how your field service engineers and technicians are doing their job - what environments to they work in and what is there workflow. Get them in to give you some input or get out there on some ride-alongs. Because, if you have an understanding of this you will find a device that fits your needs.

 

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