ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘field-service-news’ CATEGORY

Manufacturing and service companies are facing a looming skills crisis—but industrial AR can help...

In this final excerpt from an exclusive fieldservicenews.com presentation Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News is joined by John Hunt, Managing Director, EMEA, Astea as they discuss the ubiquity of mobile devices in field service operations today and just how the rise of mobile computing has truly revolutionised the way we approach service delivery in today's world. 

 

 Want to know more? The full length video of this presentation is available as premium content to fieldservicenews.com subscribers...

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In this second excerpt from an exclusive fieldservicenews.com presentation Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News is joined by John Hunt, Managing Director, EMEA, Astea to discuss the key findings of a research project Astea undertook with WBR.

Here, they talk about how the most cited goal for service-centric manufacturers in 2018/2019 is to increase innovation, agility and internal resource to support further development of new service initiatives...

 

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 Want to know more? The full length video of this presentation is available as premium content to fieldservicenews.com subscribers...

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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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Service management thought leader Sarah Nicastro joins IFS to drive recognition and growth in service

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, announces that Field Technologies Online Editor-in-Chief Sarah Nicastro will join IFS as Director of Service Business Development and Field Service Evangelist.

Sarah brings to IFS over a decade of experience covering the trends, technologies and business drivers that most impact end users of field service solutions. During her tenure at FTO, Sarah’s mission has been to help field service customers tell their stories. In her new role, Sarah will add to the in-house expertise to translate how IFS solutions address the challenges and pain points of savvy field service companies.

Marne Martin, President of IFS Service Management Business Unit and CEO of Workwave, an IFS company, shares her excitement, “With this appointment, IFS will be yet one step closer to our customers, as part of Sarah’s responsibilities include directly tuning into our customer community. Sarah will play a pivotal role in helping us achieve our growth targets, which are ambitious but entirely attainable considering the mix of great products, clients, talent and customer care at IFS.”

Commenting on her appointment, Sarah added, “I am very excited to join IFS, which is one of a small number of companies in the service management space I would consider working for. I know IFS as a strong technology vendor with an unmistakable passion for service management. I look forward to contributing with my expertise to help the company achieve its growth goals by focusing on the needs of the field service community.”

Read more about how IFS’s suite of service management solutions supports service organizations here: www.ifsworld.com/corp/industries/service/.

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The next Service Community event will be held at Oracle's Reading Offices on the 24th May 2017.

To register please email info@service-community.uk and their team will register you and send out logistics details nearer the date.

As usual this will be a very informal discussion focused programme aimed to allow you to share ideas over a range of service topics.  And a date for your diary! Our autumn event will be held on the 3rd October at a venue to be determined.

The Service Community is run by service professionals for service professionals, there are no commercial sponsors and literally if you are working in a professional capacity in the service sector then this is your community -  so if you would like to host a future event or want to suggest some discussion topics, then also contact the team on the above email.

The Agenda for the 24th May event is as follows:

•  12.00 - 13.00: Meet at Oracle Reading Offices for light buffet lunch
• 13.00 Welcome and Introduction - Steve Elsham: Oracle
• 13.15 Shift to the Left: Mark King  Service Director UK & Ireland, Pitney Bowes - Mark will share his experiences of how when faced with falling margins, through incorporating a self service model he has been able to increase profitability without reducing customer loyalty
• 14.00 Outsourcing service to 3rd parties - Dave Gibson  Veteran  Service Director with SUN / Oracle - Dave will share the challenge he faced first at SUN Microsystems and then later at Oracle, in outsourcing Customer Support to 3rd party service providers, while still maintaining excellent service on mission critical activities
• 14.45 Coffee & Networking break
• 15.15  Cloud Adoption in Field Service Management Solutions: Kris Oldland  Editor Field Service News - Kris will be reviewing the adoption of Cloud technology by both Suppliers and Clients of Field Service management Solutions, based on a 3 year research programme he recently concluded
• 16.00 Leading Change in After-Sales Support: Ian Cockett Ex Service Director Bosch UK & Cygnet-Texkimp - Shifting from a capital equipment focused business, to one that leads with service support and customer outcomes. The challenges faced and the approaches taken in achieving change.
• 16.45  Open forum & discussion based on the day
• 17.00 Close

We hope to see you there and please spread the word to any of your colleagues who may also find this event of interest - as a non-profit organisation word-of-mouth is incredibly powerful friend for us!

 

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Well it’s certainly been an interesting few months…

I think the only place I can start this column is the Service Management Expo which ran in mid June. As a brand Service Management Expo (or Service Management Europe) has been around nearly as long as the Service Management Technology industry has existed. Indeed this was the exhibition’s 30th Anniversary so it is an event that has long served our community.

However, it has been far from a steady ride for what is still Europe’s largest event of it’s kind. The brand has changed ownership a number of times over the years, as well as venues and co-located partner shows. It’s been a standalone show of it’s own, sat with alongside a call centre event one year, facilities management another and this year was part of an all encompassing ‘protection and management’ series which current show organisers UBM put together at the London Excel.

Perhaps this is the problem with our little universe. Whilst field service and service management sit neatly across a whole range of other industries the challenges Service Managers and Directors face, and the solutions to those challenges are largely specific to field service. So whilst field service spans across a huge array of different verticals there responsibility for making that service division run smoothly requires a very distinct knowledge base and skill set. With this in mind it is probably understandable that there was a touch of apprehension as to how Service Management Expo would fare it is new home in London’s Excel as the smallest cog in what was in honesty a behemoth of an event?

Yet despite some misgivings, reflecting on the whole they pulled it off. Okay at times the show felt a little lost against the enormity of some of the other events (IFSEC the international fire and security show took up half of the Exel on its own!) and there are definitely more than the odd kink to be ironed out, but as one SME veteran put it ‘a little bit of the buzz was back’ a buzz that had perhaps been becoming conspicuous in its absence for the last few years.

 

Certainly the area surrounding the Field Service Solutions Theatre which was hosted by our good selves had a great feel about it.

Maybe it was the constant stream of excellent, short presentations that we were very proud to have had a hand in arranging that kept people returning to the small auditoria but there was a definite buzz of conversation in the air for large parts of every day.

For me personally the highlight of the Solutions Theatre was the panel debate I hosted featuring Conor O’Neil, Ian Mapp, and Philipp Emennegger  where we discussed the Future of Field Service. In fact I enjoyed it so much I invite them back to take part in the panel discussion in this issue which appears on page 18.  Also you can find our coverage of SME itself across starting on page 32

However, Service Management Expo wasn’t the only event to run in June.

After the sad loss of Steve Downton earlier this year, it was fantastic to see a group of industry professionals, headed up by Chris Farnarth come together to put on a very special Service Community event which was both dedicated to the memory of Steve (whose wife and daughter were in attendance) but also had a second goal of discussing with the community itself how we can continue to build on Steve’s legacy and keep the Service Community thriving.

The event itself was a truly remarkable day absolutely crammed with presentations from some very seasoned service professionals including Coca-Cola Enterprise’s Mark Rawding, Siemans’ Graham Coyne and Fujitsu’s Martin Summerhayes (who is also interviewed for this issue which appears on page 12) amongst others. Coverage of the whole event begins on page 42

Perhaps the most fitting testament to the day was when the session headed into a breakout session at the end for those who wanted to be part of the conversation of how the Service Community should continue almost two thirds of the 60 or so people that attend remained. Steve’s vision for a non-profit, knowledge sharing community that supported each other was never more evident and we are very proud to be part of helping the community to continue to grow from strength to strength.

So after much change it seems that when it comes to our industry events it remains very much business as usual and on that theme I turn my thoughts to the other event that has dominated the headlines throughout June – the World Cup.

England are on the plane home whilst Argentina, Germany, Brazil and Holland remain in the hunt for glory. Yep. Seems like it’s a case of business as usual everywhere then…

Click here to register and get your digital copy instantly!

Field Service News was proud to publish the inaugural edition of our quarterly magazine earlier this month, which is available for free to UK field service professionals. If you missed out on this first issue or you are based outside of the UK then you can download a digital copy here.

We are fortunate enough to be joined by some of the field service community’s brightest and best and have a wide range of guest contributors from differing areas of the industry, all coming together in one place, to keep you fully up to date of all the latest key trends, technologies and practices emerging in the industry today.

Although we haven’t just gone and brought together a great bunch of writers and let them get on with it - that would be a bit of a cheat wouldn’t it?

No, the team here at Field Service News have been earning their keep as well and amongst all the other the great insight and analysis you will also find a five page special report looking at the appetite for the Cloud in the field service industry. This report comes off the back of a two month long research project we conducted in partnership with Tesseract systems.

I won’t put any spoilers in at this early stage but suffice to say that not all the findings were what you might have expected them to be, so it is certainly worth a read.

Then there is our exclusive interview with Telogis’ Top Man in the UK, Sergio Barata. He has been given the somewhat unenviable task of replicating Telogis’ exceptional growth in the US (Deloitte Fast Track 500 6 years running?!) here in the UK.

No mean feat, however, Telogis did announce an investment of £90M not too long ago to help grow their British business so it’s clear they mean business and Sergio whilst being an amiable and approaching guy, is also very switched on, very knowledgeable about the industry and also has an excellent grasp of what he needs to achieve and exactly what steps he needs to take to do so.

Yet another feature you cannot miss is our panel debate - ‘All change please.’ With the industry seemingly in constant flux as wave upon wave of ground-breaking technology appears (each with the potential to change the industry as we know it entirely) we thought we would try to make sense of things by bringing five of the smartest folks we know and putting the same three questions to each of them. With a diverse range of backgrounds and specialisms they make a formidable panel (I certainly wouldn’t want to bump into them on a dark night!) and provide some fantastic answers across the four pages.

And then there is more! But you are going to have to download the issue to find out for yourself!

So Click here to download your copy now!

 

 

Trimble Field Service Management's Aubrey Fox discusses the changing role of field service.