In this new article, Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, discusses how service leaders should make decisions based on data and research, rather than opinions...

According to Clayton Christenson, the late Harvard University Professor and strategy expert, “To find the biggest opportunities in the world, seek out the world’s biggest problems.” This is wonderful advice if your goal is to win a Nobel Peace Prize, but what if you are a senior executive in a business trying to survive? What to do? Substitute “Your Market” for “World.”

“To find the biggest opportunities in your market, seek out your market’s biggest problems.”

This is true if you are responsible for growing your company or your service business. The problems are the same but the resources available to help solve the problem at the business level are much greater than the resources at your disposal in the service business. This resource limitation frequently causes service leaders to make their plans based on opinions, not actual research. The outcomes are usually disappointing. The formal name of the solution process is Evidence Based Problem Solving.

THE BUDGET

Annually, most service leaders are asked to prepare a budget including a revenue and profit projection. These two commitments are then rolled into the next higher level’s budget. At that time, either the budget is accepted or more likely, the higher-level executives will come back with a comment like “We need an additional 10% on both revenue and profit” or “How much more can you deliver next year?” The only way to answer these questions is by having actual evidence to back up your projections. And when you finally settle on the new budget, you will first have to convince your team that you knew what you were doing when you submitted the budget and second, that you have an actual plan on how to deliver on your projection.

The implementation of your decision will require some service marketing. For example:

• Evaluate the profitability of all your services
• Create and price new services
• Update and reprice existing services
• Grow the number of people purchasing your services
• Align your branding with the corporate image
• Other things that effect your customers

EVIDENCE BASED PROBLEM SOLVING

This simple drawing shows the four steps that IMPORTANT customer impacting service decisions should follow to minimize the likelihood of having the outcome fail to meet expectations:

When trying to solve your important problems, following these four steps will not guarantee success, but not following these steps make it highly likely that you will miss the real opportunity.

Step 1: Brainstorm to define growth objectives

Defining your growth objectives seems easy – just accept your boss’ target. But doing this will be a big mistake because:

• The target may be unreachable within the time or operating budget set.
• The target may be to low and achieving it would leave money on the table.
• Your original proposal may have been spot on, but you were not able to defend it because it had been a guess and not backed by facts.
• Over time, every business tends to become less effective. You should use this opportunity to evaluate all your assumptions and make appropriate changes.
• Your operating environment may have changed. You need to update your plans to account for current situations.
• It is likely that your business experienced significant staff changes because of COVID-19. Some people retired, some may have been made redundant, others joined but were not fully on-boarded into the organization. They may not be the right people for the long-term or they may have undiscovered skills which will influence your plans.

The first thing you must do is identify any and all useful data. Some of it will come from your financial, CRM, and service management systems. Other data will come from external sources like industry projections, management articles and books, webinars, and discussions with thought leaders in your network.

Data collection should be an ongoing activity. Data from internal systems are usually reviewed daily, weekly, or monthly and reviewed to identify areas that are doing well or need help. The external data is a different story. The members of the service management team at all levels should be assigned one or more sources to follow and create and circulate summaries of useful content. Some of these summaries may result in group discussions and actions leading to operational or strategic changes. Be sure to give full credit to the people participating in these activities and take their actions into consideration when evaluating promotion candidates.

In the “crazy busy” world of field services, the organization can benefit from a periodic ½ day to multiple day meeting to just go off the grid and focus on continuous improvement. This is a fantastic way to prepare up-and-comers for future positions while getting their unique insights on your business.

There are two desired outcomes from this brainstorming - actions:

1. A set of growth targets for the coming year or two that everyone believes is attainable with a little stretch.
2. A list of potential ways to achieve these targets.

At the end of step 1, you will have gone from data to insight to action!

Step 2: Internal audit to find growth capabilities

Remember that step 1 was all about brainstorming to identify your 1 to 3-year targets and to create a list of potential ways to achieve these targets. In step 2, we begin to expand our list of potential services we created in step 1, understand the resources we have available to grow the business, and identify some of the underutilized resources in the organization.

There are two desired outcomes from this stage:

1. A prioritized list of all the possible ways the organization can grow revenue and profit. This list must include:
   1. A brief description of the offer
   2. Your best quantified guess (a range) of the contribution to achieving your target
   3. The advantages and disadvantages of each from both the customer’s and business perspective
   4. The key resources which will significantly increase over current conditions
   5. The resources that will be needed and are not currently available at all
   6. The resources which currently are used and will no longer be needed at all
2. A list of the underutilized resources in the organization including people, parts, equipment, space, etc. These will be candidates for redeployment or removal as the organization changes.

At this point, no decisions have been made about the way forward. You only have a list of potential offers and constraints. You still must interact with customers and find out how likely they are to purchase them if made available.

Step 2 can be done using internal resources only although a facilitator (either internal or external to your company) may be helpful if your team hasn’t done many of these activities.

Step 3 - Market research to discover growth opportunities

Step 3 will have the most impact on your evaluation since this is when your customers get to tell you what they want and don’t want and how much they are willing to pay for any novel offers you are thinking about. They will tell you their biggest problems, how much they are willing to pay you to solve them, and if they have enough confidence in your business to trust you and buy your new services.

This step is best done by an outside resource who understands the service business and will not bias or spin any findings or opinions. You need honest insights if your decisions are to turn into positive outcomes.

These are the steps most likely to be used to arrive at an understanding of what your customers want and need and are willing to pay for:

• Segment products and services in your normal way and then decide on which segment(s) to concentrate on initially. This could be product, geography, application, type of user, etc.
• Prepare to interview at least 15 customers in each segment.
• Develop questionnaire including the importance of every proposed offering or modification and other relevant information about how the customer feels about their relationship with your service business.
• Randomly select enough contacts to ensure being able to complete the agreed number of interviews.
• Telephonically interview the agree number of customers in each segment.
• Prepare recommendations and findings:
  • Importance of each proposed offering or modification
  • Contract elements for one or more levels or types of contract
  • Value proposition(s)
  • Acceptable price range
  • Recommendations for initial and long-term metric deployment
  • Ideas for a sales strategy
  • Other information learned from discussions

A project like this for one product and one segment in one geographical area can easily yield 2500 unique data points plus numerous comments. Compare this to the opinions of one or a few internal people and you see why this article is titled “Make Decisions Based on Data, Not Opinions.” And why your plans and commitments will carry enough weight that it will be difficult for anyone to challenge your decisions.

Step 4 - Service marketing to commercialize best opportunities

Recently I was thinking about the differences between a product and a service. One of the differences that nobody mentions is “There is no Kickstarter for services." I know that Kickstarter is for startup companies and rarely B2B, but the point is that companies can Beta test hardware products (including software), but how do we try out our services on our captive audience? The only way is through Step 3.

After we review the recommendations from the interviews, we are ready to choose one or more new offerings. Now we have to GTM (Go To Market). Here are the steps in their approximate order:

• Get buy-in from the C-suite. Sales, Marketing, and Finance are probably the most important support you will need although HR and Manufacturing may have a strong say depending on what you propose.
• Training will be critical to the success of your plans. People you must train include:
  • Your team.
  • Marketing to modify the standard quote forms and update the website to include your new stuff. You may need some dedicated advertising and an appearance at your industries upcoming real or virtual trade shows. This is your opportunity to boost your sales so do not look at this as a chore.
  • Sales needs training on how to sell what you will offer and probably would like a slide deck to use when presenting the service package to a new prospect.
  • In Finance, the Accounts Receivables team should receive an introduction to your new services so they can talk knowledgeably while collecting overdue payments.
  • If some of your service is delivered by the channel, then they the same training as the Sales team.
  • Customer experience, wherever they report, should be asked to do follow-up surveys or interviews on some of the early users of your new services.
• You can now start selling your new products. And make sure the CX group is surveying all early customers. Any negative feedback must be promptly followed-up by a senior service executive. And lessons learned should be quickly incorporated in your offerings and messaging.
• Repeat.

CONCLUSION

This whole effort deserves the same attention as the launch of a new physical product. If you have done everything well, the impact will certainly be the same in both cases. After all, new services are new products. Give then the same chance of succeeding as the product side of the business does.

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Further Reading:

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

 

Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, analyses the five global trends that will drive the future of field service...

In the science of dynamics speed is defined as the rate of displacement of a moving object over time (d/t). Acceleration is defined as the rate of change of speed over time (d/t2). And then comes jerk – the rate of change of acceleration over time (d/t3).

Why, you ask, do we care? Because until March 2020, we have been experiencing a period in which the rate of change of our “world” has been steadily accelerating. And then COVID-19 came along and changes that were projected to take years to accomplish were somehow accomplished in weeks or months. Mentally we felt as though the car we were riding in suddenly crashed into a bridge support and we were thrown into an airbag. We experienced jerk!

When we operate in a period of acceleration, we have time to prepare our self and our team to adapt to new operating conditions. It is still hard for many people to adapt as quickly as the change occurs, but they still have warning and can frequently participate in designing the new “world.” Unfortunately, the side effect of jerk is that changes suddenly appear and people must adapt without having the time to figure out how they will be affected. They don’t get a clear answer to the age-old question WIIFM (what’s in it for me?).

Since the world of Field Service depends on people, our own, our partners, and our customers, we must be sensitive to how our new operating procedures will impact them and effect their personnel and professional lives. We must consider all these people as we specify, design, implement, test, and go-live with sub-projects that will come together to create the new world that is rushing towards us.

THE five trends driving the future of field service

First a word of warning! On the morning of January 2, 2021, I read this in a Bloomberg News daily mailing:

Last year taught us that sweeping forecasts are pretty much a waste of time. Amid a raging virus, a global recession and a rapid markets turnaround, no one could have guessed that a record $120 trillion of stock would change hands on U.S. exchanges in 2020, that Tesla short-sellers would get burned so badly, or that Bitcoin would be such a huge hit with Wall Street. It’s hard to say which trends will continue into 2021. The forecasts to watch are those that only look one or two months ahead, or 10 to 20 years ahead, Jared Dillian writes in Bloomberg Opinion. As for all the prognostications in between—better to ignore them.

These five trends will drive the future of field service:

In the long-term, climate change will have the greatest influence on field service - how it is performed, who does the actual service work, how are parts managed, and how value is created. And because mitigating climate change is so critical, so complex, and so expensive, we will see unique changes being implemented in each industry and in each geographic entity and finally in each business.

In the medium term, there are two major changes which have already started to impact us:

• New business models like XaaS, IoT, and use of machine language and AI

• The circular economy and refurbishing and/or remanufacturing major assemblies or even complete products

In the short term, we are already seeing major changes due to the desire of customers for touchless service and the continuing trend of the aging workforce. What is not known is how must each of these trends will impact any specific industry or company. Knowing requires a familiarity of the specific details about what is happening behind the closed door of all the major players plus any potential entries. So, this article will discuss each trend and you, the knowledgeable reader, can pass each idea through your specific knowledge filters. You can then decide how much time, effort, and money to invest in getting your business ready to take advantage of any opportunities that develop. Now let’s look individually at each trend starting at the top of the pyramid. We start here because you should always keep this trend in mind as you address each lower level trend to make sure you do not have to redo some lower level change as you address the longer-term drivers.

CLIMATE CHANGE

We are all familiar with the need to make a major reduction in global greenhouse gases. It now appears that in the US, the Biden administration will kick our country’s response to the problem into high gear. In most other developed countries, the effort is already underway. As manufacturers and service providers of energy-driven machines, we will find ourselves on the front lines of the action. The greatest fear for OEMs business is that the environment will cause disruption in manufacturing operations. Think about the forest fires we have seen in the American west and Australia, the need for barriers to hold back tides and storm surges in London and Venice, and the drought in the American south-west during the 1930’s.

In October 2020, Boston Consulting Group published an article Climate Disruption And The Path To Profits For Machinery Makers. Here are five of the identified reasons why machinery OEMs, and their service organizations, will be impacted.

1. End users are disrupted – Reduced use of coal will reduce railroad shipments. Oilfield service will be reduced by decreased production of oil and gas. Power generated by solar and wind equipment will increase.<
2. Product design priorities shift – As manufacturers shift to the circular economy, the service groups may assume responsibility for refurbishment and rebuilding instead of on-site service. And new products will likely be more reliable than the models replaced and use fewer parts.
3. Business models change – Value will shift as manufacturers offer Product as a Service and IoT. Newer design will include fewer wear parts and the need for spares will decline. Increased use of digital twins will reduce on-site troubleshooting of failures. On the upside, newer items will include more software, which presents new service and support opportunities.
4. Value chains become circular – Field engineers will have to become experts in both recycling their equipment and consulting on a facility’s total operation to reduce their carbon footprint.
5. Weather, sea-level, and operational risks increase – Service contracts and warranties will have to change to minimize liability risks due to temperature and water-level changes

NEW BUSINESS MODELS LIKE XAAS

Businesses have been evaluating XaaS since it took off with SaaS. Now they are trying to tie XaaS and IoT into a new service based long-term contract where they are selling customer outcomes instead of hardware and service. The main advantage of the XaaS/pay for performance model is that customers and OEMs goals and objectives are totally aligned by focusing on meeting the customer’s needs. It makes their relationship a win-win partnership, not a win-lose contest. Unfortunately, according to Cooperberg in 2019, currently less than 3% of asset operators buy outcomes instead of assets. This trend is in the medium term because there is a long way to go. A secondary advantage of the hardware as a service model is that the OEM always retains ownership of the product. At the end of life, it can be brought back to the factory (possible a part of the service business) and either totally broken down into recyclable pieces or reusable spare parts or disposed of in an environmentally sound method. The challenge is that the OEM loses the initial sale and revenue when your product ships but gain the recurring revenue which can last over the total lifetime of the products and then extend as upgrades or replacements are installed. When it comes to servitization, where services are merged with products so the buyer can buy outcomes, there are a few obstacles that have to be cleared first. For example, again according to Cooperberg:

• Only 36% of asset operators have data and use it effectively
• 35% of asset operators still use in-house spreadsheets/excel to track current maintenance operations
• Only 35% of OEM’s connect all their new products
  

And a report prepared by The MPI Group in April 2020, The Power of Industry 4.0 in New Product Development stated:

• 40% (average) of revenues are from products with embedded smart devices/intelligence.
• The profit margin on these products is 34% (average), significantly higher than margins for other products (29% average).
• Significant improvements were likely to occur with access to data from products or services in the field.

In other words, most asset operators and OEM’s still are in the install-fix-decommission world. The transition to servitization will take more than 5-years unless something happens to accelerate the transition. And the improved margin may be that driver.

TOUCHLESS SERVICE

Right after COVID-19 hit, asset operators shifted from wanting on-site service to demanding touchless service. They wanted to keep as many outsiders out of their facility because any one of them could be primed to infect their whole workforce. And fortunately, merged/augmented reality product were on the brink of exploding for other reasons. OEM’s liked them because a highly skilled field service technician could stay in one place and support multiple relatively inexpensive and more junior field tech at the same time as one on-site call would take.

As the internal application worked so well, some OEM’s decided to try using the same systems with both B2C customers (even unskilled homeowners) and B2B operators or internal maintenance techs. And it worked! Less response time to get in from of the equipment and a quicker than expected restoral time.

The major challenge, and hence the major opportunity, is spare parts availability. OEM’s do not dispatch service technicians unless 1) they believe the fix will not require parts or 2) the technician a local service engineers carries spare parts as trunk stock, or the OEM coordinates the arrival of the field technician with the arrival of the needed parts.

When the internal facilities’ technician does the work, they don’t usually stock replacement parts. So, the tradeoff is technician travel time or parts delivery time. Or the OEM can stock spare parts in their customer’s facility either as an outright sale or as consigned inventory. This is an opportunity and can come in several ways including:

• Consigning or selling spare parts to the asset operator.
• Creating a local stocking location which is available to all customers in a selected area and located in one of them.
• Stocking parts in a controlled location available to a select group of customers.
• In all these examples, any parts used must be returned to the OEM. The OEM will then ship a replacement part to the stocking location.

Logistics and spare parts availability will be an area that OEM’s focus on as they try and roll-out more touchless service contracts.

AGING WORKFORCE

In September 2020, I published a Thomas Insights post “The Silver Tsunami: As Older Employees Plan for Retirement, It's Time to Plan for the Future of Your Workforce.” The article provides guidance about how to move forward and get ready for a different type of workforce. However, it assumes that your business will be the same in the future as it is today.

But we can see that what you do depends on these five trends. They will impact the number and backgrounds of your internal workforce going forward. And this mix will change depending on how quickly both you and your customers adapt to the solutions you both work together to create. In other words, you can make a one to five-year plan for dealing with each trend, but your labor plan has to be no more than one year because you are dealing with people’s livelihood and you don’t want to be known as a company that hires and fires often.

CONCLUSION

The future has at least five significant initiatives that all manufacturing companies will have to manage. The good news is that you now have the time to plan and test potential decisions.

Remember – “What got you here won’t get you there.”

 

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Further Reading:

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

 

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

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

It read: 

Yesterday: Your empowered customers demanded that you service them  

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

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

In this article we will look at the following:

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

THE HIGH-LEVEL ROLE OF THE SERVICE ORGANIZATION

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

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

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

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

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

THE customer's new challenge

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOUCHLESS SUPPORT - HOW SERVICE DELIVERY WILL CHANGE

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

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

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

Simple knowledge base (FAQs)

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

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

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

Merged reality virtual assistance

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

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

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

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

Remote computer support

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

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

Robust, and growing, multi-media knowledge base

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOW SERVICE MARKETING SHOULD RESPONDE TO THESE CHANGES

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

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

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

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

THE IMPACT OF THE NEW MODEL ON SERVICE REVENUE

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

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

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

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

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Further Reading:

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

INFORMATION IS LITERALLY EVERYWHERE, YET IT'S NOWHERE

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

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

I suggest four approaches:

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

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

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

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

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Further Reading:

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

 

Service is now moving from 'reaction' to consolidation; where the global lockdown is loosening, and service is turning back on having been left dormant. How should we approach this new phase?

 

 

In the latest Field Service Podcast, Deputy Editor Mark Glover is joined by Martin Summerhayes who gives new insight into what the sector should be considering as we emerge, blinking slightly, into a new service world. In this excerpt from that podcast Summerhayes explains why precise planning pre-empt proactive performance... 

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Want to know more? Check out the this full episode of the Field Service Podcast as well as all of our previous episodes in the podcast section of our Premium Content Library by clicking here

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Planning for Fully Reopening the Field Service Sector

"We are going to come out of this at some point," Martin says. "However, it is not going to be a mass switch on of services; mass opening of markets and outlets - think of a giant “Turn On” switch being pulled - rather, it is going to be phased approach."

In this episode and off the back of a recent article exclusively for Field Service News, Martin takes the ubiquitous 'Five Ps' business acronym - Poor Planning Promotes Poor Performance - and swaps in new first, third and fourth words:  Precise Planning Pre-empts Pro-active Performance is a possible blueprint for service directors who might be daunted or overwhelmed when sizing up a re-start.

"Take a set of scenarios to then precisely plan the impacts," Martin says, unpacking the first part of the acronym. "This evolves around asking a series of open ended questions and describing in detail the responses and impacts. This is where elements of “scenario planning” and an element of “game theory” comes into their own. 

Martin backs the theory with an example: a mixed legacy IT estate distributed across a number of outlets. Here he applies open-ended questions on health and safety, customer expectations and spare parts to garner these responses and impacts.

Proactive performance is approached with questions also but the aim is to spot patterns: "Have you captured all of the impacts, potential outcomes and put it into a plan? A resource profile? A spares planning spreadsheet? Have you shared this across your organisation teams?" he says. "You will need to explore at least five different customers and scenarios to start to see a trend and start to see the common elements that you need to work."

At the moment our feeds and inboxes are being bombarded with webinars, articles and other podcasts taking a long view approach to service's current challenge. Here, Martin suggests stepping back and concentrating on the now might be the way forward. 

However, he acknowledges this approach might not be the best way and he is keen to hear your feedback and to be challenged on his theory. So please let us know your thoughts.

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Further Reading: 

• Read more from Martin Summerhayes @ www.fieldservicenews.com/martinsummerhayes
• Read more Covid-19 related content @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/covid19
• Follow Martin Summerhayes on LinkedIn here.

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Want to know more? Check out the this full episode of the Field Service Podcast as well as all of our previous episodes in the podcast section of our Premium Content Library by clicking here

In this final video in our series looking at the grown-up gig economy and field service, we discuss the importance of customer perception when utilising gig workers as field service technicians...

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How to Protect the Brand Reputation of Your Field Service Operation, While Harnessing the Gig Economy

An important question remains when it comes to the gig economy. What about the perception of the gig worker in the eyes of the consumer – in an era when the service call plays a significant part of a company’s reputation and brand is it wise to hand that responsibility to someone who is not part of your corporate family?

There is a certain amount of trepidation amongst some companies around this approach for exactly this question. However, ultimately if the engineer is on an emergency break-fix call and gets the customer back up and running, realistically will they really care whether the engineer is a direct employee or a gig worker? Probably not.

Similarly, if the engineer is performing fairly routine preventative maintenance, then will it really matter if the engineer is gig worker or employed? Again in reality, the customer is unlikely to have too much of a concern. However, there is a potential negative impact to a brand if it becomes apparent that the company is sending out what could be viewed as cheaper, less qualified labour to maintain their customers assets.

There are a number of ways in which this could be overcome, however. 

 

Employ in the Gig Economy Like You Would for your Own Team. Hire Excellence.

One suggestion could be leveraging the natural gravitas and authority that more experienced engineers are able to bring to the table.

Of course, we are not suggesting that an organisation employ based on an age criterion here (that would be unfair, illegal and limit your potential reach into the gig economy market).

However, it could be wise to set a slightly higher experience requirement level for your jobs than is actually needed. This would have the benefit ensuring that each of your gig workers is overqualified for the work they are going to undertake on your behalf.

This may approach may be a bit more expensive than the regular approach to harnessing the gig economy, but it is still cheaper than it would be to develop and retain your own workforce, and you would be likely to see high level first-time-fix rates which not is not only good for your own P&L negating any additional expense, but perhaps more importantly would allow to maintain a strong brand reputation for your service operation whilst leveraging the gig economy.

This is however, just one potential suggestion, but there is one thing which is a simple necessity required in order to make sure you are able to successfully leverage the gig economy, whilst retaining the trust and loyalty of your customers. That is to present a consistent and unified look across all your communications with your customers regardless of whether they are internal workers or gig economy.

 

Embrace the Technology That Empowers Your Organisation and Delight Your Customers

It is essential that from your customers’ perspective that they still have clear visibility and a route of communication that is seamless.

This is where technology such as Localz can play a major role in facilitating field service organisations to truly harness the power of the gig worker market. 

In fact, moving towards an on-demand service model doesn’t have to be a huge operational or organisational change.

By using the power of location technology, such as that which the Localz solution has been designed to maximize, you can “offer” jobs to available engineers in the area with the right skill set, delivering a flexible schedule for employees and a seamless on demand experience for consumers, who are demanding more services which work around them.

 

Would You Like to Know More? There is a Field Service News white paper on this topic available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscriber. Click the button below to access it now! 

 

 

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The world of IT Services has evolved on many an occasion, however, right now it needs to prepare for another iteration of the new normal for it to continue to thrive writes Martin Summerhayes...

IT services have come a long way over the past 20 years or so. From the heyday of the hardware manufacturers, rolling out ever more sophisticated technology solutions; with faster compute power, larger storage capabilities and faster network performance; the pace of change seemed to be faster and faster.

 

Long Tail Service Support

Then the average sales lifecycle for the hardware platforms was a couple of years and services had to keep up with the ever-expanding portfolio of solutions. This meant a longer and longer list of products that had to be supported and maintained. What is known as “the long tail”.  

I was part of the long tail of support. When I first started as a field engineer for Hewlett-Packard (HP); HP had just released its first HP LaserJet printer, the 2686A and shortly afterwards its first PC. Within five years, the market had exploded and there were hundreds of different models. Combined, with the mini computers, servers, storage and network products being produced; it felt as if it was a quarterly tech refresh and learning hamster wheel.

The implications for many services companies meant, having to train the workforce on an ever expanding list of products, servicing more and more options and then having to keep, maintain and supply more and more variants of spare parts. As HP moved into the multi-vendor field of service deliver, this became even more complex. 

"As the consolidation of software operating system platforms has accelerated, so has the consolidation and merger of major hardware and solution platforms as well..."

At the same time as hardware manufacturers grew their product portfolio, the operating systems that were used to manage these diverse hardware platforms started to consolidate. From fifteen or more different types of operating system, over the past fifteen years, we have seen the standard platforms evolve to be either Microsoft or Linux/Unix based for the B2B market. For the B2C market Googles Android and Apples IOS operating systems are the two predominant variants.

As the consolidation of software operating system platforms has accelerated, so has the consolidation and merger of major hardware and solution platforms as well. What was once a diverse and jumbled array of solution providers; from an IT perspective; consolidation has meant standardisation, supply chain simplification and “more bang for the buck” that companies pay for their IT.

However, “the long tail” persists. Even today, with 70%, yep 70% of IT spend just keeping the “lights on”.

Only 20-30% of IT budgets are spent on new solutions, and the vast majority of that spend is now on software, not hardware. If you look at the hardware sale of servers, storage and networking solutions across Europe over the last few years; we have seen a steady decline in growth and a flattening of sales. It is almost at a point where customers are no longer purchasing hardware at all.

This might be an oversimplification, but the market figures do seem to indicate that the market is flat or even declining (If you are in hardware sales, and disagree, please feel free to say so in the comments below).

 

The Origins of Everything as a Service

This hardware sales decline has been driven largely by the “as a Service” models, starting with “IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service”, where customers could purchase raw hardware compute poser – be it servers, storage or network capabilities; expanding into “Software as a Service” – which has had a dramatic and completely disruptive effect on the traditional software annuity licence model and now a new variant called “Platform as a Service (PaaS)”, which wraps up IaaS, SaaS and extends it across the complete enterprise of services and IT organisation is offering to its business and end user base.

If you check out companies such as Salesforce.Com or ServiceNow, they are moving rapidly away from their heartlands of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Salesforce.Com which tracks the sales engagement and onboarding of new customers and IT Service Management (ITSM) on a Service Desk (for ServiceNow) where you track end-user incidents, problems and issues that they face; into a eco system called “Platform as a Service”.

This means that ServiceNow is launching solutions for HR; for Finance, for Marketing, for example. Salesforce.com is offering the ability for apps developers to develop applications, standing on top of the salesforce platform, that also expand into HR, finance and Marketing. (As a foot note, I can see a major battle developing between these two companies over the next few years).

Why are these companies doing this?

As markets exist, companies expand to meet those markets. The number one in the CRM and ITSM markets, are respectively, Salesforce and ServiceNow. To be able to continue to grow, provide shareholder value and appear to be leading edge, the local answer is to expand their market presence into similar market landscapes – hence – moving out from their core business models into parallel markets.

 

Time for Evolution in IT Service Design

So from an IT service model perspective, we need to adapt and change as well.

Too many of the service models that exist today are silo’d; focused on vertical optimisation of an element of the service lifecycle – Service Desk, Diagnosis, field service (massively silo’d), forward and return logistics and finally repair. This, I would contend, runs the risk of a continued race to bottom line, with lower and lower costs, less margin and an ever decreasing customer experience. Oh, and before you ask, when you get to the bottom, there is nowhere else to go!

"We need to think more of the lifecycle and value stream across IT..."

Whilst customers are looking to maximise the value of their IT estate, they also want to further standardise and modernise the services that they offer to their businesses. They are looking at IT service organisations and the value that they can bring in terms of supporting and transforming their IT services; bringing more of the adaptive model that we see in the consumer world; hand held devices, mobility, ease of use and adaptive adaption to rapidly changing business needs.

This needs a new set of thinking about how services need to be positioned. We need to think more of the lifecycle and value stream across IT.

I like to think that services will continue to develop and evolve and a new ecosystem will emerge where organisations strategically partner with one another; leveraging others strengths, as well as the clients they serve; to bring better value to the IT customers. This is going to need some new thinking, maybe, from learning from the software services world. I don’t have all of the answers, but have experience a number of these cyclical changes, so understand the changes companies need to make.

If you think that it is just “business as usual” and we as a community do not need to adapt, feel free to challenge.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

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Further Reading:

• Read more articles written by Martin @ www.fieldservicenews.com/martin-summerhayes
• Read more articles on IT Services @ /www.fieldservicenews.com/ITSM
• Find out about Martin's work with MDB Consulting @ www.mdbsc.co.uk
• Follow Martin on Twitter @ twitter.com/martinsummerhay
• Connect with Martin on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/martinsummerhayes/

In the fourth part of this series looking at the grown-up gig economy in field service we explore the win-win benefits of the older gig worker being utilised within the field service sector...

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What the More Experienced Field Service Engineer Brings to the Table...

So, let’s take a look at why the gig economy can be of benefit both for more seasoned engineers and for field service organisations themselves.

 

Flexibility

The frequent travel of a field service engineer can be an exciting life for a younger worker. Indeed, this variety is something that field service organisers are starting to leverage as they seek to employ from the millennial labour pool.

However, it is a work-life balance that is perhaps less attractive for the engineer who has settled and doesn’t want to spend time away from their family so often.

Equally the older engineer, who is perhaps entering into semi-retirement may not want to (or be capable of) climbing up pylons or squeezing down cubby holes everyday but whose technical skills can be leveraged in less demanding roles.

Additionally, as our society adapts to newer thinking towards work, the entrepreneurial approach is becoming increasingly common amongst older workers as they have the necessary diligence to continue to seek out the work needed to provide them with financial support, but relish the freedom of being able to set their own agenda.

 

Experience On Tap:

For the field service organisation, the ability to tap into a pool of experienced engineers, on demand, allows them to minimise the risk of unnecessary costs while still being able to meet any peaks in service requirements.

Whilst this is of course true of any gig-worker, regardless of age, field service companies are seeking out more seasoned engineers for a number of reasons. 

 

Experienced with the Assets

The engineer that has been there, done it and got the t-shirt is likely to hit the first-time-fix rates.

Not only are they likely to have vast experience on multiple assets within the industry segment, but also their experience will shine when it comes to fault identification as well. This is crucial considering that no fault found is one of the over-riding biggest causes for costly second visits.

 

Good Under Pressure

When every second of downtime is costing your client money the front line of the service cycle can be a high-pressure environment.

In such pressure, mistakes can be made which can be costly for both you and your client. The experienced engineer is likely to be able to draw on a well of experience to help them get the job done as efficiently as possible.

Indeed, this is the reason that so many field service organizations actively seek out ex-military personnel.

 

Good with the Customers

Of course, if the customers problem is resolved nice and quickly then they are likely to be happy.

However, a confident and well-mannered engineer can then be the link in solidifying their relationship with your organisation and potentially paving the way for renewed or upgraded service contracts in the future.

The gig-economy engineer doesn’t need to be part of your sales process to achieve this, but they are the representative of your brand and the quality of their interaction with your customers will impact your sales teams conversations at some point in the future.

The experienced engineer is more likely to understand the wider business processes and be more comfortable engaging with customers whilst also naturally carrying a more authoritative tone.

 

Would You Like to Know More? There is a Field Service News white paper on this topic available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscriber. Click the button below to access it now! 

 

 

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So far in this series of excerpts from a white paper recently published by Aquant, we've assessed the significant challenge field service companies face in finding balance in their workforce and the role Artificial Intelligence (AI) can play in helping companies do so. Now in the final excerpt in this series we look at how equally the implementation of AI requires a human touch to succeed. 

 

In Field Service we Must VALIDATE AI WITH HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

Much has been made of the idea that machines can replace humans for essential job functions. The truth is that AI is nothing without the real-life expertise of humans to guide and validate its findings.

Automating insights from historical data is not enough on its own. In order to ensure that findings about the solutions to service challenges are accurate, an organisation must bring in its experts to assess and improve the solutions offered. Before AI, organisations needed to take experts out of the field for months to help with training or knowledge sharing. With the right AI solution, experts can optimise insights in a matter of hours.

When solutions to challenges are automatically generated by a system, it enables members of the service team to spend more time doing what they do best—which is applying their expertise in the field.

 

Speed up the Training of your Field Service Engineers and Increase Their Expertise

With easy-to-access information that understands what you mean regardless of specific phrasing, and a dynamic pool of information to draw from, smart systems give all employees equal access to previously hidden information.

Skills that previously took years to learn (usually by waiting to personally encounter and solve each unique problem) can now be passed down to newer employees in a matter of days. In addition to solving the practical problem of on-boarding new hires, it also helps to engage millennials in a way they are more comfortable with. And when knowledge is easier to acquire, employees can work on acquiring soft skills like customer service and relationship building, which can’t be taught by even the most powerful machines.

 

Case Study: How 3D Systems were able to scale their field service wrokforce and decrease repeat field engineer visits with actionable insights

3D Systems empowers modern manufacturing with best-of-breed plastic and metal 3D printers.

They help manufacturing clients dramatically reduce build time and enable healthcare organisations to custom-fit solutions and improve patient outcomes. With a robust global client base, they needed to onboard new service techs quicker to get them out in the field and solving complex service problems.

As the workforce grew, one of the hardest issues was extracting the organizational knowledge out of the heads of the most experienced engineers and into the hands of everyone in the field. They turned to Aquant’s AI-powered service intelligence platform to mine and analyze all their information, including data stored in field service solutions, CRM, and parts systems. In addition, the tool was able to uncover info that lay dormant in free text notes.

"3D Systems has seen a 62% reduction in parts usage and a 39% decrease in repeat visits, driving significant cost savings..."

The Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine embedded in the technology is even able to map different phrases and words all back to the same problem, which structured the data more efficiently and made it easier to search. During the install process, which took less than a week, the tool scoured and categorized data, and then their best engineers sat down to validate the data and improve findings.

3D Systems is now able to leverage Aquant’s Intelligent Triage product to assess and troubleshoot customer tickets quickly, helping service pros resolve issues on the first visit. They’ve also decreased parts costs and usage by correctly identifying the source of the problem and sending the right tech, with the right skills into the field with the right parts.

All employees have more equal access to knowledge, making it easy for junior techs to get up to speed quickly. As a result of implementing Aquant across the organization, 3D Systems has seen a 62% reduction in parts usage and a 39% decrease in repeat visits, driving significant cost savings.

 

Would You Like to Know More? There is a Field Service News white paper on this topic available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers. Click the button below to access it now! 

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