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Manuel Grenacher, CEO, Coresystems discusses the big three technologies that are driving field service productivity to ever greater heights...

More than 85 percent of field service professionals say that the strategic use of technology is a key driver of overall productivity.

Moreover, within the next two years, 70 percent of organizations will reference customer satisfaction as a primary benefit obtained from implementing modern field service management technology, according to Gartner.

Unfortunately, many organizations are resisting from updating systems due to a need to accommodate legacy systems, and are therefore missing out on the increased workforce efficiency and productivity that updated systems deliver.

[quote float="left"]Unfortunately, many organizations are resisting from updating systems due to a need to accommodate legacy systems[/quote]Recent technological progressions have made a significant impact on many industries - and field service is no exception. Keep in mind, it’s often quite difficult for businesses to ‘bolt on’ additional technology to legacy systems, and many these should be considering new projects aimed at reducing cost and improving agility. So, what is there to gain?

Big Data and Data Analytics

Big data and analytics functionalities present a digestible, clear view of relevant data, which allow staff to make real-time decisions.

Each step is visible and transparent, and companies can start offering customers more proactive service, such as more finely tuned maintenance schedule alerts or alerts on peripherals that need replacement, consistently.

Cloud and Connectivity

Many field service applications are anchored in the cloud, and this pay-on-demand nature allows businesses to reduce spend on software and hardware costs. The cloud provides an accessible, shared environment where, for example, call centre staff can access records pulled from phone, email, IM and social media – leading to quicker and improved customer service.

Technicians can also stream video, capture photos, surf the internet and communicate with connected networks and wearable technologies.

Mobility

Mobility has an impressive impact on field service workers’ productivity and efficiency. Field service workers can access real-time data and information about customer issues, machine conditions and operating environments.

What’s more, field service organizations that implement mobility solutions improve their first-time fix rates, SLA compliance levels, cash flow and field engineer utilization levels.

[quote float="right"]Companies that still use paper-based systems often have difficulty efficiently scheduling resources and tracking employee performance. [/quote]Companies that still use paper-based systems often have difficulty efficiently scheduling resources and tracking employee performance.

It also slows down invoicing, and even affects the company culture. While upgrading can be costly, legacy systems tend to be more expensive to maintain on almost every level. Software licensing models have changed, as have the nature of service agreements, and the cloud offers a cost-effective means to have an entire IT setup without the need for huge premises.

Employees who can perform their jobs without the administrative or operational baggage are happier and more efficient.

This is a positive result for companies as it translates into a proactive state-of-mind (employees critically thinking about what more can they do), rather than a reactive one (how can it be done).

The above summaries illustrate why enterprises should switch to current FSM solutions, rather than remaining with their legacy systems. We look forward to seeing (and experiencing) the results of these and future technological innovations in the service industry.

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Manuel Grenacher, CEO, Coresystems discusses the big three technologies that are driving field service productivity to ever greater heights...

More than 85 percent of field service professionals say that the strategic use of technology is a key driver of overall productivity.

Moreover, within the next two years, 70 percent of organizations will reference customer satisfaction as a primary benefit obtained from implementing modern field service management technology, according to Gartner.

Unfortunately, many organizations are resisting from updating systems due to a need to accommodate legacy systems, and are therefore missing out on the increased workforce efficiency and productivity that updated systems deliver.

Unfortunately, many organizations are resisting from updating systems due to a need to accommodate legacy systemsRecent technological progressions have made a significant impact on many industries - and field service is no exception. Keep in mind, it’s often quite difficult for businesses to ‘bolt on’ additional technology to legacy systems, and many these should be considering new projects aimed at reducing cost and improving agility. So, what is there to gain?

Big Data and Data Analytics

Big data and analytics functionalities present a digestible, clear view of relevant data, which allow staff to make real-time decisions.

Each step is visible and transparent, and companies can start offering customers more proactive service, such as more finely tuned maintenance schedule alerts or alerts on peripherals that need replacement, consistently.

Cloud and Connectivity

Many field service applications are anchored in the cloud, and this pay-on-demand nature allows businesses to reduce spend on software and hardware costs. The cloud provides an accessible, shared environment where, for example, call centre staff can access records pulled from phone, email, IM and social media – leading to quicker and improved customer service.

Technicians can also stream video, capture photos, surf the internet and communicate with connected networks and wearable technologies.

Mobility

Mobility has an impressive impact on field service workers’ productivity and efficiency. Field service workers can access real-time data and information about customer issues, machine conditions and operating environments.

What’s more, field service organizations that implement mobility solutions improve their first-time fix rates, SLA compliance levels, cash flow and field engineer utilization levels.

Companies that still use paper-based systems often have difficulty efficiently scheduling resources and tracking employee performance. Companies that still use paper-based systems often have difficulty efficiently scheduling resources and tracking employee performance.

It also slows down invoicing, and even affects the company culture. While upgrading can be costly, legacy systems tend to be more expensive to maintain on almost every level. Software licensing models have changed, as have the nature of service agreements, and the cloud offers a cost-effective means to have an entire IT setup without the need for huge premises.

Employees who can perform their jobs without the administrative or operational baggage are happier and more efficient.

This is a positive result for companies as it translates into a proactive state-of-mind (employees critically thinking about what more can they do), rather than a reactive one (how can it be done).

The above summaries illustrate why enterprises should switch to current FSM solutions, rather than remaining with their legacy systems. We look forward to seeing (and experiencing) the results of these and future technological innovations in the service industry.

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Two decades ago high tech companies blazed a new trail that saw them move away from the traditional transactional relationships they had with their customers as they embraced service as a route to sustainable and predictable revenue.

Other industries including the copier, medical and discrete manufacturing sectors have since followed suit and the evolutionary path to becoming a service led business is now clear explains Hilbrand Rustema, Managing Director, Noventum Service Management...

Twenty years ago, high tech companies such as IBM and HP were product driven organisations that sold hardware with a product warranty service.

Their products such as PC’s and servers were often mission-critical and too complex for customers to repair themselves. Once the warranty expired, customers had to pay for spare parts and on-site field service, also known as “Time and Materials”. These high-tech companies discovered that the service business was an interesting high margins and high growth business.

They adopted a new strategy to start focusing more on the Service Business. They created a new core service business with its own profit & loss statements, with dedicated senior managers at board level.They adopted a new strategy to start focusing more on the Service Business. They created a new core service business with its own profit & loss statements, with dedicated senior managers at board level.

Their customers then discovered that rather than buying services when you have a problem, it was cheaper and less disruptive to purchase preventive maintenance services.

Eventually the high-tech companies found out that to have predictable and profitable revenue it was necessary to create services that would guarantee a certain availability of the product This was the start of a category of services called “Availability Services” and the start of “Service Level Agreements” as a business model that closely resembles that of the insurance industry when it defines a price for the service based on the risks and value as perceived by customers.

Following the high-tech industry, other industries followed a similar evolution, for example:

 

• The copier industry with companies such as Xerox and Canon, now evolved into document management solutions;
• The Medical equipment companies such as Philips Healthcare,  Siemens Healthcare and GE Healthcare that can now offer entire “Managed Hospital Services”
• Discrete manufacturing where machine manufacturers are now moving from reactive to preventive and predictive services using the Internet of Things technologies to accelerate the transformation towards more advanced services.

Since then these high-tech companies have converted themselves into full-service businesses that no longer sell only products and “Product Related Services”.

They have moved up higher in the value chain by offering “Customer Business Related Services” which we can bundle under the name Pro-Active Services.

The model below illustrates the typical evolution of a service business:

We see roughly three types of Customer Business Related Services:

 

1. Process Optimisation Services are the first typical types of services whereby process expertise is used, for example, in process advisory, process compliance services or benchmarking services. Most often, the service provider agrees upon a certain business outcome or deliverables such as an advisory report, a process compliance report or a business improvement result such as an agreed productivity improvement.
2. Business Optimisation Services address improvements in the business model of customers such as “Pay per Use” models where the technology provider also provides the financing of the technology, thereby offering the financial commitment to become an OPEX (Operational Expense) rather than a CAPEX (Capital Expenses) leaving the financing burden to the supplier who is often better able to manage the risks.
3. Business Transformation Services help customers to implement strategic changes. The expertise of the service provider includes the ability to manage change together with their customer. The ability of organisations to adapt fast enough to changing market conditions has become one of the most important drivers of success. Service providers may take over entire processes or functions and manage this with (Managed Service) or for (Business Process Outsourcing) their customer.

 

We see roughly four types of Product Related Services:

 

1. Warranty and Time & Materials Services: Service organisations typically start off offering warranty services to their products. After the warranty period, customers start to request additional services. When a service organisation responds to this request, they most likely offer time & material services.
2. Preventive maintenance: Preventive maintenance services aim to reduce the cost of time & material services. They can do so by planning ahead based on the product lifecycle and reducing the cost of delivery of services as they can be provided without urgencies.
3. Availability Services: The next step is when customers only look at when a product is available for use and consider the cost of unplanned downtime. The service provider guarantees a certain level of equipment uptime or response time. The customer will balance the perceived risk of downtime with the price they are willing to pay. The service contract or service level agreement (SLA) usually renews automatically every year and therefore generates predictable revenues for the service provider, and represents a predictable cost for the customer.

 

Once organisations start to look beyond the level of the product, they find out that they have a lot of knowledge to help their customers improve their processes and even their complete business.

 

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Jan Van Veen of moremomentum concludes his series of articles on the 4 Winning Habits of successful service organisations focusing on the fourth and final winning habit: Discovery...

Following our introductory article about the 4 Winning Habits in the previous publication of ‘Field Service News’, I will now elaborate on the fourth winning habit: Discovery.

Common mistake: Being blind-folded

Humankind by nature tends to be fairly blind-folded, by its strong focus on opportunities and threats in the short term and directly related to its current situation. Companies often enforce this behaviour by:

• Low adoption of the first three winning habits (Direction, Dialogue, Decision-making).
• Not allowing time and resources in discovery and innovation, focusing on the exploitation of the current business model.
• Detailed and top-down control of exact discovery topics and assignments.
• Leaving all discovery activities for dedicated and specialized teams close to the board.

The consequences are critical for the sustainable performance and business innovations we need to thrive in a disruptive world. We tend to:

• Overlook longer-term opportunities and issues and misinterpret the potential impact of these.
• Overlook the real issue behind symptoms and fight the symptoms instead.
• Limit our options for solving problems or pursuing new opportunities and get stuck.
• Encounter resistance when developing and implementing new solutions.

In the past we have seen many businesses missing the boat - and we still do.

Just imagine what would happen if:

• Nokia and Blackberry did recognise that maybe, business-users at some point could expect touch screens, apps, multi-media and full connectivity.
• Polaroid did consider that digital cameras would become affordable for consumers.
• Airliners did understand that low-cost airlines could become attractive to business travellers as well.

The solution: All employees discover the future with an open mind

Leading companies drive their ongoing success with a strong habit of continuously discovering new opportunities and challenges.

Their discovery habits outperform the lagging companies, by:

1. Bringing the outside in
2. Using many sources
3. Involving involve all employees and many external stakeholders.

1. Bringing the outside in:

Every company has an eye open to the outside. They investigate trends with customers, competitors and technology. However, many miss opportunities and trends as they tend to be too focussed on:

• Topics with an immediate impact on current performance, less on future performance.
• Current needs of their best clients and less on future needs or on other market segments.
• Actions of competitors, less on what they potentially could do in the future.
• Trends with clear signs and high probability, less on trends with less clarity or probability.
• What they know for sure, less what they do not know. After all, staff are being paid for what they know”, not for what they do not know.

Leading manufacturers bring the outside in through the following practices.

Explore beyond business as usual:

The key is to be looking for (potential) trends and changes which do not directly relate to the current business model and operations. These insights will help prepare the business well in advance and to be the first to benefit from the change.

Leading companies also address the following in their discovery habits:

Market:

• Current and future needs of market segments which they do not serve, particularly if they appear not to be so profitable at the moment.
• (Latent) needs of their current clients, beyond the needs which they fulfil with their current products and services.
• Current and potential future needs of the clients of their clients.

Competition:

• Changing visions and strategies of competitors, other actors in the value chain and potential new entrants into the industry.
• Trends in adjacent industries and industries like data, algorithm-driven industries.

New technology:

 

• Emerging technologies with a low rate of adoption and application, like big-data, augmented reality artificial intelligence and how these will impact their (future) clients.
• Obstacles which currently prevent rapid adoption of the new technology and how these obstacles could be solved in the future.
• Economics, social demographics, politics, natural resources, workforce etcetera.

 

Explore weak signals:

Many lagging companies make themselves vulnerable to disruption by disregarding the weak signals. They tend to assess emerging technologies on their current possibilities and threats. They often see many reasons the impact will not be that high, for example, because of poor performance, high cost and narrow practical applications.

Many lagging companies make themselves vulnerable to disruption by disregarding the weak signals.We tend to disregard the scenarios that these obstacles may disappear in the coming years and how the adoption of the emerging technology could accelerate rapidly.

Many disruptive changes take one or more decades of exponential development and growth. In the first phases, the change and its impact seems to be insignificant. However, at some point, it quite quickly becomes significant and in a few years becomes main-stream. For many, this change comes out of the blue and is totally unexpected.

Leading companies explicitly focus on the weak signals. They are the first to see changes accelerating and obstacles for adoption of new solutions being eliminated. At the right time, they assess if they are ready for the change and are the first to act on the new opportunities and challenges.

Thinking in scenarios:

It is a challenge to tell in advance which trends and changes will really become real and have an impact on our business and which trends will only be hype or just stall. I think it is key that we accept the fact that we do not know. The

challenge is not making sure you do know, but that we are prepared to sense and respond in time.

Leading companies continuously develop and maintain scenarios for potential trends, changes and alternative solutions to respond. They understand which signals to be on the lookout for.

2. Many sources 

Leading companies see their innovation and changes being fed from many different sources for in-depth and broad discovery.

Internal and external sources

People with different backgrounds and opinions add value to getting new insights and arriving at better decisions. The most successful companies actually include many internal resources, which traditionally the lagging companies tend to disregard, like:

 

• Employees from other cultures, with different values, views and experiences.
• Employees who have a lot of experience from other industries.
• Employees from specific departments like R&D, service, finance, compliance and employees at lower ranks.

 

Leading companies also activate a broader network of external sources, including those they hardly meet during daily business. They actively seek to exchange insights with:

 

• Peers from completely different industries.
• Clients of clients of clients.
• Peers from other companies serving the same value chain.
• Experts and academics from different domains.
• Other stakeholders of client-organisations, who are not talking about the products and services.

 

Experiments

Leading companies not only talk and think about potential challenges, opportunities and solutions. That would lead to paralysis by analysis. They also learn by doing by:

 

• Innovate and develop step-by-step, starting with a first minimal viable solution and running rapid cycles of learning, adjusting and taking the solution to the next level. These are the Lean Startup and Agile approaches.
• Doing experiments, where we learn from what could happen in certain circumstances with certain solutions. These provide new insights which can be included in further decision-making on the direction and timing of a solution.

 

Experiences and failures

Leading companies learn from the things they did which did not work. They rapidly adjust and find new ways. They emphasize that it’s all about the learning, not about the failure. Their employees are more open to trying new solutions and practices, discovering and pursuing new opportunities, also when the results are not yet certain.

More and more companies cultivate the belief that failure is an option.

More and more companies cultivate the belief that failure is an option.For example, they organise failure-celebration-sessions, where colleagues present a failure, what they learned from it and how they would adjust their approach.

Another approach is not to use the word “failure”, but “discovery” or similar.

Like Edison said: “I did not fail, I just discovered 10,000 things that do not work.” This seems to work better than only reframing “failure”, even more so in cultures where losing face is a major factor.

3. The power of everyone in some discovery-mode

The most dynamic businesses empower all employees to do research, explore and define new ideas to improve and innovate, not a small specialised team dedicated for this job.

Everyone Contributes

Everyone in the organisation owns part of innovation and change, whether it is about implementation or identifying new ways to improve. They all have and search for the necessary insights. They all read, talk with peers from other companies and clients, do experiments, visit conferences, do external training and conduct their discovery projects.

This engages them to own the ideas and the execution.

Exchange and share

However, they do not discover everything themselves. They also exchange insights, experiences, opportunities and challenges they have discovered, hence learning from their colleagues and having their colleagues learn from them. This happens through collaboration tools, meetings within and amongst project teams and other in company events.

Bottom-up and Top-down

Everyone, within boundaries, takes their own initiatives to explore certain topics. Some discovery assignments come from higher management levels. This way they are committed to the effort it takes and to the outcome the generate and their colleagues generate.

Benefits

These open and forward-looking discovery habits make an organisation much more adaptive to any new opportunities, challenges and solutions.

They shape a huge army of open-minded, engaged and change-oriented employees. This is mission-critical for any company that wants to thrive in a rapidly changing and complex world.

The Essence

It’s not about having smart analysts and experts creating smart intelligence.

It’s about having passionate and engaged employees learning and discovering and making great ideas work.

Want to know more? access our eBook: How to Thrive in a Disruptive World - an eBook of 42 pages about disruption, the 4 winning habits for momentum in continuous and rapid change and 3 case studies (including Mars Drinks and Volvo Penta) Field Service News subscriber can access the eBook @ http://fs-ne.ws/AcQf30jhl0S

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A new entrant into the Field Service Management Sector which offers both desktop and mobile software has been developed specifically for the SME contractor segment.

The solution which includes both desktop and mobile software, called Orthinc, works by connecting a company’s office administrators with their field engineers so that jobs can be more easily managed day-to-day. especially praised for its ease of use.

After sending job details to assigned engineers, it effortlessly collects and stores important data from the field such as materials ordered, stock used and time spent on-site. This information is then displayed on one simple page and can be used for fast, accurate invoicing.

Simon Jackson, the earliest adopter of the software, said that the system was an invaluable asset to his electrical business.

Simon Jackson, the earliest adopter of the software, said that the system was an invaluable asset to his electrical business. Since being approached by the Orthinc team one year ago to trial the so ware, I think it’s been moulded into the perfect tool for small and medium-sized contracting companies. We use it every day to send our engineers out jobs and receive information back from them. As well as improving our daily workflow, it has directly saved us time and money. For example, when seven invoices for parts went missing last month, Orthinc highlighted that we hadn’t charged our client for them which saved us around £350. We would never go back to our old system, it’s changed the way we work.

The Orthinc team began developing the software over 18 months ago with the goal of helping reduce contractors’ dependence on inefficient job management systems, such as complicated software, excel spreadsheets and order code books. Now, the team hope to go beyond that by providing the easiest, most accessible solution to job management.

Orthinc lead designer, Kieran McIntyre said: Time and money are the most important resources to contractors and poor processes can waste lots of both. Although so ware has attempted to provide a solution to this, none before Orthinc has really hit the nail on the head. For job management so ware to truly benefit contractors, it has to be genuinely easy to use – otherwise, you are just giving them another hurdle to jump. Simplicity has been our main focus here at Orthinc. We’ve worked hard to make a system that can be picked up by anyone and used straight away, so that its benefits are instantly felt.

The Orthinc software is available on both desktop and mobile devices and is accessible anytime and anywhere with an internet connection.

The team offer contractors a handy, no-contract 14 day free trial so that they can see if the software is right for them.

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Consumer & IndustryLab released its latest Insight Report today - the Zero touch customer experience – exploring the future of customer interactions with mobile service providers.

Today, smartphone users interact with operators across multiple touch points: from discovering offerings and signing up to services, to requesting support for ending a contract.

The report highlights consumers’ current frustrations at their interactions with their mobile service provider, taking on average 2.2 attempts and 4.1 days to successfully complete an interaction. This high customer effort impacts negatively on satisfaction levels.

Digitally leading brands offer the minimal effort interaction consumers prefer. Smartphone users now expect the same hassle-free, one-click digital experience from operators. The report highlights that mobile service providers can leapfrog to a zero-touch customer experience future by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics:

• Enabled by AI, telecom service providers could use data from earlier interactions and consumer behaviour to predict what consumers need before they even contact them for support. More than half (56 percent) of smartphone users expect operators to anticipate their needs even before they realize what they are.
• While we have grown accustomed to typing, clicking and swiping on our devices, new zero-touch methods are emerging based on voice, gestures, and augmented or virtual reality.One in ten households in the US already has a voice-enabled home assistant device such as Amazon Alexa. As voice assistants become more prominent in consumers’ everyday lives, they will expect integration of support interactions over those platforms too.

Digitally leading brands offer the minimal effort interaction consumers prefer.Pernilla Jonsson, Head of Ericsson Consumer & IndustryLab, says: “Consumers believe telecom service providers treat touchpoints like isolated interactions."

"Siloed focus means they miss the bigger picture. Interestingly, telecom service providers could leapfrog one-click and move from multiple-click to zero-touch by deploying future technologies in their customer offerings. The zero-touch customer experience report shows that zero-touch experiences are now an expectation of their customers.”

Read The zero-touch customer experience’ Ericsson Consumer & IndustryLab Insight Report here.

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Michael Blumberg, President, Blumberg Advisory Group and founder of Field Service Insights outlines how service organisations are overlooking the fundamental difference between a customer not seeing value in a service offering and a customer objecting to price and explains why understanding these are two very different things can open up a world of increased revenue streams...

Field Service Executives often face challenges when it comes to generating additional service revenue for their companies.

They often face resistance from customers as evidenced by low contract attachment rates. The natural tendency is to blame the price as the reasons why customers aren’t purchasing more services contracts.

After all, this is the feedback they received from their sales teams and from the customers.

Being logical and rational business people, field service executives try to solve the problem by lowering the price, after all, if the customer says that the price is too high, it must be the reason why they are not buying, right?

To quote, the popular song by George and Ira Gershwin, “It ain’t necessarily so!”. While price may be a factor in the purchase decision, seldom is price the only reason why customers don’t purchase service contracts.

In market research studies that I have conducted for clients in a wide array of technology service markets, I have found that price is often low on the list of criteria that end-users consider when selecting and evaluating service providers. Criteria such as quality of service, knowledge and skill of service personnel, breadth of service offering, and vendor’s knowledge of their business are perceived by customers to have higher importance than price alone.

The truth is “your price is too high” will always be an objection that customers provide when they cannot justify the value of a service contract. The truth is “your price is too high” will always be an objection that customers provide when they cannot justify the value of a service contract.

This is because they have no way of logically defending the value of the service being purchased. Stated another way; they are not able to differentiate the benefits of service contracts from time and materials service. The problem is that Field Service Organizations (FSOs) often attempt to sell service contracts without providing justification about why a service contract is better than simply paying for service on a time and materials basis.

A common saying among sales professionals is that customers buy emotionally and then defend their purchases logically. All too often, FSOs provide little emotional reason why a customer should purchase as service contract as opposed to T & M and even less logical supporting evidence about why a service contract is more valuable.

To achieve high attachment rates, FSOs must be able to articulate the value of their service offerings to customers as well as to their own salespeople. The value proposition must impact customers’ emotionally by addressing their fears, worries, doubts, and concerns about the impact of service or the lack thereof on their operations.

For example, fear of excessive equipment downtime, lost revenue, low machine utilization levels, or the possibility of quality defects. Of course, the FSO needs to provide logical supporting evidence why their service offering will eliminate these issues.

FSOs achieve this results by articulating, either through a sales conversation or marketing collateral, what’s included in a service contract that is not included in time & materials. This requires they do an effective job in defining the coverage, entitlements and resources available to the customer through a service contract.

Ultimately, FSOs must be able to help customers defend their purchase of service contracts. They must be able to answer the customer primary question “What’s in it for me?”. If the only difference between a service contract and time & materials is that the customer can prepay for service, then there is no emotional value or logical contrast. However, if the service contract provides a preferred level of service (e.g., 4-hour response time, 99.9% uptime guarantee, 7 by 24-hour coverage, parts, etc.) or preferred price structure then the customer is presented with some real value and contrast.

Ultimately, FSOs must be able to help customers defend their purchase of service contracts. They do this by offering more value in a service contract than the customer could possibly receive through time and materials services.

Of course, the best way win over customers is by being honest and letting them know exactly how service contracts enable you, the service provider, to provide a better level of service.

Fundamentally, FSOs can deliver better service to customers under contract.

This is because the contacts provide data about the installed base and service demand requirements. As a result, FSOS can anticipate service events and be more effective at planning and allocating service resources. This, in turn, makes it possible for FSOs to provide a guaranteed level of service to their customers.

Honesty is always the best policy especially when it is supported by a guaranty and exceptional service!

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Research released this week by Verizon Connect has revealed that a quarter of UK commercial drivers are breaching driver guidelines around rest and fatigue.

By UK law, a commercial driver must take a rest break of at least 45 minutes after a maximum of four hours and 30 minutes of driving time.[1] Yet, a quarter of fleet managers admitted that their drivers on average take breaks after five hours or more, breaching the driver guidelines.

The study confirms the challenge fleet managers face to ensure their drivers remain safe and compliant. When asked about the top issues that worry them, 24 percent cited compliance, 23 percent said unsafe driving practices and 13 percent of fleet managers said drivers not taking rest.

Two-thirds of fleet managers (66 percent) have systems in place to help ensure their drivers take required breaksTwo-thirds of fleet managers (66 percent) have systems in place to help ensure their drivers take required breaks. However, 16 percent of them leave it at each driver’s discretion to take appropriate rest, 15 percent ask their drivers about their breaks and 3 percent do not know.

Many fleet managers (46 percent) use a tachograph to automatically record vehicle speed and distance and to keep track of their drivers’ rest periods. While this is the most time-effective approach for fleet managers, it still has its challenges. According to the study, fleet managers said they spend more than three hours a week correcting and following up on drivers’ tachograph mistakes – which adds up to nearly 21 working days, or more than a month, each year. When asked how they would prefer to spend this time instead, looking for ways to reduce costs was the most popular response with 39 percent.

Fleet managers must also keep tachograph data on record for no fewer than 12 months.

Over a third (31 percent) admit non-compliance by failing to download driver data every 28 days and storing the data for less time than they are supposed to (29 percent).

“Fleet managers are frequently under pressure to increase margins, impress their customers and outshine their competitors. However, safety is still priority number one. Our research shows how hard fleet managers have to work to maintain safety and compliance while juggling so many demands,” comments Derek Bryan, Vice President, EMEA, Verizon Connect.

“Simple systems can be put in place to cut down time spent on admin while ensuring compliance and driver safety. By integrating tachograph data with their fleet management system, organisations of any size can improve driver safety, compliance, and productivity. In doing so, managers reclaim time to focus on growing and improving the business.”

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Laurent Othacehe, CEO, Cognito iQ looks at why employee engagement is a critical pillar for achieving field service excellence and offers some crucial advice for field service companies seeking to how best to ensure they are getting the most out of their most important asset - their field service staff...

Field service is not just about IT and processes, nor is it just about parts and engineering. It is about people, this is why employee engagement is one of three fundamental aspects, alongside improving productivity and meeting customer expectations, that can lead to what we view at Cognito iQ as flawless field service.

If you want to know more about this topic there is a white paper available to fieldservicenews.com subscribers. Not a subscriber? If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription.

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What is employee engagement?

So what do we mean by employee engagement?

If you Google it, you’ll get any number of definitions, but we like this one from not-for-profit organisation Engage for Success.

“Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organisation to give their best each day, commit to their organisation’s goals and values and contribute to the organisational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being. Employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, two-way commitment and communication between an organisation and its members”.

It’s also important to say what employee engagement isn’t. It isn’t manipulative. It’s not a cynical attempt to wring productivity from employees with spurious benefits. It isn’t an annual employee engagement survey – although it can be measured - and it should only be measured if doing so leads to positive change.

This means that employee engagement must be win-win for employees and their employers. It can’t be imposed from above. It’s about creating a cultural shift in the way organisations behave.

Key drivers of employee engagement include the following:

• A culture of trust, fairness and respect for employees and management
• A culture of teamwork and co-operation
• Clarity on goals, constructive feedback and support to succeed
• Quality training and clear job progression
• Work-life balance and work that makes the most of people’s skills
• Empowerment, autonomy and a sense that people’s ideas are valued

Why employee engagement matters

In the UK, only around a third of employees are ‘engaged’. Engaged employees tend to be happy in their jobs, enthusiastic about their work, committed and driven.

This matters, not only for the wellbeing of the remaining two thirds of UK workers, but also because study after study has linked employee engagement to improved productivity, customer satisfaction, growth and profitability, as well as a whole raft of other business metrics, including employee retention; innovation; safety incidents; product quality and defects; shrinkage and theft; and sickness and absenteeism. And whilst engaged employees can bring business benefits, the reverse is also true.

A US study found that there are 51% of US workers who are not engaged, and a further 16% who can be defined as ‘actively disengaged’; whilst workers who are ‘not engaged’ tend to be indifferent – they are just showing up for their pay-check - those that are actively disengaged can be resentful and disruptive, taking up managers’ time, seeking out ways to ‘cheat the system’ and even sabotaging the work done by others.

Employee engagement in field service

1. The nature of the work:

Remote workers can feel isolated, which reduces engagement. It is important to ensure that they feel connected to the main office, and also feel part of a team, whether that is at a local or regional level, or by job specialisation.

Field service has traditionally been low-tech which has meant a lot of tedious paperwork – necessary but not as satisfying as helping customers and solving service issuesAs back-office management don’t always have good visibility of how work is actually done in the field, they might not understand how to empower and enable workers to do their jobs and may have created processes that are unhelpful or counter-productive.

In addition, field service has traditionally been low-tech which has meant a lot of tedious paperwork – necessary but not as satisfying as helping customers and solving service issues – so it is important to automate some of these admin tasks, as well as give workers electronic access to the information they need to do their jobs, such as product manuals and parts databases.

2. The nature of the workforce:

There is an ageing workforce, with the average age of the field service worker being 40 years old – and many of the older baby-boomer generation engineers are starting to retire.

To fill the skills gap in field service will mean both keeping older engineers on for the long haul by retraining and re-skilling them, as well as attracting and training new younger engineers. Engagement is essential here as it is costly to train up new workers only to have them job-hop to a competitor for a slightly better rate pay or better benefits.

3. The nature of the industry:

As products become commoditised, companies are relying on the quality of their service to differentiate from competitors. Field service workers are the face of the brand and often the only company representative that customers interact with. Engaged employees are more likely to give great customer service than disengaged employees.

The most forward-thinking companies are wise to the potential of field service workersThe most forward-thinking companies are wise to the potential of field service workers. They are considering ways to upsell other products and services during their visits and are turning field operations departments into profit centres. Technology is also changing the skills needed on the job. Connected devices are reducing some of the tasks that field workers need to do, such as routine maintenance checks, but they are creating new data, which means that workers will need analytical skills.

Technologies such as virtual or augmented reality are also changing the ways that workers carry out their tasks. Workers may see these new skill requirements as a threat – however, companies that are good at engaging their employees see these developments as opportunities to offer training, career progression and the satisfaction that comes from being part of an up-to-date and modern company.

If you want to know more about this topic there is a white paper available to fieldservicenews.com subscribers. Not a subscriber? If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription.

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To find out more about the many benefits of being a fieldservicenews.com subscriber and to understand how we store and may use your data please visit our subscriptions page here

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