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Whilst the trend towards Servitization is rapidly becoming increasingly important for manufacturers and one that will have a significant impact on how field services operate, it is often viewed as a complex subject.

However, one man who has been involved with the movement since its early beginnings is Dr Michael Provost. His excellent book “Everything Works Wonderfully: an Overview of Servitization and Physical Asset Management” (www.everythingworkswonderfully.com) is a distillation of his knowledge and experience in this area built up over nearly four decades, making it a much more accessible topic.

As an introduction, Mike opens his book with an excellent short story that neatly summarises the concept of Servitization. Field Service News is pleased to be able to share it with you here…

A Short Story

Anna Edwards* was a very happy woman. It was her last day as Managing Director of Precision Powerplants* and she was looking forward to a few months of rest and relaxation on the sunny Côte d’Azur with her husband Chris* while she pondered her next move. She knew that she was leaving the company in good shape for her successor (whoever that happened to be: there were several candidates from both inside and outside the organisation who were being put through the on-going ‘beauty contest’) and felt very satisfied with the progress that the organisation had made on her watch and the transformation that she had overseen.

How different from the situation a decade ago, when she had taken over from the previous incumbent (now long forgotten) who really hadn’t understood the business and was forced to retire early. Sales and profits were falling, the share price had flat-lined for several years while the rest of the market soared and the City was muttering that the company had lost its way. A scathing analyst report entitled Always Jam Tomorrow: Beware of Perpetual Promises had ruffled a few feathers and made the Finance Director really angry. Competitors were offering deals that even the company’s most loyal customers couldn’t refuse and the organisation’s reputation for well-engineered power units just wasn’t being reflected in profitable sales. Great products (as even the writer of ‘that’ analyst report had acknowledged) but a lousy business, competing on nothing but price… Anna had taken on the job knowing that she was placing her professional reputation on the line. What should she do? She was starting to get worried.

 

She decided to bring in Peter Carpenter*, an old friend from university whom Anna admired for his out-of-the-box thinking, no-nonsense tell-it-how-it-is approach and excellent people and communication skills. She sent Peter home to have a ‘big think’, telling him to stay away from HQ and the alpha gorillas all trying to outdo each other with short-term slash-and-burn fixes which Anna felt were the painful road to corporate oblivion. Peter’s brief was simple: produce a plan for getting out of the ‘commodity trap’ that the company had fallen into and do it quickly before the inevitable crisis came and the whole organisation would be brought to its knees.

Peter had been musing about how to save the company for a few weeks when Sara* burst in to his study as he was casually doodling on a notepad. “The boiler’s broken yet again, Peter!” she fumed. “I’ll have to cancel my day in town while I wait for the man to turn up to fix it. I bet he won’t even have the right parts in his van either! Why couldn’t the thing let me know that it was going to break, so I could arrange the repair at my convenience? Why can’t it tell the repair man what’s wrong? I don’t give a damn about boilers: all I want is hot water and a warm house! Looking after it is nothing but hassle!” She stormed out, clearly not at all pleased.

Just then, Peter had his ‘eureka moment’. Were customers thinking like this about power units? After all, they had businesses to run and their own customers to serve and didn’t want to worry at all about power sources. Were the units that they had bought just an irritating distraction to them, requiring time, effort and expertise to look after that they really didn’t have? What if Precision Powerplants used its expertise to look after the units it made (after all, the company had designed and built them, so no-one else should know them better) and charged for the power delivered, not the physical units? Would this idea get the company out of its death spiral?

Peter’s mind began racing as his thoughts kept flowing. Customers would probably be happier making regular payments for guaranteed power, which would smooth out ‘lumpy’ cash flows and could add up over time to more than anyone would pay for ‘bare’ units. The company could shut out the ‘cowboy’ sales and service providers who were beginning to eat into its aftermarket business. It could also build up expertise that could be used to make the next generation of power units currently under development more attractive to the market. The organisation might even be able to offer this service to the owners and operators of competing products (after all, the laws of physics were identical for everybody and there were plenty of staff that the company had ‘poached’ with experience of competitor offerings) and thus eat its competitors’ lunches as well. After a few sleepless nights, Peter had even come up with a name for his new initiative: Megawatts, when and where wanted, or MW4 for short. Perhaps Helen*, who had just graduated from that incredibly expensive art college in Venice, could help him design a logo…

 

Peter began to ask questions and research his idea in more detail and discovered that many of the capabilities needed were already in place: they just weren’t being brought together into a coherent whole. Peter found people in the organisation who had, despite some management objections and hostility from other co-workers, devised ways of mathematically modelling unit performance and creating actionable information from the data that could be gathered and transmitted from equipment in service: there were also experts in Spares and Repairs who knew how the units should be looked after. All this valuable and unique knowledge had been ignored by Engineering and Manufacturing who just wanted to design, make and sell units before pushing them out of the door ASAP. Something would have to be done to move the organisation from a product to a service mindset, Peter decided, if his idea was to succeed.
* Note: the company and characters are fictitious, but the scenarios are based on experience.

Look out for the second part of the story, coming soon!

Please note that this short story has been previously published in the following:-
Provost, M. (2014). Everything Works Wonderfully: an Overview of Servitization and Physical Asset Management - a Short Story. Asset Management and Maintenance Journal, Volume 27, Issue 5, September 2014, pp. 43-45. Mornington, Victoria, Australia: Engineering Information Transfer Pty Ltd.

 

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Field service organisations must adapt in a rapidly changing world, says Tom Bowe, Industry Director, Enterprise Service Management, IFS.

Agility and adaptability were the overarching themes at the recent IFS customer conference in Boston.  More than 250 service-focused attendees came to hear user case studies about implementing and using IFS’s service software, watch industry experts apply new trends to real life, and to learn about what IFS is doing to take their service solutions to the next level.

Why? Because the world is changing, rapidly. According to Erik Qualman of Socialnomics fame, 40% of the Fortune 500 will be gone within 10 years. As PJ Jakovljevic of Technology Evaluation tweeted; “You have to be prepared to destroy your own business model before a kid in a dorm room does it for you.”
[quote float="left"]Monolithic legacy systems can no longer keep up with the changing market and customer demand.

So how do you future-proof yourself as a service organisation as the world changes, new technology evolves, and customer demands shift and increase? Addressing customer service vigilantly is vital to a service organisation’s success. Let your consumers drive the trends you adopt to ensure better return on investment. Flexibility and usability matter, especially in a consistently changing environment. Monolithic legacy systems can no longer keep up with the changing market and customer demand. Those organisations that don’t adapt will be replaced.

 

We have developed a sort of nine step program to help service organisations achieve service excellence and help them adapt to an ever-changing environment. Here are some of the things you should keep in mind when you are looking to make your service organisation more adaptable, and more successful:[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Know your business
   This may seem a bit obvious, and redundant, but in order to help your organisation streamline processes, maximise service margins, and increase customer satisfaction, you need to have a full understanding of your company’s goals, their future plans, their mission, and the vision. This will allow you to focus your efforts, systems, and processes on the right objectives
2. Excellence through insight
   The power of BI is never-ending. Use your collected data to drive more informed decisions, hone processes and affect change throughout your organisation. This should never be a static, one way function, BI should directly affect your future operations.
3. Accelerate service achievement
   A holistic view of not only your service organisation but your service value chain will accelerate service achievement. Bringing suppliers and other parties you collaborate with into the value chain adds value to them, you and ultimately your customers.
4. “Uberise” your service
   From the minute you order a car on Uber to when you arrive at your destination, Uber provides transparency from identifying the driver and license plate, to showing you on your route, to providing easy, secure payment options. Service businesses can use optimised, automated field service solutions (like IFS Field Service Management) to offer trust, security and reliability to their customers in a similar manner.
5. Delivery that delights you and your customers
   In the past, delivering superior customer service often meant accepting a reduced service margin. Now with powerful technology like M2M sensors, mobility solutions and automated processes, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Let your customers drive your initiatives and reap the benefit at the same time. Better organised internal processes often automatically improve external delivery.
6. Open up to new things
   New trends and technology in the service space can often be overwhelming, but don’t be closed off to what’s new and great in your space. Actively watch the market and evaluate which trends will affect your industry and your business the most. Sometimes this is customer driven. If a new trend can help meet a consumer demand, it is probably more than worthwhile to pursue.
7. Optimise your world
   Today, more people own a mobile device than a toothbrush (Socialnomics, 2014) and over one-third (36%) of consumers prefer using a company website or email to contact a business (2014 American Express Customer Service Barometer). Gone are the days when an excel spreadsheet, white board, or patched together legacy systems can handle customer demands and a mobile workforce effectively. Optimisation and automation allows for a seamless process from call intake to billing, reducing overhead costs, deviations, and errors.
8. Manage your future
   The future doesn’t have to be as unpredictable as it seems. Market research, watching trends, and utilising your business intelligence (and managing your big data effectively) will help give you a crystal ball into what’s coming and allow you to adapt faster, giving you a competitive edge.
9. Agile, ready for change
   If the past decade has shown the business world anything, it is that the most successful organisations are those that are two steps ahead of the game. The best way to future-proof yourself is to function as an agile, flexible operation. With the right systems and vision in place, the changing world will have nothing on you.

IFS Enterprise Service Management is continually investing in our solutions to support our goal of providing service organisations with dynamic scalability, mobile solutions, ease of deployment, and cloud and wearables flexibility.
We are future-proofing ourselves by helping you succeed at what you do best; delivering unrivaled service.

 

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In this exclusive series written by Field Service News Publisher, Kris Oldland, we’ve seen how a number of emerging technologies could change the way our field engineers work in the not so distant future.

In part one we explored smart watches, in part two we looked at smart glasses and drones. In the third part of this series we looked at one of the simplest emerging technologies in NFC and one of the most exciting and futuristic in 3d printing.

However, in this the final instalment of this series we look at the technology that could underpin the way field service operates entirely in the not so distant future: the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things

Now, unlike mobile 3D printing, the final inclusion on this list is here-and-now, already being actively utilised by field service companies although widespread adoption has yet to appear. However, given the recent announcement of an agreement between PTC and ServiceMax bringing the first connected field service solution to market, this may well soon change.

What exactly is the Internet of Things? Well, very simply it does what is says on the tin : it is an Internet specifically for the use of non-human things.[quote float="left"]IoT takes the concept of communication and brings it to all manner of devices.

 

We talk about smartphone communication a lot; well, essentially IoT takes the concept of communication and brings it to all manner of other devices – from washing machines to generators powering the national grid. Each of these devices is capable of communicating, of sending data about how it’s operating, so that we can remotely monitor its performance and condition.

Again the implications for such a technology in field service are phenomenal. Let’s take a simple example of a coffee machine. One of the sensors on a smart coffee machine could simply be monitoring the temperature of the water it delivers.

If the water temperature begins to move out of accepted parameters this can be communicated to the coffee machine’s manufacturer triggering an action. That action could be sending an engineer out to rectify the problem before it escalates to the point where the coffee machine stops functioning.

The benefits of such preventative maintenance can be felt by both the field service company who are able to schedule this work alongside other work in the vicinity making them more productive and also by the customer who have the benefit of no downtime on that machine.

The other benefit of IoT is that this is not a one way street.

Remote diagnostics is powerful, but there is also the potential to remedy many issues for many devices via remote maintenance whereby certain issues can be corrected by simply logging into a device and making amendments through the software.[quote float="right"]Maintenance could even be automated so that engineers are only sent out to those maintenance and repair jobs that truly require them.

 

Such an approach could further reduce the need for engineer visits with, again, massive cost-saving potential for field service companies.

Further still, much of this remote maintenance could even be automated. Corrective measures are incrementally taken as a first step, which could resolve an issue without the need for an engineer, so that engineers are only sent out to those maintenance and repair jobs that truly require them.

Also the relay of such data also makes it possible for jobs to be clearly prioritised. In fact the opportunity to implement connected devices into a field service company’s processes are truly numerous and each can have an impact on the efficiency of the company’s workflow.

The other key facet of the Internet of Things is that we are able to collect vast amounts of data from our devices which can be fed back not only into our field engineering teams – for example a best set of settings for optimal device output - , but also back into our R&D teams. Perhaps there is a very common fault that could be rectified in the next device iteration – again easily flagged up by the data recorded by our IoT-ready devices.

So there is great value in this data we are capturing, and the interpretation of this data, as well as the potential streamlining of workflow, is why IoT is envisioned by many as being the bedrock of future field service operations.

 

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With customer satisfaction now the top metric in defining field service success,  the future of service and service revenue generation is in preparing the service organisation to have the right conversations with customers before, during, and after a service visit,  says Aly Pinder, senior research analyst analyst, Service Management, Aberdeen Group.

Field service has long been a task oriented function of the organisation. Receive a customer call, schedule a technician, dispatch the tech, route the tech to the customer site, fix the problem, and then move on to the next job. Granted this is rudimentary recap of what happens, but I hope the picture is clear. A customer with a failed asset or piece of equipment, would then need the service organisation to reactively send a technician out to solve the problem with the goal of having technicians complete as many jobs as possible in a given day.
This model has been effective for quite a while, but a shift is occurring in field service. Aberdeen’s State of Service Management 2015: Connect to Your Customers (March 2015) research highlighted that the top metric defining success in service is customer satisfaction, not operational efficiency or cost containment. Furthermore, increased competition in service and heightened customer expectations demand the field service organisation enhance customer value. Unfortunately, too many organisations still view service and field technicians as reactive, fix it resources as opposed to agents building customer value and revenue opportunities. Top performers ensure they equip technicians with the support and tools to do both.[quote float="left"]Service revenue opportunities cannot come at the cost of quality service.

Aberdeen’s recent Service Revenue: Unearth an Untapped Stream of Dollars report (May 2015), highlighted top performers are 56% more likely than peers to have met their service revenue growth goals in the previous 12 months. But does this mean organisations should turn technicians into field sales people? Do technicians have the acumen to be motivated by commission? I think these are the wrong questions. The future of service and service revenue generation is in preparing the service organisation to have the right conversations with customers before, during, and after a service visit.

 

• Before the service call, provide the dispatch team with insight in regard to in-warranty or under service contract customer issues. The back office should have access to customer history, equipment information, and contract and warranty insight. The dispatch team must review warranty entitlements and service contracts before scheduling a service job. Before a work order has been issued is the best time to discuss with a customer the work that needs to be done, what is covered, and how additional services can be added if desired. This proactive conversation will not only avoid sending a technician out who must complete uncovered service, but also provides an opportunity to renew a service contract.[quote float="right"]Technicians are heroes, they want to solve problems and make customers happy.

   

• During the service call, make sure techs know if service is  being given away for free. There are times when a service organisation is OK with giving service away for free. There will be errors made or opportunities to take a short-term loss in lieu of cementing a longer term profitable customer partnership. The problem is when technicians have zero visibility into the contract or warranty status of equipment during every service call. Technicians do not want to be the bad guy / lady who denies service because a service contract has expired. Technicians are heroes, they want to solve problems and make customers happy. For this reason, it is imperative that technicians have real-time access to customer information (i.e., warranty status, repair history). This insight doesn’t only help avoid delivering “free service”, it empowers technicians to have better conversations with customers while on site.
• After the service call, help move from resolution to a sales engagement. Mobile technology empowers the field service team to not only document and close a work order, but also to create future sales opportunities. Leading organisations have incentivised technicians to be the eyes and ears of the sales function to unearth future prospects for cross- and up-sell opportunities. The key is to ensure technicians prioritise solving the customer issue and not future sales. Technicians have to remain trusted customer partners; once they are viewed as sales people they will lose the trust of the customer.

Service revenue opportunities cannot come at the cost of quality service. These two goals must be complimentary. Top performing organisations equip the entire service team with the insight to make revenue generating decisions in real-time. But these companies understand the viability of the organisation demands that customers continue to value the service being provided.

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As we continue our series of features looking at the emerging technologies that could appear in the not so distant future we turn our attention to NFC and, perhaps the most futuristic of all,  3D printing.

If you missed the earlier features in this series you can read part one here where we looked at smart watches and part two here where we looked at smart glasses and drones.

Near Field Communications

If the falling price of drones makes for a compelling argument for their inclusion in the future field engineer's tool kit, then the next item on this list is pretty much a no-brainer for a large number of Field service organisations.

That is NFC or near field communication tags.

NFC tags can be bought for as little as 30p per tag and with most modern Android and Windows smartphones and tablets supporting NFC communication they can be a very cheap means of making the field engineers workflow that much smoother.

Basically an NFC tag can be written to trigger an action on a device by simply tapping it against the tag.[quote float="left"]In theory, pretty much any action your engineer needs to take on an app can be incorporated into the script for a NFC tag.

 

A couple of quick examples…

A tag in the engineer's van could be written so that when the engineer places his smartphone against it, it opens up a dedicated mobile workforce app and logs his journey start time, plus also opens up a routing app such as Google Maps or TomTom.

The tag can also be written to include a toggle feature so when the engineer completes his journey he can again tap the tag with his device and this could log his journey end time, close his routing software, and open up the job details in his dedicated mobile workforce app.

Finally an NFC tag could be placed on the device which contains the notes of any previous engineer visits. This quick overview could be very useful in giving the engineer quick and easy access to the devices history and again similarly when the engineer updates his notes on the maintenance work he has carried our it is possible for him to include this information on the tag ready for the next engineer all with a simple tap.

And these are just three very simple ideas: in theory, pretty much any action your engineer needs to take on an app can be incorporated into the script for a NFC tag. There are also a number of apps that make the process of writing actions into a tag very simple for the lay person to do.

As I mentioned earlier the hallmark of a good technology is the ability to simplify our workflow and again NFC certainly ticks these boxes and given its low cost is another technology I think is worth considering when we look at how we can further empower our engineers.

3D Printing

The next item on my brief list is for me the most exciting and certainly the one that has the most futuristic feel about it. That is 3D printing.

Whilst we haven’t quite yet got to the point where we can instantly conjure up an earl grey tea hot like Jean Luc Picard might, the printers are still able to create physical 3D products from seemingly out of nothing just like the replicator devices seen in Star Trek.

 

However, 3D printing isn’t a particularly new concept, it actually dates back to the early eighties. So the devices we are seeing today are the product of over 30 years' worth of refinement.

This has resulted in 3D printed parts becoming robust enough and reliable enough to be used by companies such as Ford, General Electric and Boeing. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, for example, has over 30 3D printed parts; there are Leap jets and RAF Tornadoes flying around with 3D printed parts; and recently Ford printed their 500,000th 3D printed part – an engine cover for a Ford Mustang.

The fact is, 3D printed parts are out there being used more than we might think.

At the same time consumer 3D printers, much smaller and more mobile devices are becoming more readily available and at much more accessible costs.

Companies such as MakerBot and Stratysys are straddling both sides of this growing market. Is it that big a leap to envisage a meeting of these two approaches - that is,  a device with the smaller more mobile size of a consumer device capable of delivering industrial grade 3D printed parts?

When we consider the potential widespread use of the devices surely not.

Imagine it… instead of an engineer diagnosing the issue but having to delay a repair until the right part is sent to the site he could simply head out to the back of the van and print the part on site. First time fix rates would be dramatically improved.

Then there is also the benefit of not having to have stock parts kept in an engineer's van.

By removing this need a company would be able to instantly improve their cash position on their P&L as well as avoid the danger of potential loss of stock through theft.

Whilst 3D printing hasn’t quite reached this standard as yet, given the competitive nature of this growing industry and the potential gains it is hugely feasible that such developments may be made within the next five years. So I’d firmly put this into the technology-to-watch-closely category.

Look out for the final part in this series where we look at perhaps the biggest potential game changer field service companies must embrace…

 

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Welcome back to this exclusive Field Service News series in which Kris Oldland is exploring some of the technologies that could well become common place tools in the field engineer of 2020’s armoury.

In part one the focus was on smart watches, now in this the second feature in the series we look at how their close cousin the smart glasses and drones could begin to see regular use in field service also.

Wearables- smart glasses

However, whilst smart watches have the ability to improve the way we work in field service, smart glasses have the power to completely change the way we approach our field service operations.

A big statement? Perhaps, especially given the recent press Google Glass has had.

However, it’s important to highlight that whilst the ending of the Public Glass Xplorer program may have been reported in some quarters as an admission of failure, the fact is that the very opposite is true.
Google’s move of taking Glass out of their research division and into their main headquarters, as well as placing Tony Fadell, the creator of the iPod and the NEST thermostat suggests anything but. Yet there has definitely been a change of emphasis for Glass and the new focus is very much on industry which makes a huge amount of sense given it’s potential applications.

Of course whilst Glass may be the most high profile brand of smart glasses, Google are not the only maker of smart glasses, in fact there many other companies such as Vuzix or Pivothead as well as a Samsung release being expected this year. And then there is the highly exciting Microsoft Hololens also rumoured for launch later this year again, which if it lives up to the early hype could even push this fledgling technology space even further.

 

However, lets return to the topic at hand, a moment ago I mentioned that smart-glasses could change the very way field service operates… so what did I mean by that…Smart glasses don’t just offer hands free communications, they provide a true ‘see-what-I-see’ experience. The implications for this in field service are huge.

Not so long ago labour used to be cheap and things were expensive. Today the reverse is true and this is simply result of the continuing evolution of technology one of the big challenges for many field service organisations, particularly those working on complex devices such as medical equipment for example is managing the cost of getting their highly trained engineers on-site.

In fact this is often the biggest cost of a repair rather than any replacement parts etc.

Not only is there the cost of flying or even driving an engineer to a location which can be considerable, particularly if your operation is global, but also the time it takes for that engineer to be working on each specific repair, especially if your engineers are a highly skilled workforce.

Smart glasses can give a company the ability to use cheaper, less skilled local engineers, to undertake the repair guided by an experienced, engineer who is able to see the work carried being carried out remotely via video stream.

Through this type of application of smart glasses companies can open up huge potential cost savings by not only reducing the cost of each repair, but also by improving the efficiency massively of each of your engineers.

It could also lead to the potential expansion of a field service company into territories it may have been previously uneconomical to enter in. Not too mention the soft benefit of improving your engineers work/life balance which again could lead to better staff retention.

So the simple introduction of smart glasses could pave the way to completely restructure your entire field service operation into a much more efficient and productive unit.

Drones

Whilst Drones or UAD’s to use the official title have been around for sometime they’re potential commercial applications has recently starting soaring.

It was just over a year ago that Amazon launched, what I truly think will go down in history as one of the greatest PR stunts of the last twenty years by announcing Amazon Prime Air complete with a slick video of a drone picking up a parcel from the depot, making it’s way cross country before politely delivering it’s package at the front door.

The result was global press coverage and an 18 minute slot on America’s prime time show 60 minutes as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos did his best to make the whole thing look like a genuine glimpse of the not so distant future.[quote float="right"]Like any great ‘blag’ it included a very healthy dose of truth to add as much credibility to the statement as possible.

 

The way the online retail giant painted the picture is of course absurd and riddled with flaws. The approach would require huge amendments to air space regulations for a start not to mention the vast amount of investment in AI to give the drones the ability to deal with any potential pitfalls and hazards along the way.

However, not only was the Amazon announcement was perfectly timed as it raised the their profile the day before cyber-Monday, but like any great ‘blag’ it included a very healthy dose of truth to add as much credibility to the statement as possible. The fact is that the commercial use of drones is very much on the rise.

In fact the Guardian reported towards the end of the year that licences for flying unmanned drones had risen by 80%.

Of course not all uses are dependent on requiring a license either, for example if the drone is staying within the eye-line of the pilot and the drone is only flying within the vicinity of buildings and personnel for which you have consent to record you may well be fine (although it is always best to check this properly).  Having a drone on-site can give an engineer the opportunity to easily get to high positions and make a quicker analysis of a situation.

Not only is this a time saving measure, it also means that an engineer working on his own can make this evaluation – whereas without he would be reliant on a second engineer coming to assist in order to ensure health and safety requirements were met.

When we consider that a decent quality drone, with HD Camera footage and built in WiFi to allow for instant streaming can now be purchased for under £400 the argument for including one as part of your field engineers kit is a very compelling one for any company whose engineers will be required to work at height.

Look out for the third part of this series in where we turn our attention to Near Field Communications and 3D Printing…

 

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In this new four-part series Field Service News Editor Kris Oldland takes a look at five key tools forecast to become part of the field service engineer’s toolkit in the not so distant future.

 
As a child of the eighties with a penchant for a bit of science fiction to me the year 2015 sounds very much like the distant future we might have heard about when watching Tomorrow’s World back when we were kids. And whilst not all things that we thought would appear in the future have arrived -  for example,  we are not all walking around in  shiny silver outfits and the hover car has yet to be invented  - there is so much technology that is commonplace today which is truly remarkable and has that futuristic feel.
 
Devices like satnavs, tablets and smartphones could all have come straight from the set of Star Trek and just a decade ago it would have seemed incomprehensible that devices like these would be regular items in both our working and our personal lives. These devices are now not only widely in use, they are hitting mass saturation.
 
And it’s little wonder really when we think how big the impact first smartphones, then tablets and other forms of mobile computing have had on the way we work , how we communicate, the way we interact with each other, and how we manage tasks - all empowered by the mobile Internet. And in no other industry has the impact of improved mobile computing been felt more than in field service.[quote float="left"]In no other industry has the impact of improved mobile computing been felt more than in field service.

>However, I truly believe that the leaps forward we have made in terms of technology this decade are just the tip of the iceberg and in the next few years we will see further technologies that are now starting to emerge become as commonplace as the smartphone, satnav and tablet, and that they will have an even greater impact.  Phrases like the fourth paradigm, industry 2.0 and the new industrial revolution which were once being whispered in corners are now being used by very senior and respectable people with more and more frequency and more and more confidence.
 
Just consider this a moment – we are talking about a leap forward in technology that is comparable with the shift in society created by the industrial revolution.We are talking about massive changes in the way we work, a wholesale sea change bigger than anything we have experienced in living memory - all empowered by technologies that whilst they may seem futuristic are already out there and being used in industry today.
 
So lets take a look at some of these technologies and how they can be put to work as part of the field service engineer's tool kit.
 

 

Wearables: smart watches

 
Having spoken about smartphones in the introduction perhaps the most obvious place to start is with wearable technology such as smart watches. Last year was widely touted as the year of the wearables yet it didn’t really live up to the hyperbole.
 
In fact it was quite the opposite... research from digital research firm L2 confirmed what a lot of people in the industry would already have guessed:  that whilst 75% of consumers are aware of wearable technology, just 9% actually had any desire to purchase and a tiny 2% confirmed they actually owned a wearable device.
 
So not quite the mega-impact that many industry experts had been predicted.
 
However, whilst the consumer world might not be ready for such devices there is a definite home for them in the world of industry and particularly in field service.Lets take the smart watch to begin with. As part of the recent release of IFS Applications 9,  smart watch integration is embedded. Other companies like ClickSoftware have also built smart watch apps into their field service solutions.
 
The ability to communicate hands free, whether it be receiving messages or making a call, has obvious benefits for the field engineer whether it is when they are driving between jobs or working on site on a repair. This is the first key benefit of a smart watch. And whilst much of this functionality is available either through bluetooth headsets or through the smart-phone itself being put on speaker for example,[quote float="right"]A smart watch brings together and streamlines functionality in a much more convenient manner.

The impact that smartphones have had on field service is widely recognised - smart watches simply take the power of the mobile phone and deliver it in a more convenient device that enables the engineers to work with both hands at all times
 
And for me introducing additional convenience and improving the overall efficiency of the tasks we are trying to undertake, is a large factor in whether an emerging technology will take root and I do believe that smart watches certainly tick many of these boxes and have the potential to do so and should absolutely be considered when selecting the right hard ware for our field engineers.
 
Look out for the next feature within this feature where we look at how smart glasses and unmanned drones could also become regular tools used by our 2020 field engineers.
 

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A lot of technology can improve the way we work in field service but none can change the way we operate so fundamentally as the introduction of smart glasses. That is the opinion of Kyle Semani, CEO of Pristine IO and in this series of articles we've talked exclusively to Semani at length on why he sees smart glasses revolutionising the field service industries.

In the first part of this series we looked at the why despite Google removing their Glass Xplorer program in field service at least the future of Glass and other competitor products is very much alive and well. In part two we Semani outlined some very significant savings that can be made through the correct application of smart glasses in field service. Now in the final feature of this series we look at some of the challenges faced by smart glasses and how they can be overcome... 

As anyone who managed to get their hands on a Beta edition of Glass will testify excitement soon turned to frustration as you realised that even with moderate use the battery life just wasn’t enough to last you more than a few hours, five or six if you were lucky. Surely this is an issue that must be rectified if Smart Glasses are to have a place in field service?

Well for Samani – it’s just not that big an issue. “Our system today gets two to three times the battery life that you’d get if you were using a consumer product straight out of the box.” He begins when probed on this issue, pretty much shooting down the criticism there and then.

 

“That’s mainly down to optimisations being made at the operating system level as well as our own app doing a number of different things to help out.” He clarifies. However, he doesn’t stop there.

He continues to point out that even without such optimisation fears around battery life really aren’t that valid anyway.

“In terms of practical use” he continues “well we aggregate our customer data and the average call length is between eight and twelve minutes, very few of our calls exceed that time-line and the reality is that nobody needs to watch video for that long.

They may call back twenty minutes later but it’s pretty rare that someone needs to call for fortyfive minutes straight. It’s just not very useful and that just doesn’t happen. So battery life isn’t by and large proven to be an issue.”

He has a point, a very good one at that.

Something that many of us are guilty of is trying to align wearable devices with existing mobile computing options such as tablets, smart phones and so on.

However, the simple fact is that the use case is very different. We need to think of what the smart glasses would, and would not, be used for. If we do this then the reality is that as Samani asserts battery life really needn’t become a significant issue.

“I don’t think that smart watches and smart glasses are that comparable. Yes there both wearables but the use cases for both are really far apart.”

Even in those rare outlier cases where a field engineer does need to stream video excessively Samani has a solution. “ In the off chance that you do need to exceed multiple hours of video streaming in any given day, on our platform you can charge the device whilst you where it.” He concludes “We supply our customers with a battery pack if they need it and with that they could go for 10 hours of consecutive video streaming.” He explains

 

Actually the biggest issue Samani and his team are challenged with is how complex such a device is to use. “The biggest push-back we get is ‘will my field service techs be able to use it effectively?’

For them it’s a legitimate concern, they haven’t used smart glasses in the wild.”He states.

“What I say in that conversation is we have definitively proven, with our customers, that this works and our platform is incredibly easy to use.”

In fairness he certainly isn’t exaggerating when he says it’s easy to use.

Describing the user experience Samani explains “Literally all you need to do is put on the glasses and say ‘OK Glass request support.’”

“After that everything else becomes automated. And the person wearing the glass can focus on the job at hand whether they are turning a wrench, opening a panel, soldering wires... it doesn’t really matter what that person is doing the system becomes completley automated and is incredibly easy to use.”

So with all of the potential gains and very assured responses to potential pitfalls it seems Samani really is the right man , in the right place at the right time and Pristine’s already healthy initial growth is surely set to continue. The only question remains when will we start to see further widespread adoption of smart glasses?

“I think in 2016 it’ll become a reasonably discussed topic, people will accept this is happening people are already doing it and it’ll really start to grow from there.” Samani says.

“You look at IoT in the field service world or workforce management, these are technologies widely discussed in the field service industry and it’s pretty commonly expected that if your not already doing it, you’re going to do it in the next few years. I think in 2016 that type of conversation will happen around smart glasses.”

It is interesting that for Samani, the conversation is focussed very much on Smart Glasses not the wider conversation around wearables. In fact he (quite rightly) sees a significant gap between the application of Smart Watches and Smart Glasses. “I don’t think that smart watches and smart glasses are that comparable. Yes here both wearables but the use cases for both are really far apart. For me watches are for consumers and glasses are for enterprise.” He asserts

 

“Our belief is that glasses will be the ones that really deliver the value for enterprise. Watches can’t really impact how your tech works too much, glasses could change the way we structure our workforce entirely.”

Again with such ambitious rhetoric accuations could be aimed at Samani of over egging the custard. However, whilst he certainly has a tangible excitement to his tone as mentioned above, it is also countered by a measured authroity. He truly believes that smart glasses will change the way we work and he is systematically building his case piece by piece.

“When the data becomes more robust and proven we will publicise it and expect a lot more people to follow suit.” He concludes “There will be definetly some variability in differing industries, who adopts first and why - the more expensive the problem the more likely a company will be to adopt our solution sooner, but we are witnessing a lot of interest and we expect to see a big change in how global field service teams, and even regional ones, deliver customer service in the not so distant future”

 

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In the first part of this series we looked at the why despite Google removing their Glass Xplorer program in field service at least the future of Glass and other competitor products is very much alive and well. Now in the second part of the series we continue our exclusive interview with Pristine IO CEO Kyle Semani as he outlines some very significant savings that can be made through the correct application of smart glasses in field service... 

Indeed when it comes to genuine cost savings the early statistics from Pristine make a very compelling case for adoption. Something Samani is clearly keen to get across in our conversation. His business is built on offering significant savings to their client base. “I think the ROI of implementing smart glasses actually delivers far more than a smart phone or tablets did when they first appeared.” He begins

“Our data is still young but looking at our primary customers these companies are going to save millions of dollars by using our technology.”

What is particularly compelling about the smart glass argument, and Pristine’s approach is that such savings are far more tangible than those discussed when we talk about other devices such as smart phones, laptops, tablets etc.

As Samani puts it “It’s not all theoretical efficiency gains, this is money going right back on the bottom line. This is cash.”

 

“Our general line in the sand we’ve drawn is if the cost of downtime is above $2,000/hour then we get really excited because we know we can deliver you an awful lot of value.” He surmises.

Perhaps we are putting the cart before the horse here though.

Of course such talk of tangible cost saving is attractive to any company, but what exactly does the Pristine product do and how can it be used to offer such significant rewards?

Samani describes the Pristine app as the only pure solution to stream live audio and video from Google Glass (or any other smart glasses) to any other device within the world in a secure capacity so it can be deployed in an enterprise setting.”

Basically the app in combination with a pair of smart glasses will provide a true “see what I see” experience which will in turn enable people to collaborate remotely, whilst the engineer (or even customer) on site are able to keep their hands completely free.

In Samani’s own words “Rather than actually sending a technician to a site now customers can put on the Glass and walk through what the problem is whilst being is remotely connected to a service centre.”

“If field service companies can centralise their workforce somewhat then their field workers can get a better quality of life and their customers are getting better customer support in every case.”

“The goal here is to save field service trips, so to save cost and also to help companies deliver a better customer experience.”

One immediate thought around such a proposition is that this could literally change the way field service operations are structured.

 

With such remote access tools becoming readily available, this could genuinely open the doors to many companies centralising their operation, bringing their most experienced engineers into a central hub, and outsourcing a large amount of work to less skilled (and therefore less expensive) local workers, or even getting the customer to take on the work themselves.

This is certainly something that Pristine are seeing within their growing customer base.

“We’re seeing our customers equip both their existing customers and their existing field engineers with the technology. The goal is to deliver a player to every single case.” Samani explains.

However, the benefits of such a move aren’t solely financial there is also the soft benefit of improving the work/life balance of existing engineers.

“If field service companies can centralise their workforce somewhat then their field workers can get a better quality of life and their customers are getting better customer support in every case.” Samani asserts

“They [the field engineers] used to fly around 50 weeks a year now they fly around 20 weeks a year - it’s a totally different lifestyle for these guys and they spend more time with their kids and their families.”

A noble, if exceptionally forward thinking sentiment of course.

However, there are certainly the seeds of not just change but revolution being sowed as smart glass manufacturers, empowered by companies such as Pristine turn their focus onto field service.

This is a good point to bring up the fact that whilst Google are the most prominent manufacturer of smart glasses they are certainly not alone.

In fact both Epson and Vuzix sit proudly on the Pristine website front page alongside Glass. Pristine already work with pretty much every manufacturer of Smart Glasses available – a market Samani believes will continue to expand.

“Just Like there are 100 different mobile phone makers there will be 100 different manufacturers of Smart-glasses.” He explains “We’re going to be rolling out lots of different hardware to our customers. Our customers are going to get cost benefits from there being more choice and competition and they are also going to be able to choose the device that is right for them and right for their needs”

Of course developing a product to sit across a number of devices has it’s own challenge and as our recent research outlined there is a preference amongst field service companies for native applications (i.e. applications that are developed specifically for the device it is to be used on rather than device agnostic apps).

 

Is this a potential issue for a developer working in a fledgling market that is, by it’s definition, going to be fragmented as a number of companies release their own products?

Well it would seem that here smart glasses have been able to take advantage of the evolutionary path of the smart phones that went before them.

In short for Samani and his team at Pristine the variety of devices doesn’t raise too many issues. Outlining their working process in greater detail Samani commented “Whilst we are not using HTML5 we are using some web technologies, however we are using primarily Android type platforms. Basically we are now starting to see the types of decisions the device manufacturers are likely to make and are able to design for that.”

“Generally we find that our platform will work out of the box with most devices but if it doesn’t it’ll take one business day of tweaking to get it right.. We’ve encountered most of the variables of change and we don’t expect there to be that many more as the market evolves” He adds It all sounds rather exciting. (Something that is also clearly detectable in Samani’s voice is not just the passion he has for his product but the general excitement that smart glasses will changethe world in the not too distant future) But let’s not forget the huge amount of excitement when Glass was first announced.