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Having become a regular member of the Deloitte Fast Track 500 Telogis have become a firmly established leading provider in the US. Field Service News caught up with Sergio Barata, the man tasked with leading the charge into the United Kingdom.

FSN: You have been involved with Telogis since they launched in the UK. Firstly could you tell us a bit about your own background and also the approach you took when introducing what was a successful US product to the UK market?

SB: I moved to the UK just over ten years ago when first working for a mobile start-up and have worked in the LBS (location based services) space ever since. 

Initially starting in pure Geo Spatial technology, I find myself now immersed in the sector. I joined Telogis back in 2008, having just come from another US based software company where I had spent time localising and refocusing their key capabilities for the UK.  On joining Telogis, I had some specific views on how we should launch the company here – the leadership team understood and bought into the fact that we would have to localise correctly if we were to launch in such a competitive environment.

We initially started with our GeoBase product, thinking that if we could correctly localise and licence this within the UK as we have done in the US, we would have a strong platform to build upon. Once the underlying technology was in place, we could introduce the rest of our SaaS solution which is all built around this.

Since the early days Telogis has grown rapidly both in the UK and wider.  When I started at Telogis we had around 120 people in the whole organisation, now we have nearly 500. In the UK we have just moved into our new facility, which will allow us to continue to grow substantially.

FSN: With Telogis only being founded in 2001, you are in relative terms still a young company within the field service industry. Do you think this gives you an advantage in being able to build a cloud based solution from the ground up rather than having to adapt a legacy solution?

SB: We launched as a SaaS company, which in 2001 was quite a brave thing to do. Browser adoption, both as a way of working and technologically still wasn’t quite there - but that quickly shifted. The vision our founders had clearly worked. Around 2005/6 all our competitors had essentially become organisations supporting their customers in the field - not black boxes but servers with their software running on them, so their ability to innovate was hampered. Being cloud-based has meant we didn’t have these issues.

The other critical decision we made was not to develop our own hardware and to remain hardware agnostic. This has meant that our R&D budgets have been focused on the data, the software and our platform, which we are now selling as a strategic approach.

I think not having an incumbent legacy, adopting the hardware agnostic approach and choosing to be SaaS from day one has allowed us to remain innovative and scalable, which has been a key part of our success to date.

FSN: You recently wrote an article for Field Service News in which you talked about the platform approach, something we are hearing more and more of within the industry. Do you think this model, i.e. working with one provider for multiple solutions is likely to be the future for field service software?

SB: We certainly see the benefits of it!

When we meet customers we find many burdened with costly overheads and challenges of integration, even to the extent that they are not meeting the ROIs and initial business case. The costs that it takes to get systems to talk to each other can be significant.

There are also other elements: different companies have different commercial models - our telematics is a subscription model, making it straightforward to cost and manage. Other systems often have capital expenditure costs upfront and deploying different systems and suppliers efficiently can be very challenging.

We think starting with one part of a solution and then integrating other elements is the right approach. We never advocate the ‘big bang’ approach to implementing a complete solution - it’s not commercially or even technically feasible to embrace a whole system at once. Our strategy is based around ‘lets put one piece of the solution in and then work with you on building a longer term strategy and at the end you will come out with a holistic approach.’

The other question we address is the integration of our systems - the telematics, the routing and scheduling - with the customers’ systems that they have already deployed. We have some interesting platform tools, middleware/application programme interfaces that are essentially self-help modules that we can offer our customers to help this integration.

 These may be scripted alerting, customised reporting on driver stats or just workflow management that actually allows them to translate data between our solutions and their other systems. Integration can become seamless – there are even situations where they don’t even need to log into our system, they are just communicating with the cloud and getting the data straight out of it.

Look out for the next part of this exclusive interview coming soon...

Want to know more about Telogis? Check out their page in the Field Service News Online Directory here

Field Service News is pleased to bring you the first in our new monthly series of podcasts. In this first instalment we speak to Colin Brown Managing Director of  Tesseract Software. We ask Colin how the industry has changed since he first started Tesseract over a quarter of a century ago, how service management software has evolved and how the needs of service managers has changed dramatically over time as well.

With Tesseract having been one of the first Field Service companies to fully embrace a SaaS solution we also take the opportunity to put some big questions about the suitability of the cloud for field service software to him, including:

• Is the cloud/SaaS secure enough?
• How can I make sure that this new SaaS provider is legitimate?
• What about areas where there is no mobile internet?
• Is SaaS suitable for all types of company?

To hear the full interview and see how colin responds to these questions plus many more click the button below and complete the brief registration to download the podcast for free!

Download the full podcast now!

In this exclusive interview with Motion Computing's UK Supremo Ian Davies about his time in the industry, the changes he has seen and what he thinks the future holds for mobile computing...

FSN: What was the first piece of technology that made a huge impression on you? 

ID: Probably the first piece of technology, aside from the ubiquitous mobile phone or laptop that made an impression on me, was a touch screen device made by one of my previous employers that combined the Palm Pilot with a barcode scanner, essentially the pre-cursor to the rugged PDA that we know today.  I used to have it synchronised with my email, diary and address book on my PC, but as part of my job as a pre-sales consultant I could run Field Service or Retail supply chain ‘Apps’, although I guess they weren’t known as ‘Apps’ in those days.  My wife-to-be and I were in the wedding list service department of a well-known department store. 

I’ll never forget the contrasting looks I got from my wife and the sales assistant as we were handed such a device and I was asked if I knew how to work it.  At which point, with a cheesy grin I got my device out of my pocket.  Mine happened to be ‘marketing’ issue version that was made from clear plastic rather than the industrial grey, so it looked a bit flash too.  My fiancé was sighing in despair at my geekyness and the sales assistant was astonished that I knew how to use it, let alone owned one!

FSN: Do you think that the consumerisation of mobile devices has led to a major shift in the design of field service hardware?

ID: Undoubtedly there is far greater awareness of options such as tablets due to the consumer units now available - especially in businesses where there was a reliance on handhelds or laptops in the field.  Likewise, from a design perspective there is an increased demand for usability and the goal is to deliver a consumer grade experience whilst out in the field - a serious point given the potential increase in productivity.

FSN: What are your thoughts on the BYOD trend in field service organisations – do you see this as a major threat to your business.?

ID: BYOD in field service will likely hit a serious issue - consumer devices are simply not able to take the knocks that happen every day out in the field.  This then causes lost productivity, employee dissatisfaction and of course, presents the IT department with a host of OS’s to support.  Field service is one of the key industries where it will make far more sense to issue standardized pieces of equipment with training on how they should be handled to maximise the ROI.

FSN: What is the most exciting/unusual application of ruggedised devices you have seen?

ID: In terms of demands on us as a supplier of the actual tablets, the use of tablets for field based drug testing by Cambridge Cognition sticks out.  Likewise the use of the tablets for live audio mixing at concerts or remote controlling drone aircraft for surveys are all far removed from the usual applications associated with ruggedised devices.

FSN: With the rise in computational power of tablet devices do you think we are seeing the final days of the laptop?

ID: Though the increases in computing power do play a role, I think the greater factor that is leading to drops in laptop sales is far more simple - tablets are easier to use and a lot more intuitive.  They correspond much more to the mobile phones that we all own and as such people are very in tune with how to work a tablet - even down to the software available for them.  We are definitely seeing a swing away from rugged laptops towards rugged tablets for field service applications.

FSN: What is the biggest trend in devices that you are seeing come to the market currently?

ID: Right now the top demands are usually around usability features - improvements in input, display and battery life are all helping the multi-use capability for organisations and users.  Rugged Tablet PCs combine the performance of a laptop with the mobility of a rugged PDA – reducing the number of devices a user needs to carry and the IT Department’s number of devices and operating systems they need to support.  Aside from this, the regular demands are actually about enhancing the workflow by mobilizing the software and apps as opposed to just the hardware.

FSN: What do you think the next big technological advancement in mobile computing will be?

ID: That is the exciting thing about technology!  It is constantly evolving, the next great thing always around the corner.  Trends we’ve seen include more intuitive, more intelligent interacting with the mobile device such as voice and touch input.  There is obviously a great deal of competition for improvements to operating systems and another area we are seeing big developments in is around increased security of data. 

The idea of technology is to simplify lives/work, not make them more complex so contactless technologies such as RFID, NFC and Zigbee are becoming more main stream as ways of collecting and interacting with data.  There are a lot of concurrent changes happening right now and any one of these could yield substantial opportunities. However I think the dominant force right now is customer feedback into mobile apps and the emergence of professional, enterprise mobility.

FSN: You also offer a range of in vehicle solutions… driver safety is a major concern for the field service industry currently, do you think dashboard mounted devices can potentially distract a driver and cause accidents? 

ID: This is actually solved pretty quickly and easily - screen blanking technology exists to ensure that a driver cannot be distracted by a docked unit while the vehicle is moving.  Likewise the technology is clever enough that should the same mounted device be needed to be operated by a front passenger and is swung away from the driver, full access to the device can be obtained maximising ‘appropriate’ productivity whilst mobile.  These are critical concerns as safety will always trump productivity.  At present we are seeing a lot of innovation in this area coming from the Field Service and EMS sectors specifically and we have learnt a great deal so far.

FSN: You personally have been involved in this industry for about a decade – what is the biggest difference between when you started in the industry and today?

ID: When I first started, enterprise customers would gladly spend several thousands of pounds per device for then, leading edge technology capable of and designed to do single and often simple, but important tasks.  Adoption by users though was challenging.  Limited computer skills amongst users meant the technology was reluctantly used in many cases, and required significant investment in training as part of the overall project. 

Today devices can do so many things and have so many technologies built in to them that you might think there would be greater reluctance to overcome, but probably the biggest difference now compared to 10 years ago is the rapid adoption of the technology by the users. Personal IT knowledge honed from using technology at home or in their smartphone on a daily basis not only helps them embrace the technology changes their employers are adopting but they are continually pushing their employers to adopt new technologies to improve efficiencies and productivity like never before.

FSN: You have worked with a number of leading hardware providers to the field service industries, including Motorala, Intermec, Honeywell. What was it that drew you to Motion Computing and what sets them apart from their competitors?

ID: Traditionally, the technology I had been involved with prior to joining Motion was very application specific.  With the adoption of Tablet technology in the consumer space and the desire for organisations to do more with a mobile device, the opportunity in this ‘new’ wave of point of activity computing was a huge attraction for me.  I say ‘new’, but for nearly 13 years Motion has been leading the development in computing for users who were standing or walking, so I was confident they had something good going on!  The piece that really made sense to me though was the range of peripherals that Motion brings to the table to specifically suit the Enterprise Field user’s workflow. 

To use one of my colleague’s phrases, “it’s not all about the tablet”, and that is where Motion excels.  From a hardware perspective, charging, mounting, carrying and storing mobile devices is key to user adoption, and corporate responsibility for the vehicle based mobile user is an ever increasing requirement that Motion has really stepped up to.  Providing complete hardware solutions that truly offer point of activity computing sets Motion apart.

Whilst building a service business entirely from scratch might seem like a dream for many Service Managers when facing the trials and tribulations that are often the result of many legacies, it is none the less a daunting task and certainly no mean feat. However, for Daryll Brown, Operations and Service Manager with Bürkert Fluid Control Systems this was exactly the task he was employed to do. In this exclusive interview he explains just how he has approached building a service division from a standing start... 

 

FSN: Building a service business from scratch must be both a daunting and exciting proposition, what was the approach you adopted in taking the first steps to achieving this goal?

DB: Our approach to building a service business from scratch is to first of all define what can be thought of as service in our industry. 

Fluid controls are a very complex business and there is not a clear description of what is traditionally known as service work.  We need to define what we class as service work and then develop products that would be attractive to our customers.

Some of our definitions of service include Installation of Bürkert products and systems, continuous service of Bürkert products and systems, planned maintenance and breakdown cover for Bürkert products, installation and commissioning, consultancy, design, calibration and training.  As things stand most of our products do not lend themselves easily to service maintenance.  This is because there is not always what you would call spare parts that need to be replaced.  Also a lot of our products are designed for one time use and they may last for years.  So we need to be very creative with our offering.

FSN: What approach have you taken to scheduling software, are you using a manual, automated or optimized system? Why did you take this approach? Which provider are you working with and what made you choose them?

DB: This is unique for us as we do not necessarily need scheduling to cope with high volume demand we need it more to manage our complexity.  Having had experience in implementing field service software in my previous company I knew that the generic service software packages out there were not going to be as flexible as we would like.

Most offer an out of the box solution which never seems to do exactly what you need.  You then seem to spend time (and money) on modifying the software to meet your needs.  I think a lot of software companies fall into the trap of thinking all service businesses are alike.

For us this isn’t the case so we have decided to develop our current quality and asset management software (Q-Pulse) to be able to manage our service work.  This has the added advantage as we are already very familiar with the software and we have a lot of scope to develop and modify to suit our needs.

FSN: What logistics solutions do you have in place to ensure that your field engineers can get the right parts as soon as possible?  

DB: As mentioned our service work is quite complex and some visits have to be planned months in advance.  This gives our logistics team time to plan when and where our parts can be delivered and stocked.  Bürkert’s UK core business is mainly distribution of product from our Plants in Germany and France so we are already well versed in managing the logistic supply chain.  When the business grows we will need to think of innovative ways of supporting our service teams with some of our faster moving items.  Again from past experience I have found that having a partnership with a flexible logistic partner is worth its weight in gold.

FSN: How are you monitoring driver behaviour? What tools are you using (GPS, telematics etc)?

DB: Roads in the UK are becoming busier and this presents a challenge for any service business.  We have put a lot of thought into using the outside of our service van to market our business and products so we do not want our drivers to give us a bad name.  So we have had all those who drive our van read our companies driver handbook and then sign a declaration that they will comply.

We have also made this an agenda point at our Management review as ideas have been raised regarding advanced driver courses.  This would have the added advantage of potentially lowering insurance costs.

We do not have this issue of needing to know up to the minute the location of our Engineers.  Nor do we currently have any trust issue which would warrant GPS tracking.

FSN: Who else within the organisation do you liaise with when making decisions that will impact upon how the service department operates?

The Bürkert UK business is ran by a small Management team of five members.  These represent areas such as General Manager, Logistics, Finance, Quality and Sales.  Due to our business structure and all of these areas need to be involved in the decision making process.  As we are only a small business here in the UK every action has a reaction and this means all departments have to work closely together.  As past experience has taught me this is no bad thing.  For me even in larger organisations if all departments are working closely together and not in silos key decisions revolving around the service business are made more quickly and effectively with less risk.

FSN: Have you been able to integrate the service division with other divisions within the organisation such as sales or client services? What challenges did you face?

DB: We are still in the early days of developing our service business.  For now our project engineers are also doubling as our service engineers.  This is not necessarily a bad thing as we are starting with our service already integrated into other areas of the business.

For me all areas of the business working closely together is critical.  All processes tend to cross over into different areas of the business and often this is where most processes come unstuck.  If ran as a process and not a interlink of different activities in different areas the service business will run a whole lot better. For instance in the past I have often been called to meetings with the logistics departments to complain about the amount of stock in the service business.

If managed as a process then the logistics teams who are setup to manage other needs of the business can account for the service business. This will help them to adjust themselves to meet the completely different demands of service.

FSN: You personally also have a wide skill set holding an advanced certificate in Sales and Marketing (Institute of Marketing Management ILMM 2007). What led you to a career as a service management professional? What are the key skills that you think are required to be a good service manager?

DB: I spent 24 years with my pervious company and I worked in several different departments including operations, quality, sales and customer service.  This gave me a good understanding of the overall business and a good grounding in organising teams and coping with different demands.  For this reason I think the senior management thought I may be a good choice as a service manager.  Service has been by far my biggest challenge as it seems to involve so many variables and crosses over more boundary lines then I had seen before.  In my old business service was managed as part of the sales business.  If I were still there today I would have definitely recommended managing service as a separate cost Centre. This is because the needs of a service customer are completely different to that of other customers.  This should be managed by a focused service team with no distractions and to key performance targets that are service related and not just sales related.

FSN: What are the biggest challenges you think the field service industry faces and how have you set up the service business at Burkert to overcome these challenges?

DB: Of course there a different types of service businesses which will face different challenges.  However, there are challenges that are generic and affect all service businesses.

For me one of the biggest challenges is the modern lean business trends.  This drives a cost cutting culture in all industries which makes customers demand more for less. When you are selling service there tends to be a lot less overhead to play with.  One extra day on site due to an unforeseen issue and your margin disappears. So at Bürkert our way of overcoming this issue is preparation (and lots of it).

Planning needs to accurate, costing needs to be accurate and the timing needs to be spot on!  This is of course easier said than done.  So to endeavor to make this happen as mentioned before we have developed our software package to effectively manage our service business.  Our logistics are integrated with our service offering so that we have the parts available when our customers need them.  All areas of our business are part of our decision making to facilitate us managing our service as a process and not as a group of individual activities.

However, we know we cannot afford to sit still we need to look for ways to continually improve our service offering.  For this reason our marketing team is working closely with our customers to keep up with the latest developments in our market.  We have put together key performance indicators that are based on areas that our customers value.  We hold regular improvement events to review the feedback that these items give us so that we can continue to develop our business to be customer focused and deliver value.

Bürkert  at a glance:

Industry = Fluid Controls

Number of Field Engineers UK only = 3 (these also double as Project Engineers).

Number of Dispatchers = None (not set up as yet)

Average number of jobs per Engineer = 1 (our work is quite technical)

 

Mark Francis is the UK Director of support services for Shred-it UK. Based in Manchester, he supports over 17,000 customers on a daily basis across Shred-it’s Shared Service Centre (SSC). Here Mark discusses how he has recently worked with Trimble Field Service to foster complete visibility of its field services to drive customer service excellence and what other field service businesses can do to achieve the same result. 

What do you think the top business priorities/key challenges are for service based organisations today?

At Shred-it we recognise that customer expectations have shifted and companies, more than ever, are having to consistently demonstrate great service and value for money. Delivering excellent customer service is ultimately a major factor in us retaining customers and being actively recommended by customers – it is all about our brand and living the brand promise across all levels of the organisation is a major business priority.

What challenges prompted Shred-it to look into transforming the way it runs its field service operation?

For Shred-it, customer satisfaction and customer retention go hand in hand and we require our employees to “go that extra mile” in delivering the best possible customer service. Having complete visibility of our workforce and being able to deliver service excellence through the effective management of all aspects of our field service was essential and we recognised that this was something that could be improved through changing the way we ran our field operations.

What role do you think technology has in helping to improve the way a business delivers its service to customers?

Looking to technology to improve our service to customers was a natural step for Shred-it. For us the technology has helped in the overall management of what is happening across our fleet and having this insight all helps to contribute to what is needed to service each customer accurately, on time and in a cost effective way. From having little visibility of our fleet , Shred-it is now able to accurately report on and manage all aspects of field operations down to individual drivers, which has helped increase productivity levels and, ultimately, improved customer service and satisfaction.

Since gaining greater visibility of your workforce, what benefits have you experienced? (If you do not have the data to answer this, what benefits do you expect?)

Since using fleet management technology, real-time visibility into the location of a vehicle on the road has helped Shred-it to make more informed decisions in the planning and allocation of work across the workforce.

Additionally, we are able to run daily audits on vehicles to compare driver logs which have essentially provided a ‘productivity check’ for individual drivers. We have been able to pick up on any vehicles across the fleet that are being under-utilised and what vehicles aren’t being used at all and this has helped to increase efficiencies, leading to an 8 per cent growth in the business, achieved without introducing any additional vehicles to the fleet.

Since deploying driver safety technology, we can monitor and report against any individual driving behaviour and offer recommendations on training for poorly performing drivers, resulting in fewer accidents and helping to manage risk. We ensure our drivers are made frequently aware of their driver behaviour so that they are well informed to make the necessary changes that will help to improve safety and efficiency levels. Essentially, unless drivers have the facts, awareness and encouragement to change, technology only becomes a part of the solution to improving health and safety.

What has been the impact on customer service?

Real-time insight into what is happening across our workforce and what is being achieved has led directly to increased customer satisfaction due to such outcomes as increased on-time service delivery performance. As a result, our flexibility to service additional customer requests quickly and efficiently has increased. Knowing where our vehicles are at all times has also made us better informed to react to customer needs, such as scheduling an emergency visit or notifying a customer if a worker is running late or is going to miss an appointment.

How did you build the business case for technology investment?

We reviewed the upfront and on-going costs to the business in deploying the technology against the tangible savings and security/tracking levels that our customers expect. The long term investment would boost our productivity whilst reducing costs, ensuring a genuine Return on Investment whilst meeting and exceeding customer expectations.

How did you engage your workforce in the technology roll-out? Eg: did you put on any training for them?

We organised a number of road show sessions and workshops in order to educate the workforce on the new technology. This also gave the teams an opportunity to ask questions and understand the overall value attributed to the change.

Any final words of advice for people wanting to transform their field service?

Technology can be a great enabler to improve customer service levels but the tangible and lasting benefits come from employee engagement, commitment and passion to make it work day-to-day.