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ClickSoftware, a leading provider of field service management solutions for the enterprise, recently announced that Aragon Research, a technology-focused research and advisory firm, has recognised the company as a 2016 Hot Vendor in the Internet of Things (IoT) category.

Each year, Aragon Research selects Hot Vendors -- across multiple industries -- that continue to push their respective fields' boundaries into new ways of experimenting with techniques and strategies to improve business. ClickSoftware was one of five selected in the category of IoT.

ClickSoftware develops software for use by the field service industry, to maximise productivity and improve customer service. Its software contains advanced decision-making algorithms that helps managers optimise business practices, complete more service calls per day, and arm field service professionals with the information they need to delight customers. Aragon Research recognised ClickSoftware, an early adopter of integrating IoT functionality into its platform, for its ability to go "beyond the current approach to field service" and traditional scheduling functionality.

 

"The rise of IoT is forcing change in business models, and the Field Service industry is no exception as the need to make all workers productive is the current business imperative," said Jim Lundy, founder and chief executive officer, Aragon Research. "ClickSoftware is innovating by leveraging IoT to deliver a solution that's truly impactful and helping solve some of the most sophisticated service challenges today."

"We are honoured to be recognised by Aragon Research as a Hot Vendor in the Internet of Things category for 2016," said Tom Heiser, chief executive officer, ClickSoftware. "Our inclusion in this report validates our commitment to providing the most advanced Field Service Management solutions on the market and demonstrates that our technology is instrumental in advancing the power of IoT in the field service industry."

 

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Find out more about ClickSoftware in the Field Service Directory here

 

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As the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem continues to evolve, Telia Carrier and Ericsson have signed an agreement that highlights the critical role international carriers have to play. Telia Carrier will provide backhaul and interconnect solutions to Ericsson’s Device Connection Platform via a dedicated IoT backbone.

"It’s pretty clear that IoT needs its own backbone", says Brendan Ives, CEO of Telia Carrier. "It’s one thing to connect the Internet of Things today, but if you consider we will soon be connecting smart cities and the cars that drive us, things are about to get real. Ericsson is one of the driving forces in IoT with the Networked Society. We are pleased to have been chosen to provide the connectivity it deserves."

[quote float="left"]"It’s one thing to connect the Internet of Things today, but if you consider we will soon be connecting smart cities and the cars that drive us, things are about to get real"

This agreement enables IoT operators to connect via any of Telia Carrier’s 220 IPX PoPs directly to Ericsson’s Device Connection Platform in a single network hop.

 

Anders Olin, Vice President Product Area Network Functions with Business Unit Cloud & IP, Ericsson, says: "Our operator customers can now connect directly to our Device Connection Platform with a pre-integrated, scalable & secure backbone solution. The combined offering from Telia Carrier and Ericsson is fully aligned to provide the SLAs demanded by business-critical IoT applications".

Backhaul between IoT operators and device management platforms is a critical link that requires extremely high levels of security and reliability.

"When you combine a dedicated IoT service with a global fiber backbone like ours, you get the scalability IoT will soon demand", says Matthew Jones, Head of Mobile Solutions for Telia Carrier. "With this agreement in place, we can connect customers and shorten time to market considerably. That’s going to be particularly important for the operators who haven’t moved on IoT yet, but are starting to see the scale of the opportunity. Effectively, this solution brings IoT operators closer to Ericsson’s Device Connection Platform. It gives them a one-hop-shop."

 

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PTC has introduced two new smart, IoT-based connected service solutions: Remote Service and Connected Service Parts Management. Both solutions leverage the company's ThingWorx  IoT platform to help organisations transform the way they execute service for connected products,  optimising decisions for better service delivery.

They are integral components of PTC’s  roadmap for organisations adopting a strategy for smart, connected service.

It helps them redefine their service models to generate unprecedented value for their customers and organisation. The service journey entails three steps:[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Understand – Make smarter decisions by analysing service and product data in real-time
2. Advance – Differentiate your service offering by improving and expediting the way products are serviced
3. Outperform – Completely redefine value for customers and the service organization with new offerings and business models.

[/ordered_list]"Many organisations struggle to transform their service environment and desire to take advantage of IoT and the value that can be gained from the data streaming from connected equipment and devices,” says Steve Morandi, senior vice president, Service Lifecycle Management, PTC. “PTC’s connected service solutions help organisations successfully navigate this transformation by optimising their existing service models and creating new value-added offerings. With Remote Service and Connected Service Parts Management solutions, organisations can analyse service and product data in real-time, differentiate service offerings, and improve the way products are serviced.”

Remote Service enables service and support technicians to remotely identify, diagnose, and resolve issues, while continuously monitoring key performance parameters in connected equipment. Remote Service helps service organisations avoid equipment downtime and unscheduled service events enabling organizations to reduce service costs and improve customer service.

Connected Service Parts Management enables service organizations to utilise data directly from connected assets to more accurately forecast and plan service parts demand. Leveraging the power of the ThingWorx IoT platform,  Connected Service Parts Management captures asset location and performance information and feeds that data to the Service Parts Management solution. By collecting, transforming, and organizing data reported directly by equipment in the field, organisations are able to improve service levels and increase equipment availability. 

These smart connected service solutions help companies improve their service revenue and profitability, competitive advantage, and product reliability.

"In delivering better solutions and outcomes to customers, connectivity is a must for service organisations," said Sumair Dutta, chief customer officer, The Service Council. "A connected infrastructure can make a service business more predictive in its service relationships, more efficient in its reactive service delivery, and more responsive in the development of new services that are needed by customers."

 

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Mark Homer, Vice President, Global Customer Transformation for ServiceMax explains why increased connectivity is an opportunity for service departments everywhere .

While the steel industry comes to terms with Tata Steel’s decision to quit the UK, it’s a stark reminder of the fragility of jobs particularly in traditional industries.

Add steelmaker to coal miner, milkman, and switchboard operator.

Change has always been rooted in technology and shifting global economies, and we are now on the verge of a new revolution.

 

Like most other revolutions before it, the proliferation of connected sensors on everything from televisions to turbines will create further change to jobs, increasing redundancies but also creating new roles and skills.

This internet of things (IoT) is not short on publicity and with good reason.

The numbers are somewhat mind blowing.

Research analyst Gartner has claimed that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use this year, an increase of 30 per cent from 2015.

The consumer market will account for the biggest growth although general and vertical industry use is also increasing.

A recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit on the rise and impact of the smart product economy found that 40 per cent of businesses plan to use smart products to automate customer service operations, while 46 per cent report that smart products are already bringing them information about their customers that was previously not possible or not cost effective to acquire.

From Cisco’s digital ceiling to Future Shape’s smart carpet, everything everywhere is a target for connectivity.

Companies have good reason to want everything connected.

Diagnostics through data analytics is big business, whether it’s pre-determining the life span of products and proactively triggering upgrade cycles or understanding how products are used better to improve new products in the hope they will continue to sell, data will become the backbone of the modern economy.

Think about it for a minute.

If companies know for certain the condition of a particular product, how would that impact the sales and service cycles?

Imagine knowing which part is about to fail and organising that part for the customer to avoid any downtime?

 

This would also improve the accuracy of the upgrade sales cycle, and also for that matter, what would the data be worth to insurance companies, especially in the areas of security and health?

By having a direct, always-on connection to customers’ products it is possible to see how this will change a few things for field service.

As keepers of that diagnostic data it puts service departments in a strong position, as long as they can retain control of that data through expert analysis combined with product knowledge.

This is where field service needs to re-invent itself or at least evolve.

The growth in connected devices will certainly change the working pattern. While the IoT will not remove the need for field service personnel it will demand different skills.

With more insight into customer products and the potential for remote analysis through virtual mapping and even drones, it’s possible to see how this change will materialise - more onscreen work, more data analytics, more up-selling and more recommendations for future product design.

Throw in the potential for localised robots to carry out low level maintenance tasks and suddenly field service in the future looks very different.

It’s not something to be feared, but rather embraced.

This is an opportunity for field service to be at the centre of the relationship between company and customer, the driving force for product innovation and the keepers of the keys to the new industrial revolution.

And that may mean a name change too.

Smart product analytical service, sales and innovation support agent anyone?

 

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Field service in the medical industry is complex and challenging. Having recently attended the two key events -  Field Service Medical and Field Service Medical Europe - we look at some of the key challenges service directors working in this vertical face...

It is an often quoted maxim that when it comes to field service highly disparate companies from completely separate verticals can face many of the same pain points. Within the niche of the medical industry these challenges remain but there are also additional hurdles that can make service delivery even harder.

Fortunately for those working within medical field service, global conference producers WBR sit right at the heart of the industry hosting two key events, one each side of the Atlantic to help foster knowledge sharing within the community.

The first of these Field Service Medical was held in San Diego in February and in the Californian sunshine the debate was lively with a highly senior audience coming together and putting commercial rivalries aside to address some of the key challenges within the sector.

Of course as with the wider field service sector, technology has a huge role to play in enhancing the levels of service companies can provide, yet a number of additional challenges such as tighter regulation, greater security fears and fragmented purchasing structures can make the implementation of technology just that little bit harder within the medical sector.

 

Thus a number of conversations centred around integration, with FieldOne’s Ted Steffner’s presentation on the topic ‘Integrate, Don’t isolate’ being a particular highlight for a number of delegates.

Another specific focus of the medical sector is that the sale of consumables within the industry is perhaps disproportionally higher here than in other verticals such as manufacturing. Largely driven by the clean room environment, this leads to an even greater pressure to ensure good inventory management and as well as a number of presentations around this topic, Stacey Blakely, Service Sales Director, Hill-Rom led an excellent interactive round table that provided plenty of food for thought and helped drive the conversation.

Indeed, the sale of consumables is viewed very much as a key part of service revenue still within the medical sector and in some respects the thought processes of many within the vertical is still focused on the traditional break-fix approach to field service.

This was apparent when Professor Tim Baines, Aston University, gave a presentation on the topic of Servitization at Field Service Medical Europe in Berlin a month later.

 

Whilst in many other verticals the topic of servitization and phrases such as through-life-cycle service, advanced services and outcome based solutions are becoming familiar concepts, for many within the medical industry it remains a new concept which faces the dual barriers of both a relenting and strong traditional approach to revenue through consumables, as well as the additional challenges of fully implementing IoT solutions due to the aforementioned fears around security fuelled by the need to protect patient data.

However, whilst in some areas the medical industry maybe a touch behind the broader field service sector, it is also home to some truly innovative thinkers and service leaders.

One such person is Alec Pinto, Associate Director of Qiagen who gave a fantastic presentation on maximising utilisation. Pinto and his colleagues have done some exceptional work on developing mathematical modelling to truly define their available resources in terms of man hours, and then redistributing their workforce accordingly to improve customer satisfaction levels, efficiency levels and engineer engagement.

In summary, the field service industry within the medical sector has a number of unique challenges that are perhaps not felt within other verticals yet the market still continues to see innovation and development on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

“There is an overall theme of companies being more proactive and less reactive across the sector at the moment,” commented Greg Ashton, Conference Producer for WBR at the end of Field Service Medical Europe.

“People have been thinking about it for a long time but now the technology is at a place now where there is a fusion of people and technology all arriving together at a critical point.”

“It’s really the solution providers that are driving it forward, the solutions themselves have improved a lot over the last year,” he added.

 

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The way products are serviced is reshaping their design at the R&D level, and providing new insights into product usage, according to field service management specialist, ServiceMax. Service mechanisms are increasingly seen as the common denominator of accurate product development and maintenance.

The Internet of Things and intelligent field service automation is creating a connected service loop built into products, enabling manufacturers to track, pre-empt service requirements, understand usage and ultimately improve the way customers are using products.

“Before IoT, R&D teams relied mainly on interpretation and anecdotal input from field service engineers to get a full understanding of how products were faring out in the field,” said Mark Homer is Vice President, Global Customer Transformation for field service management specialist, ServiceMax. “But faced with competition and diminishing returns, manufacturers are using IoT and connected field service to make products more specific to consumer requirements.”

 

With IoT enabled field service automation, companies can collect data automatically from machines and devices to determine their condition, performance, potential for error or malfunction, foresee problems, identify troublesome parts, and equip field service techs with the right tools and materials.

Companies can also gain new levels of insight into how their products are actually used post purchase and aggregate the data for better design, maintenance and user experience, redefining the relationship between businesses and customers. The result is minimum product downtime, maximum customer satisfaction and greater insight into how consumers are using products.

 

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With the recent launch of the world’s first fully connected IoT solution for field service, ServiceMax has really opened the doors to IoT adoption within our industry. Mark Homer, VP of Global Customer Transformation for ServiceMax reflects on just how big an impact IoT can have for field service companies...

We are seeing a growing interest in IoT adoption in the market today - from both customers and service providers - along with a move from reactive to proactive service. It’s certainly reflected in many of the companies I am working with that have a keen interest in this area.

But why is this?

Reactive service, as we all know, can be very expensive. In my view, it doesn’t really deliver what it should do in terms of the quality and value.

If you consider downtime and lost output, from a customer’s point of view, reactive service costs really are quite significant.

Also from a supplier’s perspective, it’s always been expensive to send engineers out with an average figure of around £180 for a B2B environment. Even in a consumer context, engineer call out costs can be expensive.

In fact, in some of the organisations that we work with - such as those maintaining gas plants or very expensive equipment such as security scanners - it can cost anything up to £1500 for an engineer to be sent on a job.

IoT offers us some potential solutions to address this issue. The recent research we undertook with Field Service News and PTC really helped solidify some of the thinking around how these benefits can play out in the real world.

In parallel, we are also seeing the shift to connected services begin to accelerate with a growing trend towards servitization.

I’ve sat on quite a few round-tables recently in this area.

Servitization has been around for a while, having come out of lean manufacturing and Six Sigma.

 

But with the on-going drive towards globalisation and digitalisation, alongside the emergence of IoT, we’re now seeing added market momentum.

We are seeing a large number of companies of all sizes, that view IoT as an enabling technology to allow them to move towards preventative planned maintenance within their service organisations, as well as a shift in focus for their businesses that puts the emphasis on outcome based solutions.

My personal view is that we will soon see outcome based service models becoming more and more common. The industry as a whole needs to sit back and rethink its service models.

I know that there are already a few high profile case studies, such as Cannon, providing document services rather than selling printers, for example, or one of the most famous examples of Rolls Royce providing flight hours not jet engines (coined ‘power-by-the –hour’).

But these examples are no longer examples of companies operating outside of the norm.

We often see customers looking for a guarantee that their provider is going to provide a particular service, deliver a particular outcome, and a certain pre-agreed level of performance.

And this shift in thinking is leading to a change within industry that is very much ‘we are in it together’.

Providers are becoming accountable for their customers’ success, and as a result will reap the rewards of being an integral part of their customers’ businesses - including longer-term contracts, which of course adds stability and a platform for further development and growth.

Our recent partnership with PTC has been well documented, and the reason for coming together is very much a result of this emerging need for a platform to fulfil this demand. A platform to enable field service companies to evolve in keeping with these trends and to support this new service economy.

At the core of the partnership is a desire to allow manufacturers and service partners to connect products - a key building block in maximising IoT within an outcome based solutions strategy.

 

And whilst I know I’m biased, I must say that I’m really excited by our recent launch of Connected Field Service, which is the complete Internet of Things solution for the field service industry.

By leveraging PTC’s ThingWorx platform, ServiceMax’s Connected Field Service can let you know immediately when something is about to fail, and automatically dispatch the necessary technician with the right knowledge and the  right parts to repair the machine and eliminate unplanned downtime.

Given the potential we discussed above for IoT to change the way field service companies focus their businesses, and its role as an enabler for companies moving towards a servitized model, I genuinely believe that Connected Field Service is a first glimpse of the future of things to come in our industry.

Exciting times indeed.

 

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James Smith, Research Director for Field Service conference producer for The Field Service Summit, organised by Copperburg explains how the IoT is set to change everything...

 

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Field Service Summit 2016 takes place at St Hugh's College, Oxford, UK on 12 April. Not registered yet? Click here  and quote FSN25 for your 25% discount.

 

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I’ve been using the internet for 20 years, and in that time it’s changed how people connect with one another.

When I started there were 77 million online users.

Now there’s 3.2 billion.

But the Internet of Things (IoT), also known as the industrial internet, has much further to go - and is set to change how everything connects with everything.

From connecting 3.2 billion people, the IoT will connect 41 billion devices, and that’s just in the next 5 years.

An order of magnitude bigger than today’s consumer internet, the industrial internet will transform industries. It’s only a matter of time before it transforms yours: cheap bandwidth, cheap sensors, clever analytics and pervasive smartphones and wearables – in truth the IoT era is already here.

During research for this April’s Field Service Summit in Oxford, I caught up with some of our speakers to take a closer look at how IoT will change field service operations.

The ‘Service Web’

“Field Service is undergoing a revolution. New sensors and sources of data mean that firms are able to offer ever greater and more sophisticated services and solutions to their customers,” explains Professor Andy Neely, Head of Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing & Founding Director of the Cambridge Service Alliance.

“Original equipment manufacturers in all sectors seem to be waking up to the challenges and opportunities of field service not just for their products, but also for their competitors. This, coupled with developments in big data analytics, make field service a fascinating place to work today.”

When everything is connected, it will be those service companies that best understand their customers who capture the most value.

“IoT is not just a technology transformation, it’s an industry transformation that requires competing industry players to work collaboratively to realise the true benefits on offer,” says Stephen

Jeffs-Watts, Senior Advisor – Enterprise Service Management, Service, Projects & Asset, with enterprise service management company IFS.

 

Competitive advantage will not come from responsiveness or cost; it will come from becoming a strategic partner to your customers - and the field service team will be the elastic cord that binds together vendors and customers.

“It is also important is to rethink both the back office and customer interaction – the large call centre will disappear, to be replaced by control centres, staffed by more highly skilled people able to interact with equipment remotely,” he adds.

“Sending a service technician will become a last resort; only happening when physical intervention with equipment is necessary, but how does the service organisation ensure that they don’t become commoditised as well and move up the value chain to become trusted advisors with strong customer relationships?”

“The biggest challenge facing most service organisations is how to increase their service profitability and increase revenue,” observes Mikko Keto, Senior Vice President, Performance Services, Metso Corporation.

“Focusing just on spare parts maximises profitability but tends to limit service growth. Too much field service work and profitability can become too low. Finding the optimum mix is the holy grail of services.”

 

“The real power of IoT lies in the data that is produced,” says Marc Tonen, EMEA Product Management, Astea International.

“Field service management solutions take the data collected from machine-to-machine monitoring and turn it into actions – actions that mean faster repair times, less time wasted on travel and reduced asset downtime.”

“Leading service organisations have moved from a purely reactive service delivery model to a proactive or preventative model and are already reaping the rewards.”

If it’s clear to see where the initial value will be created - the real prize will be won by field service organisations able to retool their teams to move into the role of strategic advocacy.

“There is a need to enhance the customer experience through field service interactions,” says Aly Pinder, Senior Research Analyst, Aberdeen Group.

“Technicians not only find themselves responsible for fixing downed equipment, they also have to have the tools, skills, knowledge, and expertise to deliver value to customers as the brand advocates for the business.”

 

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St Hugh's College Oxford, UK, is the venue for Field Service Summit 2016 on 12 April.  Not registered yet?  Click here and quote FSN25 to receive a 25% discount

 

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If you thought that servitization was still a concept or something only applicable for large manufacturers, it's time to think again, says Professor Tim Baines, Director of the Centre for Servitization Research and Practice, Aston University Business School, Birmingham.

There’s an excitement about servitization at the moment.  "People are asking questions such as: Is it relevant to my business? Will it work for my products?  Are my competitors adopting it? What does a Servitization model look like?" Servitization in general and Advanced Services in particular are attracting interest, says Baines, because they offer the prospect of new revenue streams through post-sale services and the greater financial sustainability that comes with it because manufacturers are no longer totally reliant on transactional sales of products for income.

However, as more services are being built around products, says Baines, so process are becoming more complex. "There are three levels of manufacturer-led product services: spare parts, proactive and reactive product condition maintenance, and Advanced Services such has outcome-based contracts. As companies realise the benefits and value servitization can deliver, both they and their customers are becoming more excited about the possibilities of the Advanced Services element." He points out the parallels with the lean manufacturing journey many manufacturers have already been to remove waste and cost from production processes.  “Just as Kanban inventory control and just-in-time logistics processes were advanced elements in lean manufacturing,  so Advanced Services are a sophisticated element in servitization."

The move towards a servitization model requires a greater focus on customer intimacy, and a change in process towards delivering capabilities and outcomes rather than products, which in turn requires business model innovation, organisational transformation and adoption of new technology, he explains.

 

All of this is challenging for manufacturers to take on board, he concedes.  "While there’s a lot of interest, there’s still a lot of uncertainty about whether the servitization model fits all manufacturers and whether it is relevant to all business sectors.  Part of that is because people often think servitization is difficult because of the process changes that need to happen. However, rather than look at servitization per se as being difficult, it’s more useful to focus on how receptive your organisation is to change. It’s as much about the culture and attitudes within the business."

Neither is company size is relevant to whether change will be embraced or resisted, says Baines. “Big companies have more resources to initiate change but also more inertia when it comes to changing existing processes. SMEs can be much more nimble having fewer constraints with, say, legacy processes." There is no doubt that SMEs are interested in servitization - in 2015, out of 100 companies that Aston consulted with on servitization, 77 were SMEs, reports Baines.

The intimate relationship with your customer and long-term partnership that the servitization model demands, beings other  challenges. "Who has the intimate relationship with the customer: you, the manufacturer of the product, or your distributor? How do you ensure your distributor has the same commitment to your customer needed to make the Advanced Services model work?”

Professor Baines will be hosting Aston Business School's  2016 Spring Servitization Conference on 16-17 May  2016.  For more information click here.

 

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