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The Konica Minolta field service operation has more than 2000 field service technicians across Europe in 30 National Operating Countries (NOCs), servicing over a million customer assets, such as office printers and commercial printing devices, as well as IT Hardware and Software. Cognito iQ provides mobile and analytics solutions that enable field service operations to drive efficiency and improve customer satisfaction.

Cognito iQ’s COO, Dave Webb, had an opportunity to interview Patrick Stucke Senior Manager, Service Strategy for Konica Minolta, Europe. Patrick talked about how the organisation has been working to systematically harmonize and improve field service for a number of years; their shift-left strategy focuses on the technologies and processes which enable them to reduce costs and enhance customer service.

SHIFT-LEFT IS THE FOCUS OF KONICA MINOLTA FIELD SERVICE STRATEGY

Shift left is one of those terms that means something different in different industries, or even in diverse organisations within the same industry, so Dave asked Patrick what the term means to Konica Minolta.

Patrick Stucke: Shift left is a strategy that we've been following for seven to eight years. Our approach was to look at how we serve our customers, and rank all the functions that work towards incident resolution according to the ‘cost to operate’ , and the time it takes to resolve. Then, we took the most costly and valuable resources that take the longest to fix an issue and put them all the way to the right. And we took the resources that offer the fastest fix at little-to-no cost and put it them all the way on the left. It will come as no surprise that field service technicians were very far on the right. They are precious resources: they’ve received lots of training, they are equipped with tools, they carry spare parts, and they spend a lot of time driving around in leased vehicles. By contrast, on the left, there were the systems that self-diagnose and use automatic troubleshooting and reset functions. And then between those two different poles - the service technician on the right and the automated systems on the left - there were a lot of different shades of support, such as dedicated remote support specialists and expert teams, customer care teams or end-users using self-service support.So we asked ourselves: how can we shift as much work effort from the right to the left? Doing so would enable us to reduce downtime for customers, and also operate at a more competitive price point.

Dave Webb: What sort of challenges did you face in implementing the shift-left strategy?

When we started on the process of improvement, we discovered that we had various different mobile solutions in place. In some countries, local offices would self-dispatch the technicians but in others there was a central dispatch and scheduling function. Some technicians had mobile devices, and we were getting live feedback, but at the other end of the scale, some were doing all their call processing offline, on laptops, which was quite tedious. So it was very hard to compare one operation to another, and it was also very hard for the service managers to keep up to date with what was happening in their fields.

DW: So what steps did you take to harmonize field service?

PS: When we started looking into it, we weren’t really aware what was possible, and how much having live information would improve our capabilities to serve our customers. One target we had was to give our service managers more transparency of what's happening in their field operations, and enabling them to better analyse performance. So we went looking for best practices across different countries, exploring how operations work there and what partners they were working with. The real eye opener was our UK operation, which was using Cognito iQ’s Operational Performance Analytics solution (OPA). I had not seen anything like it before. Having real-time reporting and seeing how calls move through different statuses on an easy-to-understand dashboard reinforced our conviction that we have to move to fully mobile working - mobile devices and live data. The other element that I had not seen in such intensity before was the culture of performance and thought leadership on service optimization that has been established: Cognito IQ and the Konica Minolta UK team are working in a very close relationship and mutually improving each other.

                                                                                Patrick Stucke, Konica Minolta

DW: What was it about the platform and the solution that particularly appealed to you?

PS: The platform itself is unique, I have not seen anything like it. Being able to start at the top of the organisation and get a quick overview of what's happening in the field, and then being able to drill down to the individual details - that was something I've not seen in any other tool. So we can see, for example, utilization of technicians - how much time is spent in front of the customer, how much time is spent in the car, how much time is spent idle because technicians are not utilized to the best of their capacity. And that enables us to maybe shift resources from one team to another during the day to get a better resource utilization and help the more busy areas out. That’s really actionable.The second part of the answer is the very close and good collaboration with everyone at Cognito iQ. We don't just get an off-the-shelf solution; you challenge our way of thinking, you listen to the requirements that we have and implement those into your development roadmap. And I think that's really valuable when forming a partnership between two organisations.

DW: And how do you see Cognito IQ supporting you in your shift-left initiative?

PS: A lot of the metrics within OPA show us whether we have been successful in our attempt to try and shift left. So having, for example, live visibility of our first-time-fix rate. We have different teams collaborating with each other to try and achieve that: we would first try to help our customers remotely, but if we can’t achieve a remote fix, then we would send a technician out but we would pass along all the information that we have gained through the remote fix attempts. And we would at least make sure that we send the right technician, with the right training, and who has the right spare part to the customer. Just having that visibility and transparency in the field operations goes a long way in employing the shift-left strategy.

DW: And what has been the day-to-day impact on the team? The service desk, the field operation, the field engineers themselves? What has been the response to the shift-left strategy that you've introduced?

PS: This strategy has transformed our service organisations. As we were embarking on the shift-left journey, a lot of our organisations started putting remote support specialists in place. However, these were just field technicians who were on a rotating remote support duty. They would just scan through the call queues and pick prospects for a remote fix, and call customers proactively. And through that, we saw that they maybe decrease the burden on their field service colleagues a bit. But now, more and more countries are actually changing to dedicated remote support specialists who use all the great technology that we have in place to try and resolve incidents remotely as much as possible. And if they cannot fix an issue, they pass along all the information. So we see the service desk function and the field service function move a lot closer together and support each other. That's definitely a trend we're seeing throughout our business and in our growing IT service business. The clear cut between what's happening in the field and what's happening in the back office that we've had in the past - it's not really there anymore. So it’s become really important that they all look at the same set of data and intelligence. We need to all be working to the same service level agreements, from the first contact in the Customer Care Centre, through the field service operations in the countries, up to the European support organisations. We’re all working towards resolving our incidents according to our promises to the customers.

DW: How successful has your shift-left initiative been?

PS: Well, the way we have implemented that strategy has been a guiding principle for a lot of the initiatives that we have embarked on over the years. It’s also earned us some external recognition; we’ve won a BLI Pacesetter Award for Outstanding Serviceability in Western Europe twice. And it's of course, something we're proud of, because it shows the right strategy and the right guiding principle: to reduce our cost to operate and at the same time serve our customers better.

DW: Looking ahead, what other technologies are you expecting to adopt? And what do you expect those technologies to bring to your shift left strategy?

PS: One area that we have invested in already and want to grow is predictive analytics. We have systems in place already that notify us about possible downtimes, in advance. In some cases, we're able to resolve possible sources of a downtime for customers before anything happens. And we want to fine tune those algorithms even more and employ them for new use cases. We have also developed a lot of own technologies as part of the shift-left strategy implementation. One example is our AIRe Link platform, which is a remote video support system that enables us to connect to our end-users phone cameras, without them needing to install an app on their phone. That gives us a visual impression of what our end-users see when they try to operate the system, instead of just listening to the issues that they describe. And it's very easy to use due to the fact that we don't have to install applications on customer mobile phones.So that helps us a lot in our remote support attempts, especially at the moment where we are trying to avoid having to visit end customers at all, so we don’t put people in harm's way. This platform has been so successful that we're not only using it ourselves, but we're also offering it commercially. Together with Cognito iQ, we’re looking forward to the next generation platform of OPA, which will give us even better insights into operations. And because we can see trends developing throughout the day, in the dashboards that you provide to us, I think that soon you will be able to give us a glimpse into the future.

DW: As you say, the predictive aspect is very much a journey we're on together. At the moment OPA enables you to replay the operational day, but we're looking at playing it forward into predicting based on the data that we can see for tomorrow and beyond.

PS: That will certainly help us to serve our customers even better. And that's really an exciting prospect.

To find out more about any of the topics discussed in this interview please get in touch www.cognitoiq.com

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Cognito iQ on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/cognito-iq
• Learn more about Konica Minolta @ www.konicaminolta.co.uk
• Find out more about Cognito iQ @ www.cognitoiq.com
• Follow Cognito iQ on Twitter @ twitter.com/Cognito_iQ
• Follow Cognito iQ on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/cognito-

Konica Minolta has won the BLI PaceSetter Award for Serviceability and Support 2020-2021 in Western Europe awarded by Keypoint Intelligence for the second time.

With Cognito iQ flagged as a platform that supported the win, the recognition honours the OEM that offers the best-designed tools, programs and trainings to enhance the serviceability of its products and services. With its “shift left” approach, Konica Minolta provides systems to empower its clients to help themselves, such as using online trainings or providing support through remote tools.

COGNITO iQ's PLATFORM ALLOWS KONICA MINOLTA TO AUTOMATE THEIR FIELD OPERATION, IMPROVING EFFICIENCY AND REDUCING ERRORS

Leveraging their Cognito iQ-developed platform, Konica Minolta is able to analyse operational performance of its field service in real time. With this “shift left” approach, the issues are solved closer to their origin and field presence of service experts can be reduced significantly. This helps to limit physical contact points which increases safety for customers and technicians, as travel from client to client can be minimised in the time of Covid-19.

Konica Minolta use Cognito iQ to automate and mobilise their field operation, automating previously manual processes, improving efficiency and reducing errors, and giving Konica Minolta real-time information to control the service support operation. In addition to this they have implemented the Cognito iQ analytics platform, OPA, which gives the field service operation live data enabling them to make fact-based decisions on trends in real-time.

“Pursuing a customer-centric approach, Konica Minolta always focuses on the needs of its users for its products and services’, commented Nick Ranson, UK Director of Value Added Services, Konica Minolta Business Solutions UK, “We have a close relationship with Cognito iQ, their expertise and understanding of our operation has helped to redefine service for the UK business. It’s great to see our efforts recognised with this award”.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Cognito iQ on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/cognito-iq
• Learn more about Konica Minolta @ www.konicaminolta.co.uk
• Find out more about Cognito iQ @ www.cognitoiq.com
• Follow Cognito iQ on Twitter @ twitter.com/Cognito_iQ
• Follow Cognito iQ on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/cognito-

It is often said that data will be the true currency of future businesses across all sectors, but have we already reached a point where the seamless flow of data within an organisation is now essential for effective service delivery?

 

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Want to know more? There is a video with Konica Minolta's Head of Direct Service, Ged Cranny outlining how they have revolutionised their business through data analytics available exclusively to fieldservicenews.com subscribers on the link below...

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In modern field service, it is impossible to ignore the power of data and its potential to drive businesses forward.

One company that has been able to harness that power effectively to push their own service delivery levels to new levels of efficiency, has been print and copy giant Konica Minolta and in a forthcoming exclusive Field Service News webcast we were joined by Ged Cranny, Head of Direct Service for Konica Minolta as well as Dave Bochenski and David Webb of Cognito iQ - the organisation providing Konica Minolta with the tools that have allowed them to fully embrace data-driven service.

Cranny often speaks about the importance of transparency that adopting such a data-centric approach has yielded and how such visibility has empowered important conversations around their service delivery in multiple layers across the organisation - and it is the seamless flow of data across an organisation that is crucial to being able to reach such levels of transparency across the various business units within an organisation. 

So is this smooth movement of data across different divisions within an organisation the fundamental building block of modern service excellence? 

Have we now reached a point where it is imperative for field service businesses to break down the data silos that often exist within their systems in order to remain competitive?

“I think transparency of data is important in the service world because service can often be viewed by the rest of the business as something of a dark art,” explains Cranny.

 

"Transparency of data is important in the service world because service can often be viewed by the rest of the business as something of a dark art.."

 

This is indeed true for a vast majority of organisations. Whilst for those of us engaged within the sector, we can absolutely see the key strategic importance of having an effective and efficient field service operation, which increasingly can become a significant contributor to overall revenues, the fact remains that within many organisations field service is all too often still viewed merely as a necessary evil and something that is a huge red line on the P&L sheets.

However, by being able to clearly outline the various complexities and benefits of a field service operation, supported by robust, accurate data that can be viewed in real-time, it is far easier to make the case as to why field service should be a key area of strategic focus within any customer-centric organisation.

“One of the most important things for me when we got the data from Cognito iQ during the trial phase, was that we were able to show it to our Financial Director and Managing Director and straight away they were able to see the value of that data across the business. Essentially it took away the ‘dark art’ element of what we do,” Cranny continues.

However, it is not just at the exec level that such visibility into the data can have an impact. Right across an organisation, there are wins to be had from being able to share data-led insights with various different stakeholders.

“We’ve actually opened up the data to anybody who wants to look into the top level figures within the business. For example, our CX manager can see the information relevant to customer satisfaction levels. In fact, anybody can see how we are performing on any given day, in terms of how well we are meeting our SLAs. That openness has led to much more informed questions to us in the service department, which in turn raises the level of both our service engineers and our service managers,” Cranny explains.

“It is absolutely key that service organisations are able to harness field service teams as a whole and that they really encourage collaboration around the data,” concurs Webb.

“I think that is the nature of the world that we are operating in now. It is no longer the preserve of the management teams to manage the customer experience, to manage the performance of the business and to worry about all the dimensions of success for an organisation - it is now down to all contributors.”

 

"Openness and transparency are key, but also the way in which you engage teams in the discussion around that performance is critical..."

 

Field Service engineers are the people that interact the most closely with the customers and the old adage of the customer advisor is absolutely true today. Therefore being able to share with the engineers the impact that their contribution is having on the overall performance of the operation, to ensure that you have that openness of communication is hugely important.”

“What I’ve seen Ged and his team at Konica Minolta do so effectively is to make that performance discussion about the process in the operation. It is far less about people and far more about their contribution to the process and identifying those aspects of a process that are failing or that could be improved.”

“So openness and transparency are key, but also the way in which you engage teams in the discussion around that performance is critical.” 

“If you use good data badly, then you’ll only get to use it once, if you use it well then the reality is it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, you get to see a continuous performance improvement mindset emerging within your teams - which makes a huge difference to the overall business.” 

This of course also frees up management teams who can then offer a huge amount of value in other areas of the business as well such as new business development, key account management and other more strategic aspects of the role.

Essentially by freeing these key personnel up from the day to day service delivery, they are able to focus purely on management by exception around the operation and then really focus on where the next business development role is coming from and how they can contribute - essentially making the service operation come alive for their business development colleagues when they are dealing with prospects and customers.

Of course, this is the optimal end goal. However, it is not necessarily a simple path for an organisation to follow. It is clear that the relationship between Konica Minolta and Cognito IQ is one which is well grounded in a level of trust and openness and there is a clear willingness from both sides to work in tandem to help Konica Minolta unlock the insights held within their data.

But how much weight falls on the shoulders of a solution provider to be able to guide their clients on that path, and how much responsibility does the field service organisation have for plotting their own path themselves?

“I think the answer ultimately here is that it really depends on the dynamics within the relationship in any given scenario and either can have contributions on that level,” comments Bochenski when the topic comes up.

 

"If you can harness the data then the rewards are absolutely there..."

 

”It is certainly true that data is the new arms race within business and being able to marshal and gain insights into that data is really what can drive benefits and opportunities for you to beat your competition. If you can harness the data then the rewards are absolutely there,” he adds. 

“That then comes into the two sides. You can have some insights yourself, but it also helps to have someone from the outside also looking at things that perhaps you might not have seen within your own data - sometimes companies can become a bit tunnel visioned about their data without that external viewpoint.”

“I see the role of service providers being to help with platforms to bring that data into a place where meaningful insight can be drawn from it - to establish one place where companies can access all of their data through APIs etc.”

“Then, when we have that the flow of data from different parts of the business available, a solution provider can not only help you access it, but also glean additional insights that you might not have necessarily got yourself.”

“Another benefit is that the data is also available to other parts of the business and often I find that when you have established this kind of structure within your data, you have emergent things happen that you may not have initially anticipated.”

“Essentially, if you have two different people looking at the same piece of data, very often you can find something that neither of them would have seen were they only looking at the data on their own.”

This is a hugely salient point as often companies are able to unearth unexpected value within their data - sometimes that can help them improve their own processes, but equally it can be insight that is intrinsically valuable for their clients as well - leading to ways to further increase an organisations stickiness with their customers, or even opening up completely new revenue streams entirely.

Indeed, the benefit of breaking down information silos within a business does appear to be perhaps one of the most crucial tasks field service organisations must undertake in today’s world of data-led field service.

By working alongside CognitoiQ Konica Minolta certainly seem to be an excellent example of a company that has achieved that and they are now positioned to reap the rewards of that forward. 

 

Argon Office Systems, one of the Isle of Man’s leading suppliers of IT and Print services, has upgraded its service support capability after installing 2serv, the service management software solution from Purpose Software. 

The new system will enable the organisation to streamline internal workflow processes and deliver an even better level of support to customers operating in the telecommunications, media, healthcare, retail, transport, public, financial services and professional services sectors.

Argon wanted to further increase the efficiency of its service operation after recently achieving a Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) 5 Star service accreditation by demonstrating compliance with the highest standards in training, handling of field service calls, service call processing, customer satisfaction.  Konica Minolta recommended Purpose Software, the leading developer of service management solutions for document and managed print services providers.

2serv enables Argon to increase the efficiency of the whole service operation which is responsible for supporting a wide range of technologies from complete IT infastructures through to multifunctional devices, copiers, fax machines and printers along with other paper handling systems such as shredders, binders and laminators.

 

“Purpose Software understood the unique challenges faced by organisations such as Argon and worked closely with our IT team to ensure an incident-free installation process,” commented Iain Fairbairn, Managing Director of Argon. “2serv has increased the efficiency of our service operation and enabled us to integrate our service, stock and accounting functions to provide more proactive support to customers, whether supplying a single toner cartridge or a complete IT infrastructure project.”

2serv provides instant access to real-time data relating to maintenance and support contracts, installed equipment and outstanding service calls.  It also improves the control of parts and consumables whether in the warehouse, at customer sites or carried as car stock by engineers.  Purchase orders are automatically generated to maintain optimum stock levels, eliminate the incidence of double ordering and ensure compliance with customer SLAs.

2serv generates a wide range of reports at the press of a button, enabling decision-making to be improved in every area of the business.  It eliminates the need for staff to manually compile spreadsheet-based reports and provides an efficient way to measure performance against KPIs such as service and profitability at customer, model and device level.

 The installation also includes 2roam which allows field service engineers equipped with tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices to access and update 2serv from any location across the island.

 

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Rebecca Barnett, VP Marketing Cognito iQ guides us through how they worked with Konica Minolta to improve far more than just service standards...

At Cognito iQ, we love seeing what we do, come to life in the businesses we are lucky enough to call customers.

Konica Minolta UK produces business and industrial imaging products, such as MFP’S (multifunctional peripherals), copiers, laser printers and digital product print.

The company has over 275 service engineers providing planned, reactive maintenance and support to businesses throughout the UK.

Over relationship with Konica Minolta started 15 years ago and exemplifies much of the recent history of mobile workforce technology. From simple automation to today’s solution which provides unrivalled visibility of operational and employee performance.

Konica Minolta originally selected the Cognito iQ mobile application to automate and mobilise their field operation. In 2004, following the merger of Konica and Minolta, the UK business implemented a Europe-wide SAP ERP system which replaced the incumbent mobility solution.

After a few months, the UK team reverted to the Cognito iQ solution which we then integrated into their SAP application.

 

In 2014, Konica Minolta following a market review, we took the opportunity to showcase our new solution, Operational Performance Management (OPM). Cognito iQ OPM represents the very latest in field service analytics.

With easy to understand dashboards and the ability to drill down into granular detail, be it at an individual employee or indeed at a task level, the team at Konica Minolta quickly understood how powerful this would be for them.

18 months on and the Cognito iQ OPM solution is firmly embedded at the heart of the service operation. Here’s a snapshot of just some of the results.

Customer Service

Via their handheld devices engineers are able to request customer feedback on completion of their jobs. The number of customers giving NPS (Net Promoter Scores) scores has more than doubled over the past 18 months.

However, what’s really impressive is that, on average, the Konica Minolta field team are achieving an NPS score of 85.

As a sustained average, 85 is fairly unheard of in NPS terms and here’s the really clever bit - the scores are received by the back office in real-time. Managers have a KPI to call every customer who scores a 10 within an hour to say ‘thank you’ and enquire as to why they felt the service warranted such a high score.

 

In parallel, any customers scoring a 6 or below (NPS calls them Detractors) are called to enquire what the engineer could do better next time.

The insights from all calls are recorded and used to drive a programme of continuous improvement through training, feedback to the engineers and process change.

Productivity

The Cognito iQ OPM solution gives real-time visibility of what is happening in the field. With this comes a greater understanding of where improvements can be made.

By analysing the data through the Cognito iQ dashboards, significant savings have been made by reducing travel times between jobs. Over the course of year, small savings in time have added up to significant savings in pounds.

In addition, the team have measurably been able to service many more machines per man through improvements in training and process.

Employee Engagement

The Cognito iQ OPM solution produces what we call the Worker Scorecard. In simple terms, it measures each engineer against 6 Key Performance Areas and produces an overall, aggregated individual score at the end of each day.

This then feeds into the League Table which shows, at the click of button, who the highest performers are over whatever period of time you choose.

By understanding exactly where improvements in service needed to be made, Konica Minolta developed a whole new engineer career development programme.

To move up the levels an engineer has to consistently achieve certain KPI’s and undertake and pass certain training programmes. Pay and reward is linked to this development and guided by quality markers taken from the Cognito iQ OPM solution such as NPS scores, levels of productivity etc.

 

Sharing performance information transparently has enabled productive conversations and Konica Minolta have quickly developed a reputation for being an ‘Employer of Choice’ enjoying many benefits such as reduced recruitment costs, reduced attrition rates and a happy, motivated, loyal workforce.

Now, I’m not all that keen on tech buzzwords.

Frankly ‘transformation’ is about as overused as they come. However, having worked with team at Konica Minolta on this story, I really couldn’t justify using anything else.

 

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Want to know more? You can read the full transformation story on www.cognitoiq.com/case-studies

 

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