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Alistair Clifford Jones, CEO Leadent Solutions looks at why failing your own field service operations is also failing your customers...

It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, customers are becoming more demanding and products less differentiated. The boundary between efficient customer service and the best products is blurred. If you talk to people about what car to buy the topic is often more focused on aftercare service than the actual car.

In the case of domestic appliances this is certainly the case; although many manufacturers have outsourced their service business, it is still perceived as the service arm of the manufacturers. I know my wife will never purchase a well-known brand again as the service company was in her view ‘a nightmare’ (her post on Facebook attracted many similar ‘likes’ effectively trashing the product), when the problem was a different organisation.

Facilities management companies invest heavily in bid management, but rarely in efficient operations. Yet this has had fairly tough consequences – we can all remember the G4S fall out after the Olympics more than 4 years ago. I am sure, retrospectively, G4S would have invested more in efficient processes and technology had they known the consequences.

 

Service management is now the shopfront for products, not an afterthought, but it never seems to have the investment it deserves, certainly not compared to areas of the business like product development or marketing.

Why is this? I guess it’s not seen as dynamic or sexy, and operations rarely have a position on the board. Unfortunately, many organisations still view operations as a cost and a target for reduction, rather than investment.

This is where CEOs and CFOs have failed. Not only to understand how influential service management is on their overall business, but also how investment in technology, supporting efficient processes, will really drive down costs and more importantly enhance the customer experience.

There have been many business cases, requiring substantial capital expenditure, which have been rejected, often as the argument has been based purely on operational costs and not the impact of poor service on future sales.

I hate the phrase ‘no brainer’ but in today’s world, we are missing a trick in excluding the company’s reputational damage through poor service from a business case. Also in failing to recognise how cheaply cloud-based products can be implemented as the cost becomes a monthly charge rather than a huge operational expenditure. If our industry leaders truly understood this, implementing a solution would surely become a ‘no brainer’ and the costs of running a service business balanced with the repeat sales.

Our team has spent the last 10 years determining what makes the very best field service organisations succeed.  We know how to get organisations like yours working smarter, delivering better customer experience whilst reducing costs, that’s why today we have launched Leadent Service Cloud to help CEO’s stop failing their customers.

 

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There's still time to register for next week's "Creating Value from Field Service" event, being held at the prestigious Williams F1 Conference Centre, in Wantage, Oxfordshire, on  Thursday 28th April.

There's no charge to attend the action-packed event, which is hosted by  mobile workforce optimisation solutions specialist Leadent and attracts senior figures from the UK field service sector.

 

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To register and see the full agenda click here

 

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The interactive agenda will allow delegates to explore the theme of "Creating Value from Field Service".  How do you maximise the value delivered by and through a dispersed  field force? The conference will bring together industry experts and practitioners who have been there and done it.  Field service organisations such as Anglian Water, NATs, Serco and Arqiva will share their real-life experiences.

The event attracts senior delegates from some of the country’s largest organisations. The day is structured with presentations, case studies, and panel events,  and there is plenty of opportunity for discussion with fellow peers and for delegates to network, converse and share ideas.  Represented organisations will include utilities, telcos, facilities management, government agencies and more.

The range of topics includes Tactical Resource Planning, Analytics, Change and Transformation Management, the End-to-End Customer Journey, as well as IoT and the latest technologies.

A  complimentary tour of the Williams F1 Collection is included.

 

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To view full agenda and register,  click here

 

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Pete Sharpe, Managing Consultant, Leadent Solutions looks at how the role of IT Management is beginning to evolve into something far more sophisticated than turning it off and on again... 

I recently read that 60% of IT projects fail to deliver on time and on budget. It’s not hard to see why - in the last decade new technologies have changed the way a business works considerably. Information technology has reached every last corner of industry moving at break-neck speed.

IT projects are no longer confined to implementing one system in one area of the business and with larger IT projects becoming far more complex with tightly integrated solutions, IT Project Managers need to move beyond the comfort of the IT department to interact with others such as Operations, Finance and Shared Services, which means that they will have to lead the organisational change required to meet their project goals.

 

IT Project Managers used to be safe in the knowledge that they were called upon for their technical skills alone, it wasn’t imperative that they think strategically or have to communicate complex plans to anyone outside of their immediate project team and sponsor.

Today however, IT Project Managers are not only required to deliver complex projects on time and on budget, they are also expected to address the impact on the business, align technology strategy to the business objectives and consider the approach to change required to ensure the project is a success. In short, to succeed IT Project Managers must think like business professionals not just technical ones.

A new set of skills

In order for IT Project Managers to succeed in their new roles it is essential that they build their Communication, Leadership and Business Change skills.

In every project there is a demand from the relevant business areas for subject matter experts to advise and facilitate the business impact and change management. Whilst this is critical to all project deliveries, the impact on the day-to-day business operation is often underestimated and not planned as well as it could be.

By enabling and empowering IT Project Managers to manage and influence relationships across the business, whilst simultaneously championing the new technology they are implementing, businesses can avoid the sudden pull on key resources.

 

These core skills will allow Project Managers to look at the broader context of the project across the organisation and understand the impact that this will have on people and culture, and importantly allow them to create joint IT and business plans to pre-empt the resource requirement.

IT Project Managers need to be equipped to deal with the human side of IT projects, ensuring that change is embraced, adopted and utilised and in turn this will allow them to be more aware of the impact upon people, process and technology across the organisation.

Business Transformation is no longer an event, it is a method for continuous improvement. By embracing the change in concept and through robust succession planning the IT Project Managers of tomorrow can help businesses to avoid the associated cost spike of a business-wide transformation programme, provide accurate capital investment plans that align to the business strategy and manage the change as though it were business as usual.

A unified approach

The most effective projects will take a unified approach, implementing change on both technical and people fronts. By enabling IT Project Managers to look at both the technical and human side of projects, the efforts become focussed toward a singular objective. The flow of information is integrated so that at the front-end employees are receiving timely information and appropriate messages whilst at the back-end, the project team is receiving effective feedback on usage and adoption.

This allows a fluid and dynamic approach, a blend of the traditional ‘Agile’ and ‘Waterfall’ without the rigidity and restrictions but inclusive of the appropriate methodology required to ensure that the right steps can be taken at the right time in the project lifecycle, engaging employees and allowing them to embrace the changes being made.

IT Project Managers need to be held accountable for the success of the project as a whole – not just hitting the go-live date. After all, the success of an IT project should be measureable through results and outcomes – not just time and budget, but by tangible, realised business benefits, a reduction in ‘run-the-business’ costs and how the solution has been embraced, adopted and utilised by the organisation.

 

IT Project Management and Business Change are complementary disciplines with a common objective. If IT Project Managers of the future are enabled to deliver a unified approach then far more IT projects will be successful.

Field service management is a huge playing field with some pretty big players. Typically when organisations talk about field service management they talk about having the right person in the right place at the right time with the right information. But what about ensuring that they have the right tools? Leadent Solutions', Emma Newman asks... 

Just like in any marketplace, within the workforce management software market there is distinct brand loyalty at play. ClickSoftware, SAP, IBM and TOA dominate the market with their products and continue to expand their suite of field service applications to include, for example mobility. Many customers of these solutions will look at the systems they currently have in place and stay loyal to the same brand. Gartner feeds this brand loyalty mentality with field service software organisations clambering to be at the top-right of the eponymous quadrant. Companies look to, and in some cases rely on, Gartner for guidance as to which provider is “best of breed”. But I think you would be wise to remember that what is considered to be “best of the best” doesn’t necessarily mean the best for your organisation.

Generally the big boys of field service will now offer a “suite” of solutions claiming to cover the whole end-to end process, packed full of features and marketed using all the on-trend buzz words.

Is it right that an organisation which has a scheduling and rostering solution from one vendor should automatically choose mobility or reporting tools from the same provider? The larger players would certainly lead you to believe that this is the case, and there are some heavy arguments for this route. For example: easy installation with out of the box plug and play functionality, instant integration with the other products in the suite, similar user interface, easy licensing and just one provider to pay. These solutions are usually at a cheaper price or marketed as “free”.

Many customers are led to believe that if you buy licenses for modules X & Y you get free licenses to unlock the functionality held within another, the reporting module, for example. A common tactic used by software providers as an apparently cost effective incentive for prospects to procure an entire suite of products.

But is this the right approach to take? Do we need to turn the way in which we research and purchase field service software on its head?

Levelling the field service playing field

The workforce management software playing field is becoming far more level in terms of feature-functions, and whilst brand recognition is important, it’s not – and nor do I believe it should be - the be all and end all when making a purchase decision. With most software vendors now offering managed cloud based solutions along with far more robust and proven integration platforms, we find ourselves at a junction of endless possibilities.

Today’s workforce management market is all about the customer. Software providers and workforce management solution consultants alike must seek to support this ethos and look to more creatively architect solution landscapes to effectively blend and integrate products so that they can best resolve today’s far more demanding customer service orientated challenges.

Not many organisations can purchase an out-of-the-box product and just plug-and-play as promised; most will need some level of customisation to fit the business processes. A recent MPL Systems and Field Service News survey found that a quarter of the organisations who took part in the survey admitted to changing the way they worked to fit around their workforce management software. But it should be the other way around – your field service software should meet the needs and requirements of your business processes.

Before you embark on any decision making about workforce management software, you should first look at the processes you are trying to improve. Not only this, but you must focus on really understanding the areas that need to be optimised and automated in order to achieve the biggest ‘value-add’ to the customer experience. To assume value will deliver itself from a packaged suite of ‘same brand’ products is not the forgone conclusion it perhaps once was.

The end game

The future of field service software should be flexible. It should enable customers to pick and mix to create an end-to-end solution that will fit their needs; and these solutions should be supple enough to integrate with ease into other products in the market.

Interestingly the “Technology in Service Management” report found that 74% of companies were working with multiple vendors and the statistics from the 2014 report show an increase of 2%. This would indicate that organisations are demanding that they not only have choice but that they deem it to be important. Yes organisations want an integrated end-to-end service management solution, but not necessarily all from one vendor.