In the third and final excerpt from a recent white paper published by Aquant, we look at four solutions for effectively building the new service workforce...

In this second article of a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant, we look at two major service challenges to overcome when it comes to the service workforce...

 

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, today announced its financial results for the first quarter—January to March of 2021. After a strong 2020, Q1 results point to a continuation of the growth trajectory across the entire business and specifically in recurring revenue, cloud revenue and service management revenue.

After a strong 2020, Q1 results point to a continuation of the growth trajectory across the entire business and specifically in recurring revenue, cloud revenue and service management revenue.

IFS’s position as the global vendor of choice for companies transforming their business models away from selling products towards selling services and outcomes is validated by its Q1 performance and the triple-digit growth of its service management business at 103 percent.

IFS’s Q1 hits significant markers with recurring revenue over 80% of software revenue, cloud revenue growth at 102% and representing over 50% of recurring revenue

Q1 also saw some key milestones for IFS, which included:

The launch of IFS Cloud, which was the most significant in the Company’s history. It brings IFS’s entire depth and breadth of functionality into a single platform. Deployable in a modular way, on-premises or in the cloud, it not only supports a composable enterprise but with digital innovation natively part of the product, it also accelerates digital transformation. 

The acquisition of Axios Systems extends the Company’s enterprise service management proposition with IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Operations Management (ITOM) functionality and creates new opportunities for IFS and Axios customers alike. The combination of IFS and Axios Systems is instrumental in extending IFS’s ambition to cement itself as the market leader in the service space.

The global launch of IFS’s Moment of Service positioning and new branding took place in February. This set out IFS’s clear strategy to align its value proposition to servitization and become the default vendor for organizations who want to be their best when it matters to their customers—at the Moment of Service. 

IFS CEO Darren Roos commented, “The launch of IFS Cloud in Q1 was the most important launch in company history. It was a milestone that delivers on our promise of helping customers create truly amazing moments of service. The impressive performance and growth of our cloud and service management business is evidence that customers value that we understand their needs and are delivering products that support their journey.” He added, “In addition to our organic growth, we are strengthening our proposition with the addition of Axios Systems to ensure we remain the de facto leader for companies that want to differentiate in how they deliver and profit from service.”

IFS Chief Financial Officer, Constance Minc, added, “I believe Q1 is representative of the recognition IFS is getting in the cloud software market. By continuing to deliver double-digit recurring revenue growth at 24 percent we are showing a consistent upward trend in our performance and in the quality of our revenue mix. With our cloud software revenue now representing 40 percent of our total software revenues and 50 percent of recurring revenue, IFS is hitting some very significant milestones.”

Other financial highlights:

• Q1 software revenue was SEK 1.2 billion, an increase of 13 percent Year on Year
• Q1 recurring revenue was SEK 1.0 billion, an increase of 24 percent Year on Year and representing more than 80 percent of software revenue
• Q1 cloud revenue increased 102 percent Year on Year representing more than 40 percent of software revenue (cloud revenue defined as all revenue streams associated with a cloud deployment deal)
• Proportion of license revenues from new customers up to 57 percent.

* Note: all figures based in Swedish Krona and reported in constant currency. Service management revenue growth normalized for one large deal in Q1 2020.

Learn more at www.ifs.com/corp/company/financial-results/.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com/
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Learn more about IFS Q1 Financial Results @ www.ifs.com/financial-results/
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

 

Today, on Earth Day, IFS announces its promise to sustainability through a plan to improve the company’s own operations, enable customers to achieve their sustainability goals, as well as influence the industry at large to improve its accountability to our environment.

IFS’s values, culture, and business model are linked to its vision to provide the best possible experience to its customers. The relationship between this vision, leading by example and providing sustainability technology are key to systematizing a sustainable mindset and behavior.

The multi-year plan lays out the company’s stepped approach and commitments for the next three years and brings IFS’s long-term thinking on the importance of sustainability internally and its ecosystem and owners to the fore.

The three-year plan will create positive impact in IFS’s own business, its customers’ and through industry-wide action

The stepped approach will be established around three core pillars:

1. Our own business

In line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, IFS has identified several areas where it increase its focus for greater impact.

• Education – the IFS Education Program already works with nearing 80 universities and higher education institutions globally. The program provides scholarships, grants, IT equipment, as well as practical knowledge through internships and mentorships for students. Over the course of the next three years, IFS plans to expand the program to 150 institutions globally.
• Carbon emissions – in a program started in 2019, IFS committed to reducing its carbon footprint in part through consolidating its real-estate and improving the green credentials of its properties. From mid-2019 to date, IFS has reduced the square meterage of its global real estate by 9.5 percent, shrunk its car fleet by 86 percent versus 2019 and is committing to reach carbon neutrality by 2025.
• Philanthropy – IFS champions and partners with the IFS Foundation to alleviate poverty and other social ills in Sri Lankan rural villages - Sri Lanka is home to the largest proportion of the IFS workforce. The IFS Foundation’s mission is to help improve the living standards of people in the countryside by addressing aspects of health, water and sanitation, education, and economy, and resulting in a self-sustained community. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Sri Lanka have already improved the lives of over 3,000 people. IFS supports the IFS Foundation’s planned expansion to encompass additional areas within remote and rural areas of Sri Lanka.
• Developing an Impact Mindset: IFS is looking for ways to further accelerate its employee awareness of and contribution to the sustainability agenda. We will be introducing a framework to trigger people's mindsets and to guide engagement. The framework will drive how the company is making it possible for its employees to impact sustainability as individuals and assess how successful IFS is at engaging its workforce behind the Impact Mindset.
  • Volunteering – all employees are given the opportunity to invest one workday a year to support a charitable cause of their choice. In 2023, we strive to have the equivalent of three years’ worth of work invested by our employees
  • Employees – IFS has set the bar high against peers in the industry in terms of diversity in employee mix sets. For example, women make up 34 percent of the business, above the industry average for tech
    • We will continue to drive grass-roots programs such as the IFS Education Program to foster diversity across the industry
    • The health and wellbeing of employees remains top of mind, with a new program being launched for employees across the world and measured by twice annual employee surveys
  • Governance – IFS has always maintained policies on Human Rights and Anti-Slavery and will further ensure that this is not only in line with UN criteria and reporting and but also pervasively included in the education of its employees.

2. Our customers’ businesses

Increase energy efficiency: In March 2021, IFS launched IFS Cloud, is a single platform that IFS customers can deploy on premise or in the cloud in a modular way taking advantage of the latest technologies and thus reducing needless computer processing and storage. When deployed in the cloud, such as on Azure, IFS Cloud is 52-79 percent more energy efficient than compute equivalents deployed in traditional data centers, and storage is 71-79 percent more energy efficient than storage equivalents deployed in traditional enterprise data centers*.

Sustainability technology to give back: Recognizing the need and pressures many customers must monitor, manage, and report on their own sustainability goals and commitments, IFS is producing a new module within IFS Cloud specifically for sustainability management. With so much information held within the value chains that IFS Cloud connects, this new module will be offered as standard, to all IFS Cloud customers in late 2021. IFS will donate a share of the license revenue generated by the module to sustainability causes.

Innovation for sustainability: To propel the ideation and delivery of added sustainability scenarios for IFS Cloud, a yearly hackathon will be launched on the 21^st April and will run for three days across Earth Day (Thursday 22^nd April). Teams from all over IFS’s research & development (R&D), customer-facing and internal divisions are taking part together with our partner ecosystem. Please contact us here if you are interested in joining one of our teams. IFS will also continue to strengthen its IFS Incubator program along the 10 principles are the key statements that describe how we implement sustainability at IFS at the corporate level, in our businesses and at the regional level.

3. Our industry at large

To raise awareness around the importance of sustainability at a macro level and to help improve its own approach to sustainability, IFS will be making two significant appointments, one internal in creating the role of Director Global Sustainability (ESG) and one external by appointing Lewis Pugh as its Sustainability Ambassador. Lewis Pugh is the UN Patron of the Oceans. Pugh will influence IFS’s sustainability plan, as well as engage with the IFS ecosystem to challenge and celebrate sustainability best practice.

 

Commenting on his appointment, IFS Sustainability Ambassador, Lewis Pugh said: “We need governments, businesses and individuals to all play a role in making positive change. I am pleased to be working with IFS whose team is clearly taking the issue of sustainability seriously. Having the ability to engage with their ecosystem of customers and partners presents an opportunity to have an impact at scale.” He continued, “Climate change is an existential threat to life on earth. We now need all hands-on deck to tackle this crisis.”

Darren Roos, CEO of IFS, added: “IFS has a long-term responsible approach to creating value for customers. By considering sustainability as an integral part of our business model we not only capture value creating opportunities, but we can mitigate risks so and stay on course to be successful in our sustainability strategy.” Roos continued, “The progress achieved over the last couple of years to improve IFS’s approach to sustainability has been meaningful, but with the launch of this multi-year plan we are making commitments and make ourselves accountable. This is meaningful to our customers, our employees, our owners and our community at large.”

To find out more about how IFS is helping customers achieve their sustainability goals, please visit: ifs.com/sustainability

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about Sustainability on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sustainability
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com/
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Learn more about IFS Commitment to Sustainability @ ifs.com/sustainability
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

 

In the first article of a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant, we look at the disruption and the challenges presented by he ongoing generational shift for service organizations of all sizes...

 

Your most seasoned service techs are retiring. Do you have a plan to replace them? And how do you know how to transfer years of experience to junior staff quickly?

How can organizations like yours attract, retain, and quickly bring up-to-speed younger workers before your seasoned pros retire? The solutions to these challenges, according to industry experts and leading service leaders, include:

• Leveraging the latest digital technologies that empower less experienced employees to succeed by democratizing knowledge
• Promoting continuous learning and development on your service teams
• Setting your people up for success in a post-pandemic world filled with uncertainty and accelerating change

 

 

An Ongoing Generational Shift

Further Reading:

In this new article for Field Service News, Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, discusses many aspects that field service organisations should consider and evaluate as we start existing the pandemic...

The pandemic still has the world in its grip, but it is becoming looser as vaccinations become more widespread. In some developed countries, we see signs of increased hiring and manufacturing output. And increasing manufacturing output means more demand for field service for installation, training, and warranty work as well as remedial repairs on equipment supporting the manufacturing ramp-up.

The big unknown is how B2B customers will react to field service continuing its emphasis on touchless service while they are thinking about the old normal. The answer to that question may impact how these customers think about our brand: which can have a major impact on our future business.

HOW B2B BUYERS SELECT A PRODUCT TO PURCHASE

As a service leader, you know about customers and their buying habits. You know that most products are becoming commodities and while there may be differences between products from different managers, those differences will disappear over time and new differences will emerge from other competitors. You also know that there is usually a minor difference in price and anyway, B2B businesses do not buy based on price.

So how do people choose who to purchase their new equipment from if not by price or features and functions? If we are totally honest, we would say the primary differentiator is service. Of course, our sales and marketing peers would disagree with you, but we know they are biased. They would probably agree with you if you said, “people buy based on the brand.”

WHAT IS A BRAND?

If you ever want to get into a good argument with sales and marketing people, just ask each person to write down their definition of brand. Do not be surprised if there is no agreement. During my research, I discovered a wonderful article “Defining What a Brand Is: Why Is It So Hard?" In the article the author, Tracy Lloyd, shared a few definitions:

1. David Ogilvy, the “Father of Advertising,” defined brand as “the inangible sum of a product’s attributes.”
2. The Dictionary of Brand defines brand as “a person’s perception of a product, service, experience, or organization.”
3.  Marty Neumeier, author and speaker on all things brand, defines brand by first laying out what a brand is not: “A brand is not a logo. A brand is not an identity. A brand is not a product.” Neumeier goes on to say that “a brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.”

Definitions 2 and 3 are remarkably similar yet hard to do anything with.

In late 2012, my friend Harry Klein, a professional Marketeer, and I decided to collaborate on a White Paper that we called “Because I’m The Customer!” A Guide to Managing Your Brand & Customer Experience in the Age of the Customer. Here is a paragraph from the White Paper:

As Brian Millar wrote in his FastCompany article Branding Talk Isn’t Helping Your Company. Here’s What Should Replace It:

“If you promise something clearly, deliver on that promise, and repeat the process, you build strong emotional links to your company with certain consumers. But that’s where the value resides: in my head and your head, and your mother’s head. And the stuff inside my head is my property. If brands exist at all, they exist in the minds of consumers. I can switch my brand of search engine at a moment’s notice. Bank accounts and makes of automobile are a bit more hassle to discard, but I can still change my mind about them.”

So, a brand is unique to each of us. It is the sum of all promises and experiences we had with a product, service, or company. This perception changes as we forget old or irrelevant promises or experiences and add newer ones to our memory. And to make matters worse, we might have different perceptions of different situations with the same product or service.

Here is an example: Think about your current car. If we are talking about design and ease of use, you might say “It took me only 30 minutes to figure out how to set up the infotainment system.” But if I ask you about the dealers training on all the new features, you might say “he was confused and so was I.” And if ask about fuel economy, you might say “It is great on the open road, crap in city driving, and does not come close to what was on the sticker.” But if I just ask, “how do you like your new car,” you might respond “I love it and feel like I rule the road when I drive it.”

ARE BRANDS REAL?

Even though brands only exist in our minds, they are real because we make our purchasing decisions based on our current perceptions of the promises the manufacturer makes and our experiences about how well these promises are met. In other words, brands drive how money is spent! That is as real as it gets.

In January 2021 McKinsey & Company released an interesting article “The Rising Value of Industrial Brands.”  One of the six main insights in the article is;

Visibility drives performance—but only for a few players. The top three brands in each segment average a total 60 percent of visibility, and the top brand typically has four times more visibility than the third-place competitor. Overall, 5 percent of companies capture 95 percent of total visibility. And top-quartile companies enjoy about 30 percent higher ROIC than those in the bottom quartile.

McKinsey & Company uses visibility (share of voice) as the measure of brand favoritism. They define visibility as “… brand name mentions in the media, including industry publications that customers read to learn about new products, systems, and technologies. Because B2B sales are increasingly held to the same standards as B2C sales channels, including the option to purchase online, we also tracked the growth of searches for the brands on major online search engines.”

Next, they show how share of voice impacts the company’s ROIC (Return on invested capital):

CLOSING THE CIRCLE

Since a brand is the sum of all promises (expectations) and experiences we had with a product, service, or company and brand visibility drives ROIC (and other financial metrics), then your promises and delivered experiences are driving your financial results. That raises two questions:

Question 1. Where do expectations come from?

There are six sources of customer expectations

1. Organizational promises
2. Competitor’s promises and/or performance
   
3. Personnel promises
4. B2C experiences
5. Previous experiences with your business
6. Comments from friends and associates

Unfortunately, you and your business can only influence #1 and #3. The other four are outside your control but you must be sensitive to them and if you or your team discovers that customers have expectations that differ from what you can routinely deliver, you must reset their expectations. Doing that professionally will prevent disappointment when the experiences are as you promised, not what they wanted.

Question 2. Where do experiences come from?

Every interaction your company has with a customer or prospect creates a new memory of an experience. The two most important steps you can take to make sure you are providing great experiences are

1. Train everyone on how what they do and say impacts how customers feel about doing business with your company
2. Follow up either all interactions or a randomly chosen subset of all interactions and talk about how the customers feel about their experience. Discussions are better than surveys because people are sicker of surveys than they are of being locked down at home. Do this every day with the same people making the calls and analyze the data using as many views as you can imagine. Then share the results with everyone in the company.

WHY IS MONITORING BRAND PERFORMANCE ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT AS WE EXIT COVID-19?

During the past year, we have all been busy implementing touchless service, a blended workforce, and trying to avoid sending our Field Engineers on calls for both health and safety and economic reasons. Many of us believe that these initiatives will continue into the future and become our permanent business model.

This was expected during the height of the pandemic and customers subconsciously adjusted their expectation to accept what you were providing. But what if customer’s expectations revert back to the 2019 business model and you continue to deliver on the 2020 model? A major gap will open up and customers will feel disappointed.

The solution is marketing communications. You and your team must proactively reset your customer’s expectations to be in line with your intended future deliveries. There might be some intense customer discussions and you may have to modify your plans if the pushback is too great. You must ensure that the experiences your business delivers either meets or exceeds your customer’s expectations.

Finally, when the folks in the C-suite start looking for more revenue and profits, don’t automatically jump on the cost-reduction train. Make sure your promises are being met and exceeded by your performance. It takes work but it is worth the efforts.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive FSN articles by Sam Klaidman @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sam-klaidman
• Read more about the impact of COVID-19 on the field service industry @ www.fieldservicenews.com/covid-19
• Connect to Sam Klaidman @ www.linkedin.com/samklaidman
• Find out more about Middlesex Consulting @ www.middlesexconsulting.com
• Read more from Sam Klaidman @ middlesexconsulting.com/blog

 

IFS today announces the appointment of Johan Made as Chief Commercial Officer. In the newly created role, Made will be responsible for driving IFS’s growth strategy through inorganic investments and development initiatives, including mergers & acquisitions. The appointment is a further signal of IFS’s ambition to extend its leadership as the technology platform of choice for companies who want to create and deliver amazing moments of service for their customers. Michael Ouissi, IFS’s Chief Customer Officer will continue to focus on driving growth organically.

Made will join the IFS Executive Leadership Team at an important time of IFS’s growth journey. With the recent launch of IFS Cloud, IFS is well positioned to help more customers realize value faster and drive the cost of ownership down. The powerful technology is not only a new proposition for customers, but IFS Cloud is also changing how IFS operates, with twice yearly updates that will keep customers evergreen, a Voice of the Customer program that sets a new industry benchmark, and rapid innovation-to-impact capabilities. Together with his team, Made will help drive growth opportunities for customers and accelerate IFS’s own growth journey.

IFS strenghtens its executive leadership team to further improve commercial strategies and capabilities

Commenting on the appointment, Darren Roos, CEO at IFS, said: “Johan is a passionate leader who is known for helping people and companies achieve their best. We have worked together before, so I have seen him in action. Johan will be a great addition to my Executive Leadership Team, and I’m looking forward to seeing his contribution help us build on the momentum we have achieved in the market, as well as further improve our commercial strategies and capabilities”.

Johan Made, Chief Commercial Officer at IFS, added: “IFS has been on my radar for many years. However most recently I have seen the company transform into the most agile and customer-committed vendor in the industry – clearly this was something that was attractive to me. There is a lot of opportunity for further growth and I believe IFS has the right people, technology, and partners to move faster and add more value to its customers than any of its peers. These are the ingredients that enable IFS itself to deliver amazing moments of service to its own customers.” He continued: “With the continued support from EQT and TA, I am looking forward to putting in motion new strategic initiatives that will achieve strong value for our customers, partners and employees.”

Chairperson of IFS, Jonas Persson, said: “Adding the industry’s best talent is hugely important for any growth business like IFS. Having achieved 26% YoY growth in software revenue in 2020, it makes perfect sense to have Johan join us. He has a stellar track record, really understands the market, and is hugely passionate in the way he leads.”

Made joins IFS from Infor where he was EVP for North, West & East Europe. Prior to Infor, Made was Managing Director for SAP in Sweden, and has also held senior leadership roles at Oracle, Hyperion and IBM.

Find out more about IFS’s leadership team here.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com/
• Learn more about IFS Cloud @ www.ifs.com/corp/ifs-cloud
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

 

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. After explaining the steps to define the service, in this fifth blog he looks at how to ensure the efficient engagement of the field service team.

In my previous blog, we considered the actions necessary to clearly define the service of our technicians making proactive recommendations. Now that we’ve defined the service we’re offering, it’s time to ensure that we have the support structures in place to ensure the efficient engagement of our field service team. There are a number of things to address here, so let’s consider three critical ones, processes, tools and training.

Processes

This is one that often gets overlooked, but we ignore it at our peril. Without a clear process, opportunities can fall through the cracks. When opportunities are not followed up in a timely fashion, this can cause embarrassment for the technician and send a clear signal that we’re not that serious about this new service of making recommendations. Some examples:

• How are opportunities captured?
• Who’s responsible for following up with the customer?
• What’s the tech’s involvement once the opportunity is identified?
• By whom and how is the technician kept informed of the status of an inquiry?
• Once a quote is issued, who is responsible for tracking outstanding quotations and inquiring into dormant ones?

Tools

What tools can be employed to help the field service team improve their efficiency? For example, what can be done to allow technicians to issue quotes in the field? How can opportunity status be relayed to the technicians so it’s readily available in a timely manner if needed? How can you alert technicians of outstanding opportunities so that they can follow up directly with the customer on their next maintenance visit?

Training

Most techs I know are comfortable engaging the customer in technical conversations, but fewer feel as comfortable talking about commercial issues. A tech that’s not comfortable discussing new opportunities with customers may avoid doing so. It’s important, therefore, that our technicians learn and gain comfort in conducting a conversation with the customer about products and services that will benefit them. A good training program and practice role plays can have a significant impact here.

Product and service training should also be considered. Often technicians have limited knowledge about their company’s capabilities beyond their own areas of expertise. If our techs don’t know about ALL of our products and services how will they identify an opportunity? And even if they have a general understanding of what we do, if they don’t have a conversational knowledge of a product or service they’ll likely avoid the conversation.

What hurdles stand in the way of fully engaging your field service technicians in making proactive recommendations that will help your customers to be better off?

How do your current processes and systems facilitate or detract from the implementation of your strategy to engage the techs in looking for opportunities to help your customers achieve their business goals?

Next time we will consider the interdependencies that we will rely on when making and delivering on our recommendations.

Reflection

Make a list of all the actions you can take to support your technicians’ efforts in making proactive recommendations that will help your customers to be better off. As you draft this list, think about each action’s impact on the following:

• How does this make the service easier for the technician?
• How does this minimize the amount of time required by the technician?
• How does this help improve the techs’ comfort level in completing this service?
• How does this help keep the technician informed?
• How does this prevent opportunities from falling through the cracks?
• How does this help ensure that every technician provides a comparable level of service?

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

Nick Frank, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Si2 Partners, discusses how companies can successfully integrate knowledge and data into their business processes in this new article for Field Service News.

While the vast majority of organisations recognise that managing Knowledge and Data is a key source of competitive advantage, how many equip their team members with the understanding to effectively integrate these solutions into their operating processes?

Within the Service Leaders Network, we recently ran a collaboration project with a small number of Service Leaders to look at this challenge. The result has been the development of a pragmatic framework and self-assessment tool, that all service professionals can apply in their day-to-day working environment. A simple management blueprint that encourages managers to ask incisive questions that will increase the likelihood of success of their Data or Knowledge projects

The conversation came about when we asked a group of service leaders about their Knowledge and Data challenges. The topics included access to expert product knowledge, sharing specialist competencies, knowledge retention, competency management, knowledge transfer... The list was indeed long and many of these challenges you no doubt can relate to.

As the collaboration project progressed, the group realised they needed a framework to judge what was good practice across different solutions and approaches. They recognised that most managers understand WHY knowledge and data is important to them and they know WHAT they need (hence the long list). But where there is a big hole is HOW to get there. Through a slow process of virtual meetings, one-on-one interviews (this was the time of COVID) and supporting analysis by a facilitator, we moved towards the framework you can see. A simple tool developed by managers, for managers that helps them take actions that will increase the likelihood of success for their data or knowledge solution.

The thinking framework consists of four interdependent factors that should be considered when integrating a data or knowledge solution into an organisation’s processes:

• Purpose
• Data Architecture
• Process and Tools
• People

For a business process to leverage data and knowledge to the full, all four factors should be considered and where necessary planned for. This is especially important where investment is made in specialist tools and technologies such as a Service Management Software, Human Resource IT solutions and Advanced Analytics Data Solutions. Let’s look at these four areas in a little more detail:

Purpose:

This is the “Why” of the data solution and can be articulated in different ways depending on where the project lies on the Strategy – Operations continuum. Purpose of the data solution should contain some, but not necessarily all the following components:

• Fit with the vision and strategy of the company
• The KPI’s or performance measures to be influenced
• The risk to be managed
• Value created, costs reduced, or loyalty created

Without a well-defined purpose, the project is likely to lack direction and so disappoint or fail in its return-on-investment objectives.

Common mistakes: A company who invests in SharePoint with a generic goal to ‘share data in the business’, without understanding the KPI’s being influences or the data being collected. They are often disappointed with the results.

Data Architecture:

With a clear understanding of Purpose, it is possible to define the data/knowledge to be collected by the process, or the data/knowledge required to support the process. Knowing whether this data is structured (numbers) or unstructured (text/words) is key to defining how it is collected and analysed within the business process.

Common mistakes: Defining Key Performance Metrics indicators without understanding if the data can be collected and analysed in a sustainable fashion.

Process & Tools:

The next component is to define how data/knowledge fits into business processes and the tools required to ensure it is presented in such a way such that decisions can be made. Often managers will jump to this step without understanding Purpose or Data Architecture resulting in sub-optimal data/knowledge solutions. Common mistakes: Remote Data Capture is a common data solution, but it does need to be built into the Service process if it is to deliver sustainable value. Too often it is seen as just another activity we do.

People:

Without people’s willingness to engage in the Knowledge management process, initiatives will fail. The key is to design this factor into the Knowledge/Data Project at the start, whether that is building a culture where knowledge is shared, developing the skills required to support the process or simply good old-fashioned change management to ensure engagement. This is the component that many business leaders miss when implementing knowledge management solutions.

Common mistakes: Within the Service CRM processes, users do not update master-data, or worse still, simply bypass specific data entry requirements to save time, as they do not understand the implications of their actions.

 

Want to know more about your own skills, take this very short 4 question self-assessment using this link: https://si2partners.outgrow.us/si2partners-3

If you want to know more the Knowledge and Data Implementation framework, then you can contact nick.frank@si2partners.com and he can support you with engaging workshops that will help you and your team identify how to integrate data into your business processes. Si2 also have run a series of workshops that help service professionals to become more data savvy. To date more than 200 professionals have participated in these programmes which aim to raise their bar in terms of how to use data.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more articles by Nick Frank on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/nick-frank
• Find out more about Si2 Partners @ si2partners.com
• Connect with Nick Frank on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/nick-frank
• Follow Si2 Partners on Twitter @ twitter.com/servitisation

• Contact Nick Frank by email @ nick.frank@si2partners.com