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The question of how to grow profitably is high on the strategic agenda of most companies, yet only few are able to realise it. In today’s world, many businesses are struggling to maintain their existing revenue and profit margins, let alone achieve ambitious growth rates. But there are also many exceptions!

Given that significant variations appear in the growth strategies companies choose and the role services play within this strategy, Noventum set out to answer the following two questions:

1. What are today and tomorrow’s key drivers for profitable growth?

2. What role do services play in respect to growth?

The research comprised of in-depth interviews and a survey conducted amongst board members, service managers and directors, primarily from B2B product-orientated companies across a wide distribution of industry sectors and company turnovers.

It was quite clear that companies exhibiting higher growth rates saw ‘services’ as one of their strategic solutions to achieving growth and not as a challenge in its own right.

We found that these companies tended to exhibit 4 key capabilities:

1. Deployed a wide portfolio of growth strategies

In order to outperform competitors on revenue growth and margins, companies should pursue a broad portfolio of growth strategies and not just the traditional few of  (1) Product growth in mature markets; (2) Product growth in emerging markets; (3) Product Related Services. When these 3 strategies are broadened by Advanced Services focused on solving company’s business problems, or improving a customer’s processes, revenue growth was generally above 11%. In addition these companies were more likely to achieve gross margins across the whole business of greater than 40%.

2. Innovate for customer value

Key to growth and profit margins is a focus on innovation in order to optimise customer value. Successful companies do this by employing multiple tools to glean customer insights and maintain a balanced portfolio between incremental and ‘game changing’ innovations.

3. Demonstrate Organisational Agility

We defined agility as the capability, dedication and culture to rapidly innovate on a continuous basis. The companies that achieve high growth are innovative in nature which leads to change. But all this change creates internal friction and conflict . Hence successful high growth companies develop a culture that can move and change rapidly giving the oganisation an agility to adapt to new ideas

4. Strategic alignment between service- and corporate strategies

Companies need to develop a clear long-term vision as to how to develop their service business, ensuring each step delivers a tangible and credible contribution to the overall performance of the company. Focusing on the overall value of service for the company will secure corporate commitment and thereby further enable (service) business success.

The bottom line: Advanced services are a key differentiator in driving companywide revenue growth.

If you are interested in understanding more about how advanced services differentiate the winners from the losers, you can down load  a summary of the research finding using this link.  Or if you would like to participate in our follow up research, you can join Noventum’s Service Innovation Programme on LinkedIn. When people subscribe they will receive our newsletter including the events updates such as the Servitisation conference in May at Aston Business School.

I will be presenting the research findings at this event, as well as at the Service Management Expo at the ExCeL in June.

 

 

Welcome to the fourth edition of our Field Service News podcast. This month we are joined by Noventum Service Management consultant Nick Frank. 

In this exclusive interview Nick talks extensively about a recent study he and his colleagues have made into what are the key drivers for growth for businesses and the role service plays in this.

This podcast is also accompanied by a great article written exclusively for Field Service News by Nick which you can find here

Nick will also be joining Field Service News in the Field Service Solutions Theatre at this year's Service Management Expo being held in London's ExCel on June 17th, 18th and 19th. So if you want to here more from Nick then make sure you get your complimentary 3 day pass by clicking this link

 

 

Click Software's Gil Bouhnick, Vice President of Mobility looks at how how companies can use gamification in their organisations to improve efficiency....

Gaming has become a core part of our daily lives. Whether we’re sitting at home playing Candy Crush or trying to break that unbeatable Flappy Bird record on the way to work, people from all walks of life are beginning to play more games, ever more frequently. All you need to do is sit on a train and see men in suits, parents after the school run, teenagers, or people just enjoying a day of leisure – most of them will have a gaming app on their phone, and more often than not, will play it on a regular basis.

We work best when we are happy, and so smart companies are looking into how they can use the surge in popularity of both games and the smartphones they are played upon. Is there some way you can blend the two to make work that little bit easier? The answer is absolutely.

Gamification is a term that has been around for a while, but now we are really seeing it adopted by companies of all varieties for things such as helping them increase employee collaboration and motivation, to providing training and supporting change management. Essentially all the tasks that you know you have to do, but don’t always enjoy doing can have an amount of gamification woven into them. And in a way, this can be turned into a reward for employees who do these tasks on time and accurately. A small badge here, an unlockable picture there, small tokens that can make staff feel better for doing the administration.

Engaging employees of all levels and functions is a notoriously difficult thing to do, especially when it comes to adopting new processes. It often happens that employees are resistant to changes because they can’t understand the new processes nor do they see any personal benefit in adopting them. But having an engaged and motivated workforce is a crucial ingredient to a successful company, even more so when that company has a dispersed workforce.

In businesses where there is a core back office function and then a field team carrying out the tasks, it’s very easy to become split between these two fault lines. Unifying them and making sure they are all following the same procedures can be much more difficult than a business that is self-contained or less diversified in the roles and responsibilities of the staff.

Yet tapping into a common ground can be a great way of bringing a company together. This is where it’s hoped gamification will come into its own. Think about some of the tasks you need to do as part of your job – timesheets, expenses, logging tasks. It can be pretty boring stuff. But what if you livened it up a little bit and made it more compelling by adding a competitive element to what you are doing? And if you made your employee feel appreciated for doing such tasks?

We have begun to see businesses doing just that. Company-wide league tables charting who is best at one task, or which division is doing something better or faster than another. A little healthy competition goes a long way to bringing people together.

You can also apply this to customer service too. If the end customer has the option to directly feedback via a smart device, then suddenly it is even more critical for the technician, engineer, or salesman to make sure they do the best job possible. It provides a way to show how well they are doing by comparing the best in your company with each other and it also allows companies to reward their top employees for their outstanding results. It’s like the old sales charts companies used to have where at the end of the month, a salesman of the month would be announced. The concept is exactly the same, just digitising it and making it something that people from across the business can take part in.

At the foundation of any good gamification model is the goal to reward staff. This doesn’t necessarily mean holidays abroad, mountains of cash etc., it’s more about appreciation that they are doing a good job and are recognised across the business as such.  A good gamification model should be easy to embrace. The moment it becomes as complicated as the tasks it’s trying to replace, then you’ve lost sight of the reason of employing it.

Make it simple. Make it compelling. And make it as fun as possible. If you stick by these rules, then you should begin to reap the benefits pretty quickly. Benefits, such as a more engaged workforce, more accurate reporting and completion of administrative tasks, and ultimately a better customer experience. We are still in the early days of companies adopting true gamification policies, but with no end in sight for the adoption of smartphones, the technology is finding its way into more people’s hands, and that’s an opportunity businesses should be seriously considering in the years to come.

 

Recruitment consultancy Concept Resourcing have recently announced that they are able to report the highest demand for their services since 2008.

This growth is largely due to the company having seen particularly strong demand for their Field Service Engineering division.  This division specialises in providing field engineers to a number of sectors including IT, document solutions, domestic appliances, plant hire and commercial and domestic gas.

In March this year the company registered 346 new client vacancies, which is a 57% increase on the same period last year.  This increase is a clear indication that many UK business owners across the UK have confidence to increase permanent headcount in their service departments.  Good news overall for the UK employment market and further proof of a strong growth in the economy.

Concept Resourcing’s field service engineering division has placed more permanent staff over the last quarter than ever before. As a result they are currently hiring new resourcers and recruitment consultants into the division in response to increasing demand for our services.

It seems that the service industry continues to remain a strong, vibrant and vital part of the UK’s economic recovery.

 

 

The field service industry continues to evolve at pace. New technologies are constantly emerging which have the potential to change the industry as we know it.

At the same time we are seeing a huge cultural shift with many seeking to realign their service division from cost centre to profit centre. To help us keep up with these changes Field Service News has put together a panel of five field service industry experts and asked them each to share their insight on the industry today. The third member of our panel is Mark Forrest, of Trimble Field Service Solutions

 

What is the biggest driver for change in field service today?

Many companies managing a large field service workforce operate in industries which require highly skilled individuals, whose work is variable and complex in terms of location and task. Add in a high degree of compliance-focused work and that means that field service work has become increasingly mission-critical in terms of timing, skills and consequence. With increased customer expectation it is important that companies ensure that their field service is not derailed by unpredictable dynamics of the working day.

An increasing number of organisations are beginning to realise that it isn’t where the vehicle is that’s important, it’s where the engineer or field service worker is and what they are doing that is of paramount concern, as ultimately they are the ones providing the service to the customer. The support of solutions to help manage work efficiently and effectively has therefore become integral in helping to meet customer demands and achieve service delivery excellence.

 

Which technology has had the biggest impact on the field service industry in the last 5 years?

Organisations with field service technicians have previously struggled to effectively schedule their work and track their progress to continually meet service commitments. Indeed, one in ten organisations still collect data from the field via paperwork. However, work management technologies have emerged to transform the productivity of mobile workforces through intelligent scheduling tools and performance management analytics.

Organisations can measure, manage and improve their operations through optimising resources, offering real-time visibility and monitoring and giving warning of tasks at risk or showing the impact of work allocation decisions.

Data obtained from such technologies can be analysed through performance management analytics to allow interrogation of the information to provide an understanding of the performance, trends and the barriers in line with business targets. The analysis drills down to different variables around individuals, teams, regions, job type etc. and can be provided to different stakeholders within the organisation depending on their business need for day-to-day management or longer term business planning.

 

What is the most important consideration when moving from cost centre to profit centre? 

Field service has evolved from what was once an operational necessity to a strategic significance, as the technician may now be the only contact a customer has with the company and therefore exposure to the company’s service delivery and brand. With a proven link between customer satisfaction, retention and profitability, how the technician interacts with the customer can be significant in the customer experience.

The most common customer complaint is when a technician does not resolve the issue first time. Making sure you get the right people with the right skills with the right assets to the right place within a set time is therefore essential. Work management technologies can help by incorporating technician knowledge, parts availability, and capacity into scheduling processes to ensure that the technician arriving on site is the person who can resolve the issue first time.

In addition, employing mobile workers who have the ability to upsell or cross-sell products and solutions whilst with customers can also make a difference to service delivery as a cost or profit centre.

 

Who is Mark Forrest? 

Mark Forrest is general manager of Trimble Field Service Management, a position he has held since January 2012. In this role, Mark is responsible for providing worldwide mobility-based productivity solutions to the communications, field services and trades markets.

Prior to joining the Field Service Management division, Mark served as general manager and Chief Operating Officer for Caterpillar Trimble Control Technologies (CTCT), a joint venture between Trimble Navigation and Caterpillar. Mark also has served as the general manager and worldwide sales director for the Heavy and Highway Division. A native of Australia, Forrest holds an undergraduate diploma in Engineering Surveying and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Colorado.

To read this full panel debate and much more download a free digital copy of our quarterly magazine. Click here to register.

 

Field Service News was proud to publish the inaugural edition of our quarterly magazine earlier this month, which is available for free to UK field service professionals. If you missed out on this first issue or you are based outside of the UK then you can download a digital copy here.

We are fortunate enough to be joined by some of the field service community’s brightest and best and have a wide range of guest contributors from differing areas of the industry, all coming together in one place, to keep you fully up to date of all the latest key trends, technologies and practices emerging in the industry today.

Although we haven’t just gone and brought together a great bunch of writers and let them get on with it - that would be a bit of a cheat wouldn’t it?

No, the team here at Field Service News have been earning their keep as well and amongst all the other the great insight and analysis you will also find a five page special report looking at the appetite for the Cloud in the field service industry. This report comes off the back of a two month long research project we conducted in partnership with Tesseract systems.

I won’t put any spoilers in at this early stage but suffice to say that not all the findings were what you might have expected them to be, so it is certainly worth a read.

Then there is our exclusive interview with Telogis’ Top Man in the UK, Sergio Barata. He has been given the somewhat unenviable task of replicating Telogis’ exceptional growth in the US (Deloitte Fast Track 500 6 years running?!) here in the UK.

No mean feat, however, Telogis did announce an investment of £90M not too long ago to help grow their British business so it’s clear they mean business and Sergio whilst being an amiable and approaching guy, is also very switched on, very knowledgeable about the industry and also has an excellent grasp of what he needs to achieve and exactly what steps he needs to take to do so.

Yet another feature you cannot miss is our panel debate - ‘All change please.’ With the industry seemingly in constant flux as wave upon wave of ground-breaking technology appears (each with the potential to change the industry as we know it entirely) we thought we would try to make sense of things by bringing five of the smartest folks we know and putting the same three questions to each of them. With a diverse range of backgrounds and specialisms they make a formidable panel (I certainly wouldn’t want to bump into them on a dark night!) and provide some fantastic answers across the four pages.

And then there is more! But you are going to have to download the issue to find out for yourself!

So Click here to download your copy now!

 

 

Customer service is widely recognised as being the number one business priority with a proven link between customer satisfaction, retention and profitability. Indeed, Aberdeen Group recently reported that organisations that reached a 90 per cent plus customer satisfaction rate achieved an annual 6.1 per cent in service growth, 3.7 per cent growth in overall revenue and an 89 per cent level of customer retention.[1] With approximately 78 per cent of UK GDP derived from the services sector[2], customer service is becoming increasingly recognised as a strategic issue and, according to the Institute of Customer Service, if organisations do not include it in the boardroom then some of those businesses won’t be around in the longer term.

The growing importance of customer service

Tom Gorman, president of opXL, LLC and a field service expert believes that the goal of field service excellence is to respond quickly to customer needs, whatever they may be and it takes four criteria to meet this goal: Be on time; allow enough time to do the job; have the right skills; and bring the right equipment.

The most common customer complaint is when a technician does not resolve the issue first time. This may be due to not having the right part or tools, not having the right skills or not enough time to complete the job[3]. Considering 25 per cent of service calls require a follow-up visit, the result of not achieving a first-time fix can be detrimental. Indeed, Aberdeen Group report that companies not meeting a 50 per cent first-time fix rate and requiring a return visit reported revenues dropping by nearly 3 per cent.

As a result, more and more organisations are beginning to realise the value of ‘intelligent scheduling’ - incorporating technician knowledge, parts availability, and capacity into their scheduling processes to ensure that the technician arriving on site is actually the person who can resolve the customer’s issue first time. Businesses can address the challenge of making better in-day decisions by utilising a work management self-learning tool. To avoid large data set-up exercises of skill sets and work areas, a self-learning tool supports the assignment of work orders to the field technicians by remembering who has the right skills and their usual work areas. The user also has the ability to enquire what has been learnt by the system and correct it. Aberdeen’s research found that the Best-in-Class (the top 20 per cent) performers had mean success ratios of 92 per cent for meeting response or project completion deadlines and 88 per cent for first-time fixes.

What matters most to customers?

According to Jo Causon from the Institute of Customer Service, there are five key areas which matter most to customers:

• Well trained and professional staff members who are genuinely empowered to do their jobs.... are the people that interact with customers professional and empathetic with emotional intelligence and business acumen?
• How easy is the organisation to do business with... does the business make it easy for me to interact with them across all channels?
• Product and service quality...Does the product or service do what is expected?
• Problem resolution.... how are any issues resolved? This is not just about the outcome but also includes the way the process is managed.
• And timeliness...care needs to be taken when managing customer expectations about the timescale in which products or services can be delivered. It is absolutely critical to match and manage customer expectations.[/unordered_list]

The strategic importance of the field service worker

The role of the field service operative has changed dramatically over recent years; shifting from one of operational necessity to strategic significance. Why this change? Because with the rise in use of automated booking systems, for example, and with the growing trend of machine to machine (M2M) capability allowing applications to provide preventative and predictive analytics, the field technician’s visit to the customer may be the first and only exposure a customer has to the company’s brand and service delivery.

Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service:

“The biggest change we have seen in customer service, is the move from a transactional economy to the relationship economy where value lies in one-to-one interactions and service leaders prevail in the marketplace. A ‘personalised service for many’ and a dialogue approach, as opposed to the traditional monologue, is now desired. This power shift has come about, partly due to technology and the rise of social media, but also because you and I, as customers, want to be much more engaged in the customer experience.”

“Looking ahead, demand for staff who have desirable attitudes and attributes for customer service will increase. In particular, there will be a stronger focus on the importance of emotional intelligence as an enabler to deal with the wide variety of changing customer service relationships and interactions.[4]”

Social media given power to the consumer

How do you build relationships with so many, while personalising the interaction? This dialogue approach is a major management issue but one which can, in part, be addressed through the use of social media.

Social media channels have given power to the consumer like never before. We now take to Twitter and Facebook to communicate with organisations about our customer experience, with many of us expecting rapid responses to our queries and complaints. It is therefore vital that organisations not only have a social media presence but have clear messaging via social channels and teams empowered to conduct social media interactions with customers in a rapid and flexible way.

Who owns the customer experience?

According to the Institute of Customer Service, having somebody on the board who has overall responsibility for the customer experience is essential and that somebody needs to be the CEO. The customer service strategy is integral to the business strategy, and the board needs to lead on this.

For further understanding on the changing landscape of customer service get a copy of Trimble FSM's latest Insight report Transforming Service Delivery which delivers more exclusive analysis and insight from Trimble's latest research plus a number of great insights from industry leaders and examples from real-life businesses.

Click here get your free copy of this excellent 40 page insight report

Promotion of this ebook is a joint venture between Trimble FSM and Field Service News. By downloading you consent to the terms of the privacy policy here

Nick Frank, Consultant with Novetnum Service Management continues his exclusive series looking at building revenue from services...

Selling services, how difficult can it be? Talk to a product sales person: ‘Piece of Cake, but…’.     Talk to the Services Sales specialist about their product colleagues; ’They don’t understand…. all they care about is the big deal’

In truth it’s not black and white, which is why it’s not so easy. Product Sales people can be very successful at selling services, if they are packaged as a product. For example I have seen great results for well defined service maintenance contracts, sold up front with the product. But I have also experienced complete frustration with some product sales people, as they struggle to sell managed services to more senior decision makers.  Generally this because they do not fully understand the strategic growth issues the boardroom faces and focus on service features.

To find the best path for your business requires an in depth knowledge of your customer’s buying processes, your own service propositions and your people. Get the answer right and it’s possible to create tremendous momentum, where you can start to see growth rates of between 20-40% per year in your services business.

Easy words, but what about the reality. Lets look at the experiences of a world leader in packaging equipment, Bobst SA based in Switzerland. The Head of the Service Business Unit, Stephan März saw the opportunity to transform the Services into a sustainable engine for long term growth. Two years in and Parts & Service is starting to push past 6% annual growth. This growth has been led by a focus on services where contract penetration has doubled. Although he is mid- journey, some of the lessons Stephan has learned about energising service sales are a good guide for anyone making this transition:

 

1. Technology leadership is not enough anymore: Spend time with the product sales force repeating this message. ‘Good Services are key to selling more Machines’. They will get it in the end, especially when you look at their incentives!
2. Focus, Focus, Focus: Creating a separate service team gave service an identity and motivation. Bobst had gone as far as creating a separate Business Unit, which allowed Stephan to demonstrate who was making the money…and it was not the products! Dedicated marketing, sales and supply chain allowed him to develop and implement very effective service proposition quickly. A focus on sales people skills; who were hunters or farmers. And often a successful approach for complex equipment manufacturers, leveraging  the customer perception of Regional Service Managers as trusted advisor’s, and using their skills to drive Service Sales.
3. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate: It’s a major cultural change, but change does not happen overnight. Even though Stephan had 100% commitment from the CEO and the Executive team, he still had to work through the silos issues, dealing with jealousy, finger pointing, remuneration, profit & cost allocation and yes, car policy. Bobst worked very hard on team work with their product Sales colleagues, making sure roles and responsibilities were clear; and its beginning to work!
4. Patience, Patience, Patience: Business is impatient for results, but service sales is in fact part of a long term transformation programme, where the business model, processes and people all need to be challenged. It takes time commitment and management skill to achieve the desired relationship and results.

If you are interested in how to sell service more effectively, why not look to attend Noventum’s next Service Sales Course or look at our article on ‘How to boost Service Sales at this link

 

 

We live in an increasingly mobile world – how often you are at your desk when a crisis occurs? Where are your colleagues? Do they work in different offices and do they support your business continuity efforts? Teon Rosandic, VP EMEA, xMatters takes a look at then need for a virtual team strategy in modern business... 

Disasters can occur anytime and everyone may not be able to get to a physical location to manage the incident.  When an emergency occurs, we need to pull together teams, assess the incident, develop a plan of action and work the plan.  The team’s role is to manage and monitor the response, as well as the recovery of the business.

The primary function of any Incident Management Team is to establish and manage the Six Cs: Control, Command, Communication, Collaboration, Coordination, and Consistency.

Why do you need a Virtual Team and Process?

Primarily, because the world is mobile and employees may be dispersed, so there’s a threat of a pandemic or transportation is difficult.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Virtual Team

1. No waiting – A virtual team allows you to manage the event immediately rather than waiting for the team to assemble in a location.
2. Flexibility – Plans, teams, and processes can be changed easily in a virtual world and meet the fast changing demands of a disaster.
3. Location – Team members can participate regardless of where they are, as long as they have access to a tool.
4. Redundancy – If your facility is damaged or not available, response is not delayed.
5. Cost effective – The cost of being mobile may be less than maintaining a physical space.
6. Efficient communication – Relevant teams can get updates in real time, view “live” status boards and hear or participate in briefings.
7. Timely resource deployment – Resources can be deployed quickly and efficiently, reducing response time, making recovery faster.
8. Safe - If there’s a disease outbreak

So if virtual centres are so great, why doesn’t everyone have one? Often, utilities are affected after a major disaster.  A virtual team is dependent on power, phones, computers, networks and the company’s data centre.

Processes and procedures

For any process to be effective, you need to have a plan.  If your processes and procedures are not thought-out, the virtual road will be full of obstacles. So, if the current team is a train-wreck, the virtual one will be a nightmare!

Virtual or physical, it is essential to carefully craft the following processes:

1. Roles and responsibilities – You need discipline and clearly identified processes. Everyone should know what he or she should do, and what other team members are responsible for. Using team checklists is useful for this. Think carefully about team organisation and use a well-honed methodology, such as the Incident Command System.
2. A well-defined process and criteria for incident assessment and activation. Have a team including facilities, security, and technology with key leadership showing in responsibility matrix.  We advocate the team discuss issues related to: Life safety, Facilities, Technology, Mission-critical business and Reputation.
3. Incident Action Planning meetings are essential and include documentation of current situation status, development of strategic objectives, assignment of objectives to a team owner, and the time and duration of the operational period. They are shared with those working on the issues and/or in senior management using mobile technology.
4. Ability to track status so you don’t overlook necessary tasks. Depending on the tool or platform you use, you could use virtual status boards giving privileges to team members or update the boards with current status and action steps.
5. During an incident, it is critical to gain awareness from multiple sources including: Employees, News sources and Social Media.
6. Team Notification, including timely and efficient notification of team members and business unit recovery staff is important and might be worth considering emergency notification system.
7. Integration of maps, floor plans, and real-time images must be easily found and available in a mobile/virtual setting.
8. Resource deployment and logistics tracking of physical equipment such as laptops, mobile phones, and office space and personnel.

What Type of Technology Do You Need?

It takes more than one phone-bridge to be successful.  One bridge per team should be created for the Initial Assessment Team, Incident Management Team, and senior management.  Where possible, this should also include Command, Operations, Logistics, Planning & Intelligence and Finance.

Tools are needed to facilitate online communication and include:

• Instant messaging  – On the company’s network or products such as Skype, instant messaging allows teams to talk in real time, allowing instant communication, coordination, and collaboration.
• Project management tools – Products such as SharePoint allows teams to work virtually, track actions, and document progress.
• Web-enabled meeting tools – Products including NetMeeting and WebEx can assist in facilitating virtual briefings and team organisation.

Many smartphones have advanced the state-of the- art of mobile incident management with apps that can: Store and recall plans, team definitions, roles and responsibilities, task lists, contact information.  They can also enable communication and collaboration processes leveraging hosted services and native smartphone capabilities for redundancy.

A virtual team, whether stand-alone or with an existing physical team and Command Centre, offers many advantages. If you can design a virtual process that embraces the Six Cs: Control, Command, Communication, Collaboration, Coordination, and Consistency, you’re almost there. Time to jump in and go mobile!