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A recently published study from Aberdeen Group commissioned by Trimble FSM has found that the best-performing field service organisations are extremely focused on improving service, and to achieve that, they are leveraging performance analytics to launch new initiatives and enhance existing ones. As a result, they are reaching higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The report, Secrets to Optimize Field Service for Better Customer Experience, written by Aberdeen analyst Aly Pinder, revealed that top performers exceed customer expectations and SLA goals in their efforts to retain valuable customers, and that customer satisfaction is a leading contributor to their success.

Streamlining service in the field and improving efficiency are key objectives of today's executives, the report stated. Customer experience is a top priority, and organisations are leveraging analytics to drive quality and enhance customer interactions. More than 50 per cent of the organisations surveyed say they use performance data to evaluate the effectiveness of their service.

The field service organisation traditionally has been evaluated based on operational metrics such as workforce utilisation and overtime costs.

This model worked best when field service pursued a break/fix strategy but is no longer the only path to service differentiation and success, the report found. Customer experience must now be at the centre of the entire service operation's strategy.

Organisations meeting 80 per cent of their customer service requirements for issue resolution times on average are able to retain 12 per cent more customers than those that meet only half of their customer requirements, the report says. With service a key factor in customer loyalty and a leading indicator of field service success, it is critical that companies deliver on what they've promised, when they've promised it. For businesses with mobile workers in the field, it becomes even more important to achieve excellence in delivering services

 The report is available here (registration required) 

Big Data is a buzz word making its rounds across a variety of industries and the field service sector is no exception. Gartner defines Big Data as high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making.

Over the last 10 years, field service organisations have become overwhelmed by the relentless flow of information coming in from multiple sources, in various formats and through an array of tools. For example, in a typical field service business data will be coming in from GPS and vehicle-tracking systems, telematics, fleet management and workforce management. Merging and organising this ‘Big Data’ is so difficult that, in most businesses, it ends up sitting unused in applications and databases. However, many are now beginning to realise its sleeping intelligence and that they need to tap in to it to help make more informed business decisions.

The major challenge they face is how to make sense of the massive amounts of data they collect daily and tame this flow in order to extract valuable insights to help hone day-to-day operations and make long-term strategic decisions.

Performance Management Analytics (PMA) has come to the fore as a solution able to tackle the Big Data challenge. PMA provides field service managers with the visibility to analyse the productivity of their field service operations. For instance, the tool can help reduce unauthorised stops, minimise excessive speeding and idling, increase the number of jobs performed daily, and improve response times.

The Big Data Opportunity for Field Service

The ability to make sense of data can make the difference between a business that is good enough and one that stands out from the pack. When a company figures out how to review historical data about itself, identify patterns, and compile metrics and statistics to determine which assets and employees are the most productive, it can use those insights for predictive analysis and better business decisions.

The reward is higher customer satisfaction and profits. In a study commissioned by Trimble, The Road Ahead: The Future of Field Service Delivery, 80% of managers surveyed cited customer satisfaction as their top priority. A 2012 Aberdeen report highlighted the importance of customer satisfaction, finding that organisations with ratings of 90% or higher successfully retained at least 90% of customers, while those with ratings of 50% or lower retained only 26%.

Big data can play a major role here. Field service organisations that have deployed GPS, fleet and workforce management technologies already have the tools that help make sense of the information and make decisions to improve customer satisfaction. To accomplish this effectively, field service organisations must set specific goals, such as reducing overtime through route optimisation and cutting fuel costs through GPS tracking and fleet management systems.

Capture and Analysis

So much information flows back into dispatch centres and offices of field services organisations that letting it go unused actually hurts the business. Distilled properly, information through GPS, telematics, fleet management and workforce management tools provide concrete, actionable details, giving managers and dispatchers real-time visibility into fleet activities.

Systems set up to capture in-day exceptions, for instance, can save a company thousands of pounds by catching bad driver habits such as fueling cars with premium instead of regular fuel, making unscheduled stops, and ignoring pre-set routes optimised for time and fuel-savings.

Fleet and workforce management systems give managers the ability to review a day’s work and measure performance results against company standards. By leveraging Performance Management Analytics (PMA) tools, managers can identify top performers, determine which schedules and routes produce the best results, and compare results from one vehicle or worker against the entire fleet.

Performance analysis can also help with job assignments, helping managers match the skills of field technicians to specific service calls. This increases the prospect of first-time case resolution. According to Aberdeen, 26% of field visits fail to resolve the problem, requiring follow-up visits, and frustrating customers.

Telematics solutions can capture a wealth of useful information, from mechanical and emissions to driver safety habits, all of which can be collected and organised into easily digestible reports. Analytics reports, for example, can leverage telematics to provide stakeholders with information in easy-to-read, relevant snapshots highlighting operational areas that need immediate attention.

The basis of telematics was originally location, but location is now merely an enabling tool for a plethora of complex business applications. Analytics now let customers see everything from the most profitable jobs to success rates in meeting appointment times.  We’re moving towards an era of ‘super information’ delivered by telematics which will see the impact of the technology surge.

Immediate and Long-term Benefits

With big data, knowledge leads to action. A field service manager who knows which drivers have bad habits is better equipped to evaluate those drivers, act to correct their behaviour and schedule training for individuals who need it. Up-to-date information on the health of vehicles leads to better maintenance, which in turn leads to safer vehicles, improved fuel consumption and less wear and tear.

Likewise, the ability to collect real-time information on traffic through GPS tracking empowers dispatchers to make decisions on the fly to change routes and avoid congestion. AVL (automatic vehicle location) and real-time information on the distance between customer stops leads to routing and schedule optimisation.

Those are the immediate benefits, but understanding big data also brings long-term advantages, as companies engage in strategic planning based on historical patterns and predictive analysis. Thanks to big data, organisations can conduct predictive analysis for more accurate planning. For example, for companies focusing on repair, using historical data about when a part is most likely to fail, enable them to do better planning for the future. This is called preventative maintenance, fixing or changing a part even before it fails. Furthermore, adjusting resources, modifying schedules, planning vehicle purchases and forecasting hiring needs become less about guessing and more about precise, well-researched planning. And that’s why field organisations need to take control of their information.

 

Manage the unexpected out of the mobile work day

With customer expectations at an all-time high in an increasingly competitive marketplace, the pressure for field service businesses to deliver best-in-class performance has never been higher. Providing excellent service delivery is a clear priority and for the mobile worker, their importance has shifted from one of operational necessity to strategic value.

With a number of obstacles to contend with out of the control of the technician, may it be traffic congestion or vehicle breakdown, there is never a ‘perfect’ mobile work day. But with work becoming increasingly mission-critical, companies need to ensure that their field service is not derailed by unpredictable dynamics of the working day. A technician is only as good as the tools he has to work with so the support of a solution to manage work efficiently and effectively is of the utmost importance to achieving service delivery excellence.

Trimble’s ‘Road Ahead’ report unveiled that customer satisfaction is ranked as the number one priority for field service businesses and 49 per cent of respondents agreed that the latest field-based technology would help them achieve their goals. Many operations directors see technology as an enabler with 41 per cent stating they will invest in workforce planning and investment and 44 per cent see planning and scheduling as the greatest opportunity for investment.

Investment in technology in the form of work management solutions provide far reaching benefits including:

• Increase productivity up to 30% with intelligent, in-day scheduling
• Improve dispatch efficiency by up to 60%
• Decrease drive time and mileage by up to20% per job
• Reduce overtime expenses by up to 70%

Take control of the unpredictable work day

Industries which run field service operations are often mission critical in what they do and require skilled staff to execute compliance focused work which is often variable and complex (location and task). The perfect mobile workday would start off with all employees reporting for work on time, there will be plenty of spare capacity for daily tasks, all vehicles will be operational, all recipients will be available and no drivers will come across any traffic delays or vehicle breakdowns. However this is rarely a reality and contending with these issues head on is the first step to maintaining a consistent and sustainable flow of productivity across field service operations.

The first step to managing productivity requires field service managers to get the right people with the right skills with the right assets to the right place within a set time. Performance management is vital and a modern work management solution can assist with this. It provides real-time job status of each mobile worker as well as alerts for proactively managing productivity. For example, if a job is in jeopardy of being missed due to such circumstances as a technician being caught in traffic, a vehicle breaks down or a customer emergency comes up, work management solutions automatically highlight this and can adjust schedules and reassign work to meet the new requirements.

Furthermore, managers must be able to look at the total number of jobs attended per day per technician as well as being able to view the utilisation of their technicians, ie: the amount of time spent on work as opposed to transit or idle time, to avoid falling into the trap of having more work than there are resources. Work management solutions provide the capabilities of comparing planned vs. actual work done per day/shift and communicate to mobile workers via a laptop or smart phone so they can view work details, provide current work status and receive work assignments without returning to the office.

Prioritise on-time performance and create a mission critical culture

The cost to businesses of missed or late appointments affect them more now than they used to, as customers increasingly expect more for less, happy to shop around for services and, with the growth of social media, are much more able and likely to share their experiences of poor customer service. This is largely down to global companies such as Amazon and Tesco having set new expectations for reliable, quick and cheap service delivery, such as providing one-hour delivery slots. This has lead many companies, especially those that need to carry out a more complex and skilled service, such as boiler installations or fixing electrical problems, struggling to seek new ways to keep up with demand whilst remaining profitable and competitive.

Achieving customer satisfaction in today’s marketplace is tough. On-time performance is the Holy Grail – problems must be solved the first time, and solved effectively. Research by Aberdeen group revealed 65% of incoming service requests require a field visit or a dispatch and nearly 26% of these dispatches fail to resolve the problem, requiring secondary or additional follow-up visits. AberdeenGroup also report that that 57 per cent of organisations say that their biggest customer complaint is that the 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.[1]

Issues like this can be avoided if companies focus on ‘processing productivity’ by taking a bird’s eye view of the end-to-end process. They need to know what the problem is, who is qualified to solve it, notify them of the task, know where they are, when they will arrive and when the job is done. Taking these necessary steps to avoid a return visit, by making sure a qualified technician with the right tools and parts for the job is sent, will maintain productivity and ensure customer satisfaction. Aberdeen’s research found that Best-in-Class (the top 20%) performers had mean success ratios of 92% for meeting response or project completion deadlines, 88% for first-time fixes, and 83% for workforce utilisation.

The power of work management

Work Management solutions can greatly improve first time fix rates. Not only do they allocate the right worker, with the right skills, for the right job but back-end logistics like drive-time, route-booking, expected time of visit, and allotted time for the job are all analysed for efficiency, leaving staff with the information and time they need to do their jobs.

Furthermore, 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.

The information managers can take from the analysed data that the solution can provide is significant. For example, they can analyse the time it takes a certain technician to do a job compared to another. If the time difference varies significantly they can determine if one is cutting corners to complete a job or if he/she has found a better way to do it more efficiently.   This analysis helps with the challenge all businesses face in how to balance service and cost.

There are very few people in the global field service management industry with the breadth of experience and depth of understanding of Bill Pollock.

With a career in the service industries spanning over twenty five years Bill has been commenting, advising and leading the industry as one of the most respected and highly thought of analysts working in field service.

He has worked as senior analyst for two of the worlds leading consultancies (Gartner and Aberdeen) as well as being Chief Research Officer and founder of The Service Council and is currently President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for Growth. He has also previously served as Chapter president for the Association for Service Management International, is a regular keynote speaker at leading services related events and has published more than 200 articles in numerous trade titles including Field Technologies, Reverse Logistics, and Healthcare Technology Management.

Suffice to say that Bill is in a fairly unique position to assess the current trends in the field service management industry and how these are evolving over time.

It is therefore with great pleasure that Field Service News is able to present exclusive UK access to Strategies for Growth’s 2013 Field Service Management Benchmarking report to readers of Field Service News written by Pollock himself.

This exceptional report is based on the findings of an exhaustive survey, which comprised of over 1,000 respondents and is perhaps the most comprehensive benchmarking exercise available, giving the truest indication of the mood and needs of the industry on a global scale.

With a range of respondents from right across the breadth of the service world, this research provides a true barometer of how service is moving on a multi-industry wide scale.

The sample of respondents also has true international representation with sizeable numbers from the North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific regions and with an almost even number of responses from small, medium and large companies the findings presented in this report present a clear picture of how service companies of all sizes are operating across the globe.

The headline findings of the research identify that the following three key factors are impacting on companies need to drive forward service efficiency:

• 52% Customer demand for improved asset availability
• 47% Need to improve workforce utilisation and productivity
• 43% Need to improve service process efficiencies[/unordered_list]

and the current strategic actions being required to address these issues are cited as:[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• 52% Develop / improve metrics, or KPIs, used to measure field service performance
•  44% Invest in mobile tools to provide field technicians with real-time access to required data and information in the field
• 35% Integrate new technologies into existing field service operations (i.e., iPads, Tablets or other devices, etc.)

The report then moves on to explore each of these areas in depth across 14 pages, providing insightful analysis on each, as well as exploring other related areas that may be impacting your organisation’s own drive to improve your field service management and attain service excellence.

To download this exclusive report for free simply click this link to open the report in a new tab in your browser.

It can make or break your service business growth strategy, yet it’s surprising how many service leaders do not appreciate the impact a separate service P&L can have on changing the mind-set of their people.

Many just focus on what they believe is the best way to maximise their corporate value. Yes it’s important to ensure we have the systems to manage the value of our enterprise, but we also need to consider the impact of measures on the performance of our people.

Take Textron Fastening Systems who were a $1.8bn global manufacturer of nuts, bolts, rivets, screws and plastic clips. Their European business became the sole supplier of fasteners to the Ford Fiesta, providing an integrated solution consisting of manufacturing, purchasing, logistics and engineering services. As far from their manufacturing core, it was set up with it’s own P&L and dedicated team. They succeeded due to their focus and separation from the main manufacturing business.

But once this $30million service business was stable, we decided to re-integrate it back into the core business. So a dedicated team, was re-deployed back into the operational silo’s of Engineering, Logistics, Purchasing , IT and Sales. What a disaster and I say that as this case study is from my own experiences. We lost focus, drive, energy and sales. Our biggest competitor, who set up a separate service business, grew to 5 times our revenue, from exactly the same starting point in time and experience. 15 years on the Textron Fastening Systems no longer exists, having been bought by Private Equity and then broken up. Ironically the remains of the service business have survived but without growth.

For me this was a very salutatory lesson about the importance of focus. But its not so simple as saying that for an industrial company to succeed you must have a separate P&L or Business Unit.

It depends on the strategic goals of the business and also where it is in the transformation process. For example companies such as Rolls Royce & BAE with over 50% of their revenues from services see it as such an integral part of their business model, they do not have a stand alone services division.

So if you are pondering how best to manage your corporate value and looking to make the profit/cost centre call, you might ask yourself 2 questions:

1. In your future business model how integrated will be your products and services offering.
2. Is organisational focus the key challenge facing your service transformation programme.

Having a sound service strategy is key to make the transformation to a sustainable high growth profitable service business. If you want to read  more about how real companies achieve this goal, you can look at the Bobst case study on www.noventum.eu

Read part one of this series, Creating value through services: Where to Start? here  

Read Part Three of this series, Finding nuggets of customer gold here

 

The field service engineer fulfils a unique role in an organisation – directly interacting with customers more than most people within the company. However, the need to reduce overheads is a driver impacting organisations. Reducing the cost of service technicians, by recruiting less trained individuals for example, can enable the business to provide service at a lower price.

Over the last few years this approach has been adopted by many after sales support organisations, but as a result questions have been raised over the quality of service provision. For example, a recent study reveals that just 42 per cent of service organisations have consistent SLA processes in place^[1]. One concern being raised against the quality of service provision is the lack of business intelligence being in the field. A recent report found that just 33 per cent of organisations have a business intelligence initiative which has been in place for more than two years^[2].

One track mind in the field

Martin Rulton, technical operations director at Centrex Services explains the disparity shown when it comes to intelligence being demonstrated in the field, “When a system goes wrong, often the fix will go as it should. Problems arise however when the issue is non standard, such as an unpredictable error that an engineer is unfamiliar with.

“When faced with these types of problems some field service engineers refuse to present a fix. Sometimes they just don’t have the skills to provide a solution, so shirk the responsibility.”

Some commentators suggest that a throw-away culture, so prevalent in the years leading up to the economic crash, meant that skills to repair electronic items were not in high demand, and so began to diminish.

Martin comments, “One of the major causes of current SLA failure is a result of an environment that did not call for highly skilled engineers and technicians.

“Many industries have de-skilled their workforces as a result and this is hampering the service efficiency of organisations and their ability to provide a differentiated experience, which is crucial to meeting increasing customer expectations from SLAs.”

Action is the measure of intelligence

Recent research suggests that one of the biggest complaints against service companies is the length of time it can take to fix issues from a field service standpoint^[3].

Martin explains, “The length of time repairs can take is a serious industry problem. It can be related to an engineer’s lack of technical know how, or unscrupulous after-sales support companies looking to milk issues for additional revenue, when they could be fixed much more quickly.

“This is the crux of the service failure mentality that blights the industry; for too long businesses have been content to under-perform within an SLA, because they’re maximising the bottom line through this failure. However it’s a short-sighted approach.

“If an organisation cannot deliver upon its service expectations it impacts upon the end customer. For example, if all the tills in one supermarket are out of order, most customers will take their weekly shop elsewhere, and may never return.

“If a problem isn’t fixed quickly by the field service engineers the company can potentially suffer long-term consequences, including lost revenue, custom and reputational damage. In the worst case scenario, it may even put an organisation out of business.

“On the other side of the coin, if a repair firm takes too long to find a fix, and I’ve seen cases where organisations take up to five trips just to get the right part, they may gain a reputation for poor service.

“Multiple repeat visits for a problem that could be fixed first time is unacceptable, and I believe this will lead to more companies taking their business elsewhere, potentially placing repair organisations in a similarly perilous situation.

“The industry needs a wake up call before it’s too late; firms must act to change the perception of service SLAs, or risk commercial underperformance and the real threat of losing customers.”

Intelligence is a solution that didn’t exist before

Successful companies arm their field service professionals with the technology to demonstrate effective intelligence in the field, and are able to perform tasks more quickly, serving customers more proficiently as a result^[4].

Martin believes the need for field-based business intelligence is greater than ever. He comments, “To change the current service mentality within the industry organisations must put more power into field service engineers’ hands. Out of the box thinking is critical for simplifying the complexities of after sales product services. This is key to laying the foundation for long-term business success.”

Paul Barr, a senior engineer at Centrex Services, provides some examples of how intelligence in the field is being applied, “A fast food retailer had problems with its point of sale system. Staff would lean on the screens, causing them to snap off. Rather than simply fix this issue each time at cost to our customer, we produced our own metal bracket, which added support to the screen. Now they no longer break and the retailer has benefited from some major cost savings.

“In another example, a major retailer had some serious problems with the performance of its tills. We recommended a system-wide fix that improved memory. This solution made a huge difference to the business; with its systems operating at full capacity it was able to reduce valuable seconds from each transaction, enabling it to make more sales.

“We also worked with a supermarket chain which had ten damaged point of sale screens because staff were using the wrong wipes to clean them. Rather than fix each unit individually, which would have been costly to the business, we sourced and manufactured our own, which could be inserted into the system at a fraction of the price. In this case, intelligence by field engineers meant that the supermarket was able to save thousands of pounds.”

Thinking ahead to get ahead

Business intelligence appears to be an essential ingredient for the industry if its wishes to continue meeting customer expectations. Martin concludes, “The old rules are changing, customers demands on quality, efficient service, and value are increasing; they will not put up with poor service or quick-fix answers that don’t hold up over time.

“We must move our focus away from short-term gains and analyse where strategic value can be added. This is essential to building long-term relationships with customers.

“Our partners require tailor-made solutions; if one organisation cannot fulfil customer requirements, it is very likely that they’ll turn to one that will. There is an urgent need for a highly skilled workforce with the ability to provide out of the box approaches to problems.

“Organisations must allow their engineers to adopt a business intelligence approach; it can have a profound impact on service level delivery, which is crucial for the long-term prosperity of our industry.”

For any field service organisation there is often one simple key objective, to deliver excellent customer service whilst working as effectively as possible.

However, we are working in a market place where both economic pressures and customer demands have risen to greater levels than possibly ever before and sometimes it may seem like this ‘simple’ objective is becoming increasingly unachievable. Yet at the same time we are seeing technology at our disposal moving forward in quantum leaps, as we witness technologies emerge that can and will literally change the shape of the field service industry as we know it.

Multi-person video conferencing enabled by increasing mobile internet speeds is now a common place reality when not so long ago it was the domain of science fiction. The field engineer facing on site who doesn’t have the requisite knowledge to deliver a first time is now able to access a wealth of information and advice direct from his handset, he can see where the nearest parts he requires are and if their not readily available he can order them and schedule the appointment with Mr. Bloggs there and then. (First of course checking that Mr. Bloggs account has the correct privileges and if he doesn’t than the engineer can is perfectly placed to up-sell!!)

Then there is the Cloud… Many of the initial fears around cloud based computing, a large number of companies were hesitant to move business functions into the cloud with security worries at the top of the list of peoples reasons for hesitancy, are now being allayed and the reality is that cloud technologies offer an incredible opportunity for the service industry.

If having fast mobile devices is the key, then having knowledge bases, communications platforms and even central systems in the cloud, is the door that opens the way into a whole new world of service excellence.

Even better, unlike the majority of technologies, which are prohibitively expensive when they first emerge, the cloud is in fact the opposite. Suddenly expensive and complex service management systems that were once the exclusive domain of the enterprise organization are now available as Software as a Service, bringing the cost per person down in some cases to under $100 a head.

In a period of continuing economic uncertainty, where Service is a major battle field in all manner of industries, the combination of ever improving mobile data speeds and cloud computing is a clear example of how technology is changing the shape of the industry today.

Of course, not every company is able to or indeed should invest in every new piece of technology and software that comes along. Indeed what is cutting edge today could well be obsolete within a few short years, and no matter where we see similarities in service departments, and we see them in wide and diverse industries, the simple truth is no one service story can ever be the same. Companies, like individuals require a solution that is geared just for them.

However, having an understanding of the technologies available and the advantages they may bring to your service department is a core responsibility of every field service manager.

It’s vital that field service managers understand what the options available to them are, whilst taking the time to understand their own needs and weaknesses and then find the system or systems that are fit for purpose

There is plenty of good information out there (including of course this very website!) and another source of good and refreshingly impartial advice is Service Max’s new ebook “A Definitive Guide to Modern Field Service Management”. Which we are very pleased to be able to offer to you for free when you subscribe to our fortnightly newsletter.

Drawing on research from Gartner, Aberdeen, The Service Council and Forrester as well as a real life case study this ebook gives insightful and concise advice on how technologies such as cloud, SaaS, big data and analytics, smart phones and tablets and optimised scheduling engines can be brought together to empower organisations to adopt a fully 360° view of the service they deliver.

To download a copy of this excellent book please just click the link here and then complete the very brief (less than a minute) registration form.

Whilst building a service business entirely from scratch might seem like a dream for many Service Managers when facing the trials and tribulations that are often the result of many legacies, it is none the less a daunting task and certainly no mean feat. However, for Daryll Brown, Operations and Service Manager with Bürkert Fluid Control Systems this was exactly the task he was employed to do. In this exclusive interview he explains just how he has approached building a service division from a standing start... 

 

FSN: Building a service business from scratch must be both a daunting and exciting proposition, what was the approach you adopted in taking the first steps to achieving this goal?

DB: Our approach to building a service business from scratch is to first of all define what can be thought of as service in our industry. 

Fluid controls are a very complex business and there is not a clear description of what is traditionally known as service work.  We need to define what we class as service work and then develop products that would be attractive to our customers.

Some of our definitions of service include Installation of Bürkert products and systems, continuous service of Bürkert products and systems, planned maintenance and breakdown cover for Bürkert products, installation and commissioning, consultancy, design, calibration and training.  As things stand most of our products do not lend themselves easily to service maintenance.  This is because there is not always what you would call spare parts that need to be replaced.  Also a lot of our products are designed for one time use and they may last for years.  So we need to be very creative with our offering.

FSN: What approach have you taken to scheduling software, are you using a manual, automated or optimized system? Why did you take this approach? Which provider are you working with and what made you choose them?

DB: This is unique for us as we do not necessarily need scheduling to cope with high volume demand we need it more to manage our complexity.  Having had experience in implementing field service software in my previous company I knew that the generic service software packages out there were not going to be as flexible as we would like.

Most offer an out of the box solution which never seems to do exactly what you need.  You then seem to spend time (and money) on modifying the software to meet your needs.  I think a lot of software companies fall into the trap of thinking all service businesses are alike.

For us this isn’t the case so we have decided to develop our current quality and asset management software (Q-Pulse) to be able to manage our service work.  This has the added advantage as we are already very familiar with the software and we have a lot of scope to develop and modify to suit our needs.

FSN: What logistics solutions do you have in place to ensure that your field engineers can get the right parts as soon as possible?  

DB: As mentioned our service work is quite complex and some visits have to be planned months in advance.  This gives our logistics team time to plan when and where our parts can be delivered and stocked.  Bürkert’s UK core business is mainly distribution of product from our Plants in Germany and France so we are already well versed in managing the logistic supply chain.  When the business grows we will need to think of innovative ways of supporting our service teams with some of our faster moving items.  Again from past experience I have found that having a partnership with a flexible logistic partner is worth its weight in gold.

FSN: How are you monitoring driver behaviour? What tools are you using (GPS, telematics etc)?

DB: Roads in the UK are becoming busier and this presents a challenge for any service business.  We have put a lot of thought into using the outside of our service van to market our business and products so we do not want our drivers to give us a bad name.  So we have had all those who drive our van read our companies driver handbook and then sign a declaration that they will comply.

We have also made this an agenda point at our Management review as ideas have been raised regarding advanced driver courses.  This would have the added advantage of potentially lowering insurance costs.

We do not have this issue of needing to know up to the minute the location of our Engineers.  Nor do we currently have any trust issue which would warrant GPS tracking.

FSN: Who else within the organisation do you liaise with when making decisions that will impact upon how the service department operates?

The Bürkert UK business is ran by a small Management team of five members.  These represent areas such as General Manager, Logistics, Finance, Quality and Sales.  Due to our business structure and all of these areas need to be involved in the decision making process.  As we are only a small business here in the UK every action has a reaction and this means all departments have to work closely together.  As past experience has taught me this is no bad thing.  For me even in larger organisations if all departments are working closely together and not in silos key decisions revolving around the service business are made more quickly and effectively with less risk.

FSN: Have you been able to integrate the service division with other divisions within the organisation such as sales or client services? What challenges did you face?

DB: We are still in the early days of developing our service business.  For now our project engineers are also doubling as our service engineers.  This is not necessarily a bad thing as we are starting with our service already integrated into other areas of the business.

For me all areas of the business working closely together is critical.  All processes tend to cross over into different areas of the business and often this is where most processes come unstuck.  If ran as a process and not a interlink of different activities in different areas the service business will run a whole lot better. For instance in the past I have often been called to meetings with the logistics departments to complain about the amount of stock in the service business.

If managed as a process then the logistics teams who are setup to manage other needs of the business can account for the service business. This will help them to adjust themselves to meet the completely different demands of service.

FSN: You personally also have a wide skill set holding an advanced certificate in Sales and Marketing (Institute of Marketing Management ILMM 2007). What led you to a career as a service management professional? What are the key skills that you think are required to be a good service manager?

DB: I spent 24 years with my pervious company and I worked in several different departments including operations, quality, sales and customer service.  This gave me a good understanding of the overall business and a good grounding in organising teams and coping with different demands.  For this reason I think the senior management thought I may be a good choice as a service manager.  Service has been by far my biggest challenge as it seems to involve so many variables and crosses over more boundary lines then I had seen before.  In my old business service was managed as part of the sales business.  If I were still there today I would have definitely recommended managing service as a separate cost Centre. This is because the needs of a service customer are completely different to that of other customers.  This should be managed by a focused service team with no distractions and to key performance targets that are service related and not just sales related.

FSN: What are the biggest challenges you think the field service industry faces and how have you set up the service business at Burkert to overcome these challenges?

DB: Of course there a different types of service businesses which will face different challenges.  However, there are challenges that are generic and affect all service businesses.

For me one of the biggest challenges is the modern lean business trends.  This drives a cost cutting culture in all industries which makes customers demand more for less. When you are selling service there tends to be a lot less overhead to play with.  One extra day on site due to an unforeseen issue and your margin disappears. So at Bürkert our way of overcoming this issue is preparation (and lots of it).

Planning needs to accurate, costing needs to be accurate and the timing needs to be spot on!  This is of course easier said than done.  So to endeavor to make this happen as mentioned before we have developed our software package to effectively manage our service business.  Our logistics are integrated with our service offering so that we have the parts available when our customers need them.  All areas of our business are part of our decision making to facilitate us managing our service as a process and not as a group of individual activities.

However, we know we cannot afford to sit still we need to look for ways to continually improve our service offering.  For this reason our marketing team is working closely with our customers to keep up with the latest developments in our market.  We have put together key performance indicators that are based on areas that our customers value.  We hold regular improvement events to review the feedback that these items give us so that we can continue to develop our business to be customer focused and deliver value.

Bürkert  at a glance:

Industry = Fluid Controls

Number of Field Engineers UK only = 3 (these also double as Project Engineers).

Number of Dispatchers = None (not set up as yet)

Average number of jobs per Engineer = 1 (our work is quite technical)

 

When talking about service, we often hear senior managers asking the question, ’But where do you start?’

It would be lovely to call out, ‘At the beginning!’, but most of us know that is a bit simplistic. The thing is that successful service companies align all aspects of their business to their goal. But business is complex and to address change on a wide front is costly and risky.  Instead business leaders understand where their priorities are, address these first and then move on to the next part of the puzzle. Effective decision making means defining priorities within the context of an overall vision or blue print of how their services business should operate.

We thought it would be worthwhile sharing a series of blog articles based on real life experiences to help paint this picture. The blogs will illustrate 4 key areas to get right![ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Understand the Value you can deliver to the customer and your own business
   
2. An effective GO-TO Market strategy that defines what service offerings you need to develop and how to sell them
3. Efficient  Service Delivery to ensure profitability
4. Have a Plan

Lets first look at a good way to improve your understanding of Value by analysing your Customer’s Journey to your services. We are not just talking about how they came to choose your product. We start way before that activity and move all the way through to the touch points of the service delivery model.

Many of you will recognise the customer journey map below as being similar for the lifecycle of your equipment.  It is a high level summary of just one part of a customer journey scenario that was mapped out for the premier manufacturer of injection moulding systems, Husky SA. It shows how a customer perceives the brand at different stages through the product life cycle within different touch-points and activities.

But why bother mapping out what seems intuitively obvious. In this case it allowed cross functional teams from Husky Service & Sales to understand what were the critical points in the products lifecycle at which they:

a)    Had to work together: For example in the selling process, especially where negotiations revolved around total cost of ownership commitments.

b)    Where the service organisation could have a significant impact on the customer satisfaction and loyalty. For example by reacting quickly to start up issues, a difficult situation for the customer could be turned around to be a positive experience, if solved quickly and professionally.

c)     Where the use of 3^rd party contractors for providing the service might be appropriate.

d)    To identify systems that could be targeted for different refurbishment and upgrades, so as to maximise revenues through the product lifecycle.

Detail can be added to this high level journey. For example Husky decided that all calls for all technologies should come into the same call centre. By drilling down into more detail at the call centre level and looking at how the customer journey through the organisation changed for different customers, the organisation was able to design a more effective process, to communicate appropriately with its customers and ensure the correct level of training for its employees.

From these examples we can see that being intimate with your customer’s journey is so important to understanding the value they might be seeking from us. Why not look at  www.noventum.eu for more ideas and discussions on the Customer Journey.

In our next blog in this series, we will look a how service change dramatically slows, when we make the wrong decisions in the profit centre / cost centre debate, because we have not understood how are business wants to make money.

Read Part two of this series: Ouch! getting the profit/cost centre call wrong in your service business here

Read part three of this series:  Finding nuggets of customer gold here