New research charting the servitization journey of companies shows a significant gap in progress between firms with only 3% surveyed at a stage of maturity.

The study, instigated by IFS and extrapolated by global analyst firm IDC, surveyed 420 global manufacturing companies, active across the physical value chain, who were at varying stages of their servitization strategy.

From the data, IDC developed a Servitization Maturity Framework (The IDC Servitization Barometer) comprising four levels that segments companies based on their level of adoption.

 

The Four Stages of Servitization Adoption

The ‘Splintered’ stage, and the lowest level, represented 14% of firms.Typically these companies operated in silos, running dis-jointed, manual processes and fragmented business systems producing little or no visibility in performance.

The next stage, ‘Side-Car’, was the largest representation of companies (49%). Here firms had standardised their back and front office operations but were yet to integrate the two.

‘Joined-up’ companies have integrated front and back offices in both directions and have progressed to leverage technologies such as IoT to feed core systems with real data. This segment was represented by 39% of firms surveyed.

Only 3% of canvassed firms operating at the fourth ‘Borderless’ stage (or “Servitization Nirvana,” the report says). These companies have processes that start and end outside of the organisation with operations and technology facilitating the connection between different elements of the value chain.

However, IDC said those firms at the ‘Joined-Up’ stage, who were exhibiting some, but not all elements of a servitization strategy, for example an integrated back and front office and the use of IoT, were still able to show significant financial proof-points, with service revenues - on average - one third larger than their peers’ as a proportion of total revenue.

“Organisations that bundled projects with services or offered their capabilities in a consumption-mode are already enjoying competitive advantages,” Phil Carter, Chief Analyst at IDC Europe and one of the authors of the report says. “Manufacturers engaging in this transformation should demand applications that are natively connected across the full value chain, from the shop floor to customer support and service.”

IFS carried out the survey in July 2019 and the President of the firm’s Service Management Business Unit Marne Martin said IDC’s maturity framework identified the key barriers firms are facing in their quest for full servitization adoption. “The IDC Servitization Barometer lays out the key hurdles facing many manufacturing organisations,” she says, “including the lack of internal know-how and the perrenial problem of running legacy, disjointed business systems.”

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Further Reading: 

• Read the full report IDC Sertvization Barrier - Charting your Path to New Revenue Streams here.
• Read more about customer servitization in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/servitization
• Find out more about IFS here.
• Find out more about IDC here. 

Artificial Intelligence has increasingly become a key discussion in all industries and its impact in field service management is predicted to be hugely significant, but how should field service organisations leverage this powerful twenty-first-century technology? In the part one of this two-part feature Marne Martin, President of Service Management, IFS outlined why AI in field service is about far more than chatbots, now in the concluding part, she outlines how AI can bring a touch of genius to your field service operations...

 

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Solving Problems When One Isn't Albert Einstein

Human agents are capable of optimally dealing with a customer, and AI can free them up for the most interesting and demanding tasks. In the case of scheduling technicians in the field, humans are just not up to the numerical challenge of adjusting a schedule in an optimal fashion as humans typically focus in on an aspect of a problem to solve rather than finding the best solution overall.

A dynamic scheduling engine (DSE) driven by AI algorithms is designed to solve complex scheduling problems in real time—problems much too complex for any human dispatcher or customer service agent to handle, especially when at times individuals will act myopically based on their area rather than for the greater good of the company and its customers.

 

"Even a static service schedule can be handled in myriad different ways and decisions regarding which technician to send to which of several jobs in what order are often made based on suboptimal heuristics..."

 

Even a static service schedule can be handled in myriad different ways and decisions regarding which technician to send to which of several jobs in what order are often made based on suboptimal heuristics.

“Steve’s son is in daycare in this part of town, so I will schedule this appointment last, so he will be close by.” Sometimes jobs are scheduled based on first-in, first scheduled, regardless of the actual urgency of requests that come later.

Manual or traditional software-based scheduling may be a workable solution for service organizations with a very small number of technicians each engaged in a small number of jobs during a day. But it does not take many technicians or jobs for the number of possible solutions to outstrip human computation capabilities either individually or as a group.

Even at the low end of the spectrum, a human dispatcher cannot quickly identify all the possible solutions and pick the best one. With two technicians and four service calls there are already 120 possible solutions— different combinations of technician, job and order. Two technicians, and five service calls yields 720 possible solutions. Four technicians and 10 service calls present a dispatcher with 1,037,836,800 possible solutions.

But the time you get to five technicians that must complete six calls each—a total of 30 calls, you have 12,301,367,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000 possible solutions.

Finding the optimal solution becomes even more complex as additional and rapidly-changing factors are added into the mix:

• Emergent jobs come in that must take precedence over those already scheduled
• SLAs and other contractual requirements demand that some jobs be completed within a given timeframe
• Technician skill sets that influence which tech is sent to which job
• Tools and materials currently in stock on each service vehicle
• The current location of a technician in proximity to each job and to drop locations for inventory that may be required for a job
• The duration of each service call, both in terms of estimated time required to complete the call and whether a current job is running over the estimated time, resulting in knock-on effect on subsequent jobs

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, in his book Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins, makes clear that even his mind is not capable of computing possible solutions and outcomes as rapidly or effectively as an AI algorithm.

 

"Automating the schedule through AI not only enables a much higher level of service but frees up dispatchers to handle those “beautiful or paradoxical moves” that may delight a customer or solve a tough problem...“

 

The human mind isn’t a computer; it cannot progress in an orderly fashion down a list of candidate moves and rank them by a score down to the hundredth of a pawn the way a chess machine does,” Kasparov writes. “Even the most disciplined human mind wanders in the heat of competition. This is both a weakness and a strength of human cognition. Sometimes these undisciplined wanderings only weaken your analysis. Other times they lead to inspiration, to beautiful or paradoxical moves that were not on your initial list of candidates.”

Automating the schedule through AI not only enables a much higher level of service but frees up dispatchers to handle those “beautiful or paradoxical moves” that may delight a customer or solve a tough problem.

In the end, collaborating with intelligent machines will get us further faster than going it alone. According to Kasparov, the best chess is now played as grandmasters use computers to analyze positions, opponents’ games and their own games—elevating the level of play. In an interview with the Financial Times, Kasparov, who famously had matches against an early chess supercomputer, described how the best chess is now played by combining “human intuition and understanding of the game of chess with a computer’s brute force of calculation and memory.”

“I introduced what is called advanced chess; human plus machine against another human plus machine,” Kasparov said. “A human plus machine will always beat a super machine. The computer will compensate for our human weaknesses and guarantee we are not making mistakes under pressure … the most important thing is not the strengths of the human player. It is not the power of the computer. But it is the interface. It is the corporation.”

 

Legacy Approach to Inventory Logistics

Service management for many businesses relies on inventory … if completion of a service call requires inventory and you are out of stock, you cannot meet your commitment to the customer. When a service request cannot be closed on the first visit, it is often because the right part is not on the truck or immediately available.

So, service management software should encompass inventory management functionality, and that functionality should include automated reorder points for each part. The ability to take parts availability into consideration is a critical data set for AI to work on as parts are a critical determinant in first-time fix and job completion where parts are a factor. It also is a key aspect to successful SLA and outcomes-based commercial relationships.

Once inventory data is available and integrated, a powerful DSE may also be configured to influence inventory logistics so parts and materials are housed in warehouses, satellite offices or inventory drop locations closer to anticipated demand, with inventory matched to jobs in a forward or current day schedule. In one very large implementation of IFS Planning and Scheduling™ Optimization—in the London underground transit system—inventory and tools are dropped ahead of each service visit so technicians who ride the subway to the service site can pick them up.

This is only possible with a high degree of coordination between the service schedule, inventory logistics and an AI-driven scheduling tool.

 

Conclusion

Service organisations should recognise the tremendous potential AI holds—they can harness it to transform their operations, outflank their competitors and disrupt their markets. We are only starting to tap into the different ways AI can be used to better solve the problem of delivering optimal service in a rapidly changing environment as adoption is still lagging despite the real benefits AI brings. The good news is there are several straightforward and easily accessible ways service executives can harness AI technology right now, today.

 

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Artificial Intelligence has increasingly become a key discussion in all industries and its impact in field service management is predicted to be hugely significant, but how should field service organisations leverage this powerful twenty-first-century technology? In the first of a two-part feature, Marne Martin, President Service Management IFS, offers her expert insight... 

 

 

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) will impact every industry and every business discipline—including field service management. But how quickly will practical solutions be available that enable the typical medium to large field service organization to take advantage of AI? And by practical solutions, I mean AI that delivers knowledge efficiently, processes solutions to complex data sets, and automates repetitive activities to allow human workers to focus on personalized service, solving complex problems and escalations, i.e. what people do best.

In some cases, these easily applied solutions are still on their way to market. In three specific areas, however, practical AI applications for field service are already commercially available as proven, commercial off-the-shelf software delivering real business value.

 

AI For Customer Interaction

First impressions matter. And unfortunately, the first interaction a customer has with your service organization often involves several missteps. Chief among these are long wait times on hold due to high call volumes. And then, as a customer attempts to reach out through multiple channels including email, chat and phone, the resulting data stream goes into separate siloes that are disconnected from each other, resulting in disjointed communication.

 

"Today, AI solutions can solve both these problems, but it requires more than “just” chatbots..."

 

Today, AI solutions can solve both these problems, but it requires more than “just” chatbots. Commercially available AI software that ties into chatbots is capable of learning which answers posed in a chat are appropriate for each question and automating a significant majority of chat interactions. A chatbot can be taught to answer commonly encountered questions, like inquiries about when a technician is scheduled to arrive. Of course, at some point, the AI chatbot may get stuck when personalized service is required, and a human agent takes over the discussion thread without missing a beat. This should be seamless not only to the customer but for the internal customer service, ticketing and support systems as well. The chatbot—regardless of whether driven at a given moment by AI or a human agent—should update the same customer record as other channels including social media, phone and email.

And from interactions, the AI functionality learns from answers provided by human agents and gets better and better at answering questions through learning processes. A truly advanced AI chatbot will also seamlessly hand off the chat to a human agent when the extent of its learning is overtaken. Only then can the entire customer experience be unified and consistent, even with a static number of agents handling a rapidly growing fluctuating volume of customer interactions.

AI-based chatbots, for instance, can enable a good agent to handle up to five or more chats at a time. It can capture Facebook messages and tweets and direct them to an agent or to AI for intervention. AI alone can handle, typically, between 50 and 60 percent of requests, freeing up human capacity or lowering staffing levels required to handle a given volume of activity.

 

Enables Management By Exception

In the case of AI applications for the service organization, a primary driver for ROI is that it enables humans to manage by exception. A high volume of activity can be automated, and humans intervene primarily when a situation falls outside the business rules or logic built into service management software. AI doesn’t eliminate the need for human interaction—it makes the human interaction more focused on what humans do best—handle escalations and complex decision making for unique cases.

At one IFS customer, an AI chatbot handles about 50 percent of interactions— primarily those reaching out to cancel their service after a free three-month trial period. Interactions cancelling a free subscription are handled entirely through automation. But if a longer-standing customer is cancelling their service, the interaction gets routed to an agent dedicated to saving the account.

Some interactions are by default easily handled by AI. If 30 percent of inbound contacts are requesting information on the arrival time of a field service technician, it may be possible to automate 90 percent of that 30 percent of contacts. But it is also important to consider the demographics of the customer base. Millennials are more likely to communicate via chat or social media, so if a significant percentage of customers are under 40, heavier reliance on chatbots and AI may help you increase engagement by streamlining your customers’ preferred method of interaction.

 

"Management by exception is also more successful when an AI application has access to extensive information about each customer..."

 

Management by exception is also more successful when an AI application has access to extensive information about each customer. So full integration with enterprise resource planning, field service management and other enterprise tools is essential. AI tools can be more effective if they have more rather than less information on the status of the customer’s account, including their maintenance or service history and warranty or service level agreement entitlements.

Integration between an AI chatbot, email, voice, social and enterprise applications is important for another reason. It enables one version of the customer record. Lacking this, a customer can send an email, and get no response. They send a direct message through Twitter. Then call and sit on hold. Then initiate a chat. All these interactions may not appear in a central customer record, but there have been three attempts to contact the company. Right from the first contact by email, the clock started ticking on a service level agreement.

Full integration can also enable a customer service team, once a customer request is resolved, to close off all queuing activations at the same time for the various contact methods associated with a customer case. Failing this, a service organization may spend a significant amount of time chasing customer requests that have already been resolved.

 

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In this, the latest edition of the Field Service Podcast, Kris Oldland, Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief, is joined by Marne Martin, CEO of WorkWave and president of Service Management for IFS about her new role with IFS as well as discussing whether the time has come to finally recognised Field Service Management systems as a standalone category such as CRM or ERP [hr]

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Swedish enterprise mobility and ERP provider IFS recently announced the hiring of former ServicePower CEO, Marne Martin, as President of their Service Management Business Unit, part of a dual role she has taken on alongside being CEO of IFS subsidiary, WorkWave. Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News reflects on this appointment and why it is a good thing not just for IFS, but for the wider industry as a whole...

I have known Marne Martin for some time now, speaking to her once or twice a year either for interviews, or just catching up at various industry events we've both been speaking at.

When she was included in a previous edition of the #FSN20, our annual list of key industry leaders, it was me that put her forward to the committee. That was in part because I had always found her to be engaging and intelligent when speaking to her, as well as being passionate for the industry we operate within - but then again, these things for me at least should be a given for any CEO within the sector.

Marne, of course, had all of these traits in abundance, but what always made her stand apart from the many other excellent leaders we have in our sector, what made her seem just that little bit more dynamic and exciting to speak with and why I put her forward for the #FSN20 (something we take very seriously here at fieldservicenews.com) was her ability to see the trends that were just beyond most people's range of vision, those that were over the horizon.

"What Marne has demonstrated time and again is that she is able to go that one step further and identify what will be the challenges and opportunities around how any given technology will ultimately be utilised..."

Sure, we can all get a feel for what technologies are set to emerge - a quick look at Gartner's current year hype cycle will allow us to see what we can expect to come along in the next few years. It might not always work out as we anticipate (think about the early clamour around wearables and in particular Glass as an example of this), but most of us who pay attention to these things are fairly able to put together a reasonably accurate picture of the future.

What Marne has demonstrated time and again is that she is able to go that one step further and identify what will be the challenges and opportunities around how any given technology will ultimately be utilised - and such foresight, is a much rarer attribute.

For example, I remember Marne outlining to me the importance that Quantum Annealing would play within field service management systems - in particularly within dynamic scheduling, long before the topic was even close to being something that was discussed outside of high-tech computing circles.

Indeed, the last time we spoke at any great length we had a long and detailed conversation about how and why field service management systems would need to ultimately evolve from being an additional feature sold alongside an ERP or CRM system and become acknowledged as something of equal status and importance within the world of enterprise computing.

Essentially we agreed, FSM needed to be, and eventually would be recognised as a category within its own right. This is something that we are now absolutely beginning to see happen in certain pockets of the industry, including IFS - who have across the last couple of year's publically stated that FSM is a core priority within their wider portfolio - something that was reiterated at their World Conference in Atlanta earlier this year by new CEO Darren Roos.

"As far as benefitting our industry as a wider whole, there are few places I feel Marne could have such a big impact, as at IFS..."

So as you can imagine, when we heard Marne was stepping down from her role as CEO of ServicePower, I had an inkling that it would be more au revoir than goodbye, I just had a feeling in my gut that we would see her again soon enough somewhere familiar.

However, as far as benefitting our industry as a wider whole, there are few places I feel Marne could have such a big impact, as at IFS. They have shown that they have the ambition, vision and capability to push the industry forwards (indeed the newly launched FSM6 is an excellent solution utilising best of breed technology), but perhaps also they have shown that they have a strong commitment to FSM that will surely raise the bar further for the quality of solutions available to field service organisations.

After all, as John F Kennedy famously quoted a rising tide lifts all boats.

Also, we must consider that Marne is bringing in exceptional leadership experience, industry knowledge and vision into a team that is already full of excellent leaders and thinkers.

For example, the always impressive Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director Service Management who has established an excellent reputation both within the company and the industry since having joined from PTC almost two years ago. Another would be Stephen Jeff-Watts, who is responsible for IFS' product strategy for Enterprise Service Management and is another with a canny knack for understanding where the future lies within the sector. Then, of course, there is Paul White, former CEO of mplsystems who IFS acquired last year who brings a huge level of detail around the latest developments around omni-channel communications to the table, or Tom DeVroy, personally, someone I hold as one of the best author's contributing to publications including ourselves around.

Indeed, the list is long and Marne's appointment at the head of this group, is set to make IFS an even more formidable force within our industry on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.

Finally, it is also interesting to note her dual role.

"Once such a precedent has been set by such a significant industry player as IFS, it is likely that we will see other companies follow suit..."

When IFS acquired WorkWave late last year, I wrote about how the acquisition essentially gave IFS full market penetration.

Traditionally, they have always served the mid-enterprise tier well, in recent year's we have seen them begin to open some more doors in the larger enterprise sector as well. However, the SME market has always been an area that has been somewhat underserved, yet could be potentially lucrative, as WorkWave has proven.

With Marne taking on dual responsibilities for Enterprise Service Management and WorkWave it seems that IFS may potentially be seeking to firmly organise a significant section of their business around their FSM  capabilities - exactly the type of shift in thinking that Marne and I had discussed a year ago and also something Darren Roos alluded to when I spoke to him recently as well.

Once such a precedent has been set by such a significant industry player as IFS, it is likely that we will see other companies follow suit - which will ultimately lead to further emphasis on the importance of field service within industry.

So from where I'm sitting, Marne's arrival at IFS is therefore potentially great news long-term for all in our industry - it certainly promises to be an exciting move and I for one wish her every success

 

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Swedish enterprise mobility and ERP provider IFS recently announced the hiring of former ServicePower CEO, Marne Martin, as President of their Service Management Business Unit, part of a dual role she has taken on alongside being CEO of IFS subsidiary, WorkWave. Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News reflects on this appointment and why it is a good thing not just for IFS, but for the wider industry as a whole...

I have known Marne Martin for some time now, speaking to her once or twice a year either for interviews, or just catching up at various industry events we've both been speaking at.

When she was included in a previous edition of the #FSN20, our annual list of key industry leaders, it was me that put her forward to the committee. That was in part because I had always found her to be engaging and intelligent when speaking to her, as well as being passionate for the industry we operate within - but then again, these things for me at least should be a given for any CEO within the sector.

Marne, of course, had all of these traits in abundance, but what always made her stand apart from the many other excellent leaders we have in our sector, what made her seem just that little bit more dynamic and exciting to speak with and why I put her forward for the #FSN20 (something we take very seriously here at fieldservicenews.com) was her ability to see the trends that were just beyond most people's range of vision, those that were over the horizon.

 

"What Marne has demonstrated time and again is that she is able to go that one step further and identify what will be the challenges and opportunities around how any given technology will ultimately be utilised..."

 

Sure, we can all get a feel for what technologies are set to emerge - a quick look at Gartner's current year hype cycle will allow us to see what we can expect to come along in the next few years. It might not always work out as we anticipate (think about the early clamour around wearables and in particular Glass as an example of this), but most of us who pay attention to these things are fairly able to put together a reasonably accurate picture of the future.

What Marne has demonstrated time and again is that she is able to go that one step further and identify what will be the challenges and opportunities around how any given technology will ultimately be utilised - and such foresight, is a much rarer attribute.

For example, I remember Marne outlining to me the importance that Quantum Annealing would play within field service management systems - in particularly within dynamic scheduling, long before the topic was even close to being something that was discussed outside of high-tech computing circles.

Indeed, the last time we spoke at any great length we had a long and detailed conversation about how and why field service management systems would need to ultimately evolve from being an additional feature sold alongside an ERP or CRM system and become acknowledged as something of equal status and importance within the world of enterprise computing.

Essentially we agreed, FSM needed to be, and eventually would be recognised as a category within its own right. This is something that we are now absolutely beginning to see happen in certain pockets of the industry, including IFS - who have across the last couple of year's publically stated that FSM is a core priority within their wider portfolio - something that was reiterated at their World Conference in Atlanta earlier this year by new CEO Darren Roos.

 

"As far as benefitting our industry as a wider whole, there are few places I feel Marne could have such a big impact, as at IFS..."

 

So as you can imagine, when we heard Marne was stepping down from her role as CEO of ServicePower, I had an inkling that it would be more au revoir than goodbye, I just had a feeling in my gut that we would see her again soon enough somewhere familiar.

However, as far as benefitting our industry as a wider whole, there are few places I feel Marne could have such a big impact, as at IFS. They have shown that they have the ambition, vision and capability to push the industry forwards (indeed the newly launched FSM6 is an excellent solution utilising best of breed technology), but perhaps also they have shown that they have a strong commitment to FSM that will surely raise the bar further for the quality of solutions available to field service organisations.

After all, as John F Kennedy famously quoted a rising tide lifts all boats.

Also, we must consider that Marne is bringing in exceptional leadership experience, industry knowledge and vision into a team that is already full of excellent leaders and thinkers.

For example, the always impressive Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director Service Management who has established an excellent reputation both within the company and the industry since having joined from PTC almost two years ago. Another would be Stephen Jeff-Watts, who is responsible for IFS' product strategy for Enterprise Service Management and is another with a canny knack for understanding where the future lies within the sector. Then, of course, there is Paul White, former CEO of mplsystems who IFS acquired last year who brings a huge level of detail around the latest developments around omni-channel communications to the table, or Tom DeVroy, personally, someone I hold as one of the best author's contributing to publications including ourselves around.

Indeed, the list is long and Marne's appointment at the head of this group, is set to make IFS an even more formidable force within our industry on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.

Finally, it is also interesting to note her dual role.

 

"Once such a precedent has been set by such a significant industry player as IFS, it is likely that we will see other companies follow suit..."

 

When IFS acquired WorkWave late last year, I wrote about how the acquisition essentially gave IFS full market penetration.

Traditionally, they have always served the mid-enterprise tier well, in recent year's we have seen them begin to open some more doors in the larger enterprise sector as well. However, the SME market has always been an area that has been somewhat underserved, yet could be potentially lucrative, as WorkWave has proven.

With Marne taking on dual responsibilities for Enterprise Service Management and WorkWave it seems that IFS may potentially be seeking to firmly organise a significant section of their business around their FSM  capabilities - exactly the type of shift in thinking that Marne and I had discussed a year ago and also something Darren Roos alluded to when I spoke to him recently as well.

Once such a precedent has been set by such a significant industry player as IFS, it is likely that we will see other companies follow suit - which will ultimately lead to further emphasis on the importance of field service within industry.

So from where I'm sitting, Marne's arrival at IFS is therefore potentially great news long-term for all in our industry - it certainly promises to be an exciting move and I for one wish her every success.

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Accomplished industry veteran to lead IFS’s Global Service Management initiatives as IFS, the global enterprise applications company, announces the appointment of field service industry veteran Marne Martin as President of IFS’s Service Management business unit and CEO of WorkWave.

The IFS Service Management business unit established under Marne will encompass the global IFS service management organization as well as WorkWave, acquired by IFS in September 2017, and have dedicated engineering, sales and marketing resources to address the unique needs of service management customers globally. Marne’s experience leading high-growth and expansion phases in both publicly and privately held companies will provide the leadership required to propel both brands into their next stages of growth and market expansion.

]As both President of IFS Service Management and CEO of WorkWave, Marne and her leadership team will continue to elevate the strategic importance of service management to the success of the overall IFS business. Marne will focus on ensuring the entire portfolio of IFS’s service management solutions provide customers with the business value they expect from a global industry leader in field service management (FSM).

“I am thrilled to be leading such a great organization and to be part of the overall IFS senior leadership team as we begin a new chapter in our company’s growth,” said Marne. “WorkWave continues to be an important asset to the overarching value proposition of IFS Service Management, and I look forward to working with the talented IFS and WorkWave teams to make sure IFS’s service management portfolio becomes even more customer-focused.”

With Marne’s appointment to its senior leadership team, IFS will be able to draw on her broad experience and proven track record to further increase the significance of the service business and grow its global market share.

IFS CEO Darren Roos said, “Marne’s domain experience will enable us to further develop the service management capability across the entire portfolio to deliver even more value to our customers. We remain completely focused on delivering solutions together with our partners that have an impact on the way our customers serve their customers.”

Prior to IFS, Marne served as CEO and led the executive leadership team at ServicePower Plc., a field service management software company, where she transformed its go-to-market strategy and shifted its focus to SaaS and managed services revenue, increasing pipeline every year during her tenure. Prior to that, she served as CFO of Norcon, Plc., a UK-based telecom and defense consulting firm, where she grew the company from a business largely dominant in only the Middle East to one diversified across the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Martin is a winner of a number of awards including 2016 CEO Gamechanger of the Year (FSM) from ACQ 5 Global Awards and 2015 Field Service CEO of the Year from Executive Awards.

 

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Field Service Technician enablement is both an important topic but also a frequently rolled out buzz-phrase that we hear within our industry. Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower digs deeper into the topic and helps us cut through the hyperbole to understand the key facts within this topic...

Technicians today are not the technicians of the past. Their expectations are continuously evolving based on the ability to consume information and communicate instantaneously from their connected devices among themselves, with assets, the back office and the end consumer.

ServicePower’s mission is to drive an excellent service experience and grow the value of every consumer relationship. To do that, we must focus on the technician.

Much time the past five years was spent talking about IOT. Less was focused on what a connected world means for the technician, and what is needed to work smarter. We know productivity, first-time fix and proactive maintenance is the holy grail of profitability for service organizations and customer experience. The technician is the key to both.

Consumer expectation of a seamless, digital experience has impacted the industry greatly as have technology trends, yet a true focus on technician enablement is still spotty.Consumer expectation of a seamless, digital experience has impacted the industry greatly as have technology trends, yet a true focus on technician enablement is still spotty. Our “best-in-class” customers bring technicians into the process related to user experience, and how data and workflow changes enable experienced technicians to be hyper-productive and how novice technicians become fully functional, faster. Likewise, the businesses which service a wide variety of equipment, work, or parts need technology that has best-in-class capabilities around artificial intelligence, data model flexibility, IOT, diagnostics, and robust, flexible mobile applications. They likewise need a consumer or dealer portal to collect and send technicians key information such as customer, product or service history, service contract or service level agreements.

Service technicians have become the “single point of failure” in the customer interaction because typical technology driven from the CRM and ERP ill-prepares them with a lack of information. Sales and financial systems provide customer and billing information but do not enable a game-changing service experience that improves brand, market share or revenue.

We endeavour to enable technicians to perform more efficiently with fewer points of friction in their daily activities. Consider the following.

Evolving Labor Supply

All technicians want to be successful on the job. The emerging millennial workforce uses technology every day. We must use veterans’ skills and talents while utilizing millennials to drive technology adoption. Functionality exposed to technicians is important. However, flexible date models, customer, product, and diagnostic information, available before and during a job, is equally important. First-time fixes don’t happen by accident.

Enable Technicians with Technology

Field service management technology is itself evolving, through artificial intelligence, but also more versatile data models that can use IOT or predictive information to update work orders, create differentiated service workflows, or deploy updatable forms in real-time, based on diagnostics. Asset data, IOT diagnostics and service history deliver service insights digitally, on-site. The best vendors and newest product releases do more with technology to achieve and exceed traditional metrics.

Intelligent portals

Intelligent portals are game-changing. They can do more than simply enable a service or technician location. Portals can digitally deliver appointment offers, which in the past, only the call centre would have had the insights to do. They can facilitate better service by allowing customers to upload connected smart sensor data, fault codes, photographs or videos of failed products, and interact with triage and field technicians. Portals better inform customers and prepare technicians to resolve issues in a single truck roll.

The latest mapping and location technologies provide consumers improved visibility of appointments, near-by technicians with schedule availability, and technician arrival estimates. Portals delight the customer and improve call centre efficiency by digitally handling booking, confirming and rescheduling appointments automatically.

Portals can even use AI, asset and service history to intelligently offer customers new products, accessories and services, without ever interacting with a call centre, snail mail or email, and before the technician arrives.

Mobile technology

Mobile technology has come a long way in recent years. While scheduling optimized technicians and parts together, status, and capturing payment are still a challenge for some organizations, overall, field service companies can now also use mobile technology to provide better, more personalized service in the field to every customer.

Effective mobile solutions deliver relevant customer, asset, parts, and diagnostic information in real-timeMobile applications provide entitlement, customer availability, asset information and technician location, real-time inventory, payments, and timesheet capability, as well as work order and technician status updates. Leading solutions were built with 100% configurability and flexible data models, which provide the opportunity to customize service events, improve first-time fix rates and improve customer satisfaction. Effective mobile solutions deliver relevant customer, asset, parts, and diagnostic information in real-time, as well as provide task lists, pricing and payments, and survey delivery for a faster, smarter, more satisfying experience.

Mobile technology is the best way to enable technicians to deliver the best experience.

Siri, Echo, Alexa and Cortana Aren’t Enough

Digital assistants are cool, but how can we make them more helpful? Displaying navigation, making calls or texts is handy. Digital assistants integrated with data hubs can deliver useful customer, asset, and predictive intelligence to technicians which require it to improve service delivery. `

Digital assistants become more powerful when integrated with AI, machine learning algorithms, asset and service history, predictive and repair information, providing an entirely different kind of assistance to field technicians.

AI can analyze data to derive cognitive insights and deliver it through digital assistants, resulting in the holy grail of better tech enablement, customer experience, and financial performance of the service organization or brand.

Technician Enablement Means Transforming Field Service Experiences with Technology

Friendly, competent technicians enabled with game-changing technology are the future. Sales secure customers, but your service technology retains them, increases your share of their wallets and grows your brand.

Don’t just give face value to technician enablement, own it, and make it a priority. Your brand and your customers will thank you.

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Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower explains why Artificial Intelligence is going to be a fundamental part of the future of field service and why not all AI is on an equal footing...

In business, we are all now fully aware of the importance of collecting data. However, we are also painfully aware of just how easy it is to get overloaded by the sheer volumes of data we can collect.

An often quoted example that puts the sheer amount of data being generated around us into some sort of context is that a Boeing 787 will generate around 40TB per flight. If you were to play 40TBs of mp3s back to back it would take you 78 years to listen to every file. Yep, those data lakes are deep and quite frankly it’s no wonder some companies are beginning to drown in them.

And this is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes into the question - and why it is set to play such an important role within the field service sector.

Ours is a sector in which excellence is being built on data.Ours is a sector in which excellence is being built on data. We are embracing IoT with both arms because it has the power to bring costs down for the service provider whilst increasing service standards for the customer. However, for us to fully see the promise IoT offers we need to turn to AI to help us make sense of all that data.

However, not all AI is equal.

It is often overlooked in conversations but there are very distinct different types of AI. You can have Algorithms that only do one thing. For example, in a law firm, they may have an AI algorithm that sorts through documentation for testimony in trails. Things like this are what are generally viewed as purpose-built AI algorithms, that are all about establishing simple efficiencies. Basically, an AI which is implemented by people and organisations who are searching across large data sets for tightly determined results.

Whilst it is by no means a simple task to develop and deploy such an algorithm when it comes to looking at AI in field service we are talking about a much more complex beast entirely.

For a start let’s just consider the various different types of service and touch points within the service cycle that AI can touch.

To begin with there are three obvious different areas of a field service business:

• Call centre activities
• Back office activities
• Field service activities

Then there are the various different types of information that needs to be factored in as well. For example, on any given service call we would be looking at a minimum for information on:

• The asset
• The customer
• Any service history
• Component level information
• Any complexities to service
• Warranty details

All of these elements only serve to create more complexities in the data - so AI designed to work its way through such levels of complexity is by default going to be a more sophisticated piece of programming.

However, the reason why AI is so important in field service is that we want a product that is flexible and configurable to how our field service businesses evolve and how we want to deliver service. The issue is if you are trying to cross-section a lot of data without AI algorithms that are configurable you are going to be wasting way too much time trying to build software that is one dimensional.

For example, you might build something that says if I get this preventative maintenance alert I am always going to do this. That might be OK for today but it might not fit with your business in a couple of years time.

For the requirements of field service organisations the power of a truly good AI algorithm is all about how robust is its ability to configure different processes.Then you’d have to sit back down with your IT group and your developers and kick off another two-year project on coding some other stuff. By then you’re way behind your competitors - who were able to just adjust some of the parameters on their AI algorithm.

This is why I firmly believe that for the requirements of field service organisations the power of a truly good AI algorithm is all about how robust is its ability to configure different processes.

The volume of the data that is coming out now and the direction that most businesses want to move in mean that we are now well and truly living in a Big Data world and we need to get used to it.

So we need AI to process the sheer amount of data but also we specifically need configurable AI services that will enable us to have the type of service experience that works for our brands and for our customers.

This is why we have been so focused on the development of AI at ServicePower and we were so pleased to be awarded a US patent for the AI algorithms that we’ve incorporated into our latest Customer Experience service solution - which you can see a demonstration of in our recent webinar available @ http://fs-ne.ws/XYbX30gQDeB

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