The world of IT Services has evolved on many an occasion, however, right now it needs to prepare for another iteration of the new normal for it to continue to thrive writes Martin Summerhayes...

IT services have come a long way over the past 20 years or so. From the heyday of the hardware manufacturers, rolling out ever more sophisticated technology solutions; with faster compute power, larger storage capabilities and faster network performance; the pace of change seemed to be faster and faster.

 

Long Tail Service Support

Then the average sales lifecycle for the hardware platforms was a couple of years and services had to keep up with the ever-expanding portfolio of solutions. This meant a longer and longer list of products that had to be supported and maintained. What is known as “the long tail”.  

I was part of the long tail of support. When I first started as a field engineer for Hewlett-Packard (HP); HP had just released its first HP LaserJet printer, the 2686A and shortly afterwards its first PC. Within five years, the market had exploded and there were hundreds of different models. Combined, with the mini computers, servers, storage and network products being produced; it felt as if it was a quarterly tech refresh and learning hamster wheel.

The implications for many services companies meant, having to train the workforce on an ever expanding list of products, servicing more and more options and then having to keep, maintain and supply more and more variants of spare parts. As HP moved into the multi-vendor field of service deliver, this became even more complex. 

"As the consolidation of software operating system platforms has accelerated, so has the consolidation and merger of major hardware and solution platforms as well..."

At the same time as hardware manufacturers grew their product portfolio, the operating systems that were used to manage these diverse hardware platforms started to consolidate. From fifteen or more different types of operating system, over the past fifteen years, we have seen the standard platforms evolve to be either Microsoft or Linux/Unix based for the B2B market. For the B2C market Googles Android and Apples IOS operating systems are the two predominant variants.

As the consolidation of software operating system platforms has accelerated, so has the consolidation and merger of major hardware and solution platforms as well. What was once a diverse and jumbled array of solution providers; from an IT perspective; consolidation has meant standardisation, supply chain simplification and “more bang for the buck” that companies pay for their IT.

However, “the long tail” persists. Even today, with 70%, yep 70% of IT spend just keeping the “lights on”.

Only 20-30% of IT budgets are spent on new solutions, and the vast majority of that spend is now on software, not hardware. If you look at the hardware sale of servers, storage and networking solutions across Europe over the last few years; we have seen a steady decline in growth and a flattening of sales. It is almost at a point where customers are no longer purchasing hardware at all.

This might be an oversimplification, but the market figures do seem to indicate that the market is flat or even declining (If you are in hardware sales, and disagree, please feel free to say so in the comments below).

 

The Origins of Everything as a Service

This hardware sales decline has been driven largely by the “as a Service” models, starting with “IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service”, where customers could purchase raw hardware compute poser – be it servers, storage or network capabilities; expanding into “Software as a Service” – which has had a dramatic and completely disruptive effect on the traditional software annuity licence model and now a new variant called “Platform as a Service (PaaS)”, which wraps up IaaS, SaaS and extends it across the complete enterprise of services and IT organisation is offering to its business and end user base.

If you check out companies such as Salesforce.Com or ServiceNow, they are moving rapidly away from their heartlands of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Salesforce.Com which tracks the sales engagement and onboarding of new customers and IT Service Management (ITSM) on a Service Desk (for ServiceNow) where you track end-user incidents, problems and issues that they face; into a eco system called “Platform as a Service”.

This means that ServiceNow is launching solutions for HR; for Finance, for Marketing, for example. Salesforce.com is offering the ability for apps developers to develop applications, standing on top of the salesforce platform, that also expand into HR, finance and Marketing. (As a foot note, I can see a major battle developing between these two companies over the next few years).

Why are these companies doing this?

As markets exist, companies expand to meet those markets. The number one in the CRM and ITSM markets, are respectively, Salesforce and ServiceNow. To be able to continue to grow, provide shareholder value and appear to be leading edge, the local answer is to expand their market presence into similar market landscapes – hence – moving out from their core business models into parallel markets.

 

Time for Evolution in IT Service Design

So from an IT service model perspective, we need to adapt and change as well.

Too many of the service models that exist today are silo’d; focused on vertical optimisation of an element of the service lifecycle – Service Desk, Diagnosis, field service (massively silo’d), forward and return logistics and finally repair. This, I would contend, runs the risk of a continued race to bottom line, with lower and lower costs, less margin and an ever decreasing customer experience. Oh, and before you ask, when you get to the bottom, there is nowhere else to go!

"We need to think more of the lifecycle and value stream across IT..."

Whilst customers are looking to maximise the value of their IT estate, they also want to further standardise and modernise the services that they offer to their businesses. They are looking at IT service organisations and the value that they can bring in terms of supporting and transforming their IT services; bringing more of the adaptive model that we see in the consumer world; hand held devices, mobility, ease of use and adaptive adaption to rapidly changing business needs.

This needs a new set of thinking about how services need to be positioned. We need to think more of the lifecycle and value stream across IT.

I like to think that services will continue to develop and evolve and a new ecosystem will emerge where organisations strategically partner with one another; leveraging others strengths, as well as the clients they serve; to bring better value to the IT customers. This is going to need some new thinking, maybe, from learning from the software services world. I don’t have all of the answers, but have experience a number of these cyclical changes, so understand the changes companies need to make.

If you think that it is just “business as usual” and we as a community do not need to adapt, feel free to challenge.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

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Further Reading:

• Read more articles written by Martin @ www.fieldservicenews.com/martin-summerhayes
• Read more articles on IT Services @ /www.fieldservicenews.com/ITSM
• Find out about Martin's work with MDB Consulting @ www.mdbsc.co.uk
• Follow Martin on Twitter @ twitter.com/martinsummerhay
• Connect with Martin on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/martinsummerhayes/

Development from novice to expert is something we need to go through multiple times in our working career. So, why do organisations still struggle with refining this process and what still needs to be done? Martin Summerhayes writes...

 

 

Novice?

Let me ask you a question, when were you a novice? 

Likely as not, you are currently an expert in your field of service, having worked across a number of companies and business sectors over a number of years. Your experience and maturity mean, that you may be considered an expert in your field. Whether it is supply chain, reverse logistics, inventory management, field planning, field service, engineering, remote support, or repair operations. You get the picture.

The spectrum of support areas that make up an end-2-end service model are extensive and require people to understand both the individual complexity, as well as how that whole service lifecycle fits together.

How often are people “pigeon holed” into a particular part of the service landscape, gaining experience in one area, but not understanding any other?

So, back to the question, when were you a novice?

For me, it was last Autumn, when I started a new role in a new company. Despite the many years of experience that I have in the services business; taking on a new role, in a new company, brings the feeling of being a novice and having to learn from scratch, numerous things. How the company operates; what in reality my role is verses the role that is advertised and interviewed for. The clients

and partners that I have to engage with and serve. All of these aspects take time to master and I challenge anyone to say that they are fully productive and adding value within a short period of time. Even someone with the length of experience that I have, it takes weeks and possibly months to fully embrace the diverse aspects of the role that you take on.

 

"I really do not like the word apprentice due to the meaning that it has..."

 

So, let’s turn to one of the biggest challenges in the services business today that is directly tied into being a novice and getting novices into the service world.

I have played slightly with words here, as most people would call a novice, an “Apprentice”. However, I really do not like the word apprentice due to the meaning that it has. If you check the google dictionary, the word apprentice means,  “a person who is learning a trade from a skilled employer, having agreed to work for a fixed period at low wages.” Now, I know that is what the definition means, but for those who take on these roles, it can feel negative in its meaning.

I recall starting out as a field engineer, many years ago. Yes, the salary was low compared to the other engineers in the team I was joining. However, they were all more experienced than me and had been trained on a broad range of technology. Me, I was straight out of college; had masses of theory; but no practical experience at all. I was paired up with a senior field engineer for my first month and together we travelled across greater London, resolving numerous service issues. He was kind, thoughtful and helpful in explaining both the problems and how to resolve them. He taught me the technical aspects of field service, but more importantly, he taught me how to engage with customers. How to ensure that they felt that they were important. That their issue was managed well and resolved.

More important that both of those aspects were the end-2-end views my supervisor gave me. He organised for me to sit with the field despatch team, seeing how field calls were organised. He made sure I spent time with the parts storeman, so I understood the importance of returning parts in a timely manner and finally, he let me sit with the bench repair team, so I could learn some of the techniques of component repair.

"It gave the novices the freedom to experience as many different roles and aspects of service as possible..."

That early set of experiences has always stayed with me. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to mentor and support a group of novices as they started their service careers after leaving education.

I organised their joining based on a double rotation basis. A week spent with each key aspect of the services lifecycle within the business (a lot more complex than what I had experienced when I started). This meant, starting with Service Introduction, with the technical take on of new services. Then to Remote Scheduling and Partner Support. Then into the field, across the multiple different field models – High End Systems, Break Fix, Volume Repair, and Deskside. Then into Warehousing, Logistics and Repair. This was to give them a small understanding of the services model we operated.

From there, the novices were then rotated through each department again on a four to six-week rotation. The idea being that they would deliver a specific project during that time to aid that part of the business. Finally, there was 360-degree feedback from the department heads and the novices themselves as to which department that would like to be based in for the next year. At the end of the two-year programme, they were allowed to take up permanent roles or apply for other roles in other parts of the business.

Was this approach affective? Yes, highly.

It gave the novices the freedom to experience as many different roles and aspects of service as possible. It enabled them to understand the board picture and how services fitted together. It also allowed us to understand their strengths and where they worked well and for them to understand whether service and a particular role was right for them. Some stayed and some left, but every one of the novices appreciated the effort we had put into the scheme.

So, what scheme do you have? Do you even have novices in your business?

It does not matter whether your business is massive or small, there is always an opportunity to bring on new people. Let me give you two current examples.

 

"I challenge everyone in the services world to embrace the idea of novices..."

 

The client I am working with at the moment has 40,000 employees. Yep, 40,000, across the whole of the UK. They have a novice programme and operate very similarly to what I ran previously. The cohorts are grouped together in groups, to give them peer support and so that they do not feel isolated. They do a four week rotation and work on projects designed and supported by the departments they are in. They get regular support, feedback and guidance. Each novice has a mentor that they can work with. Speaking to a number of them recently, they felt positively engaged, valued and part of the organisation.

For my own organisation, which is much smaller, we too are looking at bringing on a couple of novices this year. To support the expansion of the business and also to provide resilience by cross training them in a couple of technical areas.

So, I challenge everyone in the services world to embrace the idea of novices. Bring them into your organisations, but more importantly, have a plan and a roadmap of what they are going to do. Don’t just dump them into an area of your business and expect them to thrive, proposer and grow. Look after them and in the medium term, they will grow into roles that will add significant value to your business.

I leave with the following quote:

“In most every business, you learn by doing. The apprenticeship model is much more effective than the classroom for cultivating entrepreneurs.”

Andrew Yang (American entrepreneur, philanthropist, author, lawyer, and former candidate for President of the United States in the 2020 election

Regular Field Service News contributor Martin Summerhayes suggests the language used in service is too negative and the sector should re-frame its vocabulary as we go into 2020.

Mark Glover sat in on the latest Service Community event where the agenda covered 3D printing, data-driven manufacturing and PAS 280, the beginnings of a British standard for life-cycle engineering services.

As a sector we are drowning in data. Filtering it all down to something useful is growing more and more difficult. Here, Martin Summerhayes, outlines a strategy that will keep your head above the ones and zeros.

Martin Summerhayes takes us back to the future as he looks at field service past, present and future...

In an industry that moves as rapidly as field service often does, it is important to have a firm grasp on the nuanced skill of change management. However, getting to the heart of what makes change work lies in an all too familiar acronym writes Martin Summerhayes...

In the latest Field Service Podcast, Martin Summerhayes ponders service's evolution and plots where we are now and where we are headed.

 

In this podcast, industry expert and long-term Field Service News collaborator Martin Summerhayes chats to Kris Oldland about the industry as it is today and predicts where it might be going.

In recent years, the sector has moved from a service operation that is a cost-centre, to one that can impact customer service.
Service outfits, recognising this shift, are now building in Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to keep pace with a change that
can ultimately bring profit. Mark Glover tracks the evolving nature of KPIs in field service affirms their importance to a firm’s strategy...

Employers stifle groans and share knowing looks when a project manager starts listing KPIs. Touted in boardrooms and meeting rooms, they do however drive a business forward. They serve as signposts along a journey, ensuring that important milestones are met, completed and contribute to the end goal.

It’s a complex process to streamline but one that can bear much fruit. But is there a magic formula?

Type in ‘field Service KPIs’ to Google and your browser gets filled with an array of subjective suggestions. This is not surprising, as KPIs can be as far-reaching as a business requires. Efficiency, for example, incorporates time, such as the time it takes to complete a task, what billable time was used-up and what overtime was given to a job.

However, drilling down too much into one KPI can create issues. Martin Summerhayes, Fujitsu’s Head of Delivery Strategy and Service thinks defining a KPI is essential, something that comes from taking a long view of your service strategy. Failure to do so, he offers, could risk negative outcomes. “If you don’t look at the end-to-end,” he says, if you don’t look at the value chain that you want to achieve, if you’re not looking at the outcomes that you want to achieve and if you’re not looking at the total cost to serve then inefficiency is what you’re going to get.”

To illustrate his point, Summerhayes gives an example of the engineer told by his Manager to attend four jobs per-day.

The first he attends but without the correct parts and after explaining the situation to the customer, he leaves. He fits the parts at site two but the fault remains so raises another ticket, unable to do more, he makes a swift exit. He needs to call his branch manager (who isn’t there) after inspecting the issue at the third job, so the fault can’t be dealt with, he again explains this to the customer and departs. Finally, at job number four he fixes the part and completes the job. “

You get what you measure,” Summerhayes says, explaining the issue. “Four jobs have been done, but they haven’t been completed. The engineer hasn’t been told what to do with those four jobs. As the engineer is not being asked to completer the job, a whole load of waste is created. Of those four jobs, only one has been completed. The others will be swept back, picked up by a different engineer. You start to build complete inefficiency into the process, just purely by one measure and not being clear.”

And here lies the danger of loose KPIs. It may be tempting to create them to the nth degree but unless you create the right ones in line with the outcomes you want to achieve then you could end up pushing the wrong behaviour completely. “You need to be aware of the consequences,” Summerhayes warns. “You might measure the metric you think is right, but it will actually drive the wrong behaviour and it could even drive the wrong culture.”

Other broad KPIs, as well as time, include service delivery and the aforementiond efficiency; yet customer service – a key focus in modern field service - feeds into all the above: processes, service delivery and efficiency. In fact, one could argue it sits over the top of all KPIs being fed by those beneath it. Field service management requires a balance between time and cost savings while creating better customer service.

But how can you measure this ambiguous metric? Summerhayes says it consists of many elements. “The right people, with the right training and the right skills and the right motivation will drive employee satisfaction, employee engagement, employee loyalty and employee motivation,” he conveys. 

But within that, there needs to be a further question. How does an organisation create a positive employee culture? Does it come down simply to managing your team correctly and should you differentiate KPIs between your team and management?

In a podcast recording for Field Service News, Co- Founder and Managing Partner at Si2 Partners, Nick Frank identified that separate KPIs were extremely useful, particularly when relaying an employees’ worth to the company back to that employee. “It’s important to find the measure that motivates your staff and they can actually do something about,” he said. “If they’ve taken action, they can actually see how they’re impacting how the business is working. You should see that Managers and engineers, for example, are two different sets of stakeholders, so you should separate out the management metrics from the team metrics.”

I think Nick hits on an important point here, one that relates on human level and the impact we have in the world we operate in; which in this instance is the world of work. If you’re an engineer who is part of a large organisation, who checks-in once a month for the firm’s monthly meeting and reliant on mobile connectivity to keep in touch with colleagues, then it can be difficult to feel part of the company’s bigger picture. Having someone explain to you – through KPIs – that your excellent fix-rates are positively impacting the firm’s bottom line can only be motivating.

Service KPIs, therefore, should drive profits through loyal employees and satisfied customers. The latter achieved by acknowledging three aspects that customers expect today: access to support; overall solution time and being kept informed throughout the service experience.

Satisfied customers in turn creates customer loyalty which in turn creates revenue. Acquiring a new client is three times more expensive than retaining a current one. The focus should be on customer retention not customer acquisition. Keeping clients satisfied means adhering to KPIs that put them at the core. It means being creative with your data and having the courage to look at results a different way. If your measurements are showing positive numbers - for example, an 85% first-time fix rate - then turning the metric upside can really disrupt how you look at your services. Once flipped, analysing the 15% of jobs that didn’t meet customer expectation can lead to more insightful analysis of your service performance. It’s easy to remain in a KPI comfort zone.

Measuring what you don’t want to measure can sometimes return results that you didn’t expect but once acted on, can make all the difference in an era where the customer has, and will always come first.