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The not-for-profit knowledge sharing group the Service Community, has announced their next event will hosted by GE Power at their new Stafford Location on the 16th October 2018...

The event will run from 11.00 – 16.00 and include a light lunch.

You can sign up by emailing us at info@service-community.uk

 

Agenda

 

• Meet 10.30 for 11.00 Start
• Welcome & Service in GE
  • Service Challenges in GE Power
• Creating Service focus in a successful product business - Ross Townsend – Business Manager Ishida
  • Ishida is already a successful packaging equipment business. Ross will share his experience of the challenges of developing advanced services in an environment where the product is king. We will have an opportunity to discuss what is working, but also what is not, so this should be a great conversation for those driving change in product orientated businesses
• Networking Lunch
• Selling Service Value - Leon Sijbers Service Director at GE Power
  • One of the biggest challenges of selling business is to identify and quantify the pain points in your customers. Leon is an expert in identifying these pain points and then selling value to close the service deal. He will share with us his own approach which he has developed over the past 10 years in service sales.  An excellent session for anyone developing a service sales team
• Buying Advanced Services and the relevance of a new Service Standard
  • This session will provide insights from one of the most sophisticated buyers of services such as a availability contracts, as to how services are bought, and why the recently published British Standard ‘Through-life engineering services – Adding business value through a common framework – Guide’ (PAS280) is a must read for all professionals involved in servitisation of industrial businesses.
• Networking break
• Assets & Service Data Gravity - Mark Homer: GE Digital
  • Vanson Bourne recently carried out a research programme on behalf of ‘ServiceMax from GE Digital’ aimed at understanding on the importance of service data in managing assets. Mark Homer will share the results and the insights learned.
• 16.00 Meeting Close

 

Field Service News will be in attendance to report from the event and we hope to see you there also!

Find out more about the Service Community @ www.service-community.uk

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to nick Frank, Founding Partner, Si2 Partners, about some of the key findings of a recent research project recently undertaken by the two companies that explored emerging trends in the recruitment and development of both field service engineers as well as service managers across a wide range of industry verticals.

 

Find more from Nick Frank @ Si2Partners

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Nick Frank, Si2 Partners and Harald Wasserman explore the growing conversation around digital servitization as they attempt to break down the whole challenge around digitalisation into smaller more practical actions which leaders can take to make themselves more competitive...

The increased accessibility of digital technologies is accelerating the shift from product to service led growth strategies.

The problem is that many leaders are confused by the jargon and unclear how to leverage these opportunities Intuitively they know they must do something or potentially face disruption, as they see the industrial world shifting in 3 major ways:

1. The growing awareness of the importance of data and the accessibility of powerful analytics technology means that most business leaders recognise the value of data. GDPR is an excellent example of this awareness at a legislative level
2. The Industrial Internet of Things has transformed how we can move data around the world
3. That the role of services in industrial business is being increasingly perceived as strategic rather than tactical, as companies want to capture more value and monetise their data through Service-led business models

Successful companies starting along this ‘Digital Servitisation’ route, typically start their journey with the following three basic steps:

1. Discovery: opening up their eyes to the possibilities
2. Solutioning: developing and piloting tangible ideas
3. Business Plan: to fund the scale up and the often associated organisation transformation

Discovery:

Understanding the potential impact of these trends on your business and developing a compelling vision is an important first step.

A mistake many companies make is to start with Technology first, creating platforms and offering services they assume the customer wants.

If they started with the customer and industry need and then worked back to how they add value through technology and know-how, they are much more likely to be successful.

The Discovery phase can be facilitated by three simple methodologies to identify the profit pools that will pay for your investments; Value Mapping your customer and industry supply chain, examining your Points of Selling in the product life-cycle, and finally a review of the data you currently create and will/can create in the future.

Solutioning:

Solutioning involves breaking the vision down into tangible projects and programmes that deliver something real.

Although understanding customers enables us to quantify the opportunities and set priorities, figuring out where to focus a Digital Servitisation strategy that flows across organisational silo’s is not so easy. One way is to see the impact from two very distinct perspectives:

1. Technology Digitalisation:

That product and supporting operational infrastructures are designed to produce data that can be collected, analysed and then monetized through service-based business models. Generally, technology is used in one of two ways:

• Technology in the product and company infrastructure that enables Digital Support, such as remote diagnostics or predictive maintenance.
• Capabilities and technologies in the organisation that enables Data Analytics, such machine learning, visual analytics and business intelligence technologies.

2. Back Office Digitalisation:

The tools we use to manage our business back-office which sustain and improve margins /profits. Examples might be Service Management solutions, CRM and ERP. Generally, there are two aspects to consider in terms of system & process development:

• To enable Customer Management, making customer data transparent and so breaking down silos.
• Enable Business Process Automation: so reducing cost and often leading to improved customer experience.

3. Combining Technology and Back-office Digitalisation:

When products and infrastructure that collect, analyse and action data, are fully integrated with the back-office process, we can explore what new business models such as Digital Servitisation can deliver in terms of value

Business plan:

Having identified the customer solutions and internal process improvements, it is time to execute and deliver the products and offering.

We require a business plan which defines Where we will target, with What, When and Who in the target organisations and How the delivery model will deliver excellence.

This is a process in its own right and one which we call Customer Focused Business Development.

It involves working through a structured approach to customer segmentation, defining the service product portfolio that is relevant to specific customer profiles, the GoTo market or sales strategy that will be most effective, and the service delivery model that drives profitability.

Learning points

Digital Servitisation does not all have to be done at once, nor is it necessarily a linear process. An agile approach in small pilots or sprints that overcome specific hurdles are a good way to drive small incremental changes towards a larger goal.

The key to success is to use cross-functional teams with a breadth of expertise and experience coupled with a logical framework to cut through complexity. In our experience, it is possible to run through these 3 phases between 3-6 months depending on the complexity and ambition of the business.

The key to success is to use cross-functional teams with a breadth of expertise and experience coupled with a logical framework to cut through complexity.

Don’t be put off by technology jargon, and if in doubt always come back to the customer value as your guiding light through the complexity of change.

Once you have developed your direction, execution of the transformation strategy is more akin to a major change programme. For more thoughts on this process, you can read our FSN articles on the Art of Driving Innovative Change and Self-learning solution-focused mindset.

If you would like to know more about how Si2’s Digital Servitisation programme can help you unlock the data and know-how of your business, then please contact us Nick Frank or Harald Wasserman who can be reached at info@si2partners.com

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Mashed up by machine learning? Dumbfounded by data science? Agnostic about AI? Nick Frank, Managing Consultant, Si2 Partners doesn’t promise to the provide all the answers, but he can offer some crucial insight into the management process on turning your field service data into profits...

Recently I have been working with Data Scientist Eric Topham co-founder of The Data Analysis Bureau, to understand why many company leaders are struggling to turn data into profits. Eric solves data problems. He is the professional who will understand if it is a Data Science or a Data Analytics challenge and then deliver the appropriate math-based algorithms.

Data Science is about discovering new patterns in data in order to make predictions and take real-time action. The mathematical technologies used in this process are dynamic and self-learning, sometimes being grouped under the ‘Artificial Intelligence’ label. In Field Service, the types of data problems addressed by these technologies might include scheduling or predictive maintenance.

Data Analytics deals with historical and more ‘static’ data, where the desire is to test ideas or hypothesis, understand relationships and develop insights into historical patterns.Data Analytics deals with historical and more ‘static’ data, where the desire is to test ideas or hypothesis, understand relationships and develop insights into historical patterns. Here techniques such as statistical modelling, data mining and visualization are used to gain results. Common examples you might recognize are knowledge management or performance reporting.

Data problem solvers such as Eric will tell you that the hardest part of his job is not developing the data solution, it is defining the problem to be solved in terms of reducing costs or increasing revenues or hopefully both.

The companies who can to articulate their business problem in terms of money and performance, make it much easier for his team to create the mathematical models to answer the questions posed.

One of the ways of defining the business problem is to use value mapping tools, such as the Value Iceberg described in February’s issue of Field Service news “Don’t be caught in the Emperor’s new clothes. First focus on the customer”.

These help companies articulate not only the direct benefits to the customer, but more importantly the hidden value of their product or service, such as improved material through-put, lower energy costs or reduced risk.

A good example would be a manufacturer of air conditioning systems who targets facility managers for whom 30% of the building’s running costs is energy. This company targets their products and services to reduce their energy by 10%, enabling a very compelling sales argument.

However, the vast majority are far blander and generally fall into three broad categories:

[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• Bland USPers: Ask people about their value and they will trot out a predictable unique selling point(USP) such as 24/7 spare parts delivery. The question is do they know what this means to the customer and price accordingly.
• The Easy and Obvious: Many can tell you what their customers tell them, but not much more! Do you hear phrases such as. ‘My customer needs fast and right-first-time resolution!’. What does this really mean to the customer in terms of money and performance?
• Know, but cannot say: Then there is also a significant proportion who intuitively know their customers, but struggle to move themselves beyond the immediate need. They need help to articulate how they make their customers more profitable.

[/unordered_list]

If the key to monetizing the data is to never separate the business problem from the data problem, how should companies approach this challenge. Many lack the confidence to take the journey due to the intimidating jargon and fast pace of change.

This high-level roadmap is our attempt to demystify the process by breaking it down into 5 key common-sense steps:

[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Define the business problem: Whether it’s internal service operations or new services, a value mapping exercise such as the Value Iceberg is the essential start point. But do not just look at the customer. Look at the end to end industry supply chain and in particular the data hand-offs between the different actors in the supply chain. We discussed this more in our 2016 Field Service news article ‘ 5 patterns to discovering new data-driven service revenues’.
2. Solution and data needs: Identify the solutions you might offer, the critical data you need and how you will collect it. In their rush to create data services solutions, many companies jump to this step first without a clear view of the business problem. The result can be developing IoT platforms with no revenue stream or data they cannot analyse.
3. Define data problem: Formulate and scope the problem. Then scope and design the solution. Here matching internal capabilities matched with external expert partners is often the key to success.
4. Implement & evaluate: Start with a manageable pilot, revisit the business problem and ensure the solution is able to add the value you desire.
5. Scale Up: When successful, you are ready to scale up across your organization

[/ordered_list]

If data is particularly relevant to growing your field service business, then you can reach me @ nick.frank@si2partners.com

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With service becoming more and more integral to business strategies across the globe the role of the service leader is equally becoming increasingly crucial within successful organisations. Nick Frank, Principal Consultant and Founder of Si2 Partners explores what makes a great Service Leader...

For Service leaders wanting to develop their talent, or companies wanting to recruit new talent, knowing the competencies required to achieve your business goals is vital.

To start, we need to define what a ‘Service Leader’ looks like, smells like and tastes like, similar to a fine cheese it is not one dimensional.

As with most things in life, what defines success is often contextual.

In defining service leadership, we have identified four relevant perspectives.

1. Business Evolution;
2. Service Evolution;
3. Organizational Structure;
4. People or the individual.

Business evolution

Businesses are constantly developing and pass through different stages such as start-up, maturity or transformation.

What we find is that many companies run into problems when their business context changes due to economic realities, and their leadership cannot adapt fast enough.

As a service leader you will consequently need to be clear on your current and future position aspiration.Successful leaders need to be able to demonstrate different competencies depending on this business context. As a service leader you will consequently need to be clear on your current and future position aspiration.

For example, if you currently work for a start-up or a business at its early stages, it will be critical for your long-term career development that you acquire a higher level of business acumen. In a larger more mature business, leaders will develop change management capabilities which are essential for business transformation.

Service evolution 

The overall business context of the company drives the service evolution, inevitably putting new demands on service leadership.

Breaking this down, we observed four generic service strategy steps, which describe the journey of companies when evolving from product focus to service orientation:

1. Product life cycle; Ensure equipment availability
2. Product performance; Optimize performance over the lifecycle
3. Process support; to help the customer in improving their business processes
4. Process Outsourcing; perform processes on behalf of customers

This evolution is influenced by the mix and maturity of customer profile(s) and will impact both the breadth and depth of competence requirements.

For example, looking at how leaders deal with segmentation, a company focusing on solving product issues will segment their business by-products and geographical markets, whereas companies focusing on business outcomes will segment in terms of customer value.

Understanding the service evolution context is probably the most important area to consider when hiring/developing future service leaders.

Organisational structure

Increasingly, service organizations are being managed as a stand-alone business where companies see it as a strategic driver of growth with its own Profit & Loss responsibility. Led by a single Service leader with subordinate sub-function leaders, business acumen becomes more important than the technical knowledge of service.

The more traditional cost focused service organizations are often organized along functional lines with leaders for Field Service, Technical Support and other ‘technical’ teams.In contrast, the more traditional cost focused service organizations are often organized along functional lines with leaders for Field Service, Technical Support and other ‘technical’ teams.

Here technical expertise is more important.

The difference between the two business needs is profound. Having the wrong person in a leadership role can become a major barrier to growth. It is not that they are a poor performer, but that their skill sets and temperament have not developed to be effective to overcome a particular business challenge.

People or individual

As companies develop internal talent or search for new talent externally, Service Leaders may come from a non-technical function and/or background.

For example, Sales people are increasingly being asked to lead service organizations because of their commercial background. Alternatively, the current Service leader might only have worked within a specific organizational context such as Field Service or Digital Marketing.

The impact in both scenarios is that an individual is being moved or promoted into the position, shouldering new accountabilities with a different and/or limited traditional, service knowledge.

As service organizations become more sophisticated and require a leadership team with a diverse mix of competencies it becomes more important to be cognizant of the complementary expertise required as well as how it fits into company culture and people strategies, processes and aspirations.

Linking context to competency

Competencies are the parameters we use to describe the capabilities of people.

Within service, we have identified 30 of these competencies which can be grouped under leadership, management, personal attributes and technology (in the digital context). Successful service leadership comes from conscious adoption of these competencies to the business context and service maturity you operate in.

Coupled with a genuine understanding of your current/aspired structure, values and culture will enable leaders to create an organizational environment where people can succeedCoupled with a genuine understanding of your current/aspired structure, values and culture will enable leaders to create an organizational environment where people can succeed. So how can we use this insight when recruiting new service leaders into your teams.

One of the most powerful factors applied in the selection of competencies is undoubtedly the job/position requirements. To support this and to provide a summary overview, we found it was possible to distinguish four functional groups, Service Sales; Service Delivery; Service Excellence and Service Innovation.

Each of these groups include a complete set of relevant accountabilities.

For example, for Service Sales we include customer management, sales management, business development and product development. In total, one position should ideally include 5-8 clearly articulated and prioritized competencies.

The mix of these competencies will depend on the context we have discussed and in combination, will be used to develop job descriptions that more accurately reflect the needs of the business, rather than an intuitive perception of what the business leader thinks.

In summary

Great is defined by a number of contextual factors, therefore, the consideration of the competencies required and the weighting of each is going to be essential to be able to articulate the right job profile for a given context.

Whether you are developing the capabilities of an existing employee or hiring externally, our recommendation is to ‘go slow to go quick’, meaning take the extra time to consider your context at the outset of your search. Companies’ likelihood of finding and developing great service leaders in the B2B world will be greatly enhanced.

If you would like to know more about the competencies that define great Service leaders, than you can download our white paper by contacting the authors at dag.gronevik@servicepeoplematters.com, richard.cowley@servicepeoplematters.com or nick.frank@si2partners.com

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UK based non-profit knowledge sharing group the Service Community which Field Service News is proud to partner with has recently announced one of the most diverse events they have organised in the last couple of years.

The next Service Community event will be hosted by the Cambridge Service Alliance at the Institute for Manufacturing (a division of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering) on the 19th April 2018.

Being at one of the world’s leading service research organisations means that we hope to mix the very best in thought leadership, with practical hands-on experiences of transforming service businesses. Each discussion will be approximately 40 mins enabling you to discuss real issues with real people.  We are also very lucky to have a The Digital Manufacturing Tour, where you will have a chance to hear about the research initiatives that the IfM are undertaking on digitalisation in manufacturing.

In addition to a speaker from the CSA, we have leaders from MARS, Oracle and Fujifilm joining us to discuss and share experiences on how they have tackled some of their key service business challenges.

How to register

You can reserve your place by sending an email to info@service-community.uk. We will then contact you to confirm registration and will send out the joining instructions nearer to the event.

Please feel free to forward this information to colleagues who you think would be interested. We look forward to seeing you in April

Agenda for the 19th April 2018

12.00 - 13.00: Meet at the Institute of Manufacturing at Cambridge University
13.00: Nick Frank: Welcome

The Impact of Big Data and Machine Learning technologies on developing Customer Experience in manufacturing companies Dr Mohamed Zaki: Deputy Director of the Cambridge Service Alliance will introduce the work the Cambridge Service Alliance does and share recent research he has undertaken into Customer Experience development

Leading Service to a Trusted Advisor Culture:  Ashley Weller: UK Service Director at Mars drinks will share his own journey in driving sustainable cultural change

The Digital Manufacturing Tour

Coffee & Networking break

Real World Challenges of implementing Augmented Reality in Field Service Adil Kabel: Technical Support Manager, at Fuji Film responsible for EMEA 2nd line support for Wide Format Digital Printers will share his experiences of running two pilot projects in the Field Service organisation looking at 'glasses' and handheld augmented reality apps

Benefits and Challenges of Self Service models - Stephen Darkes Snr Process Analyst: Global Systems Remote Support at Oracle: Steve will give us some insights into the different Self-Service support models that Oracle have introduced to enhance customer satisfaction and make their business more cost-effective.  He will cover a range of models, from the use of community forums for Diagnosis and Resolution to the development of Customer Replaceable Units for hardware.  He will share his experiences of the range of benefits that self-service brings, as well as the challenges of implementation.  Many businesses can make their customer support more effective through self-service business models.

17.00 Networking Drinks

Reserve your place by sending an email to info@service-community.uk. We will then contact you to confirm registration and will send out the joining instructions nearer to the event.

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Despite huge leaps forward in technology coming at us left right and centre, the companies that will get the most from a process of digitalisation are those that keep fundamental, traditional values of putting the customer first at the core of their ethos writes Nick Frank, Managing Partner, Si2 Partners.

Those companies that are successful in implementing a digital-led growth strategy don’t bother with the jargon of the moment!

The leaders in this field start with the basics – a deep understanding of their customer’s problems and then work backwards to offer solutions that create value or reduce risk. As part of the journey, they look hard at their own DNA and take action to fill their capability shortfalls. They identify the actual data they need and then automate the data collection/analytics process to deliver scalable solutions.

Businesses starting this shift to service led growth would do well to note that successful companies do not focus on the rhetoric, but rather have an intense obsession with how to make their customers more successful. The lesson to be learned is using the latest jargon does not put you ahead of the game. Believe this and you might not realise that you are leaving your business ‘naked’ to competitive actions, just like the emperor in the children’s story.

In the last year, I have heard this same story time and time again. At the recent After Market conference in Hamburg, we heard speakers from SKF, Outotec, Caterpillar and Serco tools all starting with the customer problem, defining the customer pain map in terms of real money.

Talk to experts in machine learning or knowledge management and one hear’s exactly the same story. Start with the business problem or the KPI and then work back to the data solution. For some, this means adding services such as analytics or remote access to products to create customer value. Others go further and no longer sell a product but an outcome such as leasing a tractor unit of a truck by the mile.

In all the success stories there is a common theme. Each company is able to articulate in terms of money, why their customers should buy their solutions.

They almost all do this following what I call the Value Iceberg principal.

The cost of the product or service you provide can be clearly seen above the waterline.

However, from the customers perspective, there are many other costs within their business below the ‘waterline’. Some are easy to define such as labour, material throughput and energy. Others are much harder such as overheads or obsolescence. And then there is RISK and UNCERTAINTY that are extremely intangible and frightening when quantified, but which have a strong emotional impact on companies buying decisions.

The most profitable manufacturing companies understand the iceberg very well. By adding services to their products and creating integrated solutions, there exists a huge opportunity to capture more value that is hidden deep within the customers’ business processes. Take the truck example. The tractor unit represents maybe only 8% of the annual running costs. Below the waterline 50% of the operating costs is the fuel used, 25% the driver and profit accounts for perhaps 2-3%.

Over 20 years ago, MAN truck’s UK distributor identified this value and added maintenance services to their portfolio that were designed to reduce fuel consumption by 10% and so double the profitability of a tractor unit over the year.

Using telematics technology in the cab, they were able to manage the running costs so well, they could shift their business model to effectively lease trucks by the mile. The resulting value argument was so compelling, that over a 20-year period their business grew from £50M to 550M. The other OEM’s are now following!

For leaders of change, this deep, almost obsessive understanding of customer value, gives them the confidence to know in what businesses and technologies to invest. It allows them to understand whether customers can afford more outcome-based services and how far their business should move along the Product to Service continuum.

This value-based phenomenon is also very real when we start to look at the UK macroeconomic viewpoint. When we redefine manufacturing as a product plus associated services, a 2016 study by Cranfield University estimated this to make up 16.8% of the UK Gross Value Added(GVA) versus the traditional definition of manufacturing at 10% GVA

Perhaps this realization that our view of manufacturing is fundamentally changing, is the reason why many people focus on the digital or IR4 technologies, forgetting that these are only enablers of change. In most part, it is through services that the technologies add new value and not the other way around. But sadly many companies have yet to grasp this notion. The reality is that unless they do, many players will be left wondering why digitization and IR4 have never quite delivered on the promise!

If you would like to know more about your Value Iceberg to drive your investment priorities, then you can contact Nick at nick.frank@si2partners.com

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Nick Frank, Managing partner at Si2 Partners explores an important topic in the face of an ageing workforce crisis - how to make your brand an attractive prospect for the growing Millennial workforce...

Today, brands pervade our lives – be it food, clothes, shoes or phones - and drive the value of companies, particularly on the stock market.

The brand value of Samsung Electronics (ranked No.6 on Interbrand’s “Best Global Brands 2017”) is $56.2 billion – while for Small Medium Enterprises, their sales turnover and assets generally create their value. In either case, the value of your employer brand has an impact on many areas, including your ability to deliver growth opportunities, to hire the right talent, as well retention.

Understanding the new workforce in this regard will be critical for your Talent Management efforts – Sarah Gibbons wrote “I’m a millennial, and I embody a lot of the clichéd things you’ve heard about the generation: the frivolous wanderlust, the tattoos, the addiction to Instagram, and one pretty powerful behavioural trend – the insistence on ethical substance and integrity from brands, or in other words, choosing to make mostly idealistic purchase decisions. Without a socially conscious framework, your brand means nothing to me or many of my millennial cohort, and without capturing the millennial market, you’ll never amass the army of brand advocates you need to partake of the nearly $200 billion in millennial-driven sales each year”.

Unlike many of their Consumer driven organisations like Coca-Cola, many Manufacturing Service companies being technical driven do not focus on this critical area so this article aims to provide some assistance in what to consider.

However what is an employer brand?

It is the internal and external perception of your company. It is often not a single ‘something’ that drives the perception. For example, the belief you have in the Apple brand starts with the shop you visit and the service they provide. The decision to purchase a wonderfully designed product is only reinforced when it works well, and by the reception and quality of the phone. If something does not work, you take note of how Apple deals with maintenance or the return policy. This end-to-end experience drives a belief in you and it is the belief that drives your behaviour - a positive belief will have you returning to buy more Apple products.

It is critical that you develop and communicate workplace expectations internally - what is acceptable and what is notIn the same way, a person experiences how a company responds to and leads their employees.

This will be communicated to others and of course, will influence whether people are retained or if they will look elsewhere for a brand they want to work for.

So, what can you do to build a strong employer brand? There are many actions that can be taken to grow or strengthen your employer brand, and the energy exerted will be driven by how seriously you wish to be taken and how important your employer brand is to the delivery of business opportunities.

Our goal here is not to overload you with the many actions that can help, but to share what I consider to be the critical few – 3 simple things you can do irrespective of the size of your organisation.

First, it is critical that you develop and communicate workplace expectations internally - what is acceptable and what is not. In developing the expectations, try to reflect the organisation you want to be and the people you wish to hire and retain. For example, as a software company, you will inevitably hire younger generations.

When a leader is seen as driving the right behaviours, share their success, its impact on team morale and the impact on the organisation’s growthHaving flexible work hours and dress codes will help you, as these are important attributes today! However, frankly, these are the easy wins – expectations around leadership style and development of the team will carry far more weight and will be shared amongst top talent more than the hygiene factors.

The second step is to reinforce and redirect workforce behaviours. When a leader is seen as driving the right behaviours, share their success, its impact on team morale and the impact on the organisation’s growth. Equally, when a leader does not drive the right behaviour, they need to be told and redirected to what is expected. If this leader is permitted to continue with their unacceptable behaviour, it will undermine your employer brand building efforts.

The most important contributor to your employer brand is for the leadership team to view it as equally important as product brand value. In the great brands I have worked for, I can remember very clearly the good and great leaders who absolutely represented the brands they led.

They made me proud to work there, valued my contributions, reminded me of my obligations to the employer brand in what they said, but most importantly in what they did.

Value your employer brand as much as your company/product brand. Set expectations, hold people to these expectations, and always walk the talk.The real employer brand is defined in the moment when an employee issue raises itself in the workplace. Is the company compassionate, caring or mechanistic in its HR actions? The rest of the workforce watch, as this will define exactly the company they work for.

In summary, value your employer brand as much as your company/product brand. Set expectations, hold people to these expectations, and always walk the talk.

Companies, as well as people, define themselves every day by what they say and, more importantly, do. There’s no doubt - great employer brands built with this in mind will attract and retain top talent.

For more information on ‘Building your Employer Brand’, contact Dag Gronevik or Nick Frank at info@si2partners.com or call +44 208 144 6452.

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Nick Frank, Managing partner at Si2 Partners, looks at the trials and tribulations of sourcing the talent to drive your field service organisation forward and asks why are we not doing this better?

Delivering on business objectives demands that we really understand and acquire those capabilities that help us differentiate from competition. Indeed, the same is true for us as professionals as we look for own next steps in our career. Yet matching needs with people is still recognised as one of the biggest challenges for employers and employees alike.

The reality is that for business in general and in the area of service business specifically, finding people who can deliver (experience, knowledge, qualifications & competencies), are highly motivated (right career move, location, salary, benefits & company) and fit (industry, company values, team they will be working with) is a major management headache. The impact of getting this process wrong can be a costly, time consuming, an emotionally draining exercise and frankly devastating on objectives.

Why is it like this?

Successful companies ideally manage their talent acquisition through a balance of succession planning, external hiring, or interim positions. This journey is complex and fraught with organisational, political and external challenges to deliver a robust and effective talent management framework. In this age when data, analytics and connectivity technologies threaten to disrupt many industries, the pressure to introduce new capabilities has never been stronger. Increasingly, service leaders are frustrated that to find talent whether it’d be sourced internally or externally is taking too long and with minimal choice.

This is why in trying to find great people, companies traditionally turn to head-hunters who rely on their respective contact base to provide suitable candidates. Whereas many head-hunters have developed dedicated expertise in finding well defined positions in areas such as IT, Finance and HR, very few if any, provide the same level of contacts, expertise and competencies in successfully searching for the modern service professional. Instead, head-hunters turn to the now infamous LinkedIn website as their primary tool for finding people.

 

Interestingly though, if you have ever tried to search for service people using these types of recruitment tools you will discover that it is very difficult to pinpoint the type of positions and qualifications you require to fill your vacancies.

One of the main stumbling blocks is that service is such a wide generic term that it identifies 1000’s of unsuitable candidates.

Using company job titles seems a good idea, but often although these might make sense to people within the business, they bear little relevance to the outside world. The result is that recruiters are forced to search for candidates with vague, irrelevant job titles which are difficult to match on the main social media platforms available today.

Alternative approaches such as on-line job boards have other challenges. Frequently job descriptions are not clear and easily understood. Recruiters do not know which talent match the ‘Service’ brief and are often overwhelmed with the volume of response, because many candidates apply based on their belief they work in the ‘Service’ industry, yet often are completely unsuitable for the job.

In summary, companies often end up waiting up from 9- 12 months to successfully fill Service Leadership positions!

What can we do about it?

With above in mind, it is possible to reduce the time it takes to hire good service people by more than 50%, through following three very simple rules:

1.Job descriptions:

Organisations are good at producing job descriptions that suit their internal HR processes, but these are often not easy to translate into the terminology used in the wider world. Don’t fall into this trap! Make sure the job description you develop meets both the internal company needs and for the recruiter is geared to the language of social networks.

2.Work with people who know Service:

Working with professionals who deeply understand your business environment and needs, will be far more effective in terms of time and quality.

They will enable a more relevant job description to be developed as well as widen and enrich the search to allow candidates from seemingly unrelated backgrounds to be identified. Very few internal recruitment teams or external head-hunters truly understand the ‘Service’ space, or the wide variety of terminology used by service job seekers.

 

3.Be involved:

Make sure that you are fully aware of the type of people being searched, so that you can ensure it is focused on the right experiences. Close teamwork between client and recruiter has been shown to significantly reduce the time it takes to identify great candidates.

By following these three simple guidelines, you will not only find people faster, you will find better qualified talent that will enrich your organisation as well as significantly reducing your recruitment costs. They also can be applied to those professionals looking to develop their career paths.

These guidelines have been developed over many years participating in the hiring process of service professionals across many parts of the world.

Whilst conceptually, fairly straightforward, they are not so easy to follow and execute. With technical and service business talent at a premium and the adoption of on-line search through social networks is transforming the recruitment process.

Good definition thorough understanding the service “space” and feedback throughout the recruitment process have become critical to successfully finding the nuggets of gold in the ocean of working humanity.

For more information on recruiting Great Service People, contact Dag Gronevik, Richard Cowley or Nick Frank on how to ‘Build your Service Capability’ at info@si2partners.com or call +44 208 144 6452.

 

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