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Field Service Insight UK is a brand new industry event that will be held on the 9th March 2016 at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, hosted by mplsystems.

The day will consist of a unique mix of presentations, interactive talks, customer case studies and networking opportunities for professionals in the field service management sector.

Unlike many other shows and conferences in the industry, Field Service Insight UK is a smaller, focused event designed to address key topics and trends via a mix of industry professionals, field service organisations and topical experts. With a compact agenda over a 4 hour time frame the event has been put together to allow busy professionals to attend without having to dedicate a full working day.

Paul White, CEO, mplsystems comments “The field service industry is rapidly changing and introducing more and more advanced tools and technologies to improve operations than ever before. It is therefore important for organisations to understand the industry, what is changing and how other businesses are successfully implementing field service solutions to improve performance and remain competitive. Field Service Insight UK has been designed to address key topics and trends, such as the Internet of Things, Servitisation and best practice project implementation that will provide the audience with a range of knowledge from some of the best speakers in the industry.”

 

This new industry event is targeted at those in senior level positions who manage the field service delivery, operations or technology within their organisation. The presentations and case studies at this event will suit those individuals in organisations with 20+ field based workers who are looking at ways to improve service delivery and want to know more about how new technologies are changing the way we work.

Speakers will include Dave Ormston, IT Success Specialist from leading IT Consultancy LOCS, Paul Gresty, Managing Director of Ecomaster and a case study session from Rob Burgess, European Service Manager from leading casino equipment manufacturer, TCSJOHNHUXLEY.

Nick Frank, Founding Member of the Steering Committee at Manufacturing Services Thought Leadership Network (MSTLN) who will be hosting an interactive session on Servitisation and the Internet of Things in the field service sector. This will be followed by Paul White, CEO mplsystems, discussing the latest technology solutions for field service drawing on key customer project implementations including Cofely, the Metric Group and Gamestec.

 

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For more information or to register go to: mplsystems

 

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The world of manufacturing is going through a seismic change with parallels being drawn to the industrial revolution. And as the trend of servitization takes seed the role of the field service engineer takes centre stage and is more important than ever before. Nick Frank, Principal Consultant of Frank Partners explains...

‘I am still making order out of the chaos of reinvention’ said novelist John Le Carre as he penned another cold war spy thriller.

Many would say the same is true of manufacturing today. Gone are the days when a manufacturer simply made the product, delivered it to the customer, sometimes supplied some parts & services, and then moved onto the next sale. In today’s unpredictable world, this model is fast becoming unsustainable.

Accelerated by the chaos of the financial crisis and propelled by the industrial internet, many businesses are moving beyond this traditional notion of manufacturing. No longer do they just ‘make stuff’, they provide services such as financing, maintenance programmes, lifecycle consulting or even outcome orientated service contracts. Complex equipment manufacturers are leading the way in evolving ever more strategic relationships with their clients, as they deliver their technology as a service outcome rather than stand-alone product.

 

Why is this important? It’s not just that product transaction orientated business models are being replaced by those centered on relationships, outcomes and service. But that to achieve this re-invention, manufacturing must overcome a severe skills shortage! Without people and skills, all the advances in technology and thinking will stagnate. Companies need to attract a completely new talent pool into their industry. One that is technically and socially more diverse and which has many of the marketing, customer experience and media skills found in the FMCG and financial sectors.

If manufacturing is re-inventing itself, so must the services back-office. Much has been written around how IoT and analytics will change the nature of field service in terms of efficiency, transparency and customer relationship management. All this is true, but more profoundly as the product/service boundary blurs towards solutions, so the idea of field service as an entity must fundamentally change. Rather than being perceived as a ‘bolt on’ entity fixing customer problems, field service must be integrated into the business. As this happens it too must broaden its skills set, outlook and relationships, especially in the areas engineering, sales and other service back-office operations.

As connectivity and data become more available in real time, so increasingly problems can be solved centrally. As service thinking becomes more embedded in manufacturing businesses, so even self-healing technologies may be introduced into product design. One can see that this will require a completely different approach as to how service organisations are perceived and managed. It is logical that in order to provide seamless outcomes and experiences to the customer, organisations will become much more integrated, between, centralised technical support, the machine itself, local support, 3^rd parties and parts and sales/relationship management. Exactly how this happens will depend on the business models being supported.

For example in the Asia-Pacific market a leading supplier of industrial robots see their mix of Field /Central services swinging from 60/40% to 40/60% as they increasingly integrate remote services into their solutions. There are companies in the defence industry who have their service team located in situ on warships where they are contracted to provide availability. These are perhaps the more extreme examples of the moment, but one can clearly see that there is a link between the technologies, the contractual relationship with the customer, and the organisation of the service organisation.

 

We we will also see field service and centralised support organisation being closer to the sales teams. Just look at the emphasis we have seen in recent years on the Trusted Advisor roles and the discussions of how field service as one of the major customer touch-points, has a significant impact on customer experience. Trying to balance relationship skills with technical problem solving is a real challenge for the industry.

The bottom line is that as manufacturing re-invents itself, so field service as an integral part of most service offerings will become a significant part of the companies growth strategy. How this will happen is difficult to tell, because we are still in the early stages of a manufacturing revolution. However, this re-invention of manufacturing is exciting from two perspectives. It means that a more diverse and broader skills set must be attracted into industry. And secondly that field service itself will need to adapt to evolving product technologies and business models bringing new challenges and opportunities for its people.

To be part of this re-invention process, Service Leaders can follow a simple 3 point plan:

1. Undertake a strategic re-evaluation of the customer /industry supply chain to identify how services can contribute to sustainable business growth.
2. Experiment with and adopt connectivity technologies to discover the cost and business model benefits
3. Constantly look at how other businesses are adapting. This Outside-In perspective will speed up your adoption of innovation and can be gained in many ways. You can achieve this through not only reading publications such as Field Service News, but by joining networks such as that offered by ‘The Manufacturer’ to explore the role of Manufacturing Services in industry (MSTLN.com), the Service Community (www.service-community.uk) or the servitization courses for industry by the Aston Business School, UK.

 

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The great and the good of the service management industry came together at this years Service Management Expo held in London's Exel and Field Service News was at the heart of the action hosting the Field Service Solutions Zone.

Here we bring you a selection of the speakers from Day One including: George De Boer, International Alliance Manager, TomTom Telematics, Professor Tim Baines, Aston Business School, Nick Frank, Principal Consultant at Frank Partners, Steve Foxley, Customer Services Director Siemens.

 

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Have you ever had a great business idea, and found yourself saying ‘Oh that’s just a bit beyond our capability’. Shame, as you have already talked yourself out of it before you have even started!

But if a project seems a little too big for your business, perhaps give it a second chance by exploring partners that can make up for your capabilities gap. Service Management expert Nick Frank, Principal at Frank Partners explains more... 

Many businesses utilise local partners or agents to sell and service their products in regions outside their organisations reach. This arms length type relationship is OK until you start wanting to develop more advanced service offerings, which may require a far deeper integration between the product side of your company and the customer facing service operations.

Value propositions such as uptime guarantees, vendor managed inventory or outcome based services require far more interaction between the manufacturer the agent and potentially multiple partners. But this ‘intra-dependency’ also makes the relationship between the partners more complex.

 

Take the fastener manufacturing company that was asked by a major Automotive OEM to supply every single nut, bolt, rivet, screw and clip for a particular car platform. Rather than supplying 10 part numbers, they now had to supply 450 most of which they now had to buy-in! How do you go from manufacturer to a ‘just-in-time’ delivery partner with a global supply base in just 3 months?

Their solution was to use a 3^rd party logistics provider to move parts from all over Europe to a point of fit in the factory, while they focussed on Application Engineering Services, Purchasing and Programme Management. They challenged their mind-set and built a supplier ecosystem that included many of their competitors.

As the business developed some competitors even became key customers and suddenly relationships were not quite as simple as before. It shows that with a bit of creativity, an advanced service offering can be delivered that goes beyond the initial core capabilities.

So how can an organisation provide solutions for complex customer business problems that at first sight appear to be beyond their capability?

Recently I worked with a small UK SME who embarked on creating an ecosystem to deliver an IoT technology platform that enables smaller equipment suppliers to deliver remote services such as diagnostics and upgrades. MAC Solutions is a £2M+ UK supplier of industrial router solutions.

Together with one of its 
key supplier eWON (www.ewon.biz), the company identified an opportunity to provide a remote service solution to SME equipment manufacturers. This went beyond the router and cloud technologies it currently supplied and involved the integration of Historians, Alarm Management Analytics and other new data technologies. MAC Solutions realised they did not have all the capabilities in house and that they would need to develop an ecosystem of up to eight expert partners to deliver their vision.

 

As they brought the partners together, it became clear that inter-relationships became more complex and could not be managed as a traditional customer/supplier discussion. They developed a framework that helped them think clearly through the process of developing their service solution.

It essentially linked together standard business tools that enabled clearer business thinking through 4 key steps:

1. Understand the Value Chain and the market: The basic business analysis that should be in gaining a deep insight into the markets, customer value and the current business context. This understanding becomes very important when it comes to agreeing pricing mechanisms with different partners
2.  Define the complex problem to be solved and the ecosystem solution: in other words the basic building blocks of the solution, so that a clear vision, mission and strategy can be articulated and actioned. This involves clearly defining the Business Opportunity, Value Proposition, Product Service Solution and the Roles & Responsibilities within the partner ecosystem.
3. A clear plan of how to execute and develop the solution: For example develop a detailed business plan to drive the allocation of resources and actions. How will you use pilot projects to develop your solution? Develop the Value Delivery Model that defines the commercial interactions within the ecosystem. This would cover the sales model, delivery model, people and competencies, customer experience, organisation, partnerships and contracts, pricing, revenue sharing schemes and procurement
4.  Test for Resilience: Develop mechanisms for ensuring that the business plan is resilient in terms of business risk and partner/customer fit

The framework they developed, undoubtedly helped them move through the complex process of developing a network of partners that can deliver results. The result has been that MAC-Solutions were able to pilot their proposition with a supplier of washing systems for rail networks.

Their story shows how it is possible for even small organisations to develop service propositions that appear to be beyond their capability by developing an ecosystem of partners.

MAC-Solutions will be telling the story in more detail at the Spring Servitisation Conference to be held at Aston Business School in May 2015.

 

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While many IT experts are predicting further big things in IoT this year, Nick Frank suggests they are missing one more vital letter...

2014 saw an explosion in our societies understanding of the potential for connected devices.

Driven mainly by the SMARTphones and the ease of connection to the internet,just about everyone from your primary school kid to their grandmother is getting connected.

And is it my imagination, but utter the words Big Data, Analytics and IoT and they all seem to nod ‘sagely’? So with all this ‘wisdom’ in the world, it’s not surprising that in their struggle to differentiate, Service IT Solution providers have been falling over themselves to describe capabilities that manage knowledge, bring transparency and leverage big data.And in fairness this is not just talk.

The capabilities on offer are impressive, as Field Service, Parts Management, CRM technologies are increasingly integrated into seamless end to end solutions.

Indeed this trend is driving the next wave of consolidation in the industry. Led by PTC with their acquisition of Axeda and ThingWorx, solution providers are looking to develop the technology platforms to enable Remote Services.

Another example of the big bets being made is GE’s multi million dollar investment in their Predix platform for Machine to Machine (M2M) communications.The effect of this hype has been to dramatically raise the profile of the potential value connected technologies could have on industry.

But I am troubled by this jargon and thinking. In my mind these technologies and capabilities have no value if you do not do anything with the information they create. Yet we are all being told that if you don’t have an Internet of Things (IoT) strategy, you are dead!

But while working on a couple of projects in the area of Analytics and Remote Services, I had a Eureka moment.

It’s about the way we think!

Ok I admit, its probably blindingly obvious to the readers of FSN, but I believe that 2015 will increasingly become the

year of S.

And that is not because it’s now the ‘Chinese year of the Sheep’!

No, I believe we have it all wrong when we talk about IoT. It should be the iotS…

S for Service Thinking!

In simple terms ‘Service Thinking’ is the culture or even passionate belief that value is only created by applying your technical or business knowledge to improve whatever it is your customer is trying to achieve.

But to do this professionals will start to adopt new ways of thinking and I am afraid new jargon.

We will hear more of ‘Co- Creation’ & ‘Service Experience’. Metric will be biased towards outcomes rather than operational inputs. ‘Continuous improvement via learning’, which is a very much part of the service psyche, will enable companies to find new ways to ‘run, transform and innovate’ their business.

Indeed this type of thinking is not just limited to field service. Already most really profitable manufacturing companies have moved away from a product dominant focus to a Service Centric approach.

These companies focus on value creation in their customer’s business leveraging their technology and inherent know how to earn better than average margins.

Indeed this is a concept I will be promoting in 2015 together with the Servitisation guru Professor Tim Baines of Aston Business School, as part of the Manufacturing Services Thought Leadership network initiative to be launched later this year.

But it also dawned on me, that it is our imagination that is now the limiting factor.

Frankly the technology is out there to do more or less what ever you want. The big gap is our understanding of what these technologies can do for our business.

Indeed it is Service Thinking and Imagination, which companies must master if they are to reap the full rewards offered by these new technologies.

Already larger OEM’s are exploring these concepts in a very pragmatic way. We see them building infrastructure that sits between their Service Management System and their devices as they discover the benefits of remote services.

In the coming year, together with FSN, we will explore the progress they are making. So in 2015 if you want to stay ahead, don’t be a sheep…. Be a Service Thinker!

 

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You may or may not have spotted it  but over the course of the year in my series of features for Field Service News I have been writing a series of articles that describe and outline a framework of the critical attributes and understanding required to deliver a successful Service Business.

Why? Most managers find it hard to know where to start, because service transformation involves every single aspect of a business.

In other words it's a complex process, with many possible pathways to being able to deliver sustainable growth. So we created the service business model to provide managers with a holistic view of how to break the business challenges into smaller bite size chunks which they can action.

I wanted to illustrate these chunks through real case studies that I have experienced. This final article pulls it all together into a coherent story.

The 50,000ft Birds-Eye perspective

In our 1st article en-titled ‘Where to Start’ we described four key elements companies should understand in order to develop a service business.

1. VALUE: Do you know the value you can create for your customer, and what your own organisations strategy is for turning it into profit?
2. GO-TO MARKET: Can you innovate, design, develop, market and sell service propositions?
3. SERVICE DELIVERY: Can you deliver services consistently, profitably and to the level of customer experience you intended?
4. PLAN: Do you have a detailed explicit plan to drive change that is supported by your leadership and your people?

This is a good start, but how do you get into the detail? We went on to describe nine best practices case studies that provide some insights into how to achieve the balancing act required to develop a profitable service business.

1. Know your CUSTOMER’S JOURNEY(s)

We reviewed how Husky, a leading manufacturer of capital equipment mapped out their customer journey through the product lifecycle to understand the specific 'moments of sales' when the customer was open to the services being proposed.

This insight is often the 1^st step to truly understanding how your customer’s business operates, and where you can make a difference. Many companies have an intuitive feel for their customer. Many more would do well to bring some analysis to their ‘gut feeling’, to uncover the attractive target segments and quantify the value add of all the stakeholders in the value chain.

2. Define your strategy for CORPORATE VALUE MANAGEMENT

In ‘Ouch! Getting the profit/cost centre call wrong’ we highlighted the importance of understanding your own companies objectives. What is your business model to make money?

How does your strategy translate into organisational design? What are the systems and processes you need to manage value? It is not only about the numbers, but your culture and also your capabilities. In particular the ability to manage knowledge.

 

We illustrated this through looking at how different companies have tackled the question of service being a separate P&L and when this has successfully brought focus to their service transformation.

The point is ‘Know Yourself!’. This is the key to discovering how you will reach your goals.

3. CUSTOMER PERCEPTION OF VALUE

In our 3^rd article, ‘Finding nuggets of customer gold’, we discussed that there is no point understanding the customer journey and your own business strategy if you can not define the value you can deliver to your customer’s business.  This is probably the most basic building block for developing the service value proposition.

Through the case study of Yokogawa, we saw how good insight into this value does not always come through the sales team. Indeed using a number of different methodologies can lead to surprising results. In this example they found customers wanted much closer technical relationships to boost the OEE of their plant. On the face of it, this simple insight was the enabler to really innovate for customer value.

4. PROPOSITION DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT

‘Services that speak to their customers’ moved us away from VALUE and onto the GOTO MARKET strategy. We discussed how leading companies nearly always have a formal stage-gate type process to design and deploy services.

But that services are different from products, in that the use of prototyping and agile design techniques is more prevalent, because the upfront investment is not so large. We looked at Yokogawa as an example of how by looking at your websites language you can discover for yourself, whether your corporate culture is more INSIDE-OUT and product orientated, or more OUTSIDE-IN and focused on customer value.

 

Studies such as Noventum’s ‘Drivers of Growth’ earlier this year show that the more driven a company is in seeking inputs from it’s customer’s, the more likely it is to achieve higher growth rates of 10% or more.

5. SERVICE SALES MODEL

The second important component of a GOTO MARKET strategy is the Service Sales model. Here we are using Sales in the broadest sense of the word, including not only the front line sales team, but also the sales support teams, all customer touching employees and marketing. They all contribute to selling service!

So in ‘Service Sales; How difficult can it be?’, we heard the experiences of a leading equipment manufacturer in the Packaging Industry, as they ramped up their Service Sales. The key lessons from the Head of Bobst’s Service Business Unit were:

1. Time: spend time with Product Sales explaining the contribution of services to their success.
2. Focus, Focus, Focus: through dedicated Service Sales and Marketing teams
3. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate: it’s a major cultural change
4. Patience: it takes time and commitment to develop the relationships in order to get results

An important message that becomes clear, is that there is no one Service Sales Model that guarantees success. It very much depends on the context of your industry, people and markets.

6. SERVICE DELIVERY MODEL

Having a clear view of VALUE and a GO-TO MARKET strategy is not enough to create a sustainable business. In our 6^th article ‘Don’t Lose your Service Shirts’ we began to explore SERVICE DELIVERY, often so critical to delivering profitability. First we looked at the five core components of the Service Delivery mode:

• End to End business processes
• Service management practices
• People competencies
• Performance management systems (KPI’s)
• IT Functional requirements and Master-data management

We described how Bobst were able to standardise seven different brands and sets of service processes into one global ’Book of Standard’s’ in only three months.

Their vision was to build a Standardised Back-Office, which could be customised for the different needs of their global customer base. This was achieved using a methodology that broke their business down into small standard, best practice components, and then rebuilt the processes with these standard components.

A bit like lego bricks. This methodology, which is used by leading technical service businesses such as Xerox and Siemens, allow the business to deeply understand & define the business needs. This is vitally important before deploying new technologies that automate the processes, bring transparency to data and help companies manage their knowledge.

7. PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

Successful service delivery is all about the your people. So in our 7th article ‘Why Dutch firm Hutten are happy to stand out from the Crowd’, we looked at a very innovative approach based on happiness.

They undertook a programme to promote the values of happiness, collaboration, transparency and sustainability across their organization, suppliers and stakeholders. The result was significantly improved productivity. An unusual approach , but it underlines the importance of people and communication in any business.

8. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The final aspect of Service Delivery is to ensure the customer experience is what we intended when we designed our services. Ten years ago, this was usually an intuitive process within the B2B world.

A good example being how our people look or how they answer the phone. As our economies have become more Knowledge & Experience centric, customer experience has become a critical outcome to be designed, managed and improved. In ‘Is your service organisation looking inside out or outside in’ we explored different methods for gaining insights into Customer Experience. We looked at how one Medical equipment manufacturer went further than their standard Net-Promoter-Score survey’s and undertook in-depth interviews at different customer touch points.

The results were very uncomfortable. The challenge for the company was to, take the observations at face value and action them. Not easy for an organisation, if you have an internally focused technology culture.

 

The awareness of customer experience as an important element of fulfilling the Brand promise has led to leading companies introducing more formal Service Design processes and developing Service Design professionals.

9. PLAN

In our final article, ‘The Winning Plan’, we see how leading researchers have proved what most managers already know. Without an explicit documented plan, that is fully committed to by the leadership and the people, all the efforts on ensuring VALUE, having a robust GOTO MARKET strategy and an excellent SERVICE DELIVERY operation will go to waste. What needs to be done simply will not happen.

So if you have not guessed it yet, the value of this type of Service Business Model is to help managers see where are the priorities. Transformation and change is complex and not everything is possible at once. So to be able to see the wood from the trees and navigate the way to the destination is critical to success.

This Service Business Model is explored in more depth during Noventum’s Service Executive Leadership Courses. For more information use this link to our website www.noventum.eu

In the penultimate part of his series Service Management specialist Nick Frank takes a look for that secret magic formula that creates winning companies in field service.... 

It sounds too obvious, but companies who ‘plan’ for success, are more likely to get results from their service transformation programmes. So found Dr Wolfgang Ulaga, Professor at the IMD Business School when researching how companies transform their service business profitably.  He identified that companies who release their service potential have done so not only because they were well positioned to deliver value, but because they had an explicit and supported plan. (an interesting guy and would well recommend reading his Harvard Business Review Article on service transformation)

But why do we need a professor to tell us this!  Most well run companies have a planning cycle that lays out the financial numbers and the high level strategies to achieve their objectives. It always surprises me how many leaders of transformation believe that this is enough. It’s not!

Yes, experience says that the plan has to be clear and ‘light’ enough to inspire the team and colleagues. Yet it has to be backed by the detailed analysis which gives it credibility not only to business leaders, but also your agents of change themselves. This means the plan has to be explicit. It has to describe the detail of how strategies are achieved and most importantly it must be written down!

So managers wanting successfully drive transformation programmes should prioritise their resources, whether that be their own time or a programme manager into developing the plan. The more the stakeholders are involved, the more credible and supported it will be. The more senior management support managers have, the more likely that the resources required will be committed. But what are we talking about:

 

• Put in place strong project management resources with a governance structure and steering team that has the muscle to move many of the obstacles you might face
• Clearly define the objectives for the projects that will get you to your goal.  Each should have a kind of charter that defines the project in detail and most importantly who is responsible for what. The charter should show the expected outcomes and the impact on the business
•  Clearly define the objectives for the projects that will get you to your goal.  Each should have a kind of charter that defines the project in detail and most importantly who is responsible for what. The charter should show the expected outcomes and the impact on the business
• Plan out the investments you require and the potential timing. More and more we see companies looking to rationalise their business systems and will cost time as well as money. This is especially true in the implementation phase. So the motto is ‘Be Prepared’.
• Ensure your plan clearly identifies early wins to demonstrate success to your management and help them keep faith with the vision
• Make sure that your communication strategy is built into your plan. Often great ideas fail because the troops are not sure what is expected of them.

The last remaining piece of the puzzle is that your plan needs to be back by the decision makers of your business. It’s not just a question of a polite yes in the annual business plan review. It needs real commitment such as being part of your governance structure or taking a very active and vocal interest. If you don’t see this, be very aware!

The list could go on and on, but these are the main factors. If you are faced with planning change then at Noventum you can see what a Transformation Road map looks like, or experience developing your own by attending a Service Leadership Course .

 

Rolls Royce once reinvented service in the aerospace industry with ‘power by the hour’ they are about to do it again with ‘disruption based availability’ writes Field Service News Editor, Kris Oldland...

When it comes to creating real value through service and integrating your service offering and product into one holistic package that generates far greater value for your customers and far greater long-term revenue for yourselves, there is one company whose name is come across in almost every conversation.

One company who are the ultimate example of what getting it right looks like.

One company who revolutionised not only the way service operates in their industry but indeed how an entire industry operated.

That company is Rolls Royce Aerospace.

So when we were asked if we would head down to Bristol to record an interview with Dave Gordon, Program Director for Rolls Royce’s Defence Aviation division for a series of interviews for the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP) we leapt at the chance. And we were not disappointed.

Accompanied by Service Management Specialist Nick Frank we arrived at the Bristol Base, after submitting an array of additional paper work to allow us to film in what on the surface seemed a fairly regular corporate building, although the strict restrictions on where we could and couldn’t be and the detailed examination of our equipment relayed that this was still for all intense purposes an integral component in the Royal Air Force’s operations and therefore access was neither granted or to be taken lightly.

And as we met with Gordon he too carried this air of being somewhere between corporate and government official. As we got set up he spoke with a relaxed and comfortable manner of the experienced corporation man. Getting our coffees personally, making light-hearted small talk about a recent decision to have laser-eye surgery etc.

You felt this was a businessman who had sat in many meetings such as these before, that was calm, relaxed and in control. Yet when we begin the interview and talk about the role Gordon plays he speaks about the UK client, he touches on their engines performance in ‘extreme conditions’ and you suddenly realise just how much pressure he and his team must be under to deliver, when your customers are some of the worlds leading military forces and we live in troubled times where the air strikes in Syria, would be just one example of where both Gordon’s and Rolls Royce’s reputations are put to the test in life and death scenarios that will effect the lives of thousands.

 

Yet still one gets the impression that Gordon would remain the same calm and amiable figure fixing the coffees before the meeting begins, if he was a meeting with a group of RAF Air Marshalls, US Marine Core Generals or as in this instance a member of the trade press.

The other early observation is that he is clearly very proud and passionate about the work he and his team are doing for Rolls Royce.

“Rolls Royce within defence has been on a journey over the last ten to fifteen years, we were a fairly traditional provider of the service we sold a product, we sold a very time and material based service solution, it was very driven by the customer and their management of our product” Gordon begins

“However, it became clear to us that that wasn’t the best fit for our customers” he continues. And it is this attitude, this belief that they can stand in the face of a customer driven process and say ‘hold on, we think we should be doing all this a bit differently’ that has separated Rolls Royce from the rest of the pack in the sectors they operate in.

Although their famous power-by-the-hour service system that is at the heart of their success as a serviced provider required a leap of faith from another global player in the industry.

“There was a very strong pull from American Airlines, who approached Rolls Royce and said we would be far more interested in you providing a solution that kept your engine on wing and we incentivised you for doing that” Gordon explains

“So we worked very closely with that customer and developed a total care solution that very much focuses on that end-to-end need and during that process Rolls ourselves have gradually taken on more of the risks, more of the responsibilities for managing those assets”

And Gordon’s own department in defence have followed this path now themselves taking a strikingly similar journey forward with the those he refers to as ‘The UK Customer’

“Within defence we’ve taken some of those core tools and processes and embedded them into our own value offering to our customer and we particularly use the UK Customer as a testing house to work with them.” Gordon continues

“They themselves were going through a major transformation looking to downsize the scale of their operation and drive efficiency. We were very much up for that journey as well. Very much a collaboration we went about introducing a far more availability based solution, which has been very successful”

However yesterday’s revolution is today’s best practice. And the only true revolutionaries are those who continue to innovate, continue to push boundaries and continue to look for ways they can further improve tomorrow.

Both Gordon and Rolls Royce fit into this camp.

“As we look to the future, we’re starting to work with the customer to go beyond just an availability solution and say what’s really disrupting that customers operation? What is really stopping them doing their job?” Gordon comments before taking a moment to pause.

[quote float="right"]We want to get to a point where they are no longer thinking about my propulsion system they’re just focussed on prosecuting their operation. To do that we need to know a little bit about the nature of the disruption and what we can do to help

“We want to get to a point where they are no longer thinking about my propulsion system they’re just focussed on prosecuting their operation. To do that we need to know a little bit about the nature of the disruption and what we can do to help.” He adds with a definite hint of excitement of that future being within touching distance. It is this concept of ‘disruption based availability’ that Gordon and Rolls Royce clearly believe to be the next evolution of there service offering as they continue to lead the industry from the front.

 

“Disruption based availability is something that we been very focussed on”

“Disruption based availability, or sometimes we refer to it as project zero, as in zero disruption to the customer, is something that both us in Defence and our colleagues in Civil have been very focussed on.” Begins Gordon.

“Understanding that it’s not just about guaranteeing the engine time on wing but actually understanding when the engine does have an incident that causes some disruption to the customer, even something as minor as a delayed take off, still that clearly has a cost. What we have been trying to do is work with our customers to understand very clearly what that cost is.” He adds.

It is a bold vision of where the Aerospace giants next steps will be, yet at the same time it feels like a natural evolution from where they are today. It’s also an approach that will yield a number benefits both hard and soft according to Gordon.

“The benefits are both the tangible where we can build an offering around saying ‘We understand the impact around cost and therefore if we are able to reduce that we can develop that into a value proposition...  but also there is an intangible piece to this as well as it helps me to motivate my teams to understand the exact impact an event will have on a customer. To help them see the fact that there are repercussions way beyond a flight not being able to take off. It will feedback into the impact such an event has on the wider operation, the planning that went into it, the need for contingency planning, and so on…” Gordon explains with enthusiasm

“Understanding the whole eco-system that sits around not just my product, but the system it’s working in and how the customer is using it, and then understanding how we can reduce the impact, you can clearly demonstrate the value to the customer, and we’re working with them to do that….”

He takes the briefest of pauses, giving his next thought some consideration before committing to it.  But when he does it sums up exactly what both Gordon and Rolls Royce are all about

“It’s a real motivator for me as the team really starts to understand what customer service actually means.” He adds in an almost solemn tone.

And this for me is it, there is a point in any interview where you grasp the heart of the story, and you see your subject in their truest light. Dave Gordon and Rolls Royce are a perfect fit. Look at the DNA of both the man and the corporation and you’ll find service deeply entwined.

In the heart of each you’ll find a desire to innovate, to keep pushing the boundaries, and to keep on being revolutionary.

Which is why I expect both to succeed.

 

 

 

Part Five of an exclusive Field Service News interview with Dave Gordon, Rolls Royce.

Here Dave speaks about the challenges of sharing data between supplier and customer, however if these challenges can be overcome the relationships can become much more holistic and the service can become as close to seamless as is possible...

Missed part one of this excellent series? Find it here

Missed part two of this excellent series? Find it here

Missed part three of this excellent series? Find it here

Missed part four of this excellent series? Find it here
 
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