Service is now moving from 'reaction' to consolidation; where the global lockdown is loosening, and service is turning back on having been left dormant. How should we approach this new phase?

 

 

In the latest Field Service Podcast, Deputy Editor Mark Glover is joined by Martin Summerhayes who gives new insight into what the sector should be considering as we emerge, blinking slightly, into a new service world. In this excerpt from that podcast Summerhayes explains why precise planning pre-empt proactive performance... 

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Planning for Fully Reopening the Field Service Sector

"We are going to come out of this at some point," Martin says. "However, it is not going to be a mass switch on of services; mass opening of markets and outlets - think of a giant “Turn On” switch being pulled - rather, it is going to be phased approach."

In this episode and off the back of a recent article exclusively for Field Service News, Martin takes the ubiquitous 'Five Ps' business acronym - Poor Planning Promotes Poor Performance - and swaps in new first, third and fourth words:  Precise Planning Pre-empts Pro-active Performance is a possible blueprint for service directors who might be daunted or overwhelmed when sizing up a re-start.

"Take a set of scenarios to then precisely plan the impacts," Martin says, unpacking the first part of the acronym. "This evolves around asking a series of open ended questions and describing in detail the responses and impacts. This is where elements of “scenario planning” and an element of “game theory” comes into their own. 

Martin backs the theory with an example: a mixed legacy IT estate distributed across a number of outlets. Here he applies open-ended questions on health and safety, customer expectations and spare parts to garner these responses and impacts.

Proactive performance is approached with questions also but the aim is to spot patterns: "Have you captured all of the impacts, potential outcomes and put it into a plan? A resource profile? A spares planning spreadsheet? Have you shared this across your organisation teams?" he says. "You will need to explore at least five different customers and scenarios to start to see a trend and start to see the common elements that you need to work."

At the moment our feeds and inboxes are being bombarded with webinars, articles and other podcasts taking a long view approach to service's current challenge. Here, Martin suggests stepping back and concentrating on the now might be the way forward. 

However, he acknowledges this approach might not be the best way and he is keen to hear your feedback and to be challenged on his theory. So please let us know your thoughts.

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Further Reading: 

• Read more from Martin Summerhayes @ www.fieldservicenews.com/martinsummerhayes
• Read more Covid-19 related content @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/covid19
• Follow Martin Summerhayes on LinkedIn here.

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Want to know more? Check out the this full episode of the Field Service Podcast as well as all of our previous episodes in the podcast section of our Premium Content Library by clicking here

 

In a recent edition of the Field Service Podcast, Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland was joined by Field Nation CEO, Mynul Khan as the two discussed how field service organisations are turning to the gig economy and other third-party labour pools to balance their workforce needs. 

The original interview was part of an interview for a documentary that Field Service News have produced in partnership with Field Nation looking at how field service organisations can harness the power of the 'blended workforce' in this manner.

However, the full interview contained a lot of additional insight from a man that has been a pioneer in bringing the technology that underpins the blended workforce to our sector. As such, we asked Mynul if we could publish the full interview on the Field Service Podcast. The above is an excerpt from this episode. 

 

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You can find the full podcast and our entire back catalogue here

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The New Requirements of Field Service Management

 

There have been many crucial developments within the field service sector within the last few years. One of the most important of these, from Mynul Khan is sitting is how many field service organisations are now pushing their service offerings out to a wider reach of geographic areas. 

"These are different types of service offerings, which require different types of skill sets," reflected Khan. 

"This translates to having a different type of workforce that can provide the type of service needed that is more on demand, that is more agile and more nimble. Companies that are under pressure from industry to expand in different geographies and with different types of services are therefore having to adopt this more on-demand workforce model.

In parallel, we are also seeing that product based companies, so the OEMs or retailers, are also pushing more services and more solutions. The reason for this is fairly obvious - there is not much margin in selling hardware. So we are seeing large OEMs, VARs, and retailers developing their own service and solutions arm." 

 

"There is an increasing trend to go beyond the traditional layers of service-centric revenue and to move towards a more servitized, or outcome focused approach within modern service offerings..."

 

Indeed, this is something that we are seeing more and more of as the trend continues.

Those companies now who don't explore the routes to developing their own field service operations to deliver such offerings, which deliver not only high margin revenue but also recurring revenue, are in danger of missing the boat and getting left behind. 

Of course, this is just one mega-trend within a rapidly changing landscape of field service management.

There is an increasing trend to go beyond the traditional layers of service-centric revenue and to move towards a more servitized, or outcome focused approach within modern service offerings. At the same time automation is changing the way we think about field service, just as it is changing many other industry sectors. 

The role of technology within this change, is an important one that cannot be understated. 

"Technology and automation is playing an absolutely pivotal role," Khan comments. 

"Another mega trend that has emerged is that all hardware is becoming IoT enabled hardware. This connectivity means that we can remote monitor and remotely trouble shoot the problem that the device is having. On top of this we are also seeing the rise of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms which are being used in preventative maintenance.

"All of this is coming together to really drive the cost of service down for field service companies and enables faster repair time and ore uptime for the customer. Even for a company like Field Nation, we are deploying mMachine Learning algorithms for better matching of workers to the service ticket," Khan added.  

 

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If not, the link will take you to our subscriptions page so you can join 30,000 of your field service management peers and subscribe now and get access this documentary and all of our other premium content!

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In a recent episode of the Field Service Podcast, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News was joined by Danny Wieder, Field Service Consultant with HSO to discuss the topic of Health and Safety in the field service environment and how technology casn play a critical role in ensuring we meet the standards we require.  

The original interview was part of an interview for a documentary that Field Service News have produced in partnership with HSO which puts together a case that field service managers and directors can take to their board to secure investment in the tools required to effectively deliver service in the modern age. 

Not wanting to waste any of the excellent insight that Wieder, who has a 15 year pedigree in implementing field service software and systems, provided during the interview we also asked the team at HSO if we could put the full unedited interview onto our podcast channel. They kindly agreed and the above is an excerpt from that episode of the field service podcast. 

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You can find the full podcast alongside all of the other episodes here

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Technology is essential for Field Service engineer safety

 

The importance of health and safety in any workforce is an absolute given.

In field service however, it is perhaps an even more challenging task than in many other industries. Not only are our engineers often working in hazardous environments, but the are also working in isolation. 

Technology is there to help however and embedded within the field service technology stack, and even within many FSM solutions, there are multiple tools to help ensure your field service engineers and technicians are working in the safest possible manner achievable. It is little wonder then that building an argument for investment in such systems is often built up around ensuring health and safety standards are met. 

"In a lone worker scenario you have the capability to avert a potential safety issue by identifying and reacting to it..."

 

"I would say technology can really help to make sure field service engineers and can also help companies make sure they excercise their duty of care towards their employees," explained Wieder during the interview. 

"Let's take geo-fencing for example which has recently been introduced to Microsoft Field Service. It monitors the GPS position of an engineer and can issue an automatic alert to the contact centre if the engineer has been on site for too long. So in a lone worker scenario you have the capability to avert a potential safety issue by identify8ing and reacting to it. 

"Another are is perhaps risk assessments. These have been around for a while but are often paper driven or sometimes companies are using something like Excel. The obvious issue with this it is this is not particularly easy to use. Today's modern mobile software can be configured so an engineer not only gets the risk assessment, but in fact they have to complete it before they can progrees to the call details. This is a real benefit.

"On top of this, the questionnaires now can be tailored so the content of the questions is different, depending on the work type. This makes them more relevant, perhaps more concise and I think all things being considered this is a massive improvement to the tool kits we have to keep our engineers safe," Wieder added. 

The safety of our workers, both in the field and in the office is of absolute paramount importance - if the technology is available to help us improve in this area - surely we are beholden to implement it? 

 

 

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Want to know more? Check out our full documentary on the 'Three Core Arguments to Gain Investment in Your Field Service Management Systems'

If you are a Field Service News subscriber the link below will take you straight to the documentary.

If not, the link will take you to our subscriptions page so you can join 30,000 of your field service management peers and subscribe now and get access this documentary and all of our other premium content!

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In a recent edition of the Field Service Podcast, Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland sat down with Doug lacy, CEO and Founder of Pivital an ITSM company who have embraced the power of the blended workforce.

The original interview was part of an interview for a documentary that Field Service News have produced in partnership with Field Nation looking at how field service organisations can harness the power of the 'blended workforce' in this manner.

However, the full interview contained a huge amount of insight so with Doug's permission we took the audio from the session and published it in its raw unedited form as an episode of the Field Service Podcast. 

 

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You can find the full podcast alongside all of the other episodes here

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Transparency in the Field Service Cycle:

In the excerpt above we hear from Lacy as he describes the importance of transparency in the whole of the field service cycle especially when it comes to understanding customer challenges and perceived poor engineer performance. 

"We were providing a router deployment for a very large bank in the US which involved thousands of sites. We did a pilot and our techs were really struggling and we got the feedback that our techs were not doing a good job and they were taking too long to do the install," Lacy begins.

Knowing the regular performance of his own team to be of a very high standard, he realised that something wasn't quite right for there to be this much negative feedback. His response was to take a closer hands-on look at the situation himself by doing a site visit himself on a job near their local headquarters in Colarado, USA.

 

"While such C-level site visits are important, Lacy believes they shouldn't be necessary as technology develops to offer the transparency we require..."

 

As Lacy, thought the situation wasn't as clear cut as it had seemed.

"My experience was that first of all I waited 20 minutes just for someone to show up and take me to the network closet. I then spent another 20 minutes looking around for where the network closet was and where the routers were. We finally figured out that they were behind all of the Christmas decorations that had just been piled up on top of the router. It turned out to be issue after issue that was nothing to do with the tech's performance.

"Having some of that visibility, it had been four hours since I had arrived there, and it had been challenge after challenge, and all environmental challenges nothing related to our tech. I could then bring that visibility to our client and explain what I had experienced." 

However, whilst such C-level site visits are important, Lacy believes they shouldn't be necessary as technology develops to offer the transparency we require. 

"If we could find a better way for our clients, through technology to just be able to see, where the tech is struggling and what are the actual reasons why that tech is struggling - that insight makes a big difference in client satisfaction. Plus, it also sets the tech up for success.

"It is all about the communication and being able to understand what are techs are experiencing on site, and if we can use technology to do that, even better." 

 

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Want to know more? Check out our full documentary on the 'Rise of the Blended Workforce.'

If you are a Field Service News subscriber the link below will take you straight to the documentary.

If not, the link will take you to our subscriptions page so you can join 30,000 of your field service management peers and subscribe now and get access this documentary and all of our other premium content!

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Data usage note: If you're subscription is our sponsored complimentary tier, by accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, FieldNation who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content.

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In a recent edition of the Field Service Podcast, Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland sat down with Patrick Jansen, Field Service Manager, VBR Turbines, about why they decided to undertake an in-depth build of their own bespoke IoT solution.

"It all started about 6 years ago. We are an MRO (maintenance and repair organisation)  so we do own anything, we don't produce anything, our business is service. We saw that our market was changing. There was knowledge drain, changes in the labour market and more." Jansen explained. 

"So we started to look at what our service deliver should be like ten years from now and alongside that how could we overcome the challenges that we face in the labour market and how could we address the knowledge drain with our customers. There were a couple of things that saw needed to be done.

"One of the main drivers for us was to create an additional tool to facilitate remote support for the customer but also do diagnostics on the assets. This is because in the energy market within Europe has changed significantly." he added.

One such change has been the shift within the energy sector is that the traditional way of working with a predictive maintenance schedule was to base the schedule on running hours, but this is no longer an appropriate methodology as the amount of running hours has reduced. 

However, there were other benefits that Jansen and the team at VBR Turbines were able to benefit from - including the reduction in training time for new engineers. 

"The remote solutions can help people to get trained faster, the time to training a field service engineer really dramatically reduced." Jansen added. 

 

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Mark Glover, Deputy Editor, Field Service News continues the latest series of The Field Service Podcast as he sits down with simPRO's Richard Pratley. 

Field Service News Deputy Editor, Mark Glover, sits down with Richard Pratley, Managing Director, UK simPRO and discuss how the challenge of an ageing workforce is being echoed around the world for field service companies and how technology, in particular, IoT, is able to help resolve the problem by increasing service management efficiency. 

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief welcomes back Kevin McNally, Sales Director of Asolvi as they look through five key considerations to factor in when trying to build a case for investment within a field service management solution including, definable return on investment, health and safety compliance, increasing customer engagement, reducing staff turnover and avoiding a competitive disadvantage....

 

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

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