Tracking Customer Preferences is Critical in the New Normal (podcast highlights)

Nov 11, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce • The Field Service Podcast • Covid-19 • Remote Services

Salesforce's Gary Brandeleer and Field Service News' Kris Oldland discuss why it is essential to track customer preferences as we move out of the pandemic and head towards recovery...

Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts

We CANNOT UNDERMINE THE VALUE OF THE TRUSTED ADVISOR STATUS OF OUR ENGINEERS

Having recently authored a white paper in partnership with Salesforce, in which he discussed the question of whether as field service leaders we ‘do we need to be redefining the value proposition of service delivery in a post pandemic world’, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News invited Salesforce’s Gary Brandeleer onto the Field Service Podcast to discuss the topic further.

The paper took a particular lens on the fact that now as a sector we are much more focused on remote service delivery, potentially even moving to remote-first as a default. However, Oldland asserts there is a balanced and nuanced conversation that needs to be undertaken here. Whilst there are huge advantages to service delivery, being delivered remotely, not only at these testing times, but also moving forward as we start conversations around uptime and quicker fault resolutions, the flip side is, are we losing the trusted advisor status of the engineer?

In this highlight from the Field Service Podcast, Brandeleer and Oldland began to tackle this question around where those nuanced differences lie.

We should not undermine the fact that the technicians while they are on-site can see things that will be very unique from the fact that they are there in person..."

- Gary Brandeleer, Salesforce

“We must also consider that some customers will just not like remote assistance,” Brandeleer commented.

“Yes, they understand the way that we do it right now for COVID-19. And at this stage it really makes sense, but you should really track the preference of your customers as well, because some customers will tell you ‘I really want someone on site, I actually miss that connection.’

“Some customers will tell you, it's fine. we can continue [with remote service delivery] even after COVID-19. With you coming in or looking at the site remotely and fixing a few things remotely. However, some customers will say, ‘well, you know what the technician is bringing so much expertise when he's on site on other topics. Maybe he can maintain one device, but there are five other devices that might be under contract, might not be in the contract - it doesn't really matter at this stage, because the technicians are always there to serve the customer and essentially help them.

“We should not undermine the fact that the technicians while they are on-site can see things that will be very unique from the fact that they are there in person. Then there is this relation of trusted advisor that will continue. It's not only fixing the problem that they have right now, it's actually quite helpful for the trusted advisor to come in the sense of actually seeing other things on site you could fix, maybe advising ‘you should actually maintain the device a bit more often’ and things like this.

"That's where I think you need to track the preferences of the customer. We need to know, is the customer happy with remote assistance? Is a customer, OK, for IoT? Does the customer prefer it if we send one technician, do they always prefer the same guy?

“I think it's really important to track preference from customers and not impose the technologies on to customers.”

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We Must Have Our Technological Foundations Right in Field Service (podcast highlights)

Nov 09, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce • The Field Service Podcast • Covid-19 • Remote Services

Salesforce's Gary Brandeleer and Field Service News' Kris Oldland discuss the importance of having the foundations of field service management tools in place before we can explore the next iteration of service management technologies...

Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts

A VISION OF THE FUTURE

In a recent exclusive Field Service News white paper written by Kris Oldland and published in partnership with Salesforce, we explored the shifting dynamics of the fundamental value proposition of service delivery in a world of remote first service delivery. However, while there was a lot of room for error in the first few months of the pandemic as we were all just grateful for the monumental efforts it took to deliver even basic service, now we are at a point where customer expectations are beginning to return.

Remote service delivery remains an acceptable delivery mechanism, however, the teething problems of some of our early initial attempts may no longer cut the mustard. Within the white paper Oldland explored some of the key technologies that are essential for efficient remote service that will meet customer expectation. As a follow up to that white paper Salesforce’s Gary Brandeleer joined Oldland as a guest on the Field Service Podcast to bring his insight to the table. It was a wide-ranging conversation but in this excerpt from that episode the focus is on the tools we need to make remote service a seamless offering for our customers.

Of course, this was an area of the topic where Brandeleer was really able to bring a huge amount of direct insight, drawing upon the vast experience of himself and colleagues at Salesforce in terms of the companies that they've already directly helped with huge digital transformation projects.

"That's where I think there is still a part for technologies to still evolve. I think the whole install base little by little needs to be refreshed and evolve as well..."

Gary Brandeller, Salesforce

“I think what is critical is to do the basics, right,” explained Brandeleer.

“I think what we saw with COVID-19, was that the companies that didn't control their basics, were unable to actually react and adapt fast enough. These technologies are really, really impactful, but can only be impactful if you have the right data. They can only be impactful if you are already connecting your install base, if you're already doing warranty tracking, if you already know your customer when is calling you.

“From there, you can move little by little to a different solution. So for example, when you think about AI, there is the optimization engine that we are providing, and things like this, I guess, but I think there are other places where AI can really augment the experience of the technician in that context of ‘can we serve the customer?’ We must establish, can we use AI to offer remote diagnostics of the problem and can we find a solution?

“Ideally, you would even say, that AI if can identify one or two solution, can a human further expand on that and say ‘out of two solutions suggested by AI we should apply the first one, which can be pushed remotely via IoT, for example?” Brandeleer suggests.

“I think that's the vision of the future,” he continues before adding “Are we there? I think not yet. COVID-19 is going to accelerate that. But when you think about IoT connected devices, there are still many, many devices out there, especially in manufacturing where the install base that is pretty old, with assets still working and still being maintained. So, that's where I think there is still a part for technologies to still evolve. I think the whole install base little by little needs to be refreshed and evolve as well.”

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What comes after remote service delivery (podcast highlights)

Nov 06, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce • The Field Service Podcast • Covid-19 • Remote Services

Salesforce's Gary Brandeleer and Field Service News' Kris Oldland discuss what comes next after the pandemic has brought the technology required for remote service delivery to the mainstream out of necessity

Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts

An EXPLORATION OF WHAT COMES NEXT

Having recently authored a white paper in partnership with Salesforce that explored whether we need to reevaluate the value proposition of service delivery as we all become more accustomed to remote service delivery, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News invited Salesforce’s Gary Brandeleer on to The Field Service Podcast to explore the topic further.

Do we move to remote services first as a default, was a big theme in the white paper and the two discussed the pros and cons of such an approach at length. Here in this highlight from the full podcast, and to get further insight into that topic, we hear Brandeleer’s thoughts around what comes next, having seen remote service become table stakes almost overnight.

“One thing that is interesting to see as well is that remote assistance is a quick reaction for an issue that we all have right now,” Brandeleer commented

“Yet it's become a keystone for different things as well. So I think in the short term, remote assistance became really table stakes but I think there are other things that are going to follow this.

“When you think about remote assistance, you can speak to the customer, but for many, many call centre agents or technicians that are on the call, they might not know about the machine, and they might not have the machine connected to IoT. So I think this kind of rapid change for remote assistance will lead us towards the rapid change, for example, remote diagnostics, IoT, and all these other steps in the movement of ‘can I actually serve my customers remotely as efficiently as I was doing it before when I had somebody on site?’

“I think we are going to see an exploration of other technologies that are going to add on the remote assistance side essentially,” Brandeleer adds.

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The Acceleration of the Digital Transformation (podcast highlight)

Nov 04, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce • The Field Service Podcast • Covid-19 • Remote Services

Gary Brandeleer of Salesforce talks to the Kris Oldland, Field Service News about how we are seeing unprecedented acceleration of digital transformation in the field service sector...

Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts

REMOTE SERVICE DELIVERY IS NOW TABLE STAKES

In a recent exclusive Field Service News white paper authored by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News we asked an important question “Do we need to redefine the value proposition of service, as we look towards moving towards a post pandemic world?”

It is an important discussion, one that many senior leaders in our industry are currently having, yet it is also a topic that is evolving and emerging in real-time as we piece together what the new normal looks like for our sector.

To build upon the white paper, which had a particular lens looking at remote services and do we move to remote first as a default in our industry, Salesforce’s Gary Brandeleer joined Kris Oldland on the Field Service Podcast to further drive the discussion forwards.

Brandeleer and the team at Salesforce have, of course had huge experience dealing with digital transformation and in the above excerpt from that conversation, Brandeleer and Oldland touch on whether the acceleration we've seen in the last six months towards digital transformation projects is truly unprecedented.

This is perhaps the biggest factor that will shape the way we view field service delivery both in terms of the value proposition and operational delivery. It is not only the leap forward that has been made, but it is also the rapidity at which almost all of us in the industry moved forward simultaneously that has caused such seismic shifts in our thinking.

As we saw in the last highlight from this podcast, we saw conversations go from “this is on our roadmap in five years’ time,” to “we need this now, how quickly can we implement it?”

"We were sending people onsite, now we are doing remote assistance. Can we do other things as well? Can we now invest in outcome-based services and push towards servitization and other things like this?"

Gary Brandeleer, Salesforce

"I would say the field service world has been quite often protected from rapid disruption, like this,” Brandeleer commented.

“We've always had time to implement things [in field service], even the optimization engine that we provide to companies. The companies who are implementing such systems know and understand the benefits the solutions will bring, but they also know that it's important to take that time when you are dealing with technicians, when you're dealing with mission critical business.

“You need to take your time to change such important things and make them more efficient over a long period of time.”

“I don't think I've ever really seen such a disruption where, from one week to another, these technologies literally became table stakes. I think that what we see as well is, of course, COVID accelerated many, many other trends for field service. I think what's happening is that the one trend that we seek from that disruption, also is this agility that you see now in field service.

“We were sending people onsite, now we are doing remote assistance. Can we do other things as well? Can we now invest in outcome-based services and push towards servitization and other things like this?" Brandeleer asks.

"These trends have been there for a while and people have been talking about it, but not really acting very fast. Are we now going to see the mentality of ‘well, we did it for remote assistance, we implemented in two weeks, and we have return on investment here – can’t we just do that for other things that we wanted to do?’ The world is in such a chaotic state right now, we must take this opportunity to drive more acceleration of things that we wanted to do, things that were part of a roadmap, but now we want to accelerate them.

“I think this digital transformation that's out there which traditionally can take quite a while for many field service companies, I think people are going to take as a table stakes now as well. Now companies want these digital transformation projects to happen very, very fast. They went time to value and that's another trend that came out of this COVID-19 disruption."

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The Rapid Rise of Remote Service Delivery (Podcast Highlights)

Nov 02, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce • The Field Service Podcast • Covid-19 • Remote Services

Gary Brandeleer of Salesforce talks to the Kris Oldland, Field Service News about how the pandemic has ushered in a new era of remote service delivery...

Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts

REMOTE SERVICE DELIVERY IS NOW TABLE STAKES

Field Service News Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland recently authored an exclusive white paper published in partnership with Salesforce, that looked at the sudden emergence of remote service delivery as a go to approach for service delivery. To dig further into this embryonic industry-wide discussion, Salesforce’s Gary Brandeleer joined Oldland on the Field Service Podcast. Across the following weeks we will be publishing a series of excerpts from that episode beginning with this opening highlight that looks at how the pandemic has rapidly ushered in a new era of service delivery…

Across the last seven months as a direct result of the pandemic we have seen the adoption of an implementation of technology that was predominant best-in-class as we entered 2020.

In fact, for many years, many best-in-class service organisations have had the ability to deliver service remotely – certainly we've been talking about it here at Field Service News for an awfully long time. However, since the arrival of the COVID19 pandemic and the subsequent ongoing lockdowns, the tools that are required to deliver service remotely have suddenly become a necessity for almost all field service organisations, in all corners of the world, across all industries.

"Very rapidly, what was actually a good addition to a demonstration of what is possible with a FSM solution suddenly became table stakes..."

- Gary Brandeleer, Salesforce

“At first, it was only a few organisations that would be able to offer this kind of remote assistance,” commented Salesforce’s Gary Brandeleer on a recent episode of the Field Service Podcast.

“However, we were already beginning to see more and more customers asking for it, even before the pandemic. However, it was not an essential requirement. It was not that if a FSM solution provider could not offer it they would be out of RFP. However, very rapidly, what was actually a good addition to a demonstration of what is possible with a FSM solution suddenly became table stakes,” Brandeleer added.

“Now, everybody wants to get a remote assistant solution. I think the story that we see as well, is that the pandemic pushed field service companies to be much more agile than before.

"Essentially companies were wanting to get remote assistance, and they had no choice in terms of implementing it very fast. There were customers coming to us, customers coming to many different companies, all asking not only for remote assistance, but also being able to implement this kind of remote assistance within the next two weeks.”

Want to know more? Field Service News Subscribers can access a White Paper on this topic on the link below.

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The Pros and Cons of Remote Service Delivery for the Field Service Company

Oct 13, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce

In the previous feature in this series of excerpts from an exclusive Field Service News White Paper, sponsored by Salesforce, we looked at the pros and cons of remote service delivery for the customer. Now in the final feature in the series we look...

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Understanding Good and Bad of Remote Service Delivery for Field Service Companies

Having looked at the considerations from the customers perspective, now let us take a look at the pros and cons from the position of the service provider...

Pro#1: Reducing the Cost of Service Delivery

Ultimately the most significant benefit for the service provider when it comes to delivering service remotely is that it reduces the single biggest cost line on a service P&L – the truck roll. Not only is there the expense of getting the service engineer to site, including man-hours, fuel and vehicle maintenance costs etc., but the sheer amount of ‘windscreen time’ each engineer spends significantly impacts one of the most critical KPIs that field service organisations measure – engineer utilisation.

The cost of on-site service delivery vs remote service delivery is quite simply astronomical. By adopting a remote-first approach to service delivery, the service organisation can instantly improve profit margins, while potentially offering a faster and more efficient service to the customer.

Pro#2: Greater Geographical Coverage

Additionally, the adoption of remote services can allow the field service engineer to cover an infinite geographical spread essentially. Compare this to the average range of a field service engineer which, dependent on location, is usually viewed as a couple of hundred miles. In this respect, remote service delivery can offer a major benefit to the field service organisation.

Not only does it mean that there is greater flexibility in arranging and scheduling work calls as the restrictions of geographical regions are primarily removed, it can also potentially allow for further expansion of a service offering into an area that was previously physically impossible to access.

Con#1: The Loss of Meaningful Interaction with the Customer:

As we touched on above when reviewing the pros and cons of remote service delivery for the customer, where there is a distinct advantage for the customer to have a trusted advisor on site, this is very much a two-way street.

The on-site engineer is the ambassador of your business, and this is something that should not be overlooked. In an era of increasing digital touchpoints, the service engineer’s on-site visit is one of few, indeed potentially the only face to face interaction that your organisation may have with your customer. Statistically, we are, on average, 70% more likely to buy from someone we have met, and this is down to a matter of trust.

Having a real, physical presence when interacting with your customer is overwhelmingly more likely to lead to a more established, trust-based relationships than it will have a negative impact.

This is a massive aspect to be considered before adopting a remote-first approach.

Con#2: The Loss of the Eyes and Ears of the Engineer On Site

For the service provider, often it is said that the service engineer is the best salesperson within a company. Not only do they have the highly valued, but equally hard to achieve trusted advisor status within the eyes of the customer, but they can act as the eyes and ears of the sales department as well.

An engineer on-site may be able to notice competitor assets that are near the end of their lifecycle, or that your service organisation has also incorporated into your service offering, providing an opportunity for cross-selling of a new service contract.

When we couple subject matter level expertise, a trust-based relationship with the customer and the ability to see what opportunities for upselling or cross-selling are available for the engineer, this can prove to be a potentially potent mix when it comes to seeking out further revenue opportunities.

Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we explore the Pros and Cons of remote service delivery for the Field Service Provider...

Don't want to wait? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below. If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

The Pros and Cons of Remote Service Delivery for the Customer

Oct 06, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce

So far in this series of excerpts from an exclusive Field Service News white paper sponsored by Salesforce we have looked at why requite service is becoming a necessity for field service organisations as well as the tools needed to offer remote services effectively. Now in the third instalment in this series we look at the pros and cons of remote service delivery for the customer...

Want to know more? Field Service News Subscribers can access a White Paper on this topic on the link below.

If you have yet to subscribe click the button below to join 30K of your field service management professional peers and subscribe now to access this content and our entire premium content library now!

Understanding Good and Bad of Remote Service Delivery for Field Service Customers

Having established the fundamental pieces of technology required for effective remote service delivery, in previous articles in this series, let us take a moment to look at a couple of positives and negatives of such an approach for the customer.

Pro#1: The Importance of Biosecurity in a Post-Pandemic World

In the short term, this is almost certainly the most significant point for consideration all round.

Quite simply, we are all working together to try to get the world back on track as quickly as possible. Every organisation around the globe is currently evaluating how they can get their business back operating in some capacity while still protecting their staff and also in some cases, their customers as well.

While equally field service organisations may also be doing everything they can to ensure that when their staff go on-site and they aren’t breaking their customers’ bio-security, questions will inevitably be raised when a customer is the third, fourth or even fifth site visit of the day.

Will customers have the right to reject an engineer if they have been on multiple different sites earlier in the day?

Can the service provider vouch for the bio-security of each of those sites which are beyond their control? In the short-term at the very least, pragmatically, a remote-first approach to service delivery would be an advantage for companies getting back on their feet.

Pro#2: The Importance of Uptime vs SLA Response

The second pro of remote service delivery is not a new discussion at all. It is at the very heart of much of the advanced services or servitization discussion. Ultimately, what holds more value to your customer – the costly approach of sending an expert to their site to get things fixed, or getting things up and running, minimising downtime as quickly and as efficiently as possible? In regular times there was a much more balanced debate around this conversation.

If the asset that was down wasn’t mission-critical, then bringing an expert on-site could be an advantage. It could equally be a matter of trust – if one engineer has a relationship with the customer, then that customer may be prepared to wait for the engineer to be available.

The uptime here is less important than the customer’s preference. However, as with the first pro we mentioned, in the short term at least, companies will be looking to get as much of their business operational as possible with as little interruption to their operations. Therefore, the speed in which a remote service approach could offer resolution will be a huge advantage for customers for the duration of the recovery period.

Con#1: The Loss of a Trusted Advisor:

This is, of course, the other side of the coin to the second pro we referenced above. For many service customers, the arrival of a trusted and experienced professional on-site is not just an opportunity to get a problem resolved – it is also an opportunity to further tap into that expertise and ensure you are running your operation as effectively as possible.
It has often been a discussion amongst field service organisations as to how we can leverage the trusted adviser status of our field service engineers.

However, we must also consider this to be a two-way street. Often our customers take far more value away from the service call than the surface level resolution.

For many organisations, the loss of having the ear of a subject matter expert on-site is significant.

Con#2: Delays in Resolution for More Complex Problems:

This second con may at first glance seem counter-intuitive , especially when we consider that the second of our pro’s was a quicker resolution.

However, consider for a moment, that no matter how sophisticated the tools being used by the service provider are, if a problem is particularly complex or unusual, then the fault may never be identified at all. Every service management professional will understand the frustration of the dreaded no-fault-found (NFF) diagnosis – something that can be even harder to identify on an intermittent fault.

However, in a world of remote-first service delivery, it could be a reasonable prediction that NFF percentages may begin to rise. From the customer’s perspective, this means a lengthy remote service call, taking up his resources with no resolution. Potentially, followed by a repeat remote call, this time with a more experienced engineer but still no resolution and then finally an on-site call to diagnose the issue. All the while, the customer is becoming increasingly frustrated as their asset remains down.

Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we explore the Pros and Cons of remote service delivery for the Field Service Provider...

Don't want to wait? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below. If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

The Tools Needed for Remote First Service Operations:

Sep 29, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce

In the last article in this series which is taken from a series of excerpts from an exclusive Field Service News White Paper sponsored by Salesforce we looked at how the world is moving towards remote service delivery as a default. We also began a look at the tools needed for delivering service remotely including Augmented Reality. Now we continue exploring those tools with a closer look at three more crucial pieces of tech...

Want to know more? Field Service News Subscribers can access a White Paper on this topic on the link below.

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Field Service Management Solution:

This is perhaps a very obvious layer in the field service management technology stack!

However, there are still some important considerations that should be discussed when looking at your FSM solution. While there are a wealth of options available to field service organisations when it comes to this fundamental piece of the puzzle, frankly not all FSM is created equal, and as systems become more advanced, there will be increasing demands and expectations of how your FSM tool plugs into other critical parts of the stack. Does the solution have a built-in AI, for example, such as Salesforce’s Einstein? Is it capable of reading IoT based asset data and utilising that to help with triage and on-site fault identification?

Does the solution have a modular approach where you can bring in other aspects of additional functionality where needed such as via the Salesforce AppExchange? Does the FSM tool act as a conduit for the smooth flow of data from one area of the business to another? Or does it act as a barrier? This last point is perhaps increasingly critical as we move forwards into a world of digitalisation. As the global economy continues to slowly recover from the impact of the global lockdowns of 2020, we look forward to the next couple of years where we are predicted to see a far greater focus on service and maintenance of existing assets. Many organisations are going to be seeking to increase asset performance, and service providers who can utilise their warranty and contract data to improve asset uptime, reduce costs, and drive revenue, are going to be the ones who flourish.

When it comes to remote service delivery, the FSM platform is what everything is built upon. It must be robust and ready to meet these new challenges.

Parts Management and Optimisation:

For all the effort that is put into optimising the field service engineer, there is decidedly less time spent on managing and optimising parts inventory. However, with many companies getting caught out during the lockdowns as borders temporarily closed and supply chains became restricted, this gap in the field service sector’s efficiency became considerably more noticeable. While, we all hope to see a future, where 2020 remains a once in a lifetime event, we cannot be certain we will never see such circumstances again. Our world is a connected world, a globalised world, and therefore, it is essential that we make our processes and systems more resolute and a robust parts management solution is a crucial area of focus. Visibility of stock can also help companies reveal considerable gaps in ‘lost cash’ tied up in assets that become lost somewhere in between the P&L of the service operation and the P&L of the manufacturing side of a business. Garage stock and van stock can amount to a huge amount across the entirety of a field service workforce.

Visibility into ‘what is where’ is vital for a field service organisation. This is perhaps even more relevant at a time where cash is sparse. Additionally, spare parts sales is a reliable revenue generator, even more so at a time when customers are ‘sweating’ their assets while we slowly edge towards a recovery. Against a backdrop of remote-first service delivery, the one factor that is going to slow the whole process down is an inadequate supply chain that delays getting the part to the customer on time. It is crucial when we talk about remote service delivery that we have built a strong layer of trust with our customers, and that means every aspect of the service delivery must be optimised – especially parts management.

Artificial Intelligence:

Let’s not make any bones about this; Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to be at the heart of almost all field service operation in the not too distant future. Indeed, as digital transformation projects have been accelerated since the pandemic, that future is even closer today than it ever has been before.

This is why major organisations such as Salesforce and IBM have invested heavily in their own respective AI solutions and are set to be at the heart of innovation in the future. Particularly in field service, AI is essentially set to be the glue that binds all of the various elements of remote service delivery together.

Quite simply, it will touch each and every aspect of the service call from start to finish. If an asset begins to operate outside of acceptable operating parameters, AI will schedule a call. Suppose a contact centre agent is discussing an issue with a customer. In that case, AI will be able to prompt the agent through the right questions to identify the fault quickly and effectively and also suggest a resolution. Suppose an engineer in the field doesn’t have the skill-set to resolve a particular issue.

In that case, AI will be able to guide them to a knowledge bank that can guide them through the solution, or even connect them to a colleague who is not only available to offer remote assistance but has resolved this issue many times before. If a part needs replacing, AI will have identified where the closest part is and have it ready for the engineer when they get on site. AI is set to be the secret sauce in the mix of service excellence – and it is going to be the differentiator between clumsy and effective remote service delivery.

Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we explore three more key technologies required for remote service delivery.

However, www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below. If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

Beyond the Headlines: The ServiceMax/Salesforce Partnership

Sep 25, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce • servicemax • Neil Barua • Stacey Epstein

As part of our ongoing series where we go beyond the industry headlines to dig deeper into the news that matters for field service management professionals, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to ServiceMax's Neil Barua and Stacey Epstein about the recent announcement of a deeper relationship with one time competitor Salesforce...

A Compelling Move by Two of the Big Names in Field Service Technology:

The last time I spent time with ServiceMax's Neil Barua and Stacey Epstein in person was nearly 18 months ago, where, in the desert heat of Palm Springs we shared a beer towards the end of a long day of discussions, presentations and interviews at the Field Service USA conference.

Fast forward to today, and the memory seems like a relic from a different time. Such casual catch-ups, indeed, even simple business conferences seem like a luxurious relic of another time. A time where we weren't restricted by a pandemic that no-one saw coming.

Yet, for all the pain, suffering and heartache COVID-19 has brought us, in the field service sector at least, in equal measure the pandemic has sharpened us, refined our offerings and pushed us singularly as an industry towards the adoption of what were, not too long ago, seen as best-in-class technologies, processes and strategies.

When a market is disrupted, we see innovation flourish. COVID-19 has been the most significant disruptor the world has ever seen.

"While others may want to talk about the great reset, I see what we are currently going through more akin to hitting the fast forward button..."

It feels like we are living in triple time at the moment. While others may want to talk about the great reset, I see what we are currently going through more akin to hitting the fast forward button (for those of us old enough to remember the halcyon days of analogue tape). In a major research project for which I am currently authoring the report, I see evidence of this. What we are seeing emerge around us in many ways is not the sudden emergence of new thinking and new technologies. It is the natural endpoint of a journey we have been on for a long, long time. We are just getting there a lot quicker than we ever thought we might, because, quite simply, we have to.

This sentiment is echoed in Neil Barua's words as we reconnect. "If you recall, when we last me 18 months ago, that was only the first week of my taking on the CEO role with ServiceMax although it feels like 6 years ago, a lot has happened since then."

It certainly has. The very world in which we all exist has changed. However, even without the backdrop of a global pandemic, you have a feeling this was going to be a big period of evolution for Barua and ServiceMax either way.

"I'm really proud of this team and what we have achieved since I've been here and candidly, the tail-winds of service transformation that you have been following for many years, if not decades, is now truly upon us and COVID, while the tragedy continues, has really driven the need for our customer base to adopt new tools to both be competitive and also to be able to serve the essential workers out there in a way that is modern that can support them out there on the frontline," Barua adds.

This is an important point. In our sector, we have always known that our field service engineers are the unsung heroes of our industry, long before the term 'essential workers' ever entered into our everyday lexicon. However, as that value is magnified even further, we must be able to offer our engineers the latest technologies. Technologies that not only allow them to do what they do best and keep the world working but to be able to do it safely and effectively.

"This announcement is the evolution of the reconnection with Salesforce that began back in February that is a far greater partnership..."

- Neil Barua, CEO ServiceMax

The role technology will play in allowing us to do that will, of course, be huge. So the recent announcement of a much deeper working partnership between two of the industry behemoths in ServiceMax and Salesforce was met with great fanfare. Add into the mix that we are now seeing Salesforce acquisition of ClickSoftware begin to bear fruit and we have something coming close to an FSM supergroup. There are a lot of very experienced, knowledgeable people now working alongside each other, pulling in the same direction. This can only be a good thing for the wider industry. To use a quote that I am particularly fond of, as JFK once said, 'a rising tide lifts all boats'.

"This announcement is the evolution of the reconnection with Salesforce that began back in February that is a far greater partnership," Barua explains. "We're taking a significant part of the eighty million dollars coming from Salesforce Ventures and began the continuous communication between the two companies to think about what more can we do beyond the transfer of money to make value for customers and to do more than what either company has ever done before.

"When we look at this market opportunity, Salesforce are really excited about the opportunity, it [FSM] is the fastest growing product in the history of Salesforce, we are also seeing extremely fast growth in our core busines and we decided to put our product teams together in collaboration," Barua added.

Yet, having seen the initial press statements from both organizations, and reading between the lines of those statements, which as with all such press announcements carry a slightly sanitized tone, polished by corporate communications departments, I couldn't escape the feeling that there was far more to the announced partnership than the standard industry collaboration.

"This is a time period where partnerships really matter, so we've reached across the aisle on both sides to make sure we do right by our customers..."

- Neil Barua, CEO, ServiceMax

Personally, knowing both companies and a number of the key players involved, I had a sense that this partnership ran far deeper than similar partnership announcements. This was more I felt than a formal agreement to share a go-to-market strategy. It seemed to be something far more engaged at the micro-level, rather than the usual surface-level macro approach.

I was keen to see if this truly was the case.

"We've brought together our R&D teams, our marketing teams and our sales teams and the announcement earlier this month, of ServiceMax Asset 360 for Salesforce, is an announcement of a really strategic partnership which unleashes the most complete field service solution in the market out there. It brings to the table the strengths that they bring to bear, particularly the appointment centric capabilities and all the platform technologies that they are evolving and building our asset-centric capabilities on that platform. Putting this together, there is no use case we cannot serve now. We now have execution in front of us to really take advantage of the strengths of both companies."

With this in mind, then it truly is a genuinely exciting proposition for the industry to see such a complete solution come to the fore. It is also perhaps the perfect example of a solution borne in 2020 – a year where in the face of all the adversity we have begun to understand the importance of true business partnerships. As Barua wisely comments "this is a time period where partnerships really matter, so we've reached across the aisle on both sides to make sure we do right by our customers."

Again, the cynical old journalist listening to soundbites about 'doing the right thing for customers' might just see a selection of play-book quotes ready to hand. Yet, there is an earnestness and excitement to the way Barua communicates that makes it hard to stay cynical. While undoubtedly like every great CEO, Barua knows what to say and how to say it, you also get a feeling that his words are built on a foundation of honesty and a belief in doing things the right way.

When I first met Barua, one observation I made was that there was a feeling of continuation from the preceding CEO's he had taken the mantle from. Initially being Dave Yarnold, and then during the GE period, Scott Berg.

That is not to say that under the stewardship of Barua the ServiceMax story isn't evolving, it most evidently is. However, the ethos that underpinned the organization's previous meteoric rise, a focus on understanding the challenges that their customers, and the field service sector at large face remains. That ethos has been key to ServiceMax's approach to building solutions to meet those customer needs which has remained consistent across the various chapters of this compelling story.

I also commented at the time, that I felt a large factor in maintaining a consistent ethos would be the return of Stacey Epstein, now CMO and Chief Experience Officer at ServiceMax to the fold.

Epstein was part of the early team at ServiceMax under Yarnold, who went on to become an impressive CEO in her own right, nurturing communications platform start-up Zinc to becoming an innovative tool that again addressed the needs of modern field service organizations.

"Integrated isn't even the right word, these solutions are all built on one data model leveraging all the same native objects... "

- Stacey Epstein, CMO & Chief Experience Officer, ServiceMax

ServiceMax's subsequent acquisition of Zinc was thus doubly important.

It not only brought another piece of the FSM puzzle into Servicemax's suite of solutions, but it also brought back another experienced voice and mind, one who understood the 'special sauce' that made ServiceMax such a success, back into their senior leadership team.

"I've been in this space for decades," Epstein reflects.

"Well before ServiceMax I was selling field service software for Clarify in the nineties. Field service has been around forever; probably people were going around in wagons and on horses to offer services for people! But I think technology has just continued to fuel the maturity of what field service teams can do. In the past everything was client-server, there was no such thing as mobile. So then it was all about optimizing and tracking parts.

"When ServiceMax came along, it was one of the first Cloud-based FSM solutions and the first vendor to offer a mobile solution. Then Salesforce started building, and Click had great scheduling, and now we have really combined all of this into one very integrated solution.

"In fact, integrated isn't even the right word, these solutions are all built on one data model leveraging all the same native objects." Epstein adds as she considers the point further.

"The things that companies were buying piecemeal before, they can now access on one platform, which will mean a much faster time to value for customers. There are more features out of the box, so there is less customization, and it puts our customers in the position to adopt the new things that come up, like ScopeAR's augmented reality tools, like Aquant's artificial intelligence tools and like the Zinc communication tools.

"If my core features and functionality, asset-centricity, resource -centricity, are all covered in a very robust platform integrated into my CRM then it is not a big step to leverage the cutting-edge tools that allow me to achieve a digital transformation.

"In some ways it is a maturity, but in another way is that it doesn't mean we are 'there' yet . In a sense it simply means that when new technologies emerge, companies are really ready to adopt."

This final point of Epstein's is a good reflection on the place that FSM technology has arrived at today. Much has been refined within recent years, the foundational building blocks of what we now perceive as an FSM platform are in place and proven to be robust and reliable. However, we are also entering a new era of FSM solutions, and thanks in no small part to the pandemic our arrival at this new point came sooner than the majority of us might have anticipated.

The next iteration of FSM will involve remote diagnostics, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and more. However, without a cohesive platform to build upon these tools cannot live up to the value propositions they promise. We are entering a new phase of FSM technology, and the partnership of Salesforce and ServiceMax will see both companies play a leading role in shaping how technology in our industry is set to evolve.

ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘salesforce’ CATEGORY

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We CANNOT UNDERMINE THE VALUE OF THE TRUSTED ADVISOR STATUS OF OUR ENGINEERS

We should not undermine the fact that the technicians while they are on-site can see things that will be very unique from the fact that they are there in person..."

- Gary Brandeleer, Salesforce

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A VISION OF THE FUTURE

"That's where I think there is still a part for technologies to still evolve. I think the whole install base little by little needs to be refreshed and evolve as well..."

Gary Brandeller, Salesforce

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An EXPLORATION OF WHAT COMES NEXT

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REMOTE SERVICE DELIVERY IS NOW TABLE STAKES

"We were sending people onsite, now we are doing remote assistance. Can we do other things as well? Can we now invest in outcome-based services and push towards servitization and other things like this?"

Gary Brandeleer, Salesforce

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REMOTE SERVICE DELIVERY IS NOW TABLE STAKES

"Very rapidly, what was actually a good addition to a demonstration of what is possible with a FSM solution suddenly became table stakes..."

- Gary Brandeleer, Salesforce

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Understanding Good and Bad of Remote Service Delivery for Field Service Companies

Pro#1: Reducing the Cost of Service Delivery

Pro#2: Greater Geographical Coverage

Con#1: The Loss of Meaningful Interaction with the Customer:

Con#2: The Loss of the Eyes and Ears of the Engineer On Site

Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we explore the Pros and Cons of remote service delivery for the Field Service Provider...

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Further Reading:

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Understanding Good and Bad of Remote Service Delivery for Field Service Customers

Pro#1: The Importance of Biosecurity in a Post-Pandemic World

Pro#2: The Importance of Uptime vs SLA Response

Con#1: The Loss of a Trusted Advisor:

Con#2: Delays in Resolution for More Complex Problems:

Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we explore the Pros and Cons of remote service delivery for the Field Service Provider...

Don't want to wait? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below. If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

Further Reading:

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Field Service Management Solution:

Parts Management and Optimisation:

Artificial Intelligence:

Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we explore three more key technologies required for remote service delivery.

However, www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below. If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

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A Compelling Move by Two of the Big Names in Field Service Technology:

"While others may want to talk about the great reset, I see what we are currently going through more akin to hitting the fast forward button..."

"This announcement is the evolution of the reconnection with Salesforce that began back in February that is a far greater partnership..."

- Neil Barua, CEO ServiceMax

"This is a time period where partnerships really matter, so we've reached across the aisle on both sides to make sure we do right by our customers..."

- Neil Barua, CEO, ServiceMax

"Integrated isn't even the right word, these solutions are all built on one data model leveraging all the same native objects... "

- Stacey Epstein, CMO & Chief Experience Officer, ServiceMax

Further Reading:

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