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Join Microsoft and HSO experts on 27th April for a one-day field service masterclass dedicated to transforming your business, explore the role of servitization and see the benefits Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service can bring to your organisation.

Field Service Masterclass 27^th April – Transforming Service Delivery

A one day masterclass dedicated to transforming your business by connecting people, data & equipment to deepen customer loyalty & deliver profitable field service operations.

Adoption of new technology is at the forefront of both customer and field service organisations’ minds, with a combination of mobility, social media, cloud computing, IoT capabilities and more significantly, changing behaviours & expectations. In this landscape, companies need to revisit their infrastructure and processes to ensure that they are capable of delivering a service that puts the needs and desires of their customers first.

Join Microsoft & our HSO field service experts for a field service masterclass where we will explore the role of servitisation to supplement traditional product offerings, discuss ways in which the industry is evolving from a customer and technology perspective, & see the benefits Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service can bring to your organisation in both building customer trust &  embracing the gig economy.

Places for the Masterclass are limited so please apply for your place on this popular virtual event today. Find out more.

Download the agenda here.

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Further Reading:

 

• Find out more about HSO Field Service Masterclass here
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Service Delivery @ www.fieldservicenews.com/service-delivery
• Learn more about HSO @ www.hso.com
• Read more about HSO on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hso

 

In a move that eased their own last mile service delivery problems, BT have implemented a vast network of smart lockers across the length and breadth of the UK. Simultaneously BT have utilised their expertise to establish a crucial solution for other field service organisations. Could this be the panacea to overcome the increasing headache of last-mile service delivery? Kris Oldland reports…

Digital Twins have been discussed in tech circles for a while now, but their potential value in field service is still only just beginning to filter through, Manuel Grenacher, SAP Field Service Management, explains the role they could play in improving service delivery. 

Have you ever considered the possibilities and potential of digital twins for your customer service?  Don’t worry, we are not talking about virtual figures in cyberspace that are modelled after the user just like avatars.

A digital twin represents a real object in the digital world. Digital twins are composed of data and algorithms and can be coupled with the real world via sensors.  They form the basis for a digital customer service and other industry 4.0 related processes. In short, “digital twins” recreate a system in the computer. Ideally, data from the engineering phase – from 3D models to detailed information on installed components – is transferred to the operating phase.

Sensors provide live information on operating conditions, and in addition, all technical innovations on the system, such as the installation of a spare part, are tracked in the “digital twin”. Users benefit from more accurate real-time information and they get a detailed “reference book” with all service information they need.

But how can companies use the advantages of digital twins for their customer service? Digital twins enable the implementation of predictive maintenance since they allow data to be assigned to specific plant conditions. Thus, changing measuring conditions often show in advance that a certain component will fail in the foreseeable future. This allows planned system downtimes to be better coordinated and repair cycles to be adapted to expected failure probabilities.

Requirements For Digital Twins In Service
Sufficient sensors and a systematic evaluation of the data are the essential basis to predict imminent component failures – an approach that is already feasible today. However, technical possibilities are still far from being exhausted right now.

Due to ongoing depreciations or for other economic reasons, companies are only gradually investing in plants equipped with modern IoT technology. IoT, however, will become more affordable in the near future. Sensors will therefore spread continuously while at the same time becoming easier to use, more resistant and cheaper.

"A digital twin represents a real object in the digital world..."

Enabling New Business Models, A Recipe For Digital Success
Industry 4.0 cannot work without a well-planned and technologically underpinned digital service concept, because service is an essential part of digitization. Many companies today already try to stand out with the quality of their service rather than just great products since they are often too similar, even exchangeable.

Customers therefore primarily choose the partner that offers more and faster service. The goal of every company should therefore be to better understand its customers, create better touchpoints and improve service.

This is where new concepts such as “machine-asa-service” become more and more important: companies only purchase the performance of a machine instead of the machine itself – including the service to ensure constant performance. Service Lifecycle Management plays a central role in this concept. In the future, entire ecosystems will emerge from new service providers using concepts like this.

Digital Twins Will Revolutionize Customer Service
Digital twins with their immense data material in both service and business intelligence offer the potential to create entirely new areas of business. Sensors allow to map and control machine statuses and product quality in real time – as well as predicting problems at an early stage. This way, service can intervene before expensive machine failures occur.

Furthermore, companies can dynamically adapt maintenance intervals to actual requirements on the basis of live information. In the future, all of a company’s systems as well as all of its spare parts, tools, containers and products, will be represented by their “digital mirror images”, a complete factory in the computer. The large amount of data that can be collected using digital twins in combination with artificial intelligence evaluation will provide stunning new insights into the interaction of operating processes.

This will lead to fully automated smart factories, which, thanks to artificial intelligence and digital twins, can control themselves practically without human intervention

Manuel Grenacher, is GM at SAP Field Service Management.

The advent of Cloud computing has had a profound effect on field service management.

Indeed, there is no denying that the emergence of Cloud computing has been a core driver in the ability for smaller and medium-sized field service companies to be able to compete with their larger competitors - and such competition has raised the bar for service delivery in all corners.

Anecdotally, how often have you heard someone comment (or indeed thought to yourself) ‘how is it that say my local florist is able to give me a detailed overview of where the flowers I have sent to my wife are at any given point within their delivery and are able to give me a 30 minute window for when they will arrive, yet the multi-national organisation that provides one of the key widgets that is essential to my businesses productivity can only tell me that an engineer will be with me at some point between 8 and 5?’

Of course, the truth is that the delivery of flowers is far less demanding of expertise than that expected of a highly qualified engineer capable of fixing said widget – which of course means that the scheduling requirements are also equally less complicated for the local florist.

In addition to this, the local florist will, largely by definition, only be serving a local area – whereas the B2B provider of the widget will almost certainly serve a national market, if not an international one.

So it is unfair perhaps to compare one to the other, accusations of seeking the similarities between apples and oranges are in this instance somewhat understandable. Yet, ultimately in today’s connected world, we must remember that we are no longer competing solely with those companies within our direct vertical sphere.

 

"Today, we are competing very simply against the best service experience our customers have ever had, whether that be within their consumer or their corporate lives..."

 

Today, we are competing very simply against the best service experience our customers have ever had, whether that be within their consumer or their corporate lives.

However, what this anecdotal example does highlight with true clarity is how smaller service organisations, be they florists, electricians, HVAC engineers or any of the other array of small entrepreneurial companies that help keep our day to day lives running, have been able to harness the power of modern FSM solutions.

This development is mostly the result of the introduction of SaaS-based subscription-style licensing which makes access to such systems possible. It seems like a long, long time ago that Tesseract, an Asolvi product became the first company in the world to offer their full FSM solution in the Cloud and on a SaaS model. Indeed, today almost all FSM providers now offer their solution in such a manner.

This means that smaller companies can have access to tools like scheduling, stock and parts management and mobile work management applications for their field-based staff to access via a mobile device. Yet, they also have the advantage of being more agile, more streamlined and less weighed down by legacy systems and processes that their larger peers undoubtedly face.

 

"In a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scenario keeping on top of MDM can sometimes feel like painting the Golden Gate Bridge – by the time you finish at one end it’s time to head back the other way and start all over!"

 

Many, many aspects of introducing an FSM solution can become more challenging the larger an organisation is.

Optimised scheduling engines need to be ‘taught’ the rules under which they are to operate – the larger the workforce and the more diverse the skill-sets within that workforce, the more ‘lessons’ that need to be fed into the scheduling system for it to operate as intended.

Also, let’s consider the devices that are being utilised by the field workers – mobile device management (MDM) is a challenge that few IT departments will relish.

In a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scenario keeping on top of MDM can sometimes feel like painting the Golden Gate Bridge – by the time you finish at one end it’s time to head back the other way and start all over!

Even in an environment where devices are provided by the organisation, there may be a mix of options within one company, with different devices being provided that meet specific roles within the organisation – such as rugged devices for field-based technicians.

This can result in a mix of iOS, Android and Windows operating systems (possibly even more) which all need to be factored into the MDM equation.

Again, this is a challenge that becomes magnified by the scale of the workforce in question.

Of course, another challenge magnified by the scale of the workforce is the simple fact that the introduction of any new business technology, including an FSM solution, is inherently a change management project – and as any change management consultant will inform you – good change management is about people. It is a simple equation to understand that more people mean more effort and complexity when undertaking such a task.

In terms of FSM solutions, the shift to the Cloud has absolutely changed the competitive dynamics within various industries in favour of those smaller companies who are savvy enough to embrace cloud-based FSM and unencumbered by challenges such as the above which larger companies may face.

This has given smaller organisations to flourish and thrive in the modern business eco-system, but this increased competition has resulted in huge organisations like Thyssenkrupp or ABB further driving innovation as we have showcased in these pages previously.

Our sector is going through a huge evolution with non-competing companies pushing each other to achieve more through service delivery and the cloud has played a major role in that allowing us to do so.

 

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Titos Anastassacos from Si2Partners shares with us some interesting insight on Augmented Reality from their recent research-based reports...

Technology is changing field service rapidly.

In the not too distant future Smart Connected Products will be self-diagnosing; Maintenance will become, almost exclusively, predictive; Spare parts will be 3D printed; And humans will interact at a deeper level with machines through Augmented Reality and Digital Twins, whether the machine is in the same room or on the other side of the planet.

The nature of the service business will shift from technical labour and logistics to knowledge management and exchange. Service delivery will change drastically as will the nature of competition and business models.

 

"The nature of the service business will shift from technical labour and logistics to knowledge management and exchange. Service delivery will change drastically as will the nature of competition and business models..."

 

But if the “end-state” medium term can be discerned quite clearly, getting there poses significant challenges.

So, at a Si2 Partners, we developed a series of survey-based management reports, to shine a spotlight into service businesses’ efforts to grasp the opportunities of digitization while dealing with the challenges. We then draw conclusions and recommend the best ways forward. The first report on Augmented Reality is available now, the next report on Predictive Maintenance is due by the end of the year.

The first public demonstration of AR was in 1998 during ESPN’s coverage of a football game: Generation and display of the yellow first down line. The line stayed fixed within the coordinates of the playing field. It was not physically present on the field and was visible only to the television audience.

But from that simple application, only 15 years later, Gartner was predicting that companies would be increasing their profits by over $1 billion annually -by 2017- through the application of AR in their field service business.

Things, of course, are not so simple. Reducing costs does not directly translate into increased profits.

That depends on prices and we know that digitization tends to make them drop, sometimes to zero -think of what happened to chemical photography. But even if we only consider costs, AR is clearly important, in many ways transformational, technology with a potentially very powerful impact.

So, are companies adopting AR for field service? Our survey showed that they are.

Most expect significant cost savings and productivity improvements through AR, mainly in engineering time and travel cost -and, interestingly, smaller companies are at least as much engaged with the technology as larger ones: Upfront investment can be low, and it can be implemented quickly and stand-alone (at least initially).

Importantly, it may help reduce pressure on scarce, highly qualified, and expensive engineering resources, while simultaneously improving the cost-effective support of remote customers (smaller companies are less likely to have extensive service networks).

Overall, we found that while less than 1/3 of respondents already used AR, and, of those, the majority had introduced it over the past 12 months, another third planned to introduce it over the coming 12 months. This indicates an accelerating trend.

Of course, for users, it has not been all smooth sailing. Challenges are numerous: For example, it turns out that connectivity at customer sites is a significant issue, which hampers the use of the technology. But technical problems are normal at this stage of introduction.

Far more important are managerial challenges.

For example, as always, one size does not fit all: The most commonly reported use case is field technicians receiving AR-based support by experienced engineers from a remote central hub.

 

"Better applications for such cases may be pooling AR-based support, providing technical information through “knowledge-libraries”..."

 

This may help companies with large field service workforces (possibly with high turn-over rates or fewer qualifications) supporting standardized equipment. It is not much help to vendors of highly complex equipment whose field engineers are already highly experienced and qualified themselves.

In fact, it may be even counter-productive, slowing things down or reducing acceptance.

Better applications for such cases may be pooling AR-based support, providing technical information through “knowledge-libraries”, particularly on rarely encountered problems or legacy equipment, or integrating AR with the IoT, so that operational data can provide real-time context to engineers and support for diagnostics.

However, such applications require investment in digital content, something that many AR users have often not considered, as well as a process of experimentation and development.

Another finding is that following implementation of AR, many managements don’t take the necessary action to lock-in the AR benefits by pushing through change in the support and field service processes. For example, few companies eliminate technical manuals and drawings from a field engineer’s toolbox, delaying the necessary adjustments.

And, while many companies market their AR capability to customers, few have developed AR-based offerings. Yet our survey shows that customers would welcome AR-based support if it would help to reduce costs and improve performance, notwithstanding issues of confidentiality or privacy.

The process to integrate AR into a company’s mode of operations and to maximize its benefits will, as for any new technology, be arduous and bumpy. But the impact on costs and productivity is becoming clear. Though most don’t yet formally track it, 72% of our respondents said that AR is on par with or has exceeded expectations.

Augmented Reality in Service: Ready for Prime Time? Visit the Service in Industry Hub Shop to download the flyer or purchase the report. For more information contact titos.anastassacos@si2partners.com or visit Si2Partners

 

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Samir Gulati, Chief Marketing Officer, ServicePower explains why savvy service organisations understand that building an excellent customer experience must begin from the first interaction, but must continue through every service touch point onwards - and how IoT data can be a key tool in achieving that...

Customers purchase products and don’t interact with the OEM or retailer again until something fails. Thus, your next contact with the consumer is one in which your product has become their problem. You are behind the eight ball right out of the gate. 

While the industry has focused on metrics important for operational improvements, such as first-time fix rates, productivity, efficiency of field technicians and fuel utilization, all of which are critical to any business, we now must recognize that customer experience must be the driving force behind our strategies, the top priority for our operators, for sales and marketing and for our service teams.   

Considering the customer experience from the very beginning is the surest way to drive downstream revenue.  

Start at the Beginning 

Customer experience must be considered from the point a product is manufactured or sold, not simply from the perspective of field service downstream. 

Customer experience must be considered from the point a product is manufactured or sold, not simply from the perspective of field service downstream. Ensure that your product includes features which makes your customers’ experience with your product easy and helpful, that it meets expectations. Don’t stop there though. Make sure the product exceeds expectations. With the ease at which IoT sensors can be embedded in products and used to provide proactive new accessories and services, makes tapping into this technology a no-brainer.

IoT isn’t reserved for heavy industry. Consumers, both residential and commercial, are using IoT in their lives every. Use it to your advantage, and theirs. 

Take the Next Step 

Your responsibility to your customer doesn’t stop at the point you ship or sell a product or service. Once the product is in hand, make sure you’ve made it easy to connect with your organization in real time.

If a customer has questions about usage or features and functions, needs accessories or complementary products, or in the event, there is an issue with a product, omnichannel connectivity gives them the ability to connect with you in ways that are convenient for them.

Use web portals and mobile apps, use Smart Speakers. Image how much better a repair experience could be if Siri could schedule an appointment for your customer.  

Go Beyond Service Delivery 

Enabling field teams with technology with the information, part and tools required to fix a problem in the field is the minimum expectation of field service organizations now.

If you’re not there, and recent data suggests that almost 50% of field service teams are not, get there fast. Look to configurable, cross-platform mobile applications that you can deploy quickly, on any device, with the process and forms needed- by your employed or contracted field technicians- to get onsite and problem solve in real time.

But don’t stop there.

Tap into the data you’ve collected from manufacturing, the point of sale, IoT and service history to offer your customers more.Tap into the data you’ve collected from manufacturing, the point of sale, IoT and service history to offer your customers more. The data at your fingertips makes it possible for you to offer new services using that data, directly from your field technicians.

Make the customer happy with a single visit fix. Make them happier with maintenance contract offers that keep their products up and running longer. Delight your customers with proactive service and seamless communication with every member of the product lifecycle ecosystem.

Use the data and the technology available to both your organization and your customer, to seamlessly drive positive, profitable post-sale interactions with every customer.  

 

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This is the 3^rd article in a series of case studies which examines how companies can improve their understanding of there own Value, create more effective GO-TO Market strategies and drive profitability through efficient Service Delivery models.

‘If you want customer insight to develop new services, go ask the sales force’….uh oh …probably not completely the right idea.  Sorry guys but customer’s talk to sales people in a different kind of way. So while sales input is essential, there are many factors that influence the accuracy of the feedback.

If you really want to understand what your customers value, probably its best to go direct to the customers themselves. That’s why many senior managers insist on visiting customer. But how many times have you heard the CEO call for a change of direction based on a recent visit to an unhappy customer.  A more balanced approach is needed to make informed decisions, if you do not want to fall into the trap of this frequently used quote, ’8% of companies think they deliver superior experience…….only 8% of their customers agree!’

The solution to a balanced & informed analysis is often to involve impartial 3^rd parties.

Take Yokogoawa,  an industrial leader in automation solutions for process industries. Back in 2010 they wanted to know what services their customers thought they should offer. They had talked to the sales force who came back with a pure price, price, price argument. To the Benelux service manager Ton van den Ham, this did not add up, and he felt that perhaps they were asking the wrong questions in the wrong way. So he engaged a 3^rd party to help structure a set of visits and interviews aimed at getting under underneath the skin of their customers. Why a 3^rd party. Well he wanted an impartial perspective that did not carry Yokogawa baggage.

The interviews were done jointly with the 3^rd party acting as a coach and sometime lead. To Yokogawa’s amazement they found that their customer’s really appreciated the technical competence of the application engineers. That the customer’s challenge, was not in fact lower prices, but to have more stable and predictable processes for their chemical plants. The customer’s wanted Yogokawa’s technical experts to be even more engaged at a much deeper level in their business to help keep their processes at the optimum performance.

Armed with this feedback Yokogawa, started to develop their services programme which has developed into what they refer to as ‘Vigiplant Services’

At a recent conference Ton described his his experience of this programme as:   ‘You don’t know what you don’t know. It’s worthwhile talking to your customers to get a different perspective’

So the moral of the story is that when you are developing your services business, forensically clean customer insight is key to truly understanding the value you offer. Don’t be afraid of getting outside people that you trust involved in this process as the results may be surprising. If you would like to learn more about this case study, you can see a video of Ton’s presentation at: http://smc.noventum.nl/smc2011/service-track-video-presentations-2011

Nick Frank is a service specialist with Noventum Service Management and can be contacted at nick.frank@noventum.eu

Read part one of this series, Creating value through services: Where to Start? here  

Read Part two of this series, Ouch! getting the profit/cost centre call wrong in your service business here

 

 

It can make or break your service business growth strategy, yet it’s surprising how many service leaders do not appreciate the impact a separate service P&L can have on changing the mind-set of their people.

Many just focus on what they believe is the best way to maximise their corporate value. Yes it’s important to ensure we have the systems to manage the value of our enterprise, but we also need to consider the impact of measures on the performance of our people.

Take Textron Fastening Systems who were a $1.8bn global manufacturer of nuts, bolts, rivets, screws and plastic clips. Their European business became the sole supplier of fasteners to the Ford Fiesta, providing an integrated solution consisting of manufacturing, purchasing, logistics and engineering services. As far from their manufacturing core, it was set up with it’s own P&L and dedicated team. They succeeded due to their focus and separation from the main manufacturing business.

But once this $30million service business was stable, we decided to re-integrate it back into the core business. So a dedicated team, was re-deployed back into the operational silo’s of Engineering, Logistics, Purchasing , IT and Sales. What a disaster and I say that as this case study is from my own experiences. We lost focus, drive, energy and sales. Our biggest competitor, who set up a separate service business, grew to 5 times our revenue, from exactly the same starting point in time and experience. 15 years on the Textron Fastening Systems no longer exists, having been bought by Private Equity and then broken up. Ironically the remains of the service business have survived but without growth.

For me this was a very salutatory lesson about the importance of focus. But its not so simple as saying that for an industrial company to succeed you must have a separate P&L or Business Unit.

It depends on the strategic goals of the business and also where it is in the transformation process. For example companies such as Rolls Royce & BAE with over 50% of their revenues from services see it as such an integral part of their business model, they do not have a stand alone services division.

So if you are pondering how best to manage your corporate value and looking to make the profit/cost centre call, you might ask yourself 2 questions:

1. In your future business model how integrated will be your products and services offering.
2. Is organisational focus the key challenge facing your service transformation programme.

Having a sound service strategy is key to make the transformation to a sustainable high growth profitable service business. If you want to read  more about how real companies achieve this goal, you can look at the Bobst case study on www.noventum.eu

Read part one of this series, Creating value through services: Where to Start? here  

Read Part Three of this series, Finding nuggets of customer gold here

 

When talking about service, we often hear senior managers asking the question, ’But where do you start?’

It would be lovely to call out, ‘At the beginning!’, but most of us know that is a bit simplistic. The thing is that successful service companies align all aspects of their business to their goal. But business is complex and to address change on a wide front is costly and risky.  Instead business leaders understand where their priorities are, address these first and then move on to the next part of the puzzle. Effective decision making means defining priorities within the context of an overall vision or blue print of how their services business should operate.

We thought it would be worthwhile sharing a series of blog articles based on real life experiences to help paint this picture. The blogs will illustrate 4 key areas to get right![ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Understand the Value you can deliver to the customer and your own business
   
2. An effective GO-TO Market strategy that defines what service offerings you need to develop and how to sell them
3. Efficient  Service Delivery to ensure profitability
4. Have a Plan

Lets first look at a good way to improve your understanding of Value by analysing your Customer’s Journey to your services. We are not just talking about how they came to choose your product. We start way before that activity and move all the way through to the touch points of the service delivery model.

Many of you will recognise the customer journey map below as being similar for the lifecycle of your equipment.  It is a high level summary of just one part of a customer journey scenario that was mapped out for the premier manufacturer of injection moulding systems, Husky SA. It shows how a customer perceives the brand at different stages through the product life cycle within different touch-points and activities.

But why bother mapping out what seems intuitively obvious. In this case it allowed cross functional teams from Husky Service & Sales to understand what were the critical points in the products lifecycle at which they:

a)    Had to work together: For example in the selling process, especially where negotiations revolved around total cost of ownership commitments.

b)    Where the service organisation could have a significant impact on the customer satisfaction and loyalty. For example by reacting quickly to start up issues, a difficult situation for the customer could be turned around to be a positive experience, if solved quickly and professionally.

c)     Where the use of 3^rd party contractors for providing the service might be appropriate.

d)    To identify systems that could be targeted for different refurbishment and upgrades, so as to maximise revenues through the product lifecycle.

Detail can be added to this high level journey. For example Husky decided that all calls for all technologies should come into the same call centre. By drilling down into more detail at the call centre level and looking at how the customer journey through the organisation changed for different customers, the organisation was able to design a more effective process, to communicate appropriately with its customers and ensure the correct level of training for its employees.

From these examples we can see that being intimate with your customer’s journey is so important to understanding the value they might be seeking from us. Why not look at  www.noventum.eu for more ideas and discussions on the Customer Journey.

In our next blog in this series, we will look a how service change dramatically slows, when we make the wrong decisions in the profit centre / cost centre debate, because we have not understood how are business wants to make money.

Read Part two of this series: Ouch! getting the profit/cost centre call wrong in your service business here

Read part three of this series:  Finding nuggets of customer gold here