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Panasonic Business has opened its new customer experience centre in the UK, showcasing its range of B2B solutions virtually  and physically including a rugged technology testing centre.

Situated in Bracknell, the centre is experienced as two zones. The first is an immersive 270 degree interactive presentation space, built around eight separate virtual vertical environments, and a demonstration space that allows customers to get hands-on with the latest Panasonic technology. 

Featuring AV design and integration by Sysco Productions, concept development by AB Creative, and content and physical build by Hart Wilcox, it  features over 100 items of technology, including a range of Toughbook rugged notebooks and with a rugged resistance test station, which allows water ingress, drop and impact testing of the range. 

Simon Grantham, Managing Director of Panasonic UK said: "By quietly and reliably powering their capability our technology frees businesses to perform to their maximum. The new customer experience centre provides a platform upon which we can work with our customers to solve their daily business challenges.” 

 

 

 

 

Ericsson has unveiled the next steps in the evolution of cellular IoT and launched new solutions that will enable service providers to address a larger part of the IoT market with diverse use cases across verticals including automotive, manufacturing and utilities
In line with its cellular IoT vision, Ericsson is launching enhanced functionalities for Massive IoT and new solutions for Broadband IoT. One example of Massive IoT enhancement is the NB-IoT Extended Cell Range 100km, which stretches the standards-based limit from around 40km to 100km through software updates without changes to existing NB-IoT devices.

This opens huge opportunities in IoT connectivity in rural and remote areas, particularly for logistics, agriculture and environment monitoring. Ericsson has deployed NB-IoT data connections up to 100km with Telstra and DISH.The Broadband IoT solutions being launched include drone detection and link control, radio access network (RAN) slicing, Advanced Subscriber Group Handling, and Multi-Gigabit LTE for 2Gbps data throughput and around 10 millisecond latency.

The new solutions will enable a wide range of use cases in automotive, drones, AR/VR, advanced wearables, smart manufacturing, and smart utilities. Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks, Ericsson, says: “Cellular IoT is moving from early adoption with Massive IoT to global rollout. We are now describing ‘what’s next?’ for our customers and how they can make the most out of their 4G and 5G investments on the same network and address more advanced IoT use cases across industries.”

Ericsson’s evolution concept describes how cellular IoT can move from the more basic use cases of Massive IoT such as asset tracking and smart metering to increasingly sophisticated use cases enabled by Broadband IoT (for example infotainment in cars, AR/VR, drones and advanced wearables), and then by Critical IoT (for example, autonomous vehicles), and Industrial Automation IoT (for example, collaborative robotics in manufacturing).

This stepwise approach will make it easier for service providers to match cellular IoT capabilities with current and future use cases by continuing to enhance LTE networks while preparing for 5G. With effective use of techniques such as network slicing, service providers can support all four segments in a single network, allowing them to optimize their assets and tap into revenue opportunities within industries.

According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, the number of cellular IoT connections is expected to reach 4.1 billion in 2024 – increasing with an annual growth rate of 27 percent.

Patrick Filkins, Senior Research Analyst, IoT and Mobile Network Infrastructure at IDC, says: “Ericsson has come up with a uniquely clear vision for cellular IoT with well-defined segments for service providers to address new business growth opportunities from industry digitalization. Ericsson’s cellular IoT evolution concept will support service providers to incrementally allow add-on use cases even within a single vertical.”

Manuel Grenacher, CEO, Coresystems, reflects back on some of the big predictions he made earlier this year and reflects on the progress made in interweaving the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality into the fabric of field service delivery across the last 12 months...

 

The days are getting shorter and colder, which means the holidays are approaching and 2019 is just around the corner (believe it or not!). So now is the perfect time to take a look back at 2018 and take stock of the advancements the field service industry made this year.

Back in March, we highlighted three trends we predicted would have major impacts on the field service sector in 2018. We noted that while 2017 introduced innovative new technology-based trends with the likes of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR), 2018 would bring real-world applications that put those buzzwords into practice.

So let’s review the progress of each of those three trends this year – after all, predictions don’t mean much if you don’t evaluate how accurate they were, right…?

 

The IoT Drives Proactive Device Maintenance, Service and Repair

Since the Internet of Things (IoT) became an integral part of almost every business’ technology mix midway through this decade, field service innovators have been finding ways to use the increased connectivity of the IoT to gain a competitive advantage. We predicted that in 2018, further innovation would allow field service technicians to utilize the IoT and automation in today’s devices – with the goal of providing service in real-time to meet (and exceed) customer expectations.

As is often the case in the field service industry, supply chain and manufacturing organizations were at the front of the line when it came to utilizing IoT-enabled and supported field service. Toward the end of this interview between SupplyChainBrain and various supply chain executives, the benefits of the predictive maintenance that the IoT enables become clear. Regarding sensor-equipped motors in warehouses, automation solutions provider Knapp noted:

“A motor might transmit information about vibration or heat, for example. It could indicate it needs potential maintenance services, and that's important because that would be predictive maintenance as opposed to breakdown maintenance, which is much more costly and can severely impact service levels.”

We’re seeing this focus on IoT-enabled predictive maintenance across the board with our manufacturing customers, so we can confirm that it definitely became a major focus in 2018 – and will continue to do so in 2019.

 

Artificial Intelligence Simplifies and Automates Service Appointments

Although artificial intelligence (AI) is in danger of becoming a somewhat empty buzzword in many industries, it’s here to stay – indeed, Gartner forecasts that 85 percent of customer interactions will be managed by AI by the year 2020.

The field service industry is applying AI in very meaningful ways as we speak, and it’s the concept of predictive maintenance that is driving the adoption of AI. For example, a recent study of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the supply chain sector found that most OEMs are gathering data from sensor-equipped products in the field—a key requirement for predictive maintenance. In addition, more than half of OEMs plan to make AI and machine learning a major investment, while 90 percent intend to invest in predictive analytics within the next 12 months.

Beyond predictive maintenance (but related to it), AI can streamline the field service technician dispatching process – which crucially means customers can get their equipment serviced faster. Influential software authority Capterra highlighted how design consultancy Philosophie, using AI, developed a field service program that handed 90-95 percent of the technician dispatching duties to an AI system – which enabled the field service team to dedicate its human talent to the more difficult field service jobs.

AI most definitely made its stamp on the field service industry in 2018, and the innovation is expected to continue next year and beyond.

 

Augmented Reality Provides Unprecedented Visibility into Worksites

Back in March, we noted that the increased connectivity that the IoT brings will continue to propel the application of augmented reality (AR) in the field service sector. In 2018, we saw AR applied by companies aiming to improve their first-time fix rate on service calls, as well as other vital field service functions.

ZDNet detailed several highly-recognizable brands using AR for service calls, including BP's U.S. Lower 48 onshore oil and natural gas business, which has been equipping field service technicians with AR platforms to assist with repairs, and Caterpillar, which recently tested an AR solution for the technicians who service a line of its onsite portable generators. Caterpillar provides field personnel with an internally-developed iPad app that interfaces with IoT sensors on the generator to provide real-time diagnostics and repair protocols.

While AR is in its infancy relative to the IoT and AI, we’ve seen our own customers' leverage AR to make better use of their field service resources – including servicing their customers’ equipment remotely through AR glasses. We’re very likely to see the usage of AR expand in the field service industry in 2019.

It certainly appears that the trends we highlighted earlier this year continued to gain significant traction in the field service industry in 2018, and we fully expect IoT, AI and AR technologies to continue to drive a wide range of innovative projects and initiatives in 2019. And once the calendar turns to 2019, look out for our predictions on the developments to look forward to next year!

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Jan Van Veen of moremomentum concludes his series of articles on the 4 Winning Habits of successful service organisations focusing on the fourth and final winning habit: Discovery...

Following our introductory article about the 4 Winning Habits in the previous publication of ‘Field Service News’, I will now elaborate on the fourth winning habit: Discovery.

Common mistake: Being blind-folded

Humankind by nature tends to be fairly blind-folded, by its strong focus on opportunities and threats in the short term and directly related to its current situation. Companies often enforce this behaviour by:

• Low adoption of the first three winning habits (Direction, Dialogue, Decision-making).
• Not allowing time and resources in discovery and innovation, focusing on the exploitation of the current business model.
• Detailed and top-down control of exact discovery topics and assignments.
• Leaving all discovery activities for dedicated and specialized teams close to the board.

The consequences are critical for the sustainable performance and business innovations we need to thrive in a disruptive world. We tend to:

• Overlook longer-term opportunities and issues and misinterpret the potential impact of these.
• Overlook the real issue behind symptoms and fight the symptoms instead.
• Limit our options for solving problems or pursuing new opportunities and get stuck.
• Encounter resistance when developing and implementing new solutions.

In the past we have seen many businesses missing the boat - and we still do.

Just imagine what would happen if:

• Nokia and Blackberry did recognise that maybe, business-users at some point could expect touch screens, apps, multi-media and full connectivity.
• Polaroid did consider that digital cameras would become affordable for consumers.
• Airliners did understand that low-cost airlines could become attractive to business travellers as well.

The solution: All employees discover the future with an open mind

Leading companies drive their ongoing success with a strong habit of continuously discovering new opportunities and challenges.

Their discovery habits outperform the lagging companies, by:

1. Bringing the outside in
2. Using many sources
3. Involving involve all employees and many external stakeholders.

1. Bringing the outside in:

Every company has an eye open to the outside. They investigate trends with customers, competitors and technology. However, many miss opportunities and trends as they tend to be too focussed on:

• Topics with an immediate impact on current performance, less on future performance.
• Current needs of their best clients and less on future needs or on other market segments.
• Actions of competitors, less on what they potentially could do in the future.
• Trends with clear signs and high probability, less on trends with less clarity or probability.
• What they know for sure, less what they do not know. After all, staff are being paid for what they know”, not for what they do not know.

Leading manufacturers bring the outside in through the following practices.

Explore beyond business as usual:

The key is to be looking for (potential) trends and changes which do not directly relate to the current business model and operations. These insights will help prepare the business well in advance and to be the first to benefit from the change.

Leading companies also address the following in their discovery habits:

Market:

• Current and future needs of market segments which they do not serve, particularly if they appear not to be so profitable at the moment.
• (Latent) needs of their current clients, beyond the needs which they fulfil with their current products and services.
• Current and potential future needs of the clients of their clients.

Competition:

• Changing visions and strategies of competitors, other actors in the value chain and potential new entrants into the industry.
• Trends in adjacent industries and industries like data, algorithm-driven industries.

New technology:

 

• Emerging technologies with a low rate of adoption and application, like big-data, augmented reality artificial intelligence and how these will impact their (future) clients.
• Obstacles which currently prevent rapid adoption of the new technology and how these obstacles could be solved in the future.
• Economics, social demographics, politics, natural resources, workforce etcetera.

 

Explore weak signals:

Many lagging companies make themselves vulnerable to disruption by disregarding the weak signals. They tend to assess emerging technologies on their current possibilities and threats. They often see many reasons the impact will not be that high, for example, because of poor performance, high cost and narrow practical applications.

Many lagging companies make themselves vulnerable to disruption by disregarding the weak signals.We tend to disregard the scenarios that these obstacles may disappear in the coming years and how the adoption of the emerging technology could accelerate rapidly.

Many disruptive changes take one or more decades of exponential development and growth. In the first phases, the change and its impact seems to be insignificant. However, at some point, it quite quickly becomes significant and in a few years becomes main-stream. For many, this change comes out of the blue and is totally unexpected.

Leading companies explicitly focus on the weak signals. They are the first to see changes accelerating and obstacles for adoption of new solutions being eliminated. At the right time, they assess if they are ready for the change and are the first to act on the new opportunities and challenges.

Thinking in scenarios:

It is a challenge to tell in advance which trends and changes will really become real and have an impact on our business and which trends will only be hype or just stall. I think it is key that we accept the fact that we do not know. The

challenge is not making sure you do know, but that we are prepared to sense and respond in time.

Leading companies continuously develop and maintain scenarios for potential trends, changes and alternative solutions to respond. They understand which signals to be on the lookout for.

2. Many sources 

Leading companies see their innovation and changes being fed from many different sources for in-depth and broad discovery.

Internal and external sources

People with different backgrounds and opinions add value to getting new insights and arriving at better decisions. The most successful companies actually include many internal resources, which traditionally the lagging companies tend to disregard, like:

 

• Employees from other cultures, with different values, views and experiences.
• Employees who have a lot of experience from other industries.
• Employees from specific departments like R&D, service, finance, compliance and employees at lower ranks.

 

Leading companies also activate a broader network of external sources, including those they hardly meet during daily business. They actively seek to exchange insights with:

 

• Peers from completely different industries.
• Clients of clients of clients.
• Peers from other companies serving the same value chain.
• Experts and academics from different domains.
• Other stakeholders of client-organisations, who are not talking about the products and services.

 

Experiments

Leading companies not only talk and think about potential challenges, opportunities and solutions. That would lead to paralysis by analysis. They also learn by doing by:

 

• Innovate and develop step-by-step, starting with a first minimal viable solution and running rapid cycles of learning, adjusting and taking the solution to the next level. These are the Lean Startup and Agile approaches.
• Doing experiments, where we learn from what could happen in certain circumstances with certain solutions. These provide new insights which can be included in further decision-making on the direction and timing of a solution.

 

Experiences and failures

Leading companies learn from the things they did which did not work. They rapidly adjust and find new ways. They emphasize that it’s all about the learning, not about the failure. Their employees are more open to trying new solutions and practices, discovering and pursuing new opportunities, also when the results are not yet certain.

More and more companies cultivate the belief that failure is an option.

More and more companies cultivate the belief that failure is an option.For example, they organise failure-celebration-sessions, where colleagues present a failure, what they learned from it and how they would adjust their approach.

Another approach is not to use the word “failure”, but “discovery” or similar.

Like Edison said: “I did not fail, I just discovered 10,000 things that do not work.” This seems to work better than only reframing “failure”, even more so in cultures where losing face is a major factor.

3. The power of everyone in some discovery-mode

The most dynamic businesses empower all employees to do research, explore and define new ideas to improve and innovate, not a small specialised team dedicated for this job.

Everyone Contributes

Everyone in the organisation owns part of innovation and change, whether it is about implementation or identifying new ways to improve. They all have and search for the necessary insights. They all read, talk with peers from other companies and clients, do experiments, visit conferences, do external training and conduct their discovery projects.

This engages them to own the ideas and the execution.

Exchange and share

However, they do not discover everything themselves. They also exchange insights, experiences, opportunities and challenges they have discovered, hence learning from their colleagues and having their colleagues learn from them. This happens through collaboration tools, meetings within and amongst project teams and other in company events.

Bottom-up and Top-down

Everyone, within boundaries, takes their own initiatives to explore certain topics. Some discovery assignments come from higher management levels. This way they are committed to the effort it takes and to the outcome the generate and their colleagues generate.

Benefits

These open and forward-looking discovery habits make an organisation much more adaptive to any new opportunities, challenges and solutions.

They shape a huge army of open-minded, engaged and change-oriented employees. This is mission-critical for any company that wants to thrive in a rapidly changing and complex world.

The Essence

It’s not about having smart analysts and experts creating smart intelligence.

It’s about having passionate and engaged employees learning and discovering and making great ideas work.

Want to know more? access our eBook: How to Thrive in a Disruptive World - an eBook of 42 pages about disruption, the 4 winning habits for momentum in continuous and rapid change and 3 case studies (including Mars Drinks and Volvo Penta) Field Service News subscriber can access the eBook @ http://fs-ne.ws/AcQf30jhl0S

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It’s been several years since the official end of the Great Recession and we finally see organizations beginning to switch from a cautionary mindset to one of business expansion. However, business and revenue expansion initiatives need to be built on an infrastructure of growth, an area where organizations haven’t invested significantly in the previous 5-10 years. The desire for growth needs to be matched with investments in knowledge, technology, and innovation.

Sumair Dutta, Chief Customer Officer, Service Council explains why he anticipates that the next twelve months will be a period when service leaders begin to transition into new revenue models.

The Voice of the Service Leader:

In The Service Council’s annual trends survey of 2017, service leaders indicated that their top initiatives were focused on the improvement of customer management, the enhancement of service operations with the aid of business data, and an expansion of knowledge management across the enterprise.

In discussions with service leaders, it seemed like most were looking to get closer to their customers via better voice of the customer and listening initiatives to truly understand what these customers valued. In several industries, we also noted that organizations were balancing the demands and needs of various customers within an organization.

2018 initiatives are similar to those planned for 2017 and we don’t see a major deviation for service leaders. The push is to continue to drive operational efficiencies and business capacity with the aid of data, information, and technology. In parallel, organizations are looking to continue to ramp up their customer experience initiatives. As these initiatives get more mature and move from the listening phase to the customer understanding phase, organizations are hoping to use customer insight and data to support revenue generation efforts.

In discussions with service leaders, it seemed like most were looking to get closer to their customers via better voice of the customer and listening initiatives to truly understand what these customers valued.Voice of the customer efforts have been popular for several years and were championed by those in business to consumer industries.

In serving a larger number of customers and customer transactions, it was essential for these organizations to get a pulse of customer sentiment tied to service transactions and business relationships. The effort from these organizations was to improve operations to support better loyalty and retention.

Some would argue that the intent of these organizations is now shifting to ensuring a greater use of purchased product and service features, akin to the customer success model.

In enterprises that work directly with other businesses, the volume of transactions and interactions might not be as large; nevertheless, these interactions can have a high degree of value or impact attached to them. Historically, organizations were happy to capture feedback from their customers, but customer listening wasn’t a prioritized activity.

That has changed; as over the last three years, we have seen more organizations invest in voice of the customer and customer surveying programs.

More so, service leaders have also sought after resources to map customer journeys and identify key pain points in the service delivery ecosystem.

These customer experience activities have led to a handful of initiatives that strive to assuage frustrated customers, increase visibility into the service process, and reduce the effort required to access the service organization.

We now believe that organizations are fairly well equipped to deal with direct customer feedback but now need to dive deeper to truly unearth customer value.

Deciphering value requires a deeper look at customer feedback. Customer complaints and outreach are typically a channel for customers to share their expressed wishes. Answering expressed needs and wishes is essential to maintaining customer satisfaction, but addressing unexpressed needs is the key to differentiation.

This requires the ability for service teams to dig deeper into the reasons for a customer contact and what that specific customer might be looking to accomplish with the delivered information.

Addressing constraint:

The delivery of improved experiences must occur in a constraint heavy environment. The biggest constraint faced by organizations is the capacity of the service workforce.

This capacity isn’t solely tied to the quantity of service tasks that must be met, but in the quality of service interactions that must be supported by service personnel. In organizations with field service groups, there is a major focus on replacing retiring service workers and in retaining and replicating their knowledge for future generations.

Several industries are having major issues tapping into the next generation of service workers. Yet service requests continue and customers require a higher level of service.

Technology might seem like the best answer to addressing capacity issues, but the real solution comes from a better understanding of available service data. This explains why service leaders are looking at their major sources of data to identify:

• Inefficient service delivery processes
• Opportunities for automation and elimination of manual intervention
• Opportunities for enhancement of service worker output and coverage

The data that is available at the service leader’s fingertips can come from multiple sources. It may come direct from the product being serviced, and this mode of data communication continues to gain traction. Yet reliable data is already available from:

• Customer requests, complaints, and claims
• Point-of-service systems tracking work completion and resources required

Once operational improvement opportunities are identified, it makes sense to inject technology solutions to address these opportunities.

For instance, portals can be created to offer customers an easier path to service information or to the creation of a service request as compared to a traditional 1-800 call queue.

Routing technology can be used to directly connect customers to higher-level technical support. Video solutions can allow for assisted service resolution or improved diagnosis prior to dispatch. And just-in-time content can be sent to technicians to ensure that their service visits are successful.

We would recommend that service leaders also analyze and review data tied to the customer experience as much as they use data to prioritize operational improvements.We would recommend that service leaders also analyze and review data tied to the customer experience as much as they use data to prioritize operational improvements.

If customers indicate that the ease of access to service personnel is a priority for them, or that other areas in the service delivery ecosystem need improvement, then these could help service leaders rank needed changes.

The growth plan:

Operational and customer-focused initiatives are being paired with those that focus on business and service revenue. In discussions around service’s impact on the business, TSC has previously highlighted two revenue buckets that are directly enhanced by service.

• Service-Impacted Revenue – Revenue generated as a result of positive customer satisfaction, typically tied to up-sells, cross-sells, renewals, new purchases, and referrals.
• Service Revenue – Revenue generated from the sale of service products such as service parts, time & material work, or service agreements.

In pursuing growth in 2018, service leaders continue to support the first bucket of revenue typically driven by other parts of the organization but are taking aim at enhancing their overall service revenue contribution.

This expansion is typically supported in two ways:

1. Understanding customer use of current service products
2. Uncovering appetite for new service products

For those organizations with service agreements in place, it’s essential to understand which customers are covered by these agreements and which ones are coming up for renewal. Better visibility into coverage and renewal opportunities can uncover millions in revenue opportunities.

Once visibility is established, it is essential to identify why customers chose to stay away from service agreements or other products. This might uncover awareness or sales opportunities for the service enterprise.

In addition to actual coverage and renewal, service organizations must understand how customers are utilizing products and services. Awareness of customer adoption and usage will allow for improved account management opportunities. It might also yield ideas for net new services that can be valuable to customers.

Summary/Conclusion: the need for service innovation

While organizations are navigating what it means to be a digital business, they are also looking to new collaboration models with their customers to ensure longer and more profitable relationships.

For organizations to be more innovative in service, an internal transformation needs to occur around business leadership, around business measurement, and around the technology in place to support a new service business.In innovation-focused research conducted by The Service Council in 2017, less than one-half of organizations highlighted that their service businesses received as much focus on innovation, as did the other parts of the business.

For organizations to be more innovative in service, an internal transformation needs to occur around business leadership, around business measurement, and around the technology in place to support a new service business.

Service leaders must develop and fuel a culture that welcomes and accepts new ways of doing business, even at the cost of cannibalizing existing revenue streams. The promise of innovation is ripe at service organizations; it’s now time for service leaders to execute on this promise.

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In this latest of his Momentum Case Studies, Jan van Veen, co-founder of moreMomentum, interviews proven leaders across the globe who are successfully implementing the 4 Winning Habits to lead innovative, energised and engaged teams.

Here the case study examines a global leader serving the mining and oil & gas industries. Much of their recent success has come because they take services very seriously, being seen as a knowledge partner to help their customers improve operational efficiency, reduce risks and increase profitability.

The challenges faced

The company operates in traditionally slow-moving industries with large incumbent players and has become a leader by creating a strong service business which now generates a significant portion of total revenues, deepens customer relationships and creates resilience during economic downturns.

However, it has now spotted that a potentially significant disruptive threat could emerge from ‘big data’ and data analytics technologies, enabling new types of services. In the past, they would have considered taking five years to develop new equipment to be fast for the industry, but now understands that when it comes to future services, the speed of innovation needs to be higher.

Senior management is very aware that customers will move away if they see a better way of doing things, so the company must adapt if it is to stay a market leader.

The Strategy

The company has entered a period of change. To meet the disruptive threat ahead it must be visionary: to redesign itself and its culture so it can move much faster to keep ahead, enthusiastically embracing digital technologies with a focus on the end-to-end customer experience. In fact, it has to re-imagine its relationship with its customers so that rather than selling products, it provides ways to help its customers improve their operational processes and even their business models.

The company has demonstrated success from the 4 Winning Habits for Momentum so far, but now they need to take it to another level. Here we will show how they are using each of the 4 Winning Habits in the implementation of its strategy, creating Momentum for long-term sustainable success.

Direction – the common cause that everyone can get behind

The company management has recognised that, at a time of change, a compelling vision describing their role to help customers be more profitable is important to pull everyone together in the same direction. It is being spread throughout the company using both traditional townhall meetings, the company intranet as well as new digital social sharing methods such as Salesforce, Chatter and Yammer.

It helps operational messages fit into context if there is a beacon for people to move towards if there is a vision of what the company will look like in five yearVP of Service Marketing: “It helps operational messages fit into context if there is a beacon for people to move towards if there is a vision of what the company will look like in five years, what the industry will be like, what our company will be like. Otherwise, you have isolated initiatives”.

To push the new company direction, the company has been busy hiring a new CEO, CMO and CDO (Chief Digital Officer), all with experience in driving innovation. The Board understands the need for change, but the company can be a supertanker which takes time to turn. However, it is also aware that the competitive landscape can change quite quickly.

Dialogue – open discussion at and between all levels to encourage new ideas

Digital initiatives are at the centre of this company’s reinvention, so senior managers are heavily involved in steering new ideas, to get behind them and also to prevent them from breaking current business streams.

Across the company, at least 75% of targets and incentives are collective, leading to limited silo thinking between teams since they’re all in the same boat. Where there is friction, it’s usually because goals have been set too narrowly and issues fall between the silos. As a result, there is much less politics than might be expected in a large company and a higher level of transparency on performance.

This all helps create a culture of trust with less finger pointing and blame.

VP of Service Marketing: “Rather than looking for blame, people look at how to fix issues and learn from mistakes. It works well due to open dialogue. People don’t feel threatened and are not so eager to hide problems”.

Decision-making – local decision-making empowerment

The company has always had a decentralised structure. Different markets are quite autonomous and allowed to make their own local sales decisions, choosing which sales and marketing initiatives in which to participate based on market needs. This has been a successful approach so far, but staff at all levels and across the business will need to now be included in the decision making processes if the company is to continue adapting at a fast enough pace.

Discovery – Looking for new trends, opportunities and threats (internal and external)

The newly established Digital Office is a powerhouse of new ideas to add new technology to client relationships, including tools such as the Internet of Things devices and data analytics. It has been set up to operate somewhat separately from the mainstream company in order to be free from ‘business as usual’ thinking.

Companies, middle managers actually, are often quick to kill new products they see as a threat to the status quo and that’s why it’s good to have a Chief Digital Officer, tasked to create change and disruptionVP of Service Marketing: “Companies, middle managers actually, are often quick to kill new products they see as a threat to the status quo and that’s why it’s good to have a CDO, tasked to create change and disruption. We might all be comfortable with how things are today and not want to change it but I’m damn sure there’s someone out there who wants to kill our business model, and will be aided and abetted by our customers if they see a better way of doing things”.

The company has even started trying new approaches to R&D, such as hackathons.

VP of Service Marketing: “When I first heard of hackathons I have to admit I was sceptical, but from what I’ve seen they actually allow people to look at problems in new ways and get people involved who would never normally be involved, and maybe redesign the way of doing things. And for big companies, that’s what we have to do, because our competitors don’t worry about the fact we have an established base and products, they’re actually thinking ‘How can I change the industry to make money? They don’t care if it destroys our business’”.

The company has also started involving customers in its processes, for example with surveys. They keep the company honest about its achievements, drive change and allow them to spot systemic issues. The voice of the customer can be very powerful.

Next Steps:

Change is an ongoing process at this manufacturing company, but they recognise the need to accelerate the pace of change to a new level and then make it ‘business as usual’ – a revolution in the mining sector!

The 4 Winning Habits for Momentum will be key. They are working on a clearer picture of the future state of the company, to give stronger Direction to the business units and local staff for local Decisionmaking.

Dialogue with staff will improve, so personal objectives will be better aligned to the strategy and not be so focussed on purely financial targets, but also learning, collaboration and Discovery of new opportunities. If they can do all this, then they will truly be creating a revolution in mining.

Outcomes

The huge growth in the service business at the company has brought enormous benefits for their customers, made the company a trusted ‘knowledge partner’ and expertly positioned them to forge ahead into digital transformation.

People buy from them now because of the advice they give and their approach to improving their customers’ businesses. For instance, mining equipment runs 24/7/365 and downtime can cost many €100,000s per day so, they have redesigned parts, consumables and field services to reduce the time it takes to change them, so reducing costs for their customers.

Energy efficiency has been another focus, as has the charging model – customers pay for service contracts by the ton, so they know their costs in advance. These changes epitomise the innovations that the company has achieved, and there are many more on the way.

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Noventum and the Service Science Factory have been working together to help establish a working framework for service organisations seeking to harness the power of the IoT. Damien Nunes, Dr. Dominik Mahr from the Service Science Factory and Rosanne Gresnigt, Noventum introduce some of the key concepts that have underpinned their work...

Recent advances in technology put Internet-of-things (IoT)-innovation on top of the management agenda across industries. IoT innovation is predicted to increase economic value by $11.1 trillion in 2025 (McKinsey 2015).

The Service Science Factory and Noventum collaborated to showcase the implementation of IoT in organisations.

What is the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and why is it relevant?

Over the past few years, computer technology has increasingly become a commodity as it has become cheaper, faster, more reliable, more efficient, smarter, smaller, portable and more connected.

It has given the opportunity to add new capabilities to the things (products and machines) that make up our lives. Consumer-focused examples include Philips Hue lights and the Nest Thermostat that knows via your smartphone when you have arrived home and automatically turns on your lights and heating.

But this is only a small part of the opportunities that IoT can bring.

The basis of all IoT innovations are the 6 principles listed in the graphic below. The power of IoT is to combine them in such a way that they provide new services and capabilities for your customers and organisation.

How can your organisation take advantage of IoT?

Top management often delegates the development of (IoT) innovation to middle and lower management. However, new ideas frequently face scepticism and even opposition across the firm. An example of this is the belief that IoT innovation often disrupts work practices as well as current product and service portfolios, thereby cannibalising existing revenues.

More so, some employees become worried about their jobs, and can even block innovations.

Fresh ideas, awareness of opportunities and positive attitudes across the organisation are what create the breeding ground for transformative innovation. This requires a user-centred, employee participative, explorative, iterative and routed approach like Service Design Thinking.

1. Set business focus: To leverage IoT opportunities, top management not only need to commit to drive IoT innovation but also clearly determine the strategic goals such as lowering cost, creating customer delight, building the brand or driving profits.
2. Introduce IoT Capabilities & Design Thinking: Before embarking further on this explorative journey it is important to recruit an interdisciplinary team. The team should understand customer needs (in the form of critical customer pains and gains), the context of the market they are operating in, and the potential capabilities of smart connected products. In addition, the team needs to be able to think in networks and eco-systems to be able to translate this understanding into new concrete service opportunities which are both valuable to, and in line with, the organisation's ambitions.
3. Ideate IoT innovations: The field of (service) Design Thinking provides various ideation techniques which are used by the interdisciplinary team to spark creativity. This results in ideas that embody both theopportunities that IoT can provide, and also the various perspectives of the market and the organisation.
4. Share, combine and prioritise ideas: The collective sharing of ideas strengthens the feeling of organisation-wide involvement, and collective prioritisation drives commitment. It is also an important period to receive feedback and identify if ideas can be strengthened by combining them with other concepts and initiatives.
5. Map the eco-system of the IoT innovation: IoT innovations typically involve a complex ecosystem of actors, components and connections. Visually mapping out eco-systems, on both macro as well as microscale, can reveal possible challenges to realise the IoT innovation.
6. Identify the business implications: Creating a clear understanding of potential benefits, required investments, and risks is crucial to driving any innovation. In addition, managers need to know what the implications on the organisation will be and what they can expect as ‘return on investment’.
7. Pitch to important decision makers: Especially in large international organisations with multiple divisions and functions, it is critical to have ambassadors who drive internal alignment. Pitch-like presentations towards (top) management and other parts of the organisation help to create a coalition of the willing, and obtain the commitment needed for further development and implementation.
8. In summary, the outcomes of the above process are not only great ideas but also form cross-functional teams that become ambassadors for their IoT innovations. The seven-step process is, in essence, a process for changing the mindset towards an IoT future. In the end, your employees are the basis for designing IoT Innovation – Not the technology.

What’s next?

IoT enabled services usually have a disruptive nature, and this realisation often affects all areas of the organisation. The implementation, therefore, requires a clear strategy and roadmap. Without this or an agile attitude towards unforeseen events, you risk losing not only the momentum you created in the IoT exploration phase,

 

Free IoT Readiness Assesment - Do you understand the value of IoT but don't know where to start? Have you already started on your IoT journey but want to get more out of it?

Click here to take the Noventum 5 minute IoT Readiness Assesment to get an overview of where you stand in relation to IoT and determine how ready your organisation is to benefit from it.

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Jan Van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum explains how field service companies can thrive in a disruptive industry...

The key challenge

In the manufacturing sector, a popular topic is the potential disruption, driven by:

• New technologies like artificial intelligence, Internet of things and augmented reality
• New technology specific to the equipment we offer
• Changing customers
• Emerging markets
• New entrants into the industry

And the potentially disruptive new value offerings, operating models and business models which could emerge.

As manufacturers, we run the risk of missing the boat, so the question is: Disrupt or Be Disrupted? Most of the companies will not be able to disrupt but certainly, need to know how to thrive in a disruptive world.

In my view, the following is required to be successful:

1. Full understanding of disruption and its potential impact for the business
2. Clarity on what needs to change in your business to thrive in a disruptive industry
3. The high pace of continuous change to innovate and execute

However, too often I see misconceptions about disruption and disruptive innovation, a lack of clarity on what needs to change and too slow a pace of change.

By consequence, manufacturers tend to make inadequate assessments and develop inadequate strategies, allowing leading competitors and new entrants into the industry to take the lead.

In this article, I will focus on what disruptive innovation is, the impact and how to prevent typical pitfalls.

What is disruption?

Disruptive innovation is a nasty beast. We have seen quite a few strong brands (almost) disappearing because of disruption, like Kodak, Nokia, IBM computers and Polaroid to mention a few.

For clarity, I’d like to categorize innovation along two dimensions:

• Impact: mainstream versus disruptive
• Scope: Customer value versus internal capabilities

Mainstream innovation

Mainstream innovations annually improve the value of products and services (including the related internal capabilities) as expected by the market. The aim is to increase our value and margins by better serving our best clients.

These innovations can be small and incremental or more radical.

Examples of incremental mainstream innovations are improved fuel consumption of cars engines, improved uptime of the equipment we sell through more reliable equipment and better maintenance.

Examples of more radical mainstream innovations are cars going electric and our services becoming more predictive and performance basedExamples of more radical mainstream innovations are cars going electric and our services becoming more predictive and performance-based.

Manufacturers that fall behind the competition, have not been disrupted yet The majority of the manufacturing companies are too slow in driving the mainstream innovation and see leading competitors achieving higher growth rates, higher margins, more service – recurring and stable – revenue and higher customer loyalties being ahead of the game. As Jack Welsh said: “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.”

Disruptive innovation

Disruptive innovations break with the ongoing and upward trend of improving value. There are two ways of disruptive innovation: offering lower value at a lower price for the low-end market or offering lower-barrier solution opening new market segments which have not been served so far.

At the early stages, disruptive products and services serve a small niche, often at a lower value level.

These solutions will follow a mainstream innovation journey, increasing value and price. Gradually the products or services become a viable alternative for a larger portion of the markets.

Examples of low-end disruptions are the low-cost airlines, which offer flights at lower service levels and lower prices. This is quite attractive for business travellers who do not want to pay a premium price for meals and convenience.

One example of new market disruptions in which a new product or service serves other needs are the PC’s, which after some time started competing against the mainframes. Another example is salesforce.com, which offered so much more flexibility and lower cost of ownership than the traditional on-premise CRM systems.

Innovating internal capabilities

New technology enables us to develop new organizational capabilities.

For example, the low-cost airlines have adopted quite different operating models which allow them to consistently fly at much lower cost and hence maintain good margins at a low price level. For service operations, we see many manufacturers developing capabilities like remote service, connectivity, big-data and algorithms and predicting failures.

These, in themselves, are not value propositions and have no value for customers. However, these can be crucial capabilities for new service propositions.

Innovating external (customer) value

For maximum impact focus on customer value, not on capabilities

The real impact to drive competitive value is by addressing unmet needs or barriers to use new technology or solutions with a new product, services or integrated solutions. Examples are:

• How Rolls Royce offers a zero-disruption proposition for aerospace engines in which clients only pay per flight hour
• How MAN reduces fuel consumption by improving driving behaviour
• How Caterpillar helps managing a construction plant and will ensure at every stage of the construction the right number of the required equipment is available.

Besides the services and products, we can also increase value by enhancing customer experience, our brand and (lower) price levels.

Why does this matter?

At the early stages of a disruption, incumbents may see the new products and services entering their market.

However, compared to business-as-usual, the new products and services are relevant for a small niche only, the market volumes are small and the added value often is much lower. Their best clients are not interested.

At the early stages of a disruption, incumbents may see the new products and services entering their market.Above that, there are so many trends and new innovations, it is hard to predict which ones will become successful. This, together with the pressure to optimize top-line and bottom line and adequately serving our best clients, means it is easy to ignore the signs and consider them as irrelevant.

Disruption most often comes from outside your industry

Historically it appears that often incumbents beat new entrants when it’s about mainstream innovations, as they will defend their main business with valuable clients. However, when it’s about disruptive innovation, new entrants disrupt the industry and incumbents only start to respond (in panic) when it’s too late.

The new entrants have built the knowledge, capabilities and the brand which makes it tough for incumbents to catch up in time.

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Jan Van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum, continues his exclusive series for Field Service News exploring the ‘4 Winning Habits of Long-Lasting Achievers in Service’ and looks at the importance of the third winning habit: Decision-making.

Common mistake: Dismissing employees to take ownership

During the last decades, if not centuries, it became a habit to have all important decisions in companies made at top management levels. The assumption traditionally is that this is where the skills, expertise and overview are to make the right decisions. The aim was to increase control, predictability and stability. This used to work fine in most sectors as they were fairly predictable and stable.

However, a lot has changed. Lifecycles of products, services and markets are shorter, changes are quicker, new trends and the future are less predictable, and the complexity of running a business has increased dramatically.

In more industries, companies are suffering from lack of adaptability and agility and falling behind the competition.

Here are a few symptoms we see from the traditional top-down management habits:

• Someone in the lower ranks who sees a threat or opportunity and wants to act on it first needs to discuss this with higher rank management to get their approval and buy-in/decision. There is a challenge that many initiatives face for the attention and favourable decisions from top management. These politics can be frustrating for employees.
• The time of decision-making by higher management is becoming scarce in the critical path for most initiatives. Necessary decisions are being delayed or being made without the attention required.
• The quality of decision-making suffers from inadequate information. Observations and information about threats and opportunities do not flow through the organisation quickly and accurately enough.[/unordered_list]

The solution: Unlock the huge decision-making power throughout the organisation

Leading companies have tremendous power, speed and responsiveness due to the following effective habits on decision-making:

• Top-down and bottom-up strategies and roadmaps
• Effective and efficient decision-making
• Full transparency

1.     Top-down and bottom-up strategies and roadmaps

Maintain an overall strategy and roadmap

The overall strategy and roadmap defines the changes required in different phases to achieve the envisioned future. It clarifies the focus and ballpark figures on key metrics towards the envisioned future. This provides a clear picture of the direction required for all entities of the business to shape their own role, contribution and strategy.

Typically, the leading companies have competence centres for various topics which provide best practices, frameworks, benchmarks and advice to the entities in order to develop and execute their strategies.

Each entity has its own strategy and roadmap

Based on the overall strategy and roadmap, each division, subsidiary and department maintains and executes its own specific strategy and roadmap. They own their plan and are fully accountable for the progress and results.

Larger organisations have a cascade of several levels of sub-strategies, which can contain dozens or many more sub-strategies.

Focus on “new”

Within most successful companies, the strategy and roadmap is about moving towards the future. It’s about doing new things and doing things differently in order to achieve new performance levels and future success. An excel-sheet with numbers, for example, does not achieve this purpose on its own.

2.     Effective and efficient decision making

Many business leaders fear that decentralized decision-making leads to chaos and that control mechanisms are needed to prevent this. Most companies still use traditional “plan & control” mechanisms which require complex, expensive and time-consuming coordination systems.

The following practices ensure that decentralized decision-making is powerful and secures performance;

Structure of decision making units

Every team fits in an overall structure of roles and responsibilities with clear objectives. Each team develops, maintains and follows their own strategy which contributes to the overall strategy and roadmap.

This provides clarity to everyone who decides on what, and how, decisions relate to each other.

Decision-making protocol

Every team follows a decision-making protocol which provides guiding principles and rules on;

• How autonomous the team is for the different domains that make decisions
• How to align with other stakeholders
• How to handle objections from stakeholders, depending on the impact this might have for other stakeholders and/or the organisation as a whole
• When decisions have to be handed over to other decision making units[/unordered_list]

Some decisions hardly have an impact on other teams and can therefore be made autonomously.

Other decisions have a minor impact on the work of other teams. These other teams are informed about the decision, how this will impact them and how they are expected to adjust. The other teams provide feedback and suggestions, however it remains up to the deciding team how they incorporate the feedback and suggestions.

Some decisions could have a major impact on other teams or the organisation as a whole. For these decisions, there is a protocol in which other stakeholders can raise objections that need to be processed adequately. In some cases the decision has to be handed over to another team who has the responsibility of the bigger picture.

3.     Full transparency on performance and financials trigger crucial initiatives

In many organisations, the flow of information is limited because of lack of information systems, defensive behaviour, limited willingness to openly share and too little interest in the overall picture. As a result, people miss opportunities and make wrong decisions. This reduces collaboration and initiatives throughout the organisation and increases resistance.

Constructive and well informed dialogue, strategy development and decision-making require that everyone has the same, and adequate, information about results, failures, progress, opportunities, threats, trends and practices.

Leading companies are transparent about the following:

• Financial figures of the entire business, as well as the different entities
• Progress of projects and initiatives
• Challenges or issues they are facing, including failures
• Customer feedback
• Decisions
• Practices or processes[/unordered_list]

Benefits

The benefit of encouraging decision-making throughout the entire organisation is that, on all levels in the organisation, teams and employees have engagement and ownership. They aim higher, pursue more opportunities and achieve more. Decision-making is faster, more responsive, has higher quality and is executed quicker.

The result is that the business is more adaptable to changes and therefore performs better today and will also perform better tomorrow and further in the future.

The Essence

If we think that it’s about control, stability and predictability, then we’ve missed the point! It is about thriving in a changing and unpredictable world, full of opportunities that we need to discover. It’s about passionately exploring, developing, learning and discovering what works, and what doesn’t work.

‘Magic’ happens when you bring together business innovation and employee development and empowerment.

How well has your business adopted the 4 Winning Habits?
Discover your momentum for innovation and change with the online Momentum Scorecard find out more @ http://fs-ne.ws/mpKJ30ibWsb

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