Field Service News Research identifies trends amongst field service organisations and the Internet of Things when it comes to the KPIs...

A recent Field Service News Research has taken a deep look into how field service companies are continuing face up to the challenge of harnessing the vast amounts of data they are accessing each day... 

 

The Growing Dual Challenges of Data in Field Service... 

In a recent article for Field Service News Research, Kris Oldland explored some of the key findings their current research into the use of KPIs amongst field service organisations has revealed when it comes to analysing,  interpreting and reacting to data...

"In today’s connected world, there is just simply so much data being created that we are very much in danger of being overwhelmed and consumed by it unless we are not careful." Oldland wrote. 

"Paralysis by analysis can be a genuine issue that can stifle innovation. In a customer-orientated world, the ability to adapt quickly is becoming a crucial aspect of modern business. Yet, at the same time, so is the increasingly hackneyed phrase ‘data is the new gold’."

"The ability to be able to monitor, measure and then dissect each aspect of our operation - whether it be internally within our teams and operations or externally with regards to our customer interactions, can offer us the ability to leverage vast amounts of untapped insight into our businesses that can literally open up new revenue streams, or at least maximise to the fullest potential those we already have in place," he continues.

Some of the headline findings within the research which Oldland explored within the article include: 

• 67% of field service companies are now using IoT to provide data from assets in the field.
• 72% of these companies are using data from connected assets to predict failure and schedule maintenance around this data
• 54% of these companies can interpret data from assets in the field when providing triage
• 23% of these companies factor this data into the way they analyse field service KPIs

 

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To find out more and also discover the impact of servitization on the KPIs field service companies are measuring check out the latest analysis from Field Service News Research visit https://research.fieldservicenews.com/drownin-in-data-or-gold

Field Service News research reveals a trend for increasing the numbers of service related KPIs... 

A recent Field Service News Research has revealed that while those measuring more KPIs than the average are currently in the minority, the data suggests they are perhaps slightly ahead of the curve. Indeed, just under half of the respondent companies (44%) stated that they had increased the number of field service related KPIs that they were tracking - but the crucial question is why?

The rapid evolution of field service management

As one respondent explained during a follow up interview around the research findings, “The simple fact is that from within a field service operations perspective, we have moved relatively quickly from occupying a space where customer satisfaction was something that was a by-product of what we were generally measured upon, an after-thought to an extent, to become a primary measure of the success of not just the field service operation but also the wider business itself.”

This insight reveals two things. Firstly, it highlights just how profound the broad shift we have seen in field service of the operation being primarily positioned as a cost centre to becoming a profit centre within its own P&L has been.

The findings of the research are both revealing and insightful and could provide a useful benchmark for any field service management professional who is trying to understand how best to monitor their field service operations. As Peter Drucker famously once said "you cannot manage what you do not measure". 

 

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To find out more and also discover the impact of servitization on the KPIs field service companies are measuring check out the latest analysis from Field Service News Research visit https://research.fieldservicenews.com/why-the-numbers-of-kpis-field-service-companies-monitor-are-changing

 

 

 

 

In the first part of this exclusivefieldservicenews.com  research report we explored how many KPIs field service companies are tracking and how often we should be reviewing these metrics. Now in the concluding part of this report we explore how companies are adapting their KPIs in the face of a series of mega-trends that are  reshaping our very sector... 

Nick Frank, Founding Partner at Si2 Partners, discusses the importance of understanding the metrics you are measuring to asses both internal performance and external perceptions of your service delivery in the eyes of your customers, and how the two are closely aligned...

As a Field Service manager, imagine having one Key Performance Indicator in your business that could predict how your customers will experience your equipment. One simple measure that your teams could use as a focus for their primary mission; to ensure customers remain satisfied, loyal and profitable. The limitations of most measures of customer satisfaction and loyalty are that they look in the rear view mirror, in that they ask questions after the fact. Far better to create a leading indicator, but how?

To get a better feel for customer satisfaction, many managers spend time in the field talking to customers and their teams.

Some will create rafts of measures to monitor and improve their operations. Their logic being a great performing team is more likely to have loyal customers. However there is a temptation to measure everything, which can start to confuse teams.

To overcome this managers bring focus through introducing key performance indicator’s (KPI’s) and dashboards to make it easier to see the issues and take action. More sophisticated businesses look towards the Balanced Score Card methodology in which a more holistic view is taken of the operation. They not only examine financial and processes efficiency, but also consider organisational capacity and customers in relation to their strategic goals.

 

This balanced approach is pretty sensible, but a can be too ‘management speak’ for the people at the sharp end of the business.

The key challenge is to create measures that drive the right behaviours and culture, and not ones where people start to find ways of working around. So it is not quite as simple as many make out. From my own experiences of managing a european service operation, I always felt it would be extremely beneficial to develop a simple measure that was:

1. Easily understood by everyone.
2. That gave us a forward view that a particular piece of equipment was potentially going to lead to severe customer irritation and dissatisfaction.

Our business was injection molding systems, and we knew that something was going wrong in the customer when the spare parts spend of the machine increased, fault reporting was high and the same problem re-occurred over a 12 month period. We created a ratio of these 3 indicators and found that at a machine level, we could start to rank problem systems and identify those that were likely to turn into an irate customer.

Our thinking was that not only could this be used by the local teams to bring focus to a specific customer issue, it also gave an indications of how well teams were managing their installed base. Unfortunately for a number of reasons we were unable to operationalize this strategy and I often wondered how effective it would have been.

Recently I heard Mark Noble, Customer Support Director at Inca speak at a Service Community meeting in the UK. Inca design and manufacture digital printers and gave themselves the goal to improve the equipment productivity and hence satisfaction of their customer base. For their technology, it is the performance of the print head that controls up to 256 ink delivery nozzles, which is critical to uptime.

By combining 3 key performance parameters of the machine, alarms, nozzle deviations and productivity, Inca could rank their equipment in terms of the likelihood to cause customer dissatisfaction. They created simple dashboards that clearly identified the priority machines to be working on.

This allowed them to identify faults before they became critical therefore reducing costs, enabling their customer support centre to identify issues more effectively, maintaining better print quality and improving the planning of engineer visits around customers production runs.

 

A second example of this approach is at Peak-Service, part of the Qiagen corporation, a €1Bn technical services supplier for medical, analytical and industrial equipment. As part of their transformation journey, they created a customer experience indicator which aggregated measures of machine utilisation, revisits, call response time and call completion time.

They used this to help focus their teams and people on the drivers of customer experience as they moved through a transformation programme. This gave them one measure, which was easy to action and could be used to demonstrate results.

This thinking shows that by using operational data that already exists in most businesses, it is possible to create leading measures that drive action. The analytical techniques are in fact relatively simple, it is more having the right mind-set to try a different approach which is the challenge.

As products become connected through the IoT, so the opportunities to gain greater insight into customer experience and satisfaction will expand. Some might call this predictive and others a big data opportunity, but the name is not important. The critical insight we gain from these examples is that these companies are applying their deep know-how of their equipment and customers business, to identify problems before they happen.

Fore-armed is fore-warned!

If you would like to enter into a deeper discussion on this topic and others, why not join other industry professionals at the Service In Industry blog.

 

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As our focus begins to shift towards next year planning it is important that we are able to assess and interpret the data we have gathered across the year, but your data is only as good as its application,  writes Tom Bowe, IFS

It’s that time of year again, preparing budgets and setting goals for next year, even though it probably seems like just yesterday you were doing so for 2015.

Soon, if you haven’t already, you will be gathering data from this year like volumes and revenues. To plan what’s next for your field service organisation in 2016. If you have an integrated or best-of-breed field service solution, ideally the data you have collected from the field, and your customers, will help you navigate your decisions.

But does all your research and planning apply to the real world? Do you need to do complicated calculations to attempt to understand capacity, resourcing and demand?

2015 saw another year of field service growth, with more organisations applying IoT practices and other technological advances to help cut costs, increase efficencies, and ensure customer satisfaction. More data than ever before was being fed from the customer and the field to back-end systems. But your data is only as good as its application.[quote float="left"]By its very nature a forecast intrinsically contains some degree of error

 

What if you could know, as close to real life as possible, what resources you would need, and where, to meet your 2016 field service KPIs? What if you were given visibility into the success of your predetermined KPIs, and suggestions for improvement? Imagine having an interactive tool at your fingertips that would allow you to run multiple real-life field service scenarios simultaneously. Imagine that same tool being able to store all your results and present them in a printable dashboard that you could take to management.

Such a tool does exist, and we call it the WISE (what-if scenario explorer). This easy-to-navigate forecasting and planning tool forecasts your resources based on your predicted demand; new contracts, possible acquisitions, and shifts in business. It allows you to drill down into the resulting schedules to see what the real-time schedule would look like.

So why does this all matter? Field service is an ever-shifting and highly demanding industry. It ebbs and flows with seasonal changes, shifts in demand, and multiple other factors so if there is so much potential change then why bother?

By its very nature a forecast is always wrong – it intrinsically contains some degree of error because it is based on many factors including past performance, future unknowns, confidence levels and statistical extrapolation and correlations of this data.

The skill therefore is to build a forecast that’s as close to being accurate and believable as possible thus minimising the margin of error. With any forecasting errors minimised, the impact on your KPIs becomes more predictable.

Here are some of the Key Performance Indicators that can be positively affected by scenario planning and forecasting: [ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Headcount: (Having the right number of people, when and where they are needed)
   Run real-life scenarios by feeding the WISE your organisation’s data and see whether you should add or reallocate resources. If you need t o add resources to meet demand, the WISE will show you where regionally you should be hiring. It also provides territory balancing to ensure your service areas have proper coverage.
2. Response time:  (Planning to respond reliably within the SLA or appointment window)
   The WISE will predict your response times to service calls and will also calculate the number of SLAs you will meet with your current resources. It will then make suggestions to help you increase your SLA hit rate.
3. Customer Satisfaction:  (Directly correlated to #1 and #2)Scenario planning and forecasting provides territory balancing to ensure your service areas have proper coverage. Not only will you be able to more easily achieve your SLAs but you will also be able to provide new customers with reliable first time service.
4. Operating Costs: (Reducing overtime and travel costs)With a forecasting tool that can not only tell you the outcome of your current operations but help you determine what organisational changes are needed to meet your demands; you have the ability to reduce your upcoming costs. By automatically seeing where your technicians should be located based on demand, you can ensure your technicians aren’t travelling unnecessary distances.

A scenario planning tool can be used to help establish goals and expectations for the fiscal year, but it can also be used for short term planning as well. It can help your organisation understand how to best manage new important contracts, proactively plan for changes in seasonal demand, and more.

When you start budgeting for 2016, rather than wonder why you are bothering, instead, reverse the mentality and question “why not? Using WISE could have a notable impact on your service delivery metrics and bottom line. WISE will show you where regionally you should be hiring. It also provides territory balancing to ensure your service areas have proper coverage.

 

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