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Post Script: A Few Questions for Reflection on How IoT Could Improve Your Service Operations

Feb 28, 2022 • News • Digital Transformation • IoT • servicenow

Across this series of articles published based on the latest Field Service News white paper, we have looked at how the adoption of IoT can improve the three key areas of service excellence - the asset, the engineer and customer success. Now as we bring this series to an end we offer a selection of reflective questions for you to consider about IoT adoption in your own organisation...

In this series, we have put forward a simple example of an asset with just one data point to illustrate how IoT could impact asset management, workforce management and customer success planning for field service organisations.

Of course, each organisation and each situation is unique, and there is no one size fits all approach to such a process. With this in mind, we have outlined a few additional questions for you as a service leader to consider against each of the key points of the paper to help you begin to reflect on how the ideas put forward could relate to your own organisation.

#1: IoT has become an increasingly important part of field service operations and is set to become the bedrock of service operations in the future. However, without actionable insight asset data is of little value. What is required in your organisation to turn IoT-fed asset data into meaningful and valuable actionable insight?

Do you currently receive the right asset data into the systems where it can bring value?
What is the asset data that can yield the most valuable insights to your organisation and to your customers?
Do you need to upgrade legacy assets to include connectivity? What would this cost? What assets would take priority?
Which processes within the service cycle could be automated if triggered by an appropriate data feed?
Could a self-service approach be applicable in any area of your service portfolio? If not why? If yes, what is required to make this happen?

#2: It is often said that the most valuable resource of any field service company is its field workforce. Can the adoption of a more sophisticated IoT-led service approach lead to better talent acquisition and retention?

What does an average working day look like for your field service engineers and technicians? Do they have a good work/life balance?
How does the shift towards proactive maintenance that IoT can facilitate impact their working day?
Is the adoption of remote service something that would allow you to hold onto more experienced field workers for longer?
Would the skill sets of your engineers or technicians be different if you adopted an IoT-led approach to service delivery? Would this be a positive or negative impact on your operation?
Would an advanced approach to technology adoption make your organisation a more attractive prospect for potential future recruits?

#3: Customer success has replaced customer satisfaction. It is now imperative that we work as partners to our customers to drive towards success together. Such an approach often requires more advanced layers of service thinking with IoT underpinning many such strategies.

Is there an appetite amongst your customer base for a more sophisticated type of service offering such as a servitized or outcome-based model?
Can you achieve success with such a model without adopting IoT?
Are you able to drive transparency and trust in your customer relationships by open sharing of data? Does this apply to all data or just some?
How much would your customer base value data-driven insights and advice that can allow them to increase the productivity of their assets?
Who would be an ideal customer/group of customers that would be prepared to be part of such a new initiative?

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Screenshot 2021-12-07 at 12.05.28 If you are a Field Service News subscriber on either our free-forever FSN Standard subscription tier or our Premium Subscription tier you can access this exclusive Field Service News white paper written by Field Service News, Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland on the button below.

If you are not yet a subscriber to Field Service News but would like to subscribe and gain access to this report instantly, click the button to visit a dedicated registration page for our complimentary sponsored subscription tier and that will give you instant access to this paper and a number of other assets currently available to subscribers on this tier.

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Will an economic downturn drive field service as a revenue generator

Feb 24, 2022 • News • Digital Transformation • IoT • servicenow

Field Service News and ServiceNow have recently partnered on an exclusive new white paper "Understanding The Next Phase Of IoT Evolution" and as part of the planning for this paper Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News was joined on the Field Service News Digital Symposium by Tasker Generes and Bulent Cinarkaya of ServiceNow to discuss how IoT can improve asset management, workforce management and drive customer success.

In this final excerpt from the full interview, the group discuss how field service companies will need to adapt towards a more service-centric approach to drive sustainable revenue growth.

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

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The experience economy will lead to a need for better customer relationships

Feb 22, 2022 • News • Digital Transformation • IoT • servicenow

In this excerpt from the full interview, the conversation turns to the experience economy and looks at how this growing trend will further increase the need for us as service providers to establish deeper more meaningful relationships with our customers.

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

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Connected Field Service: IoT and Improving Customer Success

Feb 21, 2022 • News • Digital Transformation • IoT • servicenow

As we have already seen so far in this series of features from the latest exclusive Field Service News white paper, each of the three pillars of field service success - the asset, the engineer, and the customer - are intrinsically linked and can be...

We have already touched upon several ways the field service company can improve customer satisfaction and drive customer success by leveraging IoT connected asset data. So far, we have discussed:

Reducing potential downtime
Increasing the speed of issue resolution
Delivering service in a more convenient manner

However, there are many other vital areas where customer success can be improved when a service provider embraces and fully leverages IoT. In this final section of the report, let us consider some additional areas where this could happen.

IoT Creates a Path to Servitization:

In a world of connected field service, where the service provider leverages IoT, the potential to introduce a servitized offering becomes measurably more tangible.

While the topic of servitization is vast and the subject of many articles and papers in and of itself (for further information, a good start is to visit https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services ), a reduced overview of the concept is “a blend of product and services is created to produce a holistic approach to meeting the customer’s needs.”

For the customer, this has multiple benefits:

It moves the service contract to one that is centred on uptime.
It moves the responsibility of maintaining an asset to meet these uptime agreements onto the service provider/manufacturer.
It allows the customer to focus on their core area of expertise (often selling the outcome of the servitized asset) rather than the operation of the asset itself.

For the service provider, servitization can lead to much more deeply engrained customer relationships, more extended service contracts and greater profitability across the long term. If undertaken correctly, the servitization model can offer a significant win-win situation for both parties.

In such a model, where uptime guarantees are the primary metric of success, the ability to track asset data in real-time via IoT is central to many successful servitized service portfolios.

Greater Visibility = Greater Trust

Another major facet of using data for a field service organization is when it comes to building deep customer relationships that are built on a foundation of trust; the transparency that IoT data can provide is crucial.

One approach to enabling such transparency is building customer dashboards to see vital operational metrics of their asset.

The ability to surface the critical insights that IoT data can offer is an exceptional way to allow customers to see not only how their assets are performing but also to highlight the value of the service provided.

Such dashboards can also truly empower the field service engineer to outline the value of the service they have delivered when on-site. Such a tool can allow them to truly evolve into an ambassador role that can further cement the trust within the relationship between the service provider and their customers.

Optimization of Each Asset via Wider Install Base Data

One final significant benefit that can be introduced as we look at how we can leverage IoT-based asset data is optimizing individual assets by collating the comprehensive data of an install base and looking at the broader data to identify further efficiencies.

Again let us use our earlier simple example of the vending machine as an illustration. Hypothetically, a water reservoir for the machine could be maintained at a set temperature.

The temperature water in this reservoir is kept at could hold several different variables:

If the temperature is held at a higher temperature, then the speed it would take to produce a coffee would, of course, be faster.
Maintaining the water at a certain level could mean less strain on the elements within the asset to heat the water to a point where it is suitable for serving drinks.
Yet, maintaining the water in the reservoir at a higher level will consume more energy and lead to a higher operating cost.

By applying data analytics to the full manufacturer install base, an optimal temperature for the water in such a reservoir could be determined based on the balance between reducing energy consumption (i.e. reducing cost) and fastest production of the product (i.e. increasing productivity).

While this example is deliberately simplistic to illustrate the point, the concept can be applied to far more complex situations given the vast amounts of data available for analysis that an IoT-connected install base can provide.

The simple equation of reducing costs and increasing productivity is a compelling offering that a service provider who embraces IoT can leverage. In doing so they can seek to ensure longer, more profitable agreements with their client base.

IoT and Outcome-Based Service Models

The ultimate endpoint of a focus on customer success, it could be argued, is the outcome-based services model that has been gaining traction amongst manufacturers and service providers for some time now.

However, much as we saw in 2008 when an economic downturn became a key driver for service to move away from a cost centre to becoming more widely accepted as a profit centre, so to now. As we face ongoing economic uncertainty as the fall out of the pandemic continues, we see increased discussion of outcome-based solutions as an emerging force within service design as companies on both sides of the provider/customer equation seek to mitigate potential financial risk.

As Bulent Cinarkaya, GM of Field Service Management at ServiceNow, explained on the Field Service News Digital Symposium.

“There is a question of derisking that must be considered.

“When you look at history, there are always economic booms and economic downturns. The critical question we must address is how do you protect your business when the times are tough?

“When we look at customer behaviour during challenging economic environments, customers prefer to buy services rather than products.

“Additionally, manufacturers are always researching and adapting to use more effective business models and the latest trend we are seeing is outcome-based business models.”

The reason this is important in the context of an ongoing economic downturn is threefold. Firstly, such models place customer success at the heart of their strategy and, in doing so, help support the business ecosystem and keep both service provider and their customers financially secure.

"In an outcome-based model, you own the product. You’re not selling the product; you’re not leasing the product. You’re selling an outcome, which means that your contract terms come to the forefront, and you have to meet those terms..."

Secondly, it creates deeper, more robust relationships between the two parties. When cash flow is reduced, when cost-lines are critical, being an integral part of their clients' workflow is vital to protect you from the risk of being underpriced by the competition and losing that business entirely.

Finally, as Cinarkaya outlines, it creates an ongoing, reliable revenue stream that helps manage cash flow for their own business - however, the move to outcome-based models is not necessarily an easy one to make, particularly without IoT.

“With outcome-based service you can bring a steady stream of recurring revenue to your business, but it comes with a challenge of course.”

“In an outcome-based model, you own the product. You’re not selling the product; you’re not leasing the product. You’re selling an outcome, which means that your contract terms come to the forefront, and you have to meet those terms.

“That is where IoT plays a really key role. Without IoT, I’m not sure how you can achieve what you promise as an outcome, which is how you will drive your revenue. Without IoT I’m not sure if you will be able to meet the demands of such agreements.”

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We need to rethink training in field service

Feb 17, 2022 • News • Digital Transformation • IoT • servicenow

In this part of the discussion the group discuss how much the way we consume information has changed as a society, the impact this will have on the way we approach training field service engineers and how IoT can play a role in training the next generation of field workers.

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

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Effective IoT strategy needs executive buy-in across a business

Feb 15, 2022 • News • Digital Transformation • IoT • servicenow

In this part of the discussion, the group discuss why an effective IoT strategy requires effective buy-in across the entire business at the executive level if it is to succeed.

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Connected Field Service: IoT and Improving Workforce Management

Feb 14, 2022 • News • Digital Transformation • IoT • servicenow

Having identified how embracing IoT from an asset management approach can benefit field service organizations in the previous article in this series, let us look at how such an approach can bring significant benefits to the next of our three pillars...

An Improved Work/Life Balance:

When the millennial generation first came into the workforce, much was made about the fact that this was the first generation that, in consistent polls, had placed personal values such as gratification and happiness above pure financial remuneration. While before this point, the positive benefits of a good work/life balance were important for employers to consider. Now they are essential if a company is going to be an attractive destination for future employees.

However, the traditional life of the field service engineer or technician can be hard. Long hours on the road and often in stressful environments can take their toll – perhaps that is why so many field service companies have struggled for so long to find a reliable source of recruits to replace an increasingly ageing workforce. However, for those field service organizations that embrace IoT, the engineer’s working day can be radically different.

Firstly, the engineer is likely to be far more informed when they arrive on site. Data from the asset itself will already have been analyzed (either by AI or a human in a dispatch centre) to identify the most likely fault as per the example in our previous section.

Similarly, with predicted fault diagnosis, the relevant parts required for a first-time fix can already be with the engineer ahead of the service call.

In this situation, our engineer will be as well prepared as possible as greater amounts of data mean more effective triage and fault diagnosis. This includes health and safety factors, as again, the better prepared our engineers are, the safer the environment they are working in.

"The ageing workforce is an issue many field service companies face currently. Still, the opportunity to work from a central location (or even from home) to provide expertise remotely may be an excellent route to keeping these seasoned engineers in the workforce for longer..."

This is hugely important as, by definition, the engineer's environment is not one that the service organization can ever have complete control over. Hence, every slight improvement in this area is essential.

Also, as this maintenance has been proactively scheduled ahead of failure, the service call is likely scheduled for a convenient time for the customer. This alone can allow the engineer the space and time to complete the task without interruption. All in all, such an approach provides our engineers with a far less stressful environment.

Let us also consider the engineer’s utilization rates – one of the most critical KPIs within field service management. Scheduling jobs in advance and ahead of failure gives the scheduling team the opportunity to potentially group jobs in a more effective route across a geography. This is, of course, a win-win for both the engineer and the field service organization themselves as less time behind the wheel is good for the engineer, and more productivity from the field workers is good for the company.

Finally, once again, let us consider the continuing trend of remote service and guided self-service.

The introduction of such an approach to service delivery offers further options when exploring how this can benefit the workforce.

As we mentioned above, the ageing workforce is an issue many field service companies face currently. Still, the opportunity to work from a central location (or even from home) to provide expertise remotely may be an excellent route to keeping these seasoned engineers in the workforce for longer.

Similarly, it could be an approach to offer a rotation of delivering remote services amongst your field service engineers. This approach could provide variation in the role and a strong balance between the flexibility of working from home and the freedom many field workers enjoy by working on the road.

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IoT in field service must be considered a strategic conversation

Feb 10, 2022 • News • Digital Transformation • IoT • servicenow

Here the group discuss how the conversation of digital transformation and IoT in particular needs to be understood as one that is a strategic business discussion and not a technology-focused one.

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

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The broader value of asset data beyond field service

Feb 08, 2022 • News • Digital Transformation • IoT • servicenow

In this part of the conversation the three look at the potential value of asset data beyond the confines of field service operations and whether it can bring greater impact to an organisation as a whole if the silos of different departments are overcome.

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

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#2: It is often said that the most valuable resource of any field service company is its field workforce. Can the adoption of a more sophisticated IoT-led service approach lead to better talent acquisition and retention?

#3: Customer success has replaced customer satisfaction. It is now imperative that we work as partners to our customers to drive towards success together. Such an approach often requires more advanced layers of service thinking with IoT underpinning many such strategies.

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Further Reading:

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Further Reading:

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Further Reading:

IoT Creates a Path to Servitization:

Greater Visibility = Greater Trust

Optimization of Each Asset via Wider Install Base Data

IoT and Outcome-Based Service Models

"In an outcome-based model, you own the product. You’re not selling the product; you’re not leasing the product. You’re selling an outcome, which means that your contract terms come to the forefront, and you have to meet those terms..."

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Further Reading:

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Further Reading:

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Further Reading:

An Improved Work/Life Balance:

"The ageing workforce is an issue many field service companies face currently. Still, the opportunity to work from a central location (or even from home) to provide expertise remotely may be an excellent route to keeping these seasoned engineers in the workforce for longer..."

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Further Reading:

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Further Reading:

If you are an FSN Premium subscriber you can access the full interview now on the button below. Alternatively, if you are yet to subscribe or are on our forever-free subscription you can join FSN Premium on the button below and get full access to the entire FSN Premium resource library.

Read this latest Field Service News Paper Now!

Further Reading:

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