Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News is joined on the Field Service News Digital Symposium by Dr Chris Raddats of the University of Liverpool a seasoned expert with experience from both the industry and academic sides of the aisle centred around servitization, digitalisation and service marketing.

During the discussion, the two discuss a wide range of topics related to Raddat's sphere of insight including reflecting on the current learnings that are coming from a recent raft of academic literature.

In this excerpt from that full interview, the two discuss if we need to be clearer in our definitions around concepts such as servitization, advanced services, and outcome-based service delivery.

Want to know more?

FSN Premium subscribers and FSN Elite members can access the full-length interview plus many, many more in the Field Service New Digital Symposium.  If you have an FSN Premium account you can access the video on the button below. If you are currently on our FSN Standard subscription tier you can upgrade your subscription by clicking the link below. 

If you are yet to subscribe you can join 30,0000 of your field service management peers by subscribing to FSN Standard for free to gain access to a monthly selection of premium content or select either FSN Premium or FSN Elite for even more resources. Click the button above to visit our subscription page to find out more. 

Further Reading:

• Read more about Servitization @ www.fieldservicenews.com/servitization
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Academic Studies @ www.fieldservicenews.com/the-view-from-academia
• Find out more about participating in Chris's latest academic study @ research.fieldservicenews.com/current-studies
• Follow Chris Raddats on Twitter @ twitter.com/chrisraddats
• Connect with Chris Raddats on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/in/chrisraddats

Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News is joined on the Field Service News Digital Symposium by Dr Chris Raddats of the University of Liverpool a seasoned expert with experience from both the industry and academic sides of the aisle centred around servitization, digitalisation and service marketing.

During the discussion, the two discuss a wide range of topics related to Raddat's sphere of insight including reflecting on the current learnings that are coming from a recent raft of academic literature.

In this excerpt from that full interview, the two discuss whether we are beginning to see servitization and advanced services reach a critical mass in the terms of momentum amongst field service focused organisations.

Want to know more?

FSN Premium subscribers and FSN Elite members can access the full-length interview plus many, many more in the Field Service New Digital Symposium.  If you have an FSN Premium account you can access the video on the button below. If you are currently on our FSN Standard subscription tier you can upgrade your subscription by clicking the link below. 

If you are yet to subscribe you can join 30,0000 of your field service management peers by subscribing to FSN Standard for free to gain access to a monthly selection of premium content or select either FSN Premium or FSN Elite for even more resources. Click the button above to visit our subscription page to find out more. 

Further Reading:

• Read more about Servitization @ www.fieldservicenews.com/servitization
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Academic Studies @ www.fieldservicenews.com/the-view-from-academia
• Find out more about participating in Chris's latest academic study @ research.fieldservicenews.com/current-studies
• Follow Chris Raddats on Twitter @ twitter.com/chrisraddats
• Connect with Chris Raddats on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/in/chrisraddats

We are at a tipping point in field service as we move from the traditional break-fix thinking towards field service to a more proactive approach. However, there is a balance to be held which Bill Pollock, President, Strategies for Growth discusses at length here...

The transition from the historical Service Level Agreement (SLA) model to a more broadly defined Servitisation, or outcomes-based, model is upending the global field services community. In fact, the movement away from a decades-old SLA service delivery model that typically guaranteed 4- or 8-hour on-site response, quarterly PMs (i.e., Preventive Maintenance) and online customer technical support is quickly being replaced by a “new” model that is built on a foundation of outcomes-based performance targets and metrics.

For example, in a typical food or beverage processing facility, the “old” way of executing an SLA may have been based on an assortment of contractual line items, such as guaranteed 4-hour, 8-hour or next day on-site arrival; 4 or more preventive maintenance visits per year; or access to a customer portal to initiate a service call, track the status of open call activity or order parts, etc. However, the “new” way of constructing a service agreement may now consist simply of delivering guaranteed system uptime, guaranteed minimum level of productivity throughput (e.g., gallons of milk processed per day, etc.), and an accompanying array of predictive and remote monitoring, diagnostics and system fixes.

As a result of this looming seismic shake-up of the way in which service performance is measured, some of the traditional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), used by virtually all services organisations, will likely soon be replaced by a swath of “new” metrics, where we will likely see:

• Mean-Time-Between-Failures (MTBF) being replaced by Mean-Time-Between-Prevented-Failures (MTBPF)
• Mean-Time-to-Repair (MTTR) measured in seconds or minutes, rather than in hours or days
• First-Time-Fix-Rate (FTFR), similarly being measured in seconds or minutes
• Preventive Maintenance (PM) being replaced by Pre-emptive Maintenance Support (PMS)

The immediate impact of these “new” KPIs will also, undoubtedly, cause year-over-year comparisons to have to wait at least a year or more in order to, once again, be relevant.

Along with this service delivery model transition also comes a major transition in the way services are being priced. As an example, over the past several years, the shift from perpetual license pricing to subscription pricing had taken some time to be fully embraced by the global services community; but the change has since become much more widely accepted and is now fairly universal. However, each of these major “disruptions” to the services marketplace have seemingly led to additional changes that may actually be even more disruptive – at least in the Post-COVID-19 short term.

Each of these major “disruptions” to the services marketplace are already leading to additional changes that may actually be even more disruptive – at least in the immediate- and short-term. For example, the “old” mission for services organisations was essentially “to keep up with the Jones’s – the Jones’s typically being represented by the competition, ever-evolving customer needs and requirements, availability of improved technology tools and resources, and the like. However, the “new” mission is now much more reflective of keeping up with “existential developments” (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic, and/or whatever comes up next!).

"The impact of COVID-19 has basically expedited the process of re-looking at and re-engineering the ways in which our customers are delivering service..."

- Steve Mason, FieldAware

As a result, there will be a whole “new” way of delivering service, as well as measuring the success of the organisation through an entirely “new” set of KPIs, or metrics. [By the way – I have already written many times about the need for “new” KPIs/metrics and, respectfully claim the rights to MTBPF!]

Steve Mason, COO at FieldAware, a cutting-edge, cloud-based, mobile field service management platform that empowers companies to transform their field service organisation through automated processes and streamlined operations, concurs that, “The impact of COVID-19 has basically expedited the process of re-looking at and re-engineering the ways in which our customers are delivering service, as well as the means by which they can measure their performance success. The traditional ways of managing field services are now transforming, and the only way for today’s FSOs to ensure that they will still be around tomorrow, is to lead the change – rather than follow the leaders”.

This transformation is impacting all sectors of the global services market, as explained by Tim Andrew, CEO and Co-founder of localz, a global provider of real-time customer communications and service tracking solutions for field, collection and delivery teams. “The bar for field service is increasingly being set by forces outside the service industry – from the global pandemic, to the B2C customer experience. We aim to make it easy for service companies to keep up with changing behaviours, while delivering on key metrics such as first-time-fix-rate. That is why we believe this transformation will soon be felt throughout the field service segment, regardless of the size, coverage or depth of the service organisation”.

However, for many service managers, it is one thing to set goals and measurement standards, but another to actually implement them. They will still need to empower their teams to develop the “new” goals and associated KPIs that will be needed by following these guidelines:

1. Set targets – decide on the baseline, and define standards or targets; then create a plan to reach them.

2. Define a scoring methodology – determine how you will be measuring success and assign individual scores that roll-up to a total score for each category; for example, in measuring and tracking Customer Satisfaction performance:

- 95% to 100% = Exceeds expectations

- 85% to <95% = Meets expectations

- 0 to <85% = Does not meet expectations

3. Link KPIs – to critical factors that drive the performance of the organisation. If the metric is not directly linked to a critical organisation success factor, it will probably not be worth the resources to measure.

4. Assign someone to take ownership – of the data being collected, processed and shared. If you do not have accurate data to report on, there is no chance you will be able to recognise achieving your goals.

5. Communicate KPIs clearly – to every party involved.

6. Invest in resources necessary to achieve goals – you cannot expect someone to improve performance metrics in an area without first listening to their needs, and then giving them the resources necessary to make improvements.  

7. Foster collaboration between sales and service – give sales-reps an incentive to sell more service contracts to turn the service department into an improved profit center.

Without a formal set of objective, realistic, quantifiable, and actionable KPIs, your organisation may never be able to accurately assess its performance over time – especially post-COVID-19! However, by using the proper mix of both “traditional” and “new” KPIs, both the organisation, and each of its key departments and divisions, will be able to measure their success – or lack thereof – on an ongoing basis, with the ability to identify problems, cultivate opportunities, and make improvements, as necessary, all along the way.

For more information, or to download a complimentary copy of the companion SFG℠ Analysts Take paper, please visit either the FieldAware or localz Websites.

Further Reading:

• Read more exclusive Field Service News from Bill Pollock @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/bill-pollock
• Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
• Follow Bill Pollock on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/sfgonservice
• Read Bill's personal blog @ https://pollockonservice.com/
• Connect with Bill Pollock on LinkedIn @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-pollock-b74874/
• Read more about the offerings Localz offer to Field Service Companies @ https://www.localz.com/
• Read more about the offerings FieldAware offer to Field Service Companies @ https://www.fieldaware.com/

In this excerpt from the inaugural Field Service News Think Tanks Debrief Session, Daniel Brabec, Coen Jeukens and Kieran Notter of ServiceMax outline what they think is driving forwards the move to servitization amongst field service organisations.

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The many conversations required for servitization to work: 

While there is much discussion about the how of servitization it is also important to understand the why. This was something that came up in on of the Think Tanks covered within this debrief session. 

As Maarten Wijnheijmer, Global Aftermarket Sales Director, Howden commented during the Think Tank in question: 

“I think perhaps one of the most important points around servitization is that you cannot sell the concept to everyone immediately. Although an even more important point around servitization is that, if you want to keep it simple and practical, you don’t need to sell it to everyone immediately either. The trick is to start with customers that recognize the value, test the proposition with them and then scale-up.”

While in the same Think Tank Jan van Veen commented: 

“I think there are two things that need to be considered. One is the belief in the direction, the other is that you need to be able to innovate and try and explore and that you have resources available to do so.  

“Often within companies everything can be so short term oriented, if that is the attitude of top and middle management then innovations will never flourish because such projects are just a disturbance of what is really important which is hitting your monthly and quarterly numbers.”

"I think that buy-in across all the organisation is key," Commented Daniel Brabec, VP Global Transformation, ServiceMax during the debrief session. 

"You have to have all of the different players and a groups and have everyone bought in," Brabec continues. 

"If we think about basic change management skills, you have your project champions. You want to make sure you have champions essentially for servitization across the whole business. That's at the the field service engineer level, that's at the senior leadership executive level and that's obviously at the at the service leader level. I think the one thing that's hugely important is making sure that service has a seat at the executive table

"It's not being directed from any one individual, it's making sure it's a conversation across all areas of the organization and that everyone's bought in. I think one of the things that must think about with servitization is understanding the conversation must make sense for all these individuals. Making sure they understand what it is is actually going to change about the business. It is also focusing on those areas of customer intimacy, operational excellence and product leadership.

"It's understanding all of those pieces, and then the value that will be generated for each of their areas of the business," Brabec adds. 

"In answering what is driving the move to servitization, I would say a launching customer..."

- Coen Jeukens, ServiceMax

"I agree with, with Daniel's statement," comments Kieran Notter, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax, 

"However, I would also add that there is there is a change now for for many businesses. It probably was a little bit earlier in the IT world, but now it's hitting the rest of the world as well is this change from having two CSOs. One being a Chief Service Officer and the other being a Chief Sales Officer, and obviously, the Chief Sales Officer was generally on that table before his service equivalent ever got there.

"But now there's a change where those two CSOs are disappearing, and you're ending up with a Chief Revenue Officer. By having a Chief Revenue Officer, now, all of a sudden, a company is focusing on where revenue comes from, and where it exists. If you are moving to a truly outcome based services, when you get to the element that you're no longer selling your product, you're actually selling as a service then that changes the whole profile. You know, if you're not selling the product, you don't need the Chief Sales Officer you're selling as a service. So you need someone to look after that revenue and understand that need and how that works between the product and the actual service that you provide," adds Notter

"I really think that Kieran and Daniel are correct from an internal Field Service Organization perspective," concurs Coen Jeukens, VP GLobal Customer Transformation, ServiceMax. 

"All these dynamics are important. in answering what is driving the move to servitization, I would say a launching customer. For instance, I think the most quoted servitization offering is power by the hour by Rolls Royce. However, Rolls Royce developed that service offering not because they thought it was such a good idea, but because the Royal Air Force said we want to have more predictable models. We want to buy it from you, so you develop it for us. So I think tapping into the mindset of the customer and see if you can find a launching customer. I think that is a very good addition to all the internal alignments just by the CEO, CFO or CSO"

Want to know more about this Think Tank Conversation? The full Executive Briefing Report from this Think Tank Session is now available for Field Service News Subscribers. If you are already a subscriber click the button below to read the report now!

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In this excerpt from the inaugural Field Service News Think Tanks Debrief Session, Kieran Notter discusses his experience when it comes to structuring a field service organisation to adapt a servitized approach... 

Missed the full debrief session? Field Service News Subscribers can access the full debrief session on the link below.

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The importance of aligning internal and external needs:

In the second of the Think Tanks discussed during this debrief session, the focus of the conversation was centred around the increasing drive towards servitization. 

One thing that came through in the Think Tank from all of the members, was the importance of executive-level buy in for a servitization project to even begin.

However, we also saw across the discussion the importance of buy-in from the bottom up as well. It really does need to be a company wide movement and adoption.

As Christo Roux commented during the Think Tank:

“In our organisation up until two years ago we had two different business units, based on two different technologies but our board reorganised and we now have three units with service being the third. Service now has a seat at the executive table and that has been the real game-changer. Now service has a very high profile, it is no longer that secondary part of the discussion which just gets added to the end of the product sale. Service is now an intrinsic part of the overall sales process. What we have found is that when you have that executive board level representation, focus and support, that does make a difference to how you can servitize.

For a long time, service has proven that in the lows of capital expenditure, service maintains the revenue stream. People always need to maintain their equipment and keep service running, so we were always a constant revenue stream at constant margins.

This was largely driven by a change in the CEO seat and a lot of credit for this shift in mindset has to go to the new CEO who had the understanding and the vision to bring service into the executive conversations.”

In that same Think Tank, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News commented: 

“Another company I have worked with has organised their services within business units so each and every business unit is responsible for developing their own service offerings. However, what I believe they also need is a platform to establish new sertivized offerings, a central competence group that is guiding the teams to what is possible.

“Having covered the establishment of such groups in the past I’ve seen them have a real impact. Such groups, I think, should keep strategy simple and make it practical. Keeping it simple means taking baby steps, but at least you are taking them and moving forward. Making it practical is to enable these business divisions to actually deliver the projects. They are not going to invent the wheel themselves – so you have to bring it to them.

“Another organisational question in this area, is whether service is best structured as a separate business with its own P&L or as part of the product teams?

“The challenge is that if service is joined up, the focus will mainly be on the new builds or implementations, because that is where the big money is. Service is usually many smaller orders as opposed to the one big hit of the product sale. The service side of the organisation has to fight for priority and capacity and a shared understanding of the value of the long-term service relationship may ensure the organisation will accept the required investments in this case. On the other hand, if a company splits the operations, the problem becomes the handover from new build to service and customer relationship management. Ultimately, both models have challenges, the key is to realise what is the ‘inside of the battle’ and to establish the common ground to work together for the greater good.”

 

Oldland's comments reflect something of a common dichotomy in the field service sector. On the one hand there is a new innovative organization within an organization. As a company seeks to build out this servitized or advanced services solutions, they are competing with not only product sales, but also the standard, traditional service approaches within their organisation as well.

Having had experience of such challenges as a service leader himself and also in his role with ServiceMax assisting over service organisations navigate their way towards a servitized business approach, Kieran Notter, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax was well placed to help offer guidance for those on the call. 

"One thing I have learned through the relationships I've had with my own experiences when working in the service industry, and then again, working for a software company like ServiceMax, but mostly through things like the Think Tank is that is never  never clear yes on these answers," Notter began. 

"There's so many variables that come into play such as the vertical that you are operating in. You look at things like new businesses, such as solar panels, they've come into the marketplace and instead of taking an old fashioned approach where they merely sell the solar panel, they have been able to ease into a servitized approach where they sell the outcome - the energy."

"There needs to be an alignment in the business. If you move into a siloed business you're not going to help anybody, the customers or yourself..."

- Kieran Notter, ServiceMax

"So there is a totally different aspect if you're a new company, you have a little bit more freedom. Whereas in some of the more traditional industries, companies that we expect to talk to day in day out, it's realistically about establishing an understanding from the top level. I personally the key is aligning the goals that people need realised.

"I mentioned earlier about understanding whether the supply chain is service's friend or foe. If you think about the fundamental goals that are required by these two organizations, with the supply chain needing to reduce inventory and service wanting more inventory, so it can increase its first time fix rates.

"On outset, that sounds like an argument, so there needs to be an alignment in the business. If you move into a siloed business you're not going to help anybody, the customers or yourself. So there has to be some sort of alignment.  You'll find that that becomes possible maybe with some of these Tiger teams, where they can bring in people from each area and then they're freed up to do the 'free thinking' that isn't constrained by their their MDO's or their KPIs, or their compensation packages."

"It's about understanding what that is and then of course, there's always the other aspect which is when you come up with these great ideas and these visions, does your customer want to join in with that that vision? Are they acceptable to it or indeed, are they actually against it? Then if you find the ones that are acceptable to the idea, can you actually manage it? What infrastructure do you have to actually manage the offering that you're giving?"

"However, I think the world is dictating a newer approach. You know, when we heard from Coen and Daniel earlier and talking to all of the members of the Think Tank, we're looking at new initiatives, new intelligence, new ways of doing business."

Want to know more about this Think Tank Conversation? The full Executive Briefing Report from this Think Tank Session is now available for Field Service News Subscribers. If you are already a subscriber click the button below to read the report now!

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

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In this excerpt from the inaugural Field Service News Think Tanks Debrief Session, Coen Jeukens expands on how we must reframe the Service/Product conversation

Missed the full debrief session? Field Service News Subscribers can access the full debrief session on the link below.

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The many guises of servitization:

The question of how we must realign the relationship between service and product as we move towards a more service-centric economy has been discussed at length across the pages of www.fieldservicenews.com. We've been tackling this conversation with representatives of  various corners of the field service world, not only geographically but also from industry and from academia.

The consensus, that was also echoed in this Think Tank is that collectively we need to reframe what what these conversations around servitization mean. That is because there are now very many different interpretations of servitization, through-life-services, outcome -based-services and advanced services. 

At the very least companies need to be able to define their understandings of what servitization means to them, they need to then reframe that conversation internally first, so they can take it forward externally.

Speaking during the Think Tank Christo Roux, Director, Field & Workshop Services, Outotec commented: 

“We talk about bundling our offering. So in terms of servitization it has come down to long term service agreements which may include consignment stock, service level agreements, partial or full presence on site, 24 hour call services and so forth. 

“For us that is as far as we are going in terms of servitization. 

“But outcome-based services in our world is definitely a discussion being held, but the general consensus would suggest that it might have to be something that is separate to this initial approach.

“I don’t today see it as something we could integrate into our field service offering particularly easily - so we will still definitely go with our long term service agreements. Through these we have an expected revenue base and also a better resource loading capability and then we can supplement this with all the spot resources we can do as well.”

In the sameThink Tank Maarten Wijnheijmer, Global Aftermarket Sales Director, Howden commented: 

“Even if the official strategy is to prioritise aftermarket and at the top level that is the story, you also need to see what is happening two layers lower in the organisation, which is where the day to day decisions are made. Strategy doesn’t land on its own and it is not always understood by the top what is needed to implement their vision to generate more aftermarket business.”

Also sat in that Think Tank was Coen Jeukens, Vice President, Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax. 

"Again, this story is just like the previous comment," Jeukens reflected when discussing the Think Tank in the debriefing session. 

"It starts with the voice of the customer. I think that if we see that the customers are getting more mature and more demanding, we can see that apart from buying a product or buying the services, they simply want to have the output or the value of a product and I can really see that in Christo's comments here because it takes two. It takes the field service organization to make a conscious decisions, how far do we want to go in the maturity of our service offerings. However, of course that has to align with the maturity of the customers. Simply, it would be a waste of time if they would invest in servitization offerings, when the customers are not there to buy them."

"I think in every vertical in every market, every customer out there has their own dynamics in the market and service companies can really tap into that," Jeukens continues.

"Going back to the example of my previous employer, we started by looking at the voice of the customer, and we were selling safety and security systems. So that could be something simple as a camera system or a security camera system. Now the customer can buy a bunch of security cameras and they can maintain them themselves. We as the solution provider could buy or sell those cameras and we could sell associated maintenance contracts with them in this scenario what we would do is over the lifespan of the system is ensure that the customer receives the camera feeds

"However, we we saw that more and more customers were saying well that is not what we want. If you look at an airport for example there would be thousands of cameras. Just try to imagine the control desk where somebody is looking at thousands of camera feeds. It is unmanageable so that was not what the customer wanted.

"The customer wanted to have the insights. They only wanted to see the feeds of the cameras which need actionable items. So if you look at what customers really need, you can really start selling those new types of services. We had the privilege to have a number of customers who really valued that type of service."

Want to know more about this Think Tank Conversation? The full Executive Briefing Report from this Think Tank Session is now available for Field Service News Subscribers. If you are already a subscriber click the button below to read the report now!

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

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Servitization, outcome-based services and product-as-a-service are hot topics. However, we see little examples in the industrial sectors. Too often, there is a gap between the theoretical framework and the real practice. Here Jan van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum, outlines 3 critical steps to boost the success of your servitization journey...

Summary

We hear a lot about servitization, outcome-based services and product-as-a-service business models. However, we see little examples in the industrial sectors. Many manufacturers face serious challenges while developing and launching new service offerings:

• Clients do not see the value, have many objections and are not ready for it
• Lack of strategic support to invest in necessary capabilities and to develop their business model

3 of the root causes are:

• The gap between academic terms like servitization, outcome-based services and product-as-a-service and the practice is not being closed yet
• Poor definition of the critical business problems of clients which will be solved with the new offering
• The impact on the manufacturer's business is not clear yet

In this article I share some of the best practices for designing advanced offerings which will help you to overcome these challenges:

• Build deeper and broader insights in your clients business challenges and pain points
• Focus on specific customer segment, based on their needs
• Approach your business models more holistic

The Problem

Just as an increasing number of manufacturing companies, you may be looking for ways to thrive during disruptive change in your industry. This is an exciting journey of enhancing your business models with digital solutions and advanced services.

Some of the major trends that make this mission critical for your future success are:

• Digital technologies
• Digitalisation of clients’ operation
• New emerging business models
• Shifts in the value chain / ecosystem

The vision behind these innovations is:

• Develop advanced services and solutions to develop new and recurring revenue streams and increase long-term differentiation.
• Develop better performing and more efficient predictive maintenance services.
• Meet a broader scope of (latent) customer needs, beyond availability and condition of equipment like operational performance solutions.

Most service leaders and innovators, solution providers, academics and consultants use broad and abstract concepts to describe their vision, strategy, innovations and new offerings with container words like:

• Servitization
• Advanced services
• Outcome-based services
• Remote services

I often hear from service leaders and innovation teams that they struggle with challenges like:

• Clients do not see the value of the new offering or solution
• Clients see many obstacles and risks
• Clients are not willing to pay more for the new solutions
• Clients are not ready for the new solutions
• Lack of support from strategic stakeholders and other functions in their organisation

In essence, all boils down to the following 3 problems:

• The new solutions and services do not solve (new) critical business problem of the clients. The value or impact is not clear (other than potentially lower prices for the maintenance services).
• It is not clear how these services contribute to the overall business challenges and vision of the company as a whole.
• The service vision is too abstract for internal stakeholders to understand and endorse. Words like servitization, outcome-based services, remote services and product-as-a-service are too theoretical and do not clearly articulate a vision and strategy.

This is pretty frustrating, isn’t it?

The Solution

In this article I share critical frameworks which many service teams miss in their service innovation strategies. These are:

• Build deeper and broader insights in your clients business challenges and pain points
• Focus on specific customer segment, based on their needs
• Approach your business models more holistic

Build deeper and broader insights in your clients business challenges and pain points

To be truly outside-in and customer driven, you need to have a deep insight in the challenges and problems your clients are facing in their business. Deep customer insights should:

• Go beyond their requirements about uptime and maintenance of their assets
• Cover a time window of 3-7 years
• Be thought provoking eye-openers for your clients

You and your colleagues already have most information at hand. It is a matter of turning this information and knowledge into a compelling customer story, for irresistible advanced services.

You can read more about this in ( “Build a Strong Customer Story in 7 Steps and Launch Irresistible Advanced Services” in the Handy Little Book, published by Field Service News.

Focus on specific customer segment, based on their needs

One size does not fit all. Different clients have different visions and strategies, different challenges and therefore different needs. When defining the (latent) customer needs for today and the near future, it is crucial to have some sort of segmentation of your important clients based on their (future) needs.

This segmentation will help you to develop a robust strategy which defines which customer segments you will target, with which new service offerings and which business models you will develop.

There are many ways to segment clients based on their needs, largely depending on the specific industry. I will share two generic patterns for customer segmentation which can be useful for you to take as a starting point. They are based on segmentations of innovative and successful manufacturers and service leaders. 

Two often used patterns for customer segmentation are:

• Maturity – Willingness to outsource of a business
• Maturity – Complexity of a business

This could be a useful pattern in industries where many of your (potential) clients tend to do most functions themselves instead of outsourcing the activities (like maintenance of equipment).

Along the vertical axis you can separate segments based on the maturity of their core capabilities and processes.

For example, in the industry of metalworkers this could be:

• Traditional craftsmen
  The entrepreneurs personally (together with their employees) manufacture the metal products themselves, love part of the manual work and working with their machines and tools. This is their pride. Little of the activities are put into structured processes.
• High tech workshops
  The entrepreneurs have invested in state-of-the-art tools to improve quality, consistency and efficiency. Their main focus is still on the technical side of the profession. Probably there is more structure in the workflow and processes, predominantly organised from a technical point of view. From a more economical point of view, the structure is not efficient yet.
• Lean manufacturers
  The entrepreneurs have a more economic view (or hired an operations director with economic competencies) and are working on efficient processes, workflow and organisation. They follow lean-six-sigma or similar approaches to optimise human resources, capital investment and materials.
• Value chain optimisers
  These entrepreneurs have a broader scope and are looking to their added value in the entire value chain, partnerships, vertical integration or specialisation. They may also develop more advanced value propositions to their clients like inventory management and delivery of the components they manufacture in small packages in the production line of their clients.

This is a very brief description. You should probably also look into functions like sales, marketing, engineering, internal logistics, inventory management, tools management, financial management, human resources management etcetera. You get the picture.

Along the horizontal axis you can segment your market into clients that tend to do as much as possible themselves versus clients that outsource many functions which are not part of their core-process. Clients in the first category probably have various dedicated departments, competence centres or teams for functions like process optimization and maintenance.

This pattern could be useful if you have clients with different types of operations with different levels of complexity.

The vertical axis is the same as in the “Maturity – Willingness to outsource” pattern.

Along the horizontal axis you segment your market into clients that have short and simple value chains versus clients with longer and more complex value chains. For example, again in the industry of metalworkers this could be:

• Jobbers or workshops that fulfil specific tasks like welding, cutting, bending, drilling etcetera and that manufacture intermediate components or semi-finished products
• Component manufacturers which perform several tasks to manufacture components, like engine blocks for the automotive industry
• Product manufactures, which manufacture complex products
• Machine manufacturers

Whatever pattern you use with these segmentations, you now have 4 (or more) segments in a logical structure. For each segment you can:

• Find a descriptive name
• Further describe their specific needs
• Define their characteristics to recognise them

For each segment you should:

• Decide whether you want to serve them or not. Or at least define which segments have your focus
• Develop a customer insight or customer story
• Develop specific messages to use in your marketing, sales and service delivery
• Develop and map specific services, offerings and delivery models
• Develop a specific commercial approach

When you are still in the early stages of developing advanced new service offerings, it often pays to focus on one specific segment first.

Approach your business models more holistically:

As soon as your advanced services go beyond the maintenance and the condition of the equipment your company manufactures and sells, you will be reconfiguring or extending the business model of your company as a whole. This means, you need to have a strategic dialogue and innovation process with strategic stakeholders.

To make this a fruitful and coherent process, you should avoid a discussion about product versus services. It starts with:

• A shared concern about developments in the industry
• The threats and opportunities for your business as a whole
• A vision about the future state of your entire business and what needs to change to achieve this

This will result in a few strategic priorities, one of which (hopefully) is services innovation.

Now I would like two share two useful frameworks that help to take the development of the business models to a more holistic – company wide – level:

• Generic types of business models for products and services
• Types of service value propositions

Note that these frameworks are not limited to services or products alone. They address the overall value proposition, which can be a combination of products, software, data and services.

In the matrix above, you can describe changes of your business model along two aspects.

Along the vertical axis, you differentiate value propositions:

• From stand-alone offerings (like single products or services)
• To comprehensive and integrative solutions which cover a broad scope of needs and solutions

Along the horizontal axis, you differentiate highly standardised offerings from highly customised offerings.

This results in 4 types of business models, which I will further describe with document printers as an example:

• Product Business Model
  • Only printers, probably including service contracts
  • A wide portfolio of different models to choose from
  • Additional equipment for folding documents, putting them in envelopes etcetera
  • Getting the printer for free and paying for the ink only
  • Predictive and remote maintenance
  • Cloud storage solutions and Microsoft Office 365 still fit in this model, even though you pay a small fee per month
  • Retail banking
• Project Business Model
  • An assessment of the entire business, to define how many printers, which type and where
  • Connecting the printers to the network, configuring security systems
  • Designing, building and commissioning an entire print room for high volume printing and mailing of documents
  • Designing more effective and efficient processes
• Solution Business Model
  • Taking over the entire print room from clients, which could still be at your clients’ locations
  • Connecting the Salary Administration system to the print room to print all salary slips at the end of the month, put them in envelopes, and send them to the postal services
• Platform Business Model
  • In the printer industry the example may become a bit theoretical, anyway.
  • An online platform where clients can upload templates, designs and lists of destinations and pay for the job. The platform will split this in smaller jobs for various connected and certified print facilities across the world and process the financial transaction. (I am not sure if this kind of service ever existed).
  • In the Additive Manufacturing sector, we do see initiatives in this direction to allow manufactures to print metal spare parts anywhere in the world close to the customer
  • Other examples of today are Apples Appstore, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb.

This framework will help you to better articulate the kind of value and related business models you are aiming for. 

In this framework you can define your value proposition along the horizonal axis based on the scope of the services. There are several ways to add value to your clients (deliver outcome if you like). I will use the commercial truck industry as an example:

• Better products
  For example, improve fuel efficiency of the truck and engines.
• Better availability
  Your services can maintain and improve the availability and condition of the equipment. This could be quite advanced with real time data, smart diagnostics predictive analytics or supported self-help offerings using AR.
  For example, predictive maintenance to improve availability (and maybe also improve fuel consumption).
• Better application or use
  Your services can drive the output or performance of the equipment you delivered to clients by improving the use, configurations, settings and ongoing optimization tactics. These services can be onetime projects or ongoing support.
  For example: Reduce fuel consumption by improving the driving behaviour of truck drivers.
• Better processes
  Your services can also concentrate on the overall processes and operation.
  For example: Reduce fuel consumption (and other cost) by improving the route planning, combining jobs, choosing the right vehicles for each job etcetera.

Along the vertical axis you can separate your offerings in

• Effort based offerings
  You promise to do certain activities for which your clients pays, regardless of the result of the activities. It remains the responsibility and risk of your clients to manage the overall performance and take the right decisions.
• Performance based offerings
  You promise your clients a certain result and get a fee depending on this result. In the example of commercial trucks, this could be:
  • Guaranteed uptime and availability of the truck of 99% and penalties if the performance is below 99%
  • A fee per percent-point of reduction of fuel consumption
  • A fee per transportation job

How to use these frameworks?

Map your current business model(s) in one or more of the matrixes described above. Also map a few scenarios for the envisioned business model(s). 

This will help you and your stakeholders to have a more structured and neutral discussion about the major trends in the market, technology and competitive landscape as well as in what direction your value propositions and business models should develop. Any choice will have an impact on engineering, manufacturing, software development, marketing & sales and services.

What are the takes

If manufactures cannot successfully adjust their business model, they run a serious risk of falling behind existing and new competitors.

Clients are developing digital capabilities in all their functions. They will have other needs for services and solutions.

This is an important opportunity for manufacturers to grow their relevance for their clients and grow their business.

It is also a unique opportunity for digital native service providers and system integrators, which offer remarkable and complete solutions to the (new) problems of your clients. They are your new competitors.

Benefit

If you use these frameworks and embed them in your service vision, your innovation strategy as well as in your dialogue with strategic stakeholders, you can develop the;

• Shared concern for the business as a whole
• The strategic priorities for the business as a whole, one of which will be services
• Shared vision for the business as a whole, which includes services
• A specific shared concern for the services business unity
• The strategic priorities for the services business unit
• A shared vision for the services business unit

Rome was not built in one day

It is an iterative journey. It takes time and work. The frameworks above will help you to facilitate and structure this journey.

Manufacturers and service leaders with successful advanced services have used these kinds of frameworks for a long time and still are. This allowed them to achieve quick, continuous and more radical innovations and thrive in disruptive times.

Conclusion:

For quite a few service leaders, the journey of service innovation is a tough one. Their clients do not see the value of new advanced offerings, they do not want to pay for them, and internal stakeholders do not provide the necessary support.

Some of the key reasons are;

• The critical business issues of the clients are not clear and are not addressed with the new offerings
• The business value of the new offerings and business models are not clear
• The envisioned business model(s) are not clearly described

Litmus proof

I would like to challenge you with the following questions.

Can you describe your services vision and strategy in concrete words? Without using words like;

• Advanced services
• Servitization
• Product-as-a-Service
• Remote services
• AR, AI, IoT

Does your services vision start with a description of;

• Major trends in the industry of your clients
• How challenges and priorities of your clients are changing
• How that will change their needs

Recommendation

If you want to be leading the transition of your business and industry, I would recommend you to;

• Define a clear shared concern with your strategic stakeholders;
• What are the developments and trends?
• How are customer needs changing? (our worksheet “Build your Customer Story” will be useful)
• What is the (potential) impact of these changes for your business?
• Does your business want to act on this by innovating the business model?
• Together with your strategic stakeholders, consider various options for developing the business model(s) and assess how these business models would help your business to thrive
• Agree on the innovation strategy and next steps
• Iterate!

Further Action: 

• Read more about Servitization and Advanced Service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services
• Read more exclusive FSN articles by Jan van Veen @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/jan-van-veen
• Connect with Jan van Veen on linked in @ www.linkedin.com/in/janvanveen1
• Follow moreMomentum on twitter @ twitter.com/more_momentum
• Schedule a discovery session with Jan van Veen @ moremomentum.eu/discovery-session

In the final feature in our series of extracts from an excellent white paper published by IDC and sponsored by IFS, we will explore the IDC Servitization Barometer which is designed to allow field service organisations to chart their path to new revenue streams.

In part one we looked at the rapid and wide reaching change that is being faced by manufacturers in all sectors, in all regions. In part two we looked further at IDC's Servitization Maturity Framework. Now in part three see how the broad maturity of the sector against this model. In part three see how the broad maturity of the sector against this model. Now in the final feature of the series we start to see best practices emerging... 

Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the link below. 

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Sponsored by:

Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, IFS who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content. 

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Service operations capabilities are at the heart of successful transformations. IDC believes that much of the focus in recent years has been on providing staff with good tools to deliver basic services, rather than creating new services and updating the flows to support those.

 

One example is mobile access. The first chart in Figure 9 shows how the spread in choice between good performers (Stage 3 and 4) and subpar performers (Stage 1 and 2) is very thin. Most companies across all sizes have managed to provide their field workers with decent capabilities, even if only providing augmented features.

 

 

On the other hand, innovation on service portfolio is overall a far more immature topic. Approximately half of the companies surveyed offer maintenance contracts at best. Another 30% augment this with financing, which means barely 20% are focused on innovating services. On top of that, there is a very large rift in regard to service creation between good performers (Stage 3 and 4) and subpar performers (Stage 1 and 2), as shown in the second chart in Figure 10. 70% of the slow performers have haphazard approaches to service creation, the complete reverse of what Borderless and Joined-Up enterprises do.

Another key discerning element in service operations excellence is the ability to have a two-way process and data flows between service management and back-office functions. 40% of the organizations surveyed have zero interlink of key systems (ERP, FSM, supply chain), suggesting a fully fragmented value chain, and just 15% have two-way links, meaning manual or sensor-based input from field service processes triggers information updates and actions in ERP and supply chain systems.

The final key success factor is related to skillsets, both in the field worker group and in the leadership team.

• Field workers need to be not only apt at using and understanding technology, but also enthusiastic about expanding their knowledge and abilities at a much faster pace. Annual training and “experience” are not enough when product updates happen monthly over-the-air and digital applications are part of the portfolio.
• Lack of know-how or internal capabilities to run a services business is ranked as the number one hurdle to servitization. IDC believes it is very hard for companies in production-oriented industries to hire executives that are capable of innovating on the service side of the house.

Eyes on the Prize — What Borderless Enterprises Teach Us

Assessing the status quo is important. But what should companies aim for? What are the benefits of becoming a Borderless enterprise and the traits defining one? The in-depth Barometer research allows us to start answering those questions:

• Companies should start investing in a long-term service vision. 90% of the best performing companies expect business model revolutions in three years with pay-per-use, outcome-based services, and ecosystem monetization all playing a role. This compares to 15% in the sample average. They also already generate 12% of their revenue from services, versus an 8% average.
• Front-end capabilities must be proactively built. The ability to immediately route calls from the contact center to engineering support is a strong indicator of leading organizations. Similarly, Borderless companies have often managed to build fully automated troubleshooting capabilities for end customers. Data is automatically synced from in-field products to the cloud, issues are logged, and solutions proactively offered.
• Strategic partnerships are critical drivers to success in servitization. Becoming a Borderless organization requires an ecosystem approach to the development of data-driven digital services. Organizations at the most advanced stage of servitization maturity are monetizing co-creation initiatives to enrich their services portfolio by leveraging the capabilities of partners in adjacent industries.

 

Figure 11 (below) shows other traits as well as the immediate benefits of being a Borderless enterprise. Much higher profitability and above-average revenue growth are both enjoyed by these types of companies.

 

 

While it is true that real Borderless enterprises are relatively hard to come by, it is imperative that businesses look to them as examples and start acting now. At the Joined-Up stage (Stage 3), roughly one-third of companies in the market are within striking distance. IDC believes many members of this group are very likely to “up-rank” in a two to three-year horizon. Remaining in the bottom ranks would mean becoming pigeonholed in a low-margin, low-growth mode for the foreseeable future.

 

Getting the Low-Hanging Fruit

IDC maintains that some low-hanging fruits can be achieved even by moving up from the lower stages of servitization. Figure 12 provides a summary of the potential gains and likely roadblocks on the path towards a Borderless enterprise. While there are multiple ways to move along the servitization journey, some common patterns start to appear. In particular:

• Strong profitability and sustained revenue acceleration are visible from Stage 3 onwards. As almost 50% of buyers sit in Stage 2, it is recommended that they build expectations around those KPIs as they connect their whole value chain. Failing KPIs would be a sign that the journey is not progressing
• The last, trickiest roadblock is linked to decision making. Transformation towards a service-first business model will eventually pass through the leadership. In the Barometer survey, 85% of respondents said they were part of a decision-making group that typically involves Head of Products, Head of Services, and often Head of Operations, plus the IT side of the organization. Building the right “dream team” dynamics will be crucial to ensure success in the final stages.

 

IDC Advice to End Buyers in Production-Oriented Industries

On a backdrop of subsiding demand for traditional products, IDC sees a clear trend emerging towards augmenting products with services, and ultimately transforming traditional physical supply chains into open ecosystem value chains. This transformation process is called servitization, and it is to be understood as a subset to digital initiatives.

While only a few have achieved the servitization “nirvana” of the Borderless enterprise, more than a third of companies globally are already Joined-Up, poised to get within striking distance of that vision soon. Those fast movers already have proof-points to show for it, including:

• Service revenues that are on average one-third larger than their peers’ as a proportion of total revenue
• 5X more chance of accelerating top line growth above 5% yearly
• Much greater likelihood of showing profitability improvements thanks to DX initiatives

IDC recommends every company in all physical value chains get moving as soon as possible. Laggards are likely to find themselves pigeonholed in low-profit niches within the next two years if they fail to do so. Based on our research, IDC recommends the following strategic and tactical best practices.

 

Strategic Best Practices

1. Work with the leadership to build a “dream team” involving Head of Products, Head of Services, Head of Operations and CIO/CDO that aligns early on strategic objectives for servitization. This transformation process will impact all those departments (and more). While initial attempts can work without coordination, data shows that internal conflicts are the biggest obstacle in Stage 3 and beyond.
2. Be proactive in customer-centricity. No servitization can happen without a strong, ultra-connected customer engagement function. Even good performers appear to struggle to go beyond basic tools and processes. Combining customer metrics with operational scores and above all being ready to invest in staff and technology from day one is highly recommended.
3. Set key performance indicators and make them public. IDC research shows that revenue growth accelerates when crossing the chasm to servitization. Financials can be volatile, though, especially on a quarterly basis and even more so when business model change hits. Measuring other items such as the percentage of service revenue in each division, field service worker satisfaction, and net promoter score is recommended to keep a steady pace and not lose sight of the end goals.

Tactical Best Practices

1. Put together a small “Services Tiger Team” as soon as possible. The team should be comprised of mid-senior members across the “dream team” divisions, including IT. Its key objectives should be to review and classify existing services, related processes, and profitability (Phase 1) and to ideate new offerings to test in the market within twelve months (Phase 2). For the sake of iteration, multi-year launches are not recommended.
2. Perform a complete review of your data flows end-to-end. To test how well connected your backoffice and front-desk are, first pick your best-selling product. Then analyze whether contact center and field service agents have consistent information about parts availability, whether they can directly augment or modify information in back-office systems, whether potential IoT or third-party component supplier data is consistent, etc. This will quickly highlight bottlenecks in process and information.
3. 3. Kill all of your IoT projects that don’t generate events in either service management or ERP/ supply chain systems. Focusing efforts on actionable data is a must. Chances are you already have IoT data collection from end products or the supply chain in place — often without a production use case. IDC recommends ruthlessly eliminating those to make space for IoT projects subordinated to the launch of new service offerings.

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Servitization and Advanced Services @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read exclusive FSN features from IDC's Aly Pinder @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/aly-pinder
• Read FSN Features and News from the IFS team @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=IFS
• Find out more about the solutions IFS offer to help field service companies @ www.ifs.com
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifsuk

We continue our series of extracts from an excellent white paper published by IDC and sponsored by IFS, we will explore the IDC Servitization Barometer which is designed to allow field service organisations to chart their path to new revenue streams.

In part one we looked at the rapid and wide reaching change that is being faced by manufacturers in all sectors, in all regions. In part two we looked further at IDC's Servitization Maturity Framework. Now in part three see how the broad maturity of the sector against this model. 

Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the link below. 

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Sponsored by:

Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, IFS who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content. 

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First Results From the Servitization Barometer

Now that we have established the requirements and benefits associated with servitization, it’s time to provide an overview of the current maturity status in this area. How far along in adoption and understanding are enterprises out there? Based on the Barometer results (Figure 5 below), IDC can confidently say that we are at the beginning of the journey.

 

Based on IDC’s benchmark, 50% of organizations find themselves at Stage 2 (Side-Car), and another 14% are stuck in the nightmare of Splintered operations (Stage 1). A third of companies interviewed have started joining up their value chains (Stage 3), and less than 5% have reached “Nirvana” (Stage 4) and already opened up their service platforms to the ecosystem.

 

These results are broadly in line with how those organizations talk about their current status:

 

• The wave is coming. The clear majority (91%) of organizations are either planning or already rolling out servitization initiatives. However, only 9% are blending most or all their product portfolio with advanced services.
• Services will trigger the wave. Services generated on average 8% of the total revenue among physical value chain companies interviewed. This was slightly higher at 11% for companies with >$1B annual revenue. As with servitization plans, expectations are tilting to growth. On average, organizations expected services to account for 16% of total revenue in three years. This was a global trend consistent across all geographies. Organizations at more advanced stages of the servitization journey expect faster growth in that direction (see Figure 6 below).

• Revenue growth will depend on services. 38% of the organizations surveyed reported zero or negative revenue growth for the twelve months ending in July 2019. Another 53% were growing below 4% yearly and less than one company out of ten more than 5% yearly. This means even small improvements in services contribution can do wonders for growth trajectory. In fact, according to this Barometer, organizations that are more advanced in their servitization journey are already perceiving significantly higher revenue growth than their peers (see Figure 7 below).

• Best performers leverage data and strategic partnerships. The barometer reveals that organizations in Stages 3 and 4 are going beyond the traditional repair and maintenance services, as they are striving to grasp the new revenue streams linked to data-driven digital services that they deliver either by themselves or in collaboration with partners in adjacent industries (see Figure 8 below).

A Deeper Look at Servitization Maturity

Servitization maturity is not equally spread across all types of companies. Nor is maturity equal across dimensions. The key findings on how IDC-assessed readiness changed in the organizations we talked to are:

• Large companies are moving faster. Among organizations with less than $500 million in revenue, only 10% reached Stage 3 or 4. This contrasts with more than 50% in companies with $500–$1 billion annual revenue and more than 80% in companies with >$1 billion revenue.
• Servitization is a cross-vertical topic. Sector of operation did not appear to influence the overall servitization speed, a sign that the topic is relevant in all physical value chains.
• Some differences exist at the geographical level. Controlling for company size, organizations based in the UK, the US, and France appear slightly more advanced than counterparts in the Nordics and Germany. The first three countries reported between 40% and 50% of companies at Stage 3 or 4, versus approximately 25% in the latter two.

Digital and Customer Engagement are Areas of Concern

Key learnings gained by looking at readiness levels by dimension (Figure 5) include the following:

• Intelligent IoT and service operations maturity track very closely to overall readiness. Service operation maturity is quintessential to servitization, so no big surprise here (see section below). However, IDC detected slightly higher than expected developments in the IoT space. Survey results showed that significant or complete portions of portfolio are already IoT-connected in 60% of organizations. However, data showed that the rarer ability to connect supply chain and production facilities was a much more important indicator of servitization maturity

• Backoffice is ahead of other areas, but integration with the front-end is missing. The base is decent: more than 85% of the sample have already standardized their processes. Half of them did so in a siloed fashion, half integrating multiple departments. Acceptance of change is the keyword for more than 70% organizations — a sign that enthusiasm is lacking. The real gap, however, is integration of the back-office and field service systems. Just 10% reported full work order integration and as many as 45% confessed to having only manual data integration, which really means no integration at all.
• Customer engagement mindset is still far away. There is a lot of work to do around customercentricity, as only 50% of organizations are set up properly with either Net Promoter Score (NPS) alone or combined with advanced techniques. 40% collect anecdotal customer feedback and 10% measure only operational metrics. This reverberates in lacking technology investments on customer experience. 55% of companies reported phone, email, or basic Web portals as the only channels. IDC maintains that this is directly linked to the hit-and-miss DX attitude of the past few years, especially in midmarket companies.

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Further Reading:

• • Read more about Servitization and Advanced Services @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services
  • Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
  • Read exclusive FSN features from IDC's Aly Pinder @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/aly-pinder
  • Read FSN Features and News from the IFS team @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=IFS
  • Find out more about the solutions IFS offer to help field service companies @ www.ifs.com
  • Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifsuk