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With an eye to the future and a desire to push today’s technologies to their limit, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to creep into a variety of service technologies. On its surface, AI might still seem like science fiction, but the number of practical use cases will only increase over time. Are you ready to use AI to its fullest potential?

In this series, run in partnership with IFS, we will be looking to see exactly what impact AI will have on the field service sector and how your organisation can harness it... 

It has taken longer than many predicted, but Augmented Reality is finally gaining significant traction in the field service sector. Indeed, evidence of this new momentum can be seen in the number of new AR vendors entering the space. One company that pioneered much of the technology and concepts now becoming increasingly explored in our sector is Scope AR. Kris Oldland sat down with their President David Nedohin, to get his take on the case for Augmented Reality in the field service sector…

There are several different layers to how AR can sit within field service operations indeed long-time readers will recall the many times myself and Scope AR President David Nedohin have discussed the various facets of how this exciting technology will play a pivotal role in the field service delivery of the future.

For a long time, Nedohin was one of a very few voices in the sector that had both a deep level of knowledge and first hand expertise within the emerging industry of AR in field service.

The number of voices around him has increased dramatically in the last year or so, but the one thing that I always found gave Nedohin a defined sense of gravitas when he spoke was a firm grasp of the broader picture within the field service setting. This, coupled with a natural earnestness and a genuine belief that the technology can and will solve a multitude of challenges in the field service sector, always marked him out for me as a man worth listening to.

So, with the additional noise now swirling around AR, I was keen to sit back down with him and gather his thoughts on whether AR was set to become more prevalent within the field service sector, and if so how?

"To begin, let's take the remote support aspect of AR," Nedohin starts as we sit down over a coffee. "In all honesty, something we saw coming last year, which is now definitely coming to pass is that this side of the AR offerings is beginning to become heavily commoditised." 

“Allow the AI to tackle the 80% of support queries, freeing up the remote expert to focus on the 20% of more challenging issues – where they can bring value to the table…”

"We find ourselves now in a situation where many of the people who come to us initially are looking at the remote support side of AR. It has become something of a common trend which I think has largely arisen because remote support is all most field service directors hear about when it comes to AR.

"Of course, for us, that is something we can and do support, but it does end up becoming a scenario of simple feature and price comparison and matching, and that's not how we want to sell our product.  The bigger question for us is how field service companies create an interim strategy based around sharing expert knowledge with workers, regardless of where they are, and it doesn't have to be a case of using a remote expert every time your engineers need help.

"You need to have expert knowledge that's available to your workers in advance, and then if they need help, you have the additional option of calling an expert in.  You need those guide instructions, you need support, driven through Artificial Intelligence (AI) highlighting best practices, and then, if needed, you also need an option to call the expert. You don't want to just be in a position where every time you're going to call an expert to help - because that's not a strategy."

Nedohin, makes a valid point here, in that as is often the way with new and emerging technology, sometimes in a rush to adopt a solution, the purpose of implementing the technology, can get overlooked.

Remote Assistance is very much a natural fit in field service, and ultimately, I believe it will become as widely used as video calls, but it is not always a necessary route for each and every call. AI-powered knowledge banks working in tandem with AR – something akin to what Nick Frank termed as "Augmented Knowledge" in a recent article for Field Service News, can help guide an engineer onsite through a repair without tying up remote support.

It is a modern example of the Pareto principle at work – allow the AI to tackle the 80% of support queries, freeing up the remote expert to focus on the 20% of more challenging issues – where they can bring value to the table.

It also brings to mind perhaps one of the most well-repeated mantras we hear in field service. Use the right tools for the job at hand. As Nedohin explains; "It's no different than let's say a mechanic working on replacing a flat tyre. They need to pick the right tool to solve that problem. I mean, some guy's not going to walk up and say, 'I sell hammers' when you've got a nut to take off, and then try to convince you that you don't need a wrench.

"Imagine that conversation, with the supplier saying, 'We've got the best hammers, you need to buy hammers and figure out what to do with the hammer.' The mechanic would think he was insane and go get a wrench from somewhere else," Nedohin adds.

“You have to work back on the problem and figure out what tools you need…”

It is a well-made point that illustrates the importance of understanding your specific use-case requirements before implementing any technology - something I have put forward on many an occasion.

"You have to work back on the problem and figure out what tools you need," Nedohin concurs. "Somebody who's working up on a telephone pole, obviously they need a wearable, they need a monocular device that's going to give them a safe environment and they can overlay some instructions. 

"If it's somebody, who's working in manufacturing on the maintenance or repair of a big piece of equipment they must see exactly what they need to be doing and the AR overlaid on top can give them a bigger picture and surface resolution quickly and effectively. In this use case, a binocular device would likely be preferable.

"The first point on the map, the first question you have to ask yourselves as an organisation, has to be 'what is the right set of tools to help us improve what we're doing right now?'"

The potential of AR in field service is undoubtedly exciting, but as with other emerging technologies becoming integrated into field service such as IoT or drones, the use cases will vary from organisation to organisation. Identifying the gaps in your service delivery and where they can be improved is a crucial first step not to be overlooked. However, having taken that step, AR will likely become an important part of the technology stack that can drive your field service operation forward.

Aligning capacity planning with dynamic work order scheduling is the key to planning for tomorrow not just getting through today unscathed argues Click’s Paul Whitelam. Kris Oldland reports...

There has been much talk in field service circles, but particularly in the manufacturing space, with regards to the importance of moving away from the traditional break-fix approach to field service delivery. In the past, the relationship between the service provider and customer has always been one whose nature has been primarily transactional.

An asset breaks, the customer calls to request a repair, and the service provider delivers that service within a previously agreed SLAs or at a designated cost if the asset lies out of warranty. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it has been around in one way or another since service delivery itself, with the odd refinement here or there.

So why, all of a sudden, does it seem that field service companies of all stripes and sizes are prepared to walk away from the ‘old ways’ to embrace the new? The truth is what we’ve done in the past has been good enough, it doesn’t mean it is the best we can be. Moreover, as technology drives both customer expectations and service provider capabilities forwards simultaneously, the need for better’ has in many senses been thrust upon us from all angles.

It is of little surprise then that we are seeing field service companies begin to adopt a new approach which positions them more firmly within a business ecosystem built of partnerships between service providers and customers. Talk of servitization and outcome-based service delivery has moved from niche concept to mainstream discussion in a relatively short time, and an understanding of advanced services has, well, advanced.

However, this shift in thinking is also being seen in the way some field service management (FSM) solution providers are approaching how they design their offerings. More and more we see talk revert to technology stacks which harness best of breed solutions versus the platform. For a long time, it seemed that the platform was going to be the future of the FSM.

“If you take the high-level strategic view, you can be a platform, or you can be a specialist in field service management..."

However, as integration becomes almost effortless in the age of the API, we see once again a shift in the direction of best-of-breed solutions. Take, for example, ClickSoftware, a company who have for a long time been regarded as a leading specialist amongst scheduling providers, who remain a best-in-class specialist, having previously appearing to flirt with the idea of a platform approach, for a short time at least.

“If you take the high-level strategic view, you can be a platform, or you can be a specialist in field service management,” explains Paul Whitelam, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, when I caught up with him earlier this year at the Field Service USA conference in Palm Springs, California.

“There are some arguments about where are the boundaries on field service management because that boundary’s changing a little bit. It’s certainly true that if you listen to service managers, they’ll say that an integral part of field service management is work holder management. Technically it’s not, it is an integral part of work order management.

“However, it’s perfectly acceptable for an organisation to have a best of breed work order management or a work order management system within their CRM and then also have field service management as an adjunct.

“As a best-of-breed field service management player, we can differentiate on how strategic we are, and we can expand our addressable market vertically and horizontally - vertically both in terms of industries and then geographically.

“When I say we differentiate on the strategic nature of field service management, what I mean by that is that a lot of the implementations you’ll see around, are centred on the day of service. For example ‘I’ve got a task, I need to allocate it to someone, and I can put various degrees of automation around it.’ Our approach incorporates this, but also questions what you did six months ago or a year ago.

"Capacity planning has become a perennial challenge..."

“What moves did you make to make sure that you’ve got the right skills, you’ve got people who have trained appropriately with the appropriate parts in the proper geographies who speak the right languages to be able to support your broader business strategies?” he adds.

This approach is certainly in keeping with the current zeitgeist becoming prevalent within our sector as touched on above, where field service is taking a much more central role within the long-term planning of many organisations.

“We’re looking at a field service management organisation that is about more than just delivering transactionally on the day of service. It’s more about making sure that, that team is set up for success and they’ve got the right skills, they’re the correct size.” Whitelam explains. 

It is interesting to hear Whitelam talk about the longer-term strategic planning of field service organisations both on the industry vertical and geographical focus. Click has undoubtedly made some significant gains in specific industry sectors such as telcos and more recently, the insurance sector. However, when it comes to increasing geographical coverage, this is often at the core of the challenge for expanding field service operations for companies in all industries.

Capacity planning has become a perennial challenge, but it has been revolutionised since the advent of cloud computing which enabled dynamic scheduling engines like Click to leverage the higher computational power of the Cloud to make modelling of potential capacity requirements into new regions a far more straightforward task than it previously once was.

“Capacity planning is a big area where we’ve invested in the product side of things,” comments Whitelam. “The advantages for linking capacity planning to work order scheduling is that if you’ve got your day of service review on how you’re doing, having that hooked in real-time with capacity management is becoming essential. It makes an excellent argument for having a tightly coupled planning and execution engine.” 

With strategy in field service evolving, it is undoubtedly prudent to consider how you can leverage the tools you have, or what tools you might need to invest in, to support you, not just with the ongoing day of service operations, but in your strategic growth in the mid and long-term future.

Augmented Reality has been widely predicted to become a fundamental aspect within field service delivery in the future. Here Jereme Pitts, COO, Librestream discusses how you can get a lead on your competitors and secure investment in AR for your field service operations today...

According to The Service Council, 70% of service companies stated that within 5-10 years they will face challenges due to the retiring workforce. This fact has created an industry wide need to capture and leverage knowledge, one of the top drivers for augmented reality (AR) technologies. Compounded with this challenge are the increasingly complex assets and operations that service teams face.
After deploying AR technologies, service operations have reported strong outcomes in worker safety, increased uptime, accelerated training, and knowledge retention, employee retention and productivity gains. Over our 15 years of delivering AR solutions, we’ve seen these outcomes across our customer base.
To successfully deploy and adopt AR within an enterprise, it is important to understand which use cases will drive the highest value across your operation. These use cases will determine which form of AR solution you should focus on first. Two of the most popular AR solutions in the industry are remote expert assistance and digital work instructions. Both solutions capture and leverage knowledge and are ready-to-deploy with strong proof points in the industry.
The first solution, remote expert assistance, is the ability to connect with virtual specialists immediately by sharing live video, audio, telestration and augmented content through wearable or smart devices. This solution is making way for just-in-time training, which is the concept of giving workers the tools they need to learn on the job at the scene of an event. With the growing turn-over rate of millennial workers, taking the time and money to train a new technician is a huge investment. Just-in-time training reduces the investment in time and money and instead trains the technician when it’s needed.

"Investing in AR is proving to combat the loss of expertise and growing complexity within the field service industry
The second highest growth AR solution is digital work instructions. Digital work instructions involve transforming paper processes into digital step-bystep workflows - accessible to technicians on their wearable or smart devices. This solution provides enterprises with the opportunity to streamline processes for consistency and better accuracy across their entire operations. Creating actionable data enterprises can use to create smarter and more effective business decisions. Here are examples of benefits and outcomes our industry-leading customers have reported since deploying these two AR solutions:
• 20% accelerated time to resolution and 50% faster support calls
• 33% faster training by mentoring field technicians with live video
• 5-10% reduction in return visits with improved first-time-fix rates
• 70% time saved in total productivity hours of technicians
• Improved worker safety statistics measured by indicators such as fewer miles travelled.
After selecting the highest value use cases and type of AR solution needed, the next step is often creating a successful business case. This step is crucial to gain consensus internally for a successful deployment of the AR solution. Over the years, we’ve worked with our leading customers to compile the main requirements they recommend in building this business case. Here are three important aspects to consider:
1. Name all the important stakeholders who should be involved from the beginning. For example, who are the executive sponsors, key team members, IT and security personnel?
2. Set benchmarks for success. Create a way to measure how well the solution is performing against the ‘old’ ways to help with determining the success of the project.
3. What are your formal KPIs? Make a list of your tangible and intangible benefits and how you will collect that data. These are just a few of the key thing to consider when building a successful business case for AR. To learn more, you can read the ‘Build a Business Case’ chapter in Librestream’s Industry guide on remote expertise.
This guide includes helpful content on the entire process from selecting an AR remote expert vendor to successfully deploying and gaining adoption. 
Investing in AR is proving to combat the loss of expertise and growing complexity within the field service industry. Choosing the right AR tools and creating a strong business case are vital to the success of the deployment. As a part of many companies’ digital transformation strategies, AR is becoming the new industry standard.

The balance between achieving high levels of customer experience and delivering operational excellence that will drive service revenues forwards is a finely nuanced one. In this first excerpt from a video presentation run in partnership with Outsystems we heard from Rachel Brennan, who spoke about the importance of getting this balance correct. Now in the second excerpt from this presentation Phil Bartholow gives a tour of the Outsystems platform to show us how their customers are using the tools to improve their own service delivery

New enterprise-class capabilities enable organizations to more easily design and improve digital workflows for deskless industrial workers, firm says.

 

The balance between achieving high levels of customer experience and delivering operational excellence that will drive service revenues forwards is a finely nuanced one. In this first excerpt from a video presentation run in partnership with Outsystems we hear from Rachel Brennan, who goes into greater detail about the importance of getting this balance correct...