ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘strategy’ CATEGORY

Is your organisation digitally determined or are you amongst the 54% of companies who are currently digitally distraught? Sarah Nicastro, IFS, reflects on some of the common errors to avoid when approaching digitalisation...


In a recent blog titled You Need a New Digital Transformation Playbook, published by IDC, author Meredith Whalen reveals that based on a recent study of digital leaders, 46 percent are what IDC refers to as “digitally determined” while 54% are what IDC calls “digitally distraught.”

It doesn’t surprise me that such a large percentage of organisations fall into the “distraught” category – true digital transformation is a massive undertaking that can prove daunting and frustrating at times. In an effort to alleviate some of the headaches that can come along with such a major initiative, I’m going to share four common missteps I see organisations make related to digital transformation:

#1: Overlooking the Cultural Implications of Digital Transformation
If you think of digital transformation as strictly a technology initiative, you are starting off on the wrong foot. Digital transformation requires just as much cultural change as it does technology use, yet this piece of the puzzle is commonly overlooked for a variety of reasons – leaders assume employees will just “get it,” carving out time for cultural change management seems to slow down progress, or companies just aren’t sure how to tackle such a cultural shift.

I assure you, making an effort to get the cultural part of digital transformation right will pay dividends. I’ve heard countless tales of efforts gone wrong because the employee wasn’t bought in on the concept or properly trained on the tool introduced.

Key areas to focus on are to communicate clearly and regularly with all employees on the need and objectives for your transformation – implement a feedback loop with your employees and listen to what they have to say. Be selective about the technology you adopt as part of your effort – if the tool doesn’t meet the needs of your workforce or
is difficult to use, adoption will suffer. Investing in tools that do what they say they will and deliver an experience your employees actually value will build their trust in your digital transformation efforts. Finally, continually monitor adoption and “take the temperature” of your employees to course correct your efforts as needed.

"Making an effort to get the cultural part of digital transformation right will pay dividends..."

 

#2: Failing to Set a Solid Digital Transformation Foundation
It’s all too easy to become enamored by some of the ultra-cool facets of digital transformation and gloss over some of the basics. But for true digital transformation to be successful, you have to walk before you run.

You have to ensure you’ve laid a solid foundation of basics from which to build your digital repertoire. While not as sexy as AR and AI, effective and efficient communication, bulletproof scheduling and routing, and solid work order management are examples of more basic technology that simply has to be mastered before being built upon.

As you evaluate your foundation, think about the past — what do you have in place already that is working well; the present — what you want to accomplish in the near term; and the future — what you want your digital portfolio to look like five years from now. This will help you visualise the evolution of how you build on what you have to get where you want to be, or will help you to identify changes you need to make to your current systems before building upon them.

#3: Defining YOUR Desired Digital Transformation State
To achieve digital transformation success, you MUST realise that your desired end state will be unique. I’ve seen organisations get off track because they see what ABC Company is doing and make every effort to replicate their success, rather than tailoring the approach to their own business. It’s fine to look around you for inspiration but staying in your own lane is critical to your success.

Start by defining your business goals, by visualising what YOUR desired digital transformation state looks like (and of course agreeing upon this vision organisation-wide). Each businesses’ end goal is going to be individualised, as well the approach for getting there – no two companies can follow the exact same path.

Once you have your goals set and vision articulated, focus then on only the technologies that will get you there – don’t allow yourself to be sidetracked by the new, shiny thing that will ultimately bring no value to your business but looks really cool. Stay focused and measure your progress to that desired state.

#4: Racing to Reach The “End Goal” of Digital Transformation
I’m here to break it to you: you’ll never reach the end of your digital transformation efforts. The “end goal” is a myth; it doesn’t exist. The reality of digital transformation in the technology age is that it will keep going, and going, and going.
This means you have to work to perfect the art of ongoing cultural adaptation, business goal setting, and technology adoption – because you’ll be adding on to and tweaking your digital transformation efforts from now until the end of time.

Don’t let this overwhelm you – the foundation you are setting will equip your entire organisation to make future adjustments and additions far more seamlessly.

While there is no true state of completion, the race is on to make progress and remain competitive.

Sarah Nicastro is Director of Service Management Business Development at IFS.

The way products are serviced is reshaping their design at the R&D level, and providing new insights into product usage, according to field service management specialist, ServiceMax. Service mechanisms are increasingly seen as the common denominator of accurate product development and maintenance.

The Internet of Things and intelligent field service automation is creating a connected service loop built into products, enabling manufacturers to track, pre-empt service requirements, understand usage and ultimately improve the way customers are using products.

“Before IoT, R&D teams relied mainly on interpretation and anecdotal input from field service engineers to get a full understanding of how products were faring out in the field,” said Mark Homer is Vice President, Global Customer Transformation for field service management specialist, ServiceMax. “But faced with competition and diminishing returns, manufacturers are using IoT and connected field service to make products more specific to consumer requirements.”

 

With IoT enabled field service automation, companies can collect data automatically from machines and devices to determine their condition, performance, potential for error or malfunction, foresee problems, identify troublesome parts, and equip field service techs with the right tools and materials.

Companies can also gain new levels of insight into how their products are actually used post purchase and aggregate the data for better design, maintenance and user experience, redefining the relationship between businesses and customers. The result is minimum product downtime, maximum customer satisfaction and greater insight into how consumers are using products.

 

---

 

Be social and share this story

Would you like to be part of a worldwide consortium of leading technology companies and industry associations committed to delivering exceptional service and support, and at the same time enhance and innovate your service and support capabilities and performance?

Join Noventum’s new project on defining a new chapter of the Service Capability & Performance (SCP) Standards - Service Parts Management. Through your participation in this standards development project, you will work with other leading companies to identify best in class practices, processes, performance benchmarks and capabilities necessary to operate a world class Service Parts Management operation. Once established, you will be able to obtain certification against the new standard by undergoing a rigorous audit of your service parts management function.

The SCP Standards are a suite of best practice standards for managing service operations.

They are developed by Service Strategies Corp together with their European partner, Noventum Service Management, and they are designed to improve the quality and effectiveness of technology service operations. Currently, over two hundred service organisations around the world use the SCP Standards to improve their business operations and deliver top-quality service and support.

Industry leading companies that have already adopted the internationally recognised SCP Standards include Schneider Electric, Advent Software, Fresenius-Kabi, Fuji Xerox, McKesson Corporation, Bobst Group, Teradata Corporation and many others.

With approximately 200 participating organisations and over 1500 certification audits performed worldwide, the SCP Standards represent the most widely adopted service quality program available today.

Click here to request more information about the project of defining the SCP Standards for Service Parts Management and learn how you can be part of it.

 

---

 

Be social and share this update

In part one of this exclusive two part interview Field Service News Editor, Kris Oldland talks to Martin Summerhayes of Fujitsu, about his spending over two decades as a pioneer in the field service industry... 

There are a number of key people who have been there and done it in field service. Professionals who have dedicated there lives to service, who have an inherent understanding of what it means to put the customer at the heart of the business strategy, and what it takes to develop a successful service division on an enterprise scale.

And then there is Martin Summerhayes.

A day before our interview I was able to witness Martin give a presentation at the recent Service Community event. In the half hour during which he spoke he gave the impression not only of a man that had a very firm understanding of the whole picture is in terms of service delivery, but also a man who had gained that understanding by paying attention to the minutiae of every aspect of the process.

However, after speaking to him one on one at some length a day later, it was clear that we had only just scratched the surface of Summerhayes’ depth of understanding of the industry in which he operates, as well as his passion for getting it right.

In terms of his entry into the world of field service Summerhayes, like many of his peers took a fairly straightforward path into the system. Having graduated from university in London in the late 80’s he joined HP as a field engineer on a graduate scheme working in their volume repair business.  As he puts it himself “You started as a man with a van and progressed from there”

Summerhayes himself ending up doing so rapidly and was soon not just progressing at HP, but was changing the way the business operated.

 

“My boss asked me to come up with some ideas for generating service revenue” he began as I asked him to describe his path from service engineer to service manager

“I came up with what I called the ten million dollar opportunity, which was literally sold up front. We offered a multi year extended warranty on the HP printers and PCs that we were selling in the UK, this would provide HP with an incremental ten million dollars worth of revenue. It was called the HP support pack business and when I left HP was generating over a billion dollars of revenue per anum.”

And perhaps here is a glimpse at what makes Summerhayes such a fascinating subject for interview or indeed just someone to have a conversation with. Whilst announcing what was a really quite an extraordinary achievement, he makes it sound as if  it was essentially a logical development that anybody else could have made

This of course isn’t true, to create a billion dollar business in any industry takes vision by the bucket load and to do it in a fledgling IT service industry even more so, but the touch of humility he shows when outlining his achievements, and an almost a blasé outlook on such a success, hints at an impression of a man who is almost certainly quite an inspiration to both his peers and his team alike.

In total Summerhayes spent nearly 20 years working with HP, having risen up the ranks from the “Man with a Van” to being at differing points responsible for 450 engineers, developing new programmes within the company to change their processes, to being heavily involved in overseeing the merger with Compaq (which actually also included absorbing Digital Equipment Corporation and Cabletron into the HP structure as well). Eventually he was asked to move to Texas as part of a management restructure, which Summerhayes declined and the HP chapter of his career came to an end.

He then took a decidedly left-field step in his career and took up a role with the Metropolitan Police Force. Spending two years with the ‘Met’ which he describes as “a mix of secret military, local government bureaucracy gone mad and IT” where the culture was one of “meetings, about meetings about meetings” Summerhayes eventually returned to the more familiar corporate environment with Fujitsu where he has been for the past six years.

Here in his roles as Head of Strategy and Business Development he now works directly with the firms fourteen largest accounts in the UK, working with them to establish margin and service improvement opportunities. (Last year alone he was able to deliver over two million pounds of margin improvements.)

Look out for part two of this feature coming soon where we look at Summerhayes' biggest frustrations in field service today as well as what makes him go home smiling after a long day...