In this excerpt from the inaugral Think Tank Debrief Session, Kieran Notter, VP Global Customer Service, ServiceMax reflects on the conversations around whether knowledge is the key differentiator for OEMs when it comes to service delivery... 

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Is knowledge the key weapon in the OEM's arsenal?

During this conversation everyone around the table was an OEM, which allowed us to dig deeper into what the group thought were the key differentiators between OEMs and third party service providers when it comes to differentiating service.

While brand reputation does of course play its on part in the discussion, it was clear amongst the group that it was knowledge and experience that really allows an OEM to shine through.

Jason Smith, Director of Field Service, EMEA, 3D Systems Corporation commented: 

“In previous companies I’ve worked at, when we have tried to push advanced services out to the market, one of the major challenges we faced was that there was little value in trying to convince customers, who didn’t see the value in connected services as a solution. In fact, this is reflected in the approach we’ve adopted at 3D Systems. If a customer is on a maintenance contract and under warranty, then we will connect the machines for free.

As far as we are concerned, in terms of the connectivity, the hardware aspect of the equation, which is where people typically perceive as the value, actually has very little value.

What I discovered, certainly in my previous role, is that the value is in the data which is provided and the insight that provides - particularly when your offering is part of a system. Companies really have to separate the hardware from the knowledge because the value proposition is at opposite ends of the scale.

Hardware is worth a couple of thousand dollars, but the knowledge is where the real improvements are. One project we did in my last company based around such a premise yielded savings to the customer of €2.5M a year. It is in the data and the insight within that data - that is where the true value sits. However, it is only by having case studies and actual data that you can quantify and describe this value.”

Peter Deeming, Service Tools Manager, Varian commented: 

“Reflecting on the three models Jan outlined of ‘do it with us’, ‘do it for us’ or ‘we’ll do it ourselves’, I would add a fourth model into this in that a third-party service contractor could also do the service work as well.

“In terms of service we see third party service companies as competitors and one of the edges the data gives us is that we as an OEM can get data from our entire install base and a contractor cannot do that. This gives us a far greater depth of knowledge and insight that we can bring to the customer - something that gives us a distinct competitive advantage.

“This demonstrates that the value isn’t in the hardware, or even getting the data from one machine. But when you can get the data from all of your machines and exploring the trending and apply some AI and get all of the analysis, then you get some phenomenal insights, and that is where the true value lies.”

It was interesting to note as the conversation evolved during the Think Tank, how we started to see the groups thinking crystallise as agreement emerged that the true value an OEM service organisation can bring to the table is based on deep product knowledge and operational best practice.

This was a theme that occurred across a number of conversations during the Think Tank's held in this period but this definitely came to the fore in this session.

Reflecting on this point during the Debrief session Kieran Notter, VP Global Customer Transformation, commented:

"With knowledge, you can start to offer more things.Then with knowledge, you can also manage those things and set the expectations for your customers and yourself."

"We can talk about entitlements and SLA (service level agreements) but if you don't have the knowledge on how to manage them, then that's an empty promise, and therefore you're going to upset your customer," Notter adds.

 

"How many people beyond service realize that, that service data is really useful to them?"

- Kieran Notter, ServiceMax

 

"So to get to that movement of how you do your contract entitlements and SLAs, or even moving further into the outcome based world, you have to have the knowledge to understand fundamentally how you price it, how you make it into a business, but also how you can make your customer successful - because you need to create that partnership to be successful," Notter reflects. 

"Then there's also the secondary element as well, which is understanding of how to use that knowledge outside of service. Most people taking part in this Debrief session will have an idea of how they would like to use their data if they can harvest it and mining. Yet, how many people beyond service realize that that service data is really useful to them?"

"If you think about the supply chain and how service data can be used there to actually work hand in hand, to create a supply chain, rather than a demand chain. Also, if marketing have the data that's coming from these products, they can do targeted marketing - marketing, that is very specific to the customer and the products and the services that you're providing currently, which gives you the knowledge and ability to make up-sells and cross sells."

"Another aspect here is that there always seems to be a little bit of a push and pull between sales and service," Notter continues.

"Service was once called aftersales but we all understand nowadays that it's moving more into the forefront because you may sell the machine once, but then you maintain it for the next 10 to 20 years. When that maintenance is getting to a point that you need to upsell, then you have the data already. For example, you may know when the machine is being overused creating an opportunity to maybe sell another unit, or indeed it needs to be serviced.

All of this data works in so many different areas to drive different areas of growth and you can see that in Jason's statement of €2.5M savings a year. You can see where that value is actually coming from."

 

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In the first of our new quarterly Field Service News Think Tank Debrief Sessions, Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News was joined by Kieran Notter, Coen Jeukens and Daniel Brabec as they reflected on the key points raised in the last three Think Tank sessions. In this first excerpt from the debrief session, Jeukens reflects on the conversations around the growing need for service companies to listen to the voice of their customers...

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An Emerging Need for Multiple Layers of Service Offerings: 

One of the things that makes the Field Service Think Tank Sessions is that when you bring together a small group of senior service leaders together to discuss the key issues our industry faces in an informal setting, often the conversation can evolve beyond the original agenda very quickly. 

That's exactly what happened on this first session of the series held in partnership with the team at ServiceMax and the conversation turned towards really digging deeper into where the the true value of data sits within the field service sector.

During the session we saw a real need for different levels of service offerings. This is an aspect of service delivery that appears to be rapidly evolving as service organisations become more aware that their customers have many differing needs.

As Patrick Jansen, Manager Field Service, VBR Turbine Partners commented during the session:

“If you look at our call-out services, some customers don’t even want people to pick up the phone immediately - they are happy to just accept a longer response time. 

“Other customers really have an essential piece of machinery that, for them, is critical to their production. So if they have a problem they want you to pick up the phone immediately. It is quite a broad service level that we offer for our clients and it is really custom made. But the thing is we don’t work with a huge amount of companies, and we serve a niche market. We are not a Samsung serving a million mobile phones, we serve smaller industry vertical within a complex niche sector, so our service towards them is also quite different from having to serve a lot of volume.”

Similarly Eddie Storan, Head of Global Services, Domino Printing Sciences commented: 

“As we operate across 5 different industries, we provide a range of different services and offerings based upon the complexity of our customers. For example, from large global customers to the other end of spectrum of smaller organisations where their production is seasonal with short production runs and high variation.

"These customers may not have the same infrastructure and maintenance teams as the larger organisations. However, like all customers 'uptime' is critical, and if there is an issue, they want it resolved instantaneously. That is where we see remote connectivity being utilised through our cloud-based connected services. These types of customers generally tend to be more focused on support.

"Our larger customers, in addition to remote support, look for data insights into their production lines across the different technologies we have installed in their plants.”

Coen Jeukens, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax was co-chair during this Think Tank discussion and during the debrief session he was able to reflect further on the importance of differing levels of service offerings, but also how the conversations had evolved throughout the backdrop of a global lockdown during the pandemic. 

"What I really find interesting, maybe as a general common for all the Think Tank sessions we held, was that this was the first session we held which was on March 22 - so I think that for most of the participants, it's was either the first or the second week of a lockdown. Many of us were still in denial of COVID. And if we go through all the different think tanks sessions, I saw them the opinions and the perspectives of the participants changing over time." Jeukens reflected

"To a certain extent, these think tanks sessions are also a timepiece. Now, if I look at the remarks on this particular slide itself, different service needs of different customers, the phrase which comes to mind for me that very much that sat behind this part of the conversation is 'the voice of the customer', This is at the heart of these two statements made by Patrick and Eddie." 

"In terms of the voice of the customer in the context of COVID, we really start to see that the voice of the customer is not a static thing, it changes over time and COVID really has shown us that the voice of the customer can change rapidly or in a very short period of time," Jeukens continued.

 

"The most important thing to understand here is the importance of listening to the voice of the customer..."

- Coen Jeukens, ServiceMax

 

"The most important thing to understand here is the importance of listening to the voice of the customer. This allows you to know if the products and services you are offering are critical for the customer - because you can imagine if you sell a product to a customer, and that product isn't critical at all, then how are you going to sell services for that piece of equipment? The more you know about the usage of your pieces of equipment out in the field, the more you know, the more you can use the voice of the customer to really tailor your service offerings."

"If we look at the statement of Patrick, he explains how they don't really have a huge install base, but many of those customers in their install base have a very different use patterns. Equally, as we see in the statement from Eddie, you could say arguably that a printer is just a printer, but in his business, it's not about the printer. It's about the context in which the printer is used and that context is different for every customer."

"Again, we see here that there is an important context brought about by listening to the voice of the customer. This allows for the criticality of moving from fixing the downtime to better understanding the uptime. Additionally, in that understanding, uptime focus can change, this is why I think we saw the voice of the customer really driving many of the conversations we had."

 

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Monitoring the driving behaviour of your fleet can have tangible positives for KPIs but negative affects culturally. Mark Glover spoke to Alistair Dobson from Whirpool about his approach to integrating a positive safety culture.

When engineers carry out on-site maintenance there is always an element of risk. I've written many times on the dangers of lone workers, which field service engineers essentially are. However, there is another high-risk environment that engineers often operate in, and that's even before they've got to the job itself.

Driving is a Central part of the Field Service Industry

Driving is an important metric of a technician's day-to-day. Time wasted while travelling either from heavy traffic or an poor route-planning can have a detrimental affect on that day's output. Fortunately, route-planning software and telematics solutions can assist in the latter, but the fact remains the roads will always be a risky environment.

In the UK, more people are killed or injured in at-work road accidents than in all other workplace accidents put together. It is estimated that around 200 road deaths and serious injuries involve someone driving whilst at work and around a third of all crashes are estimated to involve someone who was at work at the time. This means that up to 1,000 lives are lost in the UK each year through driving for work-based practices.

In the US, the figures are obviously higher. Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) are consistently the leading cause of work-related fatalities in the U.S. A total of 8,173 workers died in work-related MVCs on public highways from 2003 to 2008, representing 24% of all work-related fatalities for the period.

We're tracking them so we had to very quickly move away from the fact that we're not tracking you. This is a health and safety initiative, this is about keeping you safe.

"Driving is 30 per cent, give or take, on average of an engineer's day of what we do," said Alistair Dobson, speaking at a recent Field Service News Think Tank session. Whirlpool's Service Operations Director explained that his fleet typically travel very short distances between customers in a designated local area, a routine common for the majority of service engineers where time is spent more on residential streets rather than high-speed motorways or roadways.

Alistair and his team took the decision to integrate telematics into their fleet strategy six years ago. It was a decision met with some resistance. "We invested in telematics which was a huge step and one viewed negatively viewed by the engineers," he recalls. "We're tracking them so we had to very quickly move away from the fact that we're not tracking you. This is a health and safety initiative, this is about keeping you safe."

Outlining the Benefits to Your Field Service Engineers

The moral and ethical questions around tracking technology are part of its implementation however, framing the technology as a safety initiative, one that is in place to protect drivers rather than a spy on them. This approach can help sell the technology to cynical engineers.

"It goes back to trust," Alistair continues, explaining how fragile the relationship between engineer and manager can be. "I'm not putting these cameras on your vans to watch and monitor you. I'm doing it to help keep you safe.

"Because if you're talking about culture and trust and you do things that destroy that trust, like, 'I'm going to be watching you every single day and I'm going to have someone in an office watching you on a screen,' then you quickly erode that trust."

One element of manifesting trust, Alistair explains, was being transparent with his own driving habits. He had the technology fitted to his own car and shared his own scores in a weekly email to the workforce.

"If I'm asking my engineers to do something why should I not be prepared to do it myself? What have I got to hide?"

Engineers were encouraged to 'Challenge Alistair', to try and beat his own table-leading metrics from driving safely. A combination of friendly competition and setting a tangible example helped cement the trust further. "I was driving very slowly because I've got an example to set. Leading by example becomes a key thing. If I'm going to ask the engineers to have it fitted then I should also have it fitted. If I'm asking my engineers to do something why should I not be prepared to do it myself? What have I got to hide?

"We're running a very consistent programme and we haven't changed it after six years. The methodology hasn't changed, we still need to go out and repair things in an economical way."

As we look into the next 12 months, one that is inevitably going to be affected by Covid-19 then communication between management and team will become more important.

Fleet management and the deployment of drivers as the lockdown lifts stringent will require a new approach in bringing the system back up to speed and engineers will be expecting clear, concise and controlled instruction.

It may require another shift in culture, another period of operating slightly differently to what's gone before yet what's important is consistency.

"And it's that consistency that creates that culture," Alistair explains. "So, when you talk about culture change, if you can gain that respect it means I can do something from my level down which drives the culture and behaviour."

We're operating in a Covid-19 affected world right not and it's a challenging time for everyone that offers little certainty. When I write next year's article for the Handy Little Book, I look forward to speaking to Alistair again to see how he drove that culture change in fleet management in such difficult times and ultimately thrived.

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Further Reading: 

• Read the full Field Service News Think Tank Executive Briefing on Health and Safety on the link below

• Read More articles from the Field Service News Think Tanks @ thinktanks.fieldservicenews.com
• Read more about Driver Behaviour @ www.fieldservicenews.com/DriverBehaviour
• Read More about Fleet Technology @ www.fieldservicenews.com/fleet-technology
• Read More articles from Mark Glover @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/mark-glover
• Read more about Whirlpool on their blog @ www.whirlpoolcorp.com/latest-news/
• Connect with Alistair Dobson on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/alistair-dobson-25128826/