ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘trends-for-2016’ CATEGORY

Welcome to the final part of this series on the key trends to have an impact on field service organisations in 2016

 In previous features in this series we’ve touched on servitization in part one, IoT and AR in part two Smart Glasses and Rugged Computing in part three…, and optimised scheduling and connected vehicles in part four

Now as we bring this series to a close we look at to key tools field service managers should be implementing this year. Knowledge sharing platforms and easy reporting solutions…

Knowledge sharing projects will become high priority...

Another year gone and another year closer to an impending ageing workforce crisis for an awful lot of field service companies.

With the number of field service engineers in their mid forties and fifties there is a distinct danger that companies are facing a huge problem not just in the sheer numbers of field service engineers that will need replacing but also in the very real possibility that when these engineers leave, not only will their experience leave with them but also so will their knowledge.

And the incoming Generation Y or Millennials and the outgoing Baby Boomers have many distinct , contrasting characteristics that add further challenges to this.

 

The Baby Boomers for example are hoarders of knowledge, having worked long and hard to gain their experience they were it like a badge of honour and may not necessarily feel comfortable giving that experience away for free.

Millennials on the other hand are ‘Google Natives’, born into a world of social sharing and online collaboration, for them the first thing to do when faced with a challenge to which they don’t know the answer is not to research the topic in a book but to ask their social circle.

The challenge that many field service companies is getting their existing workforce to participate in knowledge sharing platforms, and ensuring that the platform they are building has a familiarity and strong UI that will engage the next generation of field service engineers as they come through.

Fortunately tools like AR can help overcome both challenges by recording remote engineers calls and strong them digitally.

However, regardless of how companies approach the implementation of developing a knowledge bank, it will be a high priority for the majority of field service organisations and those that don’t do so soon could be in a lot of hot water the longer they wait.

Easy reporting will become a key priority for field service companies

Finally we can’t have a top ten about business trends, without mentioning Big Data somewhere can we?

I often say that problem with Big Data for so many people is that it is very often a completely intangible concept.

However, the emergence of dashboards as a business tool in field service is essentially what Big Data is all about.

We can talk about the four V’s (veracity, volume, velocity and variety) or about things like Hadoop or MapR for ever but only a handful of folks really get it and in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter.

 

All most of us want to know about Big Data is can it help me see ‘insert relevant business challenge of the day here’. And that’s exactly what many FSM software providers are now promising.

And in today’s world where service is a key differentiator, and where service excellence sits alongside productivity as the two leading KPIs for many field service companies, then the old adage of ‘you can’t manage what you can measure’ holds as much weight as ever.

So as with scheduling, those companies looking at a new FSM solution in 2016 should ensure that the tool they opt for has all the reporting capabilities they could possibly need as instant reporting and easy access to data becomes standard.

 

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Welcome to the fourth part of this series exploring some of the big trends to expect in 2016 within the field service sector, written by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News.

 So far we’ve explored servitization in part one, IoT and AR in part two Smart Glasses and Rugged Computing in part three…

 This time around we look at a stalwart of field service technology in optimised scheduling and why it is more important than ever, the growing importance of user interfaces and one of the most hotly anticipated topics in fleet management – the connected car and how it will change telematics forever…

Improved scheduling will become a huge part of the equation for those selecting FSM software this year...

For all of the excitement around technologies such as AR and Smart Glasses in being able to reduce the need for field service companies to send their engineers to the far flung corners of the globe, the truth remains that for the majority of field service companies, for the time being at least, the holy grail of operations remains the age old mantra of ‘getting the right engineer, to the right job, with the right parts on-time, every time.’

As such scheduling tools remain a vital ingredient in the field service management cookbook and this fact hasn’t been overlooked by many of the key players in the FSM software space.

 

With ServicePower having invested heavily in both R&D and the acquisition of intellectual property in this space and the recent roll-out of their new solution NexusTM, they are anticipated to take an aggressive approach to the market, whilst scheduling remains a core functionality of a number of significant players within the space including IFS, ClickSoftware and Astea.

Such a competitive market place makes for an environment where innovation and product development is set to thrive.

For field service companies seeking to either update their solutions or take the plunge and invest for the first time in a solution then having a variety of options is of course a major bonus and given the potential savings that dynamic scheduling engines can deliver, the refinement of such tools, making them more effective and easier to implement, is great news.

Connected vehicles and Telematics-as a-Service will challenge the traditional fleet technology sector

With the advent of the connected vehicle, the telematics industry was in danger of cannibalising itself as specialist providers began working with OEMs to provide in built systems.

On the one hand this was perhaps no bad thing and just the natural evolution of the sector.

Indeed there have been some exciting collaborations spearheaded by companies such as Telogis, who through a number of shrewd partnerships with the likes of Volvo and Ford have seen their technology placed at the heart of many next-generation commercial vehicles.

On the face of it such agreements are win-win-win.

Great for the OEMs as they seek to outpace their competitors in terms of on-board technology, great for Telogis who have access to a much wider market and great for those field service companies who are seeking a complete turnkey solution.

 

But the flip side of course is that such partnerships also limit the choices available to those companies that either want to explore their options further or have existing systems that they don’t want to move away from.

Another approach to building a telematics solution was unveiled by Dutch Telematics giant TomTom at their developers' conference in Amsterdam last year when they unveiled the .connect platform.

With three separate APIs encouraging as much integration as possible the development of the .connect platform was a masterstroke by a company that had already reinvented themselves once in the face of a declining routing and tracking market as it placed them as a telematics platform firmly at the centre of a suite of 3^rd party apps that the field service company could select to define a telematics solution that was bespoke to their own specific needs.

Essentially by modelling their approach along the lines of Apple’s App Store, Google’s Play or Saleforce’s Appexchange, TomTom have paved the way for new thinking in the telematics space and have thrown down a gauntlet for the rest of the industry.

A seamless User Experience will become a prerequisite for field service companies and their clients alike

In September last year I spoke to Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower shortly before the launch of their new FSM software Nexus FS.

They had clearly spent some significant time working on the User Interface (UI) in the face of the growing impact of consumerisation on business software. “The key is taking what we’ve done with some of the new technology, and then making sure we have integrated a great user experience throughout the other applications, modernising the UI, but not losing all the functionality that we have built over the last twenty years.” Martin commented and as we look ahead to what 2016 holds in store her words continue to ring true.

Indeed, whilst in terms of the physical devices our field engineers are using, we may well be seeing the gradual shift back away from consumer devices to more industrial grade, rugged devices, when it comes to the user experience, consumerisation remains a vital trend, and one which FSM software providers will overlook at their peril.

 

But it’s not just about aesthetics, there is a very simple reason why field service companies should expect the apps they deploy for their field engineers to look as good and feel as intuitive as the apps they use in their personal lives.

To cut to the chase, the more instant familiarity an end user will feel with an app, the faster they will take to using it, which means the faster a company will fee the promised benefits of that apps deployment.

Indeed ServicePower are not alone in having put a significant amount of importance on the look and feel of their latest software.

One of the big bits of feedback from the IFS World Conference was that the company had spent a significant amount of time in ensuring their UI had a modern, elegant feel to it and that those efforts didn’t go unnoticed amongst the attendees.

Similarly when Solarvista launched the latest iteration of their own product, not only was there an extensive overhaul of the product itself, but it launched with a distinctly new look and feel that added a further gloss to what was a major product update.

 

However, it is not just within the apps used by field service engineers where UI is of growing importance.

Many field service companies are beginning to offer apps to their own customers also and whether these apps are communications channels, knowledge banks or even tools for monitoring assets within the field, increasingly digital interaction far outweighs human interaction for many companies and delivering a positive user experience through these mediums is as important to a companies relationships with their customers as face to face contact.

 

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Look out for the final part of this series coming soon which will focus on why knowledge sharing and easy reporting are the two operations that all field service managers should be demanding in 2016.

 

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In part one of this series, looking at the big trends we will see in Field Service this year we looked at way the business trend of servitization is set to become more commonplace this year.

 Now in the second part of this series Kris Oldland looks at the impact the Internet of Things and Augmented Reality might have in field service...

The Internet of Things has arrived and has two feet firmly in the field service industry

OK so this is a bit of a cheat given that in my intro I pointed out that this was the one I got right in 2015.

However, last year I mentioned it would start to become commonplace.

This time around I’m going to go all in and state that across 2016 we will see IoT implementation become a commonplace strategy for field service companies in all corners of the globe.

Perhaps one of the big myths that was firmly debunked on our pages last year was that IoT was sole domain of the largest companies only.

 

Yes we will have read the case studies and white papers by the likes of GE, Schneider and Phillips and yes the stuff these big guys are doing with IoT is really, pretty damn impressive.

However, there are also now a growing number of examples of smaller to medium sized companies who have harnessed IoT in order to improve the service they are delivering to their customers (and even to have moved towards a servitized business model in some instances.)

This was highlighted perfectly by leading service consultant Nick Frank in a presentation he gave during a Field Service News webinar last year.

Frank gave a number of examples of SME’s utilising IoT, often with fairly simple, and dare I say it relatively lo-tech solutions, that were as much about thinking about the service these companies were delivering and how ‘outside-the-box’ thinking could improve that service.

In fact it was a core facet in all of the companies Frank referred to in the webinar, and indeed also those companies he often refers to in his regular column for Field Service News, that they intrinsically understood what good service looked like for their customers, and they viewed the emergence of IoT as an enabler and facilitator in delivering and enhancing that service.

Of course, for some companies innovation sits within their DNA so adopting new technologies and approaches is nothing to be feared.

However, this isn’t necessarily the case for all companies, so it is perhaps the recent launch of ‘Connected Field Service’ by ServiceMax, that finally connects the IoT dots for the rest of the pack.

It was perhaps inevitable ever since ServiceMax and PTC got into bed together in May last year that we would see a fully IoT enabled, Field Service solution merge as the fruits of this union.

But when ServiceMax capitalised on the growing emergence of Salesforce as a business platform, they were a young, wet-behind-the-ears business,that slipped under their competitors radar before it was too late and suddenly everyone was trying to play catch-up.

 

You can be sure that they won’t be given as much grace a second time around and almost certainly other significant field service management software providers like ClickSoftware, IFS et al will soon be in the IoT game as well.

Indeed ServicePower are also rumoured to have an agreement in place with PTC so watch this space.

For field service companies though, whether they are blue chips, the smaller innovators that Frank has highlighted so well, or anything in between the ability to enhance service offerings through IoT are becoming both more accessible and more easily understood.

Indeed in our own exclusive research from October last year over half (55%) of our respondents stated they thought “IoT will become a fundamental part of field service operations in the future” whilst a further 21% went further stating that “IoT is critical to any field service organisation’s strategy”.

Augmented Reality will replace IoT as the new kid on the block everyone is talking about...

OK so if IoT is moving from the exciting cool tech everyone is talking about to the big ticket everyone is investing in, then Augmented Reality (AR) is the tech whose impact upon field service is still being outlined and explained somewhat.

However, once people grasp the concept, and the relativeease of implementation of the technology, and the quite frankly huge potential for AR to wipe significant cost lines from a field service P&L then they are almost instantly converted.

The thing is with AR that like IoT it has the potential to not just optimise the levels of productivity companies get from their service operations like mobile computing and the Cloud have done. It has the potential to completely change the way field service companies approach their service operations, and to do so for the better.

 

However, unlike IoT there isn’t the potential barrier of retrofitting hundreds, thousands or potentially millions of assets in the field.

In fact one AR provider that impressed me and everyone else that saw there demonstration at Field Service East last September (Help Lightning) offer their app as a download from the App store.

So what exactly is AR and why do I think it will have such an incredible impact?

Very simply AR is the overlaying of digital information onto the reality we see before us.

In field service, this has huge potential.

Often the largest single cost for any field service company is the cost of getting a highly skilled engineer, to fix that critical issue, for a key client ASAP. There is the cost of travel, accommodation not to mention the dead time lost whilst he is in between jobs.

AR allows us to get the experience of that engineer on-site without him being there. In fact we can utilize a less experienced engineer who is closer to the job, locally out sourced staff or even the customer themselves to undertake the physical maintenance whilst under the direct guidance of our experienced engineer who can be based in a centralized location, or even at home.

 

Through the use of AR our remote engineer can not only see exactly what the on site engineer is seeing and talk them through the repair, he can at any point freeze the image being captured by the on site engineers device and show his less experience colleague exactly what to do with hand gestures or even on screen annotations shown in real-time.

So instead of explaining over the phone ‘the dial near the mid-centre of the asset, turn it clockwise by about 20 degrees’ he can physically point to the correct dial and show how much it should be turned and this will be seen by the on site engineer on his device.

Studies have shown that the human brain is almost 20 times more receptive to being shown something via hand gestures than spoken word and this is at it’s core the power that AR provides.

And by replacing the need to ‘fly experience in’ with the ability to ‘dial it in’ field service companies could make potentially huge savings very quickly leading to a whole rethink about how we deploy our most experienced engineers.

This also leads us onto the other big area where AR could be deployed within field service, namely training.

As millennials become more and more a part of the field service landscape, the need for digitizing our knowledge banks becomes more pressing, and whilst AR can be used as a standalone training tool, for those companies utilising it actively in the field it is a simple case to record each interaction - thus building a digital knowledge library as a by-product of every AR based service call.

Given the benefits, low-cost implementation and potentially instant R.o.I surely AR will rapidly move from exciting new concept to industry staple and I think we will begin to see that traction this year.

 

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Look out for the part three of this series when smart glasses and rugged computing take centre stage…

 

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As the last remaining vestiges of tinsel are tidied away from the corners here at Field Service News Towers, our Editor-in- Chief Kris Oldland dusts off his crystal ball and begins a new series looking at what is going to be the key trends for field service companies this coming year...

As the Editor of a trade magazine, you know you're always going to be asked to put some kind of list together come the start of the year predicting the big trends in the market, and you know invariably some of them you’ll get right and some of them you’ll get wrong.

Last year was no exception, I suggested that the Internet of Things would start to become an integral part of field service operations, which in some ways it did (there are certainly more case studies of field service IoT implementations now than there were a year ago), the Cloud would finally come of age as a platform for field service management systems (which our own research showed to be partially true, there is a growing move to the Cloud but it remains a gradual shift) and that 2015 would be the year that 3D printing would make a true breakthrough (woefully optimistic as despite huge potential I’ve yet to see a genuine application for 3D printing in a field service environment.)

Yet as I look through this year’s list I find that the trends I’ve highlighted are, in the main not so much about brand new emerging technologies or concepts, but more their evolution from fledgling ideas to real-life applications now soaring in full flight.

 

Therefore for once I’m feeling more confident that most of this list will come good by the end of the year.

Indeed, I would go as far as to say that if the last few years have been all about exciting innovation, as twenty first century technologies drive us into a Gene Roddenbury inspired brave new world, then 2016 may well be the start of a period of maturation, and fulfilment.

Is 2016 the year we finally stop talking about how things are going to be in the not so distant future and start realising that this is how we are going to be doing things in the here and now?

Only time will tell, but for what it’s worth, here’s how I see the year panning out...

Servitization will become a common way of doing business

On the outset a radical shift in business thinking, driven largely from the UK with an American English spelling, servitization has a number of different monikers including ‘outcome based solutions’, ‘through life-cycle services’ and ‘advanced services’.

The concept itself, which in reality can be dated back easily to the 1960’s and less tangibly so even earlier, involves the shift in thinking away from the traditional transactional nature of manufacturing a product to sell, and then providing services to ensure the upkeep of that product, towards an approach whereby a product is manufactured with the view of delivering a long-term service.

The (perhaps overly used and certainly overly simplistic) often cited example is ‘Don’t sell drills, sell holes’ something that many switched on sales people will be fully aware of as solutions based selling has been a staple of the consultative sell in the twilight of the last century and the early dawn of this one.

 

And at it’s heart that’s what Servitization is really all about.

However, it is doing so on a company wide scale, taking a neat, piffy one liner and reinventing the whole company structure around the premise.

The all time most cited example of servitization has to be Rolls Royce who in the sixties working with American Airlines adopted a servitized approach, coining it ‘power-by-the-hour’ and in doing so re-wrote the rules for the aviation industry.

Other big name examples of servitization also come from companies as diverse as Pearson, Caterpillar and MAN Trucks (UK) but for some time the examples of truly servitized businesses beyond these headline hogging few were in short supply.

However, in part due to the ongoing work from academia by the likes of Tim Baines (Aston), Andy Neely (Cambridge) and Howard Lightfoot (Cranfield) but also driven heavily by the emergence of the Internet of Things, Enterprise Mobility and Machine to Machine communications, we are finallystarting to see servitization beginning to really come to the fore.

At last year’s Spring Servitization Conference hosted by Baines and his colleagues at Aston University we saw academia and industry on the same page and companies ranging from global PLCs such as Air France KLM and recycling and mining giant Metso through to family owned transit packaging firm Nicklin all taking the steps towards building a servitized business operation.

 

With servitization bringing the promise of both greater long term profits as well as a better service for the clients (leading to longer-term contracts – which of course provides stability for a business,) it is little wonder that companies such as Sony are beginning to adopt the model and there is a definite feel that the concept is now gaining momentum.

For us in field service this is perhaps a double edged sword.

On the one hand it means that service now sits proudly at the top table as an absolutely critical part of a business strategy.

On the other however, it means that we need to be 100% on top of our game, as a fundamental factor in a servitized business model is that unless the client has uptime, the service provider isn’t getting paid.

However, the simple fact is that servitization is coming to an industry near you and it will perhaps be those companies that neglect to pay attention to the phenomenon that may come under threat.

 

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Look out for the second part of this feature where we look at the impact the Internet of Things and Augmented Reality may have on field service in 2016

 

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