ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘uncategorized’ CATEGORY

Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director - Service Management, IFS explains how the field service sector is being undeniably changed by the growing shift of companies towards servitization...

When I first started working in the field service management (FSM) space more than a decade ago, the industry landscape looked much different than it does today.

Ten years ago, organisations were looking to automate their field service processes in an attempt to decrease unpredictable costs and inefficiencies while gaining a little more control and visibility over an otherwise unpredictable industry. The core focus was scheduling and dispatch. Today, the focus has shifted, moving from core functionality towards a new, more holistic emphasis on the end customer.

The potential is limitless and the changing market cannot be overlooked. In a 2016 research report by Markets and Markets, it is estimated that the field service management market will grow from $1.97 billion in 2015 to $5.11 billion by 2020.

 

Low profit margins, increased competition and growing consumer demand fuelled by technological revolution have contributed to a major shift in the field service management market, both in demand and vendor response.

As field service organisations look to find new innovative ways to maximise operational efficiency and reduce operational costs, enterprise software vendors have established a sweet spot, spurring a flurry of field service management vendor acquisitions.

This change has created a fundamental shift in field service management, from expectations through to functionality and approach. As product-based organisations transition towards servitization and as traditional field service organisations look to adapt and grow, the following trends have emerged in order to enable the transformation.

1. END-TO-END. A NEW APPROACH MOVING AWAY FROM BEST OF BREED

Ten years ago, service organisations were simply looking to automate their existing processes.

In the majority of cases, schedules were generated on whiteboards or spreadsheets, paper work orders were manually distributed and communication between the field and back office was limited or non-existent. Best of breed solutions provided badly needed automation enabling organisations to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. Automation is now a given.

Today it is all about the data. As technology has advanced, organisations are now able to capture the data required to drive key business decisions at the highest level.

Where an automated solution provided process efficiency, an end-to-end intelligent service solution provides the seamless data flow required to optimally drive and scale the business while delighting customers. With end-to-end field service management, an organisation has access to real-time data, empowering fact based decisions and future plans.

2. CONSUMER-DRIVEN PRODUCT AND SERVICE DIRECTION

Now more than ever, today’s consumer is empowered and knows what they want. The world has become smaller thanks to globalisation, social media and connectivity in general.

Experiences are more important than ever as today’s customer has a multitude of platforms available to make their voice heard. Customer engagement is now imperative.

In the traditional make and sell model, you design a product, engineer it, procure materials, manufacture the end product, market and sell it to customers and then optionally provide aftersales support.

 

The shift now is moving away from selling products towards delivering ‘product-as-a-service’. Where price has traditionally been based on product output and performance, now ‘contract value’ is based on a defined outcome, thus moving away from a transaction based model to a value based partner relationship. A field service organisation needs the right platform to facilitate this change in order to drive value from the product throughout its entire lifecycle.

3. REINVENTING OPTIMISATION

Whilst Servitization can be a strategy to drive enhanced revenue, this should not be to the detriment of service execution. Service will always be measured by how well you perform, and that means optimising the entire service chain from human capital to parts and logistics.

It also encompasses real-time measuring and monitoring of service execution enabling the transition to a proactive ‘manage by exception’ model, rather than providing a reactive response.

Optimisation is no longer viewed in isolation, optimising intraday schedules and inventory. Rather it should be considered holistically in an effort to deliver flawless end-to-end service.

How do field service organisations prepare for what’s next in the industry while ensuring continued success?

 

The first step is to ensure they have a strong foundation or platform to start from. Core processes and systems should be running optimally to allow an organisation the ability to effectively scale and adopt new technology.

Organisations must embrace change with an enterprise-wide change management strategy.

Lastly, the most successful field service organisations have a clear understanding of the end consumer’s expectations for today and tomorrow to ensure these can be met or exceeded today as well as anticipated for the future. Value added service is no longer optional, it is the very future of service.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

As the availability of vehicle tracking equipment continues to improve, it's not just transport operators who are interested in the information it provides, but increasingly their customers too - especially at the blue-chip end of the market.

 

That's exactly what happened for Reading-based waste management and disposal specialists, A Better Service, when as part of their continuing growth, they won a contract to serve public water supplier Thames Water.

“We're a family-run business” Director and Transport Manager Darren Bicknell says. “My father started it 36 years ago, then my brother and I came on board, growing it vehicle by vehicle up to the 33 trucks we now operate.” The company's main occupation is tanker services, including gully-emptying, the servicing of septic tanks and cesspools, dealing with blocked drains and sewage disposal.

 

We used another system before going over to AGM routeMASTER but as our fleet grew, ease of use became a much bigger consideration and that's what won us over

 

“We used another system before going over to AGM routeMASTER but as our fleet grew, ease of use became a much bigger consideration and that's what won us over” Bicknell adds.

 

Periodically, Thames Water audit their suppliers, asking for tracker reports for a certain vehicle covering a certain period and it's this which he now finds so much easier to do. “Visually AGM's system is brilliant” Bicknell explains. “You just have to look at it and everything's there and easy to use, which is one of the reasons why we went with them. We needed next to no training either – it's simple from the off.”

Now the cloud-based routeMASTER system is up and running, Bicknell and his staff can use it as a failsafe record of just where their vehicles were at any given time, and because it also shows when the PTO on the tankers is engaged, he can prove what they were doing too. “As well as enabling us to periodically double-check the hours our drivers are booking and thereby avoid costly discrepancies, Thames Water also need the loading and disposal times entering on their tickets” he explains. No human is perfect, however, and every now and again a driver may miss one of these. “Now I can just check it and put it in myself, which is really handy” Bicknell says.

Add to all that the ability to advise customers of ETAs at a glance and you really can't go wrong, especially not, he says, when AGM also provide good, solid back up. “We're really pleased with the routeMASTER system and the AGM team” Bicknell concludes. “I can't fault them!”

 

---

 

Be social and share this story

With a handy announcement from Gartner arriving just in time for their annual European conference Maximize Europe, ServiceMax were in buoyant mood across the two days in Amsterdam. Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News was on hand to get reaction from ServiceMax’s Dave Yarnold and Rick Gustafson...

With in excess of three hundred attendees sitting in the main hall of the Krasnopolsky Hotel in Amsterdam waiting for Dave Yarnold’s keynote speech, the mood in the ServiceMax camp was already on a high. However, what tipped the mood into one of true celebration was the announcement just a few days earlier that the San Francisco based company had just come out at the top of the pile of the much awaited Gartner Magic Quadrant Field Service report.

With a whole bunch of product innovations and customer success stories already lined up for the next two days - this recognition from Gartner really was perfectly timed - adding both a sense of gravitas and triumph to the sessions across the two days of Maximize Europe.

“We didn’t know when it [the Gartner announcement] was going to hit the street so everything you saw, the whole presentation around our model, our platform, our services, and our passion was already in place. But then we were able to insert the validation of all of that as well,” comments Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax as I caught up with him a little later in the day.

“It was a beautiful thing to be able to come here present our mission and our progress and then show that validation from a really credible third party - it was really fantastic. The timing was terrific,” he adds.

 

Indeed, one of the biggest factors in why the Gartner Magic Quadrants are so widely acknowledged as key industry benchmarks is that it they are not just based on a set defined group of criterion from one organisation, but also upon feedback from each company’s own clients. This is something that makes the recognition even more important for Yarnold.

“It’s the biggest thing,” he says. “Everybody meets with these analysts and everybody presents their products but where there the rubber meets the road is the references.”

“Being able to give the analysts lots and lots of accounts with lots of companies getting results from their operations and then of course the specific comments that were made in the report about large companies expanding their global roll outs and actually getting all kinds of great financial returns - those are the things that go beyond hype,” he adds.

However, one gets the feeling that even without the Gartner announcement, the conference would have been a very upbeat affair. Field Service News has now attended the last three Maximize Europe events in a row and there are considerably more people and more buzz about the place than there was at the inaugural event held in Paris just a few years ago.

“We changed our strategy a little bit this year,” explains Yarnold when I comment on the growth of the event. “Instead of having a major event in San Francisco and two minor events in Europe and APAC, we’ve acknowledged all three regions are important to our business so rather than force our European or Japanese customers to fly to San Francisco we decided to make a concerted effort to do a great event in all three places.”

“I think what’s important when you're trying to grab the hearts and the minds of a group is you have to create an environment for the tribe to get together so they can share experiences and learn from one another,” Yarnold continues.

“Even at lunch I was introducing companies who were saying ‘oh you're a ServiceMax user that’s great, we use your parts in our products so let's talk’ and that really helps. It helps them with their business and clearly it helps us because they’re bonding around the experience that they’ve had with us.”

There was one slide in particular that really caught my eye in the morning’s opening sessions and that was the sheer number of partners within the ServiceMax ecosystem, the market place for which was only launched just over a year ago. I was keen to understand just how important that partnership ecosystem was in the continuing success and vision of ServiceMax and what role it would play in the future of the company.

“Several years ago we came to a couple of realisations,” opens Yarnold when I discuss this with him.

“One was that at the time, we were doing all of our implementations because customer satisfaction was so important to us - we wanted to make sure that every single customer was thrilled with us. However, we reached a point where continuing to do that would mean it would be really hard to scale the company. Also we were broadening our geographic presence and we needed to have partners that operated locally, using the local language.”

 

“The other thing that we were seeing, especially as we got into larger situations, was there were areas of functionality that it just didn’t make sense for us to build when some of our partners had that functionality.”

“Still we were surprised how fired up those partners were to engage with us and the last time I checked about half of our customers have actually used one of our partner’s products in conjunction with ServiceMax. It’s been really great to see that since we set up that partner market place . We can’t do it all so we’ve been thrilled with the support we’ve got from the partner community.”

In terms of the technology itself there was one definite show-stealer Field Service Connect, ServiceMax’s IoT solution, which was showcased with a number of successful case studies. Given the relative infancy of the product which launched just over a year ago, were the team at ServiceMax surprised how quickly these customers were able to show real value in using the tool?

“I was not surprised by it all,” replies Rick Gustafson, CFO, ServiceMax. “We’ve brought to market a nice bite-sized way to go about this that can deliver real business value. We’ve had the early adopter program which we’ve run half a dozen customers through it and now we have a couple of customers that are going to expand it broaden it out across the business.”

“I think the key to this is we boil it [IoT] down to a very simple value proposition and we talk about it as a way of getting started with IoT. We make it very understandable, very pragmatic, with well-defined outcomes and when we sit down with the customers we intentionally say let's focus on two or three use cases lets not try to boil the ocean,” Yarnold adds.

“The key to these hype areas is you’ve got to get some value for your early customers otherwise everybody says it was just over-hyped and it dies. Here there is real business value,” he concludes.

It would seem that both an army of satisfied customers and now Gartner themselves would agree with him too.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Road-transport safety has arrived on the corporate leadership agenda and is becoming key to reputation, as other parts of the risk profile are being systematically reduced. Often dominated by contracted-out logistics within the supply chain, this presents a range of challenges beyond those typically encountered on site. Leading companies are working to extend management of the corporate risk profile to road safety write Marcus Beard and Guillaume Rominger of Management Consultants Arthur D. Little

Limited safety risk management among companies

Companies have increased safety risk management efforts over the last few decades and significantly reduced harm to staff, contractors, customers and members of the public. However, most companies continue to limit safety risk management to on-site activities. Management of off-site safety risks for owned operations across the supply chain is typically weak; indeed, many companies do not systematically record or report off-site incidents.

Specifically, with respect to road safety, only a few leading global companies consider the issue a priority, despite 36% of all occupation-related deaths occurring on the road, outside of plant gates. Even fewer truly understand the safety risk profile across their supply chains. While legal obligations for managing safety vary globally and, in many cases, fall to the supply-chain players themselves, ever-increasing scrutiny exposes corporate reputation.

Group-wide programs to manage road-safety risks

Road safety is rapidly joining the corporate leadership agenda. Leading companies are now launching group-wide programs to manage road-safety risks in distribution, in particular global companies operating in low- and middle-income countries with less than half of the world’s vehicles but 90% of fatal accidents.

 

Our analysis of external reporting by 85 of the world’s largest companies across seven sectors notes that just one-third declare the matter to be a priority, and shows considerable variation in prioritising supply-chain safety by sector.

Such campaigns have been fuelled by rapidly developing technologies such as vehicle telematics and on-board driver-monitoring cameras, enabling low-cost and effective support to safety management of fleets.

Good business performance and a range of benefits

Many road-safety initiatives support good business performance and deliver a range of benefits, for example:

1. Cost savings. Direct costs typically involve vehicles (recovery, repairs, insurance premiums) and drivers (injury and absence, replacement drivers, compensation). Further indirect costs are typically much more extensive and not fully covered by insurance (downtime, loss of production, damaged reputation, loss of goodwill and management burden) – and often forgotten when reviewing the incident.
2. Competitive edge. Improved governance of safety risk results in highly reliable supply-chain networks, whether transport services are owned or outsourced, in which products are more likely to reach their customers on time.

A broad scope of initiatives

The world’s largest companies are introducing a broad range of initiatives to reduce the number of road accidents:

Defensive driver training and driver-monitoring technologies are becoming more mainstream. Such initiatives present cost-effective initiatives and are rapidly being considered as part of “taking reasonable steps” to manage all-offsite transportation safety risks throughout the supply chain.

Our recent experience of working with leading companies has highlighted three key elements:

• Acknowledging key challenges
• Understanding the big picture
• Launching well-targeted strategic programs

Key Challenges

Unlike when managing on-site safety risks, companies have no direct ability to control the actions of third parties on public roads. For companies with extensive road-transport footprints in low-income countries, this is particularly relevant as poor transport infrastructure, together with often weak road-safety law enforcement and larger numbers of pedestrians and bicycles, lead to dangerous road conditions. The third-party death rate in such countries is significantly higher than in the developed world.

Understanding the Big Picture

A critical enabler to improving road safety is to understand the specific local risk profile by consistently collecting and reporting data on fatalities/incidents. Many organisations do not record or report off-site incidents at corporate level, which makes such matters invisible to their boards, and hence not a corporate priority. From our experience, a critical success factor is to equip the organisation with effective safety governance mechanisms. These actions allow identification of the low-hanging fruit and opportunities to take those reasonable steps.

 

Launching Well-Targeted Strategic Programs

Safe-driving initiatives need to be led from the top. Cost-effective and sustained success requires tackling the underlying causes of current accidents and alignment of driver programs with broader company culture – targeting the directly controlled workforce as well as contractual/supplier relationships. Initiatives need to be systematic and embrace driver selection, behavior, development and monitoring, best use of new technologies to equip vehicles, and assessment of driving routes.

We note three elements which are critical for success but often overlooked:

• A large-scale corporate program does not necessarily imply a uniform turnkey solution. Local evaluation of driving culture, the driving environment and underlying causes of accidents is required to develop smart and effective investments rather than a global broad-brush approach.
• Contracted supply-chain fleets are often left out of the safety equation. Contracted operations are sometimes perceived as a way to transfer risks, and for many companies, contractors are viewed as beyond their control and primary concern. Development of suitable formal structures for managing supply-chain risks is perceived as one of the biggest challenges. Companies seeking to progress from “contract-driven” supply-chain safety management to “culture driven” do well to nurture long-term relationships with high-performing contractors. A key factor for success lies in effective evaluation, based on suitable metrics, of performance on an ongoing basis.
• Technology should strengthen rather than replace driver management. Telematic-based black-box and camera technologies are now mainstream and allow real-time monitoring of driver performance. These typically record hard stops, turns, harsh braking, speeding and swift lane-change manoeuvres, and can therefore detect unsafe driving practices. Adaptive cruise control and roll stability maintain safe following distances and apply the brakes if a vehicle corners too fast. However, too often we saw during our business reviews a large amount of “guilty” knowledge accumulated by Big (Safety) Data, but not used by the management for action. Effective management programs may include a scheme with clear rewards/sanctions for the drivers. We have seen healthy day-to-day competition between drivers lead to reduced collision rates.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Value based pricing is a hot topic in industry today, but what exactly is it and why is everyone talking about it?

Is value based pricing simply about getting as much price from your customers as possible? Or is it about valuing your longer-term relationship with your customers, or perhaps improving your service? In fact it is each of these and potentially more. What is clear however, is that cost-plus pricing for services does not always offer the customer or the supplier the best value - yet there may now be options to combat this with value based pricing.

The following report co-authored by Dr Shaun West, Lucerne University and Dominik Kujawski, Arvik Bolting Solutions brings together good industry practices in a solid academic framework. The report provides business leaders with a guide on how to create a value based strategy to price B2B services - as such it is essential reading for all business leaders...

Why value based pricing?

During a conference we recently attended, a phrase that kept coming up in conversation was “We should all switch to value based pricing”. An increasingly topical statement in industry today, however, the approach of value based pricing is also one which is not being discussed any further. No one seems to be speaking about HOW to actually achieve this goal.

Pricing is not new- even Oscar Wilde said: “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing”

Companies need to focus on customer value in developing pricing strategies as pricing pressure in the industrial B2B market has been increasing as a result of changing customer buying behaviors. In this article we’ll delve deeper into why value based pricing can be challenging and why it has a huge impact on companies’ business.

Is pricing really a strategic capability?

Pricing is an important management tool to help achieve the firm’s objectives and has a huge impact on the financial results. It is a multi-departmental activity influenced by several functions within the firm that may attach different importance to pricing and the value drivers of the business.

Every business manager needs to be aware that pricing has an impact on customer satisfaction and that pricing is not only dependent on price itself.

Pricing of services is dependent on situations in which a customer finds themselves in and the jobs in which they need to do at that time.

This relation of pricing to customer engagement in this process includes three strategies:

• Cost plus strategy;
• Competition/market base strategy;
• Value based strategy.

Cost plus pricing

The process of cost plus pricing starts with the firm determining the scope of their service. Here, a unit cost is simply calculated and a pre-determined margin is applied to set the price. This margin reflects the desired profitability of the firm. The customers are then told what will be ultimately delivered in exchange for the set price

Competition/market based pricing

This process begins with pricing based both on the scope and the costs, then additionally on what the competition charges for a similar service. Setting the price here has an influence on the market situation. Large competitors tend to have a scale advantage over the smaller ones since their fixed costs are mostly lower due to a larger customer base. The last step of this process is presenting the customer with the value that is being offered through the service.

Remember that data is in your CRM system and in the market – keep track of it.

Value based pricing

The value based pricing approach is based on analyzing each customer’s needs, pains and gains, and their willingness to pay. It depends on the customer interest and acceptance of price for a provided value. Here, the price is set for the offered value, and later the scope of the service itself is determined.

Calculating the costs in this strategy is also necessary as they used to make a reality check and afterwards calculate the margin achieved.

Listen to your customers

The process of pricing in cost and competition based strategies suggests to ask the question “why is the customer situated at the end of the process if all of the companies always state that customers are the most important?”. A juxtaposition to the truth, you will always hear stated that companies involve their customers in the co-creation of service value from the very beginning, but how can this be actually possible with a cost plus and competition based pricing strategy?

Now, how do we turn this approach around and place focus back on the customer? Straight away, let’s forget about pure cost plus strategy.

This ‘simpler’ pricing strategy shows that the supplier can have a lack of understanding of the customer value and as a result the customer offering can be weak.

In addition to this, the competition/market base strategy, which is endorsed by many companies, indicates that pricing is controlled by the market. As such, this removes focus from the customer and indicates that the supplier does not entirely understand customer value, showing that the resultant value outlined by the firms offering can also be low.

So, how should service companies price in order to bring the customer into the focal point? The answer is quite straightforward; by aligning pricing objectives, strategies and tools according to the holistic strategy of the company.

Note: pricing needs to be strategic… it must not be left solely to Sales,

Production or Marketing departments. It needs to be driven by management and agreed by all the departments influenced by pricing Companies should create more customer focused objectives to choose pricing strategies that consider customer value.

This means that when pricing services, you as a firm need to firstly understand how your customer creates value and secondly, where you and your equipment fit into this process. You need to know that pricing tools used also need to support the objectives of pricing and the pricing strategies. For example, a pricing tool supporting customer oriented objectives can be bundling as it is a way for firms to present the scope/price negations, thereby providing a different approach to customer value discovery and leading to improved customer experiences.

Source of pricing power

Here, a B2B example is given, showing that the source or pricing power comes from customer need states. Let me take you through the example of a simple bolt used in industrial equipment. Bolts are widely present in everyday life and more specifically, they are present in almost every technologically advanced machine or construction, from compressor valves and turbines, to the foundations of wind mills.

So, what is the price of tightening a single bolt? The price of a single bolt varies from market-to-market, from machine-to-machine and from company to company.

The most significant result of bolting, however, is the residual load that a customer requires from the bolting supplier. Now, to show where the pricing power of services come from, let’s imagine a situation where you exchange a single bolt worth a couple of dollars, in a compressor valve which is worth hundreds of thousands or install one in an offshore wind turbine, worth even

more. How much should the tightening of one bolt be worth to keep the compressor running or the turbine safe on its foundation?

In this case, bolting provides safety and savings on a huge scale however, the value of the service to each customer varies depending on the scope of the project. Here, not all customers are the same, so they should also not be treated with the same approach.

Customer value connection based on colors

Customer value connection shows that companies need to do what their particular customer values. If the value proposition you offer creates no customer value, it is then only a purely basic cost to your customer.

It is time to use the “knowledge” about your customers to move to customer value propositions and find ways to deliver what is really valued. Hence, what they are really ready to pay for?

Firms need to consider what is core and what is standardized.

It is important to be aware that pricing can be different for different modules. This means that the customer can pay a different price based on the “menu” or “á la carte”, and shows that there are multiple pricing points for services but what is really interesting, is that its components don’t change. So what is changing?

It is the location and more importantly the type of service provision together with the customer need state. In the first mentioned case, the compressor valve is available in a workshop where the bolt can be tightened with use of onshore equipment, in a quite friendly environment.

However, the tightening of wind turbine requires going offshore to harsh conditions with special trainings and guaranteeing the customer that a bolt tightened worth a percentile of the whole wind mill will provide safety from failing the whole project.

This clearly shows that the customer gets usage, location and utility from the supplier. And if a firm is able to segment customer needs states and purposes for buying. It is also able to find the right pricing points for it.

This helps to identify margin and revenue opportunities available to a company.

This shows that that customer value identification process work for product based firms too.

Pricing waterfall for value based pricing

A prototype of pricing waterfall diagram provides guidance towards value based service pricing. It considers the most important aspects of pricing, starting from benchmarking competitors to considering the customers’ willingness to pay. As such, it helps you to triangulate on the value based price that your customer is willing to pay.

The pricing waterfall presents that single, inflexible offerings can limit companies to sharing limited value. Whereas, flexible offerings respond to customers’ changing needs.

Also, flexible pricing based on all important factors helps to increase customer value. Offering flexible service dimensions that support customer choices, together with flexible pricing strategies can provide the supplier with additional pricing dimensions that can have a positive margin increase impact. The pricing waterfall also highlights the importance of triangulation of pricing based on market analysis, internal value creation and customer value.

Final comments

This article presents that pricing is a strategic capability and needs to be kept in line with the company’s overall strategy. There is a great need to focus on customer value creation during service pricing, and aligning strategies and tools to support the objectives set by the company. Understanding customer value rather than simply relying on cost-plus or market-based approach, is a key to pricing industrial services. Another very important step in the process of pricing, is margin calculation based on the identified costs and value price offered. It is essential to calculate the margins in order to assess the correctness and validity of the price.

To summarise, consistency in pricing is of great importance and needs to be maintained across all pricing objectives, strategies and tools used to determine the final price of a service offering. So after reading this article, ask yourself again, “Should I switch to value based pricing?”. The answer is not always, but one can learn to determine situations, locations, needs and pains to price according to value.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Field Service News talk to Conor O’Neill from Red Hat Mobile about how they’ve seen the light - and it’s modular...

It’s been some 18 months since Red Hat purchased exciting Irish mobile platform developer Feed Henry. About a year earlier still Feed Henry had just released their first ever fully dedicated Field Workforce Management mobile solution.

Then for a while things seemed to go a bit quiet from the former Feed Henry team as they transitioned from exciting small start-up to part of one of giants of enterprise computing, at the forefront of the open source movement that is such a hot bed of innovation.

Indeed, we were just beginning to approach the point in time where were fearing that the original Feed Henry team’s focus on field service - which had yielded some impressive early customer success stories including a major European rail infrastructure provider, had either been swallowed up by Red Hat’s focus on the bigger pie of generic Enterprise Mobility, or that the team themselves had got lost somewhere in the belly of the enterprise beast never to be seen again - as sadly happens all too often in the technology space.

As such it was with much interest and anticipation that Field Service News headed out to meet up again with Conor O’Neill, former Director of Product Management with Feed Henry and now Product Manager with RedHat Mobile to discuss their latest offering for field service.

And whilst the job title may be different, O’Neill’s relaxed manner, coupled with an infectious enthusiasm for his work remained unchanged from the last time we had the pleasure of his company.

What has changed however, is the approach that O’Neill and his team have taken to developing tools for field service management.

 

“We’re not building an app. That’s whats very interesting about this.” he asserts as we begin discussing the new Red Hat Workforce Management (WFM) modules.

“Two and a half years ago we built what we hoped would be a solution that would somehow address all of the requirements of all of the customers everywhere and would just take a little bit of tweaking depending on each individual requirement – we were completely wrong and so we took a step back and started looking at all of the consulting projects we’d been doing, building very custom apps for customers who needed this type of field workforce application.”

“What we saw was yes every app is unique and every customer’s requirements were unique, but the individual things that they needed often had lots of commonalities.”

“So we started last June and said lets not build an app, lets not build a solution, lets build a set of modules where each module addresses each of these points and then build out from there.” he added

“The Red Hat platform gives us tons of stuff out of the box – working offline, forms for drag and drop development, actual app development itself , app building, app distribution. The platform already gives us those, which allowed us to focus on what companies in field service need.”

“Things like work orders, workflows, users, user groups, messaging alerts, location based information and so on. We have built modules for all of these areas with a common framework.”

 

“So we now have this set of modules, and we are in no way saying this is a complete set of modules - this is our first set and they are open source so if the customer doesn’t like them they can change them, they can improve them they can push improvements back to us - they can create new ones and share them with the community.”

Of course, as mentioned in the introduction one of the key things about RedHat is their commitment to open architecture. O’Neill explains that the wider open source community, including partners and customers, is likely to be a strong generator of new features and functionality found in the commercialised product.

Such an approach also will inevitably lead easier integration into other systems and this is a major USP of the Red Hat mobile WFM modules.

“What we don’t expect people to do is change what they have, which is unlike a lot of traditional mobile platforms and point solutions out there. We work with you and with your existing tools.” O’Neill explains.

“We are NodeJS based which is our integration layer and it is supremely good at connecting to disparate systems, we can take the data no matter what format it is, no matter how old it is, no matter how slow it is, and turn it into something a mobile device can actually consume easily and then fire that over the air to lots of different devices.”

As well as easier implementation,an additional benefit of such easy integration is the reduction of pressure on legacy systems as once integrated you can reduce them one component at a time, taking advantage of strangler application pattern - something which also sits well with the modular approach RedHat believe is the key to WFM in the future.

But is the modular approach proving to be successful in the real world?

“We had a great example of one of our customers who have taken our modules and within two months have built their own MVP [minimum viable product] for exactly what they want to do,” O’Neill revealed.

“They’ve done this by using our WFM modules but it is not a case of saying there is this app that I have to customise - they’ve actually assembled it in a way that suits their particular needs.”

 

So are the Red Hat WFM modules capable of delivering solutions truly tailored to individual organisations?

“It’s unique to everybody” O’Neill explains “but if you want something that works really well for your organisation the work has to be put in to put it together exactly the way that you want it,” he warns.

“We’ll never claim that in a week you can somehow magic up an app. Lets work out your business requirements and then lets pull together what you need,” he adds.

Sounds good, however, it also seems like an approach that may be reliant upon having a crack team of savvy developers on board which many be prohibitive for some smaller field service organisations.

So are the Red Hat WFM modules aimed specifically at enterprise level field service organisations?

“I don’t think so,” O’Neill replies “the customer that I mentioned earlier on are a hundred thousand employee organisation, but actually the group that was involved in creating the app for that was just four people.”

 

“Similarly, we worked with one of the largest insurance companies in the world but again a local division trying to create a very specific mobile app for a very specific slice of their workforce, again a tiny group in a much larger organisation and it delivered a massive result for them, 100% paper replacement, they had an entire flow that was all paper based and every single person in that division is now using this digital  workflow.”

“Because it’s open source anyone, even a one-man band can come along and take those modules and go off and build their own solution,” he added.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

A shift in attitude & embracing new tools can help break telco’s poor customer service cycle writes Mussy Kurt-Elli, CEO of QubeGB and a keynote presenter at Maximize Europe Conference which took place in Amsterdam earlier this month.

While it’s no secret that telcos perennially end up at the bottom of customer satisfaction reports, a survey this summer by the Institute of Customer Service report actually shows signs of significant improvement in the space.

Not exactly time to break out the Dom Perignon, but any improvement is worth holding onto - although it has to be put into perspective.

So-called challenger brands, such as Tesco Mobile and giffgaff have apparently skewed the scores, so clearly there is still room for improvement.

And according to a more recent report, from market researchers Vanson Bourne, it’s not a wish that is exclusive to the telco sector. The report shows that nearly half of IT and field service decision makers surveyed across all types of organizations peg improving customer service as a priority area for investment. For IT decision makers, ¬field services fall below the popular categories of security, big data and analytics but it’s still significant.

 

To a certain extent it is unfair to compare telco with other sectors. Customer quantities and types of product vary but certainly telco has to keep working on improving service quality. The Institute of Customer Service notes “telecoms continues to generate the highest number of complaints, with one fifth (20%) of customers having experienced a problem.”

I shouldn’t complain. After all, the fact that most operators are struggling to execute high customer service themselves gives us an “in” to winning new business (we provide field engineering and managed services to all of the UK’s major tier one carriers, such as BT, Talk Talk, Sky, EE, and Virgin Media, as well as smaller aggregators, such as the Post Office, housing associations, and electrical retailers).

In my experience, the industry doesn’t suffer from lack of experience, but more often a lack of critical fundamentals, such as modern service tools, processes, training and front line service engineers to uphold customer service standards.

Without investing properly in these areas, the industry as a whole will continue to struggle with high levels of complaints.

In our own business, we deployed the ServiceMax field service management platform to formally manage our service teams in the field, and get insight into products, history, scheduled maintenance, and Cases and Work Orders to streamline customer interaction. Having the  right tools and process in place can lead to transformational change.

So what does this mean for telco customer service? Certainly change is necessary and this change is as much about perception of customer service as it is the processes and methodologies in making customer service and support more efficient. Empowering field service engineers and support staff to improve communication, response times and repair times (as well as increase transparency and efficiencies) is important for modern support teams.

 

The key is for telcos to recognise the true value of field service, not just as something which can impact customer satisfaction but that can also provide data and intelligence on customer trends, product deficiencies, new product ideas and the potential for upselling. Unfortunately, according to the Vanson Bourne study, in the majority of cases, organisations and board members are missing the link between ¬field services and customer satisfaction, let alone everything else. This means that boards are reluctant to support increase field service projects and improvements in customer satisfaction are slow.

In fact the telco sector has an opportunity here to make a leap forward. As a third party support supplier for the industry, we have seen huge improvements in the technology that can help us improve service provision for customers.

Improved reporting with more granularity, a clear feedback path for recurring product faults and transparent workflows are just some of the benefits we can now pass on. What does this mean to telco businesses? Ultimately a time reduction on each job which increases service capacity and therefore financial savings. We estimate that a ten-minute reduction on each job would increase service capacity by 50,000 jobs a month and earn a potential £6m in additional revenue a year.

 

It’s a strategic step that puts an end to the firefighting approach (chances are your service department has yet to modernise in terms of technology, dedicated service platforms, training or tools). Addressing the gap in field service delivery teams will not only increase customer satisfaction but also improve employee satisfaction and lead to greater job retention.

Telcos need to accelerate change and embrace the field service renaissance. Customer service after all is the new growth strategy for all businesses.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Field service management software providers Coresystems showed us a glimpse into the not too distant future, bringing together field service and consumer IoT.

As smart homes become more prevalent one of the key hubs leading the way in integrating a variety of disparate smart devices is Amazon's Echo which features voice controlled personal assistant Alexa.

Commands such as 'Alexa switch off the downstairs lights' or 'Alexa turn the heating up to 68 degrees' allow the Echo to control the heating lighting, security and much more in your smart home.

And now as demonstrated in this video by Philipp Emmenegger, Deputy CEO and Head of Sales EMEA with Coresystems Alexa can schedule a field service call for you as well. 

In the brief demonstration above, filmed at Field Service Europe held in Amsterdam last week, Emmenegger is able to schedule a service call on the day of his choice simply by telling Alexa "Alexa, tell coresystems to schedule a service call'.

After a brief exchange a day is confirmed and we can see the appointment added into a dispatch schedule.

Of course, further development would be required to make this a solution rather than just a gimmick, for example identifying exactly what it is I want the engineer to come and fix, however, it is an interesting glimpse into how we could be arranging our field service schedules in the not so distant future...

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Foothills are using the StaySafe app and hub to monitor the safety of their field service technicians.

Foothills provide servicing and maintenance to the oil and gas industry in Alberta, Canada. Working with a number of clients, technicians travel to various sites to carry out construction, calibration and general maintenance of control systems, facilities and equipment.

Working in the oil and gas industry means that technicians regularly enter environments where chemicals and other hazardous substances are present. As well as the usual risks such as slips, trips and falls, field service technicians face the risk of explosions, fires, burns and chemical poisoning.

Accidents related to these risks can be fatal.

In fact, 74 workers providing support services for the oil and gas industry, lost their lives in 2012. Many of these fatalities were caused by fires and exposure to harmful substances.

 

Foothill’s technicians often travel to sites alone or in pairs. The business recognised that if an accident were to occur, they needed a way to quickly locate their work alone employees and send medical assistance straight to them. Receiving immediate medical assistance reduces the severity of an accident and in some cases could mean the difference between life and death.

Foothills were previously operating a system in which employees were calling and texting to update their employer on their location and safety status. If, however, an employee could not be reached, there was no way of knowing where they were. Even if their last site location was known, some of the sites they work on are vast and locating them could take too long.

The business began looking into more robust systems with GPS tracking, check-ins and panic being key features in their search. When they came across StaySafe, they realized the solution had all the requirements they were looking for.

 

The ability to check-in during set intervals was important to the business as it allows them to keep an eye on the safety of their employees. StaySafe allows you to chose the length of check-in intervals within the hub. For those working in high risk industries, shorter intervals mean that even if an employee cannot panic when in trouble, you will be alerted through a missed check-in alert.

But what was particularly interesting for Foothills, was the ability to bring up the hub and view all their employees’ locations on screen. They tested the location feature during a trial and were satisfied with the level of accuracy StaySafe provided.

Greg Saunders from Foothills comments, “StaySafe is a great tool with lots of really useful features. If an employee panics or misses a check-in and can’t be contacted, not only can we now locate which site they are working on, but also where they are on the site.

Work alone legislation in Canada requires us to provide an effective communication system and check-in facilities suitable to the nature of the workplace's hazards. We felt our old system just wasn’t meeting these standards so implemented StaySafe as a way to meet our duty of care. We are now confident that if an accident does occur, we are able to locate our employees quickly and respond appropriately.”

 

---

 

Be social and share this story