DEVELOP INTERNAL SKILLS AND CAPABILITIES

In the ‘develop internal skills and capabilities’ block you are designing, developing and implementing every element that is needed to successfully achieve the set strategic and financial objectives. Doing this by design will ensure that no element will be forgotten, and that people will be able to form a clear picture of the changed organization.

In the table below we outline the steps on ‘Develop internal skills and capabilities’:

TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS TO SUPPORT EFFECTIVE SERVICE DELIVERY

Service transformation is a multi-tiered initiative that requires a blend of organizational and technological changes working in tandem with on another. Positioning your current technology stack alongside capabilities deemed critical offers the synthesis necessary to enable successful transformation.

Traditional Field Service solutions just don’t stack up when it comes to enabling uptime for critical assets and truly delivering on outcome-based service. Outlined below are a variety of tools, and capabilities that are essential in any field service management solution which can truly propel you on this service transformation journey efforts.

In the next and final feature of this series of excerpts coming next week, we will look at three different case studies that illustrate successful service transformation journeys.

 

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Look out for the final feature of this series coming next week where we will look at three case studies of successful service transformation journeys.

However, www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

 

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership & Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com
• Learn more about Noventum @ www.noventum.eu
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

SET THE CLIMATE FOR SERVICE TRANSFORMATION

The first block contains the steps related to ‘Set the climate for Service Transformation’. It is essential to start with this block to deal with most of the identified barriers. Undertaking these steps will also ensure you get funding for the full journey; get help to set the right priorities; ensure that you develop services for which there is a customer demand; and be able to deal with organizational resistance from start to finish.

In the table below we have outlined the first steps that are necessary to set the climate for Service Transformation:

 

In the next feature of this series of excerpts coming next week, we will discuss how to deal with organisational resistance, develop internal skills and capabilities and how to use technology solutions to support effective service delivery.

 

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Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we discuss how to deal with organisational resistance.

However, www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

 

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership & Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com
• Learn more about Noventum @ www.noventum.eu
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

Are You Looking to Invest in New Technology for Your Service TeamS Post-COVID-19?

Technology investments might be in order, given those challenges. But, 62.9% of managers and above said "no investments planned" when asked if they are looking to make investments in new technology to support their team post pandemic (though we may again here consider the pandemic to equate with any future upheaval organizations may encounter).

 

 

How Much Are You Budgeting for New Technology to Support Your Service Teams post COVID-19?

 

To help determine the types of investments that may help technicians, we asked them to rank,in order of importance, the features they need from their mobile application in the field. Two-thirds (62%) or more of the respondents felt work order information, communication with customers, and maintenance procedures and knowledge base were "very important."

While customer communications and work order information are likely available to field technicians currently, it seems that their tools may be lacking the ability to pass down the organic knowledge base. When a 25-year veteran technician retires, does their domain knowledge leave with them?

Technology decision making must take into account non-traditional forms of data, such as institutional knowledge, in order to provide field technicians with the information and skills they need to succeed.

 

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Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we discuss how to measure field service readiness.

However, www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

 

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership & Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Find out more about Appify @ appify.com
• Follow Appify on Twitter @ twitter.com/AppifyInc

The first step in improving anything is to understand the current situation. To do this you need accurate, timely data about what is actually happening on the frontlines of field service.

The principle of value stream mapping, which comes from the discipline of lean manufacturing, is a useful concept to help guide this step. Your goal in analysing the current situation is to identify value - as defined by your customers’ needs - and then to map the value stream, which is all of the steps and processes that you undertake to deliver that value. Then you can look for bottlenecks, so you can eliminate any wasteful steps. In addition, if there is data missing, you can identify ways to fill the gaps.

The analysis requires data. In recent years, many field service operations have undergone some degree of digital transformation, which for many has meant that they have gone from having limited data about field service - knowing just whether the job was done, and the customer had paid - to having too much data that they can’t analyse or make sense of. Not only is there mobile data that tracks field service technicians’ whereabouts, and progress on any task, and gathers feedback from customers, but there is also a wealth of internal data such as from ERP or CRM systems, financial data, call centre information, repair data and customer emails. Combined with data about parts and assets, some of which comes directly from IoT enabled equipment, you end up with a complex mix of structured and unstructured data, which is often hard to makes sense of.

The most effective way to identify patterns in the data is to use data science techniques such as machine learning.

For example, using machine learning in the analysis of asset and parts data enables you to take a structured approach to asset lifecycle management. If you can spot patterns in repairs and revisits, you can start to predict and prevent failures. Again, generic tools can make some headway here, but field service specific tools have algorithms that have been programmed with field service knowledge which are better at surfacing genuine opportunities.

There was a time when in many businesses, the service operation was viewed as a cost centre, a necessary, but expensive, functional department.

This view is outdated; today, companies understand that field service is integral to the business. Field service technicians are not only the face of the brand, they are able to build relationships with customers and have opportunities to generate revenues through cross selling and upselling.

In the same way, there is a growing recognition that field operations goals need to be integrated with wider organisational goals. The opportunities identified in step one need to be prioritised based on a number of factors: which can easily be actioned, which have the greatest improvement potential, which offer the greatest return on investment, which are the low hanging fruit. But overarching all of this is the need for opportunities to align with overall company goals.

Furthermore, at this stage, there is a need to understand what the ROI of change will be, and to quantify the risk of not changing. If you can put a financial value on your goals, it will help you to make the business case for the investments you will need to make, both directly in terms of expenditure on the technology to drive change, and indirectly in terms of the time you will need to commit.

Once the current situation is analysed, opportunities to improve are surfaced, and goals set, aligned to the company strategy, you then need to decide how to act to meet those goals.

You are moving into the tactical stage of the seven-step process, and are focusing on practical actions that you and your team can take. The questions you need to answer at this stage are:

• What are the processes, practices, controls and levers that you can alter to influence performance?
• Which metrics that support these levers, need to move to indicate improvement?
• What are the thresholds for improvement - how much do the metrics have to move?

Once you have defined the metrics and set thresholds, you can use them to define employee KPIs, and you will be ready for the next challenge which is to change the behaviour of your employees in accordance with the new goals.

Change is hard, and it goes better when everyone is on board. In order to ensure that employees change their behaviour and work towards the goals you have defined, you will need to have the data to monitor performance.

You probably have an instinct for which of your field workers are the best performers, but your analysis of performance metrics will give you hard evidence, and also help evaluate why they are the best. You probably also know which workers consistently fail to hit their targets. Analysis will show you what to do to help them improve –and to monitor their progress. Once you know the drivers of excellence, you can replicate them throughout the organisation, working with employees to improve skills and capabilities where needed.

It also helps if employees understand the wider company strategy and how their own performance indicators and goals align. We recommend adopting OKRs, a method used by Google to align organisational strategy with individual goals and improve performance.

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results — the process by which leaders and their teams set ambitious, measurable goals each quarter — are a critical component of how Google’s leaders managed Google’s growth from day one. By focusing on a few priorities, identifying the metrics that measure progress towards those goals, and quantifying the impact of that progress, OKRs equipped teams at Google with what they needed to think big, get alignment across the organisation, and execute on their ambitious plans.

Once you have decided on the metrics to focus on, you can begin to make changes. These changes can be at any level. They can be to processes or procedures, in which case they will require everyone to know about and follow them.

They can be to documentation, giving people new information, or to the website, to change customer behaviour. They can impact the field service technicians directly, or indirectly - the example below involved a small change to the call centre script, not to engineering processes - but it had a big impact on a key performance metric for engineers.

There are many barriers to implementing change. Even if you have employees on board and the whole company aligned around the strategy, it can be hard to know which changes to prioritise, how they will affect other metrics, how much it will cost to implement the changes, and what will be the return on investment. At this stage, modelling the likely impact is invaluable, as it will help you prioritise.

Step 6 - Observe and Analyse Outcomes

Once improvements have been implemented, the next step is to observe the impact on performance and analyse the outcomes.

As a service leader you need to have full visibility of what is happening in the field in real time, so you and your team can make adjustments and prevent incidents before they arise. Ideally you should be able to see, at a glance, the status of all your key metrics, and be alerted if any are in jeopardy as well as any variations from the plan for the shift. Short interval control is another technique used in lean manufacturing to drive improvements, during each shift; with access to field service data and analytics tools to gain insight in real time, service managers can adopt this approach. This approach is also adapted from agile software development environments which advocate testing and learning with real customers, in real time, using data to assess the impact of each change.

Also, as you make the changes, capture those that are driving improvements, as well as those that are having little direct impact, but may impact further down the line. You might want to pilot in one region, capturing what has worked and what has not. You can then use the region staff as ambassadors of change across the broader organisation.

As well as acting in real time to change outcomes during the shift, you need to be able to analyse the impact of changes over time, so you can see whether improvements have been effective and if you need to dial up changes, dial down, or try something else. You can even conduct controlled experiments by using AB testing - trying two different approaches with different, randomly chosen sets of technicians, or in different regions, to see which improvements work the best.

This is the step where the value of the data driven approach comes into its own.

Taking the outcomes of improvements, and feeding back into the data for analysis at step one creates a feedback loop, enabling you to test and learn, freeing you from having to make gut decisions, and harnessing the power of continuous improvement to get to exceptional field service.

With a continual improvement approach, the £500K or more you could save in productivity isn’t a one-off. You can use that saving to do more, or to reduce headcount in year one, and also expect to see a similar improvement and saving in years two, three and onward. The goalposts are always moving in field service, as technology advances, competitors improve and customer expectations increase, so there will always be improvements you can make, regardless of the quality of your service at this moment.

So now you know the seven steps, what are you waiting for? It’s easy to describe, but not so easy to do.

In reality, getting to exceptional will require you to have the following:

• high quality, accurate, real-time data
• the ability to analyse the data to gain insight, both in real time, and in retrospect
• the experience to decide how to apply the insight
• the foresight to model the impact of changes and the ROI of planned actions
• the insight to know what exceptional looks like, and to set appropriate benchmarks
• the agility to test changes and learn from the outcomes
• the leadership to drive through improvements and manage change throughout the organisation

We know that field service leaders are a talented bunch, but that is still a tall order. Fortunately, there is no pressure to take all seven steps at once. Getting to exceptional is a long-term process and just taking the first step will deliver business benefits. So how do you take that first step? Advances in technology mean that there is support available. Digital transformation means so much more than just digitising paper-based processes, or automating manual processes. We believe that all of the hundreds of decisions that are made every day in field service operations can and should be driven by data and analysis, not by gut instinct, or expediency.

For many companies, the digital transformation challenge has moved on from being able to collect the data, to knowing how to analyse it, and what actions to take. Advances in AI such as machine learning mean that we can start to automate the process of continuous improvement. The goal should be that the system can spot a problem and recommend a fix without human intervention, and then track that change through the organisation and drive adoption in the field. The future of field service belongs to those companies that can adopt advanced analytics, together with smart business approaches, to use data to drive exceptional field service.

Who Are the Business Process Decision Makers?

Parsing who is responsible for business process decisions—decisions ranging from how teams are dispatched to newly developed Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) guidelines—is the first step in mitigating any issues that hamper the delivery of services.For example, though 41% of respondents list themselves as individual contributors, 36% of respondents are themselves responsible for business process decisions. Thirteen percent of respondents are either C-level or owner or president of their company, but 25% of respondents say business owners or CEOs are responsible for business process decisions.

A slightly larger proportion of C-level people make business process decisions than there are C-level respondents in the survey. This isn't terribly surprising. Many businesses rely on executives and higher-level contributors to guide the organization forward. But, in an industry where field technicians have intimate knowledge of the job at hand, it seems reasonable to wonder whether they should have a larger say in business process decision making.

As organizations attempt to improve their decision making, they will often be tempted to purchase fix-it-all technologies and spend budget on tools that they feel will help them solve every issue. Despite the urge to fix everything at once, Field Service companies might instead determine one or two concerns to address and work their way forward from there.

BUSINESS PROCESSES AND DATA ACCESSIBILITY WITHIN FIELD SERVICE

Assuming companies have enough data to make intelligent decisions, reviewing business processes regularly should be high-level priorities for companies that wish to become more efficient.

More than one-third (31%) of respondents report that they review business processes every six months or even less frequently.

And what of the data used to inform business processes? It will be difficult to affect positive change with poor or inaccessible data no matter how frequently a company reviews its processes.

How Often Does Your Company Review Business Process Used to Service Your Customers?

 

 

A majority (53%) of field technicians rate the quality of their accessible data as either "good" or "very good." Fifty-nine percent of those in managerial roles believe their data is "good" or "very good."

At the other end of the spectrum, nearly 14% of field technicians rate their data as "poor" or "very poor." Companies will likely improve their business process decision making by coming to a better understanding of what makes poor data, poor and eliminating that information from their internal data sources.

 

How Would You Rate The Quality of Your Accessible Data?

It will be difficult to weed out low-value data if that information is not first accessible. Only one-quarter (26%) of field technicians describe their work-order data as "accessible through one single application."

Nineteen percent of field technicians describe their work-order data as either "accessible but inaccurate" or "inaccessible."

Another challenge exists. A majority (55%) of field technicians say their data is accessible but either through "a couple of apps" or "many apps."

 

How Would You Describe the Overall Accessibility to Work Order Data Which Enables You to Provide Services to Your Customers?

 

 

For Field Service organizations, data enters their systems in the form of manual data entry, paper transactions or mobile device data capture. Data types include information from invoices, work orders, parts, inventory, equipment- maintenance data, and so on. If managers and field technicians alike must jump from one application to the next to manage all of this information, it is likely they will encounter more errors and lower efficiency standards than if everyone had data accessible in one place. Technicians rely on mobile devices in the field.

But what if they enter a poor cellular coverage zone or the Wi-Fi on the jobsite goes down? What if the data input while offline doesn't sync when the device is able to connect to the network again?

Ensuring data is accurate requires a variety of different systems and devices to communicate, on and off-line. Doing so is impossible without a flexible solution that can integrate these sources and limit data-quality and accessibility issues.

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Look out for the next feature in this series coming next week where we discuss how to measure field service readiness.

However, www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below. If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and you can access the white paper instantly upon completing the registration form!

 

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership & Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about Field Service Management @ www.fieldservicenews.com/field-service-management
• Find out more about Appify @ appify.com
• Follow Appify on Twitter @ twitter.com/AppifyInc