We continue our series of extracts from an excellent white paper published by IDC and sponsored by IFS, we will explore the IDC Servitization Barometer which is designed to allow field service organisations to chart their path to new revenue...
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Jul 31, 2020 • Features • IDC • White Paper • Digital Transformation • IFS • Servitization and Advanced Services
We continue our series of extracts from an excellent white paper published by IDC and sponsored by IFS, we will explore the IDC Servitization Barometer which is designed to allow field service organisations to chart their path to new revenue streams.
In part one we looked at the rapid and wide reaching change that is being faced by manufacturers in all sectors, in all regions. In part two we looked further at IDC's Servitization Maturity Framework. Now in part three see how the broad maturity of the sector against this model.
Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the link below.
Sponsored by:
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Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, IFS who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content.
First Results From the Servitization Barometer
Now that we have established the requirements and benefits associated with servitization, it’s time to provide an overview of the current maturity status in this area. How far along in adoption and understanding are enterprises out there? Based on the Barometer results (Figure 5 below), IDC can confidently say that we are at the beginning of the journey.
Based on IDC’s benchmark, 50% of organizations find themselves at Stage 2 (Side-Car), and another 14% are stuck in the nightmare of Splintered operations (Stage 1). A third of companies interviewed have started joining up their value chains (Stage 3), and less than 5% have reached “Nirvana” (Stage 4) and already opened up their service platforms to the ecosystem.
These results are broadly in line with how those organizations talk about their current status:
- The wave is coming. The clear majority (91%) of organizations are either planning or already rolling out servitization initiatives. However, only 9% are blending most or all their product portfolio with advanced services.
- Services will trigger the wave. Services generated on average 8% of the total revenue among physical value chain companies interviewed. This was slightly higher at 11% for companies with >$1B annual revenue. As with servitization plans, expectations are tilting to growth. On average, organizations expected services to account for 16% of total revenue in three years. This was a global trend consistent across all geographies. Organizations at more advanced stages of the servitization journey expect faster growth in that direction (see Figure 6 below).
- Revenue growth will depend on services. 38% of the organizations surveyed reported zero or negative revenue growth for the twelve months ending in July 2019. Another 53% were growing below 4% yearly and less than one company out of ten more than 5% yearly. This means even small improvements in services contribution can do wonders for growth trajectory. In fact, according to this Barometer, organizations that are more advanced in their servitization journey are already perceiving significantly higher revenue growth than their peers (see Figure 7 below).
- Best performers leverage data and strategic partnerships. The barometer reveals that organizations in Stages 3 and 4 are going beyond the traditional repair and maintenance services, as they are striving to grasp the new revenue streams linked to data-driven digital services that they deliver either by themselves or in collaboration with partners in adjacent industries (see Figure 8 below).
A Deeper Look at Servitization Maturity
Servitization maturity is not equally spread across all types of companies. Nor is maturity equal across dimensions. The key findings on how IDC-assessed readiness changed in the organizations we talked to are:
- Large companies are moving faster. Among organizations with less than $500 million in revenue, only 10% reached Stage 3 or 4. This contrasts with more than 50% in companies with $500–$1 billion annual revenue and more than 80% in companies with >$1 billion revenue.
- Servitization is a cross-vertical topic. Sector of operation did not appear to influence the overall servitization speed, a sign that the topic is relevant in all physical value chains.
- Some differences exist at the geographical level. Controlling for company size, organizations based in the UK, the US, and France appear slightly more advanced than counterparts in the Nordics and Germany. The first three countries reported between 40% and 50% of companies at Stage 3 or 4, versus approximately 25% in the latter two.
Digital and Customer Engagement are Areas of Concern
Key learnings gained by looking at readiness levels by dimension (Figure 5) include the following:
- Intelligent IoT and service operations maturity track very closely to overall readiness. Service operation maturity is quintessential to servitization, so no big surprise here (see section below). However, IDC detected slightly higher than expected developments in the IoT space. Survey results showed that significant or complete portions of portfolio are already IoT-connected in 60% of organizations. However, data showed that the rarer ability to connect supply chain and production facilities was a much more important indicator of servitization maturity
- Backoffice is ahead of other areas, but integration with the front-end is missing. The base is decent: more than 85% of the sample have already standardized their processes. Half of them did so in a siloed fashion, half integrating multiple departments. Acceptance of change is the keyword for more than 70% organizations — a sign that enthusiasm is lacking. The real gap, however, is integration of the back-office and field service systems. Just 10% reported full work order integration and as many as 45% confessed to having only manual data integration, which really means no integration at all.
- Customer engagement mindset is still far away. There is a lot of work to do around customercentricity, as only 50% of organizations are set up properly with either Net Promoter Score (NPS) alone or combined with advanced techniques. 40% collect anecdotal customer feedback and 10% measure only operational metrics. This reverberates in lacking technology investments on customer experience. 55% of companies reported phone, email, or basic Web portals as the only channels. IDC maintains that this is directly linked to the hit-and-miss DX attitude of the past few years, especially in midmarket companies.
Further Reading:
-
- Read more about Servitization and Advanced Services @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services
- Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
- Read exclusive FSN features from IDC's Aly Pinder @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/aly-pinder
- Read FSN Features and News from the IFS team @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=IFS
- Find out more about the solutions IFS offer to help field service companies @ www.ifs.com
- Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifsuk
Jul 24, 2020 • Features • IDC • White Paper • Digital Transformation • IFS • Servitization and Advanced Services
In a new series of extracts from an excellent white paper published by IDC and sponsored by IFS, we will explore the IDC Servitization Barometer which is designed to allow field service organisations to chart their path to new revenue streams. In ...
In a new series of extracts from an excellent white paper published by IDC and sponsored by IFS, we will explore the IDC Servitization Barometer which is designed to allow field service organisations to chart their path to new revenue streams. In part one we looked at the rapid and wide reaching change that is being faced by manufacturers in all sectors, in all regions. Now in part two we look further at IDC's Servitization Maturity Framework
Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the link below.
Sponsored by:
Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, IFS who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content.
IDC strongly believes servitization will make or break digital transformation initiatives in physical value chains. As the concept is still relatively new to many organizations, it needs to be articulated and clarified.
To help organizations understand where they currently are on this journey and, more importantly, how to proceed to the next level, IDC has built the IDC Servitization Maturity Framework, identifying key dimensions and stages defining an organization’s readiness. In connection to this effort, IDC and IFS have cooperated for this first edition of the IDC Servitization Barometer, a data-based assessment of where companies around the globe find themselves in the servitization journey.
The barometer is fed by an IFS-sponsored survey carried out in July 2019, touching 420 companies active in the physical supply chain world. In this section, we will provide an overview of the tenets of the Maturity Framework, before deep diving into the results of the Barometer. For more detailed information on the survey, including demographics and background, please refer to the Methodology appendix. IDC believes an organization’s status as regards to servitization is defined by the five equally important dimensions described in Figure 3 below.
IDC believes the servitization journey can be summarized in four key stages, as shown in Figure 4.
The four stages can be described as follows:
-
Splintered. The organization struggles under a myriad of silos that lead to disjointed, manual processes. Legacy, fragmented ERP environments provide little or no visibility on operational performance. The business model is on pure product, with challenges to profitability.
- Side-car. The organization has standardized the two chunks of the value chain (back-office and front-desk) but keeps them separated. The keyword in the company is efficiency and few add-on services are delivered. Field service is based on basic mobile capabilities and IoT stacks are at proof-of-concept stage. Growing the business is hard.
- Joined-Up. Front-office and back-office flows have been integrated in both directions and leverage the power of advanced technologies such as IoT to feed the core systems with real-time data. In some cases, Edge capabilities bring coordinated autonomy to local sites. A suite of digital services is fully available, and business model enhancements such as pay-as-you-use and outcome-based contracts are being explored.
- Borderless. Processes start and end outside the organization and operations and technology enable different elements of the value chain to connect. Co-creation, data-sharing and collaboration with customers, suppliers, partners from other sectors and in some cases even competitors are part and parcel of the business model.
Servitization - A Real Example
A few years ago, a global healthcare manufacturer was struggling with data silos and a balkanized departmental setup (Stage 1). It integrated all the systems and processes in the purchase-to-stock part of the chain and achieved a much leaner back end, allowing better forecasts. Early discussions on modernizing the support and customer front end were held as it reached Stage 2. This is where the company is now. Margins are improving, but the ability to grow is not.
The company decided to explore a new business model towards delivering its medical instruments to operating theater managers on a pay-per-use basis, enabling healthcare professionals to access new innovations without massive upfront investment. The objective of this manufacturer is to generate a competitive differentiation against low cost competitors.
New technologies and service ideas are needed to get to Stage 3. To achieve that, IoT connectivity at customer, field service management software allowing rich data capture and machine learning algorithms that shape both supply flow and product design based on customer data are needed. This will drive new revenue streams from after-sales service and parts, on top of pay-as-you-go capabilities.
Alongside this, the advantages of the business model change become visible to customers. Since losing patients on the operating table due to a lack of materials is a not acceptable, hospitals lean towards very large safety stocks, which generates high inventory costs that are absorbed by patients. By creating an intelligent data flow on instrument utilization, the manufacturer can ultimately make healthcare more accessible to patients.
The long-term horizon begins to appear. In Stage 4, the company will strive to create an adaptative digital workflow in which real-time data generated interlinked with suppliers of raw materials, sterilization companies, hospitals, and patients will drive higher levels of success in the operations room.
Further Reading:
- Read more about Servitization and Advanced Services @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services
- Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
- Read exclusive FSN features from IDC's Aly Pinder @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/aly-pinder
- Read FSN Features and News from the IFS team @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=IFS
- Find out more about the solutions IFS offer to help field service companies @ www.ifs.com
- Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifsuk
Jul 22, 2020 • Features • White Paper • Aquant • Leadership and Strategy
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. It is an oft repeated phrases amongst management professionals of all sectors. As we establish the way out of the toughest crisis our industry has ever seen, good management is crucial and that means the...
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. It is an oft repeated phrases amongst management professionals of all sectors. As we establish the way out of the toughest crisis our industry has ever seen, good management is crucial and that means the metrics we measure are more vital than ever. In this first article in a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant, Edwin Pahk, VP Product Marketing and Business Development, Aquant explains more...
Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the button below. If you are yet to subscribe join 30K of your field service management peers and subscribe now by clicking the button below...
Sponsored by:
Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, Aquant who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this white paper.
The service landscape is facing a dramatic transformation that ranges from the need to skill up a new workforce, to the move away from a reactive break-fix work towards a predictive service model. This, coupled with the desire to limit expensive on-site visits and customer demands for enhanced SLAs, means every service moment matters.
To make this transformation a reality requires a workforce of high performers, but there are plenty of hurdles on the path to achieving this goal.
Assembling and nurturing a powerhouse service team is challenging
- Baby Boomers are in the midst of a powerful retirement wave
- There is a sizable skills gap between new recruits and those who are retiring
- High paying service jobs became less desirable over the last decade as enrolment in vocational schools declined in favor of university programs
- Millennials and Gen Z seek to work, collaborate, and develop professional skills using speedy tech tools versus long-term learning plans
And the service landscape looks different, too
- Machines are more complex and require a workforce with advanced technical skills
- Consumer demand for standardized service costs are driving more predictive service offerings
- A move towards remote diagnostics and self-service triage offerings empower the customer to handle simple issues that don’t require a technician to be dispatched
- Changing economic factors are driving renewed pressure to stabilize or cut service costs
When we peel away the layers, all of this reinforces that a high-performing workforce is a key competitive differentiator. But how do service leaders move forward in this new service
landscape? Tools that map out your workforce, providing a snapshot of your experts versus challengers, and provide guidance on how to upskill the whole team is the first step.
Why Measure Individual Workforce Performance?
Service companies need to zoom in and out when it comes to KPIs Organizations have dashboards and charts to measure the service KPIs of the entire team, but few are zooming in to look at individual performance. Big picture knowledge is essential, but without visibility into great performers (service heroes) versus those who would benefit from training or upskilling (challengers) it’s hard to create service plans that address the root cause of workforce issues.
You likely know the shortlist of service heroes.
They are saved to your favorite contacts. And you may have a training plan for a few of the team members you know are struggling. What about the other 98% of the team? How are they really performing, and what do they need to do to level up and develop the skills and confidence of your superstars?
There are some obvious signs that members of your service workforce could use additional training. For example, those who regularly require repeat visits to remedy less complex issues is an obvious sign. What about more subtle indicators?
Some on the team may appear to check all the right boxes but may be struggling in other ways, such as racking up high parts costs by swapping out parts until the job is fixed.
This is where workforce measurement helps make sense of employee data by analyzing KPIs in a way that really matters. It can spot inconsistencies in service quality among the team and help you pinpoint who needs training and who is in the best position to provide mentoring.
But, there’s a caveat! Before you can get here, you need to measure the right things the right way.
Do the KPIs You Measure Provide the Right Insights?
We see you shaking your head. Service organizations already spend quite a bit of time and effort tracking workforce KPIs, and most service leaders keep a constant eye on those numbers.
But right now those KPIs tend to be narrowly focused on single measurements such as productivity or first time fix, and they don’t provide a holistic snapshot.
Without zooming out for a 360-degree view, measuring in isolation often leads to systemic and costly service issues. Instead of focusing solely on “what” to measure, it’s more important to ask “how” you are measuring. Do you have access to the right mix of information to measure what really matters? That should include understanding metrics at a macro level across the organization and on an individual level. Take a deep dive into your data.
Does one KPI improve, only to have another fall below target? Not analyzing the right data, or not doing so in the right way, can be just as harmful as not measuring at all.
In the next feature in this series, we will look at the five key KPIs that, when understood in relation to each other, can provide an accurate snapshot of what’s really going on with your service teams.
Further Reading:
- Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
- Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
- Read more news and articles featuring Aquant @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=aquant
- Connect with Edwin Pahk on LinkedIN @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwin-pahk-8a066515/
- Find out more about the solutions Aquant offer to help field service companies @ www.aquant.io/
- Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io
Jul 17, 2020 • Features • IDC • White Paper • Digital Transformation • IFS • Servitization and Advanced Services
In a new series of extracts from an excellent white paper published by IDC and sponsored by IFS, we will explore the IDC Servitization Barometer which is designed to allow field service organisations to chart their path to new revenue streams. In...
In a new series of extracts from an excellent white paper published by IDC and sponsored by IFS, we will explore the IDC Servitization Barometer which is designed to allow field service organisations to chart their path to new revenue streams. In part one we look at the rapid and wide reaching change that is being faced by manufacturers in all sectors, in all regions...
Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the link below.
Sponsored by:
Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, IFS who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content.
Production-oriented industries anchored in physical value chains are undergoing a process of deep transformation. Business leaders must find new ways to adapt to rapidly changing customer expectations and volatile market conditions. Rethinking the approach to ideation, innovation, and new product and service development is critical to maintaining top- and bottom-line growth.
Digital transformation initiatives are being rolled out with the end goal of making enterprises “Borderless.” This means the powering of a digital network that integrates internal and external silos to deliver more value to the ecosystem, including employees, customers, suppliers, and partners.
IDC research (see figure 1 below) indicates that digital organizations in production-oriented industries are benefitting from strong growth in terms of revenue and profit. Non-digital organizations struggle.
As digital transformation evolves from a cluster of one-off projects to the generation of new business models, business leaders are required to deliver the associated business outcomes from digital investments. In fact, in a recent IDC survey 65% of CEOs stated that they were under considerable pressure to craft and execute a successful digital transformation strategy that enables financial growth in their organizations.
In production-oriented industries, success is dependent on the ability to bring a much stronger service value proposition to play. Servitization is therefore turning into a top agenda item in this sector, with 82% of firms actively exploring or moving to servitize their businesses. The transition towards servitization in these industries is potentially motivated by the fact that the respondents expect the average proportion of annual revenue generated from services versus products to double from 8% in 2019 to 16% in 2022.
IDC describes servitization as the process whereby organizations with physical value chains enhance their products with — and ultimately package them within — advanced services such as digital applications and payment models based on consumption or outcome. According to IDC’s research, there is a strong correlation between servitization maturity and revenue growth. All organizations in the most advanced stage of servitization have reported growth in the top line in the past year, often over 5%. On the other hand, the revenues from 88% of organizations in the earliest stage of servitization maturity have either decreased or stayed the same in the past 12 months.
"Servitization is a journey and its end stage is the creation of an end-to-end value chain..."
In most organizations, servitization is a critical element of the overall digital transformation. It involves a transformation of the core systems, leveraging emerging technologies such as IoT and machine learning, which in turn enable organizations to access real-time data from the ecosystem and transform it into actionable insights.
Servitization is a journey and its end stage is the creation of an end-to-end value chain. This can only be enabled by driving interoperability at the application level, where the ERP systems underpinning the supply chain are seamlessly connected to the applications enabling field service and contact center agents, as well as the sensors collecting data from deployed products. The outcome is a continuous flow of relevant information across front-office and back-office to increase operational performance and new revenue streams based on data-driven services. Figure 2 (below) illustrates some of the benefits that servitization could deliver to production-oriented organizations and their end customers.
Examples of companies heading towards servitization include:
- An Israeli-based industrial valves manufacturer embedded IoT modules in its products, allowing it to charge customers based on volumes of liquid processed. The customer can program the valves for remote manual operation or set a machine-learning algorithm to do that. This increases efficiency in the industrial operations.
- A forklift maker connected one of its products to a cloud backend with GPS tracking, offering its logistic customers remote maintenance services and a fleet management service to locate its forklifts.
- A global defense and security provider offered aircraft fleet maintenance and repair services. In order to ensure high availability of the equipment for its customers, this organization has linked the systems that underpin the maintenance and repair cycle to its enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. The outcome is the delivery of an effective fleet readiness management to customers and the generation of new revenue streams coming from more after-sales services and improved customer satisfaction.
Based on discussions with companies in the sectors impacted, IDC believes changes in business models are part and parcel of servitization. These can be played out in three ways:
- Augmentation of product-based revenue with additional service revenue going beyond traditional services (maintenance, break-fix etc.) to include data-driven digital services (e.g., Fleet management service above)
- Partial or complete switch from upfront sales towards consumption or outcome-based models (e.g., “pay-per-liquid volume processed”)
- Monetization of proprietary data through licensing to third party (e.g., a car manufacturer selling access to driving behavior data to an insurer)
While complexity and impact on overall organization changes between the three approaches, IDC believes that all these new approaches to business models signal that a servitization journey is on the way and positive effects for the top and bottom line are a consequence of those.
Further Reading:
- Read more about Servitization and Advanced Services @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services
- Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
- Read exclusive FSN features from IDC's Aly Pinder @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/aly-pinder
- Read FSN Features and News from the IFS team @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=IFS
- Find out more about the solutions IFS offer to help field service companies @ www.ifs.com
- Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifsuk
Aug 29, 2019 • Management • News • Michael Blumberg • White Paper • Mize
Mize have published a new whitepaper called, Service Knowledge Management - The Key to Improving First Time Fix.
Mize have published a new whitepaper called, Service Knowledge Management - The Key to Improving First Time Fix.
Providing your customers with a great Service Experience is a function of your field service technician’s ability to quickly fix problems right the first time.
Unfortunately, technical know-how is getting harder and harder to come by.
While this information may exist in your company, the knowledge assets may be difficult for technicians to find or access it in a timely manner.
Mize have developed an optimal solution that helps FSOs overcome this challenge which results in:
- Higher Technician Productivity,
- Reduced Support Costs
- Improved First Time Fix rate.
- Enhanced Customer Experience
To learn more, download the new whitepaper from Mize here.
Dec 15, 2017 • Features • Kotter • Research • resources • White Paper • White Papers & eBooks • CHange Management • Cialdini • Asolvi
Resource Type: White Paper Published by: Field Service News (commissioned by Tesseract) Title: The Wind of Change: When and How to Implement your FSM System - A Guide to Change Management Best Practices
Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Field Service News (commissioned by Tesseract)
Title: The Wind of Change: When and How to Implement your FSM System - A Guide to Change Management Best Practices
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
Synopsis:
Within the last decade we have seen field service shift from being a necessary evil, to a core differentiator and even in some instances, to ultimately becoming the primary revenue stream.
Whilst this shift may not be as dramatic for all companies, you can be sure that almost every company with a field service operation – including you and your peers, will be at least some way along this path. What is also certain is that as you make your way along this path, at some point you will need to take a look at your current field service processes and the technology you are using to support them. Indeed, technology continues to play an increasingly important role in field service.
Your existing field service management (FSM) solution is likely to be well embedded within your workflow already - but as tools like the Internet of Things and Augmented Reality drive concepts such as ‘connected field service’ from futuristic vision to genuine process, an upgrade of your FSM system is going to be unavoidable. The problem is that a FSM solution is of course mission critical and therefore any disruption caused when changing such an important system must be managed and minimised.
With this in mind this white paper explores how to identify key signs that it is time to upgrade your FSM system as well as examining some best-practice thinking on implementation and change management methodologies.
Overview:
The key topics discussed in this white paper include:
Knowing when to upgrade your FSM system:
Whilst knowing when it’s time to replace your FSM system is based on multiple factors unique to each organisation, there are a number of strong indicators you can monitor to help you make that call at the right time.
A selection of these include...
- Your Own Efficiency
- How does your tech investment compare to industry trends?
- Know your enemy
- Listen to your end-users
- Listen To Your Customers
- Regular reporting nightmares
Change Management Best Practice:
Let’s make no bones about it, a FSM system is mission critical. Whether you are implementing a system for the first time or switching from an older system to a modern equivalent, doing so is a significant change management project. If you are to minimise the negative impact of this program and reap the efficiency and productivity improvements (and see return on investment) as swiftly as possible, then getting that change management process right is very simply a must.
There will of course be different dynamics at play within every organisation, so a comprehensive and detailed plan, put together in a methodical and structured manner is imperative. However, there are certain factors that remain true in almost every change management scenario. Equally, there are widely adopted best practices that can be applied.
Also included in the white paper is a look some key considerations that sit at the heart of good change management:
Understand the task ahead
Change is hard, and without proper understanding of your goals and the challenges you face, successfully managing it can be at best a complicated and drawn out process and at worst an abject failure.
In fact, according to change management guru John Kotter, 70% of change management efforts fail and this is largely due to a lack of preparation, a lack of understanding of best practices or more often than not a combination of both. However, at the heart of every successful change management exercise there is one maxim that holds absolutely true. Change Management is always about people.
Engaging the Head and the Heart
For a change management program to be successful it is absolutely vital we acknowledge that change is about individuals, not organisations. Yes, change will be driven by organisational needs and requirements, but individuals will implement it - individuals will determine its success.
Given this notion, we must next consider how individuals will react to change. Successful change management is as much about feeling as it is about thinking. This is one of the key principals in the Kotter Change Management philosophy and is one that is widely accepted to be an important step on the change management journey.
Principals of Influence
Robert Cialdini’s six principals of influence are certainly also worth considering when planning your change management program and the white paper looks at each of these and how they relate to change management within a field service context. The Six Principals include:
- Reciprocity
- Commitment and consistency
- Social Proof
- Liking
- Authority
- Scarcity
The importance of the change agent:
The white paper explores what a ‘Change Agent’ is and why they are key to successful change management, is another important piece of the puzzle.
Gartner’s Elise Olding neatly sums up this approach stating, “Change resistance is a myth. Employees support enterprise goals when they understand what needs to be done. Change Agents put a face on change and leverage trusted informal leaders to create understanding among employees and influence organisational change”
Breaking down the barriers of resistance:
The goal of a successful change management program should not be to completely eradicate resistance to change - this is an impossible task that will take too much energy. Instead, focus on reducing the impact of resistance, and overcoming it as quickly as possible to move the change management project from concept to full adoption as swiftly as possible.
The true key to successful change management is minimising the impact of resistance in your workforce - and to achieve this we must understand the types of resistance we are likely to encounter.
Generally, these will come in three broad categories which hare explained within the white paper:
- I don’t get it
- I don’t trust you
- I don’t like it
Progressing through the adoption cycle:
Finally, the white paper explains why it is important to have an understanding of the various stages of adoption. In almost any organisation there are generally four groups of adopters that can be plotted on a standard Bell Curve.
Broadly speaking they should be categorised as follows:
- Early Adopters
- The Majority
- Laggards
- Naysayers
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
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Nov 29, 2017 • Features • Cognito • Cognito iQ • Productivity • resources • White Paper • White Papers & eBooks • Employee Engagement • Software and Apps • Customer Satisfaction and Expectations
Resource Type: Written Guide Published by: Cognito iQ Title: Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity
Resource Type: Written Guide
Published by: Cognito iQ
Title: Your Guide to Flawless Field Service - Perfecting Productivity
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
Synopsis:
Outside of the field service industry, the growth of big data and analytics is old news. The most advanced organisations have already gone beyond the hype and have developed strategies that are delivering exciting performance-enhancing results. For example, Leicester City’s surprise Premier League win was based on the club’s expert use of football data analytics. Stories such as this are why Gartner say “Data and analytics are taking centre stage as the single most powerful catalyst for change in the enterprise”.
However, field service companies have been slower to achieve similar levels of success from the use of advanced analytics. Whilst in many organisations there is plenty of data available, it can be hard to use effectively: the data may not be sufficiently accurate or timely, and service professionals may lack the skills and tools they need. But this is changing. Field service organisations are getting smarter with both the data they collect and how they use it.
Over this series of three special guides, Cognito iQ demonstrate how simple analytics can make a significant difference to three key components of field service excellence:
- Customer Satisfaction
- Employee Engagement
- Productivity (the subject of this first instalment)
Overview:
Topics covered and addressed in this white paper include:
Expectations of field service have never been higher
Customers are used to the speed of delivery and quality of service that they get from consumer companies such as Amazon; this has raised the bar for all service companies. Customers want a service appointment quickly, they want smaller appointment windows and they expect your field worker to have the right information as well as the skills, knowledge and parts to resolve their issue first time.
So how do field service organisations provide a better service to their customers, with fewer resources?
So how do you improve productivity?
To answer that question, you have to know what productivity means to your business. All businesses will have a different definition and an individual approach. For example, would you be happy to drive up the number of visits per day your field workers attend if that meant fewer first time fixes, or reduced customer satisfaction scores?
The old adage is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure but, these days, companies know that it is a bit more complicated than that – measurement for its own sake or using the wrong metrics to set targets can be counter-productive.
It is vital to know how to measure success: which metrics are useful and which aren’t, which can be accurately determined and which can’t, how metrics interact and how setting goals and targets will affect how employees go about their jobs.
Perfecting productivity
Continual improvement is a well-established practice that seeks to increase customer value, reduce waste and optimise resources via incremental change, feedback and analysis. These techniques originated in manufacturing; on a production line, it is relatively simple to measure variables such as number of defects, as you can easily see how the work is being done and you can observe the impact when you make changes to the process.
But as continual improvement methodologies have developed, they have been profitably applied in many other industries, so why not field service operations?
With the right data, it is possible to adopt a proactive, systematic approach, breaking down the processes within the operation.
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Nov 22, 2017 • Features • Future of FIeld Service • White Paper • White Papers & eBooks • Digital Transformation • IFS • Internet of Things • IoT
Resource Type: White Paper Published by: IFS Title: The IFS Digital Change Survey
Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: IFS
Title: The IFS Digital Change Survey
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly.
(Please note that by applying for your subscription via this link you accept the terms and conditions here and a plain english version is available from our main subscriptions page here)
Synopsis:
When a car leaves a factory, this no longer signifies the end of the relationship between manufacturer and vehicle. The car goes into the next stage of its lifecycle, where it must be maintained and serviced. Businesses are realising that this servicing offers a significant revenue stream. For example, automotive manufacturer margins on new vehicle sales range from eight to 14 per cent, whereas servicing a brake disc carries around a 65 per cent margin.
As businesses become service-oriented, digital transformation gives them the tools to change.
By enabling visibility of an asset using the Internet of Things (IoT), the provider can better understand its use in the real world and feed that back into its research and development (R&D) process. Any issues from the manufacturing process that affect usage and failure rates of equipment can be managed via the IoT feedback loop. Data analysis using business intelligence or big data and analytical tools can derive value from that data.
Historically, companies have seen service as a cost centre and a necessary evil. Now, Digital Transformation is enabling more organisations to realise the potential that service has as a profit centre. Yet there is considerable variation in maturity across the sector globally. This exclusive white paper by IFS offers key insights into their research of Digital Transformation and how it is being implemented.
Overview:
Service: Leading the Way
Across many industries, manufacturing and products have become commoditised; service is now the differentiator. The winners in the service sector are those able to stand apart through their ability to support a product across its lifecycle, or support a client whose services they manage.
When set against other sectors, service organisations are leading the field in innovation and transformation
The top five factors behind digital transformation reflect this potential, with four of the five being sales, innovation and customer relationship-driven. Chief among these is ‘growth opportunities in new markets’. In reality, these growth opportunities are not new but have been expanding for some 20+ years. What is changing is recognition of these opportunities. Many organisations have been slow to recognise service as being a key driver to their overall business success.
A New Hope:
The service industry is reaching a critical point with its ageing workforce. An enormous level of knowledge, possessed by the veterans and gurus of the industry, is walking out of the door as these workers reach retirement, or are no longer effectively supported by the business. This can have more of an impact in service than anywhere else, as the level and quality of service on offer can be directly impacted by the individual that performs the service.
In developing and recruiting talent, DT has a significant role to play. Intelligent knowledge management systems can enable a six-month recruit to perform those maintenance or repair services that would have previously been the [quote float="right"]Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer
domain of a 10+ year veteran. Technologies such as augmented reality (in the form of Google Glass or Microsoft HoloLens), can be usedto virtually project onto the physical equipment an animated disassembly procedure for swapping out a part onto the physical equipment.
The greatest talent gaps reported by service providers are in the areas of business intelligence (BI) and cybersecurity, with the former particularly keenly felt in North America.
Big data/analytics and BI are crucial in supporting a quantifiable business, and unlike many other industries, service is very easy to measure. Metrics such as first-time fix rate, mean time to repair, mean time between services, and service level agreements are commonplace. It is crucial when marketing a service that the provider is able to cite a percentage level of service and agree that level with customers in their SLA.
Joining Forces:
The need for collaboration is higher in the services sector than in any other, based on the IFS cross-industry research. At a sector-wide level, the delta between desired levels of collaboration and actual levels of collaboration is 2.7 points on a ten-point scale, meaning there is a desire to increase levels of collaboration by 49 per cent.
Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer
The demand for close collaboration is not surprising – firms such as Dell have a fully outsourced service provision for their field technicians, which means a considerable source of potential revenue is in the hands of trusted third parties.
Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer, who is jointly judging the product and judging the service.
Given the delta, many firms are clearly still not optimised in their digital transformation and will need to achieve a stronger bond between their partners and their internal teams to realise the full value of servitization.
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly.
(Please note that by applying for your subscription via this link you accept the terms and conditions here and a plain english version is available from our main subscriptions page here)
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Oct 24, 2017 • Features • Future of FIeld Service • Preventative Maintenance • resources • White Paper • White Papers & eBooks • ClickSoftware • Industrial Internet • IoT
Resource Type: White Paper Published by: ClickSoftware Title: How the Internet of Things is Transforming Field Service
Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: ClickSoftware
Title: How the Internet of Things is Transforming Field Service
Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!
Synopsis:
Gartner, Inc. forecasts that 6.4 billion connected “things” will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015, and will reach 20.8 billion by 20201. This interconnected world will provide a wealth of new opportunities for service organisations. It allows them to connect equipment with technicians’ mobile devices and the office in real time, enabling a rapid response to service requests and efficient remote diagnostics. Service is set to become increasingly proactive and cost-effective.
Field service lies at the heart of the Internet of Things (IoT) evolution. Advanced field service management (FSM) software can automatically receive messages from devices, and schedule and dispatch professionals, without any human interaction. But the opportunities for IoT go beyond inbound device signals over the internet.
The increase in intelligent service resources, such as drones and autonomous vehicles, offers benefits of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication that promise to transform the service industry.
Overview:
The Internet of Things
As the internet turns 25 years old, its impact continues to transform communications, industries, and lives. The original framework of point-to-point communication via a network of distributed hubs has evolved from email and dovetailed with advances in electrical and industrial engineering in a transformative way. The era of personal computers has evolved, through mobility and the smart phone revolution, to a point where connected devices take all manner of forms from biological implants to wearable fitness trackers.
Signals sent to and from connected devices are spiralling in volume. Big data management techniques, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud storage have come together to deliver insight from this abundance of data. This increases the opportunities for automating decisions and initiating actions without the need for human intervention. The benefits to organisations are numerous.
Remote monitoring applications already save billions in transport and human capital management costs. Add the potential positive impact on customer engagement and its associated business value, and the call to action becomes clear. A complete IoT strategy leads to better and faster decisions throughout the service delivery lifecycle.
Market Definitions
The Internet of Things is having major impact across both industrial and consumer sectors, and many bodies of research focus on these separately. We look at the two areas in this way:
- Industrial IoT (IIoT): IIoT refers to the application of the Internet of Things to the broad manufacturing industry. It’s often used interchangeably with the term “Industry 4.0,” which refers to the major transformational stages of the industrial economy. Examples of IIoT range from monitoring building management systems and power grids, to tracking manufactured goods as they are shipped
- Consumer IoT (CIoT): The Consumer Internet of Things (CIoT) consists of technologies that target the home market and consumer electronics. IDC reports3 that over 8 million US households already use some kind of home automation and control. Typified by remote monitoring capabilities for security, climate control, and remote control of household functions, CIoT also offers promise in areas such as networked home appliances with use cases such as refrigerators that automatically order more milk as needed.
IoT and Field Service
As the definitions around IIoT and CIoT show, there are ramifications for field service in both areas. Products that are being serviced are equally likely to be consumer goods or elements of a manufacturing eco-system in the context of business-to-business field service. The consumer and business areas are also intertwined as IoT adds a strong feedback loop that connects product usage and the associated service requirements to the manufacturing process itself. For example, wear and tear levels in real-world conditions can feed into product development through a network of sensors and influence the manufacturing process accordingly.
CIoT and IIoT are worthwhile segmentations to assess the market at a more granular level. But there are opportunities for innovation in IoT across the field service landscape. Furthermore, areas such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and ghost IT also create fuzzy lines between consumers individually and as part of an enterprise. The opportunity for field service is broad and not constrained to any sub-segment of the market.
Reactive vs Predictive
The increasing intelligence of devices and the hardware layer also impact the approach to service associated with the device. While unsophisticated devices can signal a need for service in the event of a system failure, the richer data from intelligent sensors enable a shift from reactive to proactive service. For example, indicators of failure enable long range service maintenance planning so devices can be kept running continuously and efficiently with an optimised cost profile.
From a resource optimisation perspective, this is of course preferable to responding, at high cost, to a sudden failure.
There are opportunities for innovation in IoT across the field service landscape.
To unlock the potential of speed and automation, decision criteria must be determined and incorporated into a system flexible enough to handle the variety of data inputs and scenarios. Top field service software providers can offer a scheduling solution that incorporates countless data elements into the scheduling algorithm.
The full intelligence provided by the IoT network determines the appropriate service schedule for a device, including inspection, preventive maintenance, and repair. If required, it’s possible to incorporate a review of these IoT-generated telematics by a field service professional for additional human oversight.
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