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Understanding The changing landscape of field service...

Field service organizations are shifting the way they build and manage their mobile workforces compared to the models of the last decade. Major forces behind this shift include societal changes, significant advances in the technology that underpins field service delivery, and the structural evolution of core business strategies amongst service organizations themselves.

A new dichotomy of excellence and efficiency...

Customer expectations are higher than ever, yet executives in field service organizations continue to demand their operations do more with less. For many companies, this is an untenable position to hold. Companies like Uber and Amazon set the precedent for what is possible in terms of efficiency, while also driving customer expectations of convenience, ease of use, and simplicity even higher. As a result, the line between service expectations across Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) is blurring.

In the B2B world, companies ask questions like: “Why does it take my service provider days to ship an essential part to repair an expensive asset whose unplanned downtime is costing my organization millions in lost production revenue, when Amazon can ship items to me within a day?”

"In today’s world, you compete with the greatest service experience your customers have ever had..."

The truth is that the part being shipped may be specialized, rush-ordered from another continent, or require that the engineer who can fix the asset meets stringent requirements and is thus in high demand. The organization’s service standards and time frames of service delivery may well be comparable, or even preferable, to its nearest competitors. However, as technology and business practices advance service expectations, it is no longer good enough to deliver better service than your direct competitors. In today’s world, you compete with the greatest service experience your customers have ever had. It may be an unfair expectation, but as service delivery becomes more aligned with top-line revenue, it is one that must be acknowledged and tackled headon.

Making this more challenging is a similar increase in internal expectations for service delivery. As field service organizations undergo digital transformation, technology can streamline their processes and help them achieve greater efficiency across the board. Companies seeking to achieve more for less is nothing new. According to Field Service News research in 2018, 73% of field service directors stated that “their field service organization was being pressed to achieve a higher workload with the same size or smaller field workforce.” So how do organizations overcome such a dichotomy?

With the right processes in place, it’s possible. We’ll explore how in the following sections.

The ageing workforce crisis is pervasive

Alongside the dichotomy of excellence and efficiency in virtually every vertical segment, and in all corners of the globe, field service organizations try to balance an aging workforce with a new breed of worker. Compared to Baby Boomers, Millennials have vastly different ways of attaining knowledge and also tend to be more transitory in terms of career progression within a company or industry vertical.

This phenomenon is not limited to any particular industry or geography. While there are some peaks and troughs when looking at the global data, the challenge is almost universal, and threatens to significantly damage some service organizations in the short-term and potentially irrevocably in the longrun, too. Logistically, the systematic replacement of an aging workforce reaching retirement age with an incoming generation is a challenge itself. However, the transfer of knowledge from the older generation that is systemic to the core function of service delivery poses a more significant challenge.

At the heart of this lies the disparity between how the outgoing and incoming generations both view knowledge. The outgoing Baby Boomer generation wears their knowledge proudly on their sleeves. Baby Boomers link knowledge to experience. They believe knowledge is something gained over time, learned the hard way, and acquired the ‘honest’ way. Knowledge is something they spent their lives accumulating; it is what makes them feel like experts; trusted advisors to their team and to customers. It is an essential part of their value proposition.

"So how does an organization seamlessly replace a retiring workforce with an incoming one that is so inherently different? The answer is they don’t..."

It is at their core, and it is tribal. For Millennials, knowledge is something very different. Knowledge is a resource, something to tap into when required — something to access quickly and share freely. For the Millennial field worker, the answer to the tricky repair they have yet to tackle lies a few taps away on the device in their pocket. The same goes for the way the two generations view their career paths.

The career ladder of the Baby Boomer was straightforward. It generally progressed rung-by-rung, often within one company. The Millennials’ career path is more meandering and likely to cross multiple industries and organizations. The Baby Boomers belief was in career longevity, in a ‘job for life’. By contrast, the average Millennial expects to stay in an organization for just two years, according to a study from Deloitte in 2018.

So how does an organization seamlessly replace a retiring workforce with an incoming one that is so inherently different? The answer is they don’t.

Field Service companies have an unprecedented opportunity to re-imagine their field workforces. Let’s explore some of the benefits of embracing the contingent field workforce, which Field Service News research has shown is a growing trend year-over-year across 2016, 2017 and 2018.

The impact of technology on field service organizations

Another significant impact that affects the way field service organizations are structuring their mobile workforce is the sheer volume of innovative technology emerging in today’s digital renaissance.

The last decade saw tremendous and unprecedented technological advances within the field service sector as the world became more connected. Cloud computing, mobile computing, and the increasing availability of highspeed mobile internet paved the way for field service engineers or technicians to connect to their team the same way their colleagues connect in-office.

Big Data has also become such an integral part of enterprise technology systems that it is no longer mentioned as a technology to harness, but rather inherently understood to be at the heart of modern solutions.

"The field service operation of the not-too-distant future will be radically different from the recent past..."

The Internet of Things (IoT) will have the most profound impact of all, completely turning the traditional model of field service delivery on its head as it moves from a reactive to a proactive industry. It is through these emerging technologies that the answers to the aforementioned challenges are found.

Elements of each of these technologies play a role in how field service organizations rebuild their operational processes to not only overcome such challenges, but also improve their ability to deliver service excellence. The field service operation of the not-too-distant future will be radically different from the recent past.

Technology will play a major role in this evolution. However, people will always remain the key ingredient for success.

Want to know more? The full white paper relating to this white paper is available as premium content to fieldservicenews.com subscribers...

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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 who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content.