Field service news issue 12 banging the drum by Field Service News

FIELD SERVICE NEWS Issue #12

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May/June 2016

Banging the drum

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Leader

Banging the drum...

Cloud Field Service Software & Mobile Apps

can certainly see evolving rapidly. You can find my review of the RP1600 on page 36. And if new technology launches are the drums being banged, then it is also important to note that there have been a number of new band leaders coming to the fore lately to. Perhaps the highest profile of these is the new CEO at industry stalwarts ClickSoftware. Following the sale of the company to Californian private equity firm Francisco Partners, Tom Heiser has been appointed and in his own words one of his first tasks is to start ‘banging the drum’ a bit more about the innovations his R&D team are developing.

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Another new CEO on the block is Chris Proctor of OneServe who has had a meteoric rise through the Exeter based company within the last year. Proctor also sees the need to raise the bar in terms of shouting about the Exeter based companies successes, and is not afraid to call out his competitors (as he did back in Field Service News back in November last year).

  

s the field service conference season enters full swing there have been plenty of solution providers banging the drum of late...

Runs on every device type. And our mobile apps work offline too.

Indeed, the list of field service solution providers at Field Service USA held in Palm Springs a month ago was a certifiable who’s who of the industry, and alongside what was a truly fantastic three days of education, there were a number of big announcements from some of the industry’s key players.

 Cloud software-as-a-service. That’s right... you don’t need any server stuff.

ClickSoftware announced a new solution that takes advantage of some pretty slick artificial intelligence algorithms, Trimble Field Service Management introduced an entire new end-to-end FSM suite called Pulse whilst ServiceMax announced a very interesting tool called Service Performance Metrics that brings together analytics and best-practices in a highly innovative solution.

 Simple all-inclusive pricing. One fee. Nothing else. Upgrades for life.*

Then there were the new kids on the block such as Help Lightning, whose ‘mobile merged reality’ solution we’ve championed in Field Service News previously as a great use of an emerging technology that could have a truly disruptive impact on the industry.

 Editions to suit everyone.

Another honourable mention should also go to Co-Tap whose collaboration tool is perfectly set to help empower knowledge sharing and intra-engineer collaboration, a perfect tool for the emerging millennial workforce.

Choose what you need starting from £15 per user.**

Not to be out done by their software counterparts, there has been plenty of innovation coming from the hardware side of the industry of late as well. Getac have announced the launch of the next-gen S400, a fully rugged laptop that has the footprint of a regular business notebook, whilst the Toughbook 20 (which Field Service News first reported as being in development back in March last year) is the world’s first fully rugged detachable and has been picking up some very positive comments since it became available at the beginning of the year.

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In this issue we’ve exclusive interviews with both Proctor (page 18) and Heiser (page 40) as well as another new face to field service Rei Kasai who recently joined ServiceMax from SAP and spoke to us about what exactly Service Performance Metrics means (page 32). Of course, we can’t talk about new developments from solution providers with out mentioning Microsoft who with their purchase of FieldOne and it’s subsequent recent re-brand to Field Service have arrived firmly back within the field service sector with all the swagger of the Rolling Stones announcing a new world tour. Like the Rolling Stones, Microsoft having been around seemingly forever, yet they still have it in them to mix it with the very best. By incorporating FieldOne into their wider Dynamics platform, the software giant have put together a very attractive solution and I spoke to Carsten Groth about Microsoft’s plans for Field Service which you can read on page 50. With so much development and innovation in the sector it is truly an exciting time, and such fierce competition amongst field service solution providers is not only indicative of the growing importance of service within industry, but also can only be a good thing for practitioners when it comes to finding the right solution for them. Bang on.

Another impressive looking piece of kit is Gen2Wave’s RP1600 which I got my hands on this month. The RP1600 sits in the relative embryonic niche between rugged smartphone and handheld computer - a form factor that I

* Remote training included (professional services extra) ** Per mobile user per month, desktop users start at £29 per user per month based upon Essentials Edition, annual contract

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“We can’t talk about new developments from solution providers with out mentioning Microsoft who have arrived firmly back within the field service sector with all the swagger of the Rolling Stones announcing yet another world tour...”

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Contents

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Contents:

News:

Getac unveils next-generation S400 notebook Industry tools developing at breakneck speed... Pentalver cuts fuel spend by more than £50,000 by improving driver behaviour Coffee in the Cloud Iot service insights are re-shaping product design ClickSoftware experts release new book

page 6 page 8 page 10 page 10 page 12 page 13

Features:

Monetizing digitisation: start with the customer experience and work back Selling maintenance agreements and professional services – It’s probably much easier than you think! Hidden in plain sight... Real-time field service should not be an afterthought for SMBs Rugged Decoded: Touch-screens Case Study: Transforming service with the latest field service technology 9 reasons why millennials are a perfect fit for field service... Servitization: Are we Set for the next shift forward? It’s time to move your focus to the field... One step beyond... Empowering field service engineers through mobile technology Hands On: Gen2Wave RP1600 rugged smartphone The elusive Return on Investment Time to start banging the drum.... Nurturing your top talent... Scheduling: Integrated or standalone? Technicians, customers, spare parts and profits: how strong are the links in your supply chain? Customer centric software solutions Risk or Revolution: Rise of The Machines The Big Discussion: Fleet Management Intimus International transforming their field service operation... The need for a flexible approach to scheduling Don’t give me more, give me actionable data

page 14 page 16 page 18 page 21 page 22 page 25 page 26 page 28 page 31 page 32 page 35 page 36 page 39 page 40 page 44 page 46 page 48 page 50 page 53 page 54 page 56 page 57 page 58

Your Field Service Management Software Solution! Schedule a Demo Today! www.servicepower.com/demo Full Schedule Optimization, Including On-Demand Options

NEXUS FSTM Mobile Dispatch with End-to-End Field Service Management

Advanced Business Intelligence and Predictive Simulations

Dispatch and Claims with 3rd Party Management

Recent Awards

Hidden in plain sight: p18

Rugged decoded: p22

Customer centric solutions: p50

Advisory Panel

Named Company of the Year (WFM Technology)

Bill Pollock, President Strategies for Growth SM, | Nick Frank, Managing Partner, Si2 | P r o f . A n d y N e e l y, D i r e c t o r C a m b r i d g e S e r v i c e A l l i a n c e | A l i sta i r C l i f fo rd - J o n e s , C EO L e a d e n t S o l t u i o n s T i m J o n e s , N o r t h e r n E u ro p e S e r v i c e M a n a g e r, Wa te rs | I a n M a p p , D i re c t o r, Wy s e r S te wa r t

Mail: 9 5 H i cks Ave nue | G reenford | Lon d on | U B6 8HB | Ph o n e: + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 1 3 3 1 9 2 7 Field Service News is a 1927 Media Ltd publication. Some expert views are placed on a paid for basis p4

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News

Getac unveils nextgeneration S400 notebook

Getac’s new-generation S400 series notebook has the footprint of a business notebook, the features of a full-rugged device and incorporates Intel’s latest Skylake micro-architecture to boost performance...

etac’s new-generation S400 series notebook has the footprint of a business notebook, the features of a full-rugged device and incorporates Intel’s latest Skylake micro-architecture to boost performance.

compared with the Broadwell series it replaces.

Rugged computer manufacturer Getac has unveiled the first model in its next-generation S400 series semi- rugged laptop, the Getac S410. At 2.2kg and 35mm wide, it has the footprint of a business notebook but incorporates many features of a full-rugged device.

It has a splash-proof keyboard; rugged I/O door; flexible and durable handle and rubber bumper and footpad, with ventilation provided by the footpad from the bottom of the unit. Environmental credentials include an IP51 rating for dust, MIL-STD 810G certification and the ability to cope with 3ft drops.

Windows 10 operating system is standard.The S410 incorporates Getac’s newest proprietary composite materials to enhance ruggedness.

“The S410 builds on our success in the semi rugged notebook space, providing a combination of design, performance and versatility,” says Chris Bye, President of Getac in the UK.

A 14in TFT LCD HD 1366 x 768 display is standard, with a 14in TFT LCD FHD 1920 x 1080 high resolution screen optional.

The S410 can be specified with Intel 6th generation Core i3, i5 or i7 processors incorporating the latest Skylake U-series microarchitecture which boosts both CPU and GPU performance and reduces power consumption

Getac’s Lumibond sunlight readable technology can be specified on either screen. Capacitive touchscreen technology means the S140 can be used in touch, gloved and pen modes even when wet. Up to 1TB storage is available plus

an optional SSD drive. The 11.1-volt 4200 mAh battery should last a full day, but the S410 also comes with Getac’s optional a hot-swappable battery feature with a light indicator to flag to users if there’s enough power left for the main battery to be switched. There’s also a range of in-vehicle docking accessories. Wireless communications include Intel’s dual band AC 8260, Bluetooth 4.2 and optional GPS, GOBI mobile broadband and RF Triple Pass-Through. The S410 also offers multi-factor authentication including fingerprint touch technology. I/O options including a docking connector slot, USB 3.0 connectivity and expansion bay for, for example, PCMCIA. In-vehicle and office docking units; a battery charger, and vehicle and AC Adapters are among the accessories available. The S410 comes with Getac’s standard three-year warranty. p7

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News Round Up

Industry tools developing at breakneck speed... With the industry event season in full swing a raft of new technology launches have dominated the industry news across the last two months...

FIELDAWARE CONTINUES EXPANSION WITH INTERNATIONALIZATION AND LEADING ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE INTEGRATIONS FieldAware, a leader in mobile, cloud-based field service automation solutions, has announced the availability of its Spring product release, the latest software release for its mobile field service management solution. This release includes integration to leading accounting software packages and moves the solution forward globally with its availability in French language localisation. “We continue to focus our software releases on bringing additional value to our customers and adding market-driven features and functionality,” said Andy Murphy, director of product development at FieldAware. “Today we are announcing our latest accounting integrations to further strengthen our integration portfolio. This means businesses with established technologies already in place can seamlessly add FieldAware to their current infrastructure with minimal risk and accelerated benefit.” “In addition, we have quickly reacted to increased international demand by leveraging our agile software to release our first in a series of language localizations. The integration of FieldAware’s mobile solution with the Sage, Xero and Quickbooks Online and Desktop platforms enables customers to streamline invoicing. When a work order is complete, and a job is closed-out on a field worker’s mobile device, an invoice can be automatically generated in the back office. The invoice includes all costs related to the work order, such as the cost of service and any parts/inventory consumed, and can be sent to the customer immediately. More @ http://fs-ne.ws/BGAr300ufvy p8

NEW MASTERNAUT TELEMATICS MODULE SPOTS VEHICLE FAULTS, SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO Masternaut, a leading provider of fleet telematics and vehicle tracking services, has launched a maintenance module for Masternaut Connect, giving fleet managers the ability to adopt a proactive approach to vehicle maintenance. Masternaut Maintenance is based on Masternaut’s patented non-intrusive CANbus technology to collect vehicle data. This provides automatic and real-time information on servicing and vehicle faults on cars and commercial vehicles. It can save time and improve operations for fleet managers by helping to proactively plan fleet maintenance operations, and gives an instant overview of a fleet’s condition, improving vehicle availability. The Masternaut Maintenance dashboard provides users with a top down look of their fleet, highlighting the percentage of vehicles that are fully operational, the number of vehicles that need servicing now or in future, and the number of vehicles with faults. This enables fleet managers to reduce vehicle turnover and improve vehicle lifetime, with improved maintenance also helping to reduce fuel consumption. This information helps fleet managers to keep vehicles and employees safe and ensures a high level of fleet compliance. Masternaut Maintenance keeps a complete record of service and fault history for each vehicle which can reduce breakdowns and improve safety on the road. More @ http://fs-ne.ws/fotJ300uh0k

BRIGHTHOUSE IMPLEMENTS KIRONA SOFTWARE TO HELP CUSTOMER AGENT ADVISERS DELIVER IMPROVED SERVICE BrightHouse is the UK’s leading rent-to-own retailer providing high quality, branded consumer electronics, domestic appliances and furniture via affordable weekly payments. They have 3,000 employees in a growing network of over 300 stores.

BrightHouse has implemented Kirona’s Job Manager mobile application to connect their central team with their field-based Customer Agent Advisers. This ensures accurate, up to date information flows seamlessly and securely between the two, enabling real-time visibility and that processes are streamlined to significantly improve customer service. As well as Kirona’s Job Manager application, BrightHouse are also benefiting from Kirona’s InfoSuite management information software, ensuring the business has real-time actionable insight. Alasdair Skeoch, Head of Credit Operations at BrightHouse commented “Kirona’s Job Manager and InfoSuite software has enabled us to improve customer service and empower our Customer Agent Advisers. Job Manager provides our Customer Agent Advisers with accurate, secure customer information when they meet with our customers. They have the latest account information, credit agreements and customer data to hand enabling them to serve the customer efficiently.” More @ http://fs-ne.ws/dOT6300uc4I

KONY AND COGNIZANT JOIN FORCES ON NEW CLASS OF MOBILE SOLUTION Leading mobility specialists Kony and Cognizant are joining forces to deliver a new class of mobile enterprise solutions. The two companies have announced they will jointly develop and deliver solutions spanning enterprise mobile applications, mobile app design, and mobile back-end services to enhance business process efficiencies and security. The suite of cross-platform mobile applications will be suitable for industries such as banking, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and government, as well as horizontal mobile applications that can be used by sales and field services, workflow, and human resources organisations. Clients will have

access to Cognizant’s Digital Fabric robust mobile middleware back-end service, based on Kony’s MobileFabric for enterprise-grade mobile services. In addition, Kony’s advanced mobile app design capabilities will be integrated into the offerings of the Cognizant Digital Collaboratory in New York, further enabling clients to envision the “art of the possible” as they architect their digital future using Cognizant’s Digital Works methodology. More @ http://fs-ne.ws/7aeF300udbR

SERVICEMAX ACCELERATES FIELD SERVICE BUSINESS RESULTS WITH SPRING ‘16 RELEASE New products include Service Performance Metrics, the mobile Field Service app, and Catalyst, a new implementation package based on industry best practices ServiceMax, a leading provider of cloud-based field service management solutions, yesterday announced its Spring ‘16 product release. Built on the Salesforce platform, the ServiceMax Spring ‘16 release is headlined by ServiceMax Service Performance Metrics™, a new product that creates a clear link between field service best practices and field service management technology. Business leaders have taken notice of the high margins, growth, and differentiation that service can deliver, and with ServiceMax Spring ‘16 field service leaders will have the business insights, mobile apps, and workflows to deliver on these expected outcomes and achieve operational excellence. “With our Spring ‘16 release, we’re creating a way for field service organization to measure their businesses in ways they previously never could,” said ServiceMax co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Athani Krishnaprasad. “After working with hundreds of field service

businesses across a wide range of industries, we’re uniquely suited to provide a best-practice software platform that helps our customers deliver a bestin-class service experience in the field.” -Athani Krishnaprasad, ServiceMax

to predictive.”

More @ http://fs-ne.ws/PLTA300udEU

Trimble has launched an end-to-end field service management suite called PULSE, designed to improve productivity across mobile workforces

CLICKSOFTWARE ANNOUNCE LAUNCH OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BASED FIELD SERVICE TOOL

More @ http://fs-ne.ws/OTgP300uelq

TRIMBLE LAUNCH END-TO-END FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

ClickSoftware, a leading provider of field service management solutions for the enterprise, today introduced Click Field Service Edge, a new cloudbased, mobile workforce management platform designed to meet the needs of the largest and most demanding field service providers.

The PULSE suite is a comprehensive portfolio of end-to-end field service management solutions that enable businesses to deliver field service excellence across a range of industries, including construction, agriculture, telecommunications and utilities.

Adoption of the cloud has more than doubled over the past two years and, with that, cloud-based software solutions have become entrenched in the business world.

It is cloud-based and modular, enabling businesses to performing critical field service operations to transform the effectiveness of their work, workers and assets to improve productivity, customer satisfaction and their bottom line. Whether businesses need to streamline efficiencies in the back office, with technicians out in the field or both,PULSE provides an extensible portfolio of capabilities to meet a wide variety of operational requirements.

Recognising the technological benefits for field service companies, ClickSoftware’s first, cloud only, SaaS-based solution delivers field service management in an entirely new way. With patented artificial intelligence, Click Field Service Edge connects enterprise customers with automated real-time insight and intelligent decision-making tools that provide a new level of productivity and efficiency to field workforce performance. “As a company that has successfully managed billions of service engagements, and is exclusively focused on providing field service technology – since creating the market – we know what it takes to help our customers always be a step ahead of the demand, not just move in lockstep with it,” explained Tom Heiser, ClickSoftware’s Chief Executive Officer. “We designed Click Field Service Edge to help prepare for the future, and transform the business of customer field service operations from reactive

“The Trimble PULSE suite enables businesses to manage all of their field service operations in one place, with one provider,” said John Cameron, general manager of Trimble’s Field Service Management division. “Our combination of telematics, back-office, scheduling and mobile workforce solutions allow us to offer the most complete set of end-to-end capabilities on the market today.” Built upon Trimble’s robust infrastructure framework, the PULSE suite offers a comprehensive portfolio of capabilities to manage, schedule, mobilise and monitor the complete operation in real-time. More @ http://fs-ne.ws/yzn7300ueHK p9

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News

Pentalver cuts fuel spend by more than £50,000 by improving driver behaviour Road transport specialist Pentalver is saving more than £50,000 a year by improving driver behaviour across its 107-strong Cannock truck fleet...

ollowing the introduction of a performance improvement programme underpinned by WEBFLEET, a Software-as-a-Service solution for businesses to increase fleet efficiency, the company has seen fuel efficiency soar from an average of 8.5 mpg to 9.6 mpg per vehicle. OptiDrive 360, a key component of WEBFLEET, scores drivers on a range of performance indicators from fuel consumption, speeding and idling to driving events, gear shifting and constant speed. Pentalver has incentivised improvement with drivers receiving a quarterly bonus if they hit agreed performance targets.

“WEBFLEET has given us the tools to introduce the bonus scheme and has empowered our drivers to optimise their mpg by giving them real-time feedback and advice,” said Nick Matthews, Pentalver, General Manager “Idling time, in particular, has been cut dramatically since we introduced the initiative and we have been able to offer driving training support for those employees that have most needed it.” Pentalver has also integrated WEBFLEET with container transport management system TOPS, enabling more accurate job planning, scheduling and customer service with full fleet and journey

“WEBFLEET has given us the

A low-code solution... To Field Service Management.

tools to introduce the bonus scheme and has empowered our drivers to optimise their mpg by giving them real-time feedback and advice” time visibility. Pentalver’s investment in WEBFLEET was supported by TomTom Telematics partner, Auto Electrical Services (AES).

Introducing Field Service Management Software you can implement and configure yourself.

Coffee in the Cloud GMS Espresso has woken up and smelled the coffee. In order to bolster its efficiency and lay strong foundations for the future, it is teaming up with Tesseract...

MS Espresso has been supplying, installing and maintaining coffee machines and equipment for nearly fifteen years, but have been relying on a server-based piece of software that just isn’t moving with the times. “The problem is, our current software isn’t adaptable or future-proof,” says Seamus Doyle, Operations Manager of GMS Espresso. “This is partly because it’s server-based. If we want to change something or introduce a new kind of report, we have to give notice and wait for them to come and install it” “That’s one of the reasons we sought out Tesseract, because they offer SaaS.” SaaS – Software as a Service – means GMS Espresso

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will pay a monthly subscription to use the service management components of Tesseract’s Service Centre 5.1 (SC5.1), which are centrally hosted by Tesseract. The benefit of this is that GMS Espresso will receive new features, improvements and updates regularly and instantly. It also means, if there’s an issue, fault or inefficiency anywhere in the system, Tesseract will fix it immediately in-house. The coffee enthusiasts were also encouraged by SC5.1’s user-friendliness, which is a huge cut above their current system. Doyle explains that they would often have to go round the houses to get even basic things done,

whereas the new software is a lot more efficient and easy to use. It was actually one of GMS Espresso’s own customers who recommended Tesseract, because of their own experiences with the software — testament to the company’s influence in the service management industry.

FIND OUT MORE:

oneserve.co.uk

“We’ve had a really good experience with Tesseract,” Doyle adds. “They’re always on hand to answer our questions and make sure we’re understanding everything.” “They’re also providing regular training to help our people get to grips with the new system, and are always willing to work around our schedule.”

oneserve.co.uk

@oneserveco p11

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News

Iot service insights are Re-shaping product design The way products are serviced is reshaping their design at the R&D level, and providing new insights into product usage, according to field service management specialist, ServiceMax. Service mechanisms are increasingly seen as the common denominator of accurate product development and maintenance...

he Internet of Things and intelligent field service automation is creating a connected service loop built into products, enabling manufacturers to track, pre-empt service requirements, understand usage and ultimately improve the way customers are using products. “Before IoT, R&D teams relied mainly on interpretation and anecdotal input from field service engineers to get a full understanding of how products were faring out in the field,” said Mark Homer is Vice President, Global Customer Transformation for field service management specialist, ServiceMax. “But faced with competition and diminishing returns, manufacturers are using IoT and connected field service to make products more

specific to consumer requirements.” With IoT enabled field service automation, companies can collect data automatically from machines and devices to determine their condition, performance, potential for error or malfunction, foresee problems, identify troublesome parts, and equip field service technicians with the right tools and materials. Companies can also gain new levels of insight into how their products are actually used post purchase and aggregate the data for better design, maintenance and user experience, redefining the relationship between businesses and customers.

“Before IoT, R&D teams relied mainly on interpretation and anecdotal input from field

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ClickSoftware experts release new book Best practices, customer insights and reccomendations distilled from 20 years of experience...

ver the last 20 years, ClickSoftware’s customers have managed billions of successful service engagements, and have seen firsthand just how hard service delivery can be. Our new book Service is Hard: Turning Common Field Service Challenges into Customer Engagement Opportunities, contains insights, best practices and recommendations from experts, thought leaders, and analysts, representing hundreds of person-years of experience. This book addresses eight of the toughest challenges in achieving consistently exceptional service, from best practices for customer experience to managing spare part consumption in the field.

full understanding of how

The book’s chapters collect insights from leading service companies, implementers, industry experts, and software developers and provide recommendations on steps to take to successfully address each challenge.

products were faring out in

They are:

the field,”

maximum customer satisfaction and greater insight into how consumers are using products.

2. 3.

service engineers to get a

The result is minimum product downtime, 4. 5. 6.

Field Service Funnies...

ife never goes the way it should. But at Field Service News we’re pretty sure that for those of us working out in the field there are always more challenges than most folks have to deal with. Thanks to the good team at ServiceMax and cartoonist Jerry King now your epic field service fails can be immortalised in cartoon form and we can all laugh at...we mean with, you to!

sponsored by:

p12

News: ClickSoftware release new book on service excellence

7. 8.

Holding the customer’s hand – why customers expect superior service Aligning conflicting stakeholder interests Metrics for measuring field service management Integrating field service management and legacy systems Managing in-day schedule disruptions Integrating parts into field service management Achieving mobile application adoption Turning the Internet of Things vision into value

The Customer Service Imperative Global economic growth over the past century, driven by the manufacturing and selling of products, has created two groups of unsung heroes whose work is mainly out in the field: technical professionals who install, maintain and repair products; and service-based people who provide services such as home-based health care. Both groups have typically been viewed as operational cost centers to be contained and optimised. The more recent realisation is that these service heroes are the driving force for effective customer engagement, the brand ambassadors who present

the employer’s face to the customer. These companies—from the smallest service contractor to the largest global enterprise—see superior service as a primary competitive differentiator and growth engine.

SERV ICE IS H A R D

This shift in thinking recognises important truths about business today. Customers want (and can mainly get) what they want, when they want it. You no longer compete only against others who do what you do, or sell what you sell. You compete with every experience that your customer has with every company that provides your customer any type of service.

A Business and Technology Perspective

Turning Common Field Service Challenges into Customer Engagement Opportunities

Mike Karlskind, Stephen Smith & Alec Berry

The nature of assets, equipment, tools, and knowledge used by service-led businesses addressing different vertical markets is unique. Regulators, competitors, geography, customers and the supply of qualified service professionals are some of the varied characters of these service operations’ external influences, while internal influences include available capital, corporate history, reporting structure and executive strategy. Regardless of type of business or industry, Excel spreadsheets and legacy tools historically used for field service management (FSM) have facilitated only tactical and reactive approaches to the field service challenge. While these tools allowed individual managers or dispatchers supporting a small part of a business or service to make decisions that suited a granular part of the business, achieving total operational awareness was not possible, much less efficiency and effectiveness. Today’s FSM solutions need to support an approach that can consistently deliver against the defined strategy, meet

regulatory requirements and deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction while addressing the variability of each business and industry of operation. Embracing the challenge is only step one. Customer service excellence is a journey rather than a destination, a cliché that is as true as ever in the context of transforming service. As noted in our book’s title, “Service is Hard” - it is challenging to implement business changes to improve service delivery and enhance the customer experience at the same time. Our advice: keep your eyes on the prize. Building world class operations is not easy, otherwise every business would already have done it. Focusing on the top 8 challenges with the right team, the right mindset and the right technology solutions makes excellence in field service operation possible for any organisation. Order your copy of the book @ http://bit.ly/1VeadXy p13

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Expert View: Nick Frank, Si2

Monetizing digitisation: start with the customer experience and work back Nick Frank, Founding Partner at Si2, discusses the importance of understanding the metrics you are measuring to asses both internal performance and external perceptions of your service delivery in the eyes of your customers, and how the two are closely aligned...

espite the bigger plan, do you find that the barrage of every day problems and deliverables makes it difficult to achieve your vision? Most of us are driven by the everyday objectives of our boss, organisation and stakeholders. The best performing leaders are not only able to deliver tactical results, they seem to be able to rise above the daily noise of business, see the bigger picture and figure out how those small wins can be turned from haphazard steps into a coordinated journey. A key challenge is that ‘service’ is a business in its own right. To be successful, all elements of a business have to be coordinated and managed from sales, to operations, finance to people as well as resources. Put this in the context of a working business, where different levels of capability and maturity will exist in the organisation, and it can be pretty hard to figure out where your priorities lie. One way is for leaders to constantly see their challenges in relation to the whole business, so that they keep a perspective on how these elements fit together. For example one could view a service business as requiring four essential elements to be successful: 1.

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Value: Do you deeply understand the experience and value outcomes you deliver to the customer within the industry value chain? Have you clearly defined your business model and how you will organise your business to deliver success? Go To Market: Are you effective at creating and selling products, services and solutions that can access this value? Service Delivery: Can your operations consistently and profitably deliver services to the expectations of the customer? Plan / Leadership: Is there an explicit plan that is financially backed and supported by the organisations leadership?

Although a pretty straightforward way of thinking, most managers can get caught up in the everyday activities and lose sight of the bigger picture. To illustrate this, lets look at one of today’s hot topics, ‘How to maximise the potential of the Internet of Things(IoT)?’ Many companies are still confused as to what the IoT means for them, especially as most commentators are also struggling to see how companies can move themselves forward in a practical pragmatic manner. We see lots of ideas and case studies focused on what the potential could be, but few suggestions on how to achieve the goal.

“This goes deeper than customer needs. It is important to understand what makes customers successful in terms of growth and profit

For a product company, this could really start to challenge their ‘Go-To’ market thinking. The fact that piloting propositions for services is an important part of their design process runs contrary to many product development processes. The pilot process will also impact the ‘Service Delivery’ operations that must consistently and profitably deliver the value proposition. In particular with digital technologies, having the software and analytical expertise in house to develop robust solutions is often a challenge to be overcome. Increasingly it is necessary to work with partners or even as part of an inter-dependent ecosystem. Lastly and most importantly, it is critical to have a ‘Plan’ that is backed by the leadership with a commitment to resources. Probably the biggest frustration from managers driving change is that great ideas do not receive the resources they need due to short-term budgetary reasons.

chain.”

What we see is that even in this relatively high level simplistic example, there are a complex interacting set of factors that leaders, as drivers of change, have to manage in parallel.

Perhaps companies should first focus on the ‘Value’ that the IoT capability can bring to their customer’s value chain as well as their own bottom line.

This complexity is a fact of life and will not go away. This is why a factor that makes top performing managers successful, is having a perspective of how the daily grind fits into the big picture.

This goes deeper than customer needs. It is important to understand what makes customers successful in terms of growth and profit within the industry value chain. Then it is possible to identify the expertise or data that can be generated to make a difference to the customer’s profitability.

An even simpler way of cutting through the confusion of developing a services business can be summed up by a Steve Jobs quote:

within the industry value

As companies explore value, they will start to want to try ideas out, perhaps a few very low key pilot projects with customers, to open their minds up to new opportunities and potentially business models.

‘You’ve got to start with Customer Experience and work back towards the technology, not the other way around’

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Expert View: Bill Pollock, Strategies for Growth

Selling maintenance agreements and professional services – It’s probably much easier than you think! Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for GrowthSM explains why the key to successful service sales lies within understanding youru customers and their needs...

ost people would seem to agree that a physical product, like a copier, printer, or scanner, is the easiest thing to sell. Companies can include photographs and hardware specs for these types of products in their brochures and catalogs; photographs can be included in the company’s web site descriptions; and demos can be conducted right at the customer’s site, etc. But, in many cases, selling a product can actually be one of the most difficult things to do, especially if you have never sold anything to a particular prospect in the past, or if they are not familiar with your company’s lines of copiers, printers, or scanners, etc. This is why we are suggesting that a maintenance agreement, or professional services, for an existing business imaging system (or any other type of equipment) may actually be easier to sell than the original product itself. Let me explain. Chances are, some of the accounts for whom you provide copier service and support purchase dozens, if not hundreds, of individual pieces of equipment every year. For most of your smaller accounts, any single equipment purchase is, in a relative sense, a major consideration for them, both from an absolute and a financial perspective. However, once they have made the decision to purchase a particular piece of equipment, they have already “bitten the bullet” with respect to its importance to their business operations, and they have accepted all of the financial considerations that will be tied to its acquisition and use. You may have already heard the expression “total cost of ownership”, or TCO; what this means is that, in real life, there is usually more to the “total cost” of an individual piece of equipment than just the price that was paid for its acquisition. In addition to the specific purchase price, there is also the cost of ongoing hardware and software maintenance support, replacement parts, help desk support, consumables (like paper, toner, etc.) and many, many others.

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FIRST RAMP ICONS For some, the acquisition of new equipment also requires moves or changes to their physical facility to create space for a new business imaging system or copier machine, as well as additional training for the individuals who may be tasked with various internal maintenance and/or administrative responsibilities. The general rule of thumb with respect to TCO is that, over the course of several years, the “actual” cost of ownership for any particular piece of equipment may be up to twice the initial purchase price (or more).

“Even the most sophisticated business planners may sometimes misjudge what the ultimate TCO will be

existing business imaging system. These are both classic cases where your existing accounts may already be clamoring for enhanced maintenance, or warranty agreements, or for various other types of professional services that your company may already offer (i.e., user training, train-the-trainers assistance, custom documentation, etc.). Whether any of your existing accounts have either mis-planned - or didn’t plan at all - when they made their initial purchase decision, they have one thing in common: at some point, they will recognise that they need additional support over and above what they initially received when they purchased the equipment, and that this support will typically manifest itself in either the need for an enhanced maintenance agreement, specific professional services, or both.

equipment..”

If you have been observing and monitoring your accounts all along the way, you probably can already pick out which ones are “ripe” for selling maintenance agreements or professional services.

As such, it is easy to imagine that any one of your accounts that has already planned to purchase a major piece of capital equipment such as a copier, scanner, or printer would have already examined the anticipated TCO for that unit, and would have budgeted accordingly. However, even the most sophisticated business planners may sometimes misjudge what the ultimate TCO will be for an individual piece of equipment (or not forecast it at all).

If you have also been keeping up-to-date with your company’s product and service support offerings, you are also ready to speak to those accounts with respect to what you believe will make their ultimate “total cost of ownership” less in the long run. Armed with this information, you will find yourself in the perfect position to make the sale of maintenance agreements and professional services as easy as possible - certainly easier than making a “cold” sales call to a new prospect.

For example, they may have only anticipated requiring warranty service for one year or so following acquisition, without planning for any further post-warranty support that, if provided on a time and materials basis, would end up being quite expensive. Some may not have anticipated losing the staff that was originally trained on a particular piece of equipment, and may ultimately find themselves in a situation where new hires may need “fresh” training for an

All you really need is the understanding of what your customers require, matched against the products and services your company offers, and many of these prospective “sales” will simply be waiting there for you to “close” them.

for an individual piece of

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FIDS Baggage Baggage Passenger App Baggage Messaging Gateway Passenger App CONTRACT & ASSET Messaging Gateway Passenger App AIRCRAFT FLEET WARRANTY CONTRACT & ASSET CUSTOMER Messaging Gateway CONTRACT & ASSET SERVICE DESK & PLANNING SERVICE DESK & PLANNING Quote Warranty SERVICE DESK RESOURCE RESOURCE & Resource PLANNINGRESOURCE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP Baggage Reconciliation Auto Reflighting Baggage Auto Re Service Contracts, Assets Customer Inventory Financial Business Field FIELDReconciliation WORKFORCE QUOTE MANAGEMENT WEB QUOTE MANAGEMENT CUSTOMER WEB FIELD WORKFORCE FIELD WORKFORCE INVENTORY &CUSTOMER STOCK FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT INVENTORY & STOCK INVENTORY FINANCIAL &RELATIONSHIP STOCK MANAGEMENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT Management ManagementManagement SYSTEM BUSINESS TURNAROUND MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT PORTAL PORTAL MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT MANAGEMENT Management Management DeskMANAGEMENT & Planning & BillingMANAGEMENT Web Portal & Stock Management Intelligence Workforce MANAGEMENT INTELLIGENCE

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Hidden in plain sight... For five years UK based field service software provider Oneserve have been quietly going about their way, winning significant clients yet flying under the radar. Now with a young, dynamic new CEO at the helm they are ready to stop being the industry’s best kept secret and step into the limelight...

he story of Oneserve is not that of your average field service software provider.

For a start the company actually began life as an in-house field service management tool developed for Connaught PLC - a company that focussed on repair work in the social housing sector. After an employee buy-out in 2010 Oneserve emerged as a fully fledged solution with the advantage of being unencumbered by the initial costs of R&D that many start-up software companies may have faced when entering what is both a complex and busy market. p18

However, perhaps more importantly they already had an intimate understanding of what good service, and the tools to enable that, looked like.

a few, it is fair to say that such success has largely remained under the radar for many in the field service industry.

After a few quick wins on ‘home turf’ within the social housing sector, the team at Oneserve have quietly yet steadily expanded their footprint across a number of different verticals picking up some top tier customers such as Lovell, Islington Borough Council and Sky along the way.

However, with the appointment of a new, young and dynamic CEO Chris Proctor in February earlier this year, it seems that Oneserve are now ready to step out into the limelight alongside their more established peers and start shouting about just why it is that they feel they are ready to become a disruptive force within the sector.

Yet when compared to some of their competitors such as ClickSoftware, ServiceMax and IFS to name

Indeed, Proctor, a passionate digital evangelist who

was promoted from Sales and Marketing Director to CEO after just eight months with the Exeter based company, has already made an significant impact in the market with a blistering attack on his peers, accusing field service software providers of ‘holding innovation hostage’ in a press release issued shortly before he took over as CEO. And whilst his background as a marketeer would suggest that he is certainly savvy enough to understand the power of such an assertion in terms of getting people to sit up and pay attention to Oneserve and what they have to say, when

speaking to him it is clear that this was not just a simple marketing ploy. Proctor, is a passionate guy who truly seems to get the importance of service in today’s modern world.

“One of our core tenants is that we are always focussed on the end user – always focussed on how do we make life for that client better?”

And in his eyes technology providers should be simply making it easier for companies to deliver the levels of service excellence that twenty first century customers both expect and demand.

It is not only a noble sentiment but also an approach that is ultimately winning them business, although Proctor himself admits that it is now time for Oneserve to step out of the shadows and kick on, building upon their success to date.

“One of the key things for us was that we really felt we wanted the system to be as intuitive and easy to use as possible,” Proctor explains.

“We’ve been working incredibly hard and diligently for the last five years but we’ve been pretty quiet about it,” he comments. p19

fieldservicenews.com

Hidden in plain sight: Oneserve

“We want to turn the paradigm on its head, we want to turn every negative into a positive. We can’t control the negatives, things will always go wrong, and things will always break. But if we can enhance the interactions we can control, if we can make those better, we can improve the end experience and it comes back up the chain and makes everything work much more effectively.” - Chris Proctor, CEO, Oneserve “I don’t have a quarter of a million pound marketing budget, I can’t attend all the shows we don’t get involved in a lot of that stuff and as a result we’ve kind of kept under the radar of a lot of people. I know it was a surprise not so long ago when we won the Islington contract with a lot of people saying who are these guys?” “Today we are powering about three and a half million working hours, I’ve lost count of how many engineers, we are working across multiple sectors and now we are being pragmatic in that we are now starting to talk a lot more about what we do.” In fact there are two key facets to the Oneserve approach that appear to resonate with the needs of field service companies today. Firstly it is a model based on licences rather than professional services which will appeal to those more cost conscious Finance Directors (are there any other kind?). And it is also a fully deployable self service product which will be of interest to both Operations folks and IT alike as it means more control of things like reporting and configurations, without having to go back to the vendor everytime a change is necessary. This is a big plus in Proctor’s eyes and he uses a neat metaphor to explain his thinking. “If you buy a car and you drive off the forecourt you turn left – why should you have to call an engineer out to configure your car to be able to turn left, and then right and then left again?”

p20

give you the car, really the emphasis should be on the strength of the car, the strength of the support, the strength of the training and really the overall proposition to allow you get in and drive.” Given their background as an in-house field service solution which previously had a 360 degree role for enabling service delivery at Connaught, is it a fair assumption to say that the understanding of good service delivery remains closely entwined in the DNA of both the Oneserve product and indeed the team itself? “Absolutely” Proctor concurs. “For me it’s really simple. The vast majority of service calls start with a negative. For example ‘my boiler has just blown up’ or this has gone wrong or that has gone wrong. Yes there are other more planned things but by and large it always focuses on a negative” He explains. “And we’ve all been on the end of those experiences, those times we’ve waited for an engineer that doesn’t turn up or turns up late, but we’ve also all had those really good experiences. Where they’ve told you they are going to be with you around this time and then an hour or so before they are due they call you and tell you actually I’m going to be with you at exactly this time.” “Where the engineer has come in, they’ve be really nice, they’ve been really efficient and professional, they’ve had all the tools they’ve needed, they’ve fixed the problem and they’ve been on their way really quickly. And the difference between those two experiences is palpable.”

“Whilst that may make your journey really efficient, it makes it very efficient for a snapshot in time but if you need to diversify, if you need to take a detour or a change in direction you have to go through the same process again.”

“It’s the same in the logistics world. We all groan into our hands when we see our parcel is being delivered by Yodel instead of DHL, it’s that differentiation in service,” He adds

“Our principal is exactly the opposite in that if we

“We want to turn the paradigm on its head, we

want to turn every negative into a positive. We can’t control the negatives, things will always go wrong and things will always break. But if we can enhance the interactions we can control, if we can make those better, we can improve the end experience and it comes back up the chain and makes everything work much more effectively.” “And that really is our prevailing thought that is what we are striving for.”

Real-time field service should not be an afterthought for SMBs Manuel Grenacher, CEO Coresystems provides four key points that small and mediums size businesses should consider to help them move towards real-time field service...

xceeding customer expectations is not just for enterprise-level companies. Customers are demanding the same level of service performance whether their service provider is a large multinational corporation, or a small, local field service company. But how can SMB service teams compete with their enterprise counterparts in this era of increased competition and empowered customers demanding perfect service? Recent research from the Aberdeen Group found that trends were emerging among SMBs that have put a roadmap in place to ensure better service. These are their top strategies for driving service:

And whilst empowering their clients through a self-service based product is core to the ethos at Oneserve, Proctor also outlines how closely they continue to work with their clients in order to make sure that those tools they are providing allow companies to ensure they can deliver a positive service experience.

•

• •

“It remains something very important to us so we do spend time with our clients, we do spend time with them understanding how they are using the system,” he comments.

•

“In the same way we do that digitally in terms of heat mapping and workshops and understanding really what that UX means to the end user - that is very key to us. Understanding how we can make those interactions more effective, more streamlined and more engaging is very important,” he concludes.

•

It is this commitment to understanding exactly how their clients are using their system that will keep Oneserve close to their roots as part of a service orientated organisation themselves, which in turn allows them to develop their product in line with the needs of their customers. Hopefully this outlook won’t change as the company continues to grow, but one change that seems inevitable is Oneserve will not be a best kept secret for too much longer.

Expert View: Manuel Grenacher, Coresystems

fieldservicenews.com

Manuel Grenacher, CEO Coresystems A

•

Increase the availability of service knowledge in order to diagnose and resolve service issues faster (51%). Develop real-time visibility into field assets (i.e. people, parts, vehicles) (48%). Improve forecasting of and planning for future service demand (41%). Invest in mobile tools to provide technicians with better access to information in the field (38%). Develop standardized scheduling processes. (35%) Increase frequency of training for field technicians (32%).

These strategies fall into four main points to help SMBs deliver better service.

Diagnose and deliver One of the most important metrics for customers is how long a repair will take - or “mean time-torepair.” This metric shows just how effective the service team is at resolving customer issues. But to fix an issue quickly, engineers must be able to diagnose what’s wrong; determine what they need to fix the problem, including knowledge, the right tools and parts; and figure out the correct procedure to follow. As equipment grows more complex, not every engineer will have the ability to do this “on the fly.” It’s important then to give

engineers the tools to quickly identify a problem and understand how to fix it. Provide real-time visibility of service activities If there is one top driver for sustained revenue growth in service, it’s executive visibility. Aberdeen’s research has found that having a view into the field helps management, the back office, and the service team react quickly and deliver service at the speed necessary to excel.

Predict demand No matter how top-notch your engineers, without real-time insights, the field team will still have to scramble to meet fluctuating demands. However, the increase of IoT technology is aiding service teams, by helping them identify problems quickly.

“Aberdeen found that even in top organizations, only 53% of machinery is IoT-enabled

incentivized to perform. What are some concrete steps SMBs can take to ensure a better performing service team? We’ve listed three steps below.

Put a CSO in charge of your SMB field team Haven’t heard of the term Chief Service Officer? Most SMBs are not yet familiar with this C-Level title that’s only recently started to infiltrate enterprise-level organizations. To ensure service excellence spreads throughout the entire firm, large enterprises are hiring CSOs to ensure that a strategic service vision is carried out, with accountability and incentives put in place across the entire organization. Train your entire company to value service Typically, most companies focus on equipment sales. But service should not be an afterthought. At best, customers expect equipment to work flawlessly; at worst, they expect service to know when the machinery or part will fail and solve the issue effortlessly.

tracking, service, and

Service can be an opportunity to drive new revenue opportunities, but only if every team from marketing to sales to service can communicate the value they deliver to customers.

maintenance...”

Make real-time visibility your goal

for asset management,

But IoT is not yet a widespread reality. Aberdeen found that even in top organisations, only 53% of machinery is IoT-enabled for asset management, tracking, service, and maintenance.

Invest in the right tools and team As machines and equipment become increasingly complex, service teams need the correct technology to help them solve more difficult issues.

Small field service organizations are investing in technology because they see the benefit of increasing their efficiency and want to understand where they can add further value. However, the goal of investing in technology should be to give your entire firm real-time visibility into field service performance and the customer experience. As customer expectations increase, only companies - both big and small - that provide preemptive service can expect to survive.

The last piece of the field service puzzle comes down to the engineers themselves. As Aberdeen points out, an SMB can make the leap from paper to mobile, and put the right tech tools in their engineers’ hands, but service teams themselves must be engaged, skilled, and most importantly, p21

fieldservicenews.com

Rugged Decoded: Touchscreens

Rugged Decoded: Touch-screens As we continue our series of features helping you decode the jargon and terminology of rugged device manufacturers, we turn our attention to one of the most important yet potentially fragile areas of any device, the screen. Kris Oldand takes a look at what some of the key screen technology developments mean exactly when it comes to selecting devices for your field service workers ...

e live in the age of the touch-screen. Indeed my own son, who is now an inquisitive three and a half year old with an obsession with the word why, really struggled to understand recently why when he swiped back and fore on the TV it didn’t do anything. In a world of smartphones and tablets touch-screens have become a universally understood means of interacting with a device. Whether it is inputting data or simply navigating through an operating system, I would put a hefty wager on the fact that anyone reading this article is both familiar and comfortable with using a touch-screen device, such is the prevalence of the technology today. Touch-screens are an important, even critical part of the user experience of almost all modern tablets, smartphones. Also, amongst handheld computers that for many years were the go to device for field service teams, touch screens are becoming more and more increasingly common, whether combined with a keypad like the more traditional form factor, or on their own as is appearing in new hybrid products such as the Gen2Wave RP1600 (see our review on page 36). Yet at the same time, the screen is of course the potential Achilles heel and obvious weak spot in a rugged device. The balance therefore between delivering a screen that is sufficiently capable of with standing drops and knocks, whilst maintaining high usability, is absolutely critical for a rugged device. So lets look at some of the various options you may find in differing rugged devices when it comes to the screen and what these mean.

Capacitive vs. Resistive

Almost certainly the biggest debate when it comes to screen choices in rugged devices is whether capacitive or resistive screens are better suited for the task. But what is the difference between the two? p22

The older of the two technologies is resistive which relies on pressure to register input. This pressure can be applied by your finger, a stylus or any other object - think of the handheld computers that many delivery companies use, often covered in ink because when the original stylus is lost, the delivery driver often just uses a regular pen to collect a signature instead. Resistive touch screens consist of two flexible layers with an air gap inbetween and in order for the touch-screen to register input, you must press on the top layer using a small amount of pressure to make contact with the bottom layer. The touch-screen will then register the precise location of the touch. Rather than relying on pressure, capacitive touch-screens instead sense conductivity to register input—usually from the skin on your fingertip but also from dedicated styluses. Because you don’t need to apply pressure, capacitive touch-screens are more responsive than resistive touch-screens. However, because they work by sensing conductivity, capacitive touch-screens can only be used with objects that have conductive properties, which includes your fingertip (which is ideal), and special styluses designed with a conductive tip. Initially one of the big advantages of capacitive touch screens was that they enabled multi-finger gestures - perhaps the most obvious example is pinching or stretching a document to zoom in or out. However, resistive touch screens have also supported multi-finger input for about three or four years now also. The big advantage resistive screens have over their capacitive counterparts is the fact that the operator can still use the devices whilst wearing gloves - as the input is dependent on pressure rather than the electrical current being completed through a conductive material such as a finger. An additional benefit is that light touch, such as rain landing on the screen, won’t register so the devices are far better to suited to being used in the wet. Both of these factors are of course particularly useful in a number of field

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Visit www.xploretech.com/fieldservice-uk/ Ready to see firsthand how Xplore’s rugged tablet-based solutions can serve all of your specialised mobility needs? Contact us today: +44 (0) 1926 356 560

Case Study: Konica Minolta

fieldservicenews.com

Transforming service with the latest field service technology Rebecca Barnett, VP Marketing Cognito iQ guides us through how they worked with Konica Minolta to improve far more than just service standards...

t Cognito iQ, we love seeing what we do, come to life in the businesses we are lucky enough to call customers.

service environments. However, another key factor for rugged devices is of course reliability and durability and in this respect capacitive touch screens have the advantage especially in heavy use applications. Resistive screens can have a tendency to eventually begin to wear down in frequently used areas. Such areas may be prone to becoming faded and may ultimately even become unresponsive. Also in terms of reliability, if a capacitive touch-screen does happen to become pierced or cracked it is still likely to function - think how many times you have seen someone using a smartphone with a cracked screen? However, a break anywhere on a resistive touch-screen will often mean that it no longer works. In terms of field service this is a potentially huge advantage for capacitive screens as it allows for a field service technician to continue to utilise their device until they can get the screen repaired.

Going Gorilla...

A special mention here really needs to go to Corning, a specialist materials manufacturer based in New York whose Gorilla brand glass has achieved what very, very few component manufacturers have achieved by becoming a recognised brand beyond the confines of the technologically minded. Other than chip manufacturer Intel, can you actually think of a component manufacturer with a brand you recognise? Such is the impact that Gorilla Glass has had on smartphone and tablet manufacturing, with devices ranging from Samsung’s latest consumer flagship smartphone the S7 Edge, through to Motion F5M by Xplore Technologies rugged tablet, proudly declaring their use of the product. In fact Gorilla Glass has been designed into over 4.5Bn devices globally The process developed by Corning to create Gorilla Glass is to chemically strengthen the glass through an ion-exchange process that creates a deep compression layer on the surface of the glass substrate and this layer essentially acts as “armour” to reduce the introduction of flaws. Produced in thicknesses ranging from 0.4 mm to 2 mm, Gorilla Glass is positioned as an ideal cover sheet for touch-screens. It’s tough enough to handle the surface pressures intrinsic to these devices, and exceptionally thin to enable more sensitive and accurate responses. p24

However, a quick look at the spec sheets of some devices at the higher end of the rugged spectrum from the likes of Panasonic, Xplore, Getac, et al, will reveal that Gorilla Glass isn’t quite so frequently used amongst such devices. One reason for this is that the whole point of Gorilla Glass is that it can deflect impact significantly without breaking and while extreme deflection seems on the surface like a great a great characteristic for rugged devices, once a Gorilla Glass touch panel is installed over an LCD and a point impact occurs, the Gorilla glass deflects and the impact is transferred to the LCD glass which could potentially break, leaving you with a an undamaged sheet of glass covering a no longer working tablet.

Visibility

Finally, whilst the ability to use a touch-screen in various conditions is important, being able to read the screen in direct sunlight is the other significant factor to consider for field service operatives - who will be often working outdoors. The key terminology here that you will often find listed in the spec list of rugged device is a level of NIT. Basically a NIT is a unit of visible-light intensity, commonly used to specify the brightness and it is the crucial the number to look for in device specs for devices that are used outdoors. On average, your general consumer device will offer something between 300 and 400 NITS, which as anyone who will has tried to watch a movie on their iPad (iPad 4 is specced to 364NITS) at the beach will attest is not bright enough to use in direct sunlight. By comparison, the ultra-rugged Xplore XC6 boasts 1300 NITS, whilst Panasonic’s Toughbook 20 and Getac’s V110 convertible laptop both offer 800 NITS, which makes the devices far more usable in the direct sunlight. Also, in addition to improved NIT levels, many rugged manufacturers also offer their own enhancements to improve visibility such as Xplore Technologies’ ‘View Anywhere’, Getac’s ‘sunlight readable technology’, or Juniper Systems’ ‘Sun-to-Shade’ solutions. Of course, as with all other considerations around device selection for your engineers, an understanding of their workflow and working environment should be considered. Are they likely to be working in direct sunlight for example or are they likely to be wearing work gloves? Such questions should shape your requirements when it comes to the type of touch-screen you require in your field service engineer’s devices.

Konica Minolta UK produces business and industrial imaging products, such as MFP’S (multifunctional peripherals), copiers, laser printers and digital product print. The company has over 275 service engineers providing planned, reactive maintenance and support to businesses throughout the UK. Over relationship with Konica Minolta started 15 years ago and exemplifies much of the recent history of mobile workforce technology. From simple automation to today’s solution which provides unrivalled visibility of operational and employee performance. Konica Minolta originally selected the Cognito iQ mobile application to automate and mobilise their field operation. In 2004, following the merger of Konica and Minolta, the UK business implemented a Europe-wide SAP ERP system which replaced the incumbent mobility solution. After a few months, the UK team reverted to the Cognito iQ solution which we then integrated into their SAP application. In 2014, Konica Minolta following a market review, we took the opportunity to showcase our new solution, Operational Performance Management (OPM). Cognito iQ OPM represents the very latest in field service analytics. With easy to understand dashboards and the ability to drill down into granular detail, be it at an individual employee or indeed at a task level, the team at Konica Minolta quickly understood how powerful this would be for them. 18 months on and the Cognito iQ OPM solution is firmly embedded at the heart of the service operation. Here’s a snapshot of just some of the results.

Customer Service Via their handheld devices engineers are able to request customer feedback on completion of their jobs. The number of customers giving NPS (Net Promoter Scores) scores has more than doubled over the past 18 months. However, what’s really impressive is that, on average, the Konica Minolta field team are achieving an NPS score of 85.

aggregated individual score at the end of each day. This then feeds into the League Table which shows, at the click of button, who the highest performers are over whatever period of time you choose. By understanding exactly where improvements in service needed to be made, Konica Minolta developed a whole new engineer career development programme.

As a sustained average, 85 is fairly unheard of in NPS terms and here’s the really clever bit - the scores are received by the back office in real-time. Managers have a KPI to call every customer who scores a 10 within an hour to say ‘thank you’ and enquire as to why they felt the service warranted such a high score.

To move up the levels an engineer has to consistently achieve certain KPI’s and undertake and pass certain training programmes. Pay and reward is linked to this development and guided by quality markers taken from the Cognito iQ OPM solution such as NPS scores, levels of productivity etc.

In parallel, any customers scoring a 6 or below (NPS calls them Detractors) are called to enquire what the engineer could do better next time.

Sharing performance information transparently has enabled productive conversations and Konica Minolta have quickly developed a reputation for being an ‘Employer of Choice’ enjoying many benefits such as reduced recruitment costs, reduced attrition rates and a happy, motivated, loyal workforce.

The insights from all calls are recorded and used to drive a programme of continuous improvement through training, feedback to the engineers and process change.

Productivity The Cognito iQ OPM solution gives real-time visibility of what is happening in the field. With this comes a greater understanding of where improvements can be made. By analysing the data through the Cognito iQ dashboards, significant savings have been made by reducing travel times between jobs. Over the course of year, small savings in time have added up to significant savings in pounds. In addition, the team have measurably been able to service many more machines per man through improvements in training and process.

Now, I’m not all that keen on tech buzzwords. Frankly ‘transformation’ is about as overused as they come. However, having worked with team at Konica Minolta on this story, I really couldn’t justify using anything else. You can read the full transformation story on www.cognitoiq.com/case-studies

Employee Engagement The Cognito iQ OPM solution produces what we call the Worker Scorecard. In simple terms, it measures each engineer against 6 Key Performance Areas and produces an overall,

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9 reasons why millenials are a perfect fit for field service

9 reasons why millennials are a perfect fit for field service... The shift from boomers to millennials represents one of the greatest cultural workforce shifts perhaps ever seen, but for field service companies the rise of the millennial is nothing to fear writes Kris Oldland...

s a card carrying member of Generation X I’ve always felt some empathy with both the Baby Boomer generation that preceded us and the Millennial generation that followed. However, the two inhabit very, very separate worlds with very, very different ideals, beliefs and outlooks on life. With the ageing workforce posing a potential crisis for many field service companies, they now face the unenviable task of migrating from boomer to Millennial and somehow balancing a shift from two generations that contrast perhaps more than any other before. However, the good news is that despite being famously labelled the ‘me, me, me generation’ actually Millennials could quite possibly be the perfect match for modern field service. Here are nine reasons why...

Millennials are natural collaborators One of the biggest challenges of an ageing workforce in the field service sector is that for many baby boomers knowledge and experience is a badge of honour and as such they are not natural sharers of that knowledge. Whilst capturing that knowledge before it walks out your door is vital, distilling it and transmitting it to a new generation of workers is an even greater challenge. However, that challenge can be lessened by encouraging the emerging Millennial workers to work collaboratively using a dedicated communication platform such as CoTap or even something simpler like Skype or iMessanger.

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Millennials are digital natives and natural collaborators and as such any knowledge left behind from their boomer predecessors could be more easily disseminated across the workforce provided they have the tools for collaboration.

centric approach to service.

Millennials are practical and results-oriented

Given the previous point about field service companies beginning to recruit based on softer, more customer centric skills the fact that Millennials are comfortable with learning is important as it allows companies to hire based on these soft skills, whilst training recruits in the more technical skills required.

As a generation Millennials have grown up with an expectation for processes and service to work and speed up their interactions. They are practical, and despite some claims to the contrary they are in fact generally a pretty hard working bunch. In field service, where often the customer is dependent on the engineer to achieve their fix to get their business back operating at full capability as soon as possible, being practical and results orientated are absolutely critical traits. Fortunately, millennials tend to have this in abundance.

Millennials are confident For more and more companies, often the only face to face contact they may have with their customers is when a field service engineer arrives on site. This has led to an ever greater importance in the need for field service engineers to be positive brand ambassadors. Indeed, many field service companies now see strong customer service skills as equally as, if not more important than, technical skills. Millennials, having been raised by their Boomer parents to believe they can accomplish anything are one of the most confident generations to have ever entered the workforce. Such confidence focussed correctly can be harnessed to deliver a truly positive customer-

Millennials are well educated In fact, Millennials are on track to become the most educated generation in history.

Millennials are people pleasers Again a massively important factor when it comes to delivering great customer service. Millennials tend to have a preference for merit based systems and as such have a common desire to gain approval. At the same time they are a more conscientious group than both Boomers who are often focussed on financial remuneration. Therefore the often superhero like status of the field engineer who is able to fix the problem and get a clients business right back on track is going to appeal to many Millennials.

Millennials are tech savvy As the art of field service management becomes more and more entwined with technology the more important it is that your field service workforce is technologically savvy. Fortunately for the majority of Millennials using technology is as much of a natural skill-set as walking and talking. Whether it be digital collaboration, quick and easy adoption of apps or the ability to utilise emerging tools such as augmented reality and smart glasses, Millennials are far more likely to adapt to the new tools

you introduce to the workforce to improve productivity than their Boomer predecessors were. Similarly digital privacy is a much more foreign concept for many Millennials meaning less (if any) objections around the implementation of tracking technologies such as telematics where the ‘bigbrother is watching’ syndrome has often been a barrier to adoption amongst a Boomer workforce. Basically Millennials are far more used to leaving a digital footprint and doing so in work via vehicle tracking for example, is just the way the world works for many a Millennial.

Millennials are multi-taskers Ever get frustrated that, that Millennial in your life doesn’t seem to be listening to you when your talking to them as they are also simultaneously watching TV, updating their Twitter status and having an IM conversation all at the same time? The truth is that Millennials have a both the ability to multi-task and also a relatively low boredom threshold so are often juggling five or more balls. Yet the fact is that they are also able to keep those five balls in the air quite comfortably. For field service companies, particularly those with a number of different products within their install base, this trait could be particularly useful as Millennials are far more likely to be engaged

if they have multiple different challenges to keep them busy. For these guys variety really is the spice of life and a key to keeping them on site is to give them that variety within the workplace. One potential danger is that a company could end up with an entire workforce that are ‘jacks of all trades but masters of none.’ However, with Millennial’s natural tendency to work in a more open and collaborative manner than the Boomers they are replacing, there is less need for the Millennial field service engineer to be an expert in all areas - essentially knowledge and experience can be shared across a team rather than trapped in the silos of individual Boomer engineers.

Millennials are natural travellers Dubbed by some as ‘generation rent’ Millennials are showing a different mindset to that of their Boomer parents. The concept of getting onto the property ladder is far less attractive to the more nomadic and adventurous spirit of the Millennial. Indeed far more Millennials than Non-Millennials report a desire to visit every continent and travel abroad as much as possible, according to Boston Consulting Group. So what better working environment for this generation than field service, where they are not trapped by the confines of an office cubicle?

Add to this that Millennials, whilst having a strong work ethic, also highly value a positive work-life balance, then a working role that provides them with the opportunity to travel could be the key to a happy (and therefore loyal) Millennial workforce.

Millennials are everywhere Finally, Millennials are the largest generation in Western history. It has been estimated that there are 80 million Millennials in the US and 14.6 million UK Millennials. According to Pew Research Centre analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, last year Millennials surpassed Generation X to become the largest share of the American workforce so reality fact is they are already dominating the workforce. The simple fact is that for field service, as with all of business sectors Millennials are the future workforce as well as the future leaders. However, as service continues to take centre stage and as technology continues to become ever more embedded with the improvement of field service delivery, it does indeed appear that the future of field service is safe in MIllenial hands. The challenge however, remains to ensure that the knowledge embedded within the ageing Baby Boomer workforce is captured and retained in order to allow the transition from the past to the future to remain as seamless as possible. p27

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Servitization: Are we set for the next shift forward

servitization: Are we Set for the next shift forward? As the worlds of academia and industry came together once more at the annual Aston Spring Servitization Conference the message was clear. Servitization has moved from concept to reality and now it is time to start moving the conversation beyond the theory and into real world applications...

he concept of servitization, whilst still fresh to many is not actually particularly new.

Indeed, many of the often cited examples of servitization such as Caterpillar, MAN UK and Xerox have been providing advanced services and outcome based solutions business models to their clients for many, many years.

broadcast services division by equipping TeleMadrid with an entire new TV suite on a cost per usage basis, an agreement that put the full onus on Sony to ensure they delivered 100% uptime.

very much around isolated individual companies in many instances, and the type of benchmarking that makes industry sit up and listen more attentively has been somewhat lacking as a result.

Yet at no point in our conversation did the word servitization come up.

This sentiment sat very much at the heart of the opening keynote presentation of this year’s conference given by Prof. Rogelio Oliva, of Mays Business School, Texas A&M University.

Then their is Air France KNB. Rolls Royce, the much celebrated poster boys of the servitization movement have been delivering ‘power-by-the-hour’, their own brand of servitization, ever since the late sixties when they were given an ultimatum by American Airlines to offer a new business model or lose their business. From an academic standpoint, the first reference to Servitization as a concept is widely accredited to a paper published by Vandermerwe & Rada entitled “Servitization of Business: Adding Value by Adding Services” which appeared in the European Management Journal in 1988. Yet here we are some 28 years later and still the terminology is foreign to many, outside specific circles of industry and academia. Yet, at the same time, we are seeing a growing number of examples of servitization by significant companies. Last year in Field Service News, we reported how John Cooper at Sony Professional Services had moved their business towards what was essentially a servitized business model in their p28

When Field Service News interviewed him at last year’s Aston Spring Servitization Conference, Harman Lanser of AirFrance KNB admitted that he hadn’t come across the concept until he saw Prof. Tim Baines give a presentation at the Aftermarket Conference in Amsterdam, whereby he immediately identified with the concept as exactly the process he was trying to take the MRO unit of the world’s 2nd largest airline through. So is there this disconnect between the theoretical world of academia and the world of industry, especially when the evidence would seem to point out that they are indeed both heading in a similar direction? What hasn’t helped is that academics in the past have used a number of interchangeable phrases like ‘life-cycle through services’, ‘advanced services’, ‘outcome based solutions’ and ‘servitization’ when discussing the topic - which has weakened the focus somewhat. Add to this that the research community has tended to focus

“We’ve basically got stuck in a research mode,” began Oliva “We like to go out and work with companies, do a case study, write it up and then we’re very happy with it.” “The problem with doing that is that it is very difficult to aggregate and come up with a theory that is realisable across several industries or even across several companies.” “What you end up with is a whole bunch of anecdotes. ‘Company A did this and Company B did that and it’s very difficult to make progress under theoretical developments.” “I think we as academics, have fallen short of delivering a set of theories, a set of concepts and a set of principals that managers could actually use.” “Of course they [the theories and concepts] are going to need to be modified to a particular p29

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situation, but overall there ought to be some overarching principals to navigate this and we have failed to do that.” A similar sentiment was also offered by Prof. Tim Baines, Aston Centre for Servitization, Aston University when he gave us his reflections at the end of what was a busy, two days. “I think what we have to accept that the lens that we are using to look at the different adoptions of services throughout the world is imperfect,” admitted Baines. “It’s useful to reflect on services gaining traction, but as yet we haven’t got the techniques to say with certainty economy A is competing more

Servitization: Are we set for the next shift forward

that can help them get out of the mess that they‘re in and then there is the third set, which are companies that are competing but are getting some kind of feeling that the world that they operate in is changing.” “It is the companies that are seeing new business models emerge, those who’ve still got stability but who know they’ve got to evolve the way in which they capture value. These are the businesses that we want to work with because if we can help those, we can learn an awful lot about this transformation process and we can position these companies to compete better in future years.” However, Baines believes that there is definitely a synergy growing between academia and industry.

“We have now established the language of servitization the notion of these base, intermdiary and advanced services is becoming well established, most of the presenters are using those terms and those languages now...”

- Prof. Tim Baines, Aston University

on the basis of servitization whilst economy B is competing more on the basis of productization.” However, that is not to say that the move to servitization is floundering, in fact the opposite is very much true. It is now in a stage of evolution where it is beginning to move from the fringe slowly towards the mainstream. That said, there is still a long way to go towards more widespread understanding. Currently there is a very specific type of company that is suited to servitization, especially when it comes to doing so hand in hand with the academics. “There are three types of companies,” explains Baines. “Firstly there are those companies that are doing incredibly well selling products and they don’t want to talk about servitization at all. Then there are the companies that are struggling financially and they are prepared to look at servitization because they are prepared to look at anything p30

“This is the fifth time we’ve done this conference” he begins. “The first year we did the conference we created an event where we had practitioners and we had academics and actually there was a huge gulf between them which was really quite hard to reconcile. We didn’t have a language to describe what was actually going on.” “I think what has happened is that the academics have accelerated in that they now have a better understanding of industrial practice so they can talk more coherently with practitioners and conversely the practitioners are starting to understand the language of servitization.” “Through conversations around base, intermediate and advanced services they are beginning to be able to converse with the academics. There are still differences and there always will be - we’ve got different sets of priorities when we are both doing our jobs, but there is a definite sense of it coming together.”

“We have now established the language of servitization the notion of these base, intermediary and advanced services is becoming well established, most of the presenters are using those terms and those languages now. We really don’t want any other papers coming along offering different frameworks for this topic because we have moved beyond it,” he continues. So how can the academics move forward to support their counterparts in industry? “I would say the first thing we need to do to move forward is to leverage what we have done,” Oliva explains. “We have been out there writing case studies, interacting with firms, learning from them. Lets step back and spend a bit more time with those cases, do the hard work of thinking about what it means as opposed to just documenting the story.” “Then we need to look at the phenomena that we are researching. “We are looking at servitization, which is a transformation that is hard for companies and there is a very long tradition in research that says if you as an academic get involved in the change journey, you can learn from this process - this is something that we call ‘actual research’.” “So the next strategy is engaging in that process, the research will take longer because we are going to walk with that company, but that is what it takes to get the work done.” “The final strategy I propose is a push for being relevant,” Oliva continues. “If we put relevance at the front of our research goals: how we design research questions, how we design research hypothesis, how we design and develop research implications, if we do that with a manager at hand and thinking about the manager and about being relevant, I think that will also help us shape our own work.” One thing is certainly clear after the two days of exhaustive presentations and debate, servitization has begun to move forward both as an industrial movement and as a topic for academic research. The key questions are moving from what and why to how. As Baines commented in summing up the conference in the final session:

It’s time to move your focus to the field... The new wave of field service management technology is here writes Charlie Jackson, CEO, FieldAware...

e’re all customers and have increasing expectations around the service we expect, both in our personal and work lives. For service organisations these expectations bring increased pressure to get it right.

ability to manage the workflow seamlessly and keeps all operational elements connected. There is visibility of the work and the day’s performance and the mobile piece allows decisions to be based on real-time activity and updates.

Field service management software is part of the answer and has been around since the late 1970s. Highly complex, it was originally designed as on premise, server-based scheduling solutions and was very much focused on enabling the work of the back office. Work orders were dispatched, but technicians had only limited access to job and customer information due to the cost and performance limitations of the devices and networks.

For the back office, a mobile solution which easily integrates into existing systems is critical, as often a mix of best of breed solutions are used due to the niche nature of the work.

With the advancements in field service management software going hand-in-hand with the mobile evolution, the focus in service operations is now firmly on the field worker themselves. And this is quite right - the technician has long been the company face and often the only direct contact a customer will have. The customer experience they are able to deliver counts for a great deal. Complete knowledge of the job is often fundamental in the delivery of this service excellence and turning up to site with this information at hand or having access to it, delivers an improved customer experience. The technician needs a mobile solution which helps them to do their job in the best possible way. The workflow to and from the back office has to be seamless as this quick and easy access to information enables better decision-making and ultimately improved resolution. So how can an organisation manage this shift to focus on the field without losing sight of the importance of back office operations?

Taking the back office into the field “Really, now the conversation needs to be about how do we get traction within an organisation, how do we advance this concept.” “That’s where the real challenges are.”

Expert View: Charlie Jackson, FieldAware

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While back office processes remain essential components of any service operation, we’re seeing far more return from putting the focus on the field where greater value can be derived. The right mobility solution gives the whole organisation the

first time, how do you choose the right software for your business with the many solutions on offer today? From working with a range of companies, we’ve found that there are some common principals. •

“With the advancements in field service

•

management software going hand-in-hand with the mobile evolution,

•

the focus in service operations is now firmly

•

on the field worker themselves...” • This can mean that systems are used in isolation and data from one system doesn’t always assimilate with another. Integrated mobility means that the two-way flow of data is captured, just once, and in a consistent and efficient way. It means that no data is left unused or delayed while waiting on paperwork or downloads and an audit trail is in place reducing the chance of any missing information. The result of the right mobility solution is extending the work of the back office out into the field in a robust and reliable way, connecting the operational workflow and ultimately ensuring service objectives are met.

Ease of integration is key. You don’t need to have to think about changing your whole field service solution. Extending the life of your current systems is important, so look at mobile solutions which will leverage and expand their use. Implementation needs to be as quick and straightforward as possible. A lengthy implementation process will defeat its objective. So being up and running in days, not months, should be the realistic goal delivering a much faster ROI. Any mobility solution should be easy to use. Overly-complicated systems will be bypassed and worked around or ignored all together. The easier to use, the quicker the adoption and the better the ROI. All mobility software needs to be agile and able to move with the next generation of mobility. Developments are moving fast so it is important that your provider is keeping up to speed. It is crucial for any mobility solution to work across mixed digital devices, especially with the growth of BYOD and the rise in the use of contractor workforces. The apps will need to work across different operating systems too.

Essentially, mobility is about the anytime, anywhere access to and sharing of information that makes it the vital, valuable next step a service organisation can take. To download our white paper – ‘Making the Move to Mobility: The Digitalisation of Field Service’ – please visit http://www.fieldaware.co.uk/ movetomobility

Focus on the right mobility solution So, whether you are looking at developing your mobility strategy or introducing mobility for the p31

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One Step Beyond: Service Performance Metrics

One step beyond... With the recent launch of ServiceMax Service Performance Metrics™ the Californian based field service software provider have created a new tool that sits between the worlds of consulting and technology. But what exactly is Service Performance Metrics and will this see a shift towards professional services for ServiceMax? To find out more Kris Oldland spoke exclusively to Rei Kasai... KO: You’ve mentioned previously that you see ServiceMax very much as a field service company providing technology rather than a technology company providing a field service solution. How big of a differentiator is that amongst those other companies in the space?

measure, you can’t improve. So we start with what should I measure? Well, we have an opinion on what you should be measuring and that is based on what the best-in-class companies are measuring and then we codify that as eight standard metrics within the technology.

RK: I think to be fair, it’s why we have been successful. Going back to comments from customers on why they choose us; they view us as experts, they view us as “You are field service”. It’s interesting seeing it that way because it’s not just the technology, that’s just one aspect of it and there are many great technology companies out there; but the big difference is, how do you apply those things into real-world business problems and solve them at scale?

How do I visualise that in a dashboard, how do I slice that data over time? That’s the technology aspect.

And I think, if you look at what we’re doing, it’s not just taking these technologies but empowering them into these common practices and I think that’s what the big difference is. We need to democratise this and make this knowledge more widely available, that’s our job as a company to bring this value set to everyone in our ecosystem. So we brought those best practices, from a measurement point of view and then put them into a product so our clients can take advantage of it. These are common metrics, all interpreted in a different way, but we made it so that it could be available to anyone as a customer.

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But to even come to an opinion on first time to fix, time to repair with a contract attached etc, you need to understand what you should be measuring. In the second piece, we have what we call ‘catalyst’ and catalyst is what you can imagine as the packaging of process. Service has not really changed from a procedure point of view over the last 20 years. How you execute that process has changed over a period of time because as technology evolves more and more and we get into the IoT era and age you keep on pushing that, but these are just extensions of how you use that to utilise the process, the base processes haven’t changed.

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Save money Reduce mileage costs and travel time through optimised scheduling and route planning together with the cost saving benefits of massively reducing no-show customer appointments as well as admin costs. Trusted by over 25,000 field based workers each day

Some companies may or may not know what those processes should be and so going back to why they come to us, it’s like “Oh, you understand how service business should run. You understand how we run” and so we could even help them run better.

KO: So what makes this new development so exciting, because let’s face it, every FSM software company out there seems to be talking about analytics tools right now...

KO: Would you say that this is positioning ServiceMax essentially as a much as a consultancy as you are a technology company?

RK: They’re talking about the technology aspect.

RK: No, we’re still a software company.

But there’s two components of what we are doing; one is that if you cannot

KO: But there’s something more here, isn’t there?

To find out more visit www.kirona.com Email: info@kirona.com Call: 01625 585511

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One Step Beyond: Service Performance Metrics

RK: I ‘d say it’s really about capturing the knowledge of hundreds of years of domain experience by all these industry people that we’ve hired onto our team.

KO: Coming back to the Service Performance Metrics specifically as a tool, how much is it about the technology and algorithms and how much is about the insight from your customer transformation team?

Because it’s one thing to consult a customer, to gauge and understand their problems and eventually come up with solutions to them but how do you enable that into the technology so you can scale this?

RK: This is where we get into some of how we design products, in effect it’s about not coming up with technology and then trying to find use cases but instead everything is brimming out from the use cases.

You may not be able to afford those expensive services but how do I democratise this for everyone in the ServiceMax family?

I think that with some of the team we have on board, especially on the customer transformation team, they know exactly how businesses measure success and failure.

KO: Is this something that’s going to embed ServiceMax ever closer with your customer’s processes and the way they work - basically build more long-term relationships?

And so, with that foresight, it’s very easy to engineer those things because if you have that foresight to know where you want to go with it, it’s much easier to plan and much easier to execute and I think that has really helped us.

“You don’t want to re-implement again in the near future so instead of looking at it from the point of view, of ‘I’ve got to get this solution live as fast as possible and just re-do what I have now, but with some automation’ understand that this is a time for change” RK: Exactly. I think in the end, from a customer point of view, there’s a whole personal connection - but how do they drive value? How do they become the champion within the organisation? They become the leader and we enable them in that way.

But the reality is it’s comparisons that will add value. So we also have a notion of time-based series analytics built in. It’s analytics of how you do in comparisons over a period of time as it relates to revenue, cost and time. Those are some of the metrics that we are able to measure.

KO: There’s a position I firmly believe in, which is that in field services the implementation of any service provider software should be viewed as a business investment rather than a technology investment.

KO: Is it applicable across all different verticals?

RK: It is.

RK: I think at minimum it’s having the understanding and part of that is education, some customers may not know any better. So, how do we empower them with the knowledge to do something better for their business and then drive that?

KO: So do you think products like Service Performance Metrics will help service directors make this distinction to their executive boards?

I think that’s part of our major difference why people choose us.

RK: Absolutely. Because it’s ‘How do I translate the business case into true requirements for a solution.’ But also keep in mind the day to day realities of executing the processes.

KO: That’s an interesting point because obviously there’s a journey of continuous improvement for most companies so how easily does the solution evolve? Because obviously today’s best practice may not be tomorrow’s...

It’s not similar for many places and it’s too flippant to say, “make it simple,” and so I think it’s important that you’ve got to balance the two. And I think it’s important that when you get back to your observations, ask can we connect these two worlds in an easier way?

RK: Exactly. And that’s why I think, how do we make it flexible? Because we know that we want people to change as part of how we believe we can make the biggest advances.

Having that point of view and the team understanding that as a goal, and as an outcome focussed point of view -it changes the way that you implement.

We want people to change so how does the technology allow that? We have to measure that change so we can improve it, it all circles back to if you can’t measure, you can’t improve. But at the same time a measurement and also a solution, is a point in time of where that company was in their lifecycle. As it grows and we help companies go through that maturity, how do we enable our customers beyond this? That is all part of our product strategy and as we add other elements and components into the solutions we will see it evolve further. p34

I think with the global customer transformation team and the engineering team being in close partnership has enabled us to deliver these analytics but that’s just the first stage. You have 96% contract attachment rate great, so...what does that mean?

You really don’t want to re-implement again in the near future so instead of looking at it from the point of view, of ‘I’ve got to get this solution live as fast as possible and just re-do what I have now, but with some automation’, understand that this is a time for change. And if you were to think of it in that way, what should you measure and act on? What are the key things that you need to measure to move the business forward? Then think about how you can implement the solution to achieve that. I think that approach can really help. We see our most successful implementations driven this way especially compared to those companies who go ‘Here are 300 features, go implement them’.

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Expert View: Chris Beling, Zafire

Empowering field service engineers through mobile technology Chris Beling, Commercial Director at Zafire, looks at the connection between ‘empowering field service engineers’ and customer satisfaction and some of the business benefits those organisations, who have already made the connection, are experiencing...

ands up if your customers don’t expect exceptional service anymore they demand it, if they expect you to exceed SLAs and not just meet them? Fierce competition and evolving customer expectations mean that meeting SLAs, fixing assets and simply turning up on time don’t really do the job anymore.

Why empower your engineers? We are now seeing more and more leading service organisations shifting focus from product to service and, by equipping their engineers with the right tools and knowledge many are seeing year-on-year improvements in customer satisfaction, which as you would expect, reflects in contract renewals, client retention and positive noise about the company and the brand. According to recent reports published earlier this year the number one compliant made by customers is ‘technician was unable to resolve the issue’. The key reasons for failing to resolve an issue include things such as; lack of knowledge about the customer or asset, incorrect skill set, wrong tools, no parts – these are not new issues so I’m sure you know how the story goes in terms of business impact – multiple customer visits leading to poor customer satisfaction ratings, increased costs and ultimately a reduction in client retention and new business generation. Communication between back office and field service engineers via mobile devices and software applications has been around for years. The step change we are seeing comes from providing the engineer with real-time insight. So rather than simply firing a job out to an engineer with the focus of arriving within the agreed SLA, service organisations need to ensure that the engineer not only gets on site with the customer on time but also has the parts, skills, and information to resolve the issue. Of course it’s not just about engineers receiving

data, it’s about enabling them to collect insight whilst on-site and feed that back into a central database allowing other areas of the service organisation to leverage that information and also provide added value for the customer.

More specifically top service management software providers understand the need to keep mobile solutions simple whist actually providing more functionality to support on-site real timeinsight.

This could be an update to asset information, not only identifying but also generating quotes or processing purchasing orders whilst on-site, with the customer or having direct access to parts suppliers.

Key areas such as on-site quoting, allowing engineers to quote for, and customers to authorise work within a few quick steps eliminates the need for office staff to follow up on quotes, improving both first time fix rates and customer satisfaction. At the risk of getting overly technical, direct system interfaces play a big part in ’empowering the engineer’.

“The introduction and adoption of mobile solutions to empower your mobile workforce is not just about saving paper or improving the speed at which a work order is processed...” How do you empower your engineers

For example, systems are now linking directly to 3rd party parts suppliers to provide ‘Live Part Lookups’ which means engineers can view the entire parts database, search for and order parts, and manage the requisition-to-receipt process from end-to-end allowing on-site ordering and receipt directly from the mobile device. The ability to be reactive on site by using ‘Live Checklist Lookup’ functionality means that if the situations changes on site, engineers can reflect this in the paperwork they raise, decreasing time spent altering or changing job details or forms.

Today, top service management solutions will provide enhanced engineer planning and optimisation tools that can automatically plan a job based on any number of parameters including SLAs, customer opening times, skill set etc.

So the introduction and adoption of mobile solutions to empower your mobile workforce is not just about saving paper, reducing errors generated through manual processes or improving the speed at which a work order is processed.

They will also have the ability to auto plan multiple engineers to a single job whilst allowing the capture of individual times on site and eliminating double entry of data.

It is also about giving your engineers the tools to adopt a truly customer centric approach on every job they attend.

All aimed at getting the jobs/work orders allocated to the right engineer as quickly as possible. Once allocated the engineer needs the right parts. Automatic stock replenishment for the mobile workforce means spares can be ordered to a designated ‘Pick up Drop off’ (PUDO) point eliminating the need for engineers to return to the main warehouse to replenish stock.

And that customer centric approach will also lead to improved ‘first time fix rates’ and will help reduce downtime and loss of productivity for customers – things your customers really want their service organisation to deliver.

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Hands On Review: Gen2Wave RP1600 Rugged Smartphone

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Hands On: Gen2Wave RP1600 rugged smartphone The introduction of the smartphone, and in particular the iPhone in 2007, caused a seismic shift in terms of mobile computing in field service. However, consumer devices have their limitations when it comes to durability and reliability in the field, especially when compared to devices such as Handheld computers that are designed for such use. But with the emergence of a new breed of rugged smartphones geared specifically for field use is that set to change?

As part of our hands on series we take a look at one of the latest such devices, Gen2Wave’s RP1600 rugged Android Smartphone... What the manufacturers say... Launched in the UK in February this year, Gen2Wave’s RP1600, is the first octa-core rugged Android industrial Smartphone. The RP1600 has stand-out performance thanks to its 1.8GHz octa-core processor (Samsung, Exynos5430), 3GB RAM and 16GB ROM on an Android Kit-Kat 4.0 O/S, allowing high-speed parallel processing across eight apps and sufficient RAM space for multi-tasking without delay.

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readable display, available in either resistive or capacitive touch, this Smartphone is ideal for durability in harsher conditions. With extended battery options and simple battery swap-out, this device is particularly suitable for mobile workers who need business-critical information on the move in order to carry out their work in an efficient way.

The RP1600 has a tested and proven IP64 rating withstanding drops up to 1.5m.

This device delivers a range of communication options including Bluetooth 4.0+HS, WiFi IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n, and embedded A-GPS; assisting the mobile worker with real-time access to important data, increasing productivity and accuracy.

Adding this to the compact 4.3 inch sunlight

The RP1600 comes with Gen2Wave’s KIOSK

feature which enables businesses to restrict the use of applications, limit file access, allows for website blocking and the control of WiFi, Bluetooth or phone usage.

First impressions... There is undeniably a gap in the market sat right between rugged handheld computers and consumer smartphones. In fact there are actually two distinct gaps. Firstly, there is clearly a market for rugged smartphones, a cross-over market that can suit the needs of both industry - including field service, but also a specialist consumer market for those who like the outdoor life, such as hikers or sailors for example, where high water and dust

resistance, good outdoor visibility and tested drop resistance are all significant benefits. Then there is a secondary gap, for what are perhaps best defined as industrial rugged smartphones. Devices that meet the above rugged criteria but also incorporate further additional features such as barcode scanners, which are specifically designed to improve and enhance the workflow of their business users. The RP series of rugged smartphones firmly sits in this latter category, and the RP1600 is certainly one of the best looking examples of this relatively small market that I have seen to date.

Front on it looks far more like a consumer device than many of it’s competitors with a large 4.3 inch touch-screen display and smooth curved lines, challenging

devices such as Zebra’s gorgeous looking TC55. p37

Hands On Review: Gen2Wave RP1600 Rugged Smartphone

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And whilst selecting a device for your field service engineers is not about a beauty parade, aesthetics shouldn’t be overlooked when it comes to gaining engineer approval and thus enhancing adoption rates.

enhancements on the newer OS as well as some additional features including enhanced battery life, notifications and security all of which are of benefit to a device being deployed to field workers.

In hand the device whilst of course not as light as a consumer device, is certainly not cumbersome, whilst still feeling nice and sturdy.

Its also worth noting that the RP series also comes in a Windows flavour in the RP1300 albeit with a slightly less impressive set of specs.

In comparison to other similar devices the RP1600 comes in around the expected range of 250g (up to 300g with extended battery) which is just about 10% heavier than the TC55 but significantly lighter than Trimble’s Juno T41s which weighs in at 400g. All in all, the RP1600 looks the part, but how does it perform?

Processing power The obvious devices to look towards for comparison are the TC55 from Zebra, the Juno T41S by Trimble and the Dolphin 70E by Honeywell as each of these devices also belong in what Honeywell term the ‘Enterprise Hybrid Device’ form factor. I.e. the cross over product between Handheld and Smartphone. And in terms of processing power the RP1600 is comfortably leading the pack. In fact it’s 1.8GHz Octa-core processor alongside 3GB Ram puts it in a similar bracket to a reasonably high-end consumer device such as Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4. Amongst its peers only the TC55 with a 1.5Ghz dual processor comes remotely close. There is also plenty of storage space with 16GB internal memory, plus support for up to 32GB on an external micro SD, which again compares well to its main rivals with only the optimum configuration of the Juno T41S besting it.

Operating system The RP1600 comes with Android 4.4 KitKat operating system however it is upgradeable to Android 5.1 Lollipop. Whilst 4.4 is certainly a capable OS, the option to upgrade to 5.1 is definitely a bonus and one that isn’t available on many similar devices. Given that one of the key benefits of an Android device is that there is a familiarity to the OS due to the prevalence of the platform in the consumer world, it could be well worth exploring the upgrade as in the consumer realm many Android devices are now running 5.0 and the look and feel of the two different versions is substantial. There are also some general performance p38

The Ins & Outs: The major selling point for the RP1600 and all of the devices within this bracket, is the inclusion of a dedicated barcode scanner. The RP1600 is capable of processing both 1D and 2D barcodes and features an easily accessible quick button for activating the scanner, which is pretty much the standard for such devices. Other than this, the device comes with an additional 4 short keys for navigation, supports USB2.0 and also accepts stylus input. It also has a 13mega pixel camera with auto focus and flash, which again is ahead of its peers. The one omission that would perhaps of been useful for those out in the field would have been a 3.5mm audio input. However, the device does come with Bluetooth v4.0+HS and has dedicated headset support. However this is of course reliant on providing your engineers with a bluetooth headsets, which are far more expensive than their wired equivalents.

Connectivity: As mentioned above the RP1600 like the TC55 supports the Bluetooth 4.0 compared to the Juno T41S and the Dolphin 70E which come with Bluetooth 2.1. This is particularly useful for field service companies as we look to the future as 4.0 is geared much more towards IoT than its older counterpart. When it comes to wifi the RP1600 is capable of working with all standards of wifi with the exception of 802.11ac which means that the device can potentially operate on the 5Ghz channel although not as effectively as a device boasting 802.11ac. This is however, par for the course within the form factor and none of the RP1600’s competitors offer better. The RP1600 also edges ahead of it’s rivals in terms of mobile internet with support for 4G LTE which is not seen amongst other similar devices. Finally there is a potential to include NFC capabilities within the RP1600, a benefit the

device shares woith both the Dolphin 70E and the T55.

Ruggedity: With an IP rating of 64 the RP1600 is fully resistant to dust ingress however, in terms of its ability to be protected from water, it is splash proof but nothing more. Compare this to the Juno T41S which is fully submersible in 2m of water for up to an hour and this could be a major negative for the RP1600 as it could potentially mean the device is not suited to certain environments. In terms of it’s ability to withstand the occasional knock or two? Well the RP1600 is allegedly capable of surviving tests of 1.5m drop onto concrete, and the device we had for review certainly coped with such a drop, however, it is unclear if the devices was put through the MilStd 810g testing process, which many of it’s peers have done. This could just be information lacking from the spec sheet, or it could be that Gen2Wav used a different approach to testing. However, this does raise a potential red flag when it comes to comparing it with similar devices.

Battery Life: Finally in terms of battery life the RP1600 comes with three options. • • •

Standard : 1860mA/h Li-Ion Extended : 4000mA/h Li-Ion Medium : 2860mA/h Li-Ion

Also as the RP1600 also features a built-in backup battery, hot swapping of batteries should be possible, allowing for potentially infinite battery life as long as you have an additional battery especially as the charging cradle (which is included in the box) for the RP1600 also allows for charging an additional battery.

Conclusion: There is no denying that the RP1600 is an impressive device. Its Achilles heel perhaps lies within it’s rugged specs. If you are looking for a device that is going to take a bit of a pounding and definitely get wet once in a while then it may be worth looking at some of the more robust options of the form factor. However, that said, the RP1600 is both pretty and powerful, is certainly rugged enough for most field environments and would definitely be a good fit for many field service organisations.

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Expert View: Marne Martin, Service Power

The elusive Return on Investment Return on Investment and workforce management should go hand in hand but it can take careful application explains Marne Martin, CEO, ServicePower...

eturn on Investment “ROI” is such a buzz word, especially in field service.

of on site processes and business intelligence are also important.

Most organisations, which offer some sort of field based services eventually realize that to achieve their productivity, customer satisfaction and cost metrics, some level of automated workforce management (WFM) technology is required. Even small productivity gains bring guaranteed benefits to any organization.

And, look to the future. Business models, customer expectations and technologies change.

Making the Case

Build a solid team - Cross functional project teams, which include executive sponsorship and a strong project leader with the relationships and negotiation skills to navigate across the teams are key to driving consensus and success. Don’t forget the tribe.

The business cases for WFM vary, but generally, the most common goals are improved efficiency, increased customer satisfaction, decreased costs and streamlined processes, such as collaboration, inventory management and billing. While WFM technology does require an investment of course, it can generate huge returns, in as little as nine months according to Gartner, throughout the field service process. The most successful WFM deployments begin with a commitment to improving existing processes and a focus on productivity enhancements. An example of the sorts of key performance indicators that are possible with the implementation of a WFM technology that includes configurable parameter-based optimization include: • • •

Total capacity increased from 6,427 jobs to 8,579 jobs (33% uplift) % jobs completed late decreased from 78% to 33% Average jobs/day/tech increased from 4.72 to 7.18 (52% uplift)

To achieve these sort of improvement in your organisation through the implementation of a WFM including algorithm-based technology to maximize your productivity, it starts with well laid plans. Evaluate WFM vendors - Select a vendor based on supported deployment models, especially in 2016 when SaaS deployments are increasingly important due to speed of implementation, cost savings in terms of IT resources, hardware, licensing and security. Integration capabilities, and features such as schedule optimization, mobile dispatch/support

The best WFM vendors offer technology which supports your current business model, but also provides a roadmap to support growth and evolution in the future.

Much information about current operations and the ability to enforce the changes necessary from the bottom up depend on the techs, dispatch, call center, finance and HR teams that general aren’t initially included in the project because they fall outside to the core field service and IT teams. Every functional group will have its own goals (or not) for the project and varying commitment to it. Document plans and goals. Drive commitment by attributing specific ROI metrics to each functional group and use a formal ROI model to measure the results. Collect data. Ensure data is collected prior to launch so that recalculation of the metrics after can be calculated the same way to provide a solid, unquestionable analysis.

Calculating the results Documenting a ROI on a WFM investment is an exercise which requires data from across the enterprise to accurately measure and understand where you started and the productivity gains that were the result. Again, the most common data used to measure success and ROI on a WFM deployment are improved efficiency, increased customer satisfaction, decreased costs and streamlined processes.

Has the solution decreased the number of dispatchers required to manage field technicians? Has technician utilisation improved based on the solution’s ability to handle intra-day schedule changes, decreasing non-working time and overtime? Have field techs been able to improve their efficiency, completing more jobs per day or decreasing the time on the job site? Have first time fix rates improved? Have fuel costs decreased due to more efficient routing? Has headcount been optimized such that resources can be reallocated to other tasks or eliminated? Has schedule compliance improved, decreasing missed or late appointments? Have customer satisfaction scores increased due to shorter appointment windows, improved schedule compliance or proactive maintenance work supported by the WFM tool? Collect baseline data and use a robust, integrated, in-memory business intelligence tool to measure the baseline and post deployment data against one another. ServicePower recently helped a client evaluate the ROI on its deployment of ServiceScheduling. The client documented increased productivity of 29% and a 32% return on its investment in ServicePower’s mobile workforce management software platform, including fewer miles driven, across the entire fleet, resulting in a $1,611,055 savings per year, and improved schedule compliance resulting in $165,600 in late penalty savings per year.

Continued Success Mobile workforce management software solutions are critical to maximizing the productivity and efficiency of employed resources. Measurable, sustainable ROI is absolutely possible. Positive ROI depends on solid planning, cross functional, deeply experienced teams, agreement on the metrics, data collection and robust, integrated BI. To learn what your ROI on a WFM investment could be, run the numbers with our ROI calculator.

Specifically, measure technician and dispatcher efficiency. Has the WFM solution increased the number of jobs scheduled per day, per technician? p39

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Industry Leaders: Tom Heiser, CEO, ClickSoftware

Time to start banging the drum.... ClickSoftware have for a long time been seen as a key leader amongst field service solution providers. But the sector has gone through rapid evolution within the last few years with technology moving forward whilst the market becomes ever more competitive. Meanwhile, ClickSoftware have been through an evolution of their own, with new ownership and a new CEO Tom Heiser, at the helm. And he is determined to see the optimisation specialists stay at the forefront of the industry. Kris Oldland reports...

f you ask any seasoned field service professional to name check three field service software providers you can almost guarantee that ClickSoftware will be one of those they mention. For many years ClickSoftware has been viewed as the gold standard in terms of field service optimisation. However, the market is going through rapid change and is now more fiercely competitive than ever before. In such an environment, relying on past reputations is a dangerous game to play - even when your reputation is one as strong as that which ClickSoftware can boast. However, across the last year, ClickSoftware have gone through rapid changes of their own. After long running and widespread rumours of SAP acquiring the company proved to ultimately be unfounded, the company was

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purchased by Californian based private equity firm Fransicso Partners. This was followed by the appointment of Tom Heiser, formerly of EMC as a new CEO, and whilst many of the Israeli talent that pushed ClickSoftware to the forefront of the sector remain on board, Heiser’s arrival heralds a new era for ClickSoftware, with both their approach to technology and culture having a delicate shift of focus to help them hold on to their position as an industry leader. When we meet for the first time Heiser himself comes across initially as very much something of a people person, a firm handshake is balanced by a warm ‘Hollywood’ smile and he carries that air of informality and confidence that seems to be becoming commonplace amongst senior executives working for p41

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Industry Leaders: Tom Heiser, CEO, ClickSoftware

service centre 5.1

service management software

Our software runs in the cloud, but if you'd prefer... Visit us @ The Service Management Expo Stand N1500

“With the technology, you just get the right people, you invest in it, and you’re going to ultimately do it. The second area is the business model, which as a small public company, which is what we were, makes it super hard to go to the Cloud.”

Well it is clear from speaking with Heiser that he sees very much the future of both ClickSoftware and enterprise computing in general, as being based in the Cloud. However, he also understands that the shift from the still prevalent traditional on-premise model to a Cloud based world is not solely about the p42

Having spent an hour with Heiser, it is clear his enthusiasm could genuinely be infectious, yet it is also clear that he is grounded enough to see the woods as well as the trees. He is also smart enough to not only keep key members of his team such as Karlskind close by, but also to admit when it is time to turn to them for support. There may have been a number of changes for ClickSoftware in the last year or so, but with Heiser at the helm there is a good chance that their position as one of the leading brands in the market will remain firmly intact.

North American Office sales +1 703 437 4230 email sales@tesseractUSA.com

1985-2015 30 years the market leader!

SSERACT TE

But what about the shift in focus in terms of technology? What can we expect from ClickSoftware moving forwards?

“Culture is the third element we need to mention. I look at culture as the biggest challenge, but then there are some people here that are so energised by what we’re doing it’s like, ‘let’s go faster’ I feel like I’m holding you back! It’s really invigorating, but we need to rein it in every now and then and make sure we’re all on the same track.”

European Office M S AN sales +44(0)1494 465066 AGEMENT email sales@tesseract.co.uk

SERVIC

“They have a net promoter customer satisfaction score which is like crazy high and they’re using ClickSoftware as a tool to completely differentiate themselves from their competition, and I’m really proud to see that.”

However, there is also an underlying confidence that he and his team are more than up to the challenge, that he cannot contain.

30 Years

ARS E Y 0 3

...we can install it on your own server! Supporting our 7,500 satisfied users ensures that our feet stay firmly on the ground.

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“Mike and I have been speaking to a number of our clients’ COOs, Presidents etc recently and having strategic conversations around how to best leverage our solution and one of the best examples is Autoglass based over here [in the UK].”

As he speaks, Heiser conveys a sense of the magnitude of the task not only faced by him and his team in terms of moving with the ever growing traction driving software solutions towards the Cloud, but also faced by the industry 1985 - 2015 in general.

SSERACT TE

Indeed, in their midsts ClickSoftware have some fantastic success stories, including European automobile glass replacement giant Belron, who operate in the UK as Autoglass.

“How do we go from an on-premise model with cash flow up front to a subscription model which is where we feel we need to be. Everybody wants to be on the other side, nobody wants to go through that process. But we’re set to get there.”

SERVIC

“Before I flew over here I spent some time sat down with some senior industry analysts in Israel “ says Heiser, “and they were saying to me, the technology behind ClickSoftware is right at the top, but you guys really need to start banging the drum some more.”

2015 1985-

ARE

Part of that process is ensuring that the company retain a focus on R&D but also that they make sure the market is aware of that focus.

“Now we have with a board of six people in Moshe [former CEO and founder] myself and four guys from Francisco Partners, who are all super smart guys that have done this before. So I feel with the six of us we can do it, but how do we do this with the new business models?”

His aim it seems, is not so much a complete re-imagining and reinvention of ClickSoftware, more gentle refinement, to ensure that the company remains ahead both in terms of technology and of course market-share.

2015 1985-

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Given the recent restructure of ClickSoftware, one could be forgiven for thinking this was the old guard introducing the new. However, as conversation unravels across the next hour or so, it seems more that Heiser understands and values the talent and history embedded within the company, and intends to utilise it.

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“The thing is, shifting and changing the culture is actually harder than getting the technology right,” he begins.

When we meet we are also joined by Mike Karlskind, a man with a career spanning some twenty years plus with ClickSoftware.

development of the technology.

US tech firms these days.

AGEMENT

Service Centre 5.1 is available SaaS, is browser independent and will run on any device learn more at www.tesseract.co.uk Service Centre 5.1 is a true end to end web product. Developed using Microsoft .Net technology Service Centre 5.1 is a browser based HTML product supporting a range of databases and having a ‘zero footprint client’.

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Industry Masterclass: Developing Talent

Nurturing your top talent... As the field workforce of many companies begins to go through perhaps the greatest cultural shift in modern history, it is vital that companies begin paying attention to the stars within their midst and help them grow into more senior roles. Jennifer Lescallett, Affymetrix, explained exactly why and how we can achieve this during a presentation at Field Service Medical earlier this year...

pparently only 10% of companies spend time developing their top talent. This is despite the fact that talent acquisition and retention is a critical area for most companies. In field service where training engineers to maintain a specific set of devices can be both a long and costly endeavour this is perhaps magnified even further. So why doesn’t nurturing our top talent take more of a front seat? “We are all hard-wired in service to go out and fight fires and by the time we get to us and our needs as managers and companies, we have super important customer issues that we have to resolve. And we do that on a daily basis constantly fighting fires,” explained Jennifer Lescallett, Senior Director, North American Service and Support, at Field Service Medical held a little earlier this year.” “Taking time out of our day to focus on individuals in our company that are ear marked for those future jobs takes time and it’s time that we need to allocate away from all the distractions of our work environment,” she continued.

Identifying potential stars

Given the above it’s crucial that as a first step you can identify those with genuine potential. “Imagine the bell curve” Lescallett explains “At one side of the curve you have your low performers, people that haven’t employed all p44

the best practices as yet, those that need a little bit of help. Then in the middle you have those people who are quite steady who love doing their jobs and love going in talking to customers, fixing issues.” “And then there is the final part of the curve, the top performers; this is where the focus needs to be.” However, Lescallett advises that we then drill deep into these high performers to find those that can fill future leadership roles. “These are people that have curiosity and a penchant for understanding knowledge and understanding how to connect the dots and resolve the issues. They are people that have insight into your organisation and they have a way of looking at a customer problem and resolving that issue.” Lescallett explains

1. 2. 3.

Developing success profiles Assessing and reviewing your talent strategy Executing the plan

“The first two of these plans are relatively easy. You can go away lock you and your team in a session, leaving your phones at the door and stop fighting fires for one day to get things aligned. However it is the third element that could be the trickiest to implement,” she says. “For me, I find you can kind of get stuck here. Because you have so many things going on in a day-to-day basis that executing on a plan and figuring out how to add this into your daily routine can be pretty tough.” However lets take a look through each of the stages. The first step of developing your success profiles There are also three key steps Lescallett suggests.

around the behaviours that you want.”

managers is important also explains Lescallett.

“Next you have to define those destination rules that you have and that you’ve envisioned for them. Maybe it is an assignment in a new territory/ geography you are expanding into, or maybe it’s leading in a small business unit somewhere else within the business for example.”

“Certainly they [line managers] have a very good assessment of where there team is, but it’s important to get assessment from all of your team leaders. Because people can see different things in different individuals.”

“It is important to help people not only build their expertise in the service and support department but also make sure that they can rotate through different groups within the organisation” she adds The second process Lescallett suggest is then assessing and reviewing talent. “We actually use two or three different models, its actually often dependent on who is driving the company,” Lescallett begins.

Lescallett herself has adopted a three part process for identifying and developing talent.

“You want someone who can identify a need and have the enthusiasm and energy to figure out a solution. You want someone that can think out of the box, that’s truly creative, that works well in a team or whatever the key behaviours are that you see in your current leadership.”

“One is an approach a former CEO brought with him from GE called Zenger Folkman where you get feedback from your direct reports, your managers, and your peers on a whole range of competencies and they give you information about your strengths and your weaknesses. So you get an anonymous report back which is more powerful than most because its not just your manager giving you feedback, it is everyone you are working with.”

The process is identified as:

“Then you have to then build the competencies

Assessing the opinions of more than just the line

“The people with these high potential qualities also want to be engaged, they want to be engaged at the strategic level and they also have determination and grit. They face adversity, they can get through it and they feed off of it.”

Three-part process

The first of these is defining the behaviours that drive success.

“Its often easy to spot the ‘racehorses’ those that come in and are raring to go, always making contributions, they are easy to identify however there are also some diamonds in the rough that are worth unearthing to,” she explains. “People that might have the technical skills but haven’t really refined some of the leadership skills as yet. You have to take your time with these and nurture them to get them to that place where you can envision them being a future leader. However, it’s important not to discount those who may not be 100% polished yet.” The final process Lescallett suggest is a broad review of the data. “You should review the group data as a team of managers, so make sure that marketing and sales is evaluating their team in the same way that you are evaluating yours.”

performance being the y axis - this is a particularly useful and commonplace tool for visualising exactly who in your team have both the potential and the work ethic to step into a leadership role, whilst also helping you see who could be potentially be in need of more coaching and guidance.” “However, it is also important to remember that not everyone is designed for a leadership role. Many very good field service techs are happy being just that.” One thing is certain though, building a healthy pipeline of future leaders is crucial for the future of every business.

“There are many means of evaluating teams, including a matrix format mapping them on a grid, with potential being the x axis and p45

Scheduling: integrated or standalone?

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S c h e d u l i n g : I n t e g r at e d o r s ta n d a l o n e ?

longside the question of which type of scheduling engine is correct for your organisation (dynamic, assisted, optimised etc etc), there is also the additional consideration of whether you should opt for a solution that is stand-alone/best-of-breed or one which is fully integrated within your other core business solutions such as an ERP or CRM system? There are valid arguments made for both sides and, as with every new introduction of technology within a business environment, careful consideration needs to be made as to what will fit best with your existing solutions and your future plans, as ultimately every organisation is unique and will have unique requirements. However, let’s briefly look at the pros and cons of both stand-alone and integrated solutions.

The case for implementing a standalone/best –ofbreed scheduling solution: The first and perhaps most obvious of these is that the implementation of a standalone system is not necessarily tied into the complete overhaul of business-wide working processes - implementing a scheduling engine really should be viewed as a business not IT exercise. This means that on a one off basis, implementation and training can generally be swifter than implementing a more encompassing solution such as an ERP. However, if a company is intending to roll out an entire suite of stand-alone products then the time to implement each will greatly outweigh the time it would take to implement one overall system. The one key area where traditionally best-of-breed solutions have been viewed as often being the more superior option has been in terms of degree of fit. p46

Generally a best-of-breed solution will have been purchased to fit a particular requirement or need (i.e. mobile workforce scheduling in this instance) and you may well find that certain companies have developed a strong feel and understanding for specific industry verticals – meaning an implementation can often be as close to out-of-the box as possible if you find a company that has worked within your sector and therefore has a feel for some of the nuances of your market. This leads us to another big benefit of choosing a standalone option in that there is a wider amount of choice available to you. Firstly, many vendors that also offer their solution as a part of an integrated platform such as IFS or Oracle, will also offer their Field Service Management tools as standalone as well. So when looking at a standalone option you are able to select across the entirety of the available marketplace, from the well known industry leaders through to smaller vertical specialist providers.

With a raft of large platform providers including Salesforce, IFS, Oracle and Microsoft all now offering embedded field service solutions within their wider platforms is there still a market for specialist best-of-breed solution providers? We take a look at the arguments for both stand alone and integrated solutions....

The case for implementing integrated systems: When we look at the benefits of integrated systems, again there are a number of key arguments as to why this approach has merits. Perhaps the biggest and most important of these is the easy flow of data across different business units. In an age of Big Data, such seamless transition of data from one business division to another can help deliver a 360 degree view of a customer – something that is seen as the holy grail of business today. For example, the ability for a sales representative to see that a client has had a number of call outs for service orientated support could open up opportunities for up-selling an improved service package. Similarly, an engineer on-site could potentially see an opportunity for selling some consumable items whilst undertaking a service call and could place this information directly into a CRM directly from his mobile application – something which is relatively easily achieved in many platforms and something which could be a much more cumbersome process with multiple systems in place.

Of course such a wide range of choice can also be a challenge in it’s own right. And whilst smaller standalone solutions may have perhaps more flexibility and a better understanding of your business, it is important to understand their position in terms of business security - no matter how good their solution you will need some level of ongoing support, so you need to know they will be around for at least the amount of time you intend to use their solution for. The flip side of this is that of course with a stand-alone provider, in a worst case scenario there is always the fact that walking away from a solution that hasn’t delivered all that was promised is potentially less painful than if you have opted for an integrated solution that sits across a number of different divisions within your organisation.

Another perfect example of the importance of visibility across a platform could be that if an engineer arrives at a site where the client’s SLA period has expired. All too often such information can be overlooked resulting in that engineer’s work essentially being given away for free. A second significant benefit of the integrated approach is that many companies will find adoption of new systems a lot easier at the end-user level due to familiarity of the tools. Platforms that have various functionalities across different business units are likely to have a fundamental terminology, nomenclature, shared short cut buttons, and similar menu configurations etc.

This concept also, of course applies to the support IT departments are able to deliver. It is far less demanding for an IT team to deliver support across one platform than various stand-alone solutions. Similarly it can also mean that support from the platform vendor is directed to one location, and often one specific account manager rather than having to have multiple vendor support channels in place. Again such familiarity can improve issue resolution dramatically and this is also an important factor in terms of upgrading a system. With a selection of stand-alone solutions in place your IT department may face an unmanageable stream of continual updates and bug fixing patches, whether you are on a Cloud system or On Premise. With a platform approach, the vendor is likely to help ease the burden of so many updates by combining many system wide tweaks in each new iteration. One final consideration is that as mentioned above, whilst the implementation of one standalone solution may be swifter, the implementation of a businesswide system ultimately will be more efficient in terms of man-hours allocated to implementation in the longer term. So in summary, whilst standalone may be more suitable in terms of degree of fit, a fully integrated package is ultimately likely to be more effective in terms of time, cost, resources, and project management in the mid-to long term. However, a standalone approach does allow you to spread the cost and resources required for implementation and given the ability for scheduling engines to provide clear, tangible ROI within a generally short time frame, best-of-breed solutions could be the right option for those companies looking for direct improvements in the short term. p47

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How strong are the links in your supply chain

TECHNICIANS, CUSTOMERS, SPARE PARTS AND PROFITS: HOW STRONG ARE THE LINKS IN YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN? Whilst many field service companies have focussed their efforts on improving both customer experiences and service technician efficiency, it can all count for little if it is compromised by insufficient parts availability. Giacomo Squintani of Syncron looks at the perennial challenge of the supply chain and the role technology can play in finally finding a solution...

s the overall experiences customers have with durable goods manufacturers become more critical to company success, the strides made in field service management to ensure these positive brand interactions have been remarkable. Field service technicians not only are the ‘face’ of a company – the individuals interacting with customers on a regular basis – but also key stakeholders in improving performance for the business as a whole. As a service manager, you must put yourself in both your customers’ and your technicians’ shoes. Your customers’ experiences have improved greatly in recent years. You’ve reduced response times and improved the accuracy of the timing of your technician’s visit while improving first time fix rates. You’ve empowered them with the guidance to fix many problems without visiting them in-person, saving everyone time and money. For technicians, you’ve reduced their windshield time, turned them into trusted advisors and empowered them with access to all the required knowledge at a click. And, you’re already thinking about the new world that augmented reality could open up. But, what’s the classic problem that

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frustrates your customers, your technicians and you as a manager?

unnecessary, often obsolete stock – ultimately harming profits?

That’s right. The technician is on time, highly knowledgeable and determined to help, but isn’t stocked with the correct part.

Furthermore, Aberdeen found that only 48 percent of those organisations leveraged “service parts management to increase collaboration across business functions and service,” in spite of the unassailable notion that “the value that other functions can glean from valuable service parts data is immeasurable.” .

So your brand’s main ambassadors are all too often left sinking in unsatisfactory excuses as unhappy customers stare and shake their heads. And suddenly, that value you’d created through field service management technology investments is compromised by insufficient part availability.

The problem Many OEMs have successfully grappled with the age-old parts:people challenge, and are reaping its many benefits. In 2013, AberdeenGroup established that only 45 percent of the companies they interviewed had “increased their focus on service parts management as a result of the added demands from customers to improve service-issue resolution” . Why are so many organisations failing to address a problem that impacts technicians’ effectiveness, brand reputation and customer loyalty, tying up cash in vans and warehouses in the shape of

Highlighting the efficiency losses of a disconnected service ecosystem, the report concluded that “the success of field service is very much dependent on the parts and vice versa”. And yet…In a separate report, WBR established that, when establishing the criticality of future investments, only 8 percent of executives were considering inventory management. Yet, when they examined the sources of customer complaints, the biggest contributing problem was parts unavailability, cited by 55 percent of service executives. Failure to fix the issue on the first visit, the engineer’s arrival time and their lack of experience generated far fewer complaints, with rates of 35 percent, 29 percent and 12 percent respectively . These negative experiences leave your customers

baffled and frustrated with a negative perception of you brand.

warehouse. And, most importantly, are the ones interacting face-to-face with your

The solution Resolving these types of customer issues and experiences is perfectly feasible. Technologies exist for this very purpose – service parts management and scheduling solutions interacting together to ensure that when your technician arrives to the right place at the right time, they have the right part to keep your customers happy and encourage repeat business. Solutions specifically built for the service business, with all of its challenges around low-volume, ‘just-in-case,’ intermittent availability, rather than for high volume, predictable, ‘just-in-time’ throughput. Service parts management can make your technicians’ lives easier, and in turn positively impact each customer’s experience with your brand. As outlined previously, technicians’ responsibilities are broadening: their job no longer ends when the issue is resolved, it entails acting as trusted advisors, identifying opportunities for further business and potentially maintaining other vendors’ equipment.

customers.

“Hurt by online shopping, brick-and-mortar retailers are providing spare part stocking locations to bridge the physical gap between technicians and end customers. These scenarios should be embraced by service teams...” Room for improvement Service part inventory networks are complex – a part may go through central warehouses, distribution centres, regional stocking locations and secure local collection boxes along its journey to a technician’s vehicle. Oftentimes, technicians will end up being overstocked, causing unnecessary restocking at the

Hurt by online shopping, brick-and-mortar retailers are providing spare part stocking locations to bridge the gap between technicians and end customers. These scenarios should be embraced by service teams: the greater the complexity, the greater the potential for efficiency improvements in the service part supply chain Once routing and scheduling have been optimised, further benefits can only come from other processes within the service ecosystem, and service part inventory management, with its potential to reduce costs across multiple echelons within the supply chain, can deliver quick gains. With switching barriers lower than ever, in a competitive landscape where you are not only fighting rival OEMs but also independent service providers, you owe it to your technicians to empower them with the right tools for the job. You owe it to your customers, too. And, having established fantastic efficiencies in field service management, there is far greater scope to drive value and ROI by optimizing your service part supply chain. Enable your techs to drive an awesome customer experience at every interaction by ensuring the right part for the job is at hand when and where they need it. p49

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Customer centric software solutions: Microsoft

Customer centric software solutions

When software giant Microsoft announced a raft of highly service orientated features in the latest roll out of Microsoft Dynamics it was clear they were aiming to help their customers, help their customers. But how does that translate into Field service, the dedicated FSM solution acquired by Microsoft last year? Kris Oldland spoke to Carsten Groth to find out more...

ften when a major player in the software world acquires a smaller, niche business one of two things happen. Either the smaller company gets swallowed up never to be heard of again, or they continue with their brand but as priorities and focusses change they slowly lose a grip on what it is that made them a success in the first place. Either way there are usually a few fairly easily found voices of discontent somewhere. But when Microsoft acquired FieldOne (now rebranded to Field Service) in the summer of last year the move went particularly smoothly and it seems to have continued in that vein ever since. Carsten Groth, A Technology Solution Professional within Microsoft explained that much of the seamless transition could be put down to the way in which Microsoft work with partner developers and ISVs, which is driven by a technology platform that fosters collaboration and integration across the network.

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“Basically it is because under the hood of Microsoft Dynamics CRM we have something called the XRM framework which allows partners as well as ISVs to build on top of it,” he explains. “Think of it like a Lego brick system, so Dynamics CRM is that Lego brick system, then you decide if you build a police station or a fire station.” “The FieldOne solution came from a global ISV standpoint and what they did was build that ISV solution based on the XRM framework so they reused certain functionalities and entities coming from Dynamic’s CRM because they saw that inside field service there was a definite niche for certain types of data,”he adds. “They [the FieldOne team] already knew about field service, what are the needs, what are the pain points in it and then they built on top of that XRM framework a field service solution.” “So when FieldOne was acquired by Microsoft there were no pain points as it was a hundred per cent solution fitting inside that XRM story.”

“Think of it like a Lego brick system, so Dynamics CRM is that lego brick system - then you decide if you build a police station or a fire station.”

- Carsten Groth, Microsoft

“Basically the only adjustment was the transition from having FieldOne as accompany to having Microsoft as a bigger company.” So how is the product evolving from FieldOne to Field Service with such heavyweight backing? “We think of field service as a broad area,” begins Groth, “we do have small specialisations like the medical industry or automotive, but I think perhaps 69% to 75% of challenges are maybe equal.” “But processes are ever changing and what we as a concept are trying to bring out ‘is here is a change management ability inside your organisation’. Should you buy new software every-time you make changes to your processes? Of course not - and it would be even better if you could make adjustments on your own.” “For example, feedback from one of your field service technicians saying ‘every day I’m starting my business day it is a lot of effort for me to give you a status feedback - can we simplify it? Is p51

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there a way to do that?’ This is exactly what we are able to do inside Field Service. We come up with systems with an easy, simple UI experience that allow companies to form a better connection between mobility devices and all those interactions with the back office.” “We are trying to change the way field service companies engage both internally and with their customers, by introducing what we call Connected Field Service, which you can now do in the Cloud, with a concept that is a horizontal solution which will still totally align to your vertical business. We then have vertical instruments such as healthcare for instance, to provide a nice smooth kick-off within that system.” Given Microsoft’s position as a top tier Cloud services provider, and Groth’s reference to Field Service’s own Cloud functionality, this seems like a perfect time to address the ever-present elephant in the room. Namely Cloud security. “One of the biggest benefits that Microsoft has is that we can do both the Cloud experience as well as the on-premise experience,” replies Groth. “So if there is any reason that we cannot go with you to those Cloud services, we can still fall back to the on-premise models.” “We do have customers struggling with firewalls, policies, or they might even have more specific laws inside certain countries, so what we are trying to do is find spots where we can introduce Cloud services and then make their lives easier.” “Sometimes the worries are simply because they

Customer centric software solutions: Microsoft

read news stories about the unsafe Cloud and different types of compliance issues inside the Cloud. But that is changing, it’s changing a lot.” So does Groth see a growing momentum, in terms of companies wanting to move their field service offerings to the Cloud? “Definitely, people are struggling with making their work easier and the Cloud and Cloud Services can definitely do that.” “But it’s new technology and new methodology that we have to learn. It’s like if your not well trained in Outlook, you may well end up having an inbox with 2000 or more unread emails – should it be like that? Definitely not!” “Why is it like that? It’s because you’ve not been trained in the Outlook experience. And it’s pretty much the same with the Cloud – you must be trained to use Cloud Services and what they are.” This leads us to the question of whether the selection of a field service management software solution should fall under the remit of IT, Operations or both. “It’s actually even more complicated because we also have the management conversation as well, bringing in processes and organisational structure elements as well” comments Groth. “So we have the management coming in and saying this is the way we set out our internal processes are you able to actually adjust the software, or are we able to adjust the software, to continue to allow us to do these processes in this way?” When Microsoft rolled out the latest feature set of Dynamics in the 2016 release their was a lot of focus on knowledge sharing, to empower contact centre agents by putting the right information they need in front of them as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

With knowledge sharing being a critical tool for field service companies facing a potential crisis, with the prospect of an ageing workforce set to leave on mass in the not too distant future, it would be interesting to see if this level of functionality could now be ingrained into the Field Service product suite as well.

Risk or Revolution: Rise of The Machines

Fortunately, it seems this is very much all part of the plan at Microsoft. As Groth outlines “Imagine you’re a field technician, trained on a specific device, scheduled to perform maintenance on a customer site. You open up the log board and maintenance files and figure out it’s not revision A that you have been trained on but revision B that is required.” “Wouldn’t it be nice to have the capabilities of accessing a knowledge base on the fly to see what are the differences between revision A and revision B? Maybe there are not that many changes in the revision so the field service technician could still provide the maintenance to that customer on site once he sees the difference between A and B?” “We enabled this by offering, inside Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, capabilities for these knowledge banks. We even go a little bit further where we are enabling the field service technicians as well as others to comment whether that specific article was useful or not.” So it seems again the strength of the wider Microsoft platform, is adding weight to the feature set of Field Service. Of course, other field service solutions, as Groth (who previously worked for German based scheduling and optimisation solution providers FLS) will attest, are easily able to plug into the XRM framework too, or even add further functionality to Field Service, adding ‘one more Lego block to the tower’ as Groth describes it. But there is also a tangible shift towards field service solutions being part of a wider ecosystem with the likes of Oracle and Salesforce following in the footsteps of ERP provider IFS who made a concerted effort to embed field service within their platform with the purchase of Metric and 360 Scheduling a few years ago. There are of course arguments both for and against the case for integrated solutions versus stand-alone (see page 44), and that is consideration each indivdual company must take. However, with the acquisition and integration of Field One into their platform Microsoft are now a very, very solid option once more for field service.

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Expert View: Mark Homer, ServiceMax

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Mark Homer, Vice President, Global Customer Transformation for ServiceMax explains why increased connectivity is an opportunity for service departments everywhere Mark Homer is Vice President, Global Customer Transformation...

hile the steel industry comes to terms with Tata Steel’s decision to quit the UK, it’s a stark reminder of the fragility of jobs particularly in traditional industries. Add steelmaker to coal miner, milkman, and switchboard operator. Change has always been rooted in technology and shifting global economies, and we are now on the verge of a new revolution.

Companies have good reason to want everything connected. Diagnostics through data analytics is big business, whether it’s pre-determining the life span of products and proactively triggering upgrade cycles or understanding how products are used better to improve new products in the hope they will continue to sell, data will become the backbone of the modern economy. Think about it for a minute.

Like most other revolutions before it, the proliferation of connected sensors on everything from televisions to turbines will create further change to jobs, increasing redundancies but also creating new roles and skills. This internet of things (IoT) is not short on publicity and with good reason. The numbers are somewhat mind blowing. Research analyst Gartner has claimed that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use this year, an increase of 30 per cent from 2015. The consumer market will account for the biggest growth although general and vertical industry use is also increasing. A recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit on the rise and impact of the smart product economy found that 40 per cent of businesses plan to use smart products to automate customer service operations, while 46 per cent report that smart products are already bringing them information about their customers that was previously not possible or not cost effective to acquire. From Cisco’s digital ceiling to Future Shape’s smart carpet, everything everywhere is a target for connectivity.

If companies know for certain the condition of a particular product, how would that impact the sales and service cycles?

“The growth in connected devices will certainly change the working pattern. While the IoT will not remove the need for field service personnel it will demand different

By having a direct, always-on connection to customers’ products it is possible to see how this will change a few things for field service. As keepers of that diagnostic data it puts service departments in a strong position, as long as they can retain control of that data through expert analysis combined with product knowledge. This is where field service needs to re-invent itself or at least evolve. The growth in connected devices will certainly change the working pattern. While the IoT will not remove the need for field service personnel it will demand different skills. With more insight into customer products and the potential for remote analysis through virtual mapping and even drones, it’s possible to see how this change will materialise - more onscreen work, more data analytics, more upselling and more recommendations for future product design. Throw in the potential for localised robots to carry out low level maintenance tasks and suddenly field service in the future looks very different. It’s not something to be feared, but rather embraced.

skills...”

This is an opportunity for field service to be at the centre of the relationship between company and customer, the driving force for product innovation and the keepers of the keys to the new industrial revolution.

Imagine knowing which part is about to fail and organising that part for the customer to avoid any downtime?

And that may mean a name change too.

This would also improve the accuracy of the upgrade sales cycle, and also for that matter, what would the data be worth to insurance companies, especially in the areas of security and health?

Smart product analytical service, sales and innovation support agent anyone?

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The Big Discussion: Fleet Management

The Big Discussion: Fleet Management At the inaugural Field Service Summit held in Oxford last month Field Service News and Greenroad co-hosted a series of five 30 minute roundtables on Fleet Management. With Chatham house rules in place to allow the participants to speak freely about both positive and negative experiences of fleet management, these sessions provided fascinating insight for all of those who took part. Here we share with you three of the key points of discussion from across the day. Who is responsible for fleet management? One of the most crucial factors for understanding how field service companies manage their fleet operations is to understand where fleet management fits within the organisational structure of a company. During the day there were a number of different alternatives brought up as to who is responsible for fleet management. Perhaps unsurprisingly it was amongst larger organisations that we saw the role of a dedicated fleet manager, however, even when a fleet manager is in place, their role doesn’t necessarily involve the implementation of telematics or routing and tracking solutions. Often these more strategic elements ,that are designed to yield business improvement, sat within the field service division. Whilst the fleet manager role is more logistical, responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the fleet. Interestingly for a number of companies fleet management as a discipline sat alongside the health and safety department, which seemed to be a general starting point for many companies when it comes to rolling out an initial telematics solution. As one participant commented: “For us it’s more about managing the health and safety side, health and safety in the UK is now getting to a point where it is actually tying us up to a certain degree, we are dedicating a significant amount of time to deal with health and safety legislation in work” Another option that was utilised by some companies was to completely outsource their fleet management requirements as part of the lease arrangement for their vehicles. In fact as p54

telematics becomes more and more embedded by vehicle manufacturers in the not too distant future it may be that such arrangements become more common. Meanwhile, for those smaller companies with more manageable fleets, the responsibility for fleet management sat firmly with the field service management team. What was clear however, was if companies are to get the most out of their telematics solution, which currently many companies admit they are not doing, then the field service management team must have some input and control over the decisions made around fleet management and telematics. It is also clear that the use of telematics is now becoming far more encompassing than simple vehicle tracking. As another participant commented “We introduced telematics about two/three years ago now and for the same reason – health and safety and that really was the driver, but there are so many other benefits that can be driven from it.“ Other comments around the ownership of fleet management and the drivers behind implementing a telematics solution included: “The ownership of managing the vehicles is all down to our fleet department, in terms of health and safety, telematics, fuel consumption is in our [field service] space.” “Through risk assessment we make sure our service engineers are doing everything correctly, and we send them on advanced driving training courses, to ensure we comply with health and safety regulations and procedures.”

Driver behaviour and fleet management

However, it does seem to be a problem that often heals itself over time following implementation.

Also as more and more providers are developing APIs for open integration the flow of data is becoming increasingly seamless.

It is however, the first of these uses, feeding data back to the field engineers that was discussed the most across the day’s sessions. And gamification played a significant role in how a number of companies utilised their telematics data to improve their engineers driving standards.

“Eventually they saw it wasn’t being used as they expected it to be and now it is accepted” another delegate replied before adding “some of the guys are even asking for print outs from the system so they can see their own performance.”

What was also interesting was that there seemed to be a dual use for data, highlighted throughout the day’s conversations.

As one participant commented” Nobody wants to be the worst driver in the fleet, whether it is a fleet of 5 or a fleet or 500.”

“Companies are coming to us now and saying effectively we’ve got our telematics system running on the operational side but we are looking for something independent of that, that will take care of our R.o.I that will look into duty of care that will make sure our drivers are behaving responsibly on the roads.”

Firstly, it becoame apparent telematics data is used as a day-to-day management tool, but it is also used secondly as a strategic tool to help push a business forward.

And gamification tools can actively encourage improvements . Indeed, there was almost universal acceptance that gamification could be used as a tool to improve driver behaviour across an entire mobile workforce.

“What we are looking at now is finding the synergy between fleet management and performance and health and safety and where you can transfer that data. Data is abundant at the moment and any telematics system can produce an enormous amount of data, but it’s how you interpret and manage that internally that is the key. Handing somebody recieve 20/30 spread sheets in their inbox is not going to create any value for your organisation.”

“There are two main elements. There is the data that provides the behavioural stuff and we are a fortunate position where there are sixteen area managers and they are directly responsible for the field engineers and their behaviour and being able to send data around whether their engineers are driving too fast, or braking too hard etc. is something that they can use as a tool to deal with these issues as line management.”

This last point is something that Ryan Davison, Enterprise Sales Manager, Greenroad believes is becoming more and more prevalent. He explained: “We are starting to get approached a lot more now about the health and safety and environmental factors of fleet management.” “Where as traditionally telematics has always been logistical and operational. We are starting to see a lot more around a duty of care compliance side of things.”

Data, Data Everywhere: Indeed, one of the common themes of the day was how to harness the amount of data that a telematics system could produce and how to effectively utilise that data. The consensus was that it was important to be able to access that data in an easy to manage visual manner, with configurable dashboards being high on the wish list for most companies.

In general most companies now see the value of data available to them.However, there is also a clear fear of drowning in data if it is not possible to access it in a meaningful fashion.

This concept was neatly summed up by one particular participant who said:

“But from an organisational perspective the big win is the data that outlines the utilisation of our equipment.” “We have a big fleet and before, whilst this information was there it was in paper format so wasn’t easy to access. But now it is easier to access and it can inform our decisions on whether to buy or rent new assets, whether we can move things around the country and so on.”

However, the first battle, which is quite a common one it seems, is getting the field engineers to accept a telematics solution in the first place. All too often we heard similar stories from the delegates – namely that of push-back from unions and engineers. “Definitely there is a kind of resentment.” Commented one participant. “It comes down to trust, they believe that you just don’t trust them and then it becomes an issue. The mind-set is ‘if your putting something in it’s because you don’t trust how I do something.’ And then you get the push-back against it.” one delegate commented. “It can then become a vicious circle where the company says if your not doing anything wrong there is nothing to be concerned about, whilst the engineers say if I’m not doing anything wrong why do you need to track me.”

Yet getting that initial acceptance can still be a tricky balancing act as Davison explained further. “The two sides of the scale are encouragement and enforcement.” “To begin with you can take the approach of explaining this is for your own benefit and what those benefits are, but with those who are persistently driving badly then it is a case of falling back on policy and saying to that engineer ‘we need to take you off the road and explore training before we can get you back on.’” In terms of driver behaviour, data can also play a crucial role in streamlining training strategies as Davison added “Whereas traditionally people might have used programs such as AA drive tech, Institute of Advanced Motoring or VOSPA for generic training what we are seeing now is people are using the data more cleverly.” “Applied driving techniques is a good example, what they will do is work with us in partnership and use our data to avoid taking a scatter gun approach, but rather focus the training on areas that it is needed.” “So each individual driver will have their own risk profile and therefore we can assess how effective is that training been in improving them and reducing the risk they pose on the road.”

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Case Study: Intimus

Intimus International transforming their field service operation... Company: Intimus International Group is a leader in the Information Security industry. They offer information security products that include everything from industrial paper shredders to high security and large capacity data destruction machines. Intimus operates in multiple countries across Europe and manages processes and workflows across multiple divisions. They offer comprehensive solutions throughout the value chain in terms of innovation, development, manufacturing, sales and post-sales services.

Operational improvements: Having recently implemented Netsuite, a leading ERP system, to streamline and simplify their accounting practices and resource planning, Intimus wanted something compatible to improve their operational service, they turned their attention to field service management software.

to generate invoices from one day to less than a minute. “With FieldAware we are more efficient now,” said Peter Gils, Service Manager, Intimus. “An engineer’s tablet has a complete list of the workflow he has to do, he can plan his own route without calling the office, we drive less miles which saves us money, and the customers are happy with the shorter response time.”

“We knew from the start that we would need to extend our service needs and NetSuite has a strong partner programme and through that programme we found FieldAware,” explained Grevelt.

FieldAware optimised communications between dispatchers and field service engineers, so now dispatchers enter details of each service order into NetSuite, which instantly transfers them to technicians’ tablets. Engineers contact the customer and schedule jobs themselves. The press of a button tracks the service call and FieldAware automatically sends this data back to NetSuite for invoicing and management reporting.

“FieldAware has a very simple mobile app for engineers and at the same time, it gives me a huge amount of complex information. When an IT solution can offer me that, I’m very pleased.”

“Results have been staggering and the outcome impressive”, said Grevelt. “Most importantly, FieldAware has taken the pressure off the coordination team.”

The company offers service contracts to repair and maintain its product line and the profitability of these service contracts depends on how efficiently the company can meet its obligations. Working across multiple countries and following a merger and acquisition, Intimus found there were a number of bottlenecks with their existing workflows.

Intimus selected FieldAware because of the deep integration with Netsuite, ease of implementation and ease of use for the schedulers and engineers. The implementation of both Netsuite and FieldAware took just 40 days and with quick and high adoption from their field engineers, the positive impact was immediate.

“In the past, we had to have multiple conversations to be able to service our customer,” added Grevelt. “Now we have a direct line of communication to the customer through the engineer in the field. We only have one conversation, and that’s the only conversation that matters, and that’s the one with the customer.”

They needed to more efficiently coordinate communication between the back office and field engineers and wanted to be able to streamline the workflow as well as how they captured and processed data to and from the field.

Together, NetSuite OneWorld and FieldAware transformed the field service workflows in the company’s service operations and accounting, dramatically accelerating the job completion rates and invoicing processes.

To download our white paper – ‘Making the Move to Mobility: The Digitalisation of Field Service’ – please visit http://www.fieldaware.co.uk/ movetomobility

“Our problem was the time it took to coordinate, communicate and process everything that happened in the field,” explained Erlyn Grevelt, Supply Chain Manager of Intimus. Dispatchers were having to have lengthy, often complex phone conversations with engineers for every service request. With each call taking up to ten minutes and more than 50 engineers in the field, the calls alone consumed more than 100 hours a week.

Results:

Challenge: “Intimus International wants to be the leading global supplier of security solutions for data management and cash management systems. We have over 11,000 customers in Benelux, and it is our mission to provide them with best-in-class service,” said Gunther Dehaes, General Manager, Intimus.

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Then, as engineers completed service calls, they filled out the job details on paper, which were taken back to the office to be input manually. A team in accounting then reviewed all completed jobs before invoicing, so the entire process to bill a customer took a full day on average.

The newly automated processes save considerable time for customers, dispatchers, engineers and back office staff alike. Engineers use FieldAware mobility software to schedule their own time based on customer location and availability. FieldAware saves 80 hours each week for the dispatch team, and reduced the time required

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Expert View: Nick Shipton, Kirona

The need for a flexible approach to scheduling Nick Shipton of scheduling specialists Kirona outlines why flexibility is as much a key ingredient in scheduling as optimisation...

obilising field based staff is high on the agenda at the moment with many organisations looking to increase the effectiveness and efficiencies of their workforce alongside offering increased levels of customer service and satisfaction. It is obviously key that in order to mobilise your field staff effectively a complimentary scheduling solution is key to efficiently organise the jobs before dispatching them at the appropriate time to the mobile device. However, what is sometimes overlooked is an understanding that that scheduling solution may need to react to different types of work in different ways, and therefore it’s key that the solution offers flexible methods of scheduling to suit how you need to drive your organisation. Organisations often offer a wide range of services to their customers which can result in diverse requirements in terms of how those services need to be accessed by the customer and how that demand needs to be planned, which can cause issues if your scheduler has been built to suit a particular vertical or service, and drives you to fit the service to the schedulers constraints rather than configure the schedule to suit the requirements. Some services will require fairly simple allocation of one off tasks based on matching skillsets to the type of work, but if you throw into the mix customers expecting appointments at the first point of contact whether that is via a phone call or self-service this simple offering becomes much more complex, especially if you also want to throw into the mix planned works and programmed works. The key with offering an appointed service is that you need to be able to offer and steer the customer towards taking a slot which not only satisfies them in terms of service levels but also takes into account all the other jobs in the system at that point in time, and allows you at that first

point of contact to firstly offer the most efficient slot for you organisation, therefore building in maximum efficiency for the workforce. Even if your organisation has only a small proportion of these ‘fixed’ appointed jobs they become the key jobs in the solution to plan other work around that has a more flexible time window, as we can’t break the direct promise we’ve made to the customer via that appointment.

“Some services will require fairly simple allocation of one off tasks based on matching skillsets to the type of work, but if you throw into the mix customers expecting appointments at the first point of contact this simple offering becomes much more complex...” Generally planned works have a more flexible planning window so we may need to carry out the job within the next X days or complete the jobs once a week, or once a month but we are not too worried about when we carry it out within that period.

routes until you are satisfied with the schedule, but if you have an appointment to satisfy then that can throw an expensive spanner in the works as the scheduler doesn’t have the ability to move it where it may want to. To further complicate matters other services may be carrying out far more complex works such as those which have dependencies and sequencing of tasks required to ensure they are carried not only in the most efficient manner but also in the correct order, or have a service that needs to deal with a very high volume of jobs with a short duration within small geographical locations. All of the above pose different scheduling questions and of course you could look at implementing different solutions for these different scenarios however you lose the ability to get a complete view of the workforce and lose the ability to look at whether further efficiencies can be gained by carrying out more work at one location whilst you have resources there. Reporting also becomes a trickier task as you are unable to easily view within one system how different services or regions may be performing. Analysis can then be done to look if the location and levels of field based staff are correct and whether with a slight adjustment to these levels and locations performance can be improved. You can also start to look at hierarchical KPI’s, so right down to operative level we can start to look at where and how the business can be improved. The ability to implement a truly flexible scheduling solution such as Kirona’s DRS not only allows you to both improve the day to day operation of the organisation but also analyse how it can continually improve.

Most scheduling systems will handle this well as there is plenty of flexibility within the large planning window to continually optimise your p57

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Expert View: Aly Pinder, Aberdeen Group

Don’t give me more, give me actionable data Aberdeen’s Aly Pinder asks are we smarter than we were in the past, or do we just have better access to data?

hen was the last time you asked someone for directions, or used a phone book, or waited for the day’s forecast on the morning news? Well, that last one is probably something you still do out of habit, but the others are things which have left our consciousness as we can just “Google it” from our smart phones. The emergence of technology and the IoT has flooded the service leader with more data than ever before. Machines talk to machines, technicians collaborate with each other via mobile devices while in the field, and customers interact with the service team in rea-time owning their experience. But with all this access to information and data comes a few challenges. How much is too much data? How can we turn this data into actionable insights? Who needs to know what and when? These are all questions that the Best-in-Class service leader is tackling right now. As seen in Aberdeen Group’s recent State of Service Management in 2016: Empower the Data-Driven CSO (March 2016) research, one of the top goals for service leadership was improving the quality and relevance of data for the service team.

Connecting the field team to insights helped these organisations resolve issues faster, deliver more value to the customer conversation, and make the field team better at their jobs!

“Top performers recognise that ensuring the service team has actionable data is a journey and not something that can be solved with one-off investments. It takes a strategy, leadership, and resolve...” All these are great, and the Best-in-Class have some lessons for the rest of us: •

This is a top 3 goal, only training the need to improve customer retention and drive service profitability. Happy customers, profits, and then data quality in that order shows how the impact of data is rising on the agenda of the senior service leader today. But how do we get to a place where data is useful? Is the answer to our data problem more technology? Top performers recognise that ensuring the service team has actionable data is a journey and not something that can be solved with one-off investments. It takes a strategy, leadership, and resolve.

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•

Empower the service team with the data they need to make decisions, more isn’t always better. Top performers ensure the field team has customized data views which provide only the pertinent information for technician for the specific task they are working on. Having the data necessary to solve complex issues at the time of service is integral to ensuring resolution can occur on a first visit, technicians are efficient, and the customer can be back up and running with minimal downtime. Give the field team the mobile tools to have access to insights. The field workforce is rapidly changing. We have been fearing the aging workforce for some time now, and it is finally here. But the Best-in-Class ensure that as technicians leave the business, their knowledge does not. They are able to

•

capture best practices and expertise, and store these insights in an accessible location which can be tapped into via mobility in the field. Leverage machine, customer, and technician data to identify the future of service excellence. The IoT means different things to different people and industries. But the value isn’t just in the fact that we more devices are connected. The value of the IoT is in connecting the service chain to resolution, value creation, and collaboration. Smart machines and products open up a whole new world of possibilities as savvy organizations can take this data and better understand how to optimize assets performance, build better machines, deliver more targeted services to customers, and ensure technicians know the answer to the problem before they even get on site in front of the machine.

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The proliferation of data in this era of the empowered customer can be a challenge for many organisations. Too much data leads to delayed action or inaction all together. Top performing organizations have invested in technology and their internal processes to ensure they can turn all of the valuable data being captured every minute into actionable insights which drive value. Top performers were able to take improved data capabilities and turn that into outperformance in key metrics such as customer retention, SLA compliance, and worker productivity. Don’t be left behind looking at a phone book or reading a map. Tap into real-time data to make the decisions which will lead you into the future of service excellence.

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If your technician is going to make his 3:30PM service appointment Field service software that unites the whole team. A flexible yet powerful workforce management software solution. Web-based for a real-time view of your operations, allowing you to quickly understand what’s happening right now, and what action needs to be taken. TELOGIS DYNAMIC RESPONSE – TIMING IS EVERYTHING.

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