joanna.darby@ifsworld.com, Author at Future of Field Service

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I wrote an article not long ago on the need to build your digital “dream team,” but what exactly is the responsibility of leaders in our digital age? I spoke with Russell Masters, director of IT and analytics at DHU, a provider to the UK National Health Service, for this week’s podcast about the degree to which all leaders must develop digital capabilities. Does everyone need to be a digital expert? No, but all leaders need to reach a level of digital proficiency in some key areas.

Here's what Russell, who has worked in services for more than 20 years having notably been a part of helping build digital services at Rolls-Royce before joining DHU, has to say about the demand of leaders today to become more digitally adept: “It’s really challenging to take forward the blending of IT technology with the real world and go through what has effectively been a transition big IT to the more ubiquitous version of that which is digital. Every aspect of our life now is touched by some form of digital technology. And I would suggest that the generation of business leaders we have now are right at the forefront of being the first to take those big digital tools and technologies and deploy them into their companies, into their businesses and their teams at any real scale.”

While the digital era doesn’t require all leaders to be technical experts, it does require an effort to build more digital understanding and acumen and to think a bit differently about how you build, motivate, and measure teams who do have the technical digital skillsets you lack. Here are five key areas of focus when it comes to stepping up your leadership to be more digitally proficient.

#1: Acknowledge the Necessity

There’s no denying that digital is a front-and-center focus of every organization today. But there are leaders who feel they can leave this all “to the experts,” and this is a major misstep. It is necessary for all leaders to build a better understanding of digital so that they are able to see the opportunities it offers the company, set a strategy to digitally transform and evolve, and drive continual progress. It’s simply too critical an area of the business not to become more adept in.

“I'm probably part of one of the first generations of leaders who've really had to get their head round how do you take these digital tools and technologies and how do you deploy them successfully into your organization? With the complete democratization of those technologies, leaders are wrestling with how to make something really successful out of something that they probably haven't had a lot of chance to understand but know is incredibly important and being used by everyone everywhere to make their businesses better and more effective,” says Russell.

We’re talking about making sophisticated technology very simple for both employees and customers, and this requires immense knowledge and skill. While you don’t need to hold all of that knowledge and skill yourself, you certainly can’t opt out of educating yourself and improving your competence in such an important area.

#2: Know Your Role

While it is essential to put effort into building digital proficiency, that does not mean you need to become a technical expert. You need to find a balance of having ample understanding and capability, enough so that you can make important decisions and effectively lead a team, but not getting buried in a rabbit hole of feeling you need to become the #1 digital expert in your business. What’s the right balance for you between passing the buck (not acceptable) and feeling you must become a deep technical expert (likely not reasonable OR necessary)?

“I think the subject of digital technology starts, first and foremost, with some pretty super sophisticated content. And that can be really daunting when you're starting to contemplate how do you take digital forward,” says Russell. “And there's always a sense and a concern that really maybe you have to actually be a developer yourself to be able to be effective in these areas, maybe actually have to understand architecture. This concern is a barrier that can get in the way for a lot of leaders. The truth is, you do need to know something about the technology, and you do need to find a way of interacting with the many, many technical people that you'll meet. To be more digitally enabled, you need to understand the subject matter a bit more but not to be too worried about knowing it to the Nth degree.”

#3: Learn (and Respect) the Language

This means that the path to building digital proficiency for most leaders has a lot to do with increasing your digital acumen and focusing on creating a common language around digital within your organization to ensure everyone stays aligned. Growing your understanding and building this common language is what allows you to participate at a productive level in all key decisions and progress without needing to get lost in the weeds of the deep details.

“You do need to know enough about the technology to make yourself educated and informed, but you don't have to be the expert,” says Russell. “This comes from learning to ask intelligent questions and learning to pick out the areas where maybe it's worth digging into a big deeper. This is a far more valuable skill than, for example, taking yourself back to night school and learning all about cloud architecture. Your job is to become familiar and converse in the broad language and be able to know who to speak to about which challenge and which issue, and to learn how to bring those people together in a way that drives towards a common goal. Much the same as if you're building a house, you wouldn't lecture your architect on where to put the beams and how deep the footings would be, you trust that they know how to do their job. But you'd certainly have an opinion on what the outcome should look like.”

#4: Build a Team You Trust (and Trusts You)

While you should not shirk your responsibility to grow your digital understanding and abilities, you need to use that understanding to build strength in the technical layers that are beyond what your role requires. Good leaders know enough to define the digital strengths needed and focus on hiring a team that delivers these skills that they can trust. This trust is important, because you won’t know all of the details they do – so you need to trust their abilities and make them feel empowered to accomplish the objectives, and they need to trust your leadership and feel adequately valued.

“Your first focus should be building a great team,” says Russell. “Having built that great team, you've got to trust that that team can do the task that you put them together for. Now, by the same account, you still have to be there and show up every day and show interest and drive the energy. As a leader, your job in a number of ways is to just pour constant amounts of energy into those projects. It can be really difficult when you're leading a big project to understand how far do you go in demonstrating that you're committed and care about it and you're willing to take action and participate and how do you make sure you don't go too far and stifle the creativity and the enthusiasm and the ownership of the team around you?” This is where you use your knowledge to guide, motivate, and empower versus control or micromanage.

#5: Measure Outcomes

Russell was adamant that one of the biggest changes in digital leadership is adjusting to a different way of measuring contribution, where you’re focusing more on outcomes and less on tasks. “Digital leaders must get better at working towards outcomes. This starts with enabling the team to understand those outcomes and then really supporting and empowering them, moving away from a culture where you're the one making all the decisions and you're the one driving all the actions to the one where you're more making the team accountable for the outcome that you'll need to deliver and fostering a culture where we all work together to achieve an end result,” he explains.

This can require a shift in management philosophy and even company culture but is far more aligned to making progress the way you need to with digital projects and digital talent. “These ways of working are not necessarily well understood or well-practiced everywhere but moving away from action to outcome and focusing on creating the right culture and collaborative spirit with the right team is what leads to success in this digital age.”

Stay tuned for far more insights on this week’s podcast.

By Tom Paquin

This is part of an ongoing series of articles about the current State of Service going into 2022, along with the contributing elements that have and will continue to impact the industry in the years ahead. Read this to get caught up:

A few years back at Field Service USA, a group of service professionals were discussing how comparatively subdued talk of IoT was, that year. This was the first indication in a long time that the concept of connected assets was finally moving from buzzword to ubiquitous component of service delivery. Comparatively mundane. But that is not to say that the story of IoT has ended, nor that we’ve reached a fully saturated market. It merely represents how our perspective has moved away from “let’s connect everything” to “What can I connect to be more successful?”

And that defines the current state of connected IoT—practicality trumps novelty for connected assets. Organizations are making informed decisions about what to connect to—not going to market with app-enabled coffee mugs.

Oh wait they’re still doing that? Never mind. BUT—in industrial applications, IoT adoption now is engineered around a few core capabilities. Let’s discuss some of them.

True Predictive
We often talk in abstractions about how predictive systems work with connected assets: If you see one weed on your lawn, we can extrapolate that in a week, you’ll have a dozen weeds. But what does that actually measure? The reality is that for most industrial assets, the amount of data generated by any one device is far too much to manage. So how do you extrapolate from that data what normal processes look like, build benchmarks and contingencies for repair, and make the right decisions for your customers?

At the very base level, you need to ensure that your assets are accurately measuring data. Once that has been established, you need a way to clean that data fast and actionalize it without it sitting, untouched, in a data lake. The solution for that is of course thoughtful AI processing, which, when given the opportunity to study practical business processes can cleanse data and form a complex web of conditional guidelines that can, in turn, automate job assignment, or inform remote repairs.

Augmented Augmented Reality
With those systems effectively in place, calibrated to understand your processes, you now have a new channel of service resolution that goes a step beyond basic remote assistance and telestration. By combining visuals for repair with back-end conditions, you have the ability to show someone how to resolve issues while understanding, on the back-end, what isn’t working, how to get it up and running, and what it’ll look like when it’s working. There are a myriad of business efficiencies that are inherently derived from this. Leveraging them will allow an organization to offer more value to their customers while simultaneously improving margins.

Sarah welcomes back to the podcast Dr. Andreas Schroeder, Digital Lead of the Advanced Services Group, for a discussion around how Servitization and sustainability are inextricably linked and what that means for the future of businesses differentiating through service.

Note: As referenced in this discussion, you can view the agenda and register for Servitization Live at https://www.servitizationlive.com/.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to be talking about the intersection between servitization and sustainability. I'm thrilled to welcome back to the podcast today, Dr. Andreas Schroeder, who is the digital lead of the Advanced Services Group at Aston Business School. Dr. Andreas Schroeder has allowed me to call him Andy, so I will do that from now on.

Sarah Nicastro: Andy, welcome back to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Yeah. Thank you very much, Sarah, for having me back.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you for being here. I'm excited to chat with you again. Andy was on a previous episode of the podcast, episode 100. We had a really good conversation about how we need to leverage data, and how we need to think about data related to driving servitization. Today, we're going to talk about a completely different topic, but one that is top of mind for a lot of folks right now, which is sustainability. We're going to be talking about how servitization really fuels sustainability, and vice versa, in some different ways.

Sarah Nicastro: So Andy, the Advanced Services Group is gearing up for Servitization Live, which is an event that you all are hosting at the beginning of October. Sustainability, or climate change, is one of the three mega-trends that you all have defined, that you will be talking about at the event. Before we dig into our conversation for today, why don't you tell our listeners just a little bit about those mega-trends are, was Servitization Live is about, and how they can check that out of they're interested in getting some good insights.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Yeah, of course. The three mega-trends that we're looking at in the context of servitization, and we'll talk about servitization itself in a minute, we see servitization as a very innovative business model that had dire implications, not just for the companies engaging with it, but wider societal implications. The specific ones that we've been looking at is its contributions to topics like aging population. There's just no going away, as a population we are aging, and there are technologies and ways of interaction that can help to manage this situation. Servitization plays a role in this.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: There's food and food security, is another mega-trend. As the population grows, food is an important resource, more important than ever. Again, servitization has a role to play in bringing in technologies and different partners of food-supply chain. Making sure that food security and efficiency of food can be managed.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: The one that we will be talking about today, and looking at the intersection, is sustainability in the wider context. So, we're looking at climate change, resource utilization, and so on, and so on. These are the three trends, so sustainability is the one that we're focusing on in the podcast here.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: The event that we're gearing up, and thank you for pointing this out, there is a big executive conference that we are mounting. You find this under the title Servitization Live. It is a mixture, it is a hybrid event. It is from the fourth to the sixth of October, including, and taking place physically in Birmingham, UK, but will be streamed worldwide in real-time, of course. We will have a number of very interesting guest speakers coming from industry. The names that will be represented, and will be presenting, is Goodyear, Schneider Electric, Baxi Boilers, and Emuron Technologies. These are some of the names. They will be discussing, from their point of view, how servitization activities already help their business, what their future plans are, and what their contribution for their companies are to their sustainability goals through this business model.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: It's an event, please visit the website. If it's of interest, please register. It will be a very good event. We are expecting around 600 people to attend. We did this last year, and I hope we exceed this this year.

Sarah Nicastro: Excellent.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, absolutely. Those of you that have been listening to the podcast, or following the content on Future of Field Service, you know that I'm a big fan of what the Advanced Services Group does. I participated in the event they held last fall, and I'll be participating in Servitization Live as well. Certainly don't come because of me, there are many wonderful guests that will be speaking and sharing, and talking about how these mega-trends are in their minds and in their strategies, and how that trickles down into their individual businesses. We'll make sure to put the link to check out the event in the show notes.

Sarah Nicastro: For now, let's dive into our chat for today. As Andy mentioned, the trend or theme that we're focusing on today is sustainability. I think that what I like about how you all have planned Servitization Live is to really urge people to think about these mega-trends. I think it's very natural for business leaders to get very focused on their day-to-day, their views, and their world. It's important to do that, but it's also important to take a look at the bigger picture of what's happening, and how that all plays in.

Sarah Nicastro: Today we're going to talk about this intersection between servitization and sustainability. The first thing I want to talk about, Andy, is the differences in perception of products, between traditional product delivery or production models, and servitized models. Can we talk a little bit about what the difference is, and how that relates to this intersection between servitization and sustainability?

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Okay. Yeah, I think this is a good starting point. Maybe before we go into the detail, the way I understand sustainability, there are societal obligations towards sustainability, and then, of course, companies have their own strategies, and so on. What I argue is that these are not contradictive to each other. A good-run business, or specifically a business that tries to move into the Advanced Services space, naturally needs, and I will show this in my explanation, naturally needs and contributes to sustainability objectives. These are not two diverging interests that need to be balanced out. The interesting thing is that these are very well, and very nicely, aligned. The speakers at the conference will map this out for us as well.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: When we talk about Advanced Services, for us this is a move away. Largely we focus on manufactures, and we support around 300 manufacturers in their move from only focusing on their products, designing, developing, and manufacturing the products, and then selling it on to the customer, to a situation where a manufacturer designs, produces, the product, but instead of selling it on to the customer, the manufacturer retains ownership and responsibility for the product. It often becomes a pay-per-use scenario. The classic example is the Rolls-Royce-era engine example, where Rolls-Royce bought a large number of engines, still stays responsible for the functioning and performance of the engines, and the airlines are paying by the amount of thrust they take out of these engines. This is a significant shift for manufacturers, from being producer of products to provider of services on the basis of their product.

Sarah Nicastro: Services, and, in a lot of cases, outcomes. They're really selling that outcome in a lot of instances, so kind of a step beyond selling it as pay-per-use or pay-per-service and selling it as pay-for-an-outcome. Maybe not in every situation, but in many. That makes sense. In the conversation related to sustainability, let's talk about then how the difference in model, of produce to sell and offload versus produce to own, maintain, and deliver outcomes on, contributes to the topic of sustainability.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Yeah, yeah. I think this is the angle to understand this. In a traditional business model, and we generalize here, of course there are differences in companies so we look at generic business models of produce to sell, the objective is to make a profit margin, of course. The objective for design is not necessarily to look at the full life-cycle of the product. The objective of design and production of the product is to make it attractive for purchase. There will be a lot of innovations that companies would have in their drawers that would not meet the price point that they've identified for their customers, so these will not be developed. Or, they make the product a bit more expensive, probably a bit less attractive for an initial capital investment, but maybe there's a long-term benefit to it that they failed to communicate, or they're unsure that they can communicate in a sale of a product situation.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: A traditional business model, that limits a company. How much innovation they can introduce in their product, and also what is the cost of product they are prepared to invest in and sell. When we look at a change of business model, from a product to a servitization context, a lot of these changes... We are in a situation where the objective is not to sell for an immediate price point, or to design for an immediate price point and sell, but to be able to deliver services on the back of a product for a longer period of time. The contracts we're looking at are 10-year contracts, servitization contract. This is a company that designs a product, and knows that they are responsible for it, for the use, and service, and outcome, and possibly efficiency of the product for a ten-year period, will naturally design the product in a different way. We see this with companies like Rolls-Royce. When they design an aero-engine for service, that is a very different aero-engine, there are very different design principles, than if they would design an engine just for the immediate sell and not for continuous ownership.

Sarah Nicastro: Just to clarify a couple of points for my mind, and for listeners, this is not to say that manufacturers in a traditional business model are producing garbage, or intentionally producing products that are not good. But, by the nature of staying in business, they are producing products that the market will bear. They are producing products to the degree that the market will bear in the sense of selling that product under a traditional, capital-based sales model. So in that, when you mentioned innovation, there are certain restrictions on innovation. Some of the things that could potentially be done to, let's say, maybe put higher quality materials into that product, or to design it and produce it with the ultimate duration of life in mind, versus having to stay at a certain price point. That's where we're talking about there's differences in how these things could be produced if the goal was not to produce what the market can bare for a capital expenditure.

Sarah Nicastro: If you look at it now moving to the servitization model, the manufacturer is retaining ownership of the product, and they're responsible for delivering the outcome, so then it makes sense to invest more in the production of the product to extend that life cycle, because ultimately, they are benefiting from that longer-term view. That will help them in terms of their ultimate profits by innovating in the way that the market won't bare on a capital-expenditure model.

Sarah Nicastro: Let's talk about this just a little bit, to make sure folks are understanding. When you are going to build a product to be longer lasting, there's more expense to that. This is where looking at servitization or the shift to a pay-per-use, or as-a-service model, comes into play. Let's talk about why and how that is.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Longer lasting is one aspect, but, for example, serviceability. A lot of products are not designed to be easy to service, in the sense of easy to exchange parts that deteriorate in order to be able to maintain that entire product and give it a longer life. We know this. Again, thank you for pointing this out, this is not talking down companies and their design objective. If you are competing on price, and a lot of companies it doesn't matter in which price point they are there is a price element in the way they can position themselves in the market, there are restrictions of what they can innovate and what prices they can ask for. That limits it. The beauty of the change of the business model is that it takes away some of these limitations, and allow companies that are innovative to actually use their innovation to develop products that they would otherwise not be able to.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: What we have is longer lasting. When we look at developing products in a servitized context, or as a part of Advanced Services, we have products that are longer lasting. There is no interest in companies having to replace products repeatedly, selling another one, just preparing for the next sale. There is no interest in that. The interest there is efficiently, in an optimized way, maintaining this product in use, because they benefit from products in use, not products in sale. The other part is, again, every service, every repair, is to the detriment of the manufacturer. It's a cost to the manufacturer, so they will design in a way that things naturally are easier to service, if it has to be replaced, then it would otherwise be. A lot of these Advances Services contacts also have efficiency clause in there. It is up to the manufacturer who provides the service to ensure a certain energy efficiency, or even cost-down commitments. Sometimes there are clauses in there that requires a manufacturer to ensure that there's, I don't know, a 3% energy efficiency benefit every year as part of the service, so cost-down commitments from the side of the manufacturer.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: These very much change how a product is being designed, that's the design and production phase, but also it changes how the product is being in the use phase. When the product is being managed by somebody who has designed the product for longer lasting, who has penalties around inefficiencies, there will a lot of focus on maintaining, making sure, that the product runs on maximum efficiency. That's where the digital part comes in, a lot of monitoring along the side to ensure that this is in place.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Also, there is significant opportunities to look at the end of life of a product. Again, traditionally when we have a product-for-sale model, these products are being sold off after a while. There's a primary use, and then a pump or a machine is sold out over to a secondary-use, and possibly internationally gets distributed. There is very little chance for a manufacturer to be systematic about remanufacturing some of the products that are being taken out of use. They disappear somewhere and reduce efficiency, and cannot be traced back. When we have a situation like we're describing in a servitized context, where the manufacturer retains ownership of the products, has to monitor these products, be responsible for them, for them it's a natural, easy process to actually remanufacture these products, and take these products back and put them into a remanufacturing, recycling context.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: This is some of sustainability benefits of Advanced Services that are part of the business model. They are not an extra, kind of an ethical or moral obligation, this is to optimize the business of the manufacturers in Advanced Services context.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes, that makes sense. We're talking about the difference between products being optimized for sale versus being optimized for use. I want to emphasize the point you just made, because this is a conversation you and I had when we first talked about this topic, which is there are people for whom sustainability is a very, very important topic when it comes to their personal beliefs, and objectives, and how they want to contribute to the environment in a positive way, and all of those things. We see that reflected in a lot of, like you said at the very beginning, there's the personal obligation side of this, and there's the corporate obligation side of this. You see some correlation there, but I want to go back to the point you just made, which is nothing we've talked about so far is something that is important simply to benefit the environment. It does, and that intersection is fantastic in the sense that these servitization objectives and journeys have that impact, but what we're talking about here is really just good business. That's all we've talked about so far, is if you are on a servitization journey it benefits you from an efficiency standpoint, a financial standpoint, to put these measures in place that also improve sustainability.

Sarah Nicastro: Let's talk about that a little bit more, because I think that there is a, again we're generalizing for the sake of a podcast discussion, but there is a group of people that care deeply about the topic of sustainability and want to altruistically take measure to have a positive impact there. There are people that maybe care less. Not to sound negative, but there are people for whom it isn't as big of a personal objective. The point is, whichever side of that lens you're looking at this from, the benefit is the same. If you're looking at it from the sustainability lens, there's benefit. If you're just looking at it from the value of servitization and how to maximize that value, there's benefit. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Yeah, yeah. There's another dimension that will come in. In the future, just as an example, in the UK we have now, a new legislation has come out, that by 2025 no gas boilers can be installed in new houses. For a manufacturer of gas boilers that means if they don't change technology, they have no business. Forget about the moral obligation and the environment constraints of gas boilers, from the legislative point of view they do not have a business within four years' time. They need to innovate technologies in order to be in business, and customers need heat. They are now looking at technologies, for example heat pumps, which is more advanced technology than that traditional heating boilers. But, these technologies are more expensive, they are more difficult to manage. They require more collaboration, more looking after, than traditional gas boilers.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: They are now into the trap that we described where they have to innovate. The technologies are largely there, but they don't match the traditional price point of a gas boiler, around, I don't know, £4,000, £5,000. They are now working, and all of them do this, at saying, "Okay, the legislation doesn't allow us to go for traditional technology." The legislation is based on sustainability goals from the government, but even if the company doesn't subscribe to them they will not have business if they do not meet these goals. They are now looking at finding new business models around Advanced Services to make sure that their higher-value technology, that is more expensive and probably out of reach for a couple of new homeowners, can still be put into market, they have a business, and that technology can be provided, and their expertise can be of use in providing heat.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: This is on our side of the pond. The Americans, you have similar sustainability goals that means 50% reduction by 2030. This is nine years' time, 50% reduction of CO2 emissions. There will be, if there are yet, significant legislation coming out there, for private citizens, for companies. There will be a lot of new technologies coming on the market to meet these goals. It will happen. If the goals are met or not, but legislation will be there, incentives will be there, and the penalties will be there. Again, we are in the space where new technologies, as I described with the gas boilers, come onto market, possibly at a different price point, requiring new business models for these businesses to have a business, a viable business.

Sarah Nicastro: That's a good point. What we're really talking about is disruption, and where that's coming from. You and I have known each other a while, and we both talk with companies regularly who are embracing the journey to servitization. Many of them have begun that journey because they saw the opportunity to do so. They saw the opportunity to differentiate their business, to provide different value to their customers, to embrace a business model that would really transform their value proposition and their company, and how they operate and everything. Those folks maybe have a bit of a head start, in the sense that if some of those companies are then impacted by this legislation, they kind of have a start toward that transition. However, even those that haven't yet embraced the journey sheerly based on the opportunity they see, now they're being nudged to do so because of this legislation. The disruption is coming in the terms of a threat, not an opportunity. Regardless of how that's coming, it's just the reality.

Sarah Nicastro: The opportunity to servitize, and the opportunity that exists to change the business model, so that they can develop the products they need to develop in the way the need to develop them to meet those legislative restrictions is really pretty awesome, that that opportunity exists. However you're kind of coming into the journey, it's a really exciting journey to be able to embark on. I think you make a really good point about the US, and it's probably safer for me to say this than you, because I live in the US, but we do lag a bit in a lot of areas on this topic, related to some other countries and regions. You make a very good point, which is the objectives are there and the legislation comes next. It is going to come, so there's an opportunity here for those organizations here to get ahead of that a bit. Rather than waiting for that to be looming, and to be trying to race through this, there's an opportunity to look ahead a little bit and to sort of see what's coming, and to get ahead of that. That's a really interesting point.

Sarah Nicastro: I think we talked a bit about, for you all and the organizations you work with, what have you seen related to the catalyst? Is there differences in the catalyst for why companies are embarking on this journey? Have you seen that reflected in when companies come to you and they say, "Hey, we want to servitize, and here's why"? Are those stories different today than they were a few years ago? Or, how do you see that evolving?

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Yeah. There are different kinds of motivations, and they always show up in different ways in these companies. The buckets that I would put out there to group these, quite a number of them come from the digital angle. They're saying, "Okay, we have now digitized our products, have a good understanding. What are the business models that help us to get more value out of our investment in digital?" We discussed it in the first podcast, Advanced Services is one of the business models, I would even argue the business model, for digitalized products.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: The other bucket is certainly companies that, and often quite successful company, that are saying, "Okay, the competition is creeping up. We believe that we have an edge in terms of product, innovation, and so on, and so on, but we are getting squeezed on price. Let's look at a new business model where we can make use of our innovation and our expertise, and not have to compete on price with the competition." Now, we see also, in the case of the boiler for example, or other companies we're interacting with, where companies literally see the absolute need... the constraints that the traditional business models puts on the way they can interact with customers.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Just as another example, again in London, I'm not sure what year it kicks in, but it's to become a low-pollution... entire London, city of London, not just the city, the environment, the metropolis of London, a low-pollution environment. Manufacturers producing, or even products being used... We talk about trucks, we talk about cranes, we talk about diggers, we talk about everything, will have to meet this requirement.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: All the alternative technologies are electronic-based, will be more expensive, more difficult to maintain, require different kinds of care, do not fit traditional models. Companies coming to us and saying, "We see how the market is being constrained for us", for the right reasons, they don't even blame legislators for it. They see that this is a game change for them, now we have to respond to this. Again, coming not from altruistic motives, but somebody as a leader of a business that needs to make sure that they have a business in 15 years' time.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Also, sometimes it's based on legislation, sometimes their customers. Their customers, if it's a progressive company, their customers want to have certain commitments and certain energy efficiency benefits. Seeing from their supplier, because it becomes part of their own energy balance. If I run a production line, I'm responsible for all the energy emissions that are being created as part of the production line. If some of the machines are not owned by me, I'm still responsible, it still shows up on my balance sheet, so I want to make sure that my suppliers of products helps me to achieve these emission targets that might be there because of law, or because of strategy, or ambitions. There's a cascading effect now also, where companies hold each other accountable, and enforce each other's business model, therefore.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). This is probably a really unfair question, because I don't think there's any real way to answer it. I know that you're going to want to give me a concrete answer, but when would you say that the traditional business model is just going to become largely obsolete?

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Yeah, I can give you a precise answer, and the precise answer is the innovative companies will start... We already see it, not will start, they are starting to change the business model. But even a company like Rolls-Royce, aero-engine, will still have a market for selling some of the products from the traditional way. I would hazard a guess that the more innovated companies will, of course, embark on it further, but even the most innovate companies will still have a business related to traditional products. What we see, and the benefit of having this Advanced Service in place is the innovations that come out of designing products differently, and looking after a product differently. They seep over into the design of the products that are for the for-sale market. Any kind efficiency, and kind of improvements, will not just be isolated to one part of the business.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: I don't think there will be a world where traditional business model is totally phased out, but definitely the Advanced Services business model takes over. As always, there are some companies spearheading. Some regions are spearheading. Scandinavia is very much ahead of most of the rest of the world. Europe is catching up. The US is actually involved, and it will involve further, and further regions of the world. And, so it goes.

Sarah Nicastro: Like I said, that was unfair, and probably poorly stated. Maybe obsolete isn't the right word, but you just think about... There's a point at which the lag just becomes insurmountable. The companies that are innovating, and the companies that are not, I think there will reach a point where that gap is very hard to close. I do think that, while the traditional model won't become entirely obsolete, the demand to embrace this reality is immense. I don't think that a company can just say, "Oh, we'll just keep doing it this way and we'll continue to be successful." It just seems that that is virtually impossible. Okay, I'm trying to think of-

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Let me just get to it with another... You're saying it's virtually impossible. We have examples of companies that... I don't know what the proper word is, that didn't pick up a trend. Polaroid, Kodak, Blockbuster. There are examples of companies who missed the trend, and some can catch up, some cannot. It depends on the set-up. Innovative companies miss trends, so it can always happen. Information is out there. So that's one thing, the other interesting thing that we've seen over the years, I started with the example of Rolls-Royce, these are high-value, very high-value, items. I'm not sure the price point of an aero-engine, but let's assume we're talking about millions. The price point of products that are becoming attractive for Advanced Service models are now on the level of boilers, which are around a couple of thousand pounds. The change over the last 10 years, in what is possible and what is feasible, is dramatic. Largely related to building up expertise, opening up to the business model, but also the connectivity part.

Sarah Nicastro: You're saying the two servitized, so the potential... Yeah, it's almost like... I wrote an article, it was years ago, I don't even remember the exact angle, but it was talking about the trickle-down effect. It's the same concept. This originated as a business model that seemed feasible or a good opportunity for a company like Rolls-Royce that produces products that are millions of dollars, but it's now becoming an opportunity that is equally viable to a company that produces boilers that are a couple of thousand pounds. There's-

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Just one point to it. If we take the same mindset, as a service, and we wind back 10 years ago and we looked at software as a service coming around the corner. Of course, this started with very innovated companies, but now if you develop a piece of innovative software and you don't have it as a service proposition, you probably don't have a business. If you expect that everybody will host themselves any version of your software you don't have a business. A lot of companies will still offer this. It is getting wound down. Sometimes you cannot host it yourself. Try to host Gmail yourself, it's a tricky proposition. This is the way I see it with Advanced Services as well, that it starts with the innovative companies, it starts with the bigger companies with a high-value product, it trickles down into smaller-value products.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Just for our conversation, I looked up, just to close the loop, the energy efficiency of software as a service, or cloud services, versus hosting yourself is around 90%. If you would use the same software, hosting yourself as an SME, versus going into the cloud and using some of the cloud space available, you reduce your energy consumption by 90%, CO2 creation by 90%, by going into the cloud. Not the same numbers in our, as a service proposition, because we talk about products, physical products, that need to be shipped, that need to be produced, but we talk also about significant potential in energy and CO2 emission reduction based on the same principles.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And product waste, in the sense of what we talked about initially, which is these products being intentionally developed and manufactured to last as long as they can. Yeah, it's really-

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: And be recycled at the end. So lasting, and the recycling loop. Which again, is big chunk of what needs to be done by companies for their own efficiency's sake, and which has the added benefit for sustainability aspects.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I love this topic. I think it's so interesting. We have a podcast coming up with Tetra Pak, and it's a whole sort of extension of this conversation, which is looking at the opportunity for... beyond their own products, but looking at the opportunity to offer sustainability efforts as a service, and to help other organizations improve their own sustainability efforts. It's really interesting. I consider them a leader, and industry leader, and one of the more innovative companies, but those are the best to learn from in the sense of what we talked about with the trickle down. To listen those stories, and to think, "Hmm, how could that apply to my own business?", I think is just really cool. There's a ton of potential here. There's so many layers to this topic. I really enjoyed talking with you today, and having this conversation. I'm sure you'll come back. Is there any other comments, or words of wisdom, that you would like to close with? Any other thoughts?

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Everybody who's interested in this topic should definitely attend, register and attend, our Servitization Live conference. Again, I outlined the speakers, but what you will hear is innovative companies, for example, who are in the heating or cooling business that, again, servitize. They will also map out their servitization journey, their strategy, their objective, their motivations, but also show how they are under significant scrutiny in terms of sustainability and climate change. Cooling and heating is one of the major sources. They use this new business model to make significant headway in standing up to the scrutiny, and innovate in the way that benefits their business, as well as meeting governmental targets. If anybody is interested, and you should be, then please join Servitization Live.

Sarah Nicastro: Awesome. Yes, I definitely urge you to do so. Just to reiterate what we talked about today, the two objectives are inextricably linked. That's the really exciting thing there, is that this intersection is real, and as organizations embark on their servitization journeys they're going to improve sustainability, and as companies focus more on sustainability their going to turn to servitization. That's a really cool thing, and it'll give us a lot more to talk about. We will be sure to put the link to the event in the show notes, so that you can all go and register. I urge you to do that.

Sarah Nicastro: Andy, that you so much for joining me again today. I appreciate it.

Dr. Andreas Schroeder: Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes. You can find more by visiting us at FutureOfFieldService.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn, as well as Twitter @TheFutureOfFS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS at IFS.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

On this week’s podcast, I welcome Dr. Andreas Schroeder, Digital Lead of The Advanced Services Group at Aston Business School back to discuss the ways in which Servitization and sustainability are linked. The Advanced Services Group is preparing for its Servitization Live event, which runs October 4-6 in a hybrid format, and sustainability is one of the major themes being covered.

According to Dr. Schroeder, sustainability and Servitization are closely linked and companies with interest in either area should understand the connection. “The way I understand sustainability, there are societal obligations, and then, of course, companies have their own strategies,” he ways. “What I argue is that these are not contradictive to each other. A good-run business, or specifically a business that tries to move into the advanced services space, naturally needs and contributes to sustainability objectives. These are not two diverging interests that need to be balanced out. The interesting thing is that these are very well, and very nicely, aligned.”

The Advanced Services Group has seen an increase in Servitization efforts driven by sustainability-related motivation. “There are different kinds of motivations driving Servitization,” says Dr. Schroeder. “Quite a number of them come from the digital angle – companies that have digitized products and are looking for business models that help drive more value out of the investment in digital. The other bucket is companies that have an edge in product innovation but are feeling competition creep up and are getting squeezed on price, so they look to Servitization to make use of innovation and expertise without having to compete on price. Now, though, we see also where companies literally see the absolute need – the constraints that the traditional business models put on the way they can interact with customers.”

In London, for instance, there are a number of industries being impacted by sustainability-driven legislation that need to completely reimagine their business to comply. “Every manufacturer will have to meet these new requirements and all the alternative technologies are electronic-based. They will be more expensive, more difficult to maintain, require different kinds of care, and do not fit traditional models. This means companies coming to us and saying, ‘We see how the market is being constrained for us,’ for the right reasons, they don't even blame legislators for it. Again, coming not from altruistic motives, but somebody as a leader of a business that needs to make sure that they have a business in 15 years' time,” describes Dr. Schroeder.

Exploring the Intersection Points

Whether you’re feeling the pressures of legislative change related to sustainability initiatives, or simply have a commitment to making a positive impact, Servitization is a lever to explore. However, even if sustainability isn’t a key driver for you at the moment, understanding how Servitization based strictly on the business decision will have an impact on sustainability is interesting to explore and, I’d argue, important to understand. So, let’s examine some of the intersection points.

First, products developed with the goal of Servitization and delivering outcomes in mind will be more sustainable than those developed with the restriction of prioritizing acquisition cost. In a traditional model, products are designed and manufactured to the degree that the market will bear in the sense of selling that product under a traditional, capital-based sales model. This naturally puts certain restrictions on innovation because it would take the product beyond its tolerated price point.

But in the Servitization model, where the manufacturer is retaining ownership of the product and responsible for delivering the outcome, it often makes sense to invest more in the production of the product to extend its lifecycle, because ultimately, they are now benefiting from that longer-term view. Innovation now will help them in terms of their ultimate profits in the way that the market won't bare on a capital-expenditure model.

“In a traditional business model, the objective is to make a profit margin, of course. The objective for design is not necessarily to look at the full lifecycle of the product. The objective of design and production of the product is to make it attractive for purchase. There will be a lot of innovations that companies would have in their drawers that would not meet the price point that they've identified for their customers, so these will not be developed,” explains Dr. Schroeder. “When we look at a change of business model, from a product to a Servitization context, a lot changes. The objective is not to design to sell for an immediate price point, but to be able to deliver services on the back of a product for a longer period of time. The Servitization contracts we're looking at are 10-year contracts where the company designs a product, and knows that they are responsible for its use, and service, and outcome, and possibly efficiency for a ten-year period. They will naturally design the product in a different way.”

The freedom to design differently results in longer lasting and easier-to-use products. “When we look at developing products in a Servitized context, there is no interest in companies having to replace products repeatedly, there is no interest in that. The interest there is efficiently, in an optimized way, maintaining this product in use, because they benefit from products in use, not products in sale,” says Dr. Schroeder. “The other part is, again, every service, every repair, is now to the detriment of the manufacturer. It's a cost to the manufacturer, so they will design in a way that things naturally are easier to service.”

But the impact isn’t just on product design and production, it is also on product use. “When the product is being managed by somebody who has designed the product to be longer lasting, who has penalties around inefficiencies, there will be more focus on maintaining and making sure the product runs on maximum efficiency. That's where the digital part comes in, a lot of monitoring along the side to ensure that this is in place,” explains Dr. Schroeder. “These are some of sustainability benefits of Servitization that are part of the business model. They are not an extra, kind of an ethical or moral obligation, this is to optimize the business of the manufacturers in advanced services context.”

While for many Servitization’s impact on sustainability may be a happenstance of a financially versus environmentally driven business decision, the reality is that sustainability will inevitably become more of a driver. Some companies are already feeling this pressure, or proactively taking these steps, but for those that aren’t this is an opportunity to be proactive versus reactive and to give yourself some headway to make necessary changes. “This dimension will expand. As an example, in the UK we now have legislation that by 2025 no gas boilers can be installed in new houses. For a manufacturer of gas boilers that means if they don't change technology, they have no business. Forget about the moral obligation and the environment constraints of gas boilers, from the legislative point of view they do not have a business within four years' time. They are looking at more advanced technology, but these options are more expensive, more difficult to manage, and require more looking after than traditional gas boilers,” explains Dr. Schroeder. “They are now turning to advanced services to make sure that their higher-value technology can still be put into market. Americans have similar sustainability goals – in nine years' time, 50% reduction of CO2 emissions. There will be, if there aren’t yet, significant legislation coming out and new technologies coming on the market to meet these goals. If the goals are met or not, the legislation will be there, incentives will be there, and the penalties will be there. Again, we are in the space where new technologies, as I described with the gas boilers, come onto market, possibly at a different price point, requiring new business models for these companies to remain viable.”

By Tom Paquin

While last week we spoke specifically about how the service stack has been impacted by COVID, and gave a fairly comprehensive rundown of the features and functions that define best-in-class, we’re now going to take that towards looking at service software trends as they relate holistically to the product.

We know that service technology, like anything, can get bogged down in the novelty of new and exciting technologies, which are often solutions in search of problems. The last few years have provided us all with the opportunity to separate the gimmick from the true tools for differentiation, and this year, there are certainly some standout insights that we should explore:

Cloud Hype Continues to Wear Off
Is the ubiquity of cloud with us permanently? I would imagine, unless an EMP wipes out all electronic devices tomorrow and Future of Field Service needs to transition to a print publication, that the answer is yes. And while business models for software companies inevitably want you to invest in cloud software (preferably by subscription)l the actual business models of service companies sometimes don’t support that.

Still, forward-thinking companies realize that deployment flexibility is often key. That flexibility keeps your business on a regular update cadence, and ensures that you get the support that you need in the day-to-day. This hybrid-izes the cloud model into a container-oriented model. Containerization offers a greater threshold of control. You can run the cloud instance multi-tenant, on a cloud platform of your choice, or on your private server in the server room. Ultimate flexibility.

Is Automation Coming to the Physical World?
Self-driving cars haven’t taken off with the expedience that one would have anticipated five years ago, but we’ve spoken about how automation will take us to this place eventually, allowing technicians to work, eat, or relax while their van gets them to their next appointment. But we’ve also talked about Roomba-like autonomous workers designed to allow for completely zero-touch service. This has seemed like science fiction, but with delivery, we’ve already reached the era of automated service.

While I don’t expect R2-D2 to roll over to a terminal and fix the hyperdrive, I would expect that within a few years, the concept of a drone supporting shared view and remote assistance will become part of the conversation. Getting a high-level view in energy production, for instance, can safely provide a view for workers to validate and enrich IoT capabilities. This may all sound a bit silly today, but as drones become cheaper, easier to use, and more precise, their first stop will be a service visit.

Do You Have the Big Picture?
We talk about this all the time, but there’s no excuse, in 2021 to not have all of your service processes integrated in your broader stack of technologies.

I will say that I would not advise doing so under a single product banner. What happens with an all-in-one shop is that you end up with a wide breath of superficial functions that require compromises in order to get them to fit into your business. As we’ve noted before, this is why a more specialized solution is more likely to fit the contours of your business. Through integrations, combining that system with your broader infrastructure, you can get a much more effective top-down view of how your service practice fits within the context of your broader business structure. In a world of increased interconnectivity, this is becoming increasingly imperative, which brings me to the final point.

Mastering Multiexperience
Mobility is a fully mature business function today. As are PCs, tablets connected assets, telephone lines, and numerous additional functions. Both customers and technicians require a unified experience that passes through each of these functions. For customers, this means mastering CE systems. For technicians, this means full mobile functionality and a 1:1 desktop-to-mobile view. Not doing this now means that you’re already falling behind. Service companies owe it to their customers, and their workforce to get this right.

Hilbrand Rustema of Noventum joins Sarah again to talk about the value and importance of service benchmarking, the best practices for gaining valuable insight, and what trends are most important to gauge against at the moment.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to be talking about the importance of benchmarking when it comes to achieving strategic service objectives. We talk a lot on this podcast and within our content on Future of Field Service about all of the change that's taking place in the industry right now, all of the ways in which companies need to be innovating to keep pace with customer expectations and market pressures, and benchmarking can be a very important way to make sure that you are progressing the way you need to be with those objectives.

Sarah Nicastro: So I'm excited to welcome back today Hilbrand Rustema who is partner at Noventum. Hilbrand, welcome back to the podcast.

Hilbrand Rustema: Hi Sarah.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks for being here. So you may recognize Hilbrand's face. He's been on the podcast a few times and is back today to talk about this topic. So disclaimer, obviously Noventum does benchmarking. So there is that, but regardless of that aspect, it's certainly something that warrants a conversation because it can be a valuable way to understand how you're keeping pace with the change that is being demanded of you. So let's start off Hilbrand just by talking a little bit about the importance of benchmarking for service-based businesses today.

Hilbrand Rustema: Yeah. What I would say is that it's important, particularly for service businesses, to benchmark. I think there are two major areas where every sort of service executive should be using benchmarking. First of all, when you define your service business strategy, you need to set realistic, achievable goals. And therefore it's very useful to know what other similar companies have been doing, are doing in similar stages of their growth and their development so that you set realistic, achievable goals.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hilbrand Rustema: Now I think that's one area and the second area is looking at what is it that you're really doing? How is your performance currently compared to, of course your strategic objectives, but also compared to the rest of the world and what are similar companies doing? Because-

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hilbrand Rustema: When you set your strategy you typically have at least a medium to long-term view. And in the meantime, lots of things can happen. So if you do some regular, I would say at least once a year, but preferably more often, some benchmarking on how you're doing versus other similar companies, it would give you like a reality check.

Hilbrand Rustema: And that would allow you sometimes to sort of pivot a bit your strategy and to know if it is working what you're-

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Mm-hmm (affirmative) Yeah. So some folks probably know that in my role with IFS I run a customer group, customer community, and we engage really frequently, twice a month or so. And in some sense it's almost like benchmarking anecdotally versus in a quantitative way, right. And I think there is so much value in the idea of understanding what your peers are up to, right. And so there's instances where I see these light bulb moments in the group of honestly feeling not alone in the struggles, right? So it can be reassuring to see that organizations with similar objectives to yours are struggling in some of the same ways that you are. And then obviously in the group we have a lot of conversations about how to overcome those challenges so that we can kind of build collective knowledge and help share some insights and spark different ideas.

Sarah Nicastro: But then there's also an element of understanding where you may be lagging and kind of getting a little kick in the pants in the right direction when you realize that there might be areas where you are behind the pace of your peers. And so certainly in that group communication type setting, I've seen the value of this type of insight play out in real time. And I think that the idea of putting systems in place to do this regularly and to look at more quantitative data and see things in numbers and charts and graphs and percentages is certainly valuable with all of the objectives that companies are juggling today.

Hilbrand Rustema: I think it's very good that you mentioned that. I think making a distinction between the qualitative and the quantitative benchmarking is a good one because qualitative, like in terms of talking about best practices and how do you solve this issue, is very useful, very valuable, but quantitative, really looking at the financials for example, that has multiple purposes and obviously any well-run business needs to have a clear, good sort of dashboards on how they're performing financially.

Hilbrand Rustema: Currently what we're seeing is that there's a lot of companies that want to go into the data-driven services, the predictive services, more sophisticated services, and they are not so sure what the growth potential is, what the profitability of each type of service is because if you really look at it, there's so many different types of these sophisticated services that go beyond the basic product related services and each has its own sort of business model with different growth and profitability potential that the world is suddenly becoming a lot more complex.

Hilbrand Rustema: And one of the things that I see service leaders also sometimes a bit struggling is to explain to their colleagues, particularly if they're in the manufacturing business, on what the growth opportunity really is or the profit improvement potential really is. And having data that shows, "Hey, these type of companies, or maybe even a very direct competitor, is able to do this and why are we not able to do something similar?" That is also sort of a change management tool.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Hilbrand Rustema: It helps you to get the rest of the organization to realize, "Hey, it's real. Others are doing similar things. So we should be able to do that as well."

Hilbrand Rustema: And until you get that realism, many organizations will sort of say, Yeah, yeah. Okay. Let's see and wait." So yeah. There's a very important change management aspect to using benchmarking, the quantitative benchmarking effectively.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Yeah. I mean, when we talk about topics related to customer experience, customer satisfaction, we always talk about the importance of that balance between qualitative and quantitative insights and it's really the same thing here. It's hugely valuable to sit down in a group of five or six or 10 peers and have a detailed conversation, but it's also incredibly valuable to look at a study and get a quantitative idea of where you are in that journey versus some of the others. And to your point, certainly as it relates to servitization or delivering outcomes, it is a real challenge for some organizations that there is this idea of needing to kind of convince or win over the hearts and minds of some of the folks on the value of that journey and the importance of that journey.

Sarah Nicastro: And certainly in those instances, I think, there is nothing stronger than being able to present some objective quantitative data that's looking at how others are progressing and what benefits they're seeing. So absolutely an important part of being able to convince leadership and convince others within the organization of the why behind a certain direction. Okay. So we've talked a little bit about the importance of benchmarking, the value it can provide. Let's talk about where organizations go wrong. So I guess one thing would be just not doing it or not participating in the act of looking at or doing some benchmarking, but what else kind of prohibits companies from utilizing this type of insight as a good resource?

Hilbrand Rustema: Well to give you an example, looking at profitability of your service business is so insightful or can be so insightful if you use benchmarking in there. One of the things that we see happening right now is that a lot of companies are moving from this preventive maintenance or full service contracts to the predictive services.

Hilbrand Rustema: And obviously that creates enormous value for the end customer because you are improving performance of the equipment, you are reducing maintenance costs. And one of the interesting things that we see happening in the benchmarking that we do is that we see that companies, when they're in this experimental mode almost when they sometimes not have the full value propositions, the new service proposition, the promise to the customer, when they haven't fully developed that, when they don't have a full understanding of what is exactly the value for the customer, they are still saying, "Yeah. It's not completely ready yet." So let's just give that functionality included in the full service contract.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hilbrand Rustema: And effectively what they're doing then is they're giving a lot of value away-

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Hilbrand Rustema: For free. And it's amazing how quickly customers get used to that new level of performance.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. It's really cannibalizing the ability to monetize it when you're ready to do that. Like when you've sorted out how you want to do that, then you're really backtracking at that point to say, "Oh. Well, we've been giving you this, but now we've landed on this new offering and so what that looks like is you would pay X for it." And so that is a really big challenge for folks.

Hilbrand Rustema: Yeah. I mean, let me give you one example. I was working with a client the other day that provides street sweeping equipment. And they see several things going on. So obviously they are now able to connect their machines and sort of monitor real time of what's happening with these machines, but also they're electrifying, meaning that that equipment is maybe three thousand parts that were heavily sort of maintenance intensive parts.

Hilbrand Rustema: It goes back to 30 and they see their potential service business, in the current business model, they see it quickly disappearing. And this is the right moment for them to sort of switch over to a totally new business model. So maybe they should be offering the same equipment as a service right now. And as this is not fully crystallized yet in that industry, if you would look at benchmarking data and say, "Okay. Well what is the profitability? What's the growth opportunities for that type of business model versus what we are having right now?" You can say, "Well, okay. It makes sense." But right now the tendency for this type of situation is, "Let's wait and see and well we have another year or two," and then suddenly some competitor shows up and they've done it-

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Hilbrand Rustema: And you're gone, you're out of the business.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That's a good point. We did a podcast quite a while back with a gentleman who his name is Sae Kwon. He was at Cisco at the time. And it was called weighing the decision of disruption. And it was basically around that conversation. In their instance he was talking about them making the decision to evolve the business before there was any urgency and that sometimes has its own challenges because things are running smoothly, you're successful, and so there's a huge don't rock the boat mentality. But when you see the opportunity to make that change before it becomes kind of dire circumstances, there's a lot of benefit in acting early.

Sarah Nicastro: And so the idea that, the company you're referencing, there's this change that now they have to react to, but that then puts a certain amount of pressure on the time in which they react and the way in which they react, where if you can have a little bit more of a forward thinking or innovative perspective and get ahead of those opportunities, it gives you a little bit more latitude to make that change on your own terms instead of making that change on the industry's terms or the market's terms.

Hilbrand Rustema: Exactly. So you can see several trends and you can benchmark yourself against those trends.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Hilbrand Rustema: So you can sort of see it coming rather than just being internally focused and if you just look inside your organization and don't benchmark that much, you would be happy with yourself.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Right.

Hilbrand Rustema: Yeah. It causes some sort of inaction.

Hilbrand Rustema: The other thing is very often when companies have to make these difficult decisions to quite drastically change their entire business model, they don't know what they're getting into.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hilbrand Rustema: If you are able to look at benchmark data of similar companies that may not have the same product, but at least they have a similar business model that you are aspiring to you can kind of see what to expect there and that facilitates the decision-making because without facts, usually the senior executives are not willing to make any decision at all.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative) That makes sense. So I think you've touched on a few, but just to sort of recap or add anything to the list, what are some of the biggest trends or areas right now that you think organizations should be benchmarking against? And obviously I'm referring to organizations that would be the folks listening to this podcast, which are very similar to the types of organizations that Noventum works with. So what are some of the biggest areas that you would suggest companies be investing time and effort into benchmarking on and paying attention to?

Hilbrand Rustema: So, first of all, I would benchmark the type of service revenue that you are into. So if you just throw all the service revenue on one big pile and you see growth and you're happy with that, usually you have a distorted picture.

Hilbrand Rustema: So you have to try and distinguish between well-established types of service revenue. Like be it parts, be it preventive maintenance contracts, full service contracts, preventive maintenance contracts, or even go beyond that. So what we always call the customer business related services. So process optimization type of services can be outcome-based or as a service business models where you have the equipment, you may finance the whole equipment as well, managed services, business process outsourcing, or the real data-driven type of services where you have maybe in that category alone, you can already have sort of 10 sub categories. So trying to look at the type of service revenue and see where you are growing, where you're not growing.

Hilbrand Rustema: And then perhaps if you have that ability to look at what are your customers doing and which type of customers are the most profitable ones as a result of different types of revenues that they are consuming or what they're spending their money on.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hilbrand Rustema: And then the second area is the profitability. So if you can distinguish between the different types of service revenue in your own accounting systems or even if it is by approximation, that's also pretty good already, then you can look at what are gross margins for each of these types of services. And what are the trends that you see there?

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hilbrand Rustema: One of our recent studies showed that most service executives, they expect not to see any growth in the purely product related service revenues in the coming three to five years. So that means that, "Okay. It goes beyond product related service revenue." So what should they be looking at? What type of business model, what type of service revenue will be the right one for them to focus on and what is the expected growth of that and the profitability?

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hilbrand Rustema: So you may come to a conclusion, particularly in a highly digitalized world where sometimes the leaders of the back, it's a winner takes all model in many industries. So you have to try and look ahead, look at the trends, and look at revenue, profitability, and the growth rates. And I think if you are able to do that as a service leader, you're in a pretty good position, you can avoid a lot of nasty surprises.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Yep. Okay. So last question is around what are the best practices? So what's your advice for folks on, we've talked about the importance of benchmarking and some of the areas that people need to be paying attention to. How do they benchmark and make sure they're benchmarking well?

Hilbrand Rustema: Well first of all, inside your organization you need to be able that you compare apples with apples. So most, let's say professional service organizations, they have their accounting principles standardized across the globe so that the different types of revenues are clearly defined and recorded in that way. And profitability is a result of cost allocation and recognition in the right way. So I think that's sort of the basis for the financial type of benchmarking.

Hilbrand Rustema: Then I would say you need to find reliable sources of that benchmark data. I know it's hard. So the choices basically are you can identify a couple of companies that are similar enough. Usually your direct competitors don't want to benchmark with you or they're not allowed to, but you can identify a couple of companies and that's one of the things that we do as Noventum. You work with a consulting firm that has the research capability, that has the benchmark data available in a sort of statistically validated way so that there's a quality check on that data.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hilbrand Rustema: Another important best practice I would say is not only to benchmark at, let's say the headquarter level, throw everything in one big bucket and benchmark at that level. No. Also try to, if you're a multi-national, try to benchmark the individual country or regional operations.

Hilbrand Rustema: And you may find lots of interesting differences there and then figure out why is one country performing very well in one particular area and why is another country doing in another area much better? So that gives you the opportunities to benchmark internally, which is probably the best quality of benchmark data that you can get if you do that internally. So another best practice is to not fall into the trap of wanting only to benchmark within your industry.

Hilbrand Rustema: What we've found in our benchmarking database, if you look at it statistically, there is no correlation very often between different players in one industry because they are in a totally different level of maturity of the service business. What we've found is it doesn't matter what is the type of equipment that you service, it's more what is the business model that you have?

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Hilbrand Rustema: And so to make sure that you have a peer group of similar companies that fulfill certain requirements, such as obviously size, but maturity level, the type of services. It is more important than trying to benchmark with only your industry peers.

Hilbrand Rustema: Because if you do that by definition you may run behind, whereas you can learn so much from other industries, which may be further ahead than your own industry in terms of the service business.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And I think that's an important point is a lot of the advanced service type offerings that we talk about, they are, at a macro level, the same, industry to industry or similar enough. And so I think this idea of only looking within your industry at what's happening and what the trends are and what companies are doing and what customers want, you could lead your industry, but still be behind in terms of really where the future of services going.

Sarah Nicastro: And so I think most companies have embraced that fact and find a lot of value in looking for inspiration and innovation ideas outside of their industry, but it's certainly an important point. I always say, so going back to the group that I run, you're talking about companies in different industries, across the world, and we have so many good conversations and I always say like there's no one in this group that can create you a map of where you need to go and how to get there.

Sarah Nicastro: But by having those conversations, by exposing yourself to what others are doing and how others are thinking, it gives you a lot of opportunity to spark different ideas that can lead to immense positive change within your business. So I think it's a really important point that when you're looking at how to innovate, it's valuable to take inspiration from other industries, even industries super different than yours. I mean, that's how those disruptive ideas happen, not by kind of sticking close to home and playing it safe.

Hilbrand Rustema: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Makes sense.

Hilbrand Rustema: So what you're saying here is obviously a mix of quantitative financial benchmarking and qualitative. And I would say another best practice perhaps if I come back to the question is start with the financial benchmarking and then you will identify certain areas of improvement. And then go into the qualitative benchmarking, look at service industry standards, look at the best practices. There are many out there obviously. So in that approach and try to look at statistically validated information rather than anecdotal.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Right. Alright. So as it happens, not coincidentally, but intentionally, there is a benchmarking project that you have underway. So tell folks about that and who is a fit to participate, how they can participate, and where they can participate?

Hilbrand Rustema: Yeah. So at the moment we're running a large benchmark project, which is open to any, let's say, manufacturing company interested in growing their service business. That's the name of the project. So it's called the 2021 service growth benchmark. You can have a look anybody's interested in that and finds it valuable to participate in such a benchmark. You can have a look at our landing page for that is called thefutureofservice.com. So thefutureofservice.com. Companies can participate by filling out a survey. It's a database. It collects data until the end of September, then it will be closed. Then all participants will get an automatically generated benchmark report. And we do that by, or the system does it, by indeed creating peer groups of similar companies, pretty much according to maturity level, sizes, et cetera. And then you get an individual benchmark report.

Hilbrand Rustema: And depending on how much data you have actually filled out, you will get back on the parts of the survey that you have actually entered data in. It's free of charge and there will be a number of executive round tables organized. So to get sort of the story behind the results that we'll see. So we will be inviting some of the companies that have remarkable results and we'll invite them to talk about that. And then in small groups, 15 people or so, we will discuss the outcome by peer group. And that is more the qualitative part as you were mentioning, Sarah. And yeah. It gets a story behind the numbers.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay.

Hilbrand Rustema: And then the project will end with sort of a full report, which we expect to publish in January next year. That should give a pretty in-depth insight in the biggest trends and some of the best practices of the most successful companies.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Good. Well I urge anyone that is listening that is in the manufacturing space to check it out. So we are future of field service. This is the future of service. So that could get a little confusing, but we'll make sure we put it in the show notes. I mean, you all know that I'm a huge, huge fan of the idea of pure perspective and the voice of the industry and understanding what is happening across the space and this is certainly a really helpful way to get a view of what the trends are and where you sit amidst the trends. So definitely participate and maybe in January Hilbrand, we'll have you back to talk about some of the findings and share with folks what the trends are for those that participated. But I appreciate you coming on today to talk a bit about the importance of this and to share the project with everyone.

Hilbrand Rustema: Yeah. Well thanks a lot, Sarah. For sure we'll be back in January when we have the report.

Sarah Nicastro: Sounds good! If you'd like to participate, that is thefutureofservice.com. Not to be confused with futureoffieldservice.com, which is where you can find more of our content. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter at The Future of FS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Throughout my career I’ve been asked countless times about how companies can master the complexities of technology and I’ve always answered the same way: “Actually, technology is the easy part.” When I first gave this answer, it had a different meaning than it does today – but nonetheless, it holds true.

As we find ourselves surrounded by disruption and working hard to innovate and adapt, we must acknowledge that people are the crux of our success or failure. Digital technology is the great enabler, but there’s a lot that it isn’t – it isn’t our spark, it isn’t our heart, and it isn’t the face of our brand. Our people are. And the glancing over of this fact is becoming a significant problem, especially as it compounds the concerning challenge of the talent gap.

Put People in Focus

Technology has dominated the focus of our innovation efforts for some time, and with good reason. As organizations sought to become digitally adept, setting our sights on technology as the driver of innovation was appropriate. But with a more level digital playing field and new facets of disruption entering the mix, we need to temper our innovation efforts with a greater focus on the role our people will play.

In the new era of delivering outcomes, connectivity, asset intelligence, and preemptive action are critical – but so too are the art of building rapport, confidence, and being viewed as a trusted advisor. As we continue to advance our digital landscape with tools like AI and ML to increase automation and improve business intelligence, we must recognize how the role of our frontline worker shifts more to that of a knowledge worker.

We must also acknowledge the harsh reality that COVID has left us with, which is that while the need we have for our frontline workers to embrace change is higher than ever before – their capacity for it may be frighteningly low. The pandemic has left us all stressed, scared, and feeling burnt out. That isn’t a great baseline from which to ask your employees for something new, for something more, but that is where we are – and that reality makes it even more crucial for us to put our people in the center of our focus.

For those who thrive in the linear land of technology evaluation and data-driven decision making, and struggle to grasp the less structured realm of feelings and emotions, this article may be causing some angst. Here are my thoughts on where to start when it comes to bringing your people, and their needs, front and center:

Compassion. Start by stepping back, picturing yourself in your frontline workers’ shoes, and just thinking about how they may feel. Understand what their career has looked like thus far, and how different what you’re asking them to do as the company innovates and evolves really is. Acknowledge the emotions that may bring to the surface – anxiety, fear, frustration, concern, excitement, overwhelm, etc. – and broach your interactions with a sense of compassion about what your innovative objectives feel like from their end.
Consensus. Understand that no one likes to feel as though things are happening to them; they want to be a part of the change, not the recipient of it. Moreover, as your needs and expectations of your frontline shift and you ask them to take on the role of trusted advisor, know that their insights and input are absolutely integral to your strategy and evolution. Treat them as such, perhaps even before you reach that point. If they feel a part of the journey from the beginning, they’ll not only experience less negative emotion, but they will add far more value along the way.
Camaraderie. We all want to feel as though we’re a part of something. Often a frontline worker spends his or her days solo, and the events of the last 18 months have made many of us feel isolated in different ways than we ever have before. Looking for opportunities to foster a sense of camaraderie and community among your workforce can help employees feel more connected to one another, your company, and its mission and increase your chances of their buy-in and emotional wellbeing.
Coaching. Many companies prioritize training in their change management strategies, but when you think about the depth of change at play in service evolution today, it requires more than the classroom instruction that the addition of a new tool would. This is why I think coaching is a more appropriate approach – training is a part of this, but not the whole. Coaching is more interactive, it is more ongoing, and it helps employees to feel you’re more invested in their success.
Communication, but make it two-way. Communication is another area of change management that is commonly acknowledged and addressed, but it isn’t as bidirectional as it should be. Often companies focus efforts on communicating the “why” without seeking to understand any of the “what do you think?” afterward. As your service moves beyond transactional, so too should your relationship with your frontline workers you’re entrusting to lead your company’s evolution. Communicate, but not just in the sense of delivering a message – ask, and then listen. Authentically, thoughtfully, and with the intent to act on the feedback and feelings you hear.

By Tom Paquin

Earlier this year, we ran a series of articles about the current paradigm of living with COVID, which covered the organizational, structural, and interpersonal considerations that businesses in the service sector should focus their attention on as our relationship to the pandemic continues to evolve. Even though those articles are only three months old, much of the observations, transient as they are, seem quaint given the continuous evolutions of our current moment. In contrast, we can now observe the investments and customer changes that have changes over the last nearly two years and draw some assessments about the current and future state of technology for service. There are a few angles that need to be observed before we dive into a comprehensive list.

The Customer Service Angle

We’ve also spoken about how COVID has accelerated digital transformation efforts for businesses. This is harder to quantify in terms of specific capabilities, and functions more on how those capabilities—and new ones—should be calibrated to adapt to this new reality. For instance, consumer sentiment for multi-channel interactions has increased substantially, especially with respect to the internet. In the world of food delivery, “Shadow Kitchens” now offer entirely online experiences for delivery and remittance of food.

Service, too, has an imperative to ease the burdens of appointment booking. This can be chatbots, or online portals, but sophisticated organizations of course have deployed systems of connected assets to alert service organizations at the root of an issue, mitigate downtime, and do pre-diagnostics to shorten appointment times.

The Operational Angle

We’ve also talked extensively about how COVID immediately made the business case for remote assistance. Obviously, this served an immediate purpose in the face of lockdowns and travel restrictions, and that purpose changed. Remote assistance now serves a means to mitigate unnecessary truck rolls for easily-resolved issues and planned maintenance (or touch-free inspections that would have requires an on-site visit). Further, it functions as a means to limit workforce challenges that businesses have, challenges that have been exacerbated by COVID, causing supply chain bottlenecks and limits on the amount of appointments that organizations can take through traditional means.

Today’s Service Capability Stack

So—we’ve seen a shift in customer expectations, and that shift has been met with a broad set of operational advancements. While this was true before COVID, and will be true after, the baseline expectations of what customers want has invariably changes. With all of that in mind, lets look holistically the current key capabilities for field service, what they do in plain terms, and, based on our experiences and changes over the last two years, what defines the best-in-class.

Capability	What it does	What defines best-in-class
Service ticket management	Catalogs all active and closed tickets and ticket history across the service business.	Leaders unify this process across all channels of service delivery and provide external services like performance dashboards, as well as automatic ticketing and closing.
Pricing and billing	Provide point-of-sale functionality, purchase order, and account functionality to field workers.	The maturity of these systems means that all should have the ability to process purchase orders and credit transactions, build tabulated account views, and appropriately automate communication for late payments.
SLA management	Incorporate and outline various contract requirements in the system and use them to inform and prioritize service delivery.	Automate SLA requirements into planning, scheduling, and routing; subdivide SLA requirements by region, business use case, or technician, and provide all necessary tools for outcomes-based service delivery.
Warranty management	Catalog and maintain records of product warranties and expectations.	Automate renewal cadence, build complex repair-or-replace options for technicians to provide to customers.
Performance management	Log, analyze, and present technician performance across a variety of metrics that are prioritized by the firm.	Consolidate data from not just the service practice, but across the serviceable assets and backoffice to provide a concise view of the business with minimal customization.
Knowledge management	Deliver on-site information to service technicians to ensure an understanding of repair processes, customer requirements, and business functionality.	Provide opportunities for shared view and augmented reality. Additionally, use IoT and appointment data to prepopulate the necessary instructions and guidelines automatically.
Repair management	Log, route, and notate all instances of on and off-site repairs, and benchmark that history against any client requirements.	Track repair process in real-time across channels, both internally, through dealers, as well as external partners.
Asset management	Review output and health of serviceable assets in the field.	Predict service interruptions and automate service appointments before an asset breaks down based on historical sensor data.
Mobile field service	Access to service management capabilities on a job site via mobile device, rugged device, or tablet.	1:1 mobile and desktop functionality for all systems, including knowledge management, parts management, and all aspects of service delivery.
Planning tools	Building long-term headcount and capacity plans for back office and field workers.	AI-powered optimization allowing for multi-time horizon planning that extends past days, to weeks, months, and years, allowing businesses to set projected capacity and make decisions in advance.
Parts management	Inventory, location, and stock level tracking.	Ability to track across warehouses, technician vehicles, depot, and any other location that parts many be found to ensure quickest turnaround. Part allocation recommendations built into the scheduling tool based on appointment data.
Reverse logistics	Tracking, managing, and optimizing returns and repairs.	Multi-channel visibility across internal and external depots and warehouses. Ability to evaluate repair efficacy for customers in real-time to help facilitate informed decisions.
Driver routing	Maximizing efficient appointment delivery by reviewing appointment locations.	AI-powered utilities to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in technician behaviors, ability to set business rules and prioritize appointments and benchmarks and route technicians to maximize performance along those criteria.
Scheduling	Prioritizing customer appointments alongside service needs.	AI-powered scheduling optimization that automates scheduling with respect to all SLA, regional, and incidental requirements and restrictions.
Simulations	Field "what if?" scenarios and their impact on headcount, profitability, and other metrics.	This capability itself is typically a hallmark of best-in-class planning and scheduling optimization.
Enterprise resource management	Management of internal business capabilities outside the direct delivery of service.	Comprehensive lifecycle, performance and investment planning across all business functions in a unified platform environment.
Omni-channel contact center	Provide multiple ways for customers to interact with the business after the sale has completed.	Unified call logs and chat histories are automatically applied to customer information; Channels include phone, online, MMS, and app-based messaging, enhanced by AI.
Chatbots and virtual assistants	AI-driven utilities for customer communications.	Automated escalation and sophisticated voice recognition, ability to provide zero-touch appointment scheduling without the intercession of a human.
Customer service CRM	Customer profile and interaction management at the firm, business unit, and individual level.	Automated functionality for routine service booking and marketing utilities.
Unified desktop support	Consolidated back office functionality in a single application.	End-to-end compatibility with all utilities in your service stack.
Customer self-service	Self-resolution options for customers.	Multiple channels of delivery, including phone, online, and mobile, enhanced through emerging tech where appropriate. Built-in triggers to transfer to technicians for more complex service needs.
Remote assistance	Resolve service issues without dispatching a technician where possible.	AR-enabled shared view that goes beyond telestration to actual collaboration. The best of the best are further enhanced by IoT functionality.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. We talk a lot on the podcast and within the content on future of field service, about how organizations are focusing and making progress with innovation, related to all of the opportunity that service presents. Today, we're going to be talking specifically with Joni Chapas, who is the Vice President of Field Operations Support for Brinks Home about how Brinks Home is tackling this issue, challenge, journey. Joni, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Joni Chapas: Hi Sarah, thanks for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks for being here. So before we dig into the conversation, can you start just by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself, your background and your role at Brinks Home?

Joni Chapas: Sure. I actually came to field service in maybe what be a little bit of an unusual path. I really spent most of my career at a telecommunications company and I was on the IT side of the house there. And I spent really most of my career there on the IT side, focused on mergers and acquisitions, and then really sort of project management and IT solutions. So I was working with the business units in that telecommunications company, implement improvements and automation and things to help address their business needs. So when I left there and came to Brinks Home in September of 2019 to shift from being on the IT side to coming over to the business side of the house, where I came in as working in the operations support organization. A lot of those skills that I had learned in working with the business on how to implement solutions to improve their process, I could really bring to the table in the new role.

Joni Chapas: So at Brinks I'm the Vice President of Operations Support. And my team, as you know, the name probably implies, we support kind of all aspects of the operations team. And that ranges, we handle anything from kind of tactical support from things like fleet management and helping us with our ... we have third party partners, helping them obtain equipment that they need to do work for us, to really the more strategic part, which I think we'll talk more about today, of things of business process improvement, analytics, business intelligence, project management, learning and development, that kind of thing.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. So as I mentioned at the beginning, there's a huge amount of change underway in service at the moment. Both in terms of customer expectations and market demands and ways that organizations are evolving and modernizing their service delivery or business models. And then you have technological change, there's a lot going on. And I think I wrote an article, I don't know how long ago, but it was sort of about the idea of the dichotomy of service leadership, right? And so this concept that, as the landscape changes leaders have been tasked with the huge, huge, huge challenge of innovation while also needing to keep pace with their quote unquote day job or all of the day-to-day demands of the work.

Sarah Nicastro: And so with your role, the idea that Brinks Home has, is that innovation can be led by a dedicated team that sits alongside operations, right? To sort of balance that workload and help spearhead and some of those innovation related efforts. So I think I explained that correctly, if I didn't please correct my explanation and maybe talk a little bit about some of the reasons that it is so difficult to expect innovation from operational leadership.

Joni Chapas: Yeah. I mean, I think it's just the fact that there's always ... in operations, there's always a fire that's closer to you than that smoldering ember that's out in the woods. Now that smoldering ember might end up being what's going to lead to the forest fire that really can be truly, severely detrimental if you don't stay on top of it. But before you can even look to that, you have to be dealing with what's in front of you. So, I mean, we look to operational leaders to make sure that they're managing your day to day metrics. I mean, that's what you're looking at. I kind of use example of, most call centers in the world have a ticker or some kind of screen that is up on the wall of their call center.

Joni Chapas: Maybe now that a lot of folks are remote, they don't quite have that, but where you've had, where it's kind of showing how many calls are on hold, what's average handle time right now, how many ... what's the abandoned rate for calls that are coming in? So we have things like that that are flashing before these operational leaders, their eyes to make sure they're keeping up with those day in day out, minute by minutes stats of how things are going. So to then also really expect that, oh, and hey, and by the way, in the next quarter, next year, we need to see this overall improvement in those metrics, it's kind of tough for them to have that dual focus.

Joni Chapas: I mean, again, even you can use a whole host of analogies, but it's the same thing. Like you can't really read a book if you're sitting on the beach, you can't really both read your book and watch your kids that are running off in the distance, right. You really can focus on one or the other. And so if you have ... if you're looking back and forth too much between the two, it's hard to be effective at either one. So I think that's what ... it's not about do they have the knowledge? They absolutely do. They're the people that are living and breathing it every day. But you also don't want them to take their eye off of those ticker numbers that are flashing in front of them that show you how you're doing it this very minute. So the idea of my organization is really to partner and work alongside, so that we can have more of the eye on the future, while they're focusing more on the near term and what's right in front of their face.

Sarah Nicastro: And it does sort of feel like an unfair expectation that companies put on leaders to do both ends of that spectrum, right? I mean, to your point, it isn't about the operational leaders not having the ideas, or the insight, or the perspective, right? It's about the bandwidth that it takes to really enable innovation and not expecting those folks responsible for the day-to-day to be able to just magically manufacture that bandwidth.

Sarah Nicastro: So I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about the thinking behind, how did this role, your team come to be at Brinks Home? Because I think that I've certainly talked with people that are in situations where they have the expectation of both. They are, fair or not, being tasked with keeping pace with the day-to-day and looking for the opportunities for innovation. And, then I've talked with other organizations that sort of do this type of approach where it's a specific function within the business that kind of drives the effort. So how did the idea to put this in place, come to fruition at Brinks Home?

Joni Chapas: It started off really with, when I came to Brinks with the idea of coming into operations, to kind of help find continual process improvements. But it was really to ... it was really focused on project management. So I said, I was in IT and telecommunications for the earlier part of my career, but that was ... let me be clear, I was never a real techie person. I was always on the ... within IT, but was always more on the sort of getting solution side and project and program management. So when I came to Brinks it was really with that idea of, hey, we have some large operational projects and we just need project management to sort of help see those through. So I kind of came with the idea of sort of establishing a project management organization within operations to just help drive those things forward.

Joni Chapas: But what we kind of quickly found was that we wanted to expand that and not just help execute, not just help manage the execution of those, but to really help with the more the strategic analysis, because it really does tie, we ... the operations folks are ... they have ideas of what are some of the strategic things that need to happen.

Joni Chapas: But again, really taking the time to really analyze those ideas, to go and explore is something that they really aren't afforded the time to do. So it just became ... just sort of developed out of ... as an extension of, oh, hey, there's a project we want to do, can you have somebody, have a team that will help manage those projects to more, can we have more ownership on what the right projects are and what the ... how we can optimize the technology that's out there, how we can research about where ... what are really some ... the true business problems and what solutions we might have for those. So it really kind of expanded, but that was just kind of the evolution from, again, more tactical project management to strategic planning.

Sarah Nicastro: So what does the working relationship between you and your team and the operational leadership look like? Like how do you kind of collaborate together and learn about their ideas and their insights and figure out what to put into action? What does that collaboration look like?

Joni Chapas: Yeah, I mean, and it's, again, it's really imperative that we be working right with those operational leaders. So my team and I felt we do work directly with those operations folks when we're looking at, for example, our monthly metrics and doing our end of the month summary of how are things going and what things are we experiencing, I'm participating right along with that, that we're as accountable to the KPIs of the organization as those operational leaders. And so we work really closely with them, but what we're able to do is, and most people will kind of hear this and say, in anything that you're doing, people always talk about, it's easier to have a straw man or something to work from, and then get feedback on what's wrong with that than handing somebody sort of a blank piece of paper.

Joni Chapas: So we generally try to do that. I mean, sometimes we come ... I have one of my peers come to me with a business problem and say, can you help us in figuring out how to solve that? And we go through and kind of brainstorm and think about ideas and talk to different people involved to get some feedback. And sometimes they come really with an idea of a change that they've observed and they think is a change that can really benefit their team, and are just asking for more help in putting that all together and getting all the right people involved and operationalizing a change.

Joni Chapas: So we work closely with them and again, what we do going into my straw man point is that we're generally taking and creating those strawmans, whether it's based on an idea that they feed us or business problem or something from even higher level leadership that we can go through and say here's a straw man for how this might work, or what change that we could make, and then let them kind of tweak and edit that. Where if they're truly without us, it's like somebody handing them the blank piece of paper and saying now you have to go draw it all yourself.

Joni Chapas: So it's much more efficient for them to be able to let us do the documentation, do the ideation, go through and do analysis of what does the data show us? What does ... what are the cost benefit of and risk factors associated with it? Let us go through and do that, go do industry research and things like that. And then be able to do more of a sign-off and approval or give tweaks and adjustments, as opposed to having them again, have to go through all those steps themselves to achieve the objectives.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. So how would you describe the biggest advantages to the structure that you have set up at Brinks Home, where your team is working alongside operations to drive innovation?

Joni Chapas: I think there's ... the couple key things are just the ability to focus on it because you, as you're mentioning earlier, there's the ever, ever evolving future field service, just like what this is, this whole series is about, that you have to keep an eye and you have to look to the future and you have to innovate, or your business is not going to be successful. But you again, also have to take care of these day-to-day items. So it's really just kind of, instead of having the same people with divided focus, it kind of lets us focus on our own ... focus on those individual pieces. And again, we can't do that in silos, to your point, there definitely is collaboration and working, we're on the same team. I mean, we literally work for the same leader, but that focus, and then it really is minimizing the time spent from the operational leaders on projects.

Joni Chapas: And some of the ... I don't want to say administrative in a term that's negative, but when you're doing an organizing project, there's a lot of that analytics and thinking about things, organizing, making sure we have all the right constituents identified, making sure that you're really thinking about all of the impacts throughout the organization, dependencies, costs, timelines, all those kinds of things that we can focus on. And those operational leaders really don't need to think about that. They need to think about the impact to their operation or what is the business need that they have. And so we get to take some of that off of their ... those other pieces off their hands, that let's be honest are critical to the success of longer range projects.

Joni Chapas: But if you have a leader that is also responsible for day-to-day metrics, this is probably to stop that sort of slipping through the cracks. They probably ... not because they're not capable, but because of the timeframe that they have, that they probably aren't able to get to as thorough of analysis as they might like here. Or maybe the communication piece kind of, and coordination with other parts of the organization maybe falls through the cracks a little bit. So it helps for a little bit cleaner in those projects and minimizes the need for the operational experts to handle some of those other pieces.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, that makes sense. And I think you're right about what slips through the cracks. It's the less urgent it is, the easier it is to postpone. And I think that's one of the important things to have folks understand is that the pace of change today and the degree to companies are innovating, there is a need to dedicate specific resource or make investments in the longer term strategy and the innovation that's going to get you there. Whether that's a structure, like what you have at Brinks Home, whether that's consultants, whether that's someone, some other structure. It doesn't necessarily need to be prescriptively done in a certain way. But it absolutely is important, I think in terms of keeping pace strategically, to understand that there has to be some dedicated resource, energy, effort to this type of initiative. So are there any drawbacks to this approach that you would caution people on?

Joni Chapas: Yeah. I mean, it requires communication, absolutely. So it's really the relationship building, it's trust and buy-in are the initial pieces. So as much as the ... there's kind of a mix. You'll have some operational leaders that, because they're very accountable to metrics, I mean, their life is generally metric-driven, most anybody that works in operations, they've got KPIs and that's what they are held accountable to all the time. So because of that, there are times where they are a little bit leery, of kind of handing over ... seemingly handing over some control of projects or things that are going to affect those to somebody outside of the team. So they really do have to build that relationship of trust and buy-in, and know that we're not making decisions on their behalf, they're part of it.

Joni Chapas: We're doing more of the legwork piece. We're still ... and we have to hold to that. We have to make sure that we're accountable, to not be trying to implement change that they're not ready for, to not be making decisions that impact them without their buy-in. And to know that we're ... my team is just as invested in the KPIs that they're held to as they are. So I think it's not, definitely not so much be a drawback as much as it is a ... just a, it's a kind of, a little bit of a, it can be a little bit of our hurdle to getting there.

Joni Chapas: In some cases you have folks that out of the gates want to ... are happy as can be to have someone else that can, hey, I've been meaning to try to get to this improvement for a long time, and I haven't been able to have anybody on my team focus on it, so here, I'm glad you're here, go take this. So you'll get some of those, and in that case, you'll get more work than you have time for. But there is really that fact of building the right collaboration so that it is a balance of ensuring that those leaders also, at the end of the day, aren't able to come in and say, oh, well we were hoping that this initiative was going to achieve a 10% improvement in X, Y, Z metric, that at the end of the day, if it doesn't achieve that, that they don't get to just look and be like, I don't know Joni and her team did that. I don't know what they did.

Joni Chapas: So there definitely ... that's one thing is that it can't be viewed as, it's not a throw it over the wall, either way from my team to those folks or vice versa, that it is collaboration that we're in it together. So you have to make sure that relationship, it's really key to the success.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I like the idea of making decisions together, but then you sort of are dividing and conquering when it comes to the efforts, right? So it's ... we have to decide together where we're going, but now, you keep doing X, Y, and Z, we'll go do A, B and C when it's time to reconvene, we reconvene. But to your point, it really allows both parties to focus on their responsibilities in a way that maximizes productivity versus trying to have either responsible for both.

Sarah Nicastro: So the next area I want to talk about ... so when we talk about innovation, I think one of the biggest barriers to innovation, other than allocating appropriate resource, which we've already talked about is the idea of organizational silos. So another big part of your role and your team's role, is to aid in that strategic alignment and to ensure that the innovation that's taking place at Brinks Home is well coordinated, is in line with the company's objectives, etcetera. So talk a little bit about that aspect of things.

Joni Chapas: Yeah. So, and we're responsible for that kind of both within the various teams that make operations, as well as outside of that. So the easy examples within the organization, we've kind of touched on it a little bit within operations, but we also, again, I use learning and development as one of the areas underneath of my organization as well. So we might go through and look at when we hear about a challenge that we're having in operations, we can jump on that to go through and say, okay, what can we do? What can L&D do to help with those issues? So, I'm ... not too long ago, asked my L&D manager to go through and review the latest set of KPIs for the operations team, and then to come back and tell me to say, here are things either that we can build on in training that we already have, here's development for ongoing development for the team, here are resources that we can make available.

Joni Chapas: But it's, again, some of that is making sure that we're not just getting complacent and oh okay, we have these training that we hire, we do these types of webinars and lunch and learns, but to go through and say, it's actually directly tied to those strategic goals. Here are the strategic KPIs that we're trying to do. But again, also, as far as going across other organizations, I'm afforded a little bit more, have a little bit more bandwidth in my team to go through and have regular reviews and one-on-ones, and participate with product development, with sales.

Joni Chapas: So we can look and see what's on their roadmap. What are they doing? And take some time to absorb that and think about what does that mean? What does that mean to where we want to go? How do we ... from an operation standpoint, what are the impacts? How can we drive some of that innovation together? Again, it's just that ability to spend some time, focus and thinking on that, where from a really a more pure operational perspective, you typically will get like, oh hey, sales is rolling out this new program, or whatever it may be.

Joni Chapas: And then now let's kind of react to it. And even if you're doing it as part of our project, you're going through and putting those things in place, but you're not often looking at ... and those operational leaders aren't often looking at sales where are you trying to get to in the next year, three years, five years where I can do more of that.

Joni Chapas: So it's imperative that we can again,a cross the silos of the organization and I've built relationships with those other leaders or say, hey, can I sit in on your monthly review or quarterly review, so that we can get ... that we can see where they're headed and take that into consideration and make sure that we're all sort of headed in the same and right directions that we can align, for strategies and innovation, because we can hear, hey, you guys, it sounds like someone's looking for a tool that may aid in X, Y, and Z, but that really closely aligns to something that we want to do too. So maybe this is instead of, in a vacuum one group going and looking for a tool set, that we look together and kind of go through and do that through the power of putting that together.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I mean, it always shocks me. It seems like it shouldn't be, but there is always a lot of missed opportunity within any company of those collaboration points within function to function. So having a team that acts sort of as a conduit for ensuring that those opportunities, you get ahead of them instead of to your point at being reactive, oh, you're doing this? Great. We could use it this way. Getting ahead of that curve and thinking more strategically about the areas of opportunity across functions, so that you can be more intentional about those. That makes a lot of sense. So good. All right.

Sarah Nicastro: And then the last area is around technological innovation. So your team is also responsible for innovation in terms of technology and digital transformation. So, this recently resulted in a partnership with IFS, and that is something again where you're looking at how different tools can be leveraged across the business, to drive success in sort of modernizing the company's approach to technology. So talk a little bit about what that looks like, in terms of working alongside operations to bring those digital transformation projects to life.

Joni Chapas: Yeah, so we work, again kind of to the point of working sort of across the silos is that, I also work pretty closely with our IT organization, that ... and then vendors, for example, IFS is this key one that we've recently been working on, but to work with our IT team and again, make sure that I understand what their roadmap is and to get our needs on, on the roadmap and to be looking out ahead, of not just, hey, there's something that came up, we need to get a request in now, but what are the advancements that we want to be making?

Joni Chapas: And it's more about more of the long-range planning. But specifically for something like, IFS is a great example of that a lot of people can probably relate to. We did that through an RFP process, and if anybody's ever done that, in most organizations, there's a whole lot of ... you're putting together lot of the information on what are the requirements and what's needed, the whole RFP process, identifying vendors that are going to participate, reviewing their responses, doing Q and A sessions with them, getting demos and whatnot from them, typically putting together some cost benefits on the ROI type of information. You're able to generate a score card that you're comparing people that participate in the RFP process.

Joni Chapas: So really my team did all of that type of work. Actually, we also ... even if you step back from that, we kind of more of the research to look and see what's out there in the marketplace. And to say, we know we have a particular need that we want to address, but we also want to think ahead to a tool that not only will address that specific need, but will grow with us, and that has additional modules, functionality, and a roadmap that kind of aligns with Brinks Home, where our roadmap was going. But anyway, but going through that process, so going and coming up with all of those pieces of ... through that RFP process, what we did was then take some of the experts in and said, hey, come in and sit in the demo and help us score them.

Joni Chapas: And then yeah, they helped us provide information on requirements upfront as well. But all the other pieces and people, again, if you've done an RFP process, you know it can be very time consuming. They didn't have to spend the time on that. But, from the technology standpoint, again, being able to look ahead, investigate, understand what other teams within the organization, what their needs are, so that we can ... because obviously when you're spending money on certainly outside tools, you want to have a tool set that's going to integrate together, where you can have, not just disparate a whole bunch of one-off tools that now don't talk to each other and, or duplicative in nature. So really our role is to, again, define, think ahead, define what those needs are, then really shepherd it through that whole process.

Joni Chapas: And then when it came to actually working on the project of ... to building and rolling out field service management and PSO, that we could go through and again, play the key role in a lot of the documentation, working as the primary project team and bring those, the SMEs in as needed. We could do a lot of the testing and review and then bring them in for final sign-off. And again, take a lot of that burden of all the time that it takes, so that we could turn that around as a ... realistically turn that around much more quickly than it would be if we were relying on people to do that in addition to their day job. That's kind of the other thing I say a lot is everybody in operations, they have a day job. This is our day job.

Joni Chapas: So, but you know, really technology is a key for innovation and automation, is what you need to get there. I mean, obviously in the modern world, innovation and technology are kind of hand in hand. And so really thinking through those, understanding the longer range vision, and trying to figure out how to do that, helps you progress and bring change to the organization without crippling the organization in the meantime.

Joni Chapas: It's definitely, I mean, it's disruptive. It's disruptive, but you have to be able to kind of put all the pieces in place to have that disruption be as minimal as it can be, and then achieve the result that you want, again, without jeopardizing your day-to-day in the meantime.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And I think, you mentioned speed, right? If you are relying on operational leaders to do that whole process in addition to their everyday responsibilities, it's ... the whole thing is going to move at a slower pace, than if you have a team dedicated to it. And speed is imperative when it comes to keeping pace, and innovating, and leveraging technology today. Everything is changing faster than it ever has before, and it's not slowing down. So looking for the best way to set your company up for success, to not only focus as needed on the short term, but focus the way you need to on the longterm is super important.

Sarah Nicastro: So whatever that structure looks like, whether it's a structure like Brinks Home has, whether it's something completely different, for any company that is focusing on driving innovation, what would you say are some of the key ingredients to success?

Joni Chapas: Yeah, I think a couple of key things. One is leveraging the best of what you have right in front of you. I mean, I know that there's a balance between, yeah we want to change and we want to think outside the box, which we need to do, but you want to take a look and know what the strengths of what you already have and how to leverage those as you move forward, is really key. A lot of folks get into the almost the throwing the baby out with the bath water. So really want to make sure you know yourself and know what your strengths are. Data-driven decision-making. I mean, I can't probably preach enough. So, I'm thrilled that within my organization at the Brinks Home, that the data analytics team is there, because that's essential.

Joni Chapas: It's essential to the business. You need to look at, let the trending, tell you where you're going, but predictive analysis and analytics tell you kind of where you need to improve and where you need to go. And then that you're going to make the right decisions. I mean, there are a lot of things, don't mistake the fact that there's technology out there that's really cool to have, but when you put pencil to paper, the business case for that really cool technology may not be there.

Joni Chapas: But you will need to really understand your data and using that, again to make the right decisions for your business of where you're going to get the most bang for your buck. What's the return? Where can you really improve? That's really key. Attention to detail, which is probably, if you summarize a lot of the things that we were talking about, about sort of the focus, that's one of those pieces that, because the team's able to focus we can pay more attention to those details, that's often what happens to any of us. Any time you're rushing through something, or you're doing two things at one time, that's generally what suffers is the detail.

Joni Chapas: So, obviously everybody knows the phrase, the devil is in the details, of when you're working through certainly a complex implementation or a technology change. And so, making sure that you have people that can focus on that. And then of course, collaboration and communication, just so important to everything that we do. And regardless of the organizational structure, like you were mentioning, communication and collaboration really has nothing to do with your org chart. It's all about people. And so that's just one of my other mantras, is that we have to engage and keep talking with each other and make sure that everybody's on the same page. Because as things are moving faster and faster, it's very easy to miss those steps and to try to, race ahead and be in a hurry and miss some of those key points.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. Very good advice, Joni, and I bet there's going to be people listening to this podcast that are being tasked with the operational duties and the innovative duties that are, are going to be jealous of the support that you're providing at Brinks Home. So it's a good model though, I think for anyone to kind of think about and to consider and really just to do some critical thinking about what exactly the focus on innovation is within the business. And is it scaled to the degree it needs to be, is it as effective as it needs to be, are you moving at the pace you need to be, et cetera.

Sarah Nicastro: So I appreciate you coming on and talking a bit about how you're doing that at Brinks Home and thanks for being here.

Joni Chapas: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. You can check out more of our content by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @thefutureoffs. The future of field service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more by visiting ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I wrote an article a couple of years ago about the dichotomy of service leadership, discussing how – as the need for innovation in service has increased – we have put unfair expectations on our service leaders to be masters at both operational excellence and innovation. Now, I do believe that innovation is everyone’s responsibility – but only to a degree.

What I mean is that the expectation for a service leader to contribute to innovation is fair, particularly because they often have a very strong view of what customers need and what the company needs to change to better meet those needs. However, the expectation that the service leader bear full responsibility for that innovation is not fair. Two years ago, when I wrote that article, that did seem to be the expectation in many instances: “Oh hey – please ensure we continue to meet our operational objectives, but can you also work on determining how we need to evolve the business to succeed over the next one to five years and start making those changes, too?”

Luckily, it seems that collectively organizations have begun to realize that putting the weight of innovation on the shoulders of operational leaders alone isn’t realistic. Companies have realized the strategic value of service to the business, and as such the function has become less siloed. Further, digital transformation is also eliminating siloes within companies because they realize the need to look at these opportunities more holistically to achieve success.

The recognition of the breadth of innovation needs as well as the importance of digital have not only begun to break down siloes but have also increase acknowledgement that, while everyone should be responsible for contributing to innovation, a dedicated person or team needs to exist to spearhead it. We see many organizations introducing new titles, like a VP of Innovation or a VP of Transformation, who sit across a number of functions to drive alignment on strategic, innovative, and technological efforts.

Operational Excellence vs. Innovation

One example of this approach you’ll hear in more detail on this week’s podcast, from Joni Chapas of Brinks Home. Joni’s team was put in place to work alongside operational leaders to drive innovation and ensure strategic alignment; to listen to their insights and weigh their expertise, but take the responsibility of research, strategy, and execution off their shoulders so that they can continue to focus on operational excellence. “In operations, there's always a fire that's closer to you than that smoldering ember that's out in the woods. Now that smoldering ember might end up being what's going to lead to the forest fire that really can be truly, severely detrimental if you don't stay on top of it. But before you can even look to that, you have to be dealing with what's in front of you,” says Joni. “So, we have things like that that are flashing before these operational leaders, their eyes to make sure they're keeping up with those day in day out, minute by minutes stats of how things are going. Then to also expect that, oh, and hey, and by the way, in the next quarter, next year, we need to see this overall improvement in those metrics, it's kind of tough for them to have that dual focus.”

A dual focus won’t elicit the level of innovation most organizations need to achieve today to maintain competitive differentiation, and this is why Brinks Home created the team Joni leads. “The idea of my team is really to partner with and work alongside operations, so that we can have more of the eye on the future, while they're focusing more on the near term and what's right in front of their face,” she explains. “There’s the ever, ever evolving future field service, just like what this whole series is about, that you have to keep an eye on, and you have to look to the future, and you have to innovate, or your business is not going to be successful. But you also have to take care of the day-to-day. Both are important, so this approach allows us to eliminate a divided focus and give each area ample attention.”

Innovative ideas can come from anyone, but innovative efforts take significant time and work. As companies look to become more innovative, they must realize that it isn’t a magical process of idea to reality – there’s layers of research, analysis, strategy, and execution that are required. “There are a lot of pieces that are critical to the success of longer-range projects. If you have a leader that is also responsible for day-to-day metrics, some of that will probably start slipping through the cracks. Not because they're not capable, but because of the timeframe that they have, that they probably aren't able to get to as thorough of analysis as they might like here. Or maybe the communication piece or coordination with other parts of the organization maybe falls through the cracks a little bit,” says Joni.

One recent example is Brinks Home’s decision to invest in IFS to support its field service operations. “We worked with both field service and IT to align objectives and then began the RFP process. Anyone who has done an RFP process knows there's a whole lot of work putting together the information on what are the requirements and what's needed, identifying vendors that are going to participate, reviewing their responses, doing Q & A sessions with them, getting demos, and putting together some cost benefits and ROI information,” explains Joni. “We also want to think ahead to a tool that not only will address that specific need, but will grow with us, and that has additional modules, functionality, and a roadmap that aligns with Brinks Home.”

Joni’s team coordinated the insight from internal stakeholders, mapped the present-day and future needs, did due diligence on the technologies available, and completed the RFP process to select the best fit – shepherding the process for Brinks Homes in a way that not only created a strategically-aligned outcome but never took significant time or focus away from the day-to-day operational leaders. The team is also leading the technology implementation. “By playing the key role in a lot of the documentation, working as the primary project team, doing a lot of the testing and review and then bring the operational leaders in for final sign-off we take a lot of that burden of all the time that it takes, so that we could turn that around much more quickly than if we were relying on people to do that in addition to their day job. Innovation is our day job.”

The acknowledgement by companies like Brinks Home that this dichotomy of service leadership is not only unfair but will slow your company significantly in its innovative efforts will lead to new levels of transformation that will be exciting to see. To hear more about Joni’s journey and how Brinks Home is handling innovation, be sure to check out this week’s podcast.

5 Musts for Leaders to Increase Digital Proficiency

5 Musts for Leaders to Increase Digital Proficiency

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

Alcon’s Service Overhaul – And What Comes Next

Most Recent

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

The State of Connected Assets

The State of Connected Assets

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

Ecolab’s Remote Service Strategy

How Alcon is Strategically Approaching AI in Field Service (and Beyond)

Alcon’s Service Overhaul – And What Comes Next

Most Recent

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

The Intersection of Servitization and Sustainability

The Intersection of Servitization and Sustainability

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

Defining the Service Leader’s Duty Around the "Silver Tsunami"

The Service Leadership Trifecta

Are We Measuring Today’s Service Success on Yesteryear’s Metrics?

Most Recent

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

Where Servitization and Sustainability Converge

Where Servitization and Sustainability Converge

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

Defining the Service Leader’s Duty Around the "Silver Tsunami"

The Service Leadership Trifecta

Are We Measuring Today’s Service Success on Yesteryear’s Metrics?

Most Recent

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

The State of Field Service Management Software

The State of Field Service Management Software

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

Ecolab’s Remote Service Strategy

How Alcon is Strategically Approaching AI in Field Service (and Beyond)

Alcon’s Service Overhaul – And What Comes Next

Most Recent

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

The Importance of Service Benchmarking

The Importance of Service Benchmarking

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

Defining the Service Leader’s Duty Around the "Silver Tsunami"

The Service Leadership Trifecta

Are We Measuring Today’s Service Success on Yesteryear’s Metrics?

Most Recent

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

Actually, Technology is the Easy Part

Actually, Technology is the Easy Part

Share

Put People in Focus

Stay Connected

Related Content

Defining the Service Leader’s Duty Around the "Silver Tsunami"

The Service Leadership Trifecta