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

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

IDC estimates there will be 55.7 billion connected IoT devices (or “things”) by 2025, generating almost 80B zettabytes (ZB) of data and says “organizations continue to connect their internal processes across roles on a digital platform; and these same industry organizations are realizing the importance of expanding their ecosystems to meet market and customer need, and be more flexible and resilient.”

We all recognize the criticality of gathering data, but do we have clarity around exactly how to make the most of that data? Based on my recent conversation with Dr. Andreas (Andy) Schroeder, Reader for Information Systems at Aston University and Digital Lead for the Advanced Services Group, it seems the answer in most cases is no – particularly as we look at the paths for monetizing data. Andy and I recently recorded a podcast, which will be released soon, during which he demystified some of the common challenges around how to leverage data to increase revenue.

The Chicken and Egg Syndrome

The first point to get clear on is what comes first: strategy or technology? As Andy explains, data is an answer that should be answering a question that is tied to your strategy. “Technology or data, information technology is a way to answer questions,” he says. “The questions that need to be answered are defined by the business model. So, if my business model, for example, says I provide heating as a service, then the question is, for example, how much heat does my customer need, how much comfort does he or she need? This is a question, and then we can look at how we can use technology to answer this question.”

Leading with strategy and focusing on what questions do you need to answer to deliver value to your customers is the best way to approach putting technology in place to gather the right data. Too often companies get ahead of themselves by putting technology in place and collecting data that they aren’t sure what to do with or how it fits within their value proposition. This can waste valuable time and create overwhelm, so you are better of setting your strategy first and defining exactly what questions you need answers (data) to.

Clarify Your Path to Revenue

This was my favorite quote from the podcast with Andy: “We all agree that Servitization is tightly linked to digitalization, but I would go even further and say that Servitization is the way to monetize digitalization.” He goes on to explain the cohesiveness that should exist when it comes to your company’s evolution from product provider to Servitized business, digitalization efforts, and new customer value proposition.

Clarity around how best to approach this puzzle is where the majority of demystification needs to occur. “A lot of the IOT investments that we're seeing, may not pay off on their own unless they're wrapped into a business model that takes advantage of being able to monitor something at distance,” explains Andy. “There are some huge misconceptions around Servitization. Servitization is not a statement of, ‘We are not good at producing products.’ It's a statement of, ‘We can provide our product as a service because we have the best products around, because we can provide products that we can put a lifelong commitment to instead of our competitor who is more or less happy when they don't have to be involved with that product long-term.’”

When there is confusion around or resistance to the idea of morphing to a Servitized business model, the value proposition tends to be presented in a fragmented way: product first, then service after with new data capabilities added on as digitalization efforts mature. This fragmented approach is all wrong, because not only does it not embrace the true meaning of Servitization, but it pieces out the value that customers are willing to pay for into siloes that aren’t at all meaningful to them.

“If we take the narrow term of monetization, that means money for data in the way we can interpret this,” explains Andy. “We’ve found that in a lot of companies that we work with, they come with ambitions of being able to monetize the data on its own. Some make investments in development platforms and so on and so on, to be able to communicate data and insights to the customer. Very, very few are managing to convert this into actual business propositions that are being taken up by the customers.”

What Are Your Customers Willing to Pay For?

What Andy is describing is a challenge I’ve heard tale of many times – a customer isn’t receptive to paying for data or a new tier of service contract enabled by that data, because their expectation is that as their trusted provider, you will extend your latest and best capabilities to them. In other words, they are interested in the outcome – not the path to the outcome. “What we find is that a lot of times, the customer is not willing to pay for the data. There might be different reasons, there might not be enough value in the data, or the customer might say, ‘I buy your product and you want to charge me to tell me when my product will break? I mean, I'm your customer, why don't you just tell me? Why would we have to have a different loop, why do you want to charge me extra for it?’”

This is why, in most scenarios, the path to data monetization needs to be a natural part of the shift to Servitization or outcomes-based service, not an initiative on its own. “In the wider context, the way to monetize data is to make it part of the entire service proposition,” says Andy. “To be honest, the customer doesn't really care to know when the machine breaks in a service context. In a service context, you're contracted to make sure the machine doesn't break, and there's a penalty associated with the downtime of the machine. Why would the customer want to know? For curiosity reasons, yes, but it is your responsibility. By folding data into a service proposition, you can more easily monetize it because you are translating it into tangible, substantial value.”

Now some organizations who have advanced quite far on the Servitization journey have also seen success in monetizing data in additional areas beyond the core service value proposition – by leveraging data as a way to provide valuable knowledge and business insights in more of a consulting manner. While this isn’t yet the norm, it is also worth considering how data may play a part in your revenue growth if you can glean insights from it that provide value to your customer base beyond informing your service.

Stay tuned for this podcast coming soon, where Andy and I discuss these themes in more detail and also walk through important tips for collecting the right data for your needs.

By Tom Paquin

I am a creature of the retail world, having spent my young and early professional life in it, both directly as an hourly employee, and then indirectly in advisement to some large retail brands. Because of that, it’s something that I talk about here frequently. Most of the discussions that I’ve had have been about the actual retail go-to-market strategy for retail organizations: Where service can fit in their current day-to-day operations. This means focusing in most instances on service rather than field service, utilizing what physical space is available to provide experiences for customers who are standing on your property.

Field operations, as they relate to retail, usually fall into two categories: building physical infrastructure for delivery, repair, and installation services, or the act of delivering service to retailers. Having discussed the latter in some detail, let’s focus on the expansion of companies towards delivering actual field operations outside of retail.

It’s easy to see this in a binary—the only field service you could provide, as a bookseller, for instance, is a product delivery service. But is that the only service that you could provide? Are there opportunities to servitize the book-buying process, perhaps through subscription-based book clubs that provide books to members each month and organizes and runs their meetings, perhaps in partnership with local catering? The technology potential and intersectionality of local businesses have finally caught up with the ambitions of business owners…let’s not stifle out-of-the-box thinking now.

Obviously I can say things like this without consequence, since I don’t need to find the money, resources, and infrastructure to make it happen. With that in mind, let’s talk about some of the logistical considerations that could help connect the dots.

Appropriating field workers

How does one “staff up” for field operations? How do you manage the vehicular costs, material costs, and labor costs associate with these sorts of additions to your workflow? Why, the same way you do everything else of course. Resource planning and logistics shouldn’t be a new tenet for your business, and these new additions should slot alongside them with ease. If they don’t, you need to evaluate the tools that you’re using to manage these systems in the first place.

Schedules for field employees aren’t the same, obviously, as in-store staff, and it’ll be up to you to decide if these two (or more) roles warrant different types of talent to inhabit those roles. If so, they should sit side-by-side on a time sheet, with similar expectations, appropriately divergent goals, and compensation commensurate with skill and out-of-pocket expenses (if any). If your in-house staff can also manage your field operations, can you hybridize their day, allocating some time to in-store work, and some time to field work? How can you make this equitable? How can you conform to labor laws? Good software and mobile oversight will help you.

On-site points-of-sale

As a retail employee, my job was never to ring out customers, bag items, deliver exceptional customer service, or show customers where a product was. My job was the up-sell. At Gamestop, I was hawking preorders and magazine subscriptions. When I worked for Apple, it was their various service programs, whether it be AppleCare, which still exists, or MobileMe and One to One, neither of which exist any longer. Checkout can be managed by a mobile phone, or, if you’re Amazon, an elaborate system of motion-sensor cameras. The value of a retail employee is how much additional money and loyalty they can bring into the organization. This doesn’t stop when they step off your property (assuming they’re still on the clock, of course).

Setting field sales goals that are realistic and respectful is a key to making field operations viable for any business, but certainly for retail. For that reason, field workers need to have point-of-sale access on mobile devices—this should include full inventory, the ability to allocate inventory, remit payment, and schedule follow-ups for delivery if appropriate. This sort of connection to backoffice processes is the bare minimum of successful field operations. Your field workers can’t waste your customer’s time calling to check on inventory or whether or not you can get something. They need it at their fingertips.

Where does all this tech live?

There are basically three ways that point-of-sale, navigation, and appointment management (and the dozens of other things you might need in the field) can be put into the hands of field technicians: Proprietary devices, company-supplied consumer mobile devices, and employee-provided devices (BYOD). Is there a right or wrong way to do any of these things? Probably not, but it’s important to think about what works best for your purposes.

If you’re bought into a proprietary point-of-sale system, a proprietary device might seem like the best option, but obviously if you’re running service-oriented applications on the device, they need to be compatible—and natively compatible—or the system loses any value. What’s the point in deploying a mobile version of a proprietary technology if it can’t do what you need the mobile solution to do in the first place.

We’re at a point where, from a mobility perspective, consumer devices typically fit the bill just fine. Whether you own the devices centrally or you rely on employee devices typically comes down to the economics. The value of centrally managing devices is that you can have a few phones or tablets that are picked up and returned centrally, and you can control the operating system, applications, and what apps the device actually has on it. With BYOD, there are mobile device management overlays that can help regulate company-owned applications, but you’re still treading in difficult waters if you’re messing with an end user’s property.

In the end, the technology is a means to an end, and while field operations might not be the defining facet of retail, for many businesses, it could be exactly what sets them apart and keeps them viable.

Lilja Scheel Birgisdóttir, Reliability Engineer at Icelandair, talks with Sarah about the immense complexities and interdependencies of airline operations and the role predictive maintenance will play in the airline’s future.

Sarah: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be talking with Icelandair about their exploration of predictive maintenance. This is a conversation that I think you'll find quite interesting. Because when you talk about service complexity, I don't know that there is a more complex environment than the airline industry. I'm excited to welcome Lilja, from Icelandair, to talk with us today. And Lilja, I'm going to let you introduce yourself fully, because I know that I would not properly pronounce your last name. So, please tell everyone about yourself.

Lilja: So hello. I'm Lilja Scheel Birgisdóttir. So, we are from the airline, Icelandair. I have my team with me. We are a team of reliability engineers. We consist of three. And it's Harpa Rún Garðarsdóttir and Unnar Már Sveinbjarnarson. And then, we have our IT specialist with us who is Bjarki Elíasson. So, if I just introduce Icelandair briefly, it's an airline that has celebrated over 80 years, birthday, if you can say that. So, we track our history back to 1937. So it's only 34 years after the Wright brothers took off, we took off, not in the form that we are today. It has a longer history of mergers, but we've been flying under the name of Icelandair since 1973. So, not many airlines that can say that, especially when we're just a tiny airline flying from a tiny island in the middle of the ocean.

Lilja: We have a specific business model which has been very successful. It's called the Via. I'm not sure on the pronunciation, but Via market because we fly from Europe to the US, and we offer the great deal of free stopover in Iceland for up to seven days, which is kind of intriguing for many people, and at no extra cost. So this is a unique model that not many can replicate based on our geological position. What is kind of unique about us, I would say, but maybe the global market does not know, is that we have what could be explained as the heart of Iceland there, or heart of Iceland. And we have felt it very strongly, especially in the 2010 and '11 volcanic eruptions, from the very well-known volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, which every reporter struggled with pronouncing the name of back then.

Lilja: But throughout this Corona situation, we have felt it, again, beating strongly when our day-to-day work changed a lot overnight. And we have had to say goodbye to over 2000 fellow colleagues. So, it's been a hard time. But again, we have been feeling this strong unity. And amazingly, Icelandair is so well liked, and by the Icelandic nation as well. So many of them, they experienced their home when they step on board of our aircraft on their way home. So, they feel the Iceland spirit and the Icelandair spirit. So, that's a little bit about our company, who we are. If you want to know, understand, what we do as reliability engineers? So, what we do is collect and monitor technical data, so that we can evaluate how well our planes are doing. We monitor technical dispatch reliability, or/and... So, we're monitoring basically the health of our fleet. And if we are seeing any off trends, we notify someone who can take action on those. So, that's a little bit about us.

Sarah: Excellent. Well, thank you, Lilja. I have heard of the via structure. And it is very compelling. I have not had an opportunity to visit Iceland, but would love to. So, once travel picks back up, I will put that on my list. And I know that-

Lilja: You should.

Sarah: I know that for everyone in the airline industry, 2020 has been a very, very difficult year. So, certainly appreciate that. And I think most of the conversation we'll have today is not necessarily talking about business as it's been recently, which is uniquely difficult in a lot of industries really, but talking about the complexities in the airline operation and for Iceland in a more normal state of business, which I think is what most folks intuitively think about when they think of flying, because a lot of people are used to also being able to travel far more than we have over the last year.

Sarah: Well, thank you for the background. So, what I do want to talk about next is some of that complexity. So, we had a call to kind of set the stage for this recording. And I had shared with you all that I've never really thought about the weight of complexity on an airline. I guess I should have. But I just really have only thought about it through the lens of a passenger or a consumer, and not necessarily all of the different aspects of complexity. Some, I think, are intuitive because they're more of the customer facing things that you would notice or experience. But there's far more to it. So, I want to just talk about some of the different facets of complexity that makes managing and optimizing an airline operation quite, quite challenging. So, to start, let's talk a little bit about... The first area is customer expectations, right? So, maybe talk about that one first?

Lilja: I mean, as a customer, you want good service. You want reliability. You know, you want to be there alive and on time, basically. I mean... and smooth and enjoyable travel experience.

Sarah: Yes.

Lilja: And that's where on-time performance is a critical thing. But, I mean, it's the same for every airline. It's the same expectation. We have the same customer group, basically. So, I mean, that's the main thing.

Sarah: And it's the most intuitive and easy to understand, right?

Lilja: Yes.

Sarah: Because the vast majority of us have been on a flight that ends up delayed or canceled. And then, you... So, that frustration of the interruption to your life, and your schedule, and all of that is... It's the easiest to comprehend in terms of the complexity. But let's talk about... Then, when there is a disruption, obviously it impacts the customer experience. But talk a little bit about what happens... It's really a chain reaction, so there's a huge trickle-down effect of one issue throughout the system. So, what are some of the things that happen or areas of impact once you have some sort of issue, or failure, or downtime?

Lilja: I mean, what's happening is there are a few cases that can take place. I mean, you can have one part that is faulty, and the... In the cockpit, they see a light, and they just... They know they can't take off. It can be that it's late from another flight. It can be that it's late from a maintenance. So there are few things that can happen that causes a delay, or an AOG situation, aircraft on ground. I mean, in the case of we have a faulty part and they have the light than the cockpit, we're seeing 15 minute delay, and up to a few hours. This can lead to an AOG, where your flight is delayed, canceled, whatever. And sometimes, we can resolve it right on time, especially if the aircraft is in their home base. It's easier. If the situation occurs at an out base, it's a bit more cumbersome.

Lilja: And, I mean, for the customer, it can lead to missed flight, missed train. They have to book a new hotel. There's so many things that can... the trickle-down effect. So, I mean, if you have an AOG situation that's a longer time. The aircraft cannot take off. It can... You might end up where you have to get a new aircraft to pick up the passengers. So, then that's lost revenue when you have to fly a new aircraft empty to pick up all the passengers, and then fly the broken aircraft when it's been repaired. So, I mean, this is... There are many things we need to consider when this happens.

Sarah: Right. And the other thing is, if you think about the kind of interdependencies of air travel, right? Like you can't... When you have a delay, or you have an AOG situation... Now, I sound like I know what I'm talking about. Then, you can't just, "Oh, okay. Well, we have it fixed. So, let's just take off." Right? I mean, you're reliant upon all of the other travel happening in the air, all of the other... the air traffic. You're relying on a lot of different things. And so, to your point, there's an issue when it comes to customer satisfaction. So, how frustrated are your customers getting in those situations? But there's also a very real issue of cost complexity. Right? So, to your point, I've been in situations before, if it's extreme enough, where a flight's canceled or what have you, you end up getting some sort of compensation from the airline. So, you have that cost.

Sarah: You have the cost of flying empty planes, and all of those things. So, it becomes quite intense, in terms of the impact of that. And I think you also can't under emphasize the criticality of the number one objective, which is keeping everyone safe. Right?

Lilja: Exactly.

Sarah: So, I always think about... I've been in... Anyone that's been in a situation where a flight is significantly delayed or canceled understands how frustrating it is. But I always find myself annoyed with people that throw a temper tantrum about it. And yes, it's frustrating. But the number one thing is you don't want someone to take off in an airplane that they know they shouldn't, or something isn't properly taken care of.

Sarah: So, it's always like... Yes, I know it's frustrating, but they're acting in our best interest, even though it's inconvenient. Right? So... Anyway. But the other thing is... that I had never really thought about prior to our conversation is some of the complexity that exists in being able to rectify issues, or make necessary repairs, to be able to move along. And so, talk a little bit about... I guess I just never thought about the fact that, if you have an aircraft in some location, you can't just have any mechanic come and do a fix. You don't know if you'll have the part you need. So, talk about some of the complexities when it comes to the regulatory side, and some of the inventory, and those sorts of things.

Lilja: Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of regulatory bodies. We have FAA. We have EASE. And they have different regulations. And Icelandair, flying in both regulatory bodies, we need to abide to both. So, then we of course have the... from Boeing, everything we have to just obliged from there. So, everything is highly regulated. And you wouldn't believe the paperwork that goes with one aircraft. I mean, it's tons of paper.

Lilja: So, everything that's done has to be written down, signed off. And the person that's signing it off, as you said, has to have the permission to do so. So, the person has to be trained and licensed to do this thing. Even though you're an aircraft mechanic, you're not necessarily have the license to work on avionics, so the computers on board. So, if something comes up, you need to be sure that the person has the specific certification before they can come aboard and do the work. So...

Lilja: And the parts that we have, even though we have two 757s, Boeing, standing side by side, doesn't necessarily mean that we can use the same parts in both, because they have different specs, they have different modifications. So, they are... We might need two different parts, even though the same one failed. And these parts aren't just laying around in every stock room. We might have a AOG situation in Boston, but the part is available in Europe. And you have to transfer the parts. And you need to make sure that the part is certified properly, with the paper work that we require, with the mud status that this aircraft requires. So, there's so many things that need to align when something comes up.

Sarah: Yes. Ooh, it's not a job... I don't think I would want... I don't think I would want it. It's a lot of pressure. So obviously, you have to handle those situations when they arise. But the more you can avoid them through both traditional maintenance and what we'll talk about in a bit, predictive maintenance, the better off we are. So, the ultimate goal is to minimize and eliminate as much as possible, any sort of issues.

Lilja: But I must add that. I mean, it takes a lot of people to cover these things. So, it's not only one man job, thankfully.

Sarah: Yes, yes.

Lilja: As you say, you would not want this job. You're only getting a tiny part of the whole scenario.

Sarah: Right. Right. I don't... I just don't... I don't know that I would want... I just don't know that the airline thing would be for me. I don't know. I get anxious as a flyer, let alone being responsible for all of that. But it isn't... It is... over... holistically, not just yourself, but everyone in the industry. It's an important job.

Lilja: It is.

Sarah: Like I said, I mean, it's... People's lives are in your hands every day. And when you look at some of the industries where... You talk about mission critical situations. And sometimes, people refer to that term in terms of downtime costs money. And yes, that's important. But when there are situations like with this, or in certain medical applications and things like that, where it's lives, number one, I mean, you're talking just about a different level of importance of, of everything working, and of managing and optimizing, and paying close attention, and, and all of that. So, a lot of respect for what you're doing.

Lilja: Thank you.

Sarah: So, let's talk a little bit about the kind of historical and present-day maintenance world for Iceland. So, you use IFS Maintenix to manage the planning and orchestration of all of the maintenance of the aircraft. So, tell us a little bit about how that works, and the value that IFS has contributed to Icelandair's operations.

Lilja: Yeah. So, we've been using Maintenix from IFS since 2014. We started the implementation in 2013, so... Wow. Eight years almost? That's crazy. Yeah. We use Maintenix to keep the aircraft everywhere. They keep track of all our scheduled maintenance activities, planning actions, and... Yeah. So, it's covering most of the processes that we do.

Sarah: So, you have Maintenix in place to manage the maintenance operations. But you're obviously continually looking for ways to minimize and eliminate any sort of delays and AOG situations. So, this is sort of the thought process behind investigating predictive maintenance for critical parts on the aircraft. So, tell us a little bit about how you view predictive maintenance potentially helping Icelandair.

Lilja: So, if we get a tool that can predict maintenance, we can improve our whole planning overview. We can start ordering parts beforehand, so cost saving. We can plan the maintenance action before it happens, before we get an technical delay or AOG. So again, we're saving costs and we're increasing our on-time performance. And, I mean, we could start... We could send the aircraft with the parts that we know is about to fail, so that it can be replaced wherever the aircraft is. So, I mean, we could take... I'm not saying that, that's an ideal thing to do. But we could know beforehand what we can do, when we can do it, and how we should do it. So, it would give us so much more insight and preparation time than we have today. So, in the long run, we would get shorter technical delays, reduce AOG situations, and reduced problems when we need to order parts that possibly is in somewhere in Europe, or America, when we need it in Iceland. So, there are so many things that... predicting the need before it happens.

Sarah: Okay. Tell me how this works on... You have an older Boeing fleet. Right? So, how do you determine what components you want to use predictive analytics with? How do you sort of put that in motion with the fleet that you have?

Lilja: Let's say there are certain part groups that we know that we don't need to monitor, because they're just you use and replace, so fully excluding those. So, we are looking at multiple part groups and part types. In terms of an older fleet... I mean, we know that our 757s are kind of old. The bad thing there is that they don't have as many sensors as the types that are coming out today. So definitely, that does not help us in the predictability. But with the coming fleets, we have a few max, 737 max. So, they have more sensors. So, we know we're going to get more data there. But then again, it's also just mathematics and statistics. So, we know that the models that they make in such a system are using historical trends.

Lilja: So, that helps us. Even though the 757s do not have sensors to assist with the predicting, we know that we have statistical data with us. So, that's going to help. And it's not impossible. So definitely, there is some future there. And it's so much fun to be in this place because, all of a sudden, we're taking part of the future happening.

Sarah: Yes.

Lilja: When we see... We're taking the step into predictive maintenance. It hasn't been as much viability before as it is today and tomorrow.

Sarah: And why do you think that is? Why do you think predictive maintenance is more viable today and tomorrow than it has been for Iceland air historically?

Lilja: I mean, the technical advancement has just been so great in the past years. Computers are getting more powerful. I think also, because of how highly airlines and maintenance is regulated, it's not been so much in the computers. I mean, every work that we do... Some airlines do have what's called e-signature, where the sign off on the papers are online, if you can say that. We do not. We have not implemented that yet. So, I mean, getting the data into the computers is just happening today. And it's really slow process because it has to fulfill all those rules, regulations. We have the CAAs that have to approve everything. So, it's a slow process.

Sarah: You wouldn't want to be an early adopter in the situation you're in. You need something that is more proven, and has... I can understand that. So...

Lilja: At least you have to have a lot of money if you want to be the first one.

Sarah: Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So, you have a proof of concept around predictive maintenance in place with IFS to explore this more. Tell us about the project and its intended objectives.

Lilja: So, the basic goal is just to build a view which displays some fancy graphs and information tables. So, that's the thing. It's going to be... As we've stated, it's going to be so useful for us to be able to see the predictions down to the serial number of the components. If that part is expected to fail within a certain time, this information would then be fed to our planning team or the maintenance control for further action. This seems very simple when I say it like this. But the calculations behind the predictability, the model training, is... Those things are fairly complicated to do. And it has to be good data that is fed in. So, that's also a very critical factor. So... But the goal for us is to be able to predict a component failing before its time.

Sarah: Okay, you touched on this a little bit, but I want to dig into some of the ways that this really benefits Icelandair and its customers if it works well. So, if you are able to successfully migrate to this predictive model, it... To me, it gives you better control, and it gives you more time to react, and it takes a lot of the uncertainty out of the situation. Right? So rather than, you have a flight land in Boston and someone calls and says, "Hey, uh-oh. This light is on. This part, it has an issue. And that part is in Iceland, or that part is in Europe. And you don't have the right person there to fix it. And you need to..." You know? So, there's all this time then that passes to align the right situation to fix it, and then comply with the air traffic and everything to get the flight back in the air.

Sarah: So, if you knew, to your point, "Okay. Well, this part is nearing end of life," or "We know that there's going to be an issue," you can orchestrate a repair before that failure occurs, or at least put yourself in a position where you have the appropriate resources where they need to be. So, you're more able to precisely align resources when, or even before, failures or issues occur. So, talk a little bit about that. So, you can... The different components you're... And you're focusing on tracking components that are more of those critical components, so things that would ground a plane, not the things that you have, like you said... I can't remember the term you used, but like a use and replace, that are more readily available. Right? You're talking about the things that would take time to fix. So, with the predictive model, you would have the visibility into when and where things will be occurring so that you can align the resources to those situations. Right?

Lilja: If something comes up for parts that are flight critical, you cannot fly. But if it's not a critical part, you can... I'm not completely familiar with the process, but you can ask for an extension of life, so that... I mean, you can get permission to wait for two weeks or fly the airplane home. So, there are processes there. But these are the components that will ground the aircraft. And knowing beforehand if these components are going to fail... Yeah, we're going to reduce costs. We're going to reduce problems and unpredictability. It's going to be great with failure prediction

Sarah: And you're also obviously improving the customer experience. Right? I mean, anytime you're able to minimize or eliminate a delay or a grounded flight, you're improving that as well. Talk a little bit about how the data could be leveraged over time to analyze patterns that could help Icelandair, so looking at patterns of faults and failures and how you could use that information within the organization to make changes.

Lilja: That's basically the goal of the reliability engineer. That's to identify trends and patterns, and try to see why they're happening. And we have always, what's called a reliability meeting where there's a reliability control board that meets. And we inform them of everything that's happening, trends, and things that we are seeing, the things that we have seen. And then, this boards, which persists of... I'm not very good with stature... status names, but like all the people that are required. We have pilots. We have mechanics. And everyone that's needs to know about the things and have something to do with it, they come there. So, it's a joint board where we can discuss these things. They can decide on future steps, or like the board can decide on future steps what needs to be done.

Sarah: So, over time, you can use the data that you're gathering in the predictive maintenance program. And if I'm understanding correctly, it also... The more data it gathers, the more it learns. Right? And the more accurately it can predict.

Lilja: Yeah. That's how the predictive maintenance system will work. It's a learning process.

Sarah: So, you can use this to look at different ways to make changes within the business to, again, just kind of operate more effectively because you have that far improved visibility. Right?

Lilja: Yep.

Sarah: Now, what about external implications? Once you have data that maybe shows you things that they... Let's say you... I'm just making this up. But let's say you have some part that you're noticing is continually failing prematurely, or you notice that there's an issue. Are you also able to take that data and leverage it with your external partners to make improvements out... kind of outside of the business?

Lilja: Yeah. When we see such a trend, we often look at which repair shop has been servicing the parts. And if it's just this part, sometimes we just have an odd one out. And then we just take it out of operation. We don't want to see it anymore because it's unreliable. It's costing us a lot. So, if it's just a single part, we can just throw it out. We just scrap it. But sometimes, we see it with the same part number. They're keep failing again, and again, and again, before it should. Then, often we look at the vendors to see if maybe they are not doing their work properly. Is it always... Are they all coming from the same vendor, or multiple vendors? So yes, this information will help us also to identify those. And this is a lot of costs that's... Parts cost a lot. A repair costs a lot. Everything in the airline industry costs a lot, except for the airline tickets.

Sarah: Right. So, there's significant opportunity to optimize and save. And it's interesting. There's a lot of potential value here in terms of you have sort of the customer facing benefits. You have the benefits for Icelandair, in terms of more visibility, better ability to align resources, cost savings, and all of those things. And then you have the ability to leverage the data externally, where it's relevant to improve some of the vendor and partner relationships, and give them feedback as well if you're able to pick up on those trends. It's really interesting Lilja. And I think that... I understand your point about why, in the airline industry and for Iceland in particular, you want to move pragmatically. You want to take your time and do this the right way. But our platform talks across industries. And this move to predictive is a huge, huge trend.

Sarah: And I think, to your point, in the last few years, the technology has just become so much more accurate and more accessible to people for a variety of different reasons. And it's exciting to see it sort of come to fruition in different industries, in different use cases, because it is really powerful. And the way that it will change how Iceland operates and how different businesses operate is really exciting. So, I appreciate you coming and sharing. And I'd love to have you back in a bit, when you are further along in the proof of concept, and talk about some of the things you've found, and some of the ways you're using the data and putting it to work, and kind of talk about the progress. I think that would be really cool.

Lilja: Yeah, definitely.

Sarah: Well, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. And thank you for sharing.

Lilja: Thank you.

Sarah: You can learn more about predictive capabilities and other trends by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. You can also visit 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 service management by visiting us at www.ifs.com. As always, thanks for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Customer experience has become a critical topic for every company I interview – even in industries that haven’t traditionally prioritized CX as heavily as others (like utilities, for example). Companies have learned that, ultimately, CX is what drives revenue and creates brand loyalty. Looking at some of that statistics shared in this recent article, the emphasis on CX by companies in our audience is well supported. For example:

81% of marketers expect to compete mostly (or entirely) based on CX (Gartner)
$1.6Tis lost every year in the U.S. because of poor customer service (Accenture Strategy)
74%of consumers are at least somewhat likely to buy based on experiences alone (Forbes / Arm Treasure Data)
$98B/yearis left on the table by companies who fail to provide “simple” experiences to their consumers (Siegel+Gale)

So, what constitutes a good customer experience? I suppose the weight of different criteria vary person to person, but some table-stakes expectations are control (self-service), ease and quality of communication (omni-channel support, proactive information), visibility (insight), efficiency (first-time fix, on-time delivery, knowledgeable employees, etc.), and effective problem resolution. We’ve talked a lot in recent years about the imperative role service plays in CX, and how it is often times the most frequent (sometimes only) face of the brand to customers. As such, equipping employees with the information, knowledge, and assets they need to delivery a positive CX has become top priority for today’s service organizations.

Technology plays a key role in delivering a cohesive and satisfactory CX. Money, time, and effort are being invested to consolidate systems and reengineer processes to achieve this cohesiveness and keep pace with the type of CX provided by consumer-facing brands like Amazon. Disparate tools and siloed data must be brought together so that the customer journey isn’t fragmented, and the service workforce must be equipped with the information, skills, and resources to deliver the experience you want to be associated with your company’s brand. It’s not an easy feat, but it’s an important one – and we’ve featured many success stories of companies getting it right.

My Real-World CX Woes

Perhaps that’s why a recent experience has frustrated me so much. We just finished remodeling a family room in our basement. In December, we ordered a sectional sofa from Joybird to finish off the space. For those not familiar, Joybird is a trade name of Stitch Industries, Inc. which was acquired by La-Z-Boy in July of 2018. Joybird specializes in e-commerce of custom-made furniture with very limited showroom locations in New York, Washington D.C., and Chicago. I’d seen Joybird pieces pop up on Instagram in beautiful colors and interesting textures that received rave reviews and was excited to make the purchase.

The online selection and ordering process was modern and user-friendly, including the ability to order free swatches of their many fabrics to evaluate in person before ordering. You can custom design your piece from the Joybird website and, for those looking for financing, that option is easily integrated into the purchasing process. Because I am incredibly impatient, I actually placed an order before receiving the fabric swatches and realized when they arrived that I much preferred a different option – so I called customer service to inquire about making the change, and they were friendly and accommodating. I was impressed with the ordering process all around.

Once we updated our order to the preferred fabric, we received an order update email confirmation and estimated delivery date (January 21^st) along with a “follow your build” email which enables you to check in on the manufacturing of your product for updates from beginning to end. The experience thus far was very in line with what I’d expect from the brand’s fresh and modern persona.

On January 11^th, we received an email explaining that the sofa build was complete and that the next phase would be for the sofa to go to a transit hub, where it could sit for up to a week to synergize shipping with other local purchases. The estimated delivery date remained January 21^st, but January 21^st came and went with no word on delivery or further email updates. On January 22^nd, I called Joybird customer service to inquire about our order status – you can’t reach someone directly but have to leave a message for a call back, which I understand is likely due to work-from-home circumstances of COVID. When the representative called back, I was told only that Joybird does not have visibility into any order status once the sofa has shipped and that we must await contact from the third-party delivery provider. I was assured this would happen by January 28^th.

Then January 28^th came and went with no sofa, no contact by the delivery company, and no updates. I called again January 29^th and was told the exact same thing I’d been told the previous week. Third time is a charm, right? Wrong. Another week and no sofa, no contact, no updates. This time when I call, now into February, I press harder because – let’s be honest – this lack of communication and lack of visibility really isn’t acceptable. I am told that the sofa is en route to last-mile logistics provider J.B. Hunt for delivery. On my own, I find the number to contact J.B. Hunt to inquire about location and status of delivery and I’m told they have our order information but have not yet received the sofa – the representative is hopeful it was on the order received end of last week and just hasn’t been scanned in yet, so I remain hopeful the sofa will finally arrive this week.

Fragmentation, Lack of Visibility Are Entirely Avoidable with Today’s Technologies

Reliance on third-party logistics providers is quite common, and I’ve never had such issues with getting insight into the status of an order. Companies I talk with that use third-party providers know the importance of leveraging both technology and training to ensure the use of a third-party doesn’t negatively impact the customer experience. The contrast of the customer experience of the Joybird sales process versus its service process is honestly shocking to me – the initial phase was so strong that my expectation for a cohesive, positive experience was set. The sofa we eventually receive may very well be phenomenal, but at this point, the impression I have of the company overall is quite poor based on my service experience (or lack thereof). The reality is, with the technology available to companies to offer a more cohesive customer experience and to have (and maintain) real-time visibility into its inventory from order all the way through to delivery, this level of disconnect and fragmentation feels simply unacceptable. This is a real-world example of the type of customer experience that ruins a brand’s perception and reputation, and the thing that gets me most is how entirely unavoidable this is.

I have a local acquaintance who recently received a beautiful, emerald green Joybird sofa – I reached out to her to inquire about her experience, and it very much mirrored ours. She said, “the sofa is absolutely beautiful and wonderfully made, but I will likely never order from them again based on the overall experience.” My point in writing this article isn’t to blast Joybird, but to use this very real-world example to illustrate the absolute criticality of asset visibility, connectedness, and a cohesive customer experience – especially when relying on a third-party delivery provider.

By Tom Paquin

This is part of an ongoing series on the state and standards of service management software in 2020. Here are the previous articles in the series:

In our last “Back to Basics” piece, we discussed “Servitization”, which has become the buzzword of choice in recent years among manufacturing and adjacent industries. As we barrel headfirst into an increasingly service-oriented economy, rethinking customer-centric business models around services rather than products has been a priority for many businesses.

Outcomes-based service takes that premise and extends it across all businesses that offer service functions. For many businesses, getting servitization right in the first place means focusing it on outcomes-based functions. But even businesses with well-established service functions have seen the benefits of outcomes-based service models.

So: What is Outcomes-Based Service?

Outcomes-based service is the act of restructuring service contracts to focus on desired and provable outcomes, rather than warranty, maintenance, and break-fix.

Imagine, for instance, that when you bought a new computer, you were guaranteed five years’ maximum efficiency. Perhaps that requires an upgrade after year two, new RAM or a new video card, or perhaps that requires something be repaired. All of that is baked into the price of the outcomes-based contract. This also ensures that all service emanates from the OEM. And it builds customer loyalty and ensures that when a new machine is purchased, that it’s purchased, used, and enjoyed for half a decade.

Different businesses will engineer outcomes differently for their customers, of course, focusing on some big areas. A recent study saw companies focusing out outcomes in the following areas, ordered by prevalence, from top to bottom:

Performance metrics
Asset uptime
Time-to-service
Fail rates

Obviously, for many businesses, this is a huge shift not just in go-to-market, but in how service is tracked, managed, and optimized across businesses. That’s where employing best-in-class service, asset, and project management software becomes even more important to the bottom line, and to your relationship with your clients.

We’ve explored a lot of instances of best-in-class outcomes-based service over the course of the last few years here at The Future of Field Service. Here are a few interesting stories and articles to help you see what outcomes-based service looks like in practice.

Trond Aune, Global ERP Manager and Henning Haugen, Group Technical Manager – Maintenance, both at Jotun, join Sarah to discuss the role of company culture in innovation, how a single source of truth was an imperative foundation for Digital Transformation, and how they’re building on success with the move to predictive maintenance.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be talking through another journey of digital transformation. I'm welcoming to the podcast today, two gentlemen from Jotun, Trond Aune, the global ERP manager and Henning Haugen, the group technical manager for maintenance. Trond, can you give a brief introduction to Jotun and introduce yourself?

Trond Aune: Yes, thank you, Sarah. I am the ERP manager of Jotun. And Jotun is one of the largest paint companies in the world. We are producing paints for different purposes. And we are into four different segments. One segment is the marine segment, where we are painting ships actually. We are painting every fourth ships in the world with Jotun paints. Another segment is a protective and industrial painting. Where we are painting large assets of our customers like infrastructure, power plants, oil platforms and so on. The third important segment is what we call the decorative cell segment. That is more beautification and protectional. Our homes and buildings and the fourth segment is powder, where it's actually industrial and decorative protection of steel and wood and other stuff. So Jotun is a major player within the paint manufacturing. And we actually have a turnover of almost three billion US$ and 10,000 employees globally.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, great. And Henning can you introduce yourself and tell folks about your role?

Henning Haugen: Hi Sarah. Yes, of course. My role is group technical manager, maintenance. So my team is in charge of the setting the corporate requirements guidelines and tools, to be used by our maintenance teams across the world. So that's the short introduction.

Sarah Nicastro: Good, good, excellent. Well thank you both for being here. I'm excited to talk through your story. We have companies on the podcast all the time that are at some point in their digital transformation journey, right? And so we're going to be talking about some of the different aspects of yours today. But one of the things that I've learned over time is how critical culture is, when you're talking about any change. And using your company culture to really anchor that change. Whether that's digital transformation or a change in business processes or business focus, whatever that might be.

Sarah Nicastro: And Jotun has a really unique culture, it's the penguin culture. So Trond, can you start by telling us a bit about the penguin culture, and what it means to Jotun. How it originated, what the core values are and how it sort of permeates everything that the company does.

Trond Aune: The penguin culture is in the veins or all employees in Jotun. We, as all other companies across, we have some core values. For Jotun, that is respect, boldness, loyalty and care. That is not unique. What is maybe more unique is the way we in Jotun actually utilize this. Even though that we have excellent products and we have a fantastic infrastructure to produce and distribute those products to our customers, the most important asset we have is our employees. And by you saying, "the penguin culture," which is kind of a branding of the way we behave to each other. The way we behave to our customers, to suppliers, the thinking we are doing when taking decisions, how we treat the environment, how all these important aspects, when we take decisions every day, this is as I said in the veins of us and that is actually how we are succeeding also.

Trond Aune: This has been supported and promoted by the management in the company for so many years. And we really see the benefit of this now. And it's not only some expressions being used in the brochures, it is actually really into the company. The penguin is there, obviously penguin is an animal. And we relate to it very much. It is surviving in very tough conditions. It is a nice animal. It behaves very nice to each other, take care of each other. And obviously it's a bold creature in so. So this is things that's fits very well into our thinking. And of course it's also a great marketing tool, both internally, but also externally. And Jotun has actually got quite well-known and almost famous about how we are utilizing this strong, strong business culture.

Sarah Nicastro: I think that's... it's so interesting to me. And we talked a little bit about this before Trond. And I know that, to you it's more what it means than the visible emblem of it. But the comment I made is, I can see how having that visible emblem, that mascot, that brand, could be so helpful in reinforcing the traits that are so important to the company. And really having a way to regularly remind employees of the mission to create a common language around it and to create alignment. So I think it's a really interesting point for listeners, just to think about, how do you take the important traits or characteristics of your culture and what are some of the ways that you can really, whether it's visually or otherwise, permeate that through everything the company does in the way that Jotun has with the penguin? So the characteristics, respect, boldness, loyalty and care. There's one that stands out to me and it's boldness. And I love that that's included. And I want to talk about some of the ways that boldness is encouraged at Jotun. Can you share a little bit about that?

Trond Aune: Yeah. Obviously Jotun has over many years grown organically. And we grow in areas and countries which is early in the phase of economic development in many cases. It was one or the first companies entering Myanmar, one of the best first of the Western companies after the country open. And of course that is boldness. And they use this expression as a boldness, in order to show that, yes you are allowed to do mistakes obviously and that is part of our culture. Take decision, be bold on your decisions, be bold on your point of view. And that has proven, that openness and that philosophy has proved to be very important for Jotun and actually for Jotun growth. That all the work we are one of the really fast, most fast growing paint companies in the world.

Sarah Nicastro: I was just going to comment that I love that that trait is emphasized. Because I think that, when you talk about... today we're talking about digital transformation. When you talk about any sort of innovation, any sort of growth mindset and what it takes to be successful there, I think this emphasis on boldness makes so much sense to me. I think you want a company culture where everyone feels empowered to speak up. To share new ideas, to challenge thinking in an inappropriate and respectful way. To really, that elevates the company's mission overall because everyone's contributing. So I just really like that aspect. And I think that as it relates to the topic of today's conversation in digital transformation, I think that promoting boldness and giving people an opportunity to speak up and weigh in, is part of what's required to successfully manage change, which is what we see often as the biggest, or one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to successful digital transformation. Is change management and adoption and that sort of thing.

Trond Aune: And Sarah there is one more dimension to it actually. Jotun has very wide geographical footprint. We are into more than 50, 60 countries. And of course the cultural diversity is so huge. And we are European and Americans. We are bold when it comes to actually to speaking out and to push forward our point of view. But when it comes to other parts of the world, people are more careful. And in that respect also the boldness thing is very important, to give people real opportunity to speak out the commuter gear, to give their idea. So this is actually more than just a word. It is really an important part of our culture.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes, that's a really good point. Okay, so let's shift gears and start talking then about the digital transformation journey. So one of the big aspects of that is that Jotun has undergone a major effort to consolidate disparate ERPs into a global instance of IFS apps which is used in more than 50 countries. So the overarching objective of that I guess, was to create this single source of truth. So tell us a little bit about that project and some of the challenges you were looking to overcome and what the goals were there.

Trond Aune: Yeah. I think that when we took that decision back in 2004, that decision maybe it was more bold than what we expected to be. Because it has proven really to be a challenging journey. But we are now at the really end of that journey. We are about to complete the last country, so we're a lot of IFS in the 50 countries we are into. And we now really see the benefit and we are extremely happy that we started that journey. Obviously we saw a lot of benefits of having one instance, one thing is the data and then one truth. The other one is across the standardization of processes, to do things the same way in all the companies. The third one I recall, it was the huge internal trade we are doing in not in between all the companies that is not fully automated, which was impossible when all companies have their different solutions.

Trond Aune: And of course, the fourth one was the transparency and actually to Jotun was growing. Has been expanding a lot, and it's there's of course a need for control also from the corporate side. And all of these things has been fulfilled by the one instance set up of IFS in our group. And it's I think it's quite unique to have such a big setup, with all the challenges it's represent, all from a technical point of view. With access and performance and connections, but also on the solution side and the legal side, with all the problems related to the legal requirements, specific business requirements and of course the standardization of business processes. Which is not only an IT project, it's a huge business project actually to implement all this. So this has now, it's now about to give us a really our payback time. We are going into the payback time for this huge investment. And we are really happy to have done this journey.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. So, you touched on this a bit, but let's talk through... it's a huge undertaking, right? To, as you said, not just on the IT side, but on the business side. You can summarize it in a couple of minutes, what you've accomplished. But it really is a significant undertaking to consolidate to that degree and to really bring in that single source of truth. So talk through... I want to talk about two aspects of that. First, let's kind of recap some of the benefits. What have been the major benefits in introducing a single point of truth into the business?

Trond Aune: Obviously consolidated reporting on sales profitability on customers, on products, that is a huge benefit. Of course we have much better control than if you have a lot of truth. But I think even more important, is the benefit and the wins we have had, when it comes to the internal alignment, because the ERP system is not only a transaction system, it is actually a carrier of standard-standard business processes. And it is an enabler to improve your business processes as well. As I mentioned earlier, especially on the advanced and complex setup we have, when it comes to delivering paints to moving targets as a vessel, a big ship is moving. So one day you have to deliver in Rotterdam and the next month it might be in Singapore. And then it might be in Korea the next time. And of course the complexity of handling that kind of customers, that is the global rollout of why IFS has really been helpful a bit.

Trond Aune: But it has also enabled us to start utilizing, not only the core ERP functionality, now we are also looking into expanding the utilization of IFS and linking up new modules. Where we actually can see that, the one source of truth, the standardized processes and the one instance and one database is really helpful and might make it much easier to implement a new functionality as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that's another thing we talk about a lot on this platform, Trond. Is the importance of setting a strong foundation. Which is what I look at, at the ERP journey as. It's a major undertaking to set a strong, consistent, cohesive foundation that then you can build upon, with your digital transformation journey by adding different functionality and different technologies and different capabilities. When companies get enamored by some of the sophisticated tools that exists today, without having done those foundational efforts, they can make a lot of investments for not, right? Because they don't really have the basics, solid, to be able to expand on, so that makes sense. Before we move on, the other thing I wanted to ask related to that project and the breadth of experiences that you gained through it is, what would you say is the biggest lesson you learned?

Trond Aune: We have a fantastic support from group management, from top management in the group when we started this project. And that support has been maintained throughout the whole project. And I think that is at least one of the most important key success factors, that you have a strong ownership throughout the business, from the users up to the top management. So that has been an important things to have with you. We have also learn that building the competence internally, in our company has been important. We not only implementing implementation ERP, it's actually implementation of new business processes. And that where we, though that learning beyond the project lifetime and into the lifetime of their company, that is difficult if you have too many external. So we have actually built a strong team internally to do it, that is another learning. The biggest frustration and the biggest problem has been on the legal side. To implement the legal and to fulfill the legal requirement in countries like Brazil, Russia, India, Vietnam, Korea, Mexico, it's extremely challenging.

Trond Aune: That has obviously, we underestimated that complexity that has caused the project to be more time consuming and more costly than we initially thought. But we are now happy that we was patient. We carried that through. It was times when we were so close to give it up. We didn't do that because of the patient, our management, our shareholders. And now we have our solid setup in all these countries as well. Many other companies actually gave that up and do local installations. And if you do that of course, you breach the chain or the one truth will breach the chain of your supply chain in order to have that as our quinoa one integrated supply chain. So that has been important for us

Sarah Nicastro: Persistence and dedication, okay. Can you talk to me next a bit about how Jotun is embracing Servitization?

Trond Aune: Yeah. Traditionally of course, Jotun has been selling products. And we have been good at selling products and we have excellent products to sell. Jotun is a high-end supplier of paints. We are not competing in the low-end. Our focus is to have high quality products. Still and we have been very successful in that. The last few years of course, we have seen that it has gradually gone from not only selling products, we are also selling some services together with the products. And now we are seeing the gradual turn into more Servitization that our customers don't own, they don't want our products, they want the outcome. They want us to sell the outcome of what our products can give. Jotun has a lot of focus on innovation and our innovation has now also turned into Servitization and we will still paint. Selling paint will still be the major business, of course.

Trond Aune: But we are having examples where we, for example, are offering our customers information and data about climate conditions, sea conditions on how they can plan their routes from A to B in the most efficient way, by reducing the resistance on the whole of the ship. Because we have that data, with all the experience we have. We are also are going into a more environmental friendly and sustainable approach to this. And are offering products and services which actually clean the hull of one huge ship. So we are offering both the hardware, the software, the services, to clean the hull of the ships and of course reduce the fuel consumption of a ship and increase the profitability for the owners. And I know course giving Jotun both are environmental, putting us in a more in-mind friendly position, but also supporting our customers, into the right direction by not only selling paints, but also adding services and package our products in such a way that it's fits into the customer's needs.

Sarah Nicastro: It's really interesting to me to hear you talk about Servitization. Because I guess, I talk about it a lot and I realize how pervasive it is. But at the same time, even I don't know that I've thought of it as something that a supplier of paints would get into. So it's just a really good example of exactly how important of a trend it is. If we look at a specific example, I believe one of the ways that you're doing this is in the marine division, right? And so can you walk us through the example of how you track ships and then provide this service on, I believe sort of a subscription basis?

Trond Aune: Yeah. How we do it? We actually put sensors on the propeller exits on the huge throstles. And we are monitoring sort of the efficiency of the engine, or the ship. Combine with weather conditions, wind, seas and the climates they are into. Put this, a lot of this information together. And then of course we are tracking the ships in addition to, as I said, sell that kind of information to customers at least, offer that information to customers so that they can improve their profitability as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Interesting.

Trond Aune: So that is utilization of data and information we have, of course. And we are of course, developing good products, to get not only the service, but we are also supporting all of this with good products, improving our products according to the learning, we have this kind of information.

Sarah Nicastro: Good.

Trond Aune: Jotun our digitalization approach is not to be the most fancy and utilize whatever exist or digital tools. We are very focused on doing this, either because it serves our customers, or because it improve our efficiency. So we are not jumping in all kinds of digitalization trends, but we are very focused on those activities we start. And of course digitalization has a very high attention in Jotun these days, that is for sure.

Sarah Nicastro: Good, good. And I think that's a really smart approach. So good, all right. And Henning, I want to talk about another initiative in Jotun's digital transformation journey which is a proof of concept that you're working on, related to predictive maintenance in your production line. So talk to us a bit about the goals of migrating to a predictive approach.

Henning Haugen: Yes, to answer that, I think we should go a little bit back into our maintenance journey in Jotun. Earlier our maintenance organizations was often seen as a cost driver. So and where the main strategy was the reactive maintenance. There was often missing maintenance strategy and how proper maintenance could support efficient operations, both locally and from group. So in 2009, group maintenance also established and with that, we established a maintenance belt program. Like a corrupter thing, where we needed the one level before we can go to the next. And together with that, we also set the first standalone, computerized maintenance management system. This was required to be used at the all sites, except Norway. Because they were already in IFS and using a maintenance module.

Henning Haugen: So during this maturing process in maintenance, moving toward IT the preventive, reactive maintenance ratio, we start to see some of the limitations of the system. And it was because it's separate databases, there's no single source of truth. You need to go into each server database, if you would like to collect all the data from all the sites. Must know system support or cost control, or no links to other company function as purchase, some things like that. So it's not a complete standalone system. So, second half in 2018, we started to set up a global solution for our planned maintenance module. And using the experience from our Norwegian factory as a basis, and planned a rollout to 35 factories approximately, from second half to 2019 and 2020.

Henning Haugen: But as everybody knows, during that period, we have the COVID happening. And of course that put a stop to our onsite training. So we had to take one step backwards and think okay, what should we do now? What kind of options do we have? So we were thinking, okay, we need to do something online. And we moved all of our training to Teams. we did some piloting to ensure that they got the quality we wanted. So we have that small delay of two months. But, two months delay in a plan that first made two years back involving actually several hundred people in total, I think it will be quite reasonably good even without COVID.

Henning Haugen: So I am still pretty satisfied with that process. So until now, we have actually been very focused on preventive maintenance by a time-based money maintenance. But, last autumn we were introduced for this project and moving more towards a condition-based or predictive maintenance. As I think time-based maintenance is the most cost efficient to run maintenance. As we are probably are over-maintaining or under-maintaining the equipment. Because it's difficult to cope with the variations we have in having production module, or product types. And a real part lifetime and things like that. So for us it has been the next natural step now, it has to be to look into the cost condition-based functionality and the predictive maintenance opportunities.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay.

Henning Haugen: So by that, we expect that should thoroughly reduce the maintenance cost and maintain or increase equipment reliability and uptime. And also release more time for our technicians and spend more time on the other linear tasks, less manner of data logging and find new monitoring methods to increase equipment reliability.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, okay. So you're working on shifting from maintenance, which is done at time intervals, to maintenance that is provided as needed based on predictive analytics.

Henning Haugen: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay.

Henning Haugen: That's true, yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. And Henning, how will the addition of predictive maintenance capabilities, help you when it comes to building on the success of Jotun's partnership with IFS? So building on that foundation that Jotun has created with the ERP project?

Henning Haugen: For us to say it's a great motivation boost, in a project like this. I think it will push our organization to look into more functionality and make us able to take better decisions and be more efficient. When it comes to utilizing other huge amounts of data, that is actually created by the equipment and the systems are much faster. Trying to manually handle and analyze all this data, to get something useful out of it, is really resource demanding. And we are often too late to implement required to changes.

Henning Haugen: So if we can have some more automate this process into the system and then giving us a triggering task when it's needed, due to the conditions on the equipment or predictable by the system, that will help us a lot. So for us, it's interesting and motivating to work here, together with the IFS on this. To be in the forefront and develop new functionality and tools. So if we go, beginning like different future prospects as well.

Trond Aune: And Henning I think it's fair to say that we're utilizing new technology like this, both machine learning and internet of things into our maintenance processes to identify and capture and analyze data, utilizing that to be better in the preventive maintenance has been really a nice and exciting journey for us. It has been often a really good cooperation with IFS in that respect. To be honest, this is tool and areas which we probably not have been gone into without IFS supporting us and helping us into those areas. As I said initially, we are a little bit luggage when it comes to utilizing the forefront technology in that respect. But we are really happy that we had got that opportunity. We really think that that will help us in developing our maintenance process and hopefully reduce maintenance cost over time.

Henning Haugen: And I think we're already much faster than we would have done if this project was initiated by us. So, very good.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I was actually Trond, I was going to come back and ask, you had said, just a bit ago that Jotun is quite, what's the right word? You take projects seriously and you don't just dive into every technology that's out there. So I was going to ask, what about the opportunities of predictive capabilities made you say yes to adding that? So it sounds like part of it is the relationship and the history with IFS and then part of it is driven by the ability to really improve efficiency, right?

Trond Aune: Yeah, but it's all solid feed back to the sort of, our approach to digitalization. We really need to see the benefits of it. And obviously being in the middle of the implementation of the maintenance and modular IFS and starting to see some opportunities. But then boosting that with the machine learning, internet of things part of it, and get though that really gave a boost effect to the whole project. So at least that is what we believe it will do. We have not finalized it yet.

Sarah Nicastro: Sure.

Trond Aune: So it's, yeah. It has just confirmed the way we are thinking around digitalization.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. And we know that digital transformation is an ongoing journey, right? It's more of a path of continual evolution than it is sort of crossing a finish line. So you have this predictive project in the works. And you evaluate new technologies and capabilities quite carefully. What is the thought process I guess overall, at Jotun on this sort of continual evolution when it comes to digital transformation?

Trond Aune: I think I touched into it a little bit earlier as well. We are in some aspects I mean, Jotun was one of the first companies in the world to start to tint paints in the shops. I know if you go into a paint shops and you pick exactly the color you want. You can choose an infinite number of colors. Going 40, 50 years back, you had the maybe 25 colors to choose between. Jotun was one of the first companies in the world to implement tinting technology in the shops. Another example is that Jotun was one of the first, had the most advanced, automated warehouse, when they build a new factory that was I think in 80's.

Henning Haugen: 1977 I think.

Trond Aune: 1977, yeah sorry. And that is examples of area really are in the forefront. Where we see the benefits of it. When it comes to the digital trend of digitalizing everything in your business, I think we are not in the forefront. We are sort of in the middle. But then we saw for example, the way what we have introduced now, the way to offer a solution for us or our customers, to clean the hull of a ship, that is groundbreaking. And so that is a way of thinking. We pick our important areas which make us unique. And that is what we have done several times when it comes to digitalization. It is our customers and it's the efficiency and the profitability and the growth, which is important for us and there. And so I think that is short and sweet, our approach to digitalization. But of course, we are doing digitalization every time and we are implementing e-invoice and online services and all that kind of stuff is of course hitting us as well. And we are doing that together with all the other companies around the world.

Sarah Nicastro: Makes sense. Henning, anything to add?

Henning Haugen: I think Trond has wrapped it up very, very well. But of course yes, we select areas we expect high effect on the likelihood of a success of course. I think that's important. If you are going to jump into all the new trends of digital transformations or other business methods, I think rather this system will run, it will be run by these systems rather than we are running the systems, so yeah.

Trond Aune: What we do see though, Sarah, is that obviously the capability to collect data, the capability to present and analyze data with tools like Power BI for example, has really also boosted the digitalization over the processes, because we've seen all the, really the possibility those kinds of tools gives us to improve in all respects. So that is also an important part of it.

Sarah Nicastro: Going back to how we started this conversation with the penguin culture, it's a really well balanced approach. You as a company, you're very bold, where you need to be and where you've proven it to be beneficial. But you're pragmatic and grounded in not feeling the need to dive into areas that are outside of your expertise, or to try things that you don't know will bring a strong benefit to the company. So it's a really well balanced approach because I wouldn't... you're not a laggard, you're not ultra conservative, you're bold where you need to be, but you're smart about where you choose to apply that. So I think it's a good lesson for anyone listening to think about that. So very good. I appreciate you both sharing your time with us today. It's been a pleasure hearing Jotun's story and talking with you.

Trond Aune: It's a pleasure to share as well so, and thank you very much, Sarah.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you.

Henning Haugen: Thank you very much.

Sarah Nicastro: You can learn 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 service management, by visiting www.ifs.com. As always, thanks for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

2020 presented more challenges and hardships than any of us were prepared for, but I do believe if you look closely there were some positives among all the adversity. For me, witnessing how the leaders I’m speaking to rose to the challenges of 2020 with grit, resilience, and fortitude inspired and encouraged me. They’ve shown true compassion for their coworkers and customers alike, bonded together by a deepened sense of empathy.

Beyond the individual level, however, the challenges of the last year have forced growth upon service organizations that I am excited to see bear fruit. Elements of increased open mindedness, greater creativity and agility, a collective surrender of comfort zones, and recognition of the criticality of both people and digital tools will spur these companies forth as 2021 unfolds. Here are three predictions for how:

Prediction #1: Digital Innovation Spikes

Our world quickly turned virtual as COVID struck, and the leaders I’ve spoken to fall into two camps: those who had made significant traction in digital transformation and were relieved they had, and those who had lagged behind for one reason or another and felt the pain of lacking tools that would aid greatly in business continuity and decision making.

The moments of service that matter most, the ability to react nimbly to quickly changing business criteria, and the capacity to expand and evolve service offerings all rely on a strong, cohesive digital infrastructure. This year, we’ll see digital innovation and investment spike among service organizations. Those who’ve already made progress on their digital transformation journeys will be looking to build upon their strong foundation – and those who have lagged will work hard to catch up. An IFS study of more than 3,000 executives from six regions across the world who weighed in on their organization’s plans to invest in digital transformation technologies in automation, artificial intelligence, IoT and more – expressed that, globally, over 50% plan to increase spend on digital transformation initiatives.

In data released in October 2020, Gartner stated that, “Top performing enterprises are accelerating digital innovation and leveraging emerging technologies to come out stronger on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has arguably been the most significant ‘turn’ in 2020, according to Gartner, Inc.’s annual global survey of CIOs. 2021 will be a race to digital, with the spoils going to those organizations that can maintain the momentum built up during their response to the pandemic.”

Gartner, with findings of a survey conducted online from June through July 2020, with 402 respondents across the U.S., U.K., Germany, Australia, Singapore and India, points to increased investment in IoT, stating that, “Despite the disruptive impacts of COVID-19, 47% of organizations plan to increase their investments in the Internet of Things (IoT).” Another Gartner, Inc. poll of roughly 200 business and IT professionals on September 24, 2020 revealed that 24% of respondents’ organizations increased their artificial intelligence (AI) investments and 42% kept them unchanged since the onset of COVID-19.

IDC explores how laggards, which it refers to as digital resisters, are catching up, saying that, “The pandemic was a wake-up call for the digital resisters.” The firm’s study “shows 64% of organizations will either be early adopters of new technology or aggressively seek out emerging technology, a departure from past recessionary behavior. It is the digital laggards who are expected to make the boldest moves as they play catch up. 53% of digital resisters, the least digitally mature organizations, are planning to seek out emerging technology compared to the average of 29%.”

Prediction #2: Servitization Journeys Speed

Servitization has been the industry buzzword for the last few years, but has real progress taken place? I believe so, and I believe 2021 will speed Servitization journeys. The concept of Servitization on paper – that product manufacturers compete on service offerings rather than commoditized products – sounds simple, but the reality is it is a monumental shift in how a business thinks, sells, performs, and delivers and monumental shifts take time. Munters, for example, who is on the journey to Servitization, shares insight on both the potential but also the complexities.

However, COVID has brought together several forces that collectively will make strides toward Servitization. First, it has created greater customer intimacy – companies have learned more about not only what their customers want, but how they operate. This greater understanding inevitably leads to the discovery of additional opportunities to provide value. Many manufacturing companies I’ve spoken with have seen a heightened interest in service offerings, with customers wanting to maximize the lifespan of their current equipment to avoid capital expenditures. As such, they have become increasingly open to subscription models and premier service offerings which paves the way for Servitization progress.

I’m not saying that we’ll see the full potential of Servitization realized in 2021, but I believe we’ll see a quicker pace of progress than we have the last few years as these factors, and others, play out. This Forbes article discusses some other reasons contributing to the move toward XaaS business models for manufacturing in a post-COVID world, including revenue resiliency and employee safety.

Prediction #3: Field Service Becomes Anywhere Service

Remote service capabilities have been the most sought after as a result of the pandemic, providing business continuity as travel bans and quarantine restrictions were put in place. But the value of remote service spans far beyond surviving COVID and, in 2021, our concept of field service will be replaced with one of “anywhere service.” As remote service takes hold and becomes the standard first line of defense for organizations, we’ll realize that the initial service visit can be done from anywhere.

Organizations will recognize the benefit of leading with a remote-first approach that provides far faster response times, increases the odds of remote resolution, and improves first time fix rates when field service is necessary because of the insight gleaned in advance. Remote service empowers the customer by engaging them in the service process aiding in quicker resolution, and it empowers technicians by eliminating unnecessary trips and travel time allowing them to better leverage their expertise.

In no way do I believe that field service will disappear – rather, the use of “anywhere” remote service to diagnose issues and resolve problems that don’t require a technicians time or skills onsite will contribute to the progress toward more strategic service and allow for far more optimal use of resources. Freeing up the time and energy of technicians by eliminating service work than can and should be done remotely will give them an opportunity to focus time in the field on value-add work sharpening their skills as a trusted advisor, which is precisely what will propel the company forward in its service objectives.

I’ve been writing for more than 12 years about how service is becoming more strategic – about the incredible potential it holds for businesses across a variety of industries. But to seize that potential takes an immense amount of change – a full departure from “the way it’s always been.” Until 2020, many organizations simply weren’t ready to commit to the cultural, technological, and operational changes necessary to see the potential come to life. In 2021, we’ll see how navigating the challenges of 2020 results in a leap forward to exponentially speed the service evolution in the coming years. And that’s something I am eager to witness.

By Tom Paquin

Telecommunications companies across the board are in a bit of a crunch. For cellular companies, new technologies have converged with decreased barriers to entry, creating a harrowing landscape. On the other end, speedy wireless connections and shifting consumer behavior are changing the ways that people interact with cable and satellite companies as well. As more and more companies develop streaming solutions (in spite of my dubious assessment), that crunch will accelerate, presenting challenges and opportunities.

These pressures call for telecommunications companies to start thinking about their businesses differently. Naturally, many companies use this inflection point as an opportunity to refocus their businesses on the service experience. Are we surprised that I am making the case for service? If so, you likely are new to this website.

The march towards service requires careful consideration of the levers of business in telecommunications companies, and we’ve explored that through a variety of avenues in the past. Today let’s go a step further by looking at some specific technologies that can support the delivery of service—when done right. While backoffice service software is key to originating appointments and coordinating schedules, telco service, by its very nature, happens primarily through field operations. Field workers can certainly deliver fine service with half-baked or disconnected utilities, or just a box of tools, but these roles are improved exponentially by robust, complex mobile toolsets.

Mobile field service is by no means a new concept (I’d argue it’s one of the most mature elements of service software), which makes it easy to write off. Solutions age, technologies don’t keep up with the demands of the business, and it’s useful to benchmark your solutions every few years.

For telecommunications professionals, there are a few unique considerations that are important when reviewing your mobile service solutions. Here are some things to keep in mind:

The Backoffice and Field: One Platform in Harmony

This has been my refrain now for early five years of writing about service, but everything that your technicians have at their workstation should also be in their pockets (“Even their stapler?” some smart aleck might ask to which I say that it depends on the type of pockets). This means full schedules for themselves in their colleagues, full access to parts systems, full access to resource libraries, full marketing, customer experience, and appointment logging capabilities.

I do understand the challenge, especially among telco professionals to stop what they’re doing in order to take advantage of their mobile tools, but that is exactly why it’s important that they can access everything—and access it well—on mobile. It’s also an opportunity to enhance your mobile applications with mobile-specific elements, to make mobile a truly better-than-desktop experience.

Contingent and Salaried Labor Need to Be Brought Together

Telecommunications professionals have the added challenge of asymmetrical asset repairs, different technical fleets, and B2B and B2C sitting, under many circumstances alongside one another. For those reasons, the need to lean on contingent labor, or even just different technical pools for different types of jobs, becomes necessary. It’s easy, then for parts inventory, schedules, and resources to be siloed.

I’m not arguing that you blow down the walls of those silos, of course. That has the potential of causing anarchy for your business. However, for businesses to work effectively, field workers and backoffice, whether they’re working for you, or contracted, working in a customer’s home or on a radio tower, should be working in systems that are at the very least integrated. The future of enterprise management means that service, project, and asset management across the whole of your business should be coordinated by a unified set of applications.

Building a Field-Oriented Mindset

The last piece of this is the most complex, and requires us to step outside of the solutions themselves to the way that those tools interact with your business. Take parts management as an example. In a world that lacks field orientation, parts live in depots and warehouses. In a field-oriented world, parts live in transit, on technician vehicles, and across a wide array of channels and endpoints. Fully optimizing for mobile means tracking and coordinating all of these sometimes disparate touchpoints into a coherent strategy.

Telecommunications has long embraced the importance of service, but to take their service to the next level, it’s time to reevaluate the technologies in the hands of your employees. This means auditing not just your tools, but your whole mindset around service management. Field technicians beat at the heart of the connected telco business. Don’t leave them without the tools that they need to succeed.

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Emilie Giraudet, formerly the Head Of Customer Service Business Support & Sales Steering at GEA Group, shares with Sarah her hard-won and valuable insights from more than a decade of work transforming global service at GEA. Insights include practical advice for how to influence and align key stakeholders, how to set a solid technological foundation, and three keys to successful change management.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to be talking about some of the lessons learned on the journey to advanced services. I'm excited to welcome today Emilie Giraudet. Emilie is a global leader with 12 years’ experience in the manufacturing industry and an expertise specifically in customer service. She was most recently the Head of Customer Service Business Support and Sales Steering at GEA, one of the largest global technology suppliers for food processing. She has a wealth of knowledge and experience and has kindly agreed to join us today and share some of that. Emilie, thank you for being here and welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Emilie Giraudet: Hello Sarah. Thanks a lot for welcoming me in your podcast today. Very pleased to be here today.

Sarah Nicastro: I am pleased to have you. Before we dig into talking through some of the lessons you've learned and some of the experiences that you've had in your various leadership roles, just tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and your most recent role with GEA.

Emilie Giraudet: Yeah, sure. I hold a Master Degree in Food Process Engineering and an executive MBA from INSEAD. As you mentioned, I spent most of my carrier within GEA, which is one of the largest global technology supplier for food processing. I dedicated most of my carrier to developing service strategies, businesses and teams, and to driving business and cultural shift towards the more customer centric and performance driven organization. In my last role, I led an ambitious digital transformation project, leveraging customer install-base data through data management and analytics in CRM and analytics cloud in order to steer service revenues and customer experience.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. You make it sound so simple, but we know that it's not. That's what's so interesting about talking through different people's journeys is there really are so many things that you learn along the way. At GEA, you made some significant progress on the journey to advanced services or Servitization and you're here to talk through some of the lessons you learned as you did this. The first area is alignment on vision. What perspective can you share on making the decision to move from spare parts to advanced services, CapEx to OPEX, some of these big, big shifts that manufacturing organizations are making. What perspective can you share on sort of seeing the opportunity to evolve but then creating that alignment around it as an organization?

Emilie Giraudet: Sure. It started with a great vision from top management, that's step by step we implemented in the organization. About 10 years ago, everything started with a visionary top managers at GEA who understood early enough that in order to increase sales and support customers, especially in mature markets, GEA should not only focus on new CapEx investments which were limited in these mature countries and also support existing clients with better services to help them optimizing their plans performance and OPEX management.

Emilie Giraudet: We really had this cultural shift coming from top management, especially looking at the evolving markets in mature organizations, mature countries. In order to achieve this vision, we define an ambitious service strategy with a head of a new after sales and service business unit, a consultant and myself so a very small team at the beginning, working on a strategy that we quickly had approved by the boards. Once the board approved it, we started to implement it in the organization.

Emilie Giraudet: To start and make it easy at the beginning, we built a core team with top service leaders that we picked from the best performing service entities around the world and after that, we worked on building a community around the world, training people, showing the vision, communicating about new service products and new proactive approach that we could bring to the market and at the same time, we started to implement new KPIs to track our performance, to be able really to integrate this culture in the organization and globally, if I look at the progress we made it in 10 years, GEA doubled its service contents from 15% of the revenue to now about 30% of the revenue. Globally service transformation as you know is a long journey. Some more steps are still needed to achieve the company full potential, especially I still believe GEA needs to break down some silos and to foster even more customer experience culture in the organization.

Sarah Nicastro: But I think it's a really good point that even before you start to implement real change or introduce real tech... Different technologies and systems and change processes and things like that, you started the communication and the training on the concept and the culture itself so before you were even saying, here's how you go do this new thing we're asking you to do it was here, understand how big of a role service can play in the organization and what that can look like and really training more on making it a part of the culture. Am I understanding that correctly?

Emilie Giraudet: Yeah, exactly. We had some good examples already. We had some countries where they already shifted their culture and who had a lot of revenues coming from services, would develop new concepts, new services, new approaches to clients so we could leverage this internal benchmarking to encourage other to change and to show the direction. So to make it real and possible achievable for countries who were a bit less mature, I would say. Everything started with the vision.

Sarah Nicastro: That's helpful, when you have examples within your own organization of where it is being successfully achieved because that's, it's a bit different than pointing outward and giving examples that way. I can see how that could resonate quite a bit. I want to throw a bonus question at you because I'm just curious your thoughts. One of the things that sometimes comes up in my conversations Emilie is, because you're saying that you had this vision, the vision started from the top down, the leadership saw the potential and the opportunity and then move forward from that point.

Sarah Nicastro: Do you think it is possible to transform in this way if it doesn't initiate at the top? The reason I'm asking that is because I do talk with folks sometimes who lead service functions and they see this potential, but it's like fighting an uphill battle internally. The company culture itself is more, let's keep doing things the way we've always done them, let's stay focused on our product success or what have you and it can obviously be very frustrating for the people that do see that potential when it isn't a shared vision. Is it a lost course? Is there a way to sort of infiltrate the upper level and share that? What are your thoughts?

Emilie Giraudet: Well, globally, I don't think its waste of time, so I believe there is a lot of potential in service and I'm sure that, I mean, when... I mean, people try to drive this initiative, they can be successful already at their level. Then if they want to really roll this out into the entire organization, I believe they will need to get support from top management to a certain extent or else it's very hard to move the organization. Getting buy-in from top management to me is needed to really roll out this big change and big transformation, but I think demonstrating that you can achieve things on your own at a local level or it gives you power to engage and motivate people. For me it's, we're starting but clearly if your ambition is to roll it out into the entire organization, top management support is needed to motivate the rest of the organization.

Sarah Nicastro: I just, I always feel for those folks because I can feel that frustration of seeing the opportunity, but it not being shared so I was just curious your thoughts. I mean, I agree you have to get it to have it really take hold, but it's a good point of find some ways to demonstrate success that you'd have better luck winning people over with that than just conceptually.

Emilie Giraudet: Mm-hmm (affirmative). If you have good feedback from customers it can really help, I guess, engaging top management.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes. Good point. Okay. Moving on to sort of the next topic which is the importance of organizational structure, when we look at expanding the service business. This is something where at GEA you made some changes to set yourself up for success. Tell us a little bit about that.

Emilie Giraudet: Yeah, indeed. In the last 10 years we tried three main different approaches. We learned on the way. We started, as I mentioned, in 2011 and especially in one of the division or where I was working a segment process, engineering segment, we created a new after sales and service business unit on top of the existing traditional application business unit. That was really a shift already implementing that. As I explained, we started small with a very small team and expanded a little bit but without having a real dedicated organization.

Emilie Giraudet: Only in 2015, GEA implemented a new organization. For the first time we created a global service organization with about 400 people out of about 4,000 service people globally in the organization. The global service organization was responsible for developing new products, business development, technical support with really experts from different domains. They were in charge also of improving processes and competence management so really a central function in charge of steering and making service organization more professional.

Emilie Giraudet: At the same time, we had this local organization that we try to empower and really to give them local responsibilities for them to steer sales and to serve clients as locally as possible so really trying to get closer to customers. That's our second organization. More recently in 2020, we implemented another organization where we remove this global service organization as such, we implemented five different division and what is new is that GEA appointed chief service officers at the board of each division. Then we have service teams in a metrics organization so reporting on one side to the chief service officer and on the other side to the more operational business units.

Emilie Giraudet: During these years, I have really saw top management focus on service continuously increasing and I believe it's also been supported and encouraged by a profitable sustainable growth. I believe GEA succeeded in defining an ambitious vision to start in appointing dedicated resources to implement the vision and they also managed to develop step by step service talents and mindset across the organization. Even if we try different things, I don't think it was failures. It was just new ways of doing things and taking time to structure and change this organization.

Sarah Nicastro: I'm not sure if this will make sense to you, but in my mind listening to the progression that you just talked through, it almost seems like just that not trying something and it not working, but more of an evolution. When you started this and it was a small team and it was focused, it was because it was new. I mean, it was a new focus for the company. You really were still working on making it a part of the culture and determining how you would have success and then it sort of evolved into the second phase where you made some progress. But to me, it seems the chief service officer point is really an illustration of the initial vision permeating the company culture to the point where it doesn't need to be its own separate entity or business unit. It is truly a part of the business. Does that make sense?

Emilie Giraudet: Yeah, it's a part of the business. It has still to be steered so somebody has the vision. Somebody is leading some initiatives and is having power to engage the organization on the change and I believe having this global service organization a bit separate was not sustainable anymore. Globally we are taking care of customers. We want to build customer experience so removing silos, I think it is part of our success and we had to. It's a good way I believe to break down some silos and incorporates better service organization within the different business units.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense to me. I think the customer experience is one aspect of it. Again, organizational structure is another topic that comes up a lot in these Servitization conversations because for a company that's really starting as a product manufacturer that's evolving to trying to be a service provider in a Servitized business. I've seen different structures similar to what you've mentioned, sort of a global entity or a separate business unit or a separate function or sometimes people even set it up as a separate business that kind of comes in at the point of after the point of sale and so it seems like it's something that takes some work to your point to try different things and not only sort out what works well and what doesn't, but to evolve as the service success of the business grows.

Sarah Nicastro: But to me, I agree with the point of having it more integrated into the business makes for a smoother customer experience. I also always question the true level of success you can achieve on Servitization if it just remains a separate thing. To me it's, you're really only then buying into the vision of Servitization to an extent rather than I guess doing the work it takes to integrate it fully into the business vision, culture, mission, process, et cetera. It's another very interesting part of the conversation. Okay.

Sarah Nicastro: Next let's talk a little bit about strategy. You have the vision, you've sort of structured yourself in a certain way since start and changed over time and then you have a strategy for how you're going to have success with service, but at GEA this began with needing to have a foundation from which to build and so you uncovered this need of really better defining what the install base looked like and that's where the CRM project that you mentioned earlier came from. Tell us how this tied into the strategy and why it was so important and what that project look like.

Emilie Giraudet: Yeah, sure. I'm very happy to talk about this. It's been one of my core focus in the last years and as you mentioned, it's really for GEA the foundation for developing service business. We truly need to know who are our customers, where are their plants located, what type of installation do they have, to be able to segment clients and be more successful in our proactive sales approach, in designing new solution services and developing services better fitting to client's needs. It's really a foundation to become more proactive and more specific in what we do.

Emilie Giraudet: Maybe let me tell you a little story to start and to show you where we started 10 years ago and explaining why we had to change at a certain time. 10 years ago when we built that business unit, we started to explain the concept of structuring an install base as a foundation for growing our service revenues and I really remember that some of the service heads were very successful, had difficulties in understanding this concept. Okay. I see two main reasons for that. The first one is that at that time service people were mainly reactive in our organization so they would not need to have a list of prospects to approach them more practically so that's one

Sarah Nicastro: Waited for the phone to ring.

Emilie Giraudet: Super reactive, no need to know our clients. The second reason is that at that time GEA had a very centralized approach and were servicing clients from the core technology centers that GEA has mainly in Europe and these technology centers, they somehow have information about customers in their local systems so no need for them to have a very well-structured install base to be able to answer to client needs.

Emilie Giraudet: But everything changed with the implementation of our new organization in 2015, where GEA decided to give more power to the local organization and we realized that this local organization had no access to their install base so it was very hard for them to achieve their budgets, their targets, without being able to proactively approach existing clients because they didn't know them. That's really what drove the change and it took us many steps to get there, I would say.

Emilie Giraudet: For a certain part of the organization, we had very limited... I mean, not limited, but we had siloed data. Data were, I mean, spread around different systems, et cetera, so we had a hard job collecting all the information, put it in a very simple global Excel file to start with. Then we had this project already at that time to launch a new CRM, but we had a freeze from the board so we decided to implement an in-between situation, building an SQL server, starting to structure things.

Emilie Giraudet: Finally, one year, two years ago, the cloud CRM was approved and we were able to clean and migrate data in CRM to build a global community of users globally to define governance model and really to progress there. It was really the foundation for us to start with. I believe GEA now has data good quality accessible in a CRM cloud for the entire organization and now GEA can leverage this information to develop sales steering analytics. Okay.

Emilie Giraudet: In terms of analytics, GEA has two main KPIs that they are looking at. One is the market potential. Market potential, we define them and GEA defines how much service business they can generate from each install base. Okay. The second KPI we are looking at is what GEA calls the capture rates. It's basically the ratio between what's the legal entities are achieving in terms of sales and their potential. Two main KPIs that GEA has been using for a while already, what needs to be improved and what we started to work on in the last months, I would say is to make these KPIs more operational.

Emilie Giraudet: The local teams really accepted it's not enough to say, this is your potential, here you go. They want to... They need to trust it and that's where having data of better quality, more accessible, allows us to utilize more advanced concept like machine learning, also engaging people using design thinking concepts to develop more advanced and more detailed market potential calculation. At the same time, we also develop some dashboards to allow people to visualize their data and to be able to really take better data driven decisions based on the reality in their market.

Sarah Nicastro: This had to be a really interesting experience for you and for the rest of GEA leadership because you already had the vision and you already understood the potential without the real data. I mean, it had to be so affirming to then have the data come together and to look at the potential in real numbers and the real scale of what was possible with the service focus. That's really interesting. I wanted to make one point of clarification because I know I got confused by this when we spoke the first time and I don't know if our listeners may be smarter than I am, but, so when you talk about local versus central, so when you started this project, you had the small group to start and then you had the business unit and now you have the chief service officers, but the strategy, the innovation, the technology, those things are centralized, but the execution is localized. Am I understanding that correctly?

Emilie Giraudet: Yeah, exactly. Sales and execution are localized. Exactly. To be able to visit clients so I remember two years ago, I visited Chile for instance and I was already responsible of this install base and we organized some workshops to understand how to structure things, what do they need and so on and what came out of this workshop is that, yes, they need the install base to be able to increase their revenues but they had information about the install base, it was very limited so they told me, Emily it's great to know that this plant is in Chile, but Chile is huge. I need to know exactly what type of plan do we have in which city. Okay. Then they had very limited access to our systems so the SQL server we had at that time was not approved by IT for instance so we could not allow global access to our information so having good quality data and being able to see it was really key for local people to visit clients, to improve their knowledge of clients and their performance in service.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. I only point that out because it's another common conversation that comes up is around to what degree to standardize and to what degree to allow some level of regional or business unit or partner depending on the circumstance kind of individualization. That's why I was pointing out that the strategy, the innovation, the technology use are handled at the central level but the execution is at the local level.

Sarah Nicastro: I'm curious in terms of the CRM project and really bringing this data to existence and to life, to be usable by the entire organization. I'm curious what the reaction has been both from the company and what has it been like for folks to have access to this information and what type of feedback did you get there? But also from the customer perspective, this is really, if you're talking about moving from a reactive model entirely where it was, okay, something's wrong, we need to call for service to this level of being able to be far more proactive on providing service and looking for advanced service options and things like that. I'm curious the reaction and the feedback on both sides.

Emilie Giraudet: From the internal perspective, even if 10 years ago it was difficult to convince some people I think that the change of mindset progressed, so nobody was against or not able to understand the concept. I think everybody was in need. Also the fact that we implemented this global organization in 2015, GEA had to work with different divisions and some divisions were more advanced so already had the CRM on premise not on cloud, but had this higher maturity, I would say, in managing their install base. It was quite obvious that it was needed so nobody had to be convinced. Everybody saw the interest. We just had to do the hard work, cleansing the data, migrating the data, training people, so buy-in was already there. In terms of customer perspective, I see different... I receive different feedback. The first one is that GEA is a complex organization and GEA develops different technologies.

Emilie Giraudet: In the past GEA would have some experts in different technologies and would visit client for one specific technology and another expert would visit the same client for another technology. Finally, I think now local people have access to the entire information of the install base for GEA and it's a big advantage for them. So clients, instead of receiving visits from five different experts for their installation, they would receive visit from one person having the entire understanding and visibility on what is installed. That's one.

Emilie Giraudet: Secondly, I mean, with CRM came not only the installed base but a ticketing system. All correspondence with customer can be done in this system and it's transparent, accessible to everyone. It also increases the internal transparency and it's immediately perceived by customers so they don't have to repeat twice the same thing to two different people because we have hold historical information in our system. I think customers now get a feeling that we have a much better global understanding of their installation and not simply experts coming to solve specific problems that they have.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. It's really interesting, you said how hard of a journey it was to cleanse that data, to consolidate that data, but as we talked about at the beginning it is the foundation for anything from that point forward and so you mentioned things like machine learning and it's taking the time and this is something that is always a lesson learned when I ask folks that have transformed service, what's one of the biggest lessons you learned? It's always the importance of good data and it's going to be harder than you think it's going to be, but there are no shortcuts, those types of things so it's interesting. Okay. You had said to me a comment you must show impact to continue progress and I think we alluded to this honestly a little bit earlier when we said if someone is finding themselves in a position where they see potential for the organization that may not be shared, look for an area to make impact, to gain the attention and the buy-in to continue progress but in your instance, tell me what you mean by that statement.

Emilie Giraudet: Yeah, sure. I fully agree to convince people to be able to get more resources, more budget in an organization. I believe it is crucial to be able to prove what you achieve so I'm going to share what I personally do usually. I usually do my best to use a combination of analytics and customer centric approaches when I drive my teams and my project. As a Six Sigma Black Belt, I systematically take time at the beginning of a project to define the scope clearly, to define objectives and KPIs that I want to measure and to achieve. Okay. That's to me really crucial and I know a lot of people don't necessarily do it, even if it looks very obvious. During the project, I really take time to monitor my KPIs and also very important to communicate it regularly to key stakeholders for them to see the progress, et cetera, and also for my team to be able to adjust approaches when needed.

Emilie Giraudet: Okay. That's the analytical approach. On the other side, before I start a project I always make sure as well that my teams, my projects are fulfilling our customer needs. Internal, external customers doesn't matter, but you really need to have a clear understanding of what customers really want and as I mentioned, I like to leverage tools such as design thinking, for instance, to really make sure that I have a true understanding of the needs. I believe that then it's easier to show impact when you're able to demonstrate and to measure the progress you've made on delivering customer results okay, to prove your success and to be able to continue progress in your organization.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes. That makes sense. That's really good advice for how you handle that. It always shocks me, but it shouldn't anymore because I hear it often enough but it still shocks me, the amount of people that say, I don't, we didn't measure that, when it comes to KPIs. I think that's a really smart approach, especially because when you look at this project in particular, the CRM project, it really is just the beginning of the potential. I mean, it was setting that foundation and so there will be so many opportunities to build upon that success, but part of that is because you did an excellent job doing it the right way and tracking that progress to make sure that when the next opportunity comes, there's belief in the ability to execute.

Sarah Nicastro: We had a gentleman on the podcast very early on and there was something he said that has always stuck with me and he referred to it as building a strong digital reputation. Meaning if you don't do a good job for whatever reason and we can talk about the many, many things that that could mean, but you ruin your reputation so the next time you try and implement a new tool or a new system, you're going to be met with so much resistance because of that last time so it's important to stay focused on building a positive digital reputation because when you look to build, you need to have a good track record. So that makes sense. Emilie, can you share one of or some of the hurdles that you are proudest for overcoming because we know that this journey is not an easy one. It's nice to be at a point where you can reflect back on some of the success, but there's a lot of really hard work getting there.

Emilie Giraudet: Yeah, sure. Probably the biggest hurdle I faced with that project was related to finding the right collaboration mode with IT department to drive such a global digital transformation projects from and for the business. That was really the toughest part. In 2019, I had to drive different projects around install-base management and sales steering analytics and clearly to work on this project, I needed support from it teams. The challenge was really for me to get support from this IT team because resources are limited and at GEA at least you really have to prove that your project is super top priority to be able to get resources and when I knocked on their door in 2019, it was kind of too late and I was probably missing buy-in from this, the organization to be able to prove how important it was.

Emilie Giraudet: Later in 2019, I started to prepare 2020 and I understood that I really had to drive into nearly a complete change management project starting from convincing top management, engaging business leaders around the world, also getting support from the CRM team to be able to demonstrate the strategic importance of my project to IT. It was not enough to knock on their door and say, "Hey, this is super important." But really showing them that I had commitment engagement from top management, from the business side of the organization, from the CRM team. Then finally after a few months, they approved to support my project and they did a great job at it and we were able to deliver our project on time with good quality. So all good.

Emilie Giraudet: What I learned out of this story is that mapping key stakeholders and really understanding their needs, their objectives, their working modes at the beginning of a project is a key dimension to succeed in driving such a broad cross functional and cross geographical transformation project. If you miss one key stakeholder, it can ruin your project so really important to map early enough key stakeholders, talk to them, understand how they work and how you can make it happen together.

Sarah Nicastro: That's really smart. I'm smiling because it's really smart. Also, there's a bit of tenacity thrown in. I mean, you deserve some credit for being resourceful and understanding, well, if it's not going to work this way, then let me kind of go about it in a different way. That's really good. Okay. What would you say outside of this project specifically or related, whatever you want to share, what do you... What would you say is the biggest lesson you as a leader have learned?

Emilie Giraudet: It's kind of related to this project, but not only so I would say it's about change management. When I was younger and especially when I joined this after sales and in service business unit I was really reporting to the managing director, head of the BU so I thought that people would follow what the MD would say naively which was not true. They would always argue and negotiate and not implement things. I really understood early enough that it's not enough to have very high position to ask your people to do things, you really have to engage them and to motivate them.

Emilie Giraudet: To me, there are three main dimensions to succeed in implementing change. The first one is about motivating people. We are human beings so we need a certain level of excitement, enthusiasm to get things done. I believe it's crucial really to find a way to motivate people around your project. The second one is about showing the direction, so being able to create a vision to make it compelling enough to be able to start the change and to motivate people to act. The third dimension to succeed in change management to me is to be able to slice the elephant into actionable and achievable steps so as to reduce the complexity and encourage continuous success. I really believe that being a leader is not about giving people instruction, but really about motivating people, understanding their needs, designing and communicating a compelling vision and executing plans with clear steps and milestones. All these dimensions are crucial.

Sarah Nicastro: That's really good advice. I think... What I was thinking about when you said you realize that they weren't going to just do what they were asked, they were going to push back. Even if they hadn't pushed back, I think one of the important things to think about with really making an effort in managing change the ways that you just outlined, which were fantastic is the goal should not be compliance because the level of success you're looking to have in this type of global transformation, you won't achieve from compliance. Even if they had said, sure, Emilie, we'll do whatever you're asking us to do, you need commitment, you need a real commitment to the mission, not just somebody that's going to do it simply because they're being told and you're not going to achieve that without making that a priority. That's really good advice as well. All right, any other comments or anything, any closing thoughts you want to share?

Emilie Giraudet: Yeah, maybe one last more so we started with explaining that moving an organization used to selling machines to a service organization is a cultural shift. That's also what I understood during this year is that, it's really crucial to drive organization cultural shifts and even if GEA can be very proud of its transformation to a more service oriented companies, I believe there are still better results that can be achieved especially by engaging a broader audience so we went through this different organization that we implemented so indeed we started engaging a part of the organization, the service organization, I believe now to reach more what we expect in terms of customer experience. We really need to engage a broader part of the organization and it takes time. It's not easy to break down silos and to change the culture but that would be for me the next step, I would say, for GEA to truly succeed and really leverage the potential that they have. This is hard to do.

Sarah Nicastro: What other parts of the organization or what piece would come next, I guess?

Emilie Giraudet: I would say people who are involved in selling new plants, new machines to customers, and really to tighten and to build a closer collaboration between pure service after salespeople and people selling new plants. I think we have a, I mean, in all organization interest into building this and a good way for me to do that would be really to map the customer journey so really to step out of internal processes and how things are done in an organization, but really looking at the customer journey and building a map to improve customer experience that would really facilitate collaboration within different parts of the organization.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I always think too in this type of transformation, the opportunity, once you get into marketing. Like you said, it's every... It takes time. It's a huge undertaking to take a company from being a product business to a Servitized business. But once you start having success and being able to build upon it, it's quite interesting. I was also thinking when you were talking about the CRM project, you're really starting rightly so with a focus on how to wrap your arms around and better serve the install base but even once you're better serving them, then you have the opportunity to start brainstorming with them and thinking about adjacent services or new digital services or what have you. I mean, it really is the potential is limitless and it's exciting, but also overwhelming, particularly for people that are inclined to want to spearhead this type of transformation. It's a really interesting topic and you've had some wonderful points to share. Thank you so, so much for joining and talking with us on the podcast. I really appreciate it Emilie.

Emilie Giraudet: Thanks a lot Sarah. My pleasure.

Sarah Nicastro: You can learn more by visiting us at www.futureoffieldservice.com. You can also visit 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 service management by visiting www.ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Eickhoff is a family owned company founded 1864 headquartered in Bochum, Germany. The company’s 1,300 employees worldwide support two business units: mining equipment and gearboxes used in industrial and wind turbine applications. Like many manufacturers, Eickhoff in recent years has been navigating a new world of customer expectations and determining the role service will play in the company’s ability to differentiate.

Service for the company’s two business units looks very different, as do customer expectations. On the mining side, Eickhoff manufactures the mining machines used in mines. The scope of responsibility to a customer is installation and assembly, training, maintenance, and repairs. Mining service is done in extreme conditions underground and, with such large equipment, service can take days or weeks or even months. Since the equipment can’t be transported, Eickhoff needs to ensure they have technicians and inventory in close enough proximity to customers to provide the appropriate levels of service. Mining customers are focused heavily on uptime and output since any downtime of the equipment is incredibly costly. On the gearbox side, Eickhoff manufactures an assembly that is supplied to a manufacturer, and service is requested either by that manufacturer or sometimes by the operator of the end solution. Eickhoff conducts inspections, repairs, part swaps, and returns refurbished pieces for spares.

“My role in the service department is product development, to bring Eickhoff service into the future, and to use new technologies to improve service quality for our customers,” says Dietmar Schmitz, Head of Product Development Service at Eickhoff. “The market has changed. Requirements from customers are different – they are demanding uptime and they want to simple-to-understand yet detailed insights (data). And the products have changed – they’ve become digital as much as mechanical. Therefore, service has changed, and we need to keep up. We must be able to deliver that part or make that repair at the exact moment it is needed. As a manufacturer, we have to think about how to evolve our operations to ensure the outcomes of uptime and information are met. Complexity has increased and continues to increase, and the only way to streamline that complexity to meet the needs is by investing in today’s technologies.”

OPTIMIZING ASSET-CENTRIC SERVICE

While there are significant differences between the company’s two service operations, what remains consistent is the intricacy of operations in that both are very asset intensive. “We differentiate on product quality and uptime,” says Schmitz. “At a point, we realized that wouldn’t be possible without optimizing our service operations.” Eickhoff knew that optimizing service management and then building upon that optimization to differentiate through service would be a journey. That journey began with looking to standardize on one service management system; to move to a “single source of truth.”

“We had more than 15 different applications we needed to replace with an integrated and intelligent system – a single source of truth – in order to streamline our daily business and provide us the potential for growth,” says Schmitz. “As I worked with our teams for around three months to scope the different, we determined more than 500 requirements for our project – a critical one of which was integration with our Infor ERP. We wanted a single system to support both business lines and bring all of our information into one place.”

Eickhoff shortlisted three companies before selecting IFS Field Service Management (FSM) based on its performance on the company’s matrix of user experience, IT, price, and compliance. “We wanted a solution that would meet our needs without requiring a dedicated IT staff of 10 experts to maintain,” says Schmitz. “IFS was the clear winner in the matrix evaluation and had functionality vast enough for our needs around asset intensive service.”

As the IFS FSM project kicked off, Eickhoff began to realize that the undertaking of consolidating, validating, and porting over its data was going to be quite complex. “As we dug in, we found a mess of data, product data, bill of materials of up to 10,000 entries and nine levels down, contact data, and so on. Because information was stored in so many separate systems, we found many redundancies and realized we needed to do a big clean up,” says Schmitz.

Not only was ensuring accuracy of the millions of entries of data put into the IFS FSM system key to building a strong foundation in optimizing the service operations, but as Schmitz says – service success lives in data from the past. “Service success lives in data from the past,” he explains. “The ability to provide good service relies on rich product history, assembly history, service history, operation history, and customer details – you may not need all of this information each time, but when you do need it, it must be there. Taking the time to clean and transfer this data properly was an investment in the long-term success of the project.”

Once this process was complete, Eickhoff began rollout of the FSM system and started with the back office. “Our thought process was that if the back office is not stable and comfortable with the solution, we don’t want technicians running around out in the field with access to the system and risk impacting the customer experience. We chose to phase back office first, then begin rollout to remaining users on the mining side of the business,” explains Schmitz. Once the mining side was deployed, Eickhoff began deployment on the gearbox side. Once IFS FSM was fully deployed companywide, Eickhoff worked to incorporate feedback and manage change.

“We had a lot of input from users directly after rollout, with feedback and new ideas for the system. It was important to put ample time into discussing the reasons for and benefits of the new technology as well as examining what feedback to incorporate,” says Schmitz. “We put effort into change management following the rollout to ensure user acceptance and proper use.”

STREAMLINE SERVICE MANAGEMENT, THEN BUILD SUCCESS

Eickhoff’s goal with the initial deployment of IFS FSM was to make the company more fit for the future of service. “With our initial rollout of FSM, we genuinely felt we were at a point in the business that to compete effectively it was simply a necessity,” Schmitz says. “We wouldn’t be able to progress into service of the future without this infrastructure in place.”

Not long after completing its initial project, Eickhoff had an opportunity to become an early adopter of IFS FSM 6 and completed the upgrade in January of 2019. In the new version, Eickhoff was able to eliminate system customizations, begin using FSM for all scheduling of technicians, move time and expense management into the system, and benefit from IFS Lobbies for reporting and data analysis. “Being a part of the FSM 6 early adopter program was a good experience because we gained some valuable capabilities, like saving immense amounts of time by eliminating paper-based reporting and manual data entry with time and expenses,” says Schmitz. “It also gave us an opportunity the help shape the future of the product.”

Present day, Eickhoff uses FSM to manage all assets including both product and software configuration in both mining and gearbox divisions. The system holds all history, including the immense asset detail, in a single source of truth, which Schmitz emphasizes is important when there can be multiple requests or tasks running in parallel for any given customer. The technician portal serves to provide everything an employee needs to get the job done on site. FSM schedules the right person, at the right time, to the right place. All invoicing, hours, and expenses are managed through FSM. IFS Lobbies allow for detailed reporting and data analysis. The company’s next area of focus with FSM is extending greater mobile capabilities to its field technicians – currently, they interact with FSM through the technician portal. This works well because it provides a high level of detail and access to extensive data – and while Schmitz doesn’t see this use decreasing, he sees value in expanding upon it with a rugged mobile device that technicians can also take into the mines to extract or exchange data with the machine, make software updates, and so on.

“IFS FSM has been instrumental in enabling us to differentiate on service and has prepared us for the future of service,” says Schmitz. “We’ve completely redefined our communication flow – our data accuracy and visibility from the back office to the field and back is excellent. Everyone has the information – the same information – they need at their fingertips to do their jobs well. This has enabled us to deliver faster service and improve customer uptime, eliminate massive amounts of administrative manual and busy work to maximize resource utilization, and have far tighter cost control.”

IoT OFFERS MASSIVE POTENTIAL

In building upon its success, Eickhoff is working to bring IoT data into IFS FSM. “IoT and data analysis are critical to Eickhoff’s evolution,” says Schmitz. “We have projects going on each side of the business – mining and gearbox – to expand our IoT capabilities and ultimately develop new service offerings for our customers.”

Schmitz notes that a modern machine reads 1,200 to 1,400 parameters of data each second and that the ability to collect and analyze relevant data points can not only help the company to operate more efficiently and move to predictive service, but can enable Eickhoff to develop insights that are very valuable to its customers. “Porting notable events from our IoT environment into FSM is helpful in terms of history and documentation, in detecting events that are worth alerting customers to take action on, and to schedule out and even predict service needs,” says Schmitz. “But moreover, the insights we can glean are a new line of customer value. Insights from the machines on use, productivity, and output in non-technical, easy to read reports help meet the needs from them of more information to help improve their own business operations. Their ultimate goal is uptime, so not only can we provide the machinery but also insights to help them achieve that goal.”

As mining customers streamline their own operations, they can have less employees working underground which means less money spent and improved safety. Furthermore, Eickhoff can feed the IoT data back into its own R&D operation to improve future product development.

“Delivering outcomes to your customers means you take on the onus of mastering service complexity, and you can’t do that without technology,” says Schmitz. “My biggest lesson from this journey we started a few years ago is you simply must start. As we often say: there is no alternative. You also need to understand that technology is not a barrier; it is an enabler. You cannot say let’s wait a few years and see how the business is going; you may not be in business. And so, start as soon as you can.”

Schmitz stresses the importance of looking at your journey through the eyes of your customers and knowing it will be a process. “Delivering outcomes is a process and you have to do this step-by-step. We knew that, to start, we needed to optimize our back-office processes. This is something customers don’t necessarily see, but it was critical in our ability to evolve,” he says. “Putting the customers view on your own eyes is imperative. If you don’t know how your customers use your equipment and what their business operations are like, you can’t design service offerings that will meet their needs.”

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