Author: joanna.darby@ifsworld.com

Alcon’s Service Overhaul – And What Comes Next

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Digital Transformation: Critically Important, But Incredibly Complex

June 10, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

Digital Transformation: Critically Important, But Incredibly Complex

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I am excited to be spending this week at the PTC LiveWorx event in Boston. The Servigistics Symposium kicked things off today, which brought together leaders from a variety of industries to discuss top-of-mind service trends and to share success stories. Leslie Paulson, General Manager of PTC’s Servigistics Business Unit, delivered the keynote address along with Marne Martin, President of Service Management at IFS, and David Williams, Principal at Capgemini.

Leslie first discussed that in order to reap the rewards of service being recognized as a competitive weapon rather than seen as a cost of doing business, companies must embrace the digital journey. She outlined three phases: to digitize (the data phase), to digitalize (the process phase), and to transform (the business phase). While companies seem to universally recognize the need to digitally transform, many struggle to execute their vision (or, in some cases, even to develop and articulate the vision). Why is this? As Leslie put it, “Digital transformation is critically important, but it is not simple.” Service organizations feel the pressure to get this right, and that pressure alone can cause confusion and fear that prevents necessary progress. “The stakes in service are higher than ever,” says Marne. “The reality is, all service has become mission critical – whether you’re sending rocket ships to the moon or providing equipment to customers. Customers want outcomes – they want seamlessness. And those demands are only increasing.” It’s become impossible to deliver the kind of experiences customers want without a well thought-out, impeccably executed digital strategy. This strategy must be built on a foundation of deeply understanding what it is your customers want and need from you, aligning your resources to work collectively toward this vision, and investing in the technology that will enable you to achieve your desired outcomes. As emphasized in today’s sessions, and as illustrated by the partnership between IFS and PTC, the ability to get the right person, with the right skills, with the right part, to the right job, at the right time, and at the right cost, is what it takes to provide the experiences customers are seeking. If you’re off on any one of the criteria, the customer experience suffers. “Customers want asset availability and readiness – they want outcomes,” says Leslie. This is entirely true, and your customers don’t care what behind-the-scenes blood, sweat, and tears it might take to provide those outcomes. They want what they want, and they want it to be effortless. Which is why it’s critical to overcome this complexity of digital transformation in order to better equip your organization to deliver. Keep in mind, as Leslie said, “the goal isn’t to become a digital company, but to leverage digital technology.” Luckily for today’s service organizations, there are a multitude of options to assist you in mastering your own digital journey. Leslie discussed the need to “stay ahead of the digital curve.” I’d argue that many organizations have already fallen behind, and if you feel you’re in that boat then the time is now to overcome the obstacles holding you back from achieving your digital transformation vision. The pace of change is only intensifying – a quote was shared by Ray Kurzweil that says, “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21^st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.” I’m looking forward to hearing more this week on how PTC customers across industries are working to master digital transformation and I will of course report back with my findings!

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7 Tried-and-True Tips for Successful Merged Reality Adoption

June 10, 2019 | 5 Mins Read

7 Tried-and-True Tips for Successful Merged Reality Adoption

By Evans A. Manolis

This much is certain: Merged Reality has become an increasingly important part of the service delivery process for many companies over the past two years. Remote Assistance has moved from a “cool to have” technology to a “must have” for service organizations that are looking to increase productivity and drive operational efficiencies.

Service organizations who have invested in Merged Reality technology are able to see a great impact on measurable service KPIs. Those include reduction of truck rolls/on-site service visits, increased first- time fix rates, decreased call handle times, improved remote resolution rates, maximized product uptime and perhaps most importantly, a positive impact on the customer experience. While service leaders understand the value that Merged Reality and Remote Assistance bring to both their customers and employees, they are faced with a challenge. How do they drive adoption and use of this technology among their front-line service teams? Over the past 24 months, I have worked with over 50 service organizations to help them address this challenge. What has become clear to me is that Merged Reality is no longer a technology play. Rather, Merged Reality is much more about change management and behavior change than it is about technology. It requires organizations to change the mindsets of service professionals. To change service processes. It means getting out of a comfort zone and committing to deliver service in a new way. And the reality is that none of these changes are easy. In order to help service leaders who are in the process of deploying a Merged Reality solution or for those who are struggling to successfully get one off the ground, I wanted to share 7 Best Practices For Merged Reality Adoption that I’ve seen proven to drive change and adoption.

Build A Compelling Business Case. Start here. Make sure everyone knows what you are hoping to accomplish through the use of a Merged Reality solution and why you are launching this initiative now. Has there been a compelling event that pushed this initiative to the forefront? Be clear as to the reason this initiative is being put in place. Focus on the what and why of the program.
Put Leadership in Place. All successful programs have three types of leaders. First there is the executive sponsor who has the vision for the program. Then you have the project leader, who has responsibility for the day to day operation of the program. This person is vitally important and without their full attention to the program, it is destined to fail, or at the very least, not yield the results you were hoping to accomplish. And finally, there are the change champions who are influential service employees who help drive the program to their co-workers.
What’s in It For Me? This requires some thinking. Put yourself in the shoes of the service technicians who you want to use this technology. Why should they care about adopting and using a Merged Reality tool? Chances are they are very comfortable servicing their customers the way they have for the past five, 10, 15 or more years. What is in it for them personally? Forget about what is in it for the company or for you as the service leader. They generally don’t care about that but they do care about themselves. How will this solution benefit and be of value to them personally? Will it eliminate a plane ride and trip to service a customer in another country? Will it allow them to be more efficient in serving their customers thus allowing them to have more time with their family and friends? Will it make their job easier and less stressful? Will they be compensated for successfully using the technology? Communicate your message from their perspective and not yours. Get in their shoes!
Start Small to Get Big. When service leaders see Merged Reality they think big picture, which over time is fine. But initially, focus on one or two high value, high visibility, critical use cases to get your program started. Where in your service organization can you use this technology and see the fastest time to value? Is there a specific challenge or problem you can initially focus on? Start there and then grow as the program takes root and becomes successful.
Look for Short Term Wins. Gathering early program success stories is directly tied to the future success of the program. Be sure to communicate early successes to all those who are expected to use the solution. This is especially important for those service techs who may have used the solution once or twice but aren’t sure of the value of it. The “hedgers or fence-sitters.” Once they see that others on their team are having success, they will be more inclined to use the technology again.
Analyze and Make Changes. Talk to your employees who have adopted and are using the technology (adopters) as well as those who are not (resistors). Look for root causes of both adoption and resistance. Understand why each has chosen their position. Let them know that their voices are being heard and you genuinely care about them. Don’t be afraid to make changes based on the feedback you gather from your employees. Your program is not cast in concrete.
Publicize and Market. Once your program has started to bear fruit, make sure that all organizations within your company are aware of your Merged Reality initiative. Get it out of the service silo and communicate its success and impact to both internal and external customers. Make sure sales is aware of the program, as they can use it to win deals by differentiating you from your competitors. Conduct internal webinars to ensure that all employees are aware of the program.

As mentioned before, change is not easy — but is achievable. Keep working hard on it. It does not happen overnight, but the results you will get from your program are well worth the effort you will put in it to make it successful.

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Take the quiz: What is Your ‘New IT’ IQ?

June 6, 2019 | 2 Mins Read

Take the quiz: What is Your ‘New IT’ IQ?

By Tom Paquin

Here at the Future of Field Service, we love talking about new product implementation, integration, and rollout, but we realize that represents a very small percentage of the day-to-day life of service IT. The meat of IT interactions happen in the moments in between those large scale implementations; Maintenance, onboarding, and off-boarding of employees onto the various systems that run your service practice. Right alongside those big implementations, these day-to-day operations are changing too.

The Dawn of New IT

With the many technical advancements disrupting every area of service, it’s easy to forget about how technology impacts some of those top-level areas of IT, as well. These technical advancements, along with changing perspectives about the role of IT holistically, have led to the coining and conceptualization of what we like to call New IT. So—what is New IT, and how does it differ from, uh, old IT?In short, the way that I like to think about New IT is as the democratization of Information Technology. While traditional IT forces a top-down approach to the way maintenance is handled, New IT puts the power, and expectations of onborading and maintenance into the hands of the user. With the advent of cloud, fast connections, and remote device management, IT professionals should be interacting with end users as little as possible. In field operations, where employees should be remote 99% of the time, this is even more imperative. This allows and IT staff to focus on bigger, broader strategic initiatives that are more worthy of their time.Let's use onboarding as an example. Ideally, IT should not even have to unwrap the packaging on a new employee’s devices in order to get them up and running. Modern device management starts at the OEM, and is visible in a cloud-controlled database, so the computer leaves the assembly line with the employee's credentials ready to be configured. This logic invariably extends to your FSM software, which should be managed and deployed in the cloud for ease of integration into a New IT workflow. Moreover, a solution should be chosen that is configurable, modular, and frictionless for updates, maintenance, and management. If you're an IT professional, you might be wondering how you stack up, so we've created a short quiz to test your "New IT" IQ. It'll help you see how you stack up against the most mature of Field Service firms. Check it out below:

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Must-Read New Book: Blue Is The New White

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Must-Read New Book: Blue Is The New White

Josh Zolin, CEO of Windy City Equipment and Author of new book Blue Is The New White, chats with Sarah about what led him to write a book about the appeal of the trades and how field service organizations can use this message to assist in recruiting efforts.

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Remote Services Drive the Creation of High-Value, Low-Cost Service Models

June 3, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

Remote Services Drive the Creation of High-Value, Low-Cost Service Models

By Annick Perry

Customers are increasingly questioning the value of product-related services, and price pressure on product support services is increasing. However, many companies cannot afford to follow the reduced prices tactic as this would translate directly to lower profits. What they really need to do is re-engineer their service models to create low cost but high value services.

Such a model drastically improves profit margins by completely redesigning traditional service models to incorporate new enabling technologies, processes and customer experience designs, which increases your customer’s perception of value (for example through increased availability) and reduces the cost of delivery.

Adding Higher Value

To improve the Total Customer Value, you can either improve the brand experience, lower your price or implement improvements in the customers’ service experiences. All of these options mean that your service requires less effort on the customer’s behalf and therefore becomes more convenient and increases the total value for the customer. Simply explained, Customer Value is customer benefits minus customer sacrifices. Services are intangible so customers can’t evaluate your service offerings before buying them but do so via your brand promise. Improving the customer’s perception of value associated with your brand can be achieved by pro-actively managing the customer experience. Increasing value requires enhancement of this Customer Experience by actually designing it rather than leaving it to chance. Once you understand your customer’s expectations in relation to your brand and the brand promise, you then have to satisfy those expectations. This can be achieved for example, by analyzing various customer touch point opportunities i.e. points of interaction between the service provider and customers (a field visit, support center call, an invoice, website, app, etc.), then you can design a customer experience for each touch point.

By using information systems (IS) and looking at the management practices and policies guiding your staff, you can design the sequence and content of the customer experience, defining what will be done and by whom. Information systems should make it possible for your customer to have the right information at the right moment and from the right person. What’s more, this doesn’t necessarily increase costs because if you invest in developing your staff’s capabilities that means that they will become more effective with your customer and that in turn will lower customer complaints and losses.

Lowering Costs

One way to improve profit margins is by lowering costs. This means by using technologies like remote monitoring or remote diagnostics applications, your service provider can remotely monitor your customers’ machine or technology 24/7. This presents a significant cost saving opportunity because the more accurate your information, the better your ability to provide preventive maintenance before your equipment breaks down or the better you are able to diagnose and resolve remotely. If you integrate the equipment into the service delivery process, you will no longer require a customer call reporting the break-down; it will automatically trigger a request for repair so there’s no need for manual intervention. Cutting costs can also be achieved by using Knowledge Management (KM) applications, which can implement a better recording of the history of a machine or technology and can build reliable statistics about typical errors, causes and solutions. This knowledge can be distributed to your people in supports centers and field service engineers in order to guide them towards the right diagnosis and, hence, a faster repair time and lower service delivery costs. In addition, encouraging self-service can also lower service delivery costs. When customers are reluctant to pay a comprehensive price, you can encourage them to do some work for themselves. Self- service could mean ordering spare parts or consumables necessary to work their equipment, or it could be that the customer conducts self-help online through forums for example, or you could even offer assisted self-service (also known as looking-over-the-shoulder-service), whereby you remotely coach a customer to perform a certain action or repair. All in all, the use of Remote Services and the Internet of Things is the way to go about in lowering your costs in service delivery, while increasing the value you offer to your customers. The question is, do you have the service model that will allow you to join the game?

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The Digital Transformation Kiss of Death

May 30, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

The Digital Transformation Kiss of Death

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

With everyone racing full-steam ahead in their digital transformation efforts, there are countless questions that arise and require consideration: Are our processes streamlined? Are our current systems capable and being fully utilized? What new technologies do we need to invest in, and how do we make it all work together? How do we use these tools to maximize customer experience and create new revenue streams?

With the sheer volume of considerations that companies are weighing, there’s a very simple aspect of digital transformation success that often gets overlooked – employee adoption. Without employee adoption, your digital transformation efforts will fail – period. Resistance from the front lines is the kiss of death for digital transformation. I don’t think any company disagrees with this notion, but I do think plenty drop the ball in this area for one reason or another. To avoid the digital transformation kiss of death, you must slow down just a bit and carefully weigh how to engage and motivate your workforce so that digital transformation is something they are excited about instead of something they will fight tooth and nail. Here are a few points to consider:

Examine your past failures. Many organizations have spearheaded initiatives and made technology investments that have gone awry. It happens. But as you move forward with your digital transformation efforts, it is worth examining these past failures for two reasons. First, you need to ensure you don’t replicate your mistakes. Taking the time to look at what went wrong will help you create a solid strategy for success this time around. Second, those failures have a direct impact on your employees’ willingness to get on board with the next initiative. Being able to articulate that you’ve seen the err of your ways and describe what will be done differently this time around will be a good first step in breaking down the walls that exist blocking employee adoption.
Avoid confusion at all cost. As digital transformation efforts are commonly broader than the service function alone, it is imperative to create cohesiveness in both your strategy itself and the communication of that strategy to your employees. As soon as your workforce begins to think that there isn’t a clear strategy, or you don’t know what you’re doing, the seeds of doubt creep in and skepticism takes over. Get alignment on what the goals of digital transformation are for the company, and how you envision achieving those goals, before you begin to articulate the vision to your employees. Then, however, it is critical to begin open communication – early and often – so that your employees feel part of the process and have an opportunity to provide insights and feedback. The framework for where you’re going needs to be clear; the employees need to be a part of developing the blueprint for getting there.
Focus on creating a positive digital reputation. I love this term, and I am borrowing it from Greg Lush, founder of Last Mile Worker Solutions, who first covered this concept on a blog on Future of Field Service. Greg’s point is that to achieve employee adoption, you must consider and care deeply about your digital reputation. This means that the tools you select are purposeful, practical, and provide a positive user experience. If you are investing in technology just do invest in technology or selecting tools that don’t truly meet the needs of your frontline workers, you’ll never achieve employee adoption because adoption is dependent on the tool truly enabling your workforce and making their lives easier. If you focus on creating a positive digital reputation, you will in turn focus on selecting and investing in tools that are valuable and effective and as you go along, and your employees experience the value of those tools, they will become more open to and excited for the next steps of your digital transformation journey.

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3 Tips for Recruiting Women Into Field Service

Maria Pallotta, Chief of Staff at Canopy Lawn Care, gives her firsthand insight into what it takes to foster more diversity in field service.

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The Call for Contextual Computing

May 28, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

The Call for Contextual Computing

By Greg Lush

Would you describe yourself as a digital survivor? You know, the world has forced you to utilize digital tools such as email and file storage in the cloud. Often you wonder about how things could be better; however, you cannot seem to put your finger on the best approach. Instead, day after day you wrestle with a seemingly bottomless email inbox and a daunting business portal where you are expected to logically store digital collateral.

Long gone are those days when IT set up my computer and pointed me to a shared server drive. Between my brilliantly organized email folders, and the tree of folders on the shared drive, I was good…. Or was I? While I could locate items quickly, most of the time, requests from co-workers continued to rise as the information age seemed to bottleneck on each of us, those “in the know” comfortable on our individual data islands. Is it possible that the hope of personal and corporate “modern computing” have simply choked us in digital exhaust? Information traveling towards us at the speed of light without any context leaving us frustrated and defeated. We must think differently about how we leverage information in the future, if we have any chance of jumping off the hamster wheel. Think about a typical day for a moment, the routines that you go through from when you wake up in the morning to when you finish your day. It is likely that many parts of your digital life are already thinking in a contextual manner. For many of you a strong association between context and applications will exist. What is the traffic like; check the traffic application. How is the weather; pull up the weather. Now, let’s consider an email which may have just arrived in your inbox. This email is from Joe Smith with Smart Computing inquiring about how the job is going at 123 Main Street. Immediately you respond to Joe with whatever information you have rattling around between your ears. Now, you have the best intentions in mind; however, since you have not embraced contextual computing, your perspective is extremely limited. Come to find out that the rest of your team are proficient practitioners of contextual computing and have a collaborative group showing all pertinent information about Joe and the Smart Computing organization. One of the service providers at Joe’s site has inadvertently flooded two floors of the building. Joe’s question “how is the job going?” was asking about the flood; your assumption was the context of his question was about the new equipment installation. If your objective is to prove how disconnected you are with your customers and their concerns, then you NAILED it! Unfortunately, this scenario happens all the time. You may not see it directly, yet the ramifications will eventually be felt as the customers trust wains and your hopes of bring order to this entropy seem to get further away. All it takes is an approach which helps you see that organizing your content in context can be as straightforward as one foot in front of the other. As we dive into this next series of blogs, we’ll explore mechanisms which you may employ today to help you master the next phase of your digital evolution; contextual computing. You are in the cat-birds seat with a strong reputation your community will happily travel with you on this next step of the hierarchy of digital adoption.

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Makino’s Critical Shift from Reactive to Predictive Service

May 23, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

Makino’s Critical Shift from Reactive to Predictive Service

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Makino is a globally recognized company that produces metal-cutting and EDM machines. Like many product manufacturers, Makino is looking for new ways to differentiate itself through service. As such, the company is incorporating IoT, AI, and ML into its operations to enable the shift from reactive to predictive service. “This is a critical shift for Makino. It allows us to make support a competitive weapon,” says Mark Rentschler, VP of Customer Support at Makino.

Makino, a long-time IFS FSM customer, adopted the IFS IoT Business Connector as a part of its predictive service strategy. The IFS IoT Business Connector, a set of components that connect Microsoft Azure IoT Suite, or other discovery environments, to receive and operationalize device data and deliver observations to IFS business software. Along with proprietary AI and ML, Makino is able to monitor conditions of its machines and predict failures before they occur. In certain instances, when customers permit connectivity, the IoT Business Connector can feed data from the equipment directly into IFS FSM so that a call can be placed, or a ticket created automatically. The solution works to determine product patterns and notify of issues prior to a failure occurring. Alerts can also be set to inform when preventative maintenance isn’t done properly or as scheduled. These insights help Makino not only to operate more efficiently, but to provide optimal equipment uptime for its customers.

Creating New Service Revenue Streams

With large equipment like what Makino manufactures, downtime is incredibly costly and disruptive to customers’ operations. Further, in today’s service landscape customers simply expect minimal to no downtime and for the equipment they’ve purchased to just work, period. Of course, service providers know this is no easy feat and work to keep pace with increasing customer demands. For Makino, the IoT-enabled OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) service offering not only enables the company to better meet its customer demands, but it also provides a new revenue stream for the company. This more sophisticated level of service that combines predictive analytics as well as equipment usage and operating data gives customers both insight and reliability that they are willing to pay a premium for, which is structured in the form of an annual subscription fee. “This solution provides more than just information and status updates, it really offers the ability to avoid failures that result in significant costs and disruption,” says Rentschler. “This value proposition is exactly what our customers want.” Makino began development of this offering about a year and a half ago, and first introduced OEE to its customer base in September of 2018 with commercial availability February 2019. The company has seen immense interest from its customers with beta testing of the offering going very well. Makino anticipates this move to predictive service to create a long-term revenue stream that will augment its product and traditional service revenues.

Managing Major Change

Rentschler, who has been with Makino for more than 24 years, acknowledges that the move to predictive service is both a structural and fundamental shift. This transformation goes beyond the introduction of sophisticated new technology and reaches into the company’s culture, operations, and even business model. “You have the introduction of technology itself, which requires our already electrically and mechanically skilled engineers to also become capable of networking,” says Rentschler. “With this being a new offering for our customers, you also have to consider the soft skills that are necessary to articulate the value and deliver on predictive service. These changes require continued communication and employee development – you can’t achieve full success without true collaboration.” For a company that has traditionally provided products with break/fix service, the introduction of a subscription-based predictive service model is also a notable change. “For a company that sells capital equipment, the world of subscriptions with agreements, renewals, and the like is a significant adjustment,” says Rentschler. While not without its challenges, Makino’s willingness to embrace the world of Servitization is commendable – too many organizations are hesitating because its simply easier to do what they’ve always done. For those, though, Rentschler has some wise words. “Go fast, because you’re already late,” he says. “This is the future of our industry, so you either embrace it or you’ll be left behind.”

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