sarah.nicastro@ifs.com, Author at Future of Field Service

Sarah Gaffney, Market Insight Analyst at Aberdeen, talks with Sarah about what the research firm sees as the latest trends in IoT.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

You’ve spent years, maybe decades, working to develop and hone your leadership skills. You educate yourself in order to continually improve, you find effective ways to keep yourself motivated in order to impactfully lead, and you seek leadership tactics to fit the breadth of your employees’ needs. You fall into a rhythm and gain confidence in your leadership style and skill.

Then, one day, everything changes. Not only do working conditions almost instantly transform, but so too do everyone’s lives. The leadership methods you’ve refined are brought into question as everyone is sent into isolation and asked to shift to remote work. You have to quickly adapt and find ways to clearly communicate, stay connected, and continue to show strong leadership – from a distance.

Reihaneh Irani-Famili, VP Business Readiness at National Grid, has worked diligently to adjust to this new call of leadership and has learned some valuable lessons with the first two months under her belt. At National Grid, Irani-Famili is responsible for developing and planning transformation strategies to improve organizational effectiveness across the U.S. business, building out new capabilities and optimizing existing systems and processes. She’s worked to build and develop teams of experts and is now tasked with continuing to lead those teams remotely.

Irani-Famili says her first two months of leading from home have taught her some valuable lessons. Here she shares her top five:

Lesson #1: Continue to Be Proactive. “Create space in your teams’ days to look ahead, think and plan. It is very easy to become reactive in uncertain times, but scenario planning is what is most needed,” she says. This echoes the insight we shared in this recent Future of Field Service article about some of the characteristics shared by companies managing the COVID-19 crisis well – one of which is maintaining a parallel view on how to survive the eye of the storm while not losing sight of the need to look ahead and plan for recovery. This will ramp back up, in some areas sooner than others, and it’s important to ensure you’re reserving time amidst the uncertainty to strategize, forecast, and plan for what’s to come.

Lesson #2: Actively Manage Interdependencies. “Step in and actively engage in managing interdependencies between programs and projects,” says Irani-Famili. “Lack of informal connections makes dependency management more challenging and more critical.” With teams becoming remote, your ability to keep them connected and collaborative is more important than ever. You may need to take more tactical steps to foster this connection than you did when teams were working alongside one another and more likely to make connections by happenstance.

Lesson #3: Prioritize Visibility into Outcomes and Values. “Visibly celebrate outcomes and re-enforce values. There is a higher risk for teams to disconnect from the goals and become more siloed in a virtual setting,” explains Irani-Famili. I’d also point out that in this time, there’s a level of uncertainty and fear among some employees that can cause greater disconnect. So it’s your role as a virtual leader to ensure that you are putting effective methods in place to share progress on goals, celebrate wins, and openly communicate about matters of importance in order to avoid disconnect and minimize siloes.

Lesson #4: Remember the Importance of Informal Communication. “Create (not just encourage) forums to replace informal hallway communication,” says Irani-Famili. “This can be, for example, open calls, group text, whatever works for your team.” As leaders, you can unintentionally become hyper-focused on productivity – especially in times of added business pressure – to the point that you might not remember the important roll more informal communications play in a team. To Irani-Famili’s point, you need to not only remember the need for informal communications, but you need to create it. Since COVID-19 came into play, our team has begun virtual team happy hours every other week – just to serve as way to stay connected on a more personal level and continue to foster the camaraderie we have. I’ve also spoken with service leaders that have been making FaceTime calls to their technicians, to stay connected and check in on a more personal level. This is a point of virtual leadership that I think needs to be more emphasized.

Lesson #5: Scrap One-Hour Meetings. “Adopt 45-minute meetings,” urges Irani-Famili. “Doing so will help create mental space, allows for spark of ideas, encourages physical movement and reduces eye strain.” Yes, PLEASE! This is an excellent idea, enough said.

As Irani-Famili says, “leadership matters now more than ever.” I wholeheartedly agree, and I salute her and all of you working to adapt quickly and successfully to leading your teams through these challenging circumstances. What lessons have you learned that you’d add to Irani-Famili’s list? Email me, I’d love to hear them!

By Tom Paquin

I am very fortunate to have one living grandparent: My maternal grandfather. A musician, former public school teacher, and town historian, Grampy is a true renaissance man. Even as he tiptoes towards triple digits (though he’d be quick to say he’s not THAT close) he’s taking on new projects.

His recent fixation, at least over the course of the last decade or so, has been the digitalization of every old, brittle piece of paper in his massive collection of news clippings, maps, and genealogical documentation. I am generally tasked with developing new workflows (step one: press “scan”, step two: press “ok”, etc.) or handling troubleshooting. When I visit him, he brings out a yellow legal pad with “Computer Issues for Tommy” written across the top (yes he still calls me Tommy), and we work our way through the list.

Not being able to visit him over the course of the last few months has been difficult for all the obvious reasons you’d expect, but it’s also made troubleshooting the various issues that he’s been having especially more challenging. Any good technician knows that identifying what’s wrong with an asset involves isolating the issue, and that is much easier to do in person than over the phone.

Last week, while helping him figure out why he couldn’t burn a DVD, and struggling to parse his explanations of what he was seeing on his screen (“Well Tommy there is a large white box and several dots.”), it occurred to me that we could try screen sharing. After walking him through the directions, we were able to set him up with an interface that I could access, and I was able to remotely see what he was working on and quickly direct him to resolve the issue. We now have a very effective workflow. He will call me and unleash a steady stream of expletives about the computer, we will initiate a screen-share, and I will walk him through what to do (reserving the right to take control only if things get bad). Grampy is fully on-board, feels empowered, and is ready to do more with technology. He even volunteered to have a remote physical with his doctor using the same system.

If my grandfather is shifting his behavior, your customers are, too. I was recently reading a McKinsey study on this precise topic, and was intrigued to see their graphic looking at increased utilization of digital resources across the spectrum.

There’s obviously a lot to unpack here (and plenty to disregard) and this is looking at consumer trends very broadly, but these broader changes on the consumer-side do have implications—and opportunities—for service. Looking at these things through a service lens, we can start mapping some potentially unorthodox new business approaches that could save money and bring in new customers. Here are a few areas that immediately stand out based on this new data:

Remote Assistance
This is a topic that we’ve been eager to discuss with respect to the current situation, and have featured Munters both in writing and on the podcast regarding their quick implementation, but it’ll be important to continue thinking about this as time goes on as well. For many organizations, this would certainly have seemed to be a bridge too far in the past.

Now, though, customers are accustomed to some initial steps in order to manage and mitigate issues remotely, and that embedded change in customer sentiment means that even as travel and social restrictions are lifted, businesses have a new way to offer their customers solutions, and a new willingness on the part of their customers to accept service through that channel.

Remote Assistance can take many forms (some of which we will elaborate on below), and will often differ from asset to asset, not to mention company-to-company. To get remote assistance right, I’ll be necessary to develop a formal, structured, and well-communicated hierarchy, running from chat, to voice, to video, to augmented reality, to IoT, and so on. This requires businesses take a detailed look at their tech stack while simultaneously building out your business plans. Don’t build you plans around your technology, and don’t build you technology around your plans. Build them to compliment one another.

Asset Management
This one requires a bit more onus on the part of your customer when it comes to embedded assets, and greater redesign and investment when it comes to saleable assets, but building systems of connectivity to embedded assets, will allow yet another channel of visibility. This is not dissimilar from the uptick in connected exercise equipment referenced in the McKinsey data. In the same way that a Peloton instructor can ruin your whole day by increasing the tension of your bicycle from 1200 miles away, a remote technician could remotely manage the mechanical functions of embedded assets.

Beyond that is observing output, condition, and performance. By getting more data from assets, both at a glance as well as historically, not only does it make break-fix service (and preventative maintenance) easier to maintain; It offers the means to start building service contracts around outcomes, rather than contracts. We’ve spoken at length about the business benefits of the outcomes-based model, and to do so effectively managing asset performance is the key.

Applications
A decade ago, the uncreative digital question du jour was, “Do you have an app?” Now everybody has an app. Whether that app is downloaded, used, and relegated to the first five screens on a consumer’s device is another question entirely. Back in the halcyon days of December 2019, when we were all blessed with the blissful freedom to step foot inside the nearest TGI Fridays, I wrote about how remote assistance could be the doorway to application utilization.

This is truer today than it was then, if we draw some conclusions from the McKinsey data. Both remote doctor’s visits, as well as the prevalence of personal health applications indicate that consumers are willing to do more to self-manage their personal health. It’s a short bridge to take that concept and apply it as well to their serviceable assets.

Getting that element right requires that the app actually be useful, which is where most businesses seem to lose their way. The app should offer embedded services that can’t be accessed via the web. It can be the conduit of your remote assistance, or have prebuilt augmented reality overlays for routine repairs built in to allow for self-service. Or it can connect remotely to connected apps and allow for changes without having to pop the hood. If I can remotely adjust my thermostat with my phone then the ability to mitigate issues remotely can be built into virtually any asset that you can think of.

As always, these are but a few examples, but businesses have an obligation to evaluate and consider the changing customer sentiments. Business-as-usual isn’t going to look the same when this is all over and done with. As I’ve said before, in the wake of this crisis, you can either be an agent of change, or a victim of it. My grandfather, for one, has chosen to be an agent of change, and he’s doing great.

Gyner Ozgul, Sr. Vice President of Operations at Smart Care Equipment Solutions, talks with Sarah about the key pivots Smart Care has made to weather the storm of COVID-19 and how they’re actively preparing for recovery.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Many leading service organizations have been on a digital transformation journey for some time – those companies have been well-positioned to quickly build upon their efforts to react to these new and challenging circumstances. Other service businesses, however, have been dragging their feet a bit when it comes to embracing the potential that digital holds. Those laggards are now turning to digital transformation in an effort to survive the global pandemic and, in doing so, are breaking down barriers that have long been in place. Whether these laggards had been avoiding digital transformation intentionally because they were happy “doing things the way we’ve always done,” or had fallen victim to the best of intentions that continued to be deprioritized among other urgent tasks, the force by which COVID-19 is spawning these companies toward digital adoption is making them realize the power and value that they’ve been missing – and helping them to see the potential in leveraging today’s technologies not only to weather this storm, but to set the stage for a strong recovery and immense future potential.

There are three particular areas in which we see digital transformation being accelerated as a result of COVID-19, and I believe these areas – among others – will continue to grow and expand as recovery begins.

#1: Remote Collaboration

The use of augmented and merged reality solutions has exponentially increased since COVID-19 hit, and the value that these technologies have provided companies in terms of business continuity is immeasurable. Tools like remote assistance have several use cases that are enabling service organizations to persist despite the challenging circumstances.

These include using the technology for intra-company communications and sharing of expertise, for instance providing remote expertise and support to a remote facility with travel not possible. The technology can be used with customers, allowing service and support to be provided remotely with ease and a “hands on” feel. And the technology provides a valuable remote training option for experienced workers to train and “ride along” newer employees, from a distance. Munters is a wonderful example of this – the company was able to adeptly speed its plans to adopt IFS Remote Assistance for business continuity. Use of this technology will expand and evolve as recovery begins, giving companies new ways to provide service, train employees, and share expertise.

#2: Utilization of Resources

We’ve never faced greater uncertainty in our lifetimes, resulting in great complexity for organizations looking to effectively leverage and manage their resources amidst the introduction of many new – and continually evolving – variables. In some industries, demand has skyrocketed while regulations around social distancing make service delivery tricky. In other industries, demand has sharply declined but will begin to ramp back up as recovery begins – presenting challenges of how to effectively scale down and back up resources.

Technologies that enable organizations to most effectively utilize resources and make real-time decisions as variables change have become even more valuable than before. Forward-thinking companies are not only working diligently to the storm of COVID-19 but are already putting effort into preparing for what will come as we find the new normal. Digital tools that can aid in planning for evolving capacity needs, exploring various recovery scenarios, all the while optimally scheduling the resources currently needed using complex criteria are necessary to make the turbulence of COVID-19 surmountable. Cubic Transportation, for instance, has relied on its IFS Planning & Scheduling Optimization tool to be able to continue to deliver outcomes to its customers despite complex and quickly-changing criteria.

#3: Customer Engagement

The need to adapt to new methods of interacting with customers and ensuring communication remains consistent despite isolation needs is one of the most significant challenges brought forth by COVID-19. As safety has become paramount, customers have been looking for self-service alternatives and new options for communications. Many service organizations have seen significant spikes in online methods of contact, have had to look for new ways of interacting with and providing value to customers, and have had to become creative in how to meet the changing needs of their customer base.

Now more than ever, customers need you to be consistent, caring, and reassuring in your communications. They need to be able to get in touch with you easily and they need alternatives for service in situations where COVID-19 makes prior methods impossible or less than ideal. It’s important now, and as recovery begins, to assess your methods for engaging your customers and determine if they are as effective as they should be given the restrictions now in place. There are a wealth of options available to you to improve customer engagement, from tools that make communication and self-service easier to technologies that may allow you to provide new offerings to your customers that are more relevant to their needs right now.

Digital adoption will continue to surge as a result of our collective COVID-19 experiences. Companies that have already been on this path are gaining valuable experiences to refine their use and build upon their successes, and those that have been slower to embrace these tools are learning now the power they hold. Employees who had resisted change are welcoming tools with open arms that allow them to continue working, and in doing so, are learning that technology is a powerful enabler. These lessons and experiences will result in service organizations ready to embrace digital in a way they never have as we recover from this crisis.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I’ve been learning recently about some of the unique pressures that utilities, especially in the U.K., face. As most of you know, my coverage of service has always been from a horizontal perspective – and I do believe that the majority of the challenges and opportunities for service-based business are shared from industry to industry. That said, there are of course intricacies to each industry – and I’m learning that for utilities specifically the journey of digital transformation is being led by regulatory pressures and a significant need to improve the customer experience.

I recently spoke with Stephen Hooper, Director of Propero Consulting to discuss and gain more insight on the pressures facing utilities. Stephen is an independent consultant with a lot of experience helping U.K. utilities face these pressures and embrace digital transformation.

Future of Field Service: Describe how the regulatory pressures placed on U.K. utilities are forcing them to become more customer centric.

Hooper: The U.K. utility sector (water and energy distribution) are regulated by industry regulators (Ofwat and Ofgem, respectively). Each utility provider is the sole distributor of water or energy (gas or electricity) within that distribution area. With a lack of competition in these residential markets, the regulators have introduced schemes to measure customer satisfaction and simulate a competitive market, for example the C-MeX scheme introduced by Ofwat to the water sector.

Providing high levels of robust customer service is a primary objective of regulators in order to elevate the level of service customers can expect form utility providers to be more in line with the service leading organisations from other customer centric industry sectors are providing. Performance against these frameworks is incentivised through additional regulating funding.

Future of Field Service: What are the top three objectives around customer centricity for most utilities?

Hooper: I’d say that the three primary objectives for utilities in order to become more customer centric are to meet regulatory SLAs, to bring customer experience to a level that will be recognised in the U.K. top 50 customer service organizations, and to improve first-time fix rates.

Future of Field Service: What is C-MeX and why is it so important for U.K. utilities to be prioritizing?

Hooper: C-MeX is exclusive to the U.K. water sector (together with D-MeX for developer services), Ofgem will have a similar focus as they prepare form the next RiiO regulatory period. C-MeX is a mechanism to incentivise U.K. water companies to provide an excellent customer experience for residential customers across both retail and wholesale parts of the value chain. The mechanism has real benefits and penalties associated with over or under performance; and +6% or -12% is allowed residential retail value.

C-MeX (and/or other customer measures) are increasingly important to U.K. utilities as they have the potential to increase (or decrease) regulatory funding in a market were the opportunity to additional revenue does not exist. In addition, lifting organisational reputation is key to enhancing the organisations ability to operate effectively in their communities.

Customer satisfaction is measured from the outputs of independent customer surveys carried out on behalf of the regulator from a random selection of customer contacts during a defined period. Customers are selected across all forms of customer contact, including a significant proportion relating to operational contacts which will have reliance of interaction with field-based personnel.

Future of Field Service: Explain why optimizing the field force is such a critical aspect of utilities achieving these CX/C-MeX goals.

Hooper: C-MeX will take into account all customer contacts, although only a random sample of customers will be surveyed. All customer contacts will include billing enquiries (no field force impact) although a large proportion of customers surveyed will be in relation to operational calls – and in many cases the visit and interaction from the field force will be critical to the customer experience. In addition to achieving improved C-MeX scores, the pressure to reduce OPEX remains, therefore not only is it imperative to maintain high level of customer service, but efficient deployment of the field force is key to achieving this.

Future of Field Service: What areas do utilities need to be focused on when it comes to field force optimization?

Hooper: There are several key factors in optimizing the field force contribution in improving customer service and the field force contribution to optimal C-MeX scores. Here are notable areas of consideration.

Problem Diagnosis. Utilities need accurate information relating to the customer issue in order to identify the technician skills needed, equipment required and any necessary consumables. Very often, issues are not clearly identified and the initial diagnosis that is carried by the field technician leads to additional time and visits required for resolution, significantly detracting from the customer experience.

Accurate allocation of field resources. To dispatch effectively, you need an accurate problem diagnosis and the ability to dispatch the most appropriate resource to resolve, which requires an accurate capture of technician skills (infrequently the case in utility organisations) and field equipment to resolve. With the reticence to track location of field technicians in U.K. utilities, the assignment of most appropriate resource can also be hampered.

Improved First-Time Fix. The inability to resolve and issue on the first visit and uncertainty of follow-on activity quickly detracts from the overall customer experience. Quick and efficient resolution of issues by the first tech on the doorstep is always the best way to win over customers and raise their opinions, so getting this right has to be a primary priority for utilities.

Clarity in follow-on activity. Where follow on activity is required, utilities should have the ability for the field force to schedule on the doorstep to meet the customers’ requirements and to provide assurance that any additional activity will be effectively manged. Even when first-time fix isn’t possible, efforts to remove uncertainty and determine a clear path to resolution are appreciated by customers.

Management of multi-customer incidents. Where incidents impact multiple customers, activity needs to be coordinated to meet all customer requirements. In many cases, not all customers will require a visit from the field force but all require communication to ensure an optimal and coordinated experience.

Customer Communication. Accurate, timely and reassuring communication from the utility about the field force improves customer experience and will impact C-MeX. Updates on field force arrival time, pre-arrival insight on field technician name (and photo if possible) are particularly important for vulnerable customers.

Future of Field Service: What technologies do you see as most impactful in enabling utilities to accomplish these goals?

Hooper: We need to begin with a solid foundation of being able to effectively manage service. From there, a few technologies are of particular interest in expanding and deriving further value:

Augmented Reality. There are two scenarios that are particularly impactful in the quest to improve customer experience:

The use of apps available to the customer to improve the level and quality of information available for the initial diagnosis of issue and hence improve the quality of response, which increases the probability of first-time fix and optimises the customer experience from initiation of contact.
For the field force to use to improve level of first-time fix by supplementing skills/experience of field technician on site with more experienced remote colleagues.

IoT can be utilised to pre-empt customer contact. For example, pressure sensors on customer water supply alerting leaks etc before the customer notices. Smart Meters can potentially detect loss of supply prior to customer noticing and potentially when not present.

Internet Appointment Booking including an online contact channel contribute to C-MeX. Customers appreciate the ability to perform self-service in a variety of ways that suit their requirements.

Future of Field Service: As utilities embrace the need to change, they inevitably become more data driven. How can they work to use data as a guiding force rather than a retrospective analysis?

Hooper: The use of KPI data to manage field force performance has long been a mainstay of efficient field forces in the commercial world, however, U.K. utilities have been slow to adopt. Although there is retrospective analysis of performance at a high level; “active performance management’ to field technician level has not been widely evident which leads to sub-optimal performance of utility field technicians versus more commercially focused equivalents. The reluctance to utilise the use of vehicle tracking data (location) to manage performance is also slowing progress in this area. Where commercial organisations often offer financial incentives to their engineers to complete more tasks within their workday, U.K. utilities have a pay structure which prevent this. Given excess work often falls into overtime, even so it may prove to be counterproductive.

Future of Field Service: This is an immense amount of change for these organizations – what themes have you noticed among those managing it well?

Hooper: The level of organisational change required to enable the field force to provide this level of service is significant. Before addressing the specifics of the field force or any other area of the business, a culture of customer service needs to embedded into utility organisations which puts the customer at the centre of all activities. Retrospective reporting perpetuates the need to play catch up with customers to ensure they are happy enough to provide positive feedback prior to the regulatory survey will taking place.

The ability and will to actively manage the field force based on real-time metrics as opposed to retrospective performance reports will be essential, ensuring the organisation is able to react to customer needs yet maintaining the high levels of service. This begins to embed a customer service ethos into the organisation. The starting point for this change is the operational management of the utility organisation, front line managers and their willingness to actively manage the field technicians on their teams. This needs to be closely supported by the equivalent management structure in the scheduling department, demonstrating strength in driving compliance with the schedule and the willingness to utilise their counterparts in the field as required.

As with any organisational change, this needs executive sponsorship to provide the solid leadership required. Given the regulatory drive to achieve this level customer experience and the role the field force will need to play, this leadership needs to be readily available.

Sarah talks with Jason Inskeep, Director of the 5G Center of Excellence at AT&T, about the value 5G will bring to service organizations, misperceptions about the technology, and the timeline for adoption.

By Ira Busman

The COVID-19 outbreak has touched all of us from a corporate, political and emotional perspective. No doubt these are challenging times, and it can be very hard to pay attention to anything other than the virus and what will happen next. We’re all finding our own ways to stay strong, and my thoughts go out to all our manufacturing family at this time.

Based on historical data, it’s likely that capacity utilization in shops will decline in the months ahead. Our industry tends to go through up and down cycles, so many of us have been through this before.

Time to Optimize Machine Tool Assets

At Okuma, traditionally during times like these, our customers take advantage of the lull in business to optimize their assets and ensure their machine tools are in peak condition and ready to ramp up quickly when the recovery begins. This is also a great way to keep employees – one of your most valuable assets – working productively when all the parts have been cut.

There are also opportunities to review the overall operations and efficiency of your business. Is it time to consider automation? Perhaps a 4th axis, or an option like a bar feeder or parts catcher, or probing to optimize efficiency. Another thought may be to add an option that was overlooked at the point of sale, such as extra program storage or cycle time reduction technologies.

You can also consider the more typical preventive services, as outlined below.

Preventive Maintenance and Recertifications

This can be the perfect time to:

Perform preventive maintenance utilizing Okuma CARE PM Kits and your qualified Okuma Distributor
Do a coolant flush, including a fluid check/replacement and overall health check
Consider a geometrical alignment of your Okuma machine tool to bring it back to factory specifications

Safety Inspections

When shops are busy, it’s easy to overlook simple yet important issues on the machine. This is a good time to check for:

Door glass: broken or worn
Mechanical door locking mechanism: broken or disconnected. Interlocks that may have been overridden
Machine placards: missing or not legible
Guarding that’s missing or broken
Utilizing Okuma’s “free OSP hardware evaluation” program
Software: this is a good time to make sure you have the original software and manuals that came with the machine
Parameter backup: ensure batteries are replaced now. In some cases, machines are powered off and 100% dependent on battery backup. If the machine batteries are weak, once the power is turned back on, all system and program storage will be lost

Extended Warranty and OSP Control Contracts

Now may be a good time to consider ensuring peace of mind when the market improves. These safeguards can provide a better sense of cost control and help when unplanned downtime strikes.

Most everyone I know in the great industry of manufacturing is working to stay productive and maintain a positive outlook. Many are jumping into the front lines of producing much needed personal protective equipment, and we applaud you.

By Tom Paquin

The COIVD-19 crisis, among its many, many effects, has shown many businesses that their product categories and go-to-market strategies are much more fragile than they may have thought. To address this, many businesses are simply hunkering down, while others, like Munters, are finding new ways to do more with less. Another important consideration that Sarah touched upon last week is how businesses are moving to diversify their revenue streams. I wanted to take that concept and unpack it a little bit around a specific topic: Servitization.

Two years ago, when the thought of a global lockdown was as incomprehensible as a Microsoft phone running Android, I wrote about the macroeconomic threats leading organizations towards servitization. At the time, I was looking at the eroding barriers to entry in fields like manufacturing, distribution, and retail, and encouraged businesses to consider what it takes to set up a recurring revenue model—What it really takes to incentivize people to like you enough to pay you every month.

Given the current state of the global economy, businesses either have no appetite at all for any sort of business model adjustment, or they’re frantically looking for a way to do so (or they’re somewhere in the middle). With that in mind, servitization may not be the best priority to focus on right now, but for those not in a position to make the shift, it’ll be worth thinking about. For other businesses, servitization might end up being the existential lynchpin that keeps your business running.

Innovation in the wake of this crisis has been a rare moment of positivity and inspiration in a time full of uncertainty and tragedy. For businesses, this has frequently taken the form of service-oriented activities when product-oriented business has taken a hit.

The most obvious avenue that this has taken is through delivery, which has been the system that has kept many businesses solvent, and employees working, in traditionally product-oriented fields. Retailers, restaurants, and suppliers have in record time built systems for quickly delivering products to their customers, offering value and new experiences.

I’ve seen a few compelling examples of this. For instance, Restaurant supplier Baldor has pivoted to home delivery at an incredible pace. Delivery is of course a very small component of service, but when you’re pivoting from being a purchaser and supplier to making fast, frictionless consumer interactions, that functions as a crash-course in developing a service-oriented mindset.

I imagine that this has substantially decreased the size of the average order (a home chef is not cooking 27 beef wellingtons a night) while increasing the number of deliveries by equal measure. For a business to do this effectively, they need to very carefully manage their logistics planning. Sure, if you’re an Amazon, you can throw more drivers at a problem, but businesses that are not sitting on a trillion dollar valuation need to manage their existing workforce with care and efficiency. Fortunately, there’s some outstanding optimization options to ensure that you can scale your workforce appropriately. Alternatively, you can always try to draft contingent labor to support your efforts.

Building the business model that goes along with this is key, as well. I've seen companies begin to offer services via a waiting list that you sign up for, which offers a sense of exclusivity, and encourages purchases when customers reach the other side of the "velvet rope".

These are all simple examples, but they are things that businesses have been able to roll out in weeks. As time drags on and the nature of this crisis continues to evolve, more creative, complex, and revolutionary ideas will come, and for businesses that have been flirting with servitization, a bold move might be just what is needed in this moment. Think differently about how you can approach your customers, your products, and your addressable market, and be sure to think beyond this crisis. Smart ideas will keep you whole today, and set you apart for the recovery.

Sarah talks with Roel Rentmeesters, Director of Global Customer Service at Munters about how Munters is tackling the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic in a very tactical way while also looking ahead to lead as we find the new normal.

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