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January 29, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

Doubling Down on your Field Workforce in Telecommunications

January 29, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

Doubling Down on your Field Workforce in Telecommunications

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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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January 25, 2021 | 8 Mins Read

Eickhoff’s Mission to Maximize Customer Outcomes

January 25, 2021 | 8 Mins Read

Eickhoff’s Mission to Maximize Customer Outcomes

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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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January 22, 2021 | 2 Mins Read

Back to Basics: What is Servitization?

January 22, 2021 | 2 Mins Read

Back to Basics: What is Servitization?

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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:

So here’s the deal—we talk about servitization constantly on this site. To the point that we have a whole section devoted to our servitization stories and recommendations. For those of us in the world of service, servitization is simply entrenched knowledge. And its name does, to a point, allude to its definition. Nevertheless, the word isn’t even in my word processor’s dictionary.

There are a variety of reasons why one might not have encountered the word “servitization” before. One is the obvious—they’re new to service. Another, less obvious and arguably more prevalent, is that they’ve been raised on a different service orthodoxy. Perhaps they’ve referred to the concept as service transformation, or everything-as-a-service (the phrase I used much more frequently as an analyst). For those reasons, I wanted to take a minute and add to the record a formal definition of servitization. So…

What is servitization?

In short: Servitization is the act of restructuring traditionally product-oriented businesses towards service-oriented functions, including subscriptions, repair and maintenance contracts, and outcomes-oriented guarantees.

So within that, there’s obviously a lot of nuance, and a wide variety of topics that are worth breaking down. The primary consideration, and most important is to note that servitization is not merely the act of creating a warranty program. Servitization requires a forward-looking consideration of customer interactions, not reverting to the trappings of tradition.

Moreover, the delta between manufacturers, and, say, telecoms in adopting servitization is vast. Your business structure will naturally change—sometimes dramatically—how this definition is interpreted in practice. The good news is that we’re here to help you make the most out of servitization!

If you’re looking to see how businesses are employing servitization in practice, here are a few places that you can get started:

The Road to Servitization in Product-Oriented Businesses

COVID-19 Is Speeding Servitization Progress, But These 4 Barriers Will Hold You Back

What Aren’t You “Getting” About Servitization?

Overcoming the Barriers to Creating Servitization Revenue Streams

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January 18, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

Predictive Service: From Objective to Reality in 2021

January 18, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

Predictive Service: From Objective to Reality in 2021

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Like most of the major service trends, predictive capabilities come up in almost every conversation I have. Some organizations have already achieved this nirvana, but many are still at the point of recognizing the potential but not yet translating it into their reality. I expect we’ll see significant evolution in this area in 2021 and that’s because while there are challenges to overcome, as with any change, the opportunities are simply too immense to delay in pursuing.

IFS conducted a global study with 3,000 participants in the Spring of 2020 to examine digital transformation priorities, and as Bob De Caux discusses in this article, found that intelligent technologies (AI, machine learning, predictive analytics and cognitive services) lead the charge with 64 percent identifying investment in this area as important. This aligns with what we see within service, because the role intelligent technologies play in enabling the shift from reactive to predictive service is a natural progression for organizations that have mastered the basics of service management.

This natural progression makes perfect sense. We know that customers are demanding far more from the service experience than for an issue to be resolved when it occurs, regardless of how efficiently. Customers want peace of mind, they want guarantees, they want uptime. Intelligent technologies and the move to predictive service are how you deliver upon these expectations. We know that predictive models eliminate or at least minimize downtime, reduce costs for both company and customers, improve customer satisfaction, and enable you to expertly orchestrate both your resources and assets because you’re gaining insights into what will happen instead of reacting to what already has. In many instances, the superior level of predictive service can be monetized to create additional revenue.

So, with all this potential, why haven’t we seen more companies master predictive service already? Well, there are a number of reasons. First, before the progression to more advanced intelligent technologies you must master some foundational aspects of optimizing service. This simply takes time – companies have been hard at work standardizing, optimizing, and automating service in order to reach a point where they can successfully move to predictive. I see that time as now for more and more organizations. Second, the shift can be a bit overwhelming. The potential is vast and opportunity significant, which means the stakes are high and the change is big. One point to consider if this rings true to you is the idea of thinking big but starting small. Just because the opportunity of intelligent technologies is vast doesn’t mean you have to realize the whole of the opportunity at once. Moreover, as De Caux discusses in the article linked earlier, these technologies build their learning upon data, so the sooner you start, the more sophisticated you can become – when you’re ready.

In addition to “think big, act small,” here are a few points to consider as you chart your path to predictive service success:

  • Choose your intelligent technologies wisely. The idea here is to master complexity in order to delivery the ultimate simplicity to your customers – uptime. To do so, you need to choose technologies and technology providers that will streamline, simplify, and offer cohesiveness – not complicate matters. Doing as much as you can in one platform is helpful – which means finding a provider that can not only address your short-term objectives but build upon your success over time.
  • Be ready to feel uncomfortable. In a reactive service world, most everything is manual. In a predictive environment, you must begin to trust the technology. Using AI where you’ve previously used manpower can be an uncomfortable feeling, for you and for your employees. You have to remember why you’re introducing the technology and what it can do and fight the urge to step in and override out of habit.
  • This is because predictive tools learn over time, and if you don’t allow them the space to do that, they won’t achieve the optimal output they’re capable of. Give the tools time to learn and time to work and be ready to be in awe of what they can do.
  • Harness the wins. As you see success, shout it from the rooftops – internally to help manage change, and externally as you recreate the customer experience. Once you start down the path of leveraging intelligent technologies, you’ll be on a path of continual opportunity – once you achieve success, you can look for ways to build and expand. At first this may feel overwhelming, but once you experience those first wins, you’ll quickly transition from overwhelm to excitement at all the possibilities.

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January 15, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

How Retailers Like GameStop are Failing their Customers

January 15, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

How Retailers Like GameStop are Failing their Customers

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By Tom Paquin

As a college student, I had the decidedly unglamorous job of overseeing the launch of the Nintendo Wii as a shift manager at GameStop. Due to a variety of supply chain challenges at Nintendo, the Wii launch was notorious for a supply drought that lasted well past my tenure with the company. Several years at least. That first holiday season was brutal, as furious parents took every opportunity that they could to berate the twenty-year-old me behind the counter for not possessing the ability to generate a pile of Nintendo Wiis with the power of my mind.

This was not GameStop’s fault, but it represents the natural disadvantages that go along with being a third-party purveyor of in-demand consumer products, and one that is available to be verbally abused in the flesh. Now, nearly two decades later, on top of the natural challenges of retail, digital games downloads and online commerce has led GameStop to dramatically scale back its brick and mortar footprint.

This week, though, GameStop’s stock suddenly shot up on the news that they’d tapped Ryan Cohen of pet ecommerce site Chewy to help fortify their ecommerce business on the news that online sales had shot up by over 300% during the last holiday season.

I think this is a mistake.

Listen, digital sales are great, and the Chewy guy can certainly help GameStop increase digital sales, but there’s a reason why even Amazon is investing in brick and mortar operations. The infrastructure is there, it’s up to businesses like GameStop to use it appropriately.

GameStop is, at its heart, a boutique outfit for game sales (It should come as no surprise that their Canadian footprint still carries the name of one of their acquisitions, Electronic Boutique). While brute forcing a transition to ecommerce may seem like the most expedient way to generate funds, it ignores the fundamentals of its products.

When you buy something from GameStop (assuming you’re not buying a Mega Man keychain or something) you’re not buying a commodity, you’re buying an experience. You’re buying roughly 10-100 hours of entertainment in the form of a game, or a console. You are, ostensibly, purchasing a service. It’s tangible, it’s experiential, and it’s criminal that GameStop is not using its brick and mortar footprint to capitalize on that. Experience is just the tip of the iceberg, too! Here are some ways that GameStop could rebuild themselves as a service company:

Experience

So yes—in-store demo kiosks are not new to gaming stores. They’ve existed for years, typically installed by hardware reps that want to highlight a specific game or feature of their system. But in the land where the point of sale is so often online, a video game store should be about 70% kiosks—home-grown kiosks. Kids—being the primary consumers of games—should be compelled to come in, play around, and try before they buy. In a time of near-ubiquitous digital gaming, it’s easier than ever to have consoles ready to allow kids to play demos of whatever game they want. Smart companies (especially digitally-minded ones) would allow customers, once they reach the end of a demo, to purchase the game right from this interface.

There’s obviously a lot of back-end that would have to go in to building proprietary demo machines for a place like GameStop. You’d always want one employee manning the demo areas to keep an eye on kids, make recommendations, and answer questions. You’d likely want to tie playing to a GameStop membership, so kids wouldn’t be compelled to treat the store like an arcade. You’d also want to track plays and purchases (and services, which we’ll talk about in a minute) in a single place. With that in mind, you’ll need to consider a best-in-class customer experience tool. This, combined with some proprietary software, could completely reinvent how a company like Gamestop manages customers.

Subscription

When I was a Gamestop employee, we sold a card that got you 10% off of used games and a subscription to a magazine. Not very interesting. Today, that same card…gets you 10% off of used games and a subscription to a digital version of that magazine. Redefining the footprint of a Gamestop means redefining subscriptions, too. Perhaps the subscriptions allow extended play inside the store (Gamestop’s own pasta pass) or perhaps access to a digital library of games, similar to what Microsoft has built with its own Game Pass. This one will require careful thinking about value, but should ultimately focus on loyalty, experience, and retention.

Repair

An obviously large amount of product that accounts for GameStop’s sales would be video game consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation. These things break down periodically, as do all electronic devices. An in-store service that permitted repairs alongside the typical GameStop buy-back of used merchandise (one of the tenets of their business that we haven’t talked about). By taking that a step further and offering a service alongside the buy-back, you’re building in new revenue opportunities, and, crucially, getting people into the store. Is that difficult as a third-party retailer? Of course it is, but by hiring skilled laborers (the same ones that refurbish systems at depots, another thing that GameStop already does) the potential is there.

By doubling down on digital, GameStop might think that it’s solidifying its business position for the future, but cutting and running on brick and mortar is not the recipe to success, when you already have the infrastructure in place to build an industry-defining service business. Will it require institutional changes? Yes, absolutely, but getting it right might mean the difference between success and failure.

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January 11, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

4 Key Benefits of Additive Manufacturing in Servitization

January 11, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

4 Key Benefits of Additive Manufacturing in Servitization

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Dr. Ahmad Beltagui

We take it almost for granted now that devices, from mobile phones to industrial equipment, evolve through software updates long after they are released, in order to meet changing needs. Yet while the software can be customised and updated, the hardware stays the same. Manufacturers continue to sell the same products to all customers for many years. What if not only the software, but also the hardware could be updated, to keep products relevant long after they leave the factory? By combining Servitization with additive manufacturing, this could soon be in reach.

Servitization is the transformation of an organisation from transactional sales to long-term relationships with customers that deliver outcomes. These outcomes are achieved by aligning the incentives of customers, suppliers, and manufacturers around long term, sustainable value creation. Achieving Servitization requires a manufacturer to update its design capabilities and how it develops new products.

New products typically take years to reach market. Designers start by examining previous models, competing products, and alternative technologies to understand what works and what is missing. They listen to what customers say and try to figure out what customers don’t say. They feed technical and market data into design iterations, using drawings, computer models and physical prototypes, before preparing for manufacturing. And then they start to think about the service…

Compare this with software products, created using agile methods. Developers may start by understanding customers, examining how they interact with products, and often drawing on data from customer interactions with previous products. They create prototypes, or minimum viable products, to get continuous feedback. And they prioritise features, even after launch. For example companies as diverse as Microsoft  and Fitbit  ask customers to suggest new features and vote for which ones to launch next. In short, the product is never finished, the design does not have to be frozen, and the service can come first.

Here is where additive manufacturing (AM – also known as 3D printing, or rapid prototyping) comes in. This is a set of technologies that produce physical objects, in layers, directly from a digital design model. For large volumes of standard parts and products, AM is not useful. Yet the possibility to produce customised and high-value parts, in a few hours, anywhere in the world, with very little waste, means that updates can be launched during the lifetime of the product. Consider a long-term agreement that gives the manufacturer responsibility for maintaining performance and an incentive to improve the outcome delivered. The manufacturer monitors product performance, using data to allow preventive maintenance and, once a year, performs a full service on the product. Now consider using the data to design a new component that would optimise performance, based on this particular customer’s usage patterns, to be installed at the annual service. Since manufacturing typically depends on economies of scale, the cost would traditionally be prohibitive. With AM, however, the benefits could outweigh the costs. Variations in customer usage patterns can mean a customised design for critical components which might reduce energy consumption, prolong product life, or improve output. And if the manufacturer is paid for helping the customer improve output, or reduce downtime, then this could enable a new, more competitive value proposition to be created.

AM offers four key benefits, which can form the basis of an innovative value proposition.

  1. Designers benefit from the possibilities to make more complex shapes that are harder to make by traditional means. A part that would typically be assembled from components made by 10 to 15 suppliers, is now made in a single part by General Electric – making it 40% lighter and 60% cheaper.
  2. Since one-offs are possible, products can be made that better meet the individual requirements of customers. For example, Align Technology receives scans from dentists, and produces over 200,000 customised dental braces per day.
  3. AM can also help make product innovation and servicing faster. While refurbishing aeroplane cabins, Airbus found that printing plastic panels, although more expensive than injection moulding, saved a lot of time – an additional benefit is weight savings, which are critical for applications including aerospace.
  4. Finally, as COVID has shown, supply chain disruption is always a possibility – lockdowns closed factories, leaving customers waiting months for products. Across the world, AM was used to produce protective equipment for local use, rather than waiting for delayed deliveries. AM allows production to be nearer to the demand, helping to offer a better service.

While many have focused on the implications of AM for logistics, and spare parts in particular, evidence suggests that for spare parts, AM is more costly than storing inventory. The true value of AM comes in the ability to make product design flexible. Manufacturers can keep a step ahead of competitors by evolving their product designs even after production. For customers, this means products can be updated through physical design changes as well as software updates, as new requirements emerge. To make all this possible you need two things: Servitization, to create the incentives for continuous improvement of products in use – and AM, to offer the means.

About the author:

Dr. Ahmad Beltagui is a lecturer at Aston Business School and a member of its research centre The Advanced Services Group. His current research interests include design, innovation and supply chain management, with a particular emphasis on Additive Manufacturing (also known as 3D Printing) and its innovation potential. In this blog he looks at how product manufacturers can adopt the principles of updating and innovating in-use products, that we see much more commonly with software, and how Additive Manufacturing can achieve this, in order to better serve customer needs and support Servitization.

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January 8, 2021 | 3 Mins Read

Mobile Service Considerations for Manufacturers

January 8, 2021 | 3 Mins Read

Mobile Service Considerations for Manufacturers

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By Tom Paquin

Service businesses and mobile devices are not in any way strangers—I’ve written many articles about the relative maturity of the mobile service market, across a variety of industries. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time recently discussing the various business changes impacting manufacturers, whether they be industrial, medical, or high-tech (and yes, I know that these three groups don’t represent all manufacturers). So let’s smoosh those two things together and think about the unique case of mobile service for manufacturers!

There are two main things that set mobile apart for manufacturers. The first is the fact that for businesses that are just now embracing servitization, mobile service might not be very mature for them at all. In fact, the utilization of mobile devices for any business process might be a completely new process. The other element at play is the gigantic scope of what manufacturers might be servicing. A company servicing an exercise bike is beholden to different physical requirements than industrial kitchen equipment. So let’s outline some of the major considerations:

Interface
I’ve been a broken record on this for many years now, but any sort of mobile device that is used for service activities needs to have full 1:1 parity with its desktop counterpart. This is especially important for businesses embracing servitization. If service managers are accessing, say, inventory systems that reach outside of service departments, it’s important to ensure that while on a job site, they can access everything in real-time. Not having that information either increases the time from ticket to invoice as the tech shuffles back to a computer, or, more troublingly, creates inconsistencies between systems. Best-in-class service software will have that complete parity right out of the box, and it’s incredibly important.

Knowledge Management

Mobile devices have already gobbled up some of the physical libraries of our lives, whether it be our CD collection, or movies, or books. They should obviously, then, be able to do the same for the reams of reference materials that technicians often need access to. Mobility also offers an opportunity to approach and access knowledge management in ways that take fuller advantage of the form-factor. Simplistically, this can mean things like universal search. Forward-thinking companies use cameras and other mobile-specific goodies to enhance the experience through remote assistance, AR-powered step-by-step instructions, and other similar utilities. To that point…

Wearables

Please excuse me for this: Be wary of wearables. Does that mean don’t use them? No! But they’re often heavy and take up space. If a technician is only going to pull them out once a week, then what is the value? With any technology, whether it be hardware, software, or wetware, there’s no excuse for not properly vetting solutions for practicality, usability, and return-on-investment. For industrial manufacturers, wearables (especially when paired with remote assistance) may be an invaluable asset. For other types of manufacturers, the cons may end up outweighing the pros (and maybe by only a small margin!). I love a good wearable, but unless it’s deliberately deployed, it’s hard to recommend. The bottom line is this: Don’t grab every shiny object that is dangled in front of you. Not unless you can make the case for your business.

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January 4, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

Setting Intentions to Turn 2020’s Trials Into 2021 Triumphs

January 4, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

Setting Intentions to Turn 2020’s Trials Into 2021 Triumphs

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Fresh starts always feel good but kicking off 2021 brings a new level of relief. Now obviously challenges haven’t miraculously dissipated, but there is a sense of hope for what’s on the horizon. Let’s build from that and consider how we can use the trials of 2020 to set intentions for 2021 that will lead us to triumph. I do believe that there’s an opportunity for service businesses to come out on the other side of COVID stronger, more innovative, and more resilient than before. On the business side, here are three intentions for 2020 that I think are imperative to making that happen:

  1. Capitalize on the acceptance and open-mindedness that 2020 created. We discussed in one of our last podcasts of 2020 with Schneider Electric that we’re at an inflection point with service – the idea that the challenges of 2020 have created a greater acceptance of the strategic importance of service and an increased willingness to put a focus on service culture and service strategy within the business. This openness seems to be shared from the frontline workforce all the way to the C-suite, and it’s something that shouldn’t be wasted. In 2021, we need to capitalize on this openness and this inclination toward service by being ready to showcase all the ways service can be innovated and matured to improve the customer experience and add revenue. Being able to build upon the acceptance 2020 brought has the potential to catapult progress at a pace that seemed impossible a year ago.
  2. Evolve service offerings and service delivery. What ways did 2020 force you to get creative in serving your customers? Did you introduce or expand remote service? Did you learn how to make far more rapid decisions and become more agile? Did you create new service offerings? Don’t let the creativity and agility that 2020 forced upon your business be for naught. If remote service worked well for you in navigating COVID, work toward developing a remote-first service strategy as your standard. If you built confidence in making faster decisions and moving more quickly to innovate last year, continue that momentum. Did your customers respond well to service spend over capital investments or new service offerings? That shows you they too are open to bringing the future of service into the present.
  3. Modernize your technology stack. 2020 proved to those who’d invested in digital transformation just how imperative those investments are and illustrated for those lagging just how critical it is to catch up. A very important step in turning 2020’s trials into triumphs is making the effort to determine what is needed to truly modernize your technology stack. Do you have a cohesive platform in place or a piece-meal approach? Are you leveraging the benefits of cloud? Have you mastered the foundational elements of digital transformation so that you can begin to reap the benefits of the next generation of functionality? Each company’s starting point is different but putting focus in 2021 into determining what your technology stack is lacking and how it needs to be modernized is imperative.

Business lessons weren’t the only 2020 taught – service leaders as individuals learned a lot too and, as individuals, you should be setting your intentions for this year as well. Here are three suggestions to get you thinking:

  1. Create white space for long-term thinking. 2020 was a whirlwind and we all did a wonderful job just by surviving. We learned on the fly how to be more flexible, more creative, and more innovative. In 2021, we should try to take back some control of our time and create some white space for longer-term thinking. We know that service leadership is a delicate balancing act of solving immediate challenges while strategizing on how to build the future. What we don’t want is for the day-to-day to overshadow our time and attention on the future and creating white space that is dedicated to innovation is important.
  2. Practice vulnerability. We all became more connected as humans in 2020 and I think continuing and building upon that in 2021 will be a triumph. Being authentic and vulnerable as a leader will help you to create personal connections that not only help you in achieving your business outcomes but fulfill you as a human being.
  3. Prioritize self-care. 2020 was hard and we’re not out of the woods yet. To lead effectively, you must take care of yourself. Burnout is real and to avoid it, you need to be cognizant and respectful of your own needs. This looks different for everyone but take some time to tune in to what it is that makes you feel energize and rested and recharged and make sure you’re doing that.

Here’s to a triumphant 2021! I’m excited to be on the journey with you and look forward to telling many stories this year of how we’ve channeled the challenges of 2020 for good.

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January 1, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

What Did I Write About This Year?

January 1, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

What Did I Write About This Year?

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By Tom Paquin

I’ll spare everyone the cliched overtures about what a year we’ve had. We’ve all been enduring it, but there’s the potential of hope on the horizon. Given that 2020, on the whole, was mired by disruption of business-as-usual, with this wretched year now in the rearview, I wanted to take stock of exactly what it was that I, personally, spilled digital ink over this last year. Sarah wrote a lovely article in which she discusses many of her feelings on the last year, as well as some of her favorite pieces that she produced, and I encourage you to read that, if you haven’t. Here, on New Year’s Day, is my own.

The COVID Stuff

Perhaps unsurprisingly, beginning in mid-March, our year was inundated with content and stories about COVID—what businesses should do, what they are and will be doing, and how we, as a community, are working to make the best of a set of challenges and restrictions that few were adequately prepared for. We have a whole section of the website dedicated to this content, but here are some of the pieces that I think speak to the gravity of the situation, and where we go from here:

  • Our First Articles on the Subject (Here and Here): Sarah and I both took different perspectives when first tackling COVID-19, and while they’re now somewhat peculiar time capsules considering the immense speed of change that propelled us through the year, there are constants that run through both into today. At the end of my piece, I promise our readers that Sarah and I will see them at the next in-person service event. That has yet to happen, but I have high hopes we’ll be able to meet again in 2021.
  • The Story of Munters: Munters was a topic of frequent conversation for us during the early months of the crisis, as they were the first COVID success story, leveraging Remote Assistance from IFS to quickly keep operations afloat in spite of the pandemic’s restrictions. Even now that we’ve seen other businesses find success, Munters stands out with the speed and forward-thinking they employed to stay on top of things, and use a crisis to differentiate their business for the better (Also listen to Munters on the Podcast).
  • The Service Buyer’s Guide: COVID-19 Edition: Typically, when we write about business decisions, all roads lead to software, and that’s naturally adjusted our evaluations when planning for service software implementation. I think that the calculus of what makes service software has been permanently changed by COVID, and I tried to reflect that in this article.

The Weird Stuff

Perhaps as an antidote to the intense anxiety that this year caused me (on top of my, you know, regular anxiety), I had a little fun with my articles every few weeks. I think it’s useful, even with “serious” topics like complex business decisions, to inject a little levity wherever possible. I also like to take things that I’m passionate about outside of work and make them a component of what I’m passionate about at work. That’s what I’ve tried to do, and here are a few of the weirdest ones:

Back to Basics

The SEO-minded cynic in me knows that the most searched-for topic on service management is “What is Service Management?” and yes—that did initially inspire this lengthy series of articles. Moreover, though, I remembered what it was like to not know anything about service management software. Sarah and I both have shared stories about starting out in this field with little to no experience with the technology, and having to build a knowledge base from scratch. More than anything, I hope this series of articles saves someone the headaches that she and I went through a decade ago.

In spite of so many challenges, anxieties, lost sleep, and frustration throughout 2020, there’s still plenty of joy, hope, and thanks that this year has been able to offer. Much of it comes from being able to share thoughts, ideas, and stories here with all of you. In spite of the challenges, being part of the Future of Field Service Community through 2020 has been immeasurably special. Thanks for being part of this journey with us, and here’s to 2021.

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December 28, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

A Love Letter to the Service Community for Surviving 2020

December 28, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

A Love Letter to the Service Community for Surviving 2020

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I came across creative evangelist Debbie Millman’s “Love letters to what we hold dear” a few weeks ago and immediately had the thought to write this piece. I then went on to second guess myself, wondering is “love letter” too much? But I’m going with my gut because, no – I don’t think it is. First, I do love this community. I never thought I’d say that when I entered into it in 2008 not knowing what field service even was. But nearly thirteen years later it’s become something I, indeed, hold very dear.

Second, you deserve the love. This year has been intense and as I’ve talked with service leaders about how they’re doing, strategies for navigating the complexity, lessons learned, and everything in between, I’ve been in awe of the fortitude demonstrated in conversation after conversation. Here are some of the amazing characteristics that have stood out to me from those conversations this year:

  • Resilience – You’ve likely had days this year where you felt like you just couldn’t anymore; where you felt like running away. I have too. But you’ve shown up anyway. Day after day, challenge after challenge. You’ve stood up to the seemingly impossible tasks and fought through one step at a time.
  • Selflessness – A very common theme among the conversations this year is how you’ve put people first. Customers, but even more importantly, employees. You’ve taken great care to take great care of your people – to prioritize their safety above all else, to check in with them on a personal level, and to make sure they feel seen and supported.
  • Grit – Unfortunately, there were many hard conversations to be had this year. Conversations around pay cuts, layoffs, job reductions and even harder ones around illness and loss. You’ve faced these conversations with grit and bravery and it’s something to be admired.
  • Creativity – I don’t think there’s such a thing as a comfort zone after 2020! But rather than fight the fact, you’ve let comfort zones go and have embraced your need and ability to get creative. Whether in how you serve customers, how you lead a team virtually, or how you use digital tools, seeing creativity brought to life this year was a really cool thing.
  • Vulnerability – I’ve seen you all open up, as individuals and as a community. Having the courage to be vulnerable with your teams and your peers and to share when you’re struggling and ask for help when you need it. And calling on the community with the realization that there’s power in numbers and peace in knowing we’re all in this together.

A few of my favorite conversations of the year that touch on these characteristics, and more, are:

I do love this community, and I love how Future of Field Service has been able to serve as a platform for sharing and connecting in a year where those things have been so very critical. Thank you to each and every one of you that opened up to me this year, whether on record for an article or podcast or just because. I have deep respect for the work you’ve had to do this year – as people and as leaders – and immense gratitude to you for trusting me with your stories. Here’s to hoping that 2021 brings ample opportunity to share stories of how you’ve turned this year’s trials into triumphs.

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