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November 20, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Key Considerations for Service Surge Times

November 20, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Key Considerations for Service Surge Times

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By Tom Paquin

Every year I go outside and stare at my gutters. As a person with an exceptional fear of heights, the thought of maneuvering on my ladder to remove the accumulated gunk and misery deposited there by the two gigantic oak trees in my yard drive me to near heart attack. So I call my gutter guy and ask him to come out. My gutter guy then puts my name on a massive list and shows up somewhere in the ballpark of three to six weeks later.

I like my gutter guy because he’s the guy who installed my gutters, but I don’t like my gutter guy because the gutter guy knows that peak gutter cleaning season starts in mid-October and runs through late December, but he can’t seem to bring on additional gutter guys and gals to help manage the process.

Perhaps it’s because my gutter guy understands that a set of new gutters costs a full one hundred times what he charges for a gutter cleaning. My gutter guy looks at that, and asserts that his time is better spent installing gutters than cleaning them. Yet the cleaning service is not some sort of mandatory component of gutter service.

The leaves falling and embedding themselves like concrete in my gutters are not a yearly surprise, though, and I understand that for mom and pop shops, scaling up and down at any time of the year will be an unreasonable ask, but even if seasonality is not a consideration for the average gutter guy, there are some lessons on understanding the ebb and flow of service surge times that are worth discussion.

The most obvious, alluded to earlier in this piece, is the headcount challenges this presents. And again—I’ll couch this by saying this is not a tool of a small, local business—but smart optimization systems are specifically designed to allow organizations to plan for this. Demand is at X, headcount should be at Y, expected demand with ramp up by Z on a specific date, so we need to start brining in temps or contingents here.

Best-in-class optimization systems take it a step further. With multi-time horizon planning, businesses are able to automate surges well beyond a single day, week, or moth period. If you know that business tends to drop off around a certain date, you can automate the approval of more vacation time around that date, for instance. And you’ll know to allocate more payroll when business gets busier. The best of the best among these systems can take historical data and automate the output of these triggers through AI.

Though the seasons tend to be fairly predictable, we now know the volatility and unpredictability of external factors on our business, and the truth is that the best optimization systems not only can pivot in real-time, but offer the ability to simulate “what if?” scenarios in order to plan out the resource impacts and needs on particular hypotheticals. These are all initial planning steps that businesses can make, and they each offer the ability to more smartly serve customers. This saves firms money and time, and hey, if you can deliver faster gutter cleaning, I can tell you from experience that it improves customer happiness.

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November 16, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Preparing for a Post-Pandemic World: How Much Service Should Be Remote Service?

November 16, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Preparing for a Post-Pandemic World: How Much Service Should Be Remote Service?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

For many businesses, COVID-19 has proven to be the force in making remote service roadmaps a quick reality. We have featured a variety of companies that have shared stories with us about how acting quickly on Remote Assistance technologies was key in navigating the pandemic, including Munters, Alfa Laval, and Panasonic. With such an acceleration in the use of technologies that enable remote service delivery, combined with increased acceptance from customers due to current circumstances, it is interesting to think about what this period of business continuity through remote service will mean when a return to former service delivery methods does become widely possible and safe.

Of course, the answer will vary from industry to industry and company to company. Based on the conversations I’ve had; I know remote service is here to stay – but I also believe in-person service is a critical element of service strategy. On a recent podcast, I discussed this topic with Michael Blumberg, President and CEO of Blumberg Advisory Group. “I think every organization has to have a touchless service strategy,” he shared. “I think touchless service will become table stakes for all service organizations. Just like you can’t think of a field service organization that doesn’t have a mobility solution.”

Marrying Remote and Field Service

If remote service will become table stakes, does that mean the need for field service decreases? Well, yes and no. The burden of non-value add tasks on field service decreases – travel can be minimized, and issues that can be easily resolved remotely should be. This frees technicians up to spend time creating value – handling detailed repairs, working with frustrated customers, acting as a trusted advisor, even training new technicians. This change provides a valuable opportunity for you to more intentionally leverage your resources in a way that moves you toward your service goals.

So how do you create the best strategy for service delivery that combines remote and in-person capabilities? “I think the strategy may differ a little bit by industry, but some of the things you should consider is what is the complexity of the equipment being supported? What’s the level of mission criticality of that equipment? What are the safety issues?” suggests Blumberg. “You also have to consider the skill set of your customer, because remember when we talk about touchless service, we’re talking about supporting the customer.”

I agree with these criteria for consideration, but I think there’s also this softer element of when does an in-person visit add value in the sense of just needing to have human connection. We know how true it is that field service is the face of the brand, and I don’t believe all of that experience is replicable in an all-remote world. So maybe that’s something where it’s more of a frustration or an escalation or maybe it’s an initial install where that person is a part of the brand experience. But that softer element is important to consider, too. I believe a remote-first service approach makes sense as a really good frontline and first wave of service delivery. It’ll be powerful in terms of triaging and resolving simpler issues, so that the field technician’s role can evolve into being more of a customer service type role - a trusted advisor - than just a break-fix type role.

From Business Continuity to Business Transformation: Creating Your Hybrid Service Strategy

Having remote service capabilities is powerful in that it puts you in a position of power in terms of what you’re capable of and how you want to be strategic in making the decision of how and when you opt to provide service in a touchless way or in an on-site way. Perhaps remote service has become your only method of service delivery during COVID-19, but when that changes you will be able to move from business continuity to business transformation. As I mentioned at the beginning, the companies I’ve interviewed this year all had Remote Assistance on their roadmaps; they simply sped things up as a means for business continuity. But post-pandemic, those remote service capabilities will be leveraged to further Servitization objectives and create new revenue streams.

In considering this transition, Blumberg offers some advice. “They really need to gain clarity about the value in the use of the tool. They really need to be able to clearly articulate to the customer what it will do. What value will they get out of it? Will it save time? Will it improve productivity? Will it increase uptime? They’ve got to be able to talk about it in those terms, because without those terms, there’s no value,” he says.

Make sure that as you think through how to create new service offerings, you do so with customer pain points in mind. “Companies often have a production orientation versus a market orientation or customer orientation. Companies that don’t do a good job at monetizing their service or selling offerings is they’re talking to the customer in terms of what works for them – ‘look what this has done for us’,” says Blumberg. “That’s a production orientation. The market orientation is, “Look at what this can do for you. Companies also use too many buzzwords. In the research that I’ve done recently on touchless service, I find the companies that are really getting their customers to embrace it have branded it themselves. They’re not saying, it’s an AR solution from XYZ company; they’ve given it their own brand name. I think that makes a difference.”

We know that service holds immense potential for businesses, and that goes for both remote service and in-person service. Adding Remote Assistance capabilities to your repertoire varies the opportunities you have to differentiate your brand and solve your customers pain points; you just have to think through the right tool to use in each scenario.

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November 13, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

Back to Basics: The Politics and Potential of Changing Service Software Providers

November 13, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

Back to Basics: The Politics and Potential of Changing Service Software Providers

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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:

Last we spoke, we were discussing what happens when a brand new piece of service software gets slotted into an organization’s workflow, either replacing a few small pieces of software, or nothing at all. While that particular scenario is a rare one for large organizations to find themselves in, it’s not outside the realm of possibility. This time, we’re going to approach the much more common scenario of switching from one service management software provider to another.

So why make the switch? One might assume—wrongly—that you make a trade when you’ve been scorned in some meaningful way by your software partner. If things are honkey-dory then why change your systems and processes? Of course, you make a trade in software for the same reason you make a trade in baseball: Because you need a mixture of elements that support your business. Let’s unpack some of what might cause that to happen.

You grew out of your software
There are an inordinate number of dollar-store service management software providers out there. More today than last year at this time, as more companies realize the incredible growth potential of service. This has led to a cottage industry of limited-function home and commercial service platforms. Any one of these may be perfectly fine as digital schedulers, or very basic invoicing tools. Why would I ever need anything more?

I also don’t want to imply that outgrowing software doesn’t happen with top-tier service management software, either. At that level, what most businesses find is that they start to conform their service delivery around the limitations of their software, rather than how they want to deliver service. For instance, if your scheduling tool is dumping out useless schedules that need to manually cleaned, you are likely at a point where you’ve outstripped your service platform.

Forced upgrades to inferior products

Allow me to editorialize for a moment. The current service landscape is littered with mergers and acquisitions. There are ways to do this effectively, then there’s the common scenario where a non-service brand acquires a service platform, stripmines it, and forces its users to upgrade to a half-cooked frankenplatform that they’ve created with some of the old company’s capabilities shoved into a home-grown utility.

Service companies are then faced with a choice: Embrace a new frankenplatform, or test their fortunes elsewhere. Either way, we’re dealing with a brand new implementation, which takes away some of the incumbency bias that companies naturally feel when evaluating new software. Unsurprisingly, when companies are presented with this option, a great many of them discover that a more viable solution exists elsewhere.

Implementation problems

This is a little bit more of an abstraction, but as I have often said, your field service management platform needs to be the Grand Central Station through which your company’s aftermarket activities are executed, logged, followed up upon, and preempted. So when a new piece, usually an emerging technology, does not play reasonably well with your service platform, then it’s time to start looking elsewhere.

Does this mean that you immediately start shopping around the moment a single bauble doesn’t work with your FSM solution? Probably not, but if, let’s say your IoT system, doesn’t integrate with your solution, then that is certainly a failing of one or both system (moreover it’s a failing of your team for not identifying that at the RFP phase). As noted earlier, your software and technology needs to work for you, conforming to the way you deliver service. If that software has failed you, it’s time to look elsewhere.

Obviously there are other reasons why people choose to switch service providers, but these are a few that we see all the time. If you happen to have an interesting story about what compelling your service software change, please reach out! We would love to hear from you.

Once the decision to employ new software has been made, there are naturally a multitude of stakes, elements, and decisions that need to be made. Many of these, in one fashion or another, can be seen in previous entries in this series. Before the choice is made, though, we need to start by evaluating the unique set of challenges that businesses find themselves in when switching from one service provider to another.

How do you unplug one system and prepare your business to onboard another? Let’s look at it through three different lenses:

The software

The main consideration here is integration. Do all of your legacy systems that are not being replaced work with the current software? If not, what is the best means to proceed? How easily or directly can historical documentation, parts and employee lists, and contracts, be ported from one system to another? The best way to absolve your firm of the crushing weight of these tasks is to employ an integration partner alongside your software partner. You’ll be working with seasoned professionals who have gone through this process before many times, and can help guide you through the crossover. With the appropriate guidance in place, getting this part right is not guaranteed to be frictionless, but will at least offer a more robust system of validation.

The employees

Employee buy-in is the key to any service strategy. We’ve all been in a position where a dramatic change in the way we do business disrupts life, and sometimes adaptation to the new status quo is not something that comes naturally. This is why it’s important to engage player-coaches early in the process. You’ll need advocates to make sure that technicians are actually pressing the service buttons—especially if their new service software will automate more than it did previously (which it should). By using in-role advocates and making implementation a big deal for the company, you’ll position yourself to hit the ROI that you expect to receive from a new service platform.

The customers

This one is a bit more squishy. Does your customer care about your shiny new service platform? The answer is a resounding and unequivocal no—BUT—your customer will care if your service platform now offers new ways to go to market. If you’re now tracking more elements of your business in your service solution, then you can offer solutions around that trackability. This is the core of outcomes-based service—build your contracts around uptime and output, not break-fix. Offering customer value like that means a lot to the average customer, who prefers guarantees to warrantees. Taking this seriously can extend the ROI of a new service platform out of the obvious, and help you build business and customer loyalty. A true win-win.

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November 9, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

The 3 Essential Service Leadership Skills of 2020

November 9, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

The 3 Essential Service Leadership Skills of 2020

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 By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Regardless of your age or geography or role or industry, 2020 has challenged and stretched you. For service leaders, this year has put an extra burden on an already tall task of spearheading immense change. In the same way companies that have reacted nimbly to how the pandemic has changed the needs of their customers; service leaders have had to tap into different skills to meet the needs of their teams in this new world.

In my conversations with service leaders over the last nine months, many have shared poignant stories of how this year’s experiences have impacted them as people – and also how they’ve had to rise above their personal impact to show up for their teams, their customers, and their companies. There are three skills that seem to have been particularly critical to hone this year:

Vulnerability. This may be the lease familiar or comfortable for some of the service leaders I’ve talked with, but it is also arguably the most important. This year has been hard, and we all need a little more empathy and camaraderie. In order for your teams to feel comfortable being honest about what they’re struggling with, or sharing their feelings, or expressing their needs, they need to have a safe space to be vulnerable. We published a podcast last week with Linda Tucci, Global Sr. Director of the Technical Solutions Center at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, which I highly suggest you listen to if you haven’t. In the episode, Linda says: “People are suffering. 2020 is throwing the kitchen sink at us, between the lockdowns, job loss, wildfires, hurricanes, stress, polarization. I would say that we have to ask ourselves, how do we manage, how do we lead in these times? If we want to be experienced as leaders, we have to demonstrate both empathy and compassion. People connect with people. And being vulnerable is not a weakness; it’s an act of courage. There’s evidence that leaders who are prepared to show their vulnerability more easily gain the trust of others and are believed to be more effective leaders, and I believe in that statement. Brené Brown says, endearing greatly, that, ‘Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center of human experience.’ And I believe in that.”

Linda’s sentiment is one that is shared by many service leaders I speak with. They all discuss how they’ve become more personal with their team, more open in discussing feelings, and more connected on a human level. And, overwhelmingly, while they all wish circumstances were different, they feel increased vulnerability and connection is a very positive change. It’s important for leaders to normalize language about mental health in the workplace and being vulnerable yourself gives your team the permission they might need to do the same.

Flexibility. Chances are the way you work this year is different. Service delivery is different, business decisions are different. Customer needs are different – and employee needs are different, too. As leaders, we can’t hold to expectations, practices, or routines that worked in a post-COVID world simply because “that’s how it’s done.” We need to be willing to reexamine not only how we work to serve our customers in new and different ways, but how this year may change the way our employees work as well. We have employees now working from home that are juggling family and household responsibilities in ways that are just unprecedented.

In a podcast featuring Reihaneh Irani-Famili, VP of Business Readiness, National Grid, we discussed the need to evolve to a value-based mentality when we think of assessing productivity. “You need to replace the 8:00 to 5:00 mentality by a deliverable based mentality and a value-based mentality. And it’s both for the leaders in the companies as well as for those employees. Because as an employee, if before my success was I spent eight hours in the office, now that needs to be replaced by this is the value that I have created in the hours that I was working or being productive,” she says. “The more clarity you can give on the outcomes and the value that you’re trying to drive and less about how they would get to that, it helps people be more productive, more engaged, and it would really make sure that your productivity doesn’t get impacted by this sudden move to a virtual environment.”

The consideration around flexibility becomes even more critical when you think about how you support the women in your workforce. In this article from McKinsey & Company, they state: “Due to the challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis, as many as two million women are considering leaving the workforce (defined as taking a leave of absence or leaving the workforce altogether). If these women feel forced to leave the workplace, we’ll end up with far fewer women in leadership—and far fewer women on track to be future leaders.”

Fortitude. We can likely all identify with times this year where we’ve just felt like throwing in the towel. When you’re facing your own challenges, it can be daunting to show up – let alone show up and try to be positive for your team. But service leaders have. They’ve show up when they don’t feel like it. They’ve dug deep to be positive when it’s easier to give in to negativity. They’ve worked tirelessly to rally their team. They’ve had to continue showing up through hard decisions, layoffs, and reductions in workforce. Leaders too have to balance the stressors of work with the demands of home. None of this is easy, but service leaders have shown immense fortitude this year. To do this, you need to determine how to recharge. You have to figure out how to put your oxygen mask on before you focus on helping others. Fortitude is admirable, but without an element of self-care it will result in burnout.

I want you to know how much I respect each of you and honor what it’s taken to lead in a year like this. I’ve felt so genuinely fortunate to get to have conversations with so many service leaders this year – to hear their stories firsthand and to witness the greatness that is in all of us come to life in such challenging times. I’ve hoped to be a sunny spot in some of your cloudy days, and I hope you know you’ve been the same for me. None of us know what 2021 will hold, but I do believe wholeheartedly that this year has made all of us stronger, closer, and more acutely aware of what really matters.

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November 6, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

A Modest Proposal for Movie Theaters

November 6, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

A Modest Proposal for Movie Theaters

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By Tom Paquin

As we are now only a few months away from a full year of living with COVID-19, it is safe to say that governments and businesses are starting to learn the nuanced strategies needed to open safely and make smart decisions to keep people and employees safe. Of course, these strategies and remedies are not distributed evenly across industries. Restaurants have struggled to offset losses, and many have permanently closed. Many other industries, including a great many in the service sector, have needed to think creatively in order to stay afloat.

One industry for which I care about very dearly—Movie Theaters—have been dramatically impacted by lowered attendance and closures. With no new releases and restrictions on guests, many theaters sit empty.

I’ve wracked my brain on how these organizations may be able to reinvent themselves for these times. There are a great variety of creative and innovative ideas, but this being a service-focused website, let’s consider the place that service may sit in the future of these endeavors.

I’ll start this by saying I love going to the movies. I find the dark quiet of a theater therapeutic. I love that, in a world of increasing distraction, we are all forced to pay attention to a single thing for an hour—a shared experience with a room full of strangers. I even love the smell of stale popcorn. Not being able to experience that over the last nine months has been a disappointment. So much so that over the summer I got myself a nice little projector and built a screen in my backyard. Watching Toy Story with friends and family safely social distancing was such a joy. It was a taste of normalcy.

Not everyone is as big of a sentimental baby as I am, of course, and theater profits have been declining now for decades. Theaters need to rethink their strategies, and I believe this starts with memberships. Some of the bigger chains are starting to see the importance of this, which is a key first step. Most theater profits come from concessions, so getting people through the door is ultimately the main goal.

I’d argue, though, that for this to be successful, movie theaters need to start thinking about channel distribution more holistically. Perhaps $15 a month gets you unlimited access to visit the theater, but $40 a month—the price for a family of three to go see a first-run film—gets you streaming rights to first-run movies at home. For many people who don’t enjoy sticky floors or remain concerned about the threat of the virus, that would be a way to offer products to an interested audience. There would naturally have to be exceptions for blockbuster films, and certain studios will object to showing their movies that way, but by diversifying and servitizing some of these offerings a lot more than they have already, there’s huge growth potential.

Another consideration that organizations like the Alamo Draft House have started to play with are full theater rentals. This has been useful for their businesses while their real estate has sat mostly unused over the last few months, but the space itself is just the beginning. Forward-thinking organizations should consider how to build service packages around these things, for their space. Sure—business meetings and birthday parties are a great start, but there are other packages that theaters could offer. I think about one of my favorite theaters—The AMC Loews in downtown Boston—which has sweeping views of Boston Common and beautiful art deco designs. The space, frankly, is primed for a cocktail party, even for a wedding. Creative thinking is the key here. Obviously there are resource considerations—Catering, liquor serving, and so on—but with the right combination of partnerships and technology, there’s a huge amount of potential.

One last idea, which goes back to my DIY backyard movie screen. If theaters created similar packages, and made them available to customers for pickup or guided setup through field operations, I think there’d be quite the market for it, especially for things like Birthday Parties. Imagine combining the screen and the film with branded decorations and concessions. Obviously we’ve been talking a lot about service, and this is explicitly field service, but it’s a simple idea to diversify revenue screens that I do feel has appeal—especially today. Most people don’t need a permanent backyard movie theater, but for special occasions, it can be a very fun diversion, especially if you can pay to have someone set it up and break it down for you.

I am certain more creative people than I are coming up with additional plans to save the film distribution industry, and I look forward to seeing their ideas come to fruition. Innovation in cinema is an existential need today, and getting it right has the potential to help struggling businesses not just survive, but to expand their business beyond its current bounds.

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November 2, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

The #1 Mistake in Monetizing Your Service Transformation

November 2, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

The #1 Mistake in Monetizing Your Service Transformation

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 By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Today’s manufacturers and service organizations have a wealth of initiatives underway to improve, evolve, and transform how they leverage service as a strategic differentiator and seize the opportunity that service provides. Top of mind for these companies is determining how to serve customers in a way that delivers increased profit margins and revenue growth. This is entirely possible, which is why the focus on service is so strong, but unfortunately companies can fall disappointingly short when it comes to execution.

I wrote an article not long ago titled “Is Your Business Structured to Seize the Service Opportunity?” that discusses some of the organizational and operational changes that are necessary to see success in shifting from a product-focused to service-centric company. It’s well worth a read as these points are very important, but besides these operational changes there’s a very common mistake I see company’s making that may surprise you – articulating their service transformation in a way that resonates with their customers. You may read this and say, “Wow, that seems so simple.” In some ways it is. But to this point, I’d say two things – first, it’s often the simple things that are most overlooked. Second, for a company that’s history is rich in product development, creation, selling, and delivery, learning to speak this new language of service is not as simple as you might thing.

When you’re coming from a product world and embracing this service future, you must learn a new vernacular. Selling on features and functionality shifts to selling on pain points eased and an intangible feeling or experience. The learning of this language has to happen first internally, by departments and functions and roles that may have little or no experience with such ideas. But then that language has to not only extend but evolve for its use externally. What I mean is, the way you articulate the value of your service transformation internally will be different than how you need to articulate the value of your service transformation externally. All too often I see companies using the same language for external stakeholders as they do for internal stakeholders and then wondering why the excitement for and adoption of new service offerings is nonexistent.

Here’s why: buzzwords and tech terms don’t matter to your customers. They couldn’t care less if you’ve invested in brand-new, world-class ABC technology that will make XYZ far easier. If you can embrace the importance of speaking in the language of your stakeholders, your service transformation will yield far faster and far better results. Internally, this gets discussed a fair bit when we talk about change management – you hear folks say that if you want buy-in from your employees,  you need to explain the change in the form of the “why” it matters to them and how it will help them. Companies that do this well see a big difference in how accepting employees are of a new way of working. The same idea holds true for customers – you need to communicate the advancement or new offering to them in a way that resonates.

Let’s look at a few examples.

IoT. Not long ago, I had a call with a service leader who was immensely frustrated at the response from customers around the company’s recent investment in IoT technology. He went as far as to say the project was a failure because customers just weren’t interested in hearing about what the technology could do for them. I was so upset for this gentleman! To think they’d done this great work of investing in IoT and had the perception it was a failure simply because they weren’t communicating its value in a way customers could understand and would find themselves excited about.

  • Instead of: “We are introducing IoT technology! It’s the latest technology in our industry that will let us monitor your assets remotely and provide more proactive and predictive * service.”
  • Try: “We’ve invested in capabilities that will allow us to find issues with your equipment before they ever become a problem for you! This will minimize equipment downtime and keep your productivity high.”

Augmented reality. We know that the benefits of AR are vast, but companies have been challenged in translating these benefits into revenue gains. In a COVID world, it can be tougher since in some cases AR has become the norm, at least temporarily. But, generally speaking, there’s huge value for your customers in your investment in AR.

  • Instead of: “Instead of coming to service your equipment on site, we can use AR to do so remotely! This eliminates a truck role and saves both of us time.”
  • Try: “We’re introducing remote service to be able to diagnose – and sometimes even resolve – your issue almost immediately. We can determine remotely what the problem is so that we can speed your resolution and have you back up and running far faster than ever before.”

Scheduling optimization. Migrating from a manual scheduling and dispatching process to one that’s modern and automated is often a significant investment and major change for service operations. But what part of that investment matters most to your customers?

  • Instead of: “We’ve invested in a new scheduling system so that we can get to more jobs per day and set tighter appointment windows.”
  • Try: “We know your time is precious! We can now tell you what time your technician will arrive, within one hour. Further, we can communicate with you prior to arrival so that you know not only what time he or she will be arriving, but his/her name and what to expect.”

These are just a few examples and, again, reading this it may seem oversimplified. It is, but my primary objective here is to get across the point that you don’t want to do all of this hard work of identifying a need or opportunity to transform your service in some way to better meet customer needs only to fall short in the outcome because you aren’t properly articulating the value of that change in a way that resonates with them. It’s a simple mistake with major consequences. It’s also a great illustration of why it’s so important to have cross-functional alignment on the service opportunity and how your company is going to seize it. You need a strong marketing team to create these customer-centric value propositions; you need a strong sales team to adeptly have these conversations; and you need a frontline workforce that embraces being the face of your brand.

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October 30, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

How the New iPhone Could Change Service Delivery

October 30, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

How the New iPhone Could Change Service Delivery

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Tom Paquin

I’ll start this by saying I used to work for Apple, both in the retail space as a college student, and then again in business development while I was getting my MBA. Apple has always led the way in delivering exceptional service alongside premium products, from their support offerings, to their subscription services, to the physical structure of their retail stores. Servitization is the DNA of Apple’s 21st-century success (and, sacrilegious as it may seem, this has flourished under Tim Cook while it in many ways floundered under Steve Jobs) and it has set the standard for how to redefine retail for the digital age.

This is something I care about quite a bit, and I write about frequently, but this is not what we’re here to talk about today. Today we want to talk, specifically, about the implications that the new iPhone might have for service firms outside of Apple itself. This years’ iPhone upgrade cycle has introduced a feature that will have compelling repercussions for service, and that’s what we’re here to talk about.

The technology I’m talking about is not 5G, which I’ve already discussed, it’s LiDAR. This technology first appeared earlier this year in Apple’s iPad pro, so its appearance in an iPhone is not particularly surprising. But the increased portability and near-ubiquity of the iPhone means that suddenly this new tool will appear on many more job sites—and embedded in many more mobile service utilities.

So what is LiDAR? LiDAR stands for light detection and ranging, and what it does is shoot little lasers onto surfaces in order to create very detailed 3D renders. This CNET article has a number of very compelling examples of how this works in practice with the iPhone, from 3D modeling to simulating changes to the physical space with remarkable accuracy, to creating digital twins in real-time. LiDAR tech has been a key component in autonomous vehicles, drones, robotics, and wearables for years, but this is one of the first instances that the technology will be easily pocketable.

There are, with LiDAR, a number of interesting and compelling use cases for service. The most obvious is for remote assistance, which currently is enhanced through shared view using the camera itself. Enhanced projection and modeling will aid in accurately defining the space, helping to diagnose issues that may not be easily rendered through an image alone, and provide the ability to for remote technicians to interact with depth for on-screen instructions. This is a great way to minimize truck rolls and costs associated with service delivery while providing excellent outcomes for customers.

While we talk quite a bit about remote assistance, augmented reality can be a powerful tool for self-service as well, and with LiDAR, improved ability to provide overlays for directions would help dramatically improve the quality of step-by-step instructions. Here’s an example of how you could use it in your own life: Imagine you have a flat tire. Car companies are beginning to offer mobile apps for self-repair, so you download your app, point your camera at the car, and are taken through how to safely and properly replace a tire. With today’s technology, you usually line up one of the bumpers, and the overlay begins. But what if it’s dark? Or you have a dent in your bumper, or your kid slapped a bunch of stickers all over your car? LiDAR takes a burgeoning technology and potentially makes it foolproof.

I was recently doing some plumbing projects in my basement and I could easily see the application for tools like these. Take it a step further, and imagine lifting your phone below the floorboards, waving it around, then taking it and pointing it at the floor to see a 3D map of plumbing and electrical laid out above ground. That not only has applications for self-service, but for traditional service, too.

Will LiDAR be the killer app of the iPhone 12 Pro? Probably not for the average person, who will likely care more about the camera system, or possibly (though probably not) Dolby Vision. But in service, there is now a whole new toolset, and a lot of exciting potential. Let’s hope that service providers figure out how to elevate it for their customers.

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October 26, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Carlsberg’s Recipe for Brewing Service Excellence

October 26, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Carlsberg’s Recipe for Brewing Service Excellence

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 By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Carlsberg is one of the world's leading brewery groups with more than 140 brands in its beer portfolio, including the international brands Carlsberg and Tuborg and strong local power brands, such as Ringnes in Norway, Lvivske in Ukraine, Wusu in China as well as craft and specialty brands such as French 1664 Blanc and the Belgium abbey beer Grimbergen.

Carlsberg’s service business provides installation, repair, and maintenance to its customers in the hospitality industry. In its highly competitive industry, Carlsberg is tasked with seeking ways to deliver precise consistency as well as continually finding ways to differentiate itself. To meet these demands, the company is harnessing the power of today’s digital tools in a variety of ways. “We sell both direct to hospitality and indirect to wholesalers,” explains Per Ahlmann Andersen, Global Business Solutions Senior Director at Carlsberg. “In both channels, our ability to maximize equipment uptime and ensure product stays stocked is imperative to our success – and today’s technologies enable us to achieve the greatest results.”

Differentiation in a Highly Competitive Industry

The beer industry is highly competitive, and Carlsberg needs to focus on creating synergies between the commercial relationship and service, maintaining visibility of its breadth of assets and product stock, and reacting quickly – preemptively, even – to any equipment issues. “Our service personnel visit customers three to four times more than sales – they are very much the face of our brand,” says Andersen. “As such, one important area of differentiation is investing in tools to ensure those service technicians have complete knowledge of the commercial agreement and a thorough view of the customer’s equipment.”

In addition to considering the field service impact on the customer’s journey and perception of the Carlsberg brand, maximizing equipment uptime and product availability is critical. “The importance of customer equipment being up and running to serve Carlsberg products cannot be underestimated as a marketing investment,” explains Andersen. Further, greater visibility into customer operations helps Carlsberg to hold customers to campaign compliance.

Carlsberg is in the process of incorporating IoT into its operations to optimize its own performance as well as that of its customers. “We’re using IoT technology to provide us insights on not only consumption and availability, but also the state of our draft equipment to be able to do predictive maintenance to secure no breakdown for our customers and to optimize our service work,” says Claus Hirsbro, Senior Director of Technical Service, Carlsberg DraughtMaster. While this an important step in the company’s digital transformation journey, Carlsberg needed a central FSM (field service management) solution capable of covering all business processes while offering an open and enabled platform to incorporate this IoT data.

The Complexity of an Asset-Centric Operation

Following a thorough vendor evaluation process, Carlsberg selected IFS FSM as a managed cloud service to support its field service operations and repair centers. In its initial phase, Carlsberg is deploying the solution to field and back office staff in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Poland, and Switzerland with plans to expand globally. “Operational efficiency and visibility are crucially important to us as we grow our service business and continue to develop our offerings,” says Andersen. “The IFS platform will manage our service operations and also serve as a central repository for our inventory visibility and IoT data. We can house space and planogram insights, Digital DraughtMaster data, inventory availability and use the IFS platform to view and maintain all of our assets. We are a capital-intensive business with costly equipment in the field – having a single view of our assets, whether fielded at customer sites or located in our repair shops and warehouses, is hugely beneficial.”

The IFS FSM system will house all of Carlsberg’s IoT data and can use that data to automatically create a ticket and dispatch a technician when service is required. The tool also helps Carlsberg to better model across its services, from installation and refurbishment to predictive maintenance, break/fix and cleaning, to realize the cost elements and invoice centrally and correctly.  “With our initial deployment of IFS FSM, we expect an efficiency gain of between 10-15 percent,” says Hirsbro.

A View of the Future

Andersen feels that Carlsberg’s ability to digitize operations and master technology such as FSM and IoT will set the stage for Carlsberg’s service of the future as the Servitized world unfolds. “We are seeing the growth of hospitality chains, which compete based on cost,” explains Andersen. “As this increases, Carlsberg will need to incorporate more and more services into our offering to differentiate beyond beer. For instance, perhaps we’ll offer services related to the till, to location security, and so on. The futuristic view is delivering ‘beer in a box,’ if you will.”

“Another essential criteria for our foundational technology is the platform’s ability to allow us to scale and flex as our requirements evolve, whether that’s new geographies, new services, or incorporating additional technologies,” says Andersen. “IFS proved itself as a reliable technology partner for our current operations and for wherever our journey takes us from here.”

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October 23, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Redefining High Tech Manufacturing for a Servitized World

October 23, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Redefining High Tech Manufacturing for a Servitized World

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Manufacturers of technical and office equipment have, just like manufacturers from other disciplines, embraced the importance of making service a component of their solutions. Offering service alongside traditional business practices makes a lot of sense for these companies—the overhead is low, the opportunity for subscription-based selling naturally increases, and there is implicit value in taking customer relationships beyond the transactional.

High tech manufacturers and sellers of both business and consumer products have embraced this approach, but with a massive diversity of devices and an uncertain geography to manage service appointments within, many manufacturers don’t know where to begin bringing service under one roof.

High tech service is by no means a new concept, as much service happens in an inter-office level, or by independent labor. Many businesses, hoping to own more of their customers’ perceptions of their products, are looking at ways to own more of that service directly, and deliver it as upsells and new products.

For manufacturers looking to extend their brand loyalty and product portfolio, delivering more service under a centralized banner is a great way to do so. On the consumer side, Apple has long been the gold standard of this, and while most high tech manufacturers don’t have a trillion dollars in the bank to build an international service infrastructure, there are many little things that businesses can do to servitize themselves. Here are three major considerations.

Exploit the lowered barriers for connected service
High tech manufacturing provides a much shorter bridge to asset connectivity than, say, industrial equipment manufacturing. This means that for businesses looking to increase internal service scrutiny, the ability to get an internal view on output and performance of their assets is often baked in. It’s possible that your business decides to leave it there—You have visibility into performance and service of connected assets, while others service products. Or—you can use that as a launchpad towards tools like remote assistance, which would allow a business to scale up service without hiring and training a global workforce of technicians.

Take advantage of your infrastructure
As stated previously, most high tech equipment has an embedded service team through office-led IT departments, ITSM organizations, and other third party servicers. While it’s certainly a viable option to allow these organizations to function independently, many manufacturers are seeing the value of taking this brain-trust and directly sanctioning it. This ends up being a win-win—it offers manufacturers a degree of quality control over the servicers of their products, and takes some of the onus of certification and business development off of the small business. Moreover, it allows manufacturers to offer subscriptions while deploying technicians of their choice on their terms. Many firms hybridize these workers alongside home-grown servicers. To do this effectively, it’s important to consolidate service appointments, and planning and scheduling into a unified system. This helps organizations learn from service interactions, and keeps all customer touchpoints under a singular brand banner, and the data of those appointments managed in an internal system.

Bring it under one roof
We’ve talked about the embedded asset monitoring tools within manufacturing devices, and we’ve talked about the embedded knowledge among third-party labor and in-house servicers. As alluded to previously, for businesses to get the full value of servitization, these systems need to be interconnected. As I say all the time, your field service management needs to be the grand central station that these external elements all pass through. This allows for the management of labor, parts, assets, work, and customers under a single banner. Doing so minimizes operating costs, arms employees with the right tools to sell and manage assets, and brings all operations back to the core of delivering for your customers.

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October 19, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Why Knowledge Management Demands Prioritization in Your Digital Transformation Journey

October 19, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Why Knowledge Management Demands Prioritization in Your Digital Transformation Journey

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I’ve taken note of a recurring theme in many of my conversations with service leaders in recent months: the prioritization of knowledge management within their digital transformation roadmaps. While knowledge management has long been considered “important” to some degree, this increased focused makes sense when you pause to consider a variety of factors at play within service that are shining a light on the need for a strong knowledge management program.

First, you have what is often referred to as the talent gap – experienced workers retiring at a far faster pace than companies can bring newer talent on. When these experienced workers leave the workforce with much of the knowledge they’ve gleaned over a lifetime’s career only in their heads, it presents a real problem. The ability for companies to capture this knowledge in a way that allows them to retain it once these employees have departed and make it consumable for others within the organization is becoming increasingly critical. Furthermore, access to knowledge has been linked with employee satisfaction – technicians are happier doing their jobs when they know they have the information they need to do them well the first time.

Second, there is the trend of the use of third-party field service workers. The need here isn’t all too different from the first – when you’re relying on resources to execute your work that don’t (yet) know your businesses, the need for an effective way to provide them with the knowledge they need to get the job done is very important. With a strong knowledge management system in place, the process of getting third-party resources up to speed, and your comfort level that they will be able to conduct the work with all necessary insights at their fingertips, is vastly improved.

Finally, knowledge management has a significant impact on productivity. In fact, in a recent TSIA report, it was found that knowledge management had a huge impact on performance, with a 50% reduction in mean time to repair. Access to knowledge improves MTTR and first-time fix, which has a positive impact on the customer experience (as well as the employee experience, as stated above).

For these and many other reasons, there has been more buzz this year about knowledge management as a key focus area for digital transformation efforts. I think service leaders have come to recognize the wealth of knowledge their employees hold and the importance of capturing it, as well as the benefits they stand to gain in making knowledge readily and easily available to their workers. As you evaluate your knowledge management initiatives, keep these three focus areas in mind:

  • Knowledge capture. Companies are usually focused on two areas: the process of digitizing and expanding access to company information (manuals, product information, company history, etc. – any company-held information or resources for technicians to use on the job) as well as the ability to capture the insights of the workforce in a way that makes them accessible to others. I would say that, overall, companies have made more progress in the first category than the latter – despite the latter being arguably more critical. Employee knowledge can be captured through technologies they use – service management solutions, AR, communication platforms, etc. as well as through more hands-on methods. You want to consider what areas of knowledge are most important to the business, examine what you’re most lacking, and look at how you can work to capture that knowledge to incorporate it into a knowledge management platform.
  • With a knowledge library built, you next need to think about accessibility and consumability. When you set a new employee up with access to the knowledge management system, how easy is it for them to find what they’re looking for? AI has some really great potential here in matching content, and even suggesting content, to different scenarios. The point around consumability is that the act of capturing knowledge doesn’t do you much good if that knowledge is not easily consumed by someone at the point at which it is needed. You want to think about how content will be accessed by mobile devices, how easily searchable it is, how the tool uses AI/ML, and so on.
  • To get the most out of knowledge management, you need to think about all the ways the information and insights captured will need to be used and ensure the knowledge can be transferred appropriately. For example, besides the consumability of content on the job, can it be used for training new employees? Is the content available in multi-format options, for those that learn differently? Does the system provide analytics on what is being accessed and when that you can use to determine what further training and insights may be beneficial to your employees?

This is an area that is exciting because it provides a wealth of opportunity, particularly as companies evolve their service offerings and expand what the role of the field technician entails. If you’ve made some strides with your knowledge management efforts, I’d love to talk about it!

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