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October 16, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Industrial Manufacturers have Embraced Service. What Comes Next?

October 16, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Industrial Manufacturers have Embraced Service. What Comes Next?

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By Tom Paquin

Manufacturing firms across a variety of disciplines have been looking for ways to implement more service-oriented solutions into traditional manufacturing processes. This true for organizations that work with capital and industrial equipment as much as it is for any other manufacturer, but for industrial manufacturers, there are a variety of unique challenges that must be considered.

Industrial assets—especially those that will become part of a broader manufacturing workflow—exist in a more mature service market than some of their manufacturing peers. As tools that are largely leveraged in business environments, the need to provide thorough service is much more than a courtesy. Broken assets means money out of the pockets of your customers, so offering detailed service plans, especially if you can guarantee outcomes around things like uptime and output, are the path forward. These new outcomes-based business models will ultimately define the future of field service for industrial manufacturers, and many businesses are already embracing outcomes today.

The actual requirements and technical specifications necessary to embrace outcomes-based service will invariably differ from use case to use case, but the bottom line is that to offer contracts around guaranteed performance, manufacturers need to have the internal capabilities to measure and validate performance among often complex systems. Bridging that gap requires some mechanical and operational forethought, as well as a robust and full-featured service management utility that is capable of managing extensive and complex assets, processes, and workflows. Here are some considerations for how to do this correctly:

Consider Your Framework for Connected Assets
Thinking specifically about the assets that you manufacture, what are the current internet-enabled capabilities built into these systems? Saying that you should consider incorporating connected sensors in your products is easy for me to say from behind my computer. It requires a lot of pre-planning and forethought, and requires the synergy between product, planning, procurement, and numerous other fields. There are, however, plenty of sue cases to pull from to better prepare yourself. Making smart moved with respect to IoT, whether it’s before or after you deploy best-in-class service software, will pay dividends in the long run.

Predictive Maintenance is King
An obvious corollary to connected assets is the potential of predictive maintenance in service processes. This requires that your connected assets be compatible with your service software, and that your service software have the implicit power under the hood to deliver predictive insights. How does your asset management system connect to your service management system? Is there a seamless handoff so that appointments can be quickly and easily scheduled? Predictive is a naturally complex process, and getting it right requires the answer to these and many other questions.

Clean up Your Data
We see a surprising number of businesses who discover that they’ve built biases into their data collection. Whether it helps them make it seem like uptime is higher than it is, or that they’ve hit a higher SLA rate than they actually have, sliding scales eventually break. When they do, your customer will wonder why it appears as though you’re hitting their outcomes while their own performance lags behind. Resolving this requires a combination of deep data auditing, from outside practitioners if applicable, and the implementation of smart data inputs to begin with. It could be what keeps customers invested in their outcomes contracts.

Get a Holistic View
I’m quick to point out the importance of tying internal systems together, and we’ve talked a bit already about how service needs to touch asset monitoring for businesses to be able to properly gauge the outcomes that can be offered to customers. For all of this to work properly, your service management software needs to be the grand central station through which everything passes through: You asset information, your parts data, your service-level agreement criteria, and so on. This is the lynchpin to successfully embracing outcomes-based service.

While outcomes-based service is a fantastic benchmark, if you haven’t started on your servitization journey, it will certainly inform it. The good news is that the power that best-in-class service software offers for outcomes-based service is just as applicable to the beginning of your service journey, and if you start out with an outcomes-based mindset, you’ll be ahead of the pack right out of the gate.

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October 12, 2020 | 9 Mins Read

APi Group Shares 7 Best Practices for Field Service Software Success

October 12, 2020 | 9 Mins Read

APi Group Shares 7 Best Practices for Field Service Software Success

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

We know that the advancements in capabilities, sophistication, and usability of today’s field service software solutions are impressive. But we also know that, regardless of the strength of software selected, there are many opportunities for projects to go awry during implementation that have little to do with the software itself. Despite the best of intentions, companies can find themselves in a quandary during deployment.

Recently Katie Hunt, Service Operations Leader at APi Group, joined us on the Future of Field Service podcast for a discussion fresh off of the company’s software upgrade. If you’re not familiar, APi Group is a business services provider of safety, specialty, and industrial services in over 200 locations with more than 15,000 employees worldwide. Katie led the team on the software upgrade and, having just wrapped, had some really insightful best practices and lessons learned to share.

Best Practice #1: Know Your Why

Katie’s first piece of advice is to have a clear vision for the project. “Identifying your why is so important because it not only lets stakeholders know why we're doing this project, but then it also serves as a benchmark for project efforts. So, you can avoid that scope creep, and you can make sure you're staying on task,” she says.

APi Group’s most recent software deployment was an upgrade of its Alliance solution for which the company’s initiatives were to standardize processes, move to a hosted environment, and to set the groundwork for scaling the business. “Being clear on your goals allows you to then communicate effectively throughout the organization and really just maintain that focus and discipline and ultimately compare all of those decisions back to that strategic vision and keep the project on track,” says Katie. “It is so important to know that the whys might be different for different cohort groups. We have a very large organization, and when I'm communicating, and my team’s communicating to executives, it's a different message sometimes than the end user or the branch level professionals, which is fine. But ultimately, they all need to tie back to that strategic vision, so that they're all in alignment.”

Best Practice #2: Define Your Project Team

During your project, it’s critical to obtain input and feedback – but it’s also critical to ensure that the responsibility of driving the project forward is clearly defined. “This project was unique, in that we really relied on the operating companies to provide insight and guidance and decision making across the board. We had a unique structure with a service steering committee, where we had one representative from each company,” explains Katie. “They came together, and they really made the agreement upfront that this would be the decision-making body. Even if everybody didn't agree, we would move forward with the decision of that committee, so that we could standardize processes. And, so, although we had great discussions and sometimes people didn't agree, we were able to make those decisions and move forward. It really took the ownership off of APi Group and put that on the companies to drive this change forward, which big success overall.”

On the other hand, APi Group learned it could have benefitted from a dedicated project manager and some additional resources. “We had the core team, which was very lean, including myself and about four other key team members,” says Katie. “We did learn that we could have used a couple more people, not only a dedicated project manager to delineate the project management from business decisions, but also just having an extra set of eyes for different perspective. So that was a lesson learned.”

Best Practice #3: Develop Guiding Principles

As your project hits the inevitable ebbs and flows, and rest assured it will, you need to know exactly what to stay focused on. To this end, Katie suggests developing guiding principles. “We defined four guiding principles. The first one was maintaining focus on end user needs. We didn't want to have a holistic technology solution that didn't meet what the end user needs from the field professionals to those office leaders that are really the ones executing the work,” says Katie. “Our second one was being open to changing processes. Change is hard, but we know that we all agreed, hey, we might have to change our processes. We're doing this for the betterment of the group. And that was just an agreement up front. The third one was leveraging the ideas and suggestions of the service steering committee, which we've already discussed, which worked very well. And then the last one was valuing time over process changes. What we were saying with this is, our go live date needs to be met, despite all the process changes being fully complete.”

Having these guiding principles in place at the start is important to keep clear on what you’ve defined as most important, because competing priorities are sure to arise. Your defining principles don’t negate additional priorities or opportunities from being incorporated but ensure that you stay focused first on achieving the principles you’d set. “As we grew closer to go live, we had a list of items that had not yet been implemented. And we prioritized, made sure we hit those really key items, brought them forward before go live,” explains Katie. “And we're still working in sprints after go live, to continue to refine the system. So, we wanted to view go live not as a stopping point, but really as something we could continue and use as a springboard to keep developing our processes, systems, et cetera.”

Best Practice #4: Testing, Testing, Testing

Katie explains that there’s truly never enough time to test enough and success is a balance of ensuring you’ve done enough, in a variety of manners, to feel confident without holding up forward progress. “Testing: we love it and we hate it because there's never enough time for testing and there's so many different methods of testing. And it's just so crucial,” says Katie. “I would say one thing I learned that I did not know going into this project was how many different methods and different types of testing you could do, from the load testing to the off-road testing, to the scripted testing, to automated, there's just a whole gamut of how you can test the system. It’s important to have a really, really solid plan for testing. Before I came on board, the team already had an excellent script of testing items and what we needed to do. So, we had a really good baseline that we could springboard off of and then we just wanted to make sure that we put the system through the paces and tested as if we were conducting real-world operations.”

Katie notes the importance of not just testing but rehearsing. “Rehearse like you want to actually execute. It's like a military thing. I would say that's one thing that we did well, especially with rehearsing the actual cut-over, but also with testing,” she explains. “One thing that I would suggest that had been used at APi Group before I was on board was the testing matrix and really holding the companies accountable for not only who has tested, but when and what. Because if you have a whole group that focuses just on one end of the testing and you miss the portion where you need to invoice the work order, rather than just create it, you have a gap in the testing. So, by spreading it out and having the end users do the testing and staggering it correctly, I think it's very, very beneficial.”

Best Practice #5: Provide Ample and Effective Training

When Katie and I outlined our podcast discussion, I was quick to group training in with change management – and Katie was sure to point out that it is absolutely important to stand on its own. “I’m very proud of how our team handled training. We created videos within our LMS system with APi Group. We kept them short, no more than five minutes, because the attention span of most people is not more than that when watching the training videos. And then we also made cheat sheets. We made quick reference guides that folks can print off on a one pager for key topics, put it in a little folder, or guys can throw it in their trucks, as they're out on site, and just references as needed. And then lastly, we did make those user manuals that are very in depth. They have screenshots, they answer those tough questions, deep dive, and really, people can search them and use the PDF and that kind of thing if needed,” describes Katie.

So APi ensured there were a variety of formats of tangible resources, but also prioritized live trainings and encouraged interaction. “We had weekly live stream trainings. This was a suggestion by one of our steering committee members, and we essentially dedicated a topic each week, and we opened it up on Teams where people could just ask questions through chat,” explains Katie. “We had really good participation! I think week after week, about 150 people would log in, ask questions, and share ideas. And I think having that service community through our team's page has just been a really good benefit, but we are going to continue to take those trainings and use them for onboarding new users and then refine them, probably quarterly as we move forward, just as a continued resource.”

Best Practice #6: Don’t Skimp on Change Management

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of covering this space, it is that software projects often fail due to the tendency to de-prioritize or under focus on the criticality of change management. “Change is never easy. And I really think, even though this is a very intangible part of the project, it's one of the most important, just because it often gets pushed to the side when the budget gets tight, or you're short on time,” agrees Katie. “This is definitely something we did not want to lose focus on. And we did have times where we slipped; everyone does.”

One critical aspect is ensuring that your stakeholders feel invested and take ownership, and this is accomplished through early and often communication, explaining the “why” and how the change will benefit them, and allowing time and opportunity for feedback. “Our strategy overall was not to push this on the companies, but to have the companies take ownership. We are 100% there to support, assist developing these training tools, develop the testing, outline the plan. But for a three-person, four-person team, it's not feasible to train and really manage that change for 20 companies, 3000 users,” says Katie. “We did everything in our power to explain the why behind these changes. And if they had pushback, if they had feedback, we would listen. And there were times where we didn't make a change, or we've switched the processes, but we did that in a standardized manner to make sure that everyone was in alignment. We constantly tried to solicit feedback, really tried to over-communicate whenever possible, and focus on what I think is the most important resource of the project; the people. No matter the technology, no matter the system, if the people don't support it, and the people don't understand why, and they aren't getting what they need to conduct their work and be successful, the project's ultimately going to fail. We wanted to maintain communication and really just make sure that people understood the why of the changes and how it helped them personally, not just the company overall.”

Best Practice #7: Set KPIs to Measure Progress and Success

You won’t know how far you’ve come if you don’t know where you started. “This is one thing we definitely could have done better, and I think it circles back to our team structure with individuals filling multiple roles. We had one individual that was the project manager, as well as the business process lead. So they're not only managing logistics, resourcing, budget, but they're also doing the process analysis, business decisions, and architecture. And having that, something's going to slip through the cracks,” explains Katie. “The downstream effect of that was that we did not really have project KPIs. Our BI and metrics team has done a phenomenal job of creating operational performance metrics. But in terms of the actual project itself and key milestones, I think we could have done a better job measuring those milestones and KPIs and actually having other KPIs rather than just on-time and o- budget, which is what most people focus on. We could have been more granular and had more holistic KPIs and to do that I think it is important to make sure that you have somebody dedicated to that aspect of the project.”

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October 9, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Key Service Considerations for Medical Equipment Manufacturers

October 9, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Key Service Considerations for Medical Equipment Manufacturers

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By Tom Paquin
Manufacturers across the board are waking up to the potential of servitizing previously product-oriented businesses, building out their book of business with service and outcomes-based solutions. For manufacturers who build and sell medical devices, the opportunity is certainly just as apparent. While some customers expect systems and assets to work as expected, medical workers often require uninterrupted utilization in order to keep their patients safe and meet the unique day-to-day challenges that they face. Issues need to be resolved quickly, and service technicians need to work around the diverse, and often inconsistent needs of the business. Getting this right is a daunting task, but one that certainly pays dividends. It starts with a smart approach to technology, and a solution-oriented mindset.

For many medical device companies considering how service technology fits into their business, they naturally assume that custom implementations will ultimately be required in order to meet the demands of a complex and bespoke type of manufacturer. The truth is, though, that smart service management software is designed to be configured to the contours of your business, rather than requiring the time and complexities that come along with customization.

To get this right, it’s important to focus on the right set of capabilities for your business. There are invariably a huge variety that are worth considering, but based on what we’ve seen, there are some common challenges that can be remedied with powerful solutions. I like to pick elements from each stage of the service lifecycle to frame some key capabilities around. To do so, let’s look at these four:

Connected Assets: IoT-enabled capabilities have come a long way from emerging technology, especially in med devices, and the ability to proactively resolve issues before they arise is paramount to the successful operation of many businesses. For example, when it comes to centrifuges for clinical labwork, connectivity to internal systems is the difference between samples aging on a shelf or being actioned effectively. Knowing the status of systems proactively can make sure that organizations are always working at full capacity.

Service-Level Agreement Compliance: Making sure that you’re meeting SLA expectations for medical device manufacturers can be a life-or-death situation in many cases. For that reason, it’s imperative that when service arises, that any SLA requirements are immediately triggered in order to ensure that you’re meeting any contractual outcomes, resolution targets, and privacy requirements through scheduling, delivery, reverse logistics, and invoicing. Getting this right means building your systems around service—not bolting service on to an abstract set of applications. SLA compliance can be tricky when integrating customers into a new service system, but getting it right at the beginning, and building in triggers that inform and enhance all of your service systems, can make a huge difference in the quality of your service interactions.

Optimized Appointments and Planning: In light of the fact that you’ll need to manage and mitigate service issues as quickly and effectively as possible, getting service optimization right is the first and most important step. A good optimization engine combines scheduling capabilities with parts management and technician management to ensure that all elements are working in tandem. Best-in-class optimization goes way beyond one-day scheduling, too, building in the capabilities for simulations, as well as the ability to build multi-time horizon planning to manage demand, headcount, scheduling, and parts allocation by day, week, month, and beyond.

Consumable Management: Medical device manufacturers have a unique relationship with consumable management, and doing it right requires that many of the previously-cited capabilities be in sync with expectations of the business. Especially when dealing with hazardous materials, managing removal and disposal is, for many organizations, a need-to-have. To do this correctly, comprehensive reverse logistics can be the silver bullet. Best-in-class systems help you mange not just routing and depot repairs, but sunsetting of all materials that your service workers come into contact with.

There are obviously a wide arrange of additional considerations for medical device manufacturers to keep in mind when mapping out their service plans, but these are some of the issues that we see come up repeatedly. Getting service right for medical device manufacturers often requires more careful planning, but when it’s in place, it can make a huge difference.

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October 5, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Best-in-class Servitization in a Post-pandemic Environment

October 5, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Best-in-class Servitization in a Post-pandemic Environment

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Brad Soper and Dave Clement

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, companies across sectors were moving toward service-based strategies due to a number of challenges such as commoditization, price pressure, technological disruption, stagnant growth, and untapped market potential. Over recent months, and due in large part to the pandemic, priorities have continued to shift, making servitization more relevant than ever.

As a global consultancy focused on topline strategy, we at Simon-Kucher & Partners recently surveyed more than 200 commercial function leaders across multiple countries and B2B industries in June to understand the revenue impact, performance drivers, and key benefits of service-based strategies. Our global survey not only reveals the importance of services as a future source of sustainable growth, but also explores the success factors across the servitization journey, from one-off transactional services to full service solutions.

Impact of service revenues in the near future
A key aim of our survey was to explore the revenue impact when companies move away from the traditional product-centric model and switch some or all of their focus to services. We found that an impressive 95% of firms plan to more than double their service revenue over the next three years, with the greatest absolute potential seen by electronics and machinery companies —the two industries with the largest shares of service revenues today (12% and 19%, respectively).

The survey also revealed that revenue growth potential for companies depends on the type of service offered. Introducing one-off services for transactions such as delivery, customization, and spare parts can increase a company’s revenue by up to 130% (from 7.0% of revenues today to 16.1% three years from now). Contractual and recurrent lifecycle services, such as predictive maintenance, insurance, and repairs have the potential to increase revenues by up to 93% (from 12.9% of revenues today to 24.9% three years from now. Full service solutions, which drive the greatest share of service revenue today (16% of revenues), still have significant potential with an outlook of increasing revenue by up to 102%. Meanwhile, our study also showed that chemicals and building materials companies currently see the lowest shares of revenues coming from services (3% for each), but expect the fastest growth (181% and 211% respectively) in the years to come. So what can companies considering additional servitization learn from the top performers in our study?

Performance drivers and key benefits experienced by service “winners”
Top-performing companies confirm that the greatest benefits come from rolling out full service solutions as opposed to transactional services. These benefits include improved customer retention, financially more attractive offers, and better monetization of performance. However, key to their success is their close relationship with end-users. In particular, companies with the strongest aftersales report the highest service revenues, e.g. machinery (19%) and electronics (12%), providing a benchmark for industries that are looking to grow through servitization. Finding ways to get closer to end customers, e.g. through direct sales, end customer training, data delivery, etc. will be crucial.

Despite the aforementioned benefits, our survey also found that four in five companies struggle to charge for services in general, with the number one driver of ineffective monetization being the fact that companies often think service delivery is a cost of doing business despite its ability to be utilized as a differentiator. It cannot be emphasized enough that what is given away for free has no value. Improving monetization is crucial to unlocking value and achieving revenue growth.

For those attempting to monetize their service offering, customer openness was named as a significant implementation hurdle.  As such, improving sales capabilities and defining the best revenue model is critical for adoption. We find that less successful companies underestimate the direct link of offer design and price metric (rather than price level) to drive penetration and user adoption. As customers find it difficult to estimate costs, removing this main purchasing barrier should be a top priority.

Servitization is a journey, but you can start tomorrow: Simon-Kucher’s five-step servitization framework
In response to COVID-19, it is likely your company’s priority is to keep cash on hand and mitigate risk as much as possible. However, growth is still important, and servitization is here to help. Even the smallest changes in basic services can mean quick-wins for cash generation and the beginning of your servitization journey, with the ultimate goal being full service solutions. Companies have switched from selling jet engines to selling flying hours, from selling cranes to selling moves, or from selling tires to kilometers traveled. Our five-step servitization framework is there to support you at every step:

  1. Strategy and segmentation

Definition of customer needs and alignment of needs with market opportunity based on market trends and competitive analysis.

  1. Design and offering

Creation of service portfolio and designing service packages to meet key needs of customer segments.

  1. Monetization model

Aligning on price model, metric, and level based on service value and customer willingness-to-pay.  How you charge is as or more important than how much.

  1. Go-to-market and value selling

Defining roles and responsibilities across the organization and empowering sellers via value selling training.

  1. Process and IT systems

Managing the subscription process via ERP/CRM/ CPQ integration.

The majority of surveyed companies agree: especially now, in times of no or slowing volume growth, servitization is key to providing a new, long-term source of profitability. Many sectors have already adopted service-based strategies and revenue models and are now exploring ways to optimize them. What about your company? Are you going to wait until next crisis for the servitization shift?

For more detailed insights from Simon-Kucher’s Servitization Study, reach out to Brad Soper and Dave Clement today.

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October 2, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Back to Basics: Implementing New Service Software

October 2, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Back to Basics: Implementing New Service Software

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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:

This week, we’re looking at how an organization would implement a new service management platform to replace (mostly) manual processes. While many larger organizations generally have a solution in place today, under many circumstances, even those solutions are more of a hodgepodge of utilities than a unified platform. Moreover, as businesses in traditionally product-oriented fields pursue and expand service functions, as has been an ongoing trend, more businesses will need to unwrap service management software for the very first time. And of course smaller businesses who have relied on pen and paper are understanding and embracing the importance of software for their own growth. Today’s Back to Basics are for those groups (we’ll cover transitional software next time).

There are no shortage of shapes and permutations that businesses can take on their road to success, so mileage will inevitably vary. But, as we always say around here, there are a few key components that will tie organizations together when they’re looking at a solution for the first time.

Map Every Millimeter of your Workflows
Last year, I reiterated an old Harvard Business Review case study that has been jangling around in my head since business school, but it’s so obvious a failure point for businesses implementing new tools that it’s easy to overlook. You need to understand every single element of what your service technicians, backoffice, and depot employees are doing before implementing a new tool. This ensure that the software that you’re employing actually solves the real problems that employees are having, doesn’t overextend into nonexistent issues, and is a tool that will actually be employed on a daily basis.

There are a few key ways that you can make this work. One obvious element is choosing a development framework that involves frontline workers from the get-go. This will ensure not only an understanding of their duties, but also help make them advocates for the new software. Furthermore, as noted in the article referenced above, rollout should be an event, with iteration and feedback loops an element of standard protocol. This makes sure the software if giving employees enough cover, and doing in in a way that organically works alongside their job requirements.

Make a Sunset Plan for Redundancies
So you’re implementing a full-featured service tool, which has all the backoffice capabilities that we discussed last time. However, you had previously been running a customer engagement tool designed for small businesses that indexed all your customers, saved their payment info, their work history, and so on. This is now a redundant tool alongside your broader software investment. What do you do? Do you cut and run, forcing customers to re-enter their data manually? Do you continue to use the old tool, running (and paying for) software that does not integrate? Do you port over the data and sunset the old tool? Do you find a way to integrate the old tool into the new one?

There are options, and I’m not here to recommend one in particular (though I definitely would not recommend cutting your customers off, or running redundant systems). The important thing is to have a plan. Must you manually transition system information into the new platform? That would be an awful nightmare, but there are tools to help support that, and with that information in mind, you can build a realistic sunset plan for your older software. Regardless, your goal, and we’ve discussed ad nauseam, is a completely connected system of tools. No redundancies, no crossed wires, no cut wires. Who can help with that? Well…

Consider Implementation Partnerships
While they’re somewhat invisible to the daily discourse on Future of Field Service, we do talk to partners on here from time to time, and write about them as well. Typically, your software provider is going to recommend an implementation partnership to eliminate some of the development burdens and ensure ease of transition into new software environments. Sometimes, your software vendor themselves will have a consulting wing for that express purpose. While this can help with much of the technical, and some of the organizational strain that goes along with service software development, it can’t erase the last mile, which will inevitably come down to your unique business, and how internal teams are advocating for and engaging with the software to ensure its effective use and position within your organization.

Look Ahead
So you’ve mapped the necessary processes, and implementation is done. That’s it, right? Of course not. Technology, like fashion, is never finished. Today, right now, new advancements in areas of business modeling, device connectivity, and emerging technologies are setting up opportunities for much greater efficiencies for service providers, and far more advanced solutions for customers of service. That’s what we’re here for, of course, at The Future of Field Service! Keeping you plugged in to the latest trends and changes in the service industry. More than anything, it’s important to not be afraid to take additional steps on your technology journey, especially after you’ve just implemented a powerful new system. Know that you’ve just scratched the surface of your ROI potential, and that a solid Service Management platform is the foundation onto which you can build a successful digital-first organization.

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September 28, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Weighing the Decision of Disruption

September 28, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Weighing the Decision of Disruption

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

A few weeks ago I welcomed Sae Kwon, VP of Customer Experience at Cisco, to the Future of Field Service podcast to discuss some of the trends he’s navigating in the word of CX. We had a great discussion around his 24-year tenure at Cisco, how Cisco is tackling CX, and how he leads – but one of the points that came up during our conversation was related to weighing the decision to disrupt. Sae relays a fairly recent story of Cisco realizing that between its professional services and technical services teams sat a gap in customer need – the customers had help getting their systems up and running, and technical help if they needed it once established, but they were feeling the pain of not having ample help really managing the change and use of the solutions and promoting adoption. To fill this gap, Cisco created what it calls customer success, a function that assists customers with these needs.

However, as Sae explains, what was challenging about making this decision is that both the professional and technical services businesses, which operated separately, were very successful. “A big part of the decision was timing, because we had professional services and technical services and they were both very successful businesses on their own. It was a separate organization, but very successful businesses, but we could see in the longer term that we needed that customer success function as well and we needed to bring the teams together,” he says. “It was a very difficult decision, but we couldn't afford to wait until these businesses started to slow down. When you have three successful large businesses, it's hard to make that decision to disrupt, because you're disrupting a lot of people, a lot of organizations. I think I once described it as, we put everything into a box, shook it, turned it upside down and then put it down and then we started from there – it sort of felt that way at the time.”

Sae’s point struck me, because often when we talk about the need to disrupt it is in relation to changing the “status quo” – and the connotation of status quo is often stale, outdated, less-than-innovative. But what about when your status quo is working incredibly well? That makes the decision of disruption far harder, because you have the weigh the risk of shaking up those well-performing businesses. “I think that having that courage to disrupt early on is really important. It can be very risky and scary, but if you do that, you open more room for growth. Rather than allowing a really strong business to sort of slow down or plateau, if you make that transformation at the right time, then you can go through that growth curve again. So, the timing is so important, and having the courage to disrupt earlier is really important.”

Defining Your Disruption

According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of disruption is the act or process of disrupting something: a break or interruption in the normal course or continuation of some activity, process, etc. In Cisco’s case, disruption was a combination of creating a new business to address the needs of customers and making changes to the organizational structure of its existing business to fit this new function. It’s important to consider the different types of disruption that exist: it can be innovative disruption, like brining a new offering to market or fundamentally changing how you serve your customers. It could be operational disruption, where you restructure how your business works in some way (perfect example in today’s quest for Servitization is changing fundamentally how, and by whom, service is sold). Or it could be technological disruption, where you decide it is time to modernize an area of the business to take advantage of today’s digital tools. Each of these types of disruption can be incredibly valuable, and to Sae’s point – having the courage to act early can be very advantageous.

However, disruption is a major undertaking and you need to work smart. It takes alignment, cohesive strategy, and a major focus on people and change management. Most important of all, I believe your disruption should be customer-led. You shouldn’t be introducing a new product or service or taking your company in a new direction unless you are confident it is what your customers want or need. If you’re disrupting operationally, it should be driven by a need to evolve your business to better serve your customers’ needs. And if you’re disrupting technologically, you should do so in a way that brings greater value to your customer, better insights to your business, or makes the lives of your frontline workers easier.

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Understanding Optimization Through Super Mario

September 25, 2020 | 6 Mins Read

Understanding Optimization Through Super Mario

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By Tom Paquin

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the most famous video game hero: Super Mario. I’ve discussed video games a few times here before, and I think there’s a lot to learn about service from the simulated, self-contained worlds contained within the cascading ones and zeroes of the digital world. This is true of AI, operations, and certainly true of parts and resource management. Video games, especially simulations, like my beloved Civilization 6, provide a complex microcosm with which to test theories of resource management, optimization, and scenario forecasting. But what about Mario?

Mario, and his games, are slightly different, both in terms of the character of Mario, as well as the game mechanics themselves. Characteristically, Mario is the rare video game character with a stated career, and it happens to be in the home services space. Mario is famously a Plumber. Yes, he apparently went to Med school at some point but we’re not getting into that. In a video game landscapes full of knights, mercenaries, soldiers, and theoretical physicists, it’s somewhat refreshing to see a blue-collar guy stand as the official mascot for video gaming, and it offers a great deal of avenues for exploring Mario’s character here.

Of course, I can’t actually think of any instances in which Mario does any plumbing in any of his games, unless you count traveling through pipes, which I rarely have seen actual plumbers do. For that reason, the service angle looks fairly tenuous from a character perspective, so let’s look at the mechanics.

Mechanically, although Mario has been featured in kart racers, fighting games, puzzle games, sports games, roleplaying games, mobile games, and others I’m certainly forgetting, the core Mario experience has been the simple platformer: a game in which a small character moves, usually from left to right, jumping onto various—you guessed it—platforms in order to complete a series of levels. From his debut as “jumpman”, taking down Donkey Kong in arcades, through his meteoric rise on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Mario’s primary action has been to jump, and to navigate simple maps. Simple as it may be, let’s take a look at this through the lens of service.

Now, while the original Super Mario Bros. remains the quintessential Mario experience, my favorite game has always been Super Mario Bros. 3. I also feel, with its complex world maps and many secrets, it’s a perfect template for service technology solutions, specifically optimization. The game world is made up of eight sequential boards. Here is World 1:

Courtesy of mariouniverse.com

Each of the numbered squares here are levels, that, upon completion, are “resolved”. Yes—just like service appointments. Now the player, as they’re going through the game, will be setting their own “agreements” for how they want to “resolve” each of the items on the eight world boards. Usually, for the player, it’ll fall into one of three categories: Experience, Completionism, or Efficiency. “Experience” players execute on their own whims, going from level to level as they see fit. It’s like a technician setting their own schedule based on appointment needs. “Completionists”, try to finish everything, every job, every item grab, even if it prolongs the experience or needlessly prioritizes the wrong tasks. Think of this as a planning leader with poor optimization. “Efficiency” players are looking to resolve higher-level conflicts as quickly as possible, while leaving some of the lower-level conflicts to other technicians (Luigi, perhaps?) or for a later date in favor of more pressing/profitable options. We’re going to focus on optimizing for efficiency.

Typically, “efficiency” players become what they are by playing and learning the game. The more you play a Mario game, the more you understand the world layout. Remember—these early games existed before you had the ability to save on a cartridge, so each time you turn your console on, you start back at Level 1. This allowed players to get good and learn secrets through repetition.

This is great if there’s time and capabilities in place to do so. When you’re relaxing with a video game, it’s fine. When you have 500 technicians to manage and 3,000 jobs to complete, you don’t have the luxury of trial and error. To illustrate this, here is level 1-3 (you can click on the picture to enlarge):

A novice player would likely take some variation of the following path to complete the level:

And that’s fine, but an efficiency-minded player should know that there’s a secret item hidden in this level that would permit them to skip ahead several worlds, thus decreasing the amount of time needed to complete the most pressing objective: Beating the game and saving the princess. Imagine, then, that a novice player had a technology tool that directed them to take this path instead:

This would allow the player to collect the warp whistle, which lets them skip ahead, more efficiently completing their task.

This knowledge, which, on its face may seem counterintuitive, perhaps even take more time in the immediate, is the crux of what AI-powered optimization offers in service, as well. As Mike Gosling from Cubic mentioned on our podcast late last year, technicians, when handed a list of jobs, often build plans that seem on paper to be the most efficient. But a smart system understands the underlying complexities, can be calibrated to prioritize specific outcomes (uptime, jobs completed, estimated job value, etc) and make decisions that at first blush may not seem like the most logical ones, but can often present the most viable path through a complex world. Is this as fun as playing through all the levels you're skipping? Not necessarily, but we're not going for fun, we're going for efficiency.

That’s optimization from a purely scheduling and routing perspective, but let’s take that a step further and look at the full picture of optimization. To do that, let’s look at another level.

Thinking about Mario as a service technician, and levels as service jobs, it’s clear that this job is fraught with certain challenges. For instance, there is no ground. If Mario misses a jump he will lose a life. This would imply that an optimization system would do one of two things. One scenario: It’d make sure the right service person was available with the right skills. Luigi canonically has a longer and more precise jump than Mario’s, so he might be a better fit for this job. If this is Luigi’s day off, the alternative would be ensuring Mario has the right tools for the job. In Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario can wear something called the Tanooki suit, which gives him the ability to fly. By ensuring access to the right parts, optimization systems can make sure that the job is completed the first time…no lost lives.

Surprisingly like Mario levels, service needs and appointments are increasing in complexity. It’s great when seasoned technicians, like seasoned players, know what each encounter will require, know the most optimized routes, and can make the right decisions. But in an industry with high workforce turnover, that’s not always an option.

In gaming, the technology to optimize systems, provide the best routes, and arm you with the items you need to do jobs right the first time would be what’s called a cheat—cheating the system the designers intended to make the game easier. In service, good optimization might be exactly the cheat code you need to take your business to the next level.

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Women in Service: Leading the Industry Through Change

September 21, 2020 | 6 Mins Read

Women in Service: Leading the Industry Through Change

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Last week I had the good fortune to moderate a panel discussion for the Service Council’s Virtual Smarter Service Symposium that featured the perspective of amazing women in service – Cindy  Etherington, Vice President, Dell EMC Education Services at Dell; Linda Tucci, Senior Global Director, Technical Solutions Center at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics; Dr. Marlene Kolodziej, Vice President of Centralized Services at RICOH USA; Sonya Lacore, Vice President of Inflight Operations at Southwest Airlines; and Sophia Williams, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Telecom and Technology Business Unit at NCR Corporation. Those of you that have follow me for any amount of time know how very much I love moderating event sessions and facilitating insightful conversations – I must say, this was one of my favorites. These women are all so strong and accomplished yet were open, honest, vulnerable and really engaged with one another. I am going to discuss some of the highlights that I took away from the session and I’m also going to share the panel’s responses to a question we ran out of time for but you should be sure to watch the full session as well.

One of the points I took from the conversation is to embrace who you are – find confidence in your strengths and hone your skills. This point was made as two of the women described their quite different characteristics, and we discussed the fact that there are many “right” ways to be a strong leader. I shared that I’ve often wished away some of my own characteristics, wanting instead to be “softer” in ways. The conversation reminded me how important it is to focus energy on being your best self instead of wishing you were someone different – and it was also a great illustration of how women from different backgrounds, with different personalities, and having different leadership styles can all be significantly effective and successful.

Another point I loved is that good leaders know they don’t have to have it all figured out. In fact, good leaders know it isn’t a leader’s job to know everything – holding on to the fear of admitting when you don’t have an answer or need to call on a different skill set than your own shows a level of insecurity in your own strengths. A strong leader draws on the strengths of their entire team and knows that the sum of the team’s parts is far stronger together than any one is alone.

Finally, I loved the discussion we had around the importance of vulnerability – especially given this year’s challenges. Hearing some of the stories shared on how to lead by example when it comes to being vulnerable were enlightening around the power that comes from opening up and being human. I think there’s a misconception that if you’re vulnerable you will be mistaken for being weak, but as this conversation highlighted, I think that vulnerability is a critical strength in leadership.

Advice to Your 20-Year Old Self

I could have talked to these women for hours! I hope I’ll have the chance to do so again soon. We ran out of time before I was able to get to my last question – “what advice would you give your 20-year old self?” I asked the ladies if they’d be willing to send me their answers so that I could share them with you all here (and also because I was too interested in their responses to miss out myself!).

From Sonya Lacore, Vice President of Inflight Operations at Southwest Airlines:

  • Don’t be so overly ambitious to make “getting there” or promoting your primary goal. Instead, the goal should be to love what you do, do it to the best of your ability and promotions will be the natural progression of your hard work and determination. Maya Angelou says, “Pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.”
  • You can have it all – you may just not be able to have it all “right now.” There are seasons in your life – so be careful not to miss them. As a parent, spouse, sibling or friend, there will be seasons that your desire or focus will require heavier engagement for periods of time and that’s okay. Just enjoy those moments and don’t overlook the value of those. Remember, at the end of your life, no one ever says they wish they had worked more or had more promotions – it’s always about family and friends instead. It’s a marathon, not a race and there is always plenty of time to achieve your goals. Timing is everything. Pauses are okay.
  • Never measure your success to the success of others. Everyone is different – take time to discover who you are and then use those talents and strengths to make a difference, not only in your work or family, but in society in general. That is true success.
  • Listen more and talk less. You rarely learn by talking!

From Dr. Marlene Kolodziej, Vice President of Centralized Services at RICOH USA:  

  • Don’t expect to always “know” what you are doing or how to do it. It’s okay to ASK for help.
  • DO spend time to understand “office politics.” Not necessarily play the game, but be cognizant of the environment and the players, and participate wisely, if you choose. It’s not a waste of time, but a way to navigate the environment to get work done.
  • Develop relationships outside of your immediate organization, and not only with peers, superiors, subordinates. Be sure to make time cultivating relationships throughout the company and business and use that information to be a partner in their success (and in turn, yours).
  • Don’t equate the number of hours you work with your level of success or effort. Be sure you have a social life and room for family and friends. Respect the concept that time is money.
  • Seek mentors and provide mentorship. Be sure to learn everything you can from those who came before you and be sure to pass along your knowledge to those who follow.
  • While you don’t want to worry too much about what others “think” about you, be sure you know your brand and the perception of your corporate value.
  • Be sure you and your work are respected. This is not a popularity contest so don’t be too concerned with being “liked” or being “nice.” If you are respectful, kind, considerate, operate with integrity, and your work is valued, solid, and needed, you will be more than “liked” or considered “nice” and adequately rewarded.
  • Speaking of rewarded…KNOW your value to the company and to the people you work with and expect to be compensated appropriately.

From Linda Tucci, Senior Global Director, Technical Solutions Center at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics:

  • Stop saying you’re sorry!
  • Stay true to your core values. Live with conviction and don’t compromise!
  • Stop thinking so much – get out of your head and live from the heart.
  • Travel more for fun not just work, spend more time with family.
  • Surround yourself with positive, like-minded people who will help you grow.
  • Sometimes the best lessons are learned through our failures so take the time to learn from each experience.

From Sophia Williams, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Telecom and Technology Business Unit at NCR Corporation:

  • Find a career that lets you do what you love. Life is too precious to do anything else with the majority of your waking hours. Time is the one resource you can’t replace – once it’s gone, it’s gone. So, make sure your time is well spent on something worthy of this investment.
  • Don’t sweat the small stuff. And, remember that just about everything, in the overall scheme of things, is truly small stuff.
  • Be fearless – but not reckless or arrogant. Know your stuff better than anyone else. Then move forward and execute with confidence.
  • Don’t take yourself too seriously. Have fun!

From Cindy Etherington, Vice President, Dell EMC Education Services at Dell:

  • Be deliberate about cultivating your professional and personal network.
  • Continuously identify and build relationships with people who inspire you and who you aspire to emulate.
  • Balance your network with coaches, mentors and sponsors. Developing a treasured and valuable network takes time and effort. Dedicate time every month and hold yourself accountable to specific actions to sustain a healthy network.

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September 18, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Back to Basics: The Building Blocks of Customer Experience Excellence

September 18, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Back to Basics: The Building Blocks of Customer Experience Excellence

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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:

We’ve spent the last two articles discussing the general service delivery capabilities, as well as the underpinnings of operations that define excellent service. What’s left is the back office—the glue that holds your field operations together—and how those functions are defined, utilized, and changing.

Frankly, this is not a topic we talk about a lot on Future of Field Service. We remain so fixated on the field operations (some of us have claimed that dispatch activities may cease to exist in a few years) that it’s easy to overlook the importance of centralized operations. But discounting the importance of this area of your service business is not a winnable strategy.

So as we have done previously, let’s make a short list of the key capabilities that make up customer experience systems:

Before we dig into this list in any detail, let’s think of the contact center in the low-fi world before digital systems: You need an appointment, you call an office, a worker schedules an appointment. Or some variant of this. Many businesses still work this way in some part. Were I to call up my oil company, I’d talk to the one receptionist who would dispatch one of their half-dozen trucks.

But that’s not all that they do. I’m on an automatic refill plan, which means I’m in their system. Which means when I call, and my number appears, they have a delivery history for me, and my payment info on file. Which saves me having to read my credit information over the phone, or them having to deliver me an invoice, and helps to mitigate negligent payments. Plus, with their customer service CRM, I can log on and see all my delivery history and usage information.

This is a simple example, but it shows the way that extremely low-impact customer experience utilities can provide utilities and service changes that really move the needle for customers. This was a comparatively light lift—some telephone enhancements (“Ok Mr. X, I see you had work completed on your boiler in December of last year…”), and a solid customer management system, and it goes a long way.

For a small shop like in the above example, there might not be the need to employ chatbots, or remote assistance, but for enterprise organizations, B2B, and servicers of large machinery, these tools can really make the difference.

As has been our refrain throughout this series, not all capabilities are created equally. The biggest issue that I see with customer experience utilities, because shovelware is a dime a dozen, in service is when organizations employ boilerplate solutions that don’t actually understand service operations. When that happens, a huge amount of customization needs to go into the product to get it where it needs to be. And if it’s not specific enough, not only does it not provide any value, it is easy for staff to overlook or ignore.

There are certainly some subtopics worth delving into in the CX space, and I’d expect to see more content coming down the pipeline on that in the weeks and months ahead. Next in this series, though, we’re going to take a step back from the key capabilities of service management and look at the stages of service software implementation, starting with a fresh installation of a brand new utility.

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Is Parts Management the Missing Ingredient in Your Recipe for Service Optimization Success?

September 14, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Is Parts Management the Missing Ingredient in Your Recipe for Service Optimization Success?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I have a confession: I don’t write about parts management much because it isn’t exciting to me. I was a Psychology major in college and I just incline for many reasons to the “people” stuff. Leadership effectiveness, change management, sales and service strategy, innovation and transformation? Love it. Parts management? Meh. Why am I telling you this? Because it’s a shortcoming I’m owning up to – and also because it isn’t just me that is underdiscussing this topic. In a webinar I hosted recently we talked about how parts management is one of the most underemphasized aspects of service delivery. Everyone tends to think worrying about parts is “someone else’s job” and therefore it can get overlooked and underprioritized which inevitably unravels a company’s progress when it comes to all of the topics I listed that I do love discussing.

Further, we are entering a time where parts management will become more critical than ever. As recovery from COVID-19 ramps up and demand increases, the pressure that puts on service organizations will be infinitely amplified if there isn’t visibility into inventory and appropriate allocation of parts. If your organization is still in a lull from the impact of the pandemic, now – right now – is the time to get a handle on this to ease your transition to the next normal.

Ineffective Parts Management Will Ruin Your CX Efforts

Most organizations today are heavily focusing on the customer experience. When you think CX, parts management might not be the first topic that comes to mind. But the reality is, ineffective parts management processes are detrimental to your CX efforts. You may have the best strategy for selling service, the most personable and consultative technicians, and the latest in mobile technology to help them on site – but if you haven’t tackled parts management and they show up without what they need to get the job done, none of it matters much. It’s an imperative area to incorporate into your overall digital transformation journey around service optimization. Parts management is most impactful when it is not siloed from service but integrated into the service and scheduling systems. I have heard the phrase “right person with the right skills with the right parts and the right time” no fewer than 10,000 times in my career, but that is the case because it is true – underprioritizing any variable in that equation leads to missing the mark.

The Future of Service Requires a Holistic Approach

Ineffective parts management is also costly to your organization. Repeat trips and aging inventory are detracting from your bottom line. Moreover, the idea of any function being overlooked or operating in a silo is outdated and will not hold up to the demands of today’s service businesses. The future of service, if you really boil it down, is in maximizing your ability to manage complexity so that you’re offering the utmost in simplicity to your customers. Seizing the opportunity of Servitization or outcomes-based service requires a holistic approach to service delivery – the elimination of silos and the creation of an aligned, digitally-enabled, cohesive operation that can take on the burden of complexity to deliver what appears to be a simple solution to your customers’ greatest challenges. For this to happen, parts management can’t be handled in a silo – operationally or technologically – and either should any other function. The silos need to be broken down and, in their place, rebuild an open-concept culture where communication, collaboration, and interconnectedness are the norm. This means integration of operations and alignment across service, logistics, supply chain and procurement teams – as well as investment in a technology stack that can synergize insights of parts inventory into the service management and scheduling mix.

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