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August 7, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Back to Basics: The Key Capabilities of Service Management Software

August 7, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Back to Basics: The Key Capabilities of Service Management 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. For the first article in this series, click here.

When defining service management software, it’s typical to measure the worth of software by the breadth of capabilities that are offered, but that can be very misleading. In 2007, an Apple iPhone and Motorola Sidekick both had web browsers, but there’s no comparison between the depth of execution between the two, so everything here should be taken with a grain of salt.

So where do you even begin when defining the capabilities of service software? What is one expected feature that is so mature it’s a lifeline for service businesses? What is the latest killer app poised to shake up customer expectations or save a ton of money? To cover all of this, I will massively oversimplify the nuances of service software by putting them into three broad categories: Service delivery, operations, and customer experience.

In the coming weeks I’ll break down each, but today, let’s take a look at them holistically.

Service Delivery Capabilities
We’ll start with the most basic set of capabilities, and usually where people start (and many end) when considering field service management software. This is about as boring as it gets on its surface: Contract management, appointment management, Service-level agreement management, and so on. These are the bread-and-butter service utilities, usually with a direct paper counterpart that they’ve been implemented to replace.

More interesting capabilities typically go beyond the act of cataloging service and serve to enhance service delivery. To borrow a phrase from Forrester Research, these would be “Business Technology” utilities rather than simple IT: tools to help win, service and retain customers. The most prevalent of these tools are things like knowledge management and on-the-job training utilities, which take many forms. We’ve spoken a lot about Augmented Reality recently and with good reason: it’s a quick way to upskill technicians without having to over-encumber a business with a bunch of technological overhead.

Operational Capabilities
For the purposes of this massive oversimplification, I’m going to limit this to the movement of people, tools, and parts through a system but here we’re basically talking about one of my favorite topics: Optimization. Generally we speak about planning and scheduling optimization purely through the spectrum of technicians and appointments. Good systems allow appointments to be scheduled through multiple channels and optimize appointment delivery. The best tools can dot that optimization quickly, and with the power of AI, and provide real-time updates as the nature of job delivery continues.

Further than that, parts and reverse logistics management also become necessary (and frequently overlooked!) pillars of optimization. Within that there are a wide varity of considerations, as well. Getting a full operational picture, end to end, is functionally the key to service success, and it’s where a lot of companies fall flat.

Customer Experience Capabilities
The orthodoxy police will lose their mind when they hear this from me, but I would argue this is the most overrated capability set within service. Yes—customer experience is important, but customer experience is not piloted exclusively from customer management utilities. The truth of the matter is that customer attrition doesn’t come from customer relationship management in some sort of automated system, it comes from your technicians working efficiently and delighting customers.

I’m by no means implying that customer experience is not important, and there are certainly transformative experiences to have within CX. Good customer experience utilities enable frictionless handoffs that guide the customer through the service lifecycle, but their main purpose is to automate redundant tasks and reduce the load for the back-office staff, which has its clear benefits and drawbacks. Engaging and forward-thinking systems build chatbots to resolve common issues and routine maintenance without tying up a line or forcing a customer to wait on the phone for a human. CX exists as a steward through the various service systems that you have, not as the centerpiece of service delivery.

That pretty much does it for our high-level capability overview. There are naturally several glossed-over capabilities here and we’ll dig into greater detail about what makes those capabilities integral to service in the coming weeks. Next time, we’ll dig into the meat of service delivery. See you then!

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August 3, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Is Reskilling Your Best Source of Field Service Talent?

August 3, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Is Reskilling Your Best Source of Field Service Talent?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I came across an article from HBR recently that got me thinking about the opportunity that may currently exist for service organizations to put a major dent in the much-discussed talent gap. We talk a lot about the seismic shift that’s happening within businesses to become more service-centric, and what that shift means in terms of the skills required from frontline workers. We’ve also discussed at length the challenge companies are faced with in recruiting and hiring talent.

The article from HBR about reskilling points out that “the past few months have seen a rapid acceleration of three major forces: deglobalization, digitization, and corporate consolidation.” The article discusses the uniqueness of our current situation as not only an opportunity, but an imperative. The article states, “This is a unique scenario — millions unemployed on the one hand, and rapidly evolving and growing skills needs on the other. There is an opportunity for the former to solve the latter’s problem. With it, comes an urgency for companies, governments, and workers’ organizations to join forces and offer the global workforce clear reskilling pathways. In 2019, the ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work stated, ‘Today’s skills will not match the jobs of tomorrow, and newly acquired skills may quickly become obsolete.’ The commission strongly recommended that governments, employers, and workers invest in education and training. Today, we believe this need is no longer just a recommendation, but a necessary step to economic recovery.”

Perhaps this necessary step to economic recovery is also the service industry’s answer, at least in part, to the major talent problem? It will require companies to think outside of the box and become more creative and flexible in both their hiring and training processes. But if we’re being honest, companies need to evolve in these ways regardless. The HBR article gives a couple of examples of companies that are investing heavily in reskilling. One example, Orange – the French telecommunications company, stood out to me as being particularly relevant to our audience.

Orange Embraces the Opportunity of Skills Development

Orange recently published a press release about its commitment to this endeavor, sharing that it will invest over €1.5 billion. The press release states, “Major technological disruptions and their effects on the world of work require us to continuously adapt. With 148,000 employees, Orange is directly affected by these changes. This is especially true given that by 2025 the Group will look nothing like it does now. It will be more international, more focused on B2B and younger, while remaining multi-generational and at the forefront of new technologies. To support these evolutions and meet its ambitions, Orange has decided to make the ‘skills challenge’ a central component of its new ‘Engage 2025’ strategic plan.”

Orange highlights three main priorities of its plan: to strengthen its “tech” expertise over the next five years; to develop in all business lines the use and understanding of data, AI, and cybersecurity – in particular with marketing and network management teams; and to offer every employee the opportunity to develop soft skills with the goal of training 100% of employees in these key skills by 2025.

Considerations for Realistic Reskilling

Whether you look to reskill from the inside, like Orange is doing, or from the outside-in, you need to consider setting realistic expectations for your reskilling initiative. A few important points that come to my mind when I think about how companies struggling to hire talent could incorporate reskilling are:

  • Define what skills, not experience, you need to hire. All too often companies seek to hire based on experience alone and that experience is getting harder and harder to come by. To be able to view the idea of reskilling as an opportunity for augmenting your workforce, you need to think about what you should look for outside of what you may be used to looking for (experience)
  • Another way to do this is to separate out what aspects of the jobs you’re looking to hire for are trainable. Yes, that training may take more effort that you’re accustomed to putting in – and that leads to another conversation around how to effectively reskill – but if you can teach good talent how to do some aspects of the job, it is well worth doing so
  • With the skills necessary for today’s increasingly demanding definition of service rapidly evolving, use this as an opportunity to examine what skills gaps you have and how you may use reskilling to fill them. We know that the field technicians of today need to be more polished and have better soft skills, oftentimes be an active participant is consultative selling, need to be more tech-savvy, could benefit from better understanding customer centricity, and so on. Think about what roles you may be able to reskill in that would, with training, nicely compliment the more traditional skill sets your workforce has
  • Be realistic about what reskilling will entail – you need to consider how you’ll bring potential talent in from roles/industries/backgrounds that you may not have been pulling from historically, the time it will take to effectively reskill for the roles you’re looking to fill, how you can use some of your more experienced workers to assist in this process, and much more

I’m not saying this is a magic solution to the talent problem, but I do think it is a piece of the puzzle that is well worth some serious exploration.

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July 31, 2020 | 6 Mins Read

Jurassic Park as a Cautionary Tale for Service Automation

July 31, 2020 | 6 Mins Read

Jurassic Park as a Cautionary Tale for Service Automation

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By Tom Paquin

Back in December, in honor of the holidays, I was compelled to write about service through the lens of a popular movie series. It now being the end of July, when the sun-bleached late afternoons carry a certain sense of ennui not present at other times of the year, I feel compelled to again go to the well of movies as analogies for service delivery. This was inspired in part by the fact that, due to COVID, a 27-year-old movie was the #1 film in America last month. It just so happens that the film in question was one of my favorites: Jurassic Park.

Jurassic Park is remembered for a variety of reasons. It was a return to top form for Steven Spielberg, who would close out 1993 with another instant-classic, Schindler’s List, two dramatically different films that exemplified his incredible range and talents for visual storytelling. It represented the start of a revolution in visual effects as one of the first films to render realistic-looking creatures using computer animation. And it had dinosaurs, which are inherently cool. No movie since has quite captured the awe, nor the terror, of dinosaurs in the same way. I was just old enough to convince my parents to let me see Jurassic Park in theaters when it came out and not be traumatized, and it ignited my imagination like nothing ever had.

For those of you who don’t remember, Jurassic Park is about a lot more than running away from dinosaurs. The inciting incident that initiates the action, oddly enough, is corporate espionage. In the film, Jurassic Park’s lead programmer, Dennis Nedry (played by the incredibly underrated Wayne Knight) strikes a deal with a rival genetic engineering firm to steal live dinosaur embryos. In order to access the cold storage and flee the island, he needs to deactivate a series of automated systems that he developed, so he creates a piece of malware that tramples through the subsystems, deactivates dozens of automated systems, and ultimately releases several dinosaurs from their enclosures to destroy the park and threaten the guests.

Watching the film recently, it was impossible not to draw some parallels to the increasingly automated world of service management systems. Jurassic Park’s automation existed on a closed system, but was, just like in service, a series of interlocking systems. There were internal assets, there were the dinosaurs themselves, there were both electric and gas-powered vehicles. These all existed on a singular platform, just like service systems strive for today. So what went wrong, and how can we prevent the same mistakes from manifesting themselves in service?

The truth is that the management of Jurassic Park made a series of mistakes that are just as repeatable—or avoidable today. Below are a few of them worth considering, both within the context of the film, as well as the context of your business.

Having One Subject Matter Expert
It’s easy to lay the blame for Jurassic Park’s failure at the feet of Nedry, but we need to take a look at his bosses. In this instance, we’re talking about Lead Engineer Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson), and the owner of Jurassic Park and its parent company InGen, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough). When Nedry executes his “white rabbit” program, which goes on to deactivate the door locks, allowing him to steal the embryos, as well as certain sections of fencing, allowing the T-Rex to escape, he attempts to cover his tracks by saying that he’s running a debug program, and that some systems will go off and on as a result. When attempting to fix the problem, this is the result:

Now we can’t assume that every company will carry with it a bad actor that will sabotage systems and sell off intellectual property (I genuinely hope that is a rare prospect), but for service firms, it’s an obvious mistake to put the entirety of your mindshare in the hand of a single individual. This stresses the importance of choosing technology and automation tools that are adopted widely across the organization, and teaching employees not just the how, but the why behind the decision-making process. We actually talk about this quite a bit, and it’s imperative to developing a system, especially an automated system, that you have stakeholders from across the business. The days of IT existing in a vacuum are over. IT touches every area of the business, and business leaders need to develop systems to meet that.

Let’s take this out of the realm of IT for a minute as well as talk about mindshare in general. What do you do when a technician retires or quits? What about within the context of COVID-19, when travel restrictions and public health issues make travel impossible? It’s important to have a solid plan for knowledge management to meet those moments as well. Perhaps it’s as simple as employing augmented reality, or perhaps you need to look and different ways of passing on information to your technicians in the moment.  

A Lack of Redundancies
In Jurassic Park, even the door locks in the office are automated, so when the system is deactivated, the characters are unable to barricade themselves safely anywhere within the facility. This becomes a particularly dangerous problem when the velociraptors figure out how to open doors.

I never quite understood why the security doors were networked to begin with, it seems like a terrible idea, but a three-dollar latch really could have solved that problem for them in that moment. In fact, we see one being employed expertly three minutes earlier in the film.

I’m not saying every single automated process needs to be backed up with a manual one. For complex automation systems like planning and scheduling optimization, that would be nearly impossible to manage at the same scale. Nevertheless, continuity plans are the key to successful business operation.

Depending on your business, this could be extremely low-fi. If, for instance, you can’t manage inventory virtually via field service software, are you in a position to bypass that, pick up the phone, and get inventory levels quickly from a warehouse or depot? Or, on the technical side, could you offer service parts visibility through, for instance, your ERP software? And in either example, how do you ensure that if one system goes down, it corrects itself when it’s back up and running?

Over-customization
We know that in the context of the film that Nedry built the automation systems from the ground-up himself. The “build or buy” discussion has more or less flown out the window in the world of service, and for good reason. Organizations who want reliable systems trust companies with the domain expertise to build those systems to their specifications. By doing so, you create a secure framework that can easily be managed and serviced internally or externally. Configuration is now the name of the game with any software implementation. That way you can avoid issues like this:

You never want to be in a situation where you say, “I cannot get this system back online without one individual.” You always need to have a support system available. This starts with a diverse and powerful technology partner, through to integration. And it all needs to be predicated on the fact that you do not over-encumber your systems with complex customizations.

Velociraptors

Cloning velociraptors was a terrible idea. In the film they’re six-foot tall super-predators that are bred to kill (we’ll ignore the fact that the velociraptors in the film are ostensibly a fiction. In real life, actual velociraptors were closer to the size of a turkey). They are way too scary for a zoo attraction. Kids will not like them. They exist only to maim and horrify.

Ok, that last point is a bit of a joke, but for the others, it’s surprising how much modern service systems can learn from the mistakes of Jurassic Park. I can’t promise that any of these lessons will help you successfully launch a theme park full of cloned dinosaurs, but they certainly offer some food for thought when it comes to service.

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Understanding the Forces Behind Service Transformation (So That You Can Chart Your Path to Success)

July 27, 2020 | 6 Mins Read

Understanding the Forces Behind Service Transformation (So That You Can Chart Your Path to Success)

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

We share a lot of stories of companies on the path to servitization or outcomes-based service – companies looking to leverage service more strategically by moving beyond their traditional product or break/fix models. I’ve recognized within the leaders I speak to a now common understanding that advancing service within their businesses is the way forward, but I do wonder how they’ve gained that recognition. Is it an active, true understanding of what’s driving this evolution? Or is it more of a passive acceptance that this seems to be the journey everyone is on (and therefore we should be too)? The fact of the matter is that this is a journey everyone is on, so the latter mindset isn’t wrong, but do I think that digging in to understand the forces that are driving this evolution can really help in avoiding some common pitfalls along the way. Click to enlarge the image.

I had a conversation recently with The Advanced Services Group at Aston Business School and they shared with me the image you see here. I want to dig into some of what’s illustrated in this image and discuss, in my own words, what it means when it comes to what’s being demanded of companies undergoing service transformation today.

What’s Driving this Service Evolution?

First, let’s talk about the text you see around the perimeter of this photo – this is defining four forces that impact need for and progression toward what Aston refers to as advanced services. I believe that understanding these forces before you begin this journey is helpful in helping you chart a successful path. I’ll discuss each and try to summarize what’s important to consider.

  • Market-centric forces. I put this force first because I believe it is the most important. The market-centric forces are really what should drive your desire to evolve and what should dictate what the evolution needs to look like. The market-centric forces are what your customers need or want from you – they are the opportunity that exists for your company to do service in new and different ways to create revenue growth and drive profitability. But all too often, companies start with the desire to create that growth rather than starting with the market-centric forces that will ultimately provide it – this results in offerings created that “miss the mark” because you started without first understanding what your market wants from you. Market-centric forces are being shaped by companies like Amazon, Google, and Netflix that are leading in providing a stellar customer experience with the utmost ease. To really drive service success, you must begin with determining what your customers need and want from you. This entails both asking them directly, but also understanding that they may have unmet needs or desires they can’t articulate – so also do some research on what unsolved problems they have, what else they are purchasing, and so on.
  • Technology-centric forces. In many ways, technology-centric forces are tied in with market-centric forces as the world’s digitalization has completely transformed the customer experience across industries and brands. The market demands of things like guaranteed uptime, peace of mind, pay-per-X, real-time data flow, and super simple customer experience are made possible by how companies have transformed digitally. Just think about how experiences have evolved from even a few years ago – why would a customer call to schedule an appointment when they can easily self-book online or through an app? Why should a customer accept an eight-hour service window when technology exists to get the right person there at a specified time? Why would a customer accept a technician needing to return to complete a job because they don’t have the necessary information/parts/skills to do so the first time? Why would a customer want to wait for downtime to ask for service when they could be guaranteed peace of mind? The technology that is driving these expectations is also what is enabling them. Look at the technology-centric forces as your catalyst to meet the market-centric demands that present the greatest opportunities for your business. You cannot achieve advanced service success without fully embracing digital transformation.
  • Organization-centric forces. This is where you begin to examine what within your company’s current structure and processes will either spur you to or hold you back from success. Most often, we see the latter. The reality is that the change needed to evolve in the ways being demanded of companies on this journey is immense and far-reaching. This evolution can’t be done in a silo, it needs to be a company-wide strategic initiative. What’s required of companies to meet these market-centric needs reaches into every facet of the business – your value proposition is changing, how you market and sell needs to change, how you deliver service will change, how you develop products and take them to market will change, how you use technology will change. That’s why this is a journey, not a sprint. There’s no way to circumvent these organization-centric forces but knowing how important they are to consider, realizing how often they stand in the way of progress, and being prepared to tackle them head on is an important first step.
  • Value network-centric forces. When you begin to work through the last phase of the advanced services journey, you will realize that you could meet more customer needs and demands by working with others, or perhaps acquiring other parts of, the value chain. While this is good to be aware of, it’s important to work through the other forces and steps of the journey before really needing to dig in to this aspect and I think, for the most part, the majority of companies we speak with are not quite here yet.

Charting Your Path to Advanced Services Success

As you look at the main part of the image, you see that The Advanced Services Group has defined four phases on the roadmap to advanced services: exploration, engagement, expansion, and exploitation. I would say that most of the companies I interview are in the engagement or expansion phases, although some are certainly still exploring, and few are in the exploitation phase. Taking a detailed look at this roadmap, and The Advanced Services Group’s research in general, is well worth your time. But I’ll comment here on what I’d pick out as the most critical step in each phase of the roadmap based on my observations of where companies most commonly veer off course.

  • Exploration. Okay, I lied – here I have two points to note. First is understanding the business landscape. This goes back to all that I said above about digging into the market-centric forces. You must start this journey from a place of understanding your customers’ wants and needs, what the competitive landscape is for those, and how you are able to meet those needs. Beginning this journey from an uninformed perspective to “grow revenue” is a recipe for failure. Secondly, secure senior management buy-in. As I said before, this evolution is a company-wide strategic play – it can’t be done in a silo and the willingness to do the work must be shared.
  • Engagement. I think the idea of hiring a senior leadership role dedicated to advanced services is important. Achieving success in this transformation while also trying to “keep up with your day job” is a tough proposition. Someone dedicated to researching, planning, testing, and implementing specifically on this is a good investment (and I’d note that this could also be a promotion from within or a dual role as long as the person is given the time to dedicate to this).
  • Expansion. What stands out here is the importance of building a service culture. Recognizing the need to manage this change at the company-wide level and considering how the culture will need to evolve is really important, because this can be a sticking point for many organizations even after significant progress in the first two phases has been made.
  • Exploitation. Thinking about what the integration of products and services will look like is important. The marrying of these two things is really what most customers are after – it provides a more seamless experience and is what helps you achieve the trusted advisor or solutions provider (versus product or service provider) status in their minds.

Being able to hear about and witness so many companies’ journeys to advanced services is really neat – I love the conversations I get to have and the collective perspective they bring. The Advanced Services Group is putting on a virtual World Servitization Convention September 14-16 which I’ll be speaking at. If you’re interested, check out the agenda and join us.

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July 24, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Back to Basics: What is Service Management Software?

July 24, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Back to Basics: What is Service Management Software?

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By Tom Paquin

We spend quite a lot of time around here discussing what defines exceptional service delivery, whether it be the strategies for managing customer retention, transitioning to new business models, or navigating an unprecedented crisis. Through our often lofty discussions about these topics, it’s easy to forget that each organization is at a different point in their service journey, and for some, investing in field service software might not even be on their radar.

I was reminded of this recently when I was asked to answer the question in the title of this article. What an incredibly refreshing question! Putting aside all the bluster, all the acronyms, and all the business goals, actually defining the tool for its purpose was a great reminder of what it is that we are actually talking about here every day. So let’s try to answer the question:What is service management software?

I used to be a high school teacher, so would like to think that I’m pretty good at synthesizing definitions into as close to a singular idea as possible, then using that as the foundation to explore and connect more complex theories and practical applications, so let’s try that. Here’s what I came up with:

Service Management Software is a tool, or series of tools, that allow businesses to track, record, and optimize their field operations and service processes.

That doesn’t actually say much about what makes service management software important, or what makes for good service management software, or even what sort of things are tracked, recorded, and optimized, though. The truth of the matter is that answering those questions requires more than the software itself allows. It requires an intimate understanding of not just service operations, but business operations on the whole.

And that’s part of the challenge with defining service management software. Service functions for businesses are so complex, so diverse, so tribalistic, and so disconnected that getting a piece of software that fits around all the flailing tendrils of your business is not as easy as installing a new piece of project management software.

Don’t tell that to some vendors, though, who build their service software based on a binary checklist of service needs. Many companies, especially those new to the service game who are seeing the revenue potential of service management, build products with feature sets as basic as their other applications. This requires businesses to shove their service processes into a pre-built mold, which always means that you have to saw off elements of your service delivery plan (sometimes entrenched with years of experience) to compromise to software limitations, or invest in even more products to get back to square one.

Because of this, service management vendors that simply have a long list of capabilities, even if those capabilities look particularly flashy in a demo environment, need to be held up to greater scrutiny. Will this parts management system work for the multiple tiers of service appointments that I deal with? Does this crew management system allow me to manage my workers the way that they actually work, or does it just throw names into a list? Does this optimization software manage the scope of global appointments that my company much have oversight for?

So does that mean that depth of execution always trumps breadth of capabilities? Obviously not, but it’s important to understand how the two areas compliment each other. Then you’ll need to take it a step further, and look at what embedded systems exist today, and how they can be integrated or deemed redundant. Then you need to look at your one, five, and ten-year plans for implementation and ensure that there’s a development roadmap that matches up. Then you need to look at implementation, onboarding, the list goes on.

Each of these steps could take months or longer, of course, and there are often hundreds of considerations, stakeholders, and use cases. This new “Back to Basics” series hopes to tackle those issues one by one, and explore all those elements of service delivery, starting with the capabilities that set service apart. Whether you’re looking to invest in a whole new system, or pare down and streamline the systems you have, or just focusing on perfecting service delivery, these will service as an opportunity to revisit, dissect, and perhaps reimagine what actually defines service management software.

There are obviously a dense web of contradictions in even writing about this topic depending on the industry that you are in, and I’d like to flip over as many stones as possible. If you want to share a story or have a question with respect to this series, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

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July 20, 2020 | 6 Mins Read

Panasonic Sharpens Its Service Strategy

July 20, 2020 | 6 Mins Read

Panasonic Sharpens Its Service Strategy

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I think it’s safe to say manufacturers have recognized the need to embrace Servitization, but the race is on to see which companies can successfully transition their operations from product-focused to service-focused. Panasonic Appliances Air-Conditioning Europe is ready to lead the charge and has a strategy in place to do so. Karl Lowe, Head of European Service at Panasonic Appliances Air-Conditioning Europe, recently joined the company with the remit of leading the organization on its journey to Servitization.

“There’s been a recognition within Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions that we need to adopt more of a service mindset,” explains Karl. “The remit I’ve been given is to develop the maturity of our service organization.” Karl explains that, like many product manufacturers, historically service has been viewed within the organization in more of the technical sense. His goal is to broaden that thinking and begin work on getting the company’s service to be perceived as world-class in the way that its diverse portfolio of commercial and residential HVAC products are.

Karl explains that the process is complex because Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions operates in so many countries and regions and those operations have been conducted very independently until now. “We have this kind of silo mentality because each country works independently,” he notes. “But what we're trying to do with service is offer top-down governance in the way that we work operationally, how we work from a service sales point of view and how we work technologically. We don't want to take away the independence or the free thinking of our National Sales Companies (NSCs), but we do want to move away from each country doing it in their own way. We believe that offering common approaches and processes will really help our organization.”

Panasonic’s 3 Step Service Transformation

Karl’s first objective was to get a wholistic view of the status of service operations across the organization. He conducted a business maturity assessment to gain a greater understanding of the service business starting point within Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions.

With the baseline understood and set, Karl developed a three-step strategy to help Panasonic progress through the maturity model. “The first part of that plan is the operational side of our business,” says Karl. “This means using common tools, using similar processes and similar reporting so that we can start to work in a similar kind of way. And it's a little bit like if you were to drive your car into a showroom, if you go into Germany, if you go into the U.K., if you go into France, it's a similar feel, it's a similar approach. You should probably expect a similar kind of service. And that's really what we're trying to achieve within Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions, so that the customer that's in need of our assistance, whether they're in Italy, whether they're in the Czech Republic, whether they're in Spain or in Norway, it really doesn't matter – they should receive consistency.”

As a part of its operational transformation to mature service, Panasonic enlisted the support of IFS Remote Assistance, a collaborative merged reality software that blends two real-time video streams into an interactive environment. “IFS is important in this first phase of our strategy because it, for the first time, offers us a unification of the same way of working,” Karl notes. “We all have to use IFS. So, we will have to work in the same way in the way that we give the customer support, which is obviously to a high standard, and that is our goal.”

Remote Assistance Sets the Stage for Service Success

Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions has been piloting IFS Remote Assistance in its U.K. and Germany NSCs. “The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,” describes Karl. “So much so that interest in the technology has spread throughout Panasonic.” During the pilot, Panasonic has found that in addition to driving service consistency, there are several other benefits the company will gain from IFS Remote Assistance.

“Another valuable aspect of using IFS Remote Assistance is how it enables us to capture and transfer knowledge to protect ourselves from losing technical insights and to educate and upskill across our workforce,” Karl explains. The solution allows Panasonic to record each session and if the company notices similarities occurring, it can initiate training to alleviate common issues. Remote Assistance can also be used for collaboration among workers – the visual aspect of the technology and being able to see what the other person sees means that resolution is far greater than support via a phone call.

Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions expects that by standardizing its service operations on IFS Remote Assistance the company will improve response times, increase remote diagnostics and resolution, reduce on-site visits and save costs, improve speed of repair, and achieve higher customer satisfaction by reducing customer friction.

An example is how IFS Remote Assistance will replace a third-party triage service previously used in the U.K. So, customers would call, be connected to third-party triage who then would relay the information to Panasonic, and they’d await a reply. Now, service sessions can be initiated immediately with IFS Remote Assistance to determine what the issue is and whether it requires a physical site intervention by one of our service engineers. “We need to speed our repairs, and with IFS deployed we expect to accomplish that goal,” notes Karl.

Once deployment of IFS Remote Assistance is complete and operational processes have been polished, Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions will move on to phases two and three of its strategy. Phase two is to examine the company’s service sales structure. “This is where we’ll look at how we sell service,” Karl explains. “And this is probably the most challenging part. We want customers to see us as a solution to their problems rather than a company they buy products from. We need to examine what offerings are appealing to our customer base and how we can develop those into subscription-based contracts.  We want to deliver outcomes – for them to trust us to look after their products and make sure they are always operating optimally. It's always running. It's always being monitored. If there's a problem, we turn up, we fix it. We go away, peace of mind solutions in that way. And I think that's very much the way the industry is going. If you look at hotels, hospitals, retail, restaurants, warehouses, industries, offices, and many other applications they want to get on with doing what they do best – they don't want to worry about HVAC equipment. That's our job and we need to determine how to best meet that need.”

The third and final phase is to examine the service engineering side of things. “Lastly, we’ll look at optimizing how we work in the field from an engineering standpoint and determine how can we provide feedback from the field and from our customers back to R&D to aid in the development of new products and solutions.”

Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions has the recipe for Servitization success: the vision, the strategy, and solid foundational technology to build upon. “The expectation if you’re buying a premium product is that you get premium service,” says Karl. “Our ultimate goal is to maximize customer retention, and to do that we need to mature and innovate in how we provide service to our customers. This is a new approach, a new beginning for Panasonic and I’m excited for the journey.”

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What Can Netflix Teach Service Managers About Contextualizing Data?

July 17, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

What Can Netflix Teach Service Managers About Contextualizing Data?

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By Tom Paquin

Given the avalanche of video streaming platforms that we’ve been pelted with over the last few years, you’d be forgiven if you missed the fact that NBCUniversal just launched their own: Peacock. This is in no way particularly remarkable, interesting, or, I’d argue, good, but there’s a somewhat interesting component here, and that’s what will happen to The Office next year.

I should note here for our international readers I am talking about the Greg Daniels-helmed Office, which of course is an Americanized version of the (moderately superior) Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant-helmed UK Office, which was adapted and exported to a variety of different countries, including the US.

So why am I talking about The Office on this Field Service site? Because of Netflix. It’s widely known that The Office is the most-streamed series on the video platform, so when NBC made it clear that they planned to terminate their contract with Netflix and bring The Office to their own streaming platform, it created a pretty big stir.

The logic was, naturally, because The Office was the top streaming program on Netflix, that NBCUniversal could carry a percentage of Netflix viewers to their platform by moving the show there. The audience would follow the show. They were so certain of this that they bet $100 million a year in lost revenue on it. Netflix clearly bought this as well, and persevered to create a homegrown Office by dumping a massive sum of money at the feet of Greg Daniels and Office Star Steve Carell to create whatever show they wanted for the streaming giant. The result of that massive investment was a show called Space Force, and it’s fine.

Here’s the thing: It’s very likely that both Netflix and NBC have both made very foolish mistakes.

As someone who has a lovely spouse who turns on The Office while she is staring at her phone or answering work emails, I would postulate that The Office is the most-streamed show on Netflix for the following reasons:

  • There are a lot of episodes.
  • You can pay very passive attention to it and still enjoy it.
  • It’s there.

Sure, The Office is enjoyable, but were it not on Netflix, we would find something else that met those three criteria rather than leapfrog to yet another streaming app. Sorry NBC, I don’t care that you’re free, there’s a Netflix button right on my remote and I can re-watch the Great British Bake-off every day for the rest of my life. And if that were to be removed, we’d find something else.

So here we are, 400 words into this article, and what does this have to do with Field Service? Well, I think the gross miscalculation that both Netflix and NBC have made is just as likely to happen with service data, and it might be happening to you, right now.

Here’s an example: You see uncommonly frequent stock-outs on a specific service part in your warehouse. Binary thinking would imply that the part is used with some frequency, which would mean that either assets that use that part are more faulty than others, or the part itself is poorly engineered. So you spend time and money redesigning the asset and the part only to discover that because the parts are extremely small that technicians have an unnecessarily high volume of them on their truck.

This is a single example but it speaks to a broader challenge with a fairly anodyne solution. I’d say that there are three things that businesses can do to better contextualize their data:

Data Analysts Need to Understand Service
This is going to seem profoundly stupid but if you’re reviewing data about service, you need to actually understand every aspect of the service delivery lifecycle. For enterprise-sized businesses with data analysts, many of whom are fresh out of college, dipping their toes into the data lake will provide them a wealth of information to misinterpret.

There’s no silver bullet here. At large companies and especially at diversified companies making sure your CTO “gets” service is not always going to be in the top two thousand priorities. For that reason, it’s important to diversify the audience for your data. By putting raw data with some small context in front of, say, your operations lead, or even a front-line worker, you can have a much more informed interpretation.

Diversify your Data Sources
This is not new territory for us, but the more data sources available to you, the more accurate a picture you’ll have of your business. Combine parts information with broader logistics trends with actual service data, sprinkle on some asset management, and perhaps a few ERP functions, and you have a much better picture of your business than if you were simply looking at a single axis. This feeds into the previous point, obviously—get the right people to connect the data dots to build the picture for your business.

Audit, Audit, Audit
I realize that this is hard, especially as we wade in the uncertain waters of COIVD-19. Do we ever really have time to stop and evaluate the legitimacy of our data? I would argue that it is imperative, and it’s a key way to evaluate and contextualize your data in a meaningful way. Again, no silver bullet, but a good place to start is anecdotal evidence, which can provide much-needed shading to not just the binary cause and effect that you see in the data, but all those squishy grey areas that make up the connecting tissue between numbers on a page.

Obviously there’s no way to be sure that you’re getting data right, and as we’ve seen endlessly, the human condition does not always align with data collection conventions, but these tips will help you begin to contextualize your data. If all else fails, you can always give Steve Carell a call.

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The 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management Paints a Picture of Progress

July 13, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

The 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management Paints a Picture of Progress

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

The Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management is a highly-anticipated piece of research each year, both for the vendors hoping they’ve achieved a prominent placement and for those in the industry who rely on the Magic Quadrant to help steer their technology investments for the upcoming year(s). As I read through the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, I was impressed by the progress the report illustrated. Not only as it relates to the technology provided by the vendors evaluated, although that progress is interesting too, but by the statistics that painted a picture of significant progress by service organizations.

I’ve been interviewing service leaders from brand-name businesses across a wide variety of industries for more than a dozen years – sometimes it feels like those years have flown by and other times it feels like I’ve been doing this for a lifetime. But what has been clear to me over the past three or so years is the seismic shift taking place as service becomes a strategic differentiator for businesses in almost every industry. This progress has revealed itself to me one conversation at a time, but when you pause to look at it collectively you can see the hard work these leaders are putting in to really innovate their businesses, embrace digital transformation, and meet customer needs in new and exciting ways. My personal collection of conversation after conversation that reveals immense progress is reflected in some of the research shared in the 2020 Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management.

Outcomes-Based Service Takes Hold

In Gartner’s strategic planning assumptions, shared at the beginning of the report, Gartner states that, “By 2025, over 50% of equipment manufacturers will offer outcomes-based service contracts that rely on access to digital twin data, up from less than 20% in 2019.” In a later section of the report that shares survey results from 84 customers of 14 vendors evaluated, Gartner reveals that, “One third of respondents are already using this model, up from 19%, and 34% intend to offer this model within the next 12 to 24 months.”

As we’ve discussed, Servitization and outcomes-based service are the future – but we know they are not easy evolutions and take time. Gartner’s research illustrates not only the recognition of the importance of offering outcomes-based service, but also the progress the industry has made – and has plans to make – in doing so. This corroborates what we’ve seen in covering how companies like Cubic Transportation, Tetra Pak, Munters and Alfa Laval are embracing this journey.

Software Use Advances to Meet Service Needs

As service organizations continue to proceed down the path to outcomes-based service, they need more advanced technologies to enable the delivery of those outcomes. The software vendors featured on the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management have evolved quite a bit over the last couple of years themselves, and we see some of the solutions offered becoming simultaneously more sophisticated and simpler to use.

Gartner shares two other strategic planning assumptions that reflect more advanced technology demands. First, “By 2025, 50% of field service management deployments will include mobile augmented reality collaboration and knowledge sharing tools – up from less than 10% in 2019.” We’ve seen even more enthusiastic adoption of AR since COVID-19 struck and, personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the number in 2025 is even higher than 50%. In the survey of 84 customers from the 14 vendors, 64% of respondents are using or plan to use knowledge management within 12 months. Both AR and knowledge management hold great potential in a number of critical areas for field service organizations: improving customer experience, increasing productivity, more efficient training, and the prevention of loss of uncaptured knowledge as older workers retire.

Gartner also shared in their strategic planning assumptions that “algorithms and bots will schedule over two-thirds of field service work for field service providers dependent on automated schedule optimization, up from less than 25% in 2019.” In the survey results, Gartner revealed that “Sixty-three percent of the respondents (up from 39%) indicated that they were already offering their customers a means to self-serve.” Moreover, the report states that “In 2017, Gartner predicted that, by 2020, 10% of emergency field service work would be both triaged and scheduled by AI, up from less than 1% in 2017. Of the surveyed reference customers this year, 23% indicated that they already schedule some work automatically.” Respondents also stated that “the overall average number of technicians handled by each dispatcher was 47, compared with the 21 reported by respondents to the survey conducted for the 2019 Magic Quadrant.” We see here an interest and readiness from field service organizations to leverage more advanced tools, which I believe stems from a recognition doing so is essential in being able to evolve the ways they need to in order to remain competitive and successful.

I think it’s also interesting and important to keep in mind that much of the work for this report was completed prior to the real impact of COVID-19. While the challenges of the pandemic are vast, I do also believe that once we’ve recovered, we will see an acceleration of innovation among field service organizations because navigating the challenges has resulted in more openness to change, increased agility, and greater recognition of the importance of technology.

If you haven’t yet read the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, you can download a copy here.

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What Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant Says about the State of Service

July 10, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

What Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant Says about the State of Service

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By Tom Paquin

This week, Gartner once again released its Magic Quadrant, evaluating Field Service Management software vendors on their ability to effectively provide solutions to their customers.

The report is, as always, not just an assessment of the various vendors in the service industry, but also an overview of the state of the service market today, and what’s clear to me through Gartner’s market assessment is that service is becoming even more vital than it has been to the success, continuity, and growth of businesses in all sorts of different industries.

So knowing all this, and preparing for the future, what has Gartner identified as major market trends, and how can you prepare your business? Here are three areas noted in the report that you should be considering for your business today.

Outcomes-based Service
As Gartner writes, “Of 54 respondents, one-third were already offering this model, up from 19%, and 34% indicated that they intend to offer this model within the next 12 to 24 months.” This means that more than half of organizations will be moving towards an outcomes-based service model. This is an obvious move for forward-thinking organizations. By building their business plans around outcomes, rather than selling warranties, you build long-term contracts that extend beyond the lifespan of a given product, and you offer your customers something more valuable than the promise to resolve issues. It's something we're eager to discuss here, and do some with some frequency.

Of course, in order to do outcomes-based service right, you need to actually be measuring and managing internal systems, whether it be asset-centric, or in terms of the speed and effectiveness of service delivery. For example, if you promise a 4-hour time from ticket to resolution, you’d better not only know you can do that, but also make sure that doing so is actually profitable. Getting that right naturally benefits from smart optimization.

Knowledge Management
As Gartner notes, “Although virtually nonexistent for technicians only a short time ago, about two-thirds (64%) of 63 responding reference customers to our latest survey said that they are using or plan to use knowledge management for field service within the next 12 months.” Knowledge management is no joke, and with an influx of new, inexperienced technicians replacing an aging workforce (my last study had technician turnover hovering around 50% annually) getting it right is the key to successfully managing your business.

What tools you use will depend on your business, but manuals on mobile devices might not be enough. Many organizations are finding great success with augmented reality and remote assistance as a means to quickly upskill technicians by offering them a virtual mentor watching them over their shoulder.

Zero-touch Service
While within the context of our current challenges with COVID, this has taken on a slightly different meaning (and has been mitigated by tools like the AI ones discussed previously), in this instance, we’re discussing the ways in which businesses schedule and manage service visits. Gartner writes, “In 2017, Gartner predicted that, by 2020, 10% of emergency field service work would be both triaged and scheduled by AI, up from less than 1% in 2017. Of the surveyed reference customers this year, which represent a small but often leading portion of the overall market, 23% indicated that they already schedule some work automatically.”

Getting this right starts with a robust customer experience tool, and emanates from asset management as well. Solid IoT systems can dispatch technicians before customers even realize there’s a problem, and chatbots can be calibrated to respond accurately to challenges and recommend the right solutions. There are a great deal of tools that support zero-touch, and it behooves the service professional to choose tools that take the fullest advantage of inputs available today, as well as the openness to handle potential new technologies as they come online.

With these broad-reaching changes impacting the industry, it’s important to build a plan with proven partners that understand your business, and have tools that cater to the way you do service, not force you to cater to them. For more trends impacting the industry, and the full vendor guide, click here to access the report.

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Alfa Laval Drives Service Excellence with Remote Assistance

July 6, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

Alfa Laval Drives Service Excellence with Remote Assistance

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Alfa Laval is a Swedish company founded in 1883 that is a world leader within the key technology areas of heat transfer, separation and fluid handling. With more than 3,700 patents, Alfa Laval provides worldwide solutions in areas that are vital to society, including energy, pharmaceutical, marine and food. The company has over 17,000 employees, including more than 700 field service engineers, that help customers in nearly 100 countries.

As a product manufacturer with deep history, Alfa Laval has had an eye on advancing its service focus for quite some time. “Service has become an increasing strategic focus for Alfa Laval as we have a huge, installed base with which we need to continue to position ourselves as a trusted partner,” says Cedric Domont, Global Service Sales Director at Alfa Laval. “Service is a key enabler of differentiation and has a critical impact on customer experience. These are the major reasons that Alfa Laval’s focus on service has, and will, continue to increase.”

Like any other manufacturer on the path to Servitization, Alfa Laval has learned it is a journey that takes some time and involves some foundational changes. Jens Pulczynski, Manager Global Service Operations at Alfa Laval, points to a significant shift in company alignment that has enabled the company to make the progress it has. “In 2017, the company was reorganized, and the total lifecycle of products was clarified for alignment, including service sales and service execution,” Jens says.

Digital Transformation is Key to Advancing Service Goals

In addition to its greater companywide alignment on the opportunity around service as a strategic differentiator, Alfa Laval has recognized the role digital transformation will play in achieving its ultimate Servitization vision. “I would divide our technology focus into three categories,” says Jens. “The first is connected products – we have, for some time, embedded our products with connectivity that will allow us to remotely monitor the status and operations of equipment which will increase our service value proposition. The second is remote guidance, which we began investigating last year as a better way to provide expertise to our field service engineers. Then, as COVID-19 hit, we recognized the potential it had in customer-facing capacities and decided to speed our investment in the technology.”

The third area, which will be upcoming for Alfa Laval, is to determine a productive method of virtual selling. “We want our employees to have the right balance between physical and virtual interaction with customers. The progress we’ve made in effectively selling virtually as a result of this time will become something that is sustainable for our business. We’re looking into the right technologies, training, and processes to make this a permanent transformation”, says Cedric.

Remote Assistance Plays a Pivotal Role Through COVID-19 And Beyond

In both navigating the complexity of COVID-19 as well as furthering the company’s broader service objectives, remote guidance has proven impactful for Alfa Laval. “When we began researching remote guidance last year, we were looking at how to support our more than 700 field service engineers. They are supporting a product portfolio with significant complexity and machines sometimes in the market for more than 30 years. We were interested in the idea of providing them more efficient and productive access to remote expertise with a technology that would simulate a hands-on interaction,” says Jens. “As COVID-19 spread and travel restrictions were introduced, we realized that if we acted fast this would be a tool that would aid us in continuing to serve customers throughout the crisis – as well as set us up to serve them better than ever before after the crisis passes.”

Alfa Laval chose IFS Remote Assistance, collaborative merged reality software that blends two real-time video streams into an interactive environment. Two users can collaborate and interact in real-time while telestrating, freezing images, using hand gestures, and even adding real objects into the merged reality environment – whether that’s supporting field service engineers on site or customers directly. “We chose IFS Remote Assistance for our remote guidance because we felt it was a strong technology but also because we value the financial stability and long-term vision of the company,” says Cedric.

The timeframe from beginning of pilot to full rollout was just six weeks, and IFS Remote Assistance is now in use by approximately 150 employees at Alfa Laval. “This solution has provided us business continuity during COVID-19 in areas where travel was banned and keep utilization of our resources high. As we recover from the crisis and return to more normal operations, our use of IFS Remote Assistance will evolve from business continuity to business transformation,” says Jens. “We’ll look at how we can continue to offer remote guidance, eliminate unnecessary travel, improve efficiency, and provide a better work/life balance for our field service engineers. Our customers have been 100% satisfied with the introduction of IFS Remote Assistance and impressed by the way it enabled us to continue serving them, so they will welcome expansion of its use.”

As recovery ramps and business circumstances continue to change, Alfa Laval will work to determine how to expand its use of IFS Remote Assistance and how to continue progressing on the path to Servitization. “IFS Remote Assistance helped us to be fast and flexible when we needed to be, which meant we did sort of a ‘quick and dirty’ release of this technology due to its value proposition in helping us through COVID-19. But it’s just the very beginning,” says Cedric. “We now need to take a step back and operationalize how this fit into our broader transformation – keeping it simple for our customers but looking at how we commercialize it as well.”

Alfa Laval has further goals of connected field service that will all keep the progress moving toward Servitization. “We’ll look at how we can use IFS Remote Assistance hands free, to allow even greater productivity,” says Jens. “And we have various other initiatives to tackle in ensuring our field service engineers are armed with everything they need to provide an excellent customer experience. This is part of a major transformation, and while that includes technology it is also about being willing and ready to think and work differently. We’ve made great progress amid a challenging time and will continue to work together to drive service excellence.”

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