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June 15, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

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

June 15, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

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

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

One of the topics that has come up in the majority of conversations I’ve had with service leaders battling the challenges of COVID-19 is how it has impacted the way in which they need to serve their customers. The biggest wants and needs of their customer base look far different than they did just four months ago, and this is forcing companies to be creative and innovative to adapt to new demands. Practically speaking, many customers are facing financial strain at worst and extreme fiscal caution at best, which is putting the breaks on large expenditures and long-term contracts. Companies that are reacting nimbly are embracing Servitization and outcomes-based service concepts and looking to move toward OpEx and subscription-based models that guarantee a level of service and ease investment concerns. For manufacturers, the shift to Servitization protects them from a potential loss or slowing of product revenue by taking advantage of the customers’ preference to extend the lifecycle of assets through service – and for service organizations, the move to outcomes provides peace of mind to customers while providing recurring revenue.

As such, our current global crisis is taking the journey to Servitization and delivering outcomes that most businesses we speak with are on and speeding it significantly. This journey is complex and multi-layered, which is why we’ve seen relatively slow progress – but as in other areas, COVID-19 will act as a major accelerator and will spur organizations forward in ways that may stretch them and bring about some growing pains but will ultimately make them stronger.

The Servitization Maturity Curve

Many companies I speak with that are on the path to Servitization have defined their own maturity model – they’ve mapped out where they are, and the steps they will work through to reach the ultimate goal based on their own definitions. In 2019, IFS partnered with IDC to create the IDC Servitization Maturity Framework. It outlines four stages of the journey to Servitization, as outlined below (Source: IDC Servitization Maturity Framework, 2019):

  1. Splintered. The organization struggles under a myriad of silos that lead to disjointed, manual processes. Legacy, fragmented ERP environments provide little or no visibility on operational performance. The business model is on pure product, with challenges to profitability.
  2. Side-car. The organization has standardized the two chunks of the value chain (back-office and front-desk) but keeps them separated. Keyword in the company is efficiency and add-on services delivered are few. Field service is based on basic mobile capabilities and IoT stacks are at Proof-of-Concept stage. Growing the business is hard.
  3. Joined-up. Front-office and back-office flows have been integrated both directions and leverage the power of advanced technologies such as IoT to feed the core systems with real-time data. In some cases, Edge capabilities bring coordinated autonomy to local sites. A suite of digital services is fully available, and business model enhancements such as pay-as-you-use and outcome-based contracts are being explored.
  4. Borderless. Processes start and end outside the organization and operations and technology enables different elements of the value chain to connect. Co-creation, data-sharing and collaboration with customers, suppliers, partners from other sectors and in some cases even competitor part and parcel of the business model.

Based on IDC's benchmark, 50 percent of the organizations find themselves at Stage 2 (Side-Car), and another 14 percent are stuck in the nightmare of splintered operations (Stage 1). A third of companies interviewed have started joining-up their value chains (Stage 3), and less than 5 percent have reached "Nirvana" (Stage 4) and already opened up their service platforms to the ecosystem.

4 Primary Barriers to Servitization Success

Looking through these four stages you see some of the changes a company needs to make in shifting from a manufacturer of products to a trusted solution provider. It’s hard to deduce from a short description the many layers of challenges that exist in migrating through these phases, but those on the journey are well aware of the complexities. Despite those complexities, COVID-19 and its impact on customer needs and demands is going to force companies to pick up the pace in progressing through these stages. While the IDC data is specific to a manufacturers journey to Servitization, the barriers in the migration for a service business from break-fix to outcomes aren’t all that different.

Here are four primary areas of barriers that will slow your progression to Servitization or outcomes-based service:

  • Mindset shift – this may sound far too simple, but it’s harder than you may think – especially for a long-time product manufacturer. To deliver on the potential of Servitization, you must begin with seeing your company as a SERVICE company versus a product company. This mindset shift cannot happen only at the top but has to be carefully integrated throughout the company culture. This requires significant change management and is where many journeys stall out because it sounds simple but is oh-so-hard in practice.
  • Clarity on customer needs – in order to deliver a service your customers want or an outcome they’ll be willing to pay a premium for, you need to be intimately aware of their needs. Far too many organizations try to win the race to Servitization, or outcomes based on their own understanding of what they’re customers want versus a firsthand perspective of the problems customers are willing to pay to have solved. Taking the time to gain real-world customer insight on what they want and need is imperative to Servitization success, and even more so in a post-COVID world as those needs have changed and are continuing to change.
  • Lack of enabling technology – you see in the IDC insights provided above that Servitization requires a well-orchestrated collection of technology to enable success. Real-time data flow is critical, and the ability to plan and make quick decisions based on this data is essential. You see described a progression away from manual processes to an automated, real-time environment; intelligent planning and optimization; the incorporation of IoT and asset data; and the introduction of digital services and information sharing. This enabling technology has to be layered on in a practical manner, starting with foundational systems that provide the real-time information flow and automation of manual processes. Many companies get stuck in determining how to appropriately outline, integrate, and execute on a digital transformation strategy, which holds them back from achieving Servitization success.
  • Internal alignment & processes – Even with a service-first mindset, clarity on customer needs, and a strong foundation of technology, Servitization success can be elusive. This is because it requires such extensive internal transformation in company-wide alignment and processes. This transformation is necessary in overhauling what’s required of your field force, your R&D team, your marketing department, and – critically – how you sell. It’s an immense amount of change and coordination ripe with many opportunities to be slowed or stalled. However, one of the positive aspects of the COVID-19 challenge is how it is forcing organizations to be more open to change, more agile, and more flexible than ever before – and while that doesn’t minimize the challenges of reaching Servitization or outcomes-based service success, we’ve now learned we can do hard things and that newfound fortitude will help spur companies forward in their respective journeys.

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June 12, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Where are We?

June 12, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Where are We?

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By Tom Paquin

Having now dealt with COVID in the US for about 100 days, we’re starting to get a better picture of the edges of the crisis, however flow-y as those edges might be. Obviously the parameters are always moving, but I think it’s important not to lose sight of the benchmarks of where we find ourselves, where we’ve been, and what comes next. For that reason, I would like to submit a few stages for consideration:

As I see it, these are three very much streamlined stages of our current crisis. I know that these aren’t particularly revelatory to anyone (what we’re all collectively going through isn’t exactly news), but I do feel like it’s important to take a step back and think about this holistically. We’ve come a long way in a short time and I think we need to take a minute and take some stock, certainly as these elements change.

We have the initiation of lockdown, which obviously vacillated depending on where in the world you were. I left out all the sub-bullets about crippling anxiety and your kids crying because you can’t go to Target but you can assume those are all in that period.

Next we have restriction easement, and there’s sure to be some sub-functions here, too. If you look at Japan, South Korea, or New Zealand, these countries who very much got in front of the spread of the virus, they saw slight upticks as life went back to normal, and there were corrections. This is going to happen everywhere.

And finally we have the next next next next normal. For a while, we were throwing around the phrase “new normal”, but in reality, those setbacks that I just mentioned, along with new investments, will mean that there’s going to be an evolution of business normal. Sarah went into detail about this recently. We will likely need to add thirty “Nexts” to this for it to be truly accurate, but where are we right now?

Right here. More or less. If you’re in Wuhan, you’re a couple “Nexts” in. If you’re in Manhattan, you’re a couple steps back. I’m in Massachusetts, and the beginning of June marked “phase 2” of reopening, so non-essential businesses are coming back online. That’s where we are, more or less. What we want to do, though, is take this timeline, and think very deliberately about how we’re considering our service investments across this spectrum. So let’s flip these stages and start thinking about them proactively.

So reclaiming the moment is obviously somewhat in the past, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn a few lessons from that. As the restrictions went up, businesses had a choice—shut down service operations, or find new solutions. For some companies, that choice was taken out of their hands—manufacturers shut down, fulfillment slowed, and imports and exports were dramatically reduced. Still, some businesses made smart tech decisions at this stage that are carrying them out of this crisis. We’ve been quick and proud to discuss the ways that companies have reclaimed the moment thus far.

So what’s the next step? For businesses across the board, we need to get into building a long-term strategy. Many businesses have insulated themselves in a state of austerity still, even at this point, but I’d argue that this is a strategy with reduced returns, and that service businesses need to start capitalizing on changing consumer sentiment to move towards growth strategy, even within the boundaries of an economic downturn.

Historical precedent backs up a bullish strategy in this moment. As McKinsey wrote in April, “In the recessions of 2007–08, the top quintile of companies was ahead of their peers by about 20 percentage points as they moved into the recovery in terms of cumulative total returns to shareholders (TRS). Eight years later, their lead had grown to more than 150 percentage points.” So companies that remain growth-oriented during an economic downturn, assuming that they have the resources to do so, see a significantly higher rate of return than their peers. Service demand is under many circumstances economically agnostic (obviously not always—but frequently). Copper plumbing isn’t going to stop corroding based on the S&P 500, and businesses need to use this last respite that we have to start seriously planning for the future.

For forward-thinking businesses, that’s really a matter of reinforcing the digital-oriented DNA that they already have. Perhaps it means finally looking at Remote Assistance, or planning for a business uptick with an optimization engine. Perhaps it’s an opportunity to consider how you’re actually going to market, and using this opportunity to consider outcomes-based service.

Or perhaps you’re considering a completely different plan. We’re excited and eager to tell these new stories as they emerge. And if you want to share what your company is doing, we’d love to hear from you!

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June 8, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

There Won’t Be a “New Normal”

June 8, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

There Won’t Be a “New Normal”

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

While participating recently in a livestream discussion put on by Field Service News on how businesses are preparing for recovery from COVID-19, one of the panelists mentioned that he’d heard brought up recently the idea that there won’t be a “New Normal,” but rather a “Next Normal.” Upon investigation, it seems this is a concept that has been presented by the likes of McKinsey, Forbes, and CNBC – I just hadn’t heard it until this discussion.

This concept really resonated with me, for a few reasons. First, there’s no way that after such a significant time of strain and change and growth we could just recover into one new “norm” – there will have to be an evolution of healing that leads us from one “next” to another. Second, for service organizations that are in such a season of radical change I think the idea of a “New Normal” gives the impression that the radical change will end when, in reality it will not. While the pace of change may slow at some point, we can’t be tricked into a sense of complacency as recovery ramps by thinking we’ve reached the “new.” We need to accept and prepare for a continuation of change as a result of this crisis for likely years to come.

Why Service is Ready

While this concept may feel daunting, service organizations are more ready for what’s next than they ever have been before. In navigating COVID-19 challenges, companies across industries and of all sizes have learned lessons that will put them in a position of strength tackling what comes next (and next, and next). Companies have learned to become more agile, to make far faster decisions than ever before. Organizations have broken down barriers to change and have learned to become comfortable with the uncomfortable.

As a result of these challenging times, we’ve developed better, closer relationships with both our employees and our customers. Service organizations have broken the “how we’ve always done it” mentality to pivot and meet new customer needs. Companies have realized the value of both technology AND humanity and have witnessed firsthand how powerful the combination can be. All these lessons, and more, mean that you are ready for not just a singular New Normal, but any “next” that comes your way.

What the “Next Normal” Will Require

As recovery begins, we must be ready for the Next Normal. There are still many unknowns, but a few key themes shared by organizations as they prepare for the next normal are:

  • People Centricity: Prioritizing the safety of both employees and customers will be paramount as we reach the Next Normal. On the employee side, companies are focusing of course on proper protocols and ample PPE, but also on ensuring the employees feel a sense of empowerment. If they arrive to a jobsite and don’t feel right about the circumstances, they need to feel confident walking away. On the customer side, how service organizations are prioritizing and executing on safety will be a key differentiator for some time. There are also considerations around how this challenge has impacted people’s mental health and how companies can best support those who are struggling.
  • New & More Flexible Service Offerings: The reality is that what your customers need from you now may be starkly different than what they needed just four months ago. Companies are facing financial strain and are operating hyper-cautiously, which means that major CapEx expenditures and long-term service commitments may be a no-go right now. You need to think about what your value proposition will be in the Next Normal – you can’t get stuck in what was right four months ago, you must be innovative and creative in meeting these new needs. This could mean more of an outcomes-based service model where equipment is offered on a subscription basis, or shorter, more flexible service contracts. Whatever it looks like for your industry, creativity and flexibility are critical in the Next Normal.
  • Faster Technology Adoption: Companies that had already embraced digital transformation have been glad, and those that hadn’t have quickly realized the benefits of doing so. The Next Normal will bring a new wave of technology adoption both by those looking to augment their foundational systems and by those looking to play catch-up. Areas of focus include forecasting and analysis tools, systems that allow best utilization of resources, and technologies that enable remote service.

So, What Comes Next-Next?

We can’t predict the future, but you do need to be thinking about it. It’s important to keep a parallel view of where the business is now and what it needs to do to be successful, but also considerations for what’s coming next and how you’ll need to adjust and pivot to meet changing circumstances. A few key points as you plan for the unknown:

  • It’s important to operationalize faster decision making. This crisis has sped companies’ need to assess data and use it to drive decisions and this has reinforced the criticality of a real-time data flow. You must first ensure you have that real-time data flow, and then ensure you put processes in place to ensure you are reviewing and acting on it daily.
  • If you were caught off guard this time, don’t let it happen a second time. Some organizations I’ve spoken with had a solid Business Continuity Plan in place as COVID-19 hit; others did not. Those that did have reinforced the importance of not only having a plan, but ensuring it is well communicated and socialized among employees and even practiced. If you were one of the companies that felt under-prepared for this crisis, make the effort to ensure that doesn’t happen again.
  • Stay close to your customers. So much of the next-next will be dictated by what your customers need from you and how you need to adapt to deliver on those needs. Therefore, it’s more important than ever to stay to close to your customers, to understand their business pressures and opportunities, and to be soliciting frequent feedback and insights.
  • Know that you can handle anything – you already have!

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June 5, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Now is the Time for Multi-Time Horizon Planning

June 5, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Now is the Time for Multi-Time Horizon Planning

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By Tom Paquin

Here in the U.S., today’s jobs report tells us that the month of May has seen the largest jump in employment in history. This is not particularly surprising (though apparently many economists were surprised), as people are re-hired or released from furlough in response to states gradually easing COVID-19 restrictions. Nevertheless, this surge is further evidence that we’re nearing something that we’ve been considering since this crisis began: Service is going to approach a bottleneck.

We’ve been talking about how planning optimization will help organizations tackle these challenges, and that remains true, but I figured it’d be worth taking that a step further, because this recovery is going to happen in waves over the course of, perhaps, the next two to five years. Manufacturers will come online, traffic will slowly increase, then the capacity of public transit riders will increase, then the capacity of restaurant machinery will increase, then there may be a setback, perhaps another outbreak, then airline traffic might increase, and so on. It’ll be a long process with lots of pumps on the breaks.

For that reason it might seem reasonable to move forward with a day-by-day plan for scheduling: tread water until you have a better idea of what the future holds. That’s fine in theory, but such a binary strategy has potentially catastrophic implications for your ability to meet your customers’ needs.

It really all comes down to capacity. You may not need the hours, parts, vans, and appointment windows that you did in January right now, but unless you have plans for scaling up—and I mean plans, plural—then you’ll be reacting to market changes rather than meeting them. That's where a PSO system that allows for multi-time horizon planning comes in.

Let’s talk about how multi-time horizon planning actually works. It’s pretty much what it says on the package: Planning and scheduling optimization across multiple time domains. Let’s break it down into a few different categories:

Real-time Daily Planning
This is the most tangible form of optimization—take scheduled appointments and provide the best schedule for the parts and labor available, with the ability to optimize in real-time in order to keep things moving effectively as jobs are cancelled, schedules change, and emergencies arise. This is the day-to-day of scaling up; the baseline of successful service delivery.

Weekly Operational Planning
These functions look at appointment booking, but importantly, also considers scheduling. The best systems have triggers in place for exceptions, and furthermore allow you to set thresholds for commissioning contracted labor, where appropriate.

Monthly Capacity Planning
Looking ahead, planning at this level is when we start to get into hiring and staffing, skill and parts planning, all key functions of best-in-class optimization engines. Leading systems build into this level “what-if” planning. For instance—what if you can only bring back 30% of your workforce? What if travel restrictions limit service deployment? This is when we move from the baseline into true strategic planning.

Long-term Strategic Planning
This, of course, is true planning—looking at models to not only set staffing levels, but also set KPIs and define the terms of outcomes-based service. This is the complete picture of service—not just looking at the historical data from yesterday, but using that data to plan for tomorrow.

In March, it seemed like every day we were playing out a slightly different scenario. Sometimes, based on the available data, those scenarios changed from hour to hour. I think that, fundamentally, we have a much better picture than before about what tomorrow holds, but that’s not to say that the future is written. With smart multi-phased horizon planning, you can plan your own future.

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June 1, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

Samaritans Preserves Critical Services Amidst the Challenges of COVID-19

June 1, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

Samaritans Preserves Critical Services Amidst the Challenges of COVID-19

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

With over 20,000 volunteers and 200 branches, Samaritans is a charity working across the UK and Ireland to offer round the clock emotional support for people who are struggling to cope with life’s challenges. Samaritans’ vision is that fewer people die by suicide and to make this vision a reality, Samaritans answers a call for help every six seconds and campaigns to make suicide prevention a national and local priority.

When we think of essential services, an operation like Samaritans is toward the top of the list – always, but in an even more heightened sense with the significant emotional toll that COVID-19 is taking on people. Prior to the pandemic hitting, Samaritans had begun a journey to modernize its contact and communications operations with an investment in IFS Customer Engagement. Since COVID-19 has come into play, Samaritans has had to quickly adapt to explore how volunteers could continue to provide support for those in need, without travelling into its branches.

Multi-Channel Engagement Platform Will Expand Capabilities, Improve Reliability

Francis Bacon, Assistant Director of Digital Services for Samaritans is responsible for caller services, which includes support provided by phone, email, the forthcoming online chat service, as well as the recruiting and training of volunteers. He also oversees the intranet, help desks, and leads the charity’s digital journey.

Until recently, Samaritans handled incoming requests through an old telephone system and a completely separate system for email messages. “These systems were outdated, fairly unreliable, and quite inflexible,” says Bacon. “We wanted to modernize operations and set the stage for expansion opportunities by investing in a platform to update and integrate phone and email communications while also adding online chat functionality.”

In addition to the desire for a platform that could effectively handle phone, email, and chat capabilities, Samaritans wanted to increase capacity to enable future expansion, as well as improve security and reliability that the aging, disparate systems lacked. “The old telephone system had to be specially installed on computers and lacked flexibility,” says Bacon. “With a web-based solution, we’d significantly expand possibilities for future volunteering models, such as out-of-home volunteering.”

Samaritans quest for a modernized, multi-channel contact system led the organization to IFS. IFS Customer Engagement creates a single, unified experience across every channel of connection, including calls, email, chat and social messaging. “The IFS CE platform performed well on our selection matrix overall, but what really stood out is the customizability of the interface,” says Bacon. “Our needs are a bit different from the average service customer, in that we’re training volunteers on the system versus employees, and we need to accommodate the unique circumstances that those turning to us for help are in, therefore the ability to tailor IFS CE to our specific needs was a key differentiator.”

Deployment of IFS CE is underway currently in five Samaritans’ branch locations, including its Central London branch. The charity expects to have all 187 U.K. branches online in June and will roll out to the branches in the Republic of Ireland in the coming year. “We expect that investing in this technology will provide a number of benefits, including a more seamless experience for both our callers and volunteers, greater security and reliability, and the ability to scale and evolve our work with a stronger system for engagement in place,” says Bacon. “With the roll out of IFS CE we are anticipate an uptime of 99.95% which will be a significant improvement on our current system and allow us to provide a better service to people in distress and crisis.”

Reacting Quickly to COVID-19 Complexity to Protect – and Scale – Essential Services

As you can imagine, a service like Samaritans provides has become even more critical as COVID-19 has infiltrated our lives. Compounding this need for its services are the increasingly complex conditions in which Samaritans needs to operate. Perhaps most significant is the fact that a large portion of volunteers are unable to report into branch, as typically required, to provide emotional support to those who are struggling. “Our biggest concern has been making sure that volunteers can continue to volunteer,” says Bacon. “As this began we conducted a survey of our branches asking them what percentage of volunteers they thought may not be able to come into the branch, either because they were self-isolating or because they are high risk, and that survey showed 30% of volunteers could not report in. We needed to find a way for volunteers to support and ensure our service can continue to keep running and help those in need.”

While grappling with the issue of how to enable volunteers to serve from home, Samaritans also recognized the need to introduce a new service for essential healthcare workers. “The NHS has been under tremendous pressure in responding to this crisis,” says Bacon. “We wanted to respond to their need by providing a new helpline for NHS staff to be able to call considering the gravity of what they're experiencing with the coronavirus outbreak.”

Samaritans has been able to quickly explore the opportunities to enable volunteers to support from home, as well as bring on a number of new volunteers to provide the NHS support line. This was possible, in part, by the functionality IFS CE is providing. While efforts have begun in tandem with the deployment of the technology, Bacon says it wouldn’t have been possible to make these pivots without the modernized system. “We’ve been able to begin making these changes and expanding our services with the knowledge that the IFS solution will allow us to do so at scale while also improving the experience of our volunteers and of the public that needs our services. This wouldn’t have been possible with our legacy system.”

While the circumstances are unfortunate, Bacon is thankful for the ability to serve on an even greater scale given what’s going on. He’s also been heartened by seeing how people are stepping up and coming together amidst this crisis. “As we launched the NHS service, we had more than 2,000 people fill out the volunteer form and say they were willing to help within a matter of just a few days. We've seen members of the public, even at this really difficult time, putting their hands in their pockets and supporting us on our emergency appeal for funds,” says Bacon. “This is what enables us to continue to work toward our mission and we’re thankful. We know the public needs us, especially now, and we’ll continue to do our best to find ways to step up to meet those needs.”

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May 29, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

COVID-19 is Turning Manufacturing on its Head. Is Service the Key to Success?

May 29, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

COVID-19 is Turning Manufacturing on its Head. Is Service the Key to Success?

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By Tom Paquin

I recently had the pleasure of reading Anna-Katrina Shedletsky’s Forbes column on the impacts of COVID-19 on the manufacturing industry. It postulates (as the title makes clear) that manufacturers will experience 5 years of innovation over the course of the next year and a half. I’m not necessarily in a position to make any assertions about the 18-month to 5-year mathematical conversion, but there’s no avoiding the fact that necessity is driving an avalanche of new technologies into manufacturing, for better or for worse.

Do I have concerns? Absolutely. Chief among them are the perils of reckless tech adoption, a topic worth much more elaboration than my article from earlier this year delves into. Nevertheless, these changes are happening now, exacerbated by a gradual return to work and the establishment of a new normal at that work, and businesses will be forced to reckon with, justify, and build upon those changes to enrich their business in ways that make knee-jerk software investments seem worthwhile.

In her article, Shedletsky earmarked two specific and interconnected areas of exponential growth for manufacturers today, specifically cloud data adoption and automation, and though she is primarily focused on straight manufacturing, it is impossible not to consider these through the lens of service as well. To that end, she says in the article,

“Adoption of cloud data unlocks technologies like AI, which can be used to surface unanticipated defects during development and catch quality shifts in production without stepping foot in the factory.”

We’re not shy about the importance of cloud around here, but let’s unpack this a bit for its importance within the specific context of manufacturing. As we know, manufacturers are moving towards servitization—building business plans around service delivery rather than straight product delivery, given its much better margins and customer retention capabilities. Companies moving to, or already with service in place, are shifting service delivery from break-fix plans to more outcomes-oriented service delivery as well.

This is where cloud-oriented datasystems like the one in the article could really shine. Shedletsky rightly identifies cloud oversight as being able to help identify and mitigate production irregularities and output lags. For service-oriented companies, access to that data would offer a metric to be used for outcomes-based service. Without cloud oversight into your assets, you’re limited to promising outcomes such as time from ticket to invoice, first-time fix rate, and other repair-oriented KPIs. With greater asset oversight, you can expand those outcomes into predictive maintenance, output, and performance. This is a capability unique to manufacturing’s complex assets, and it’s a huge opportunity for forward-minded companies.

We often talk here about how you can’t engage in new service software effectively unless you have the underlying infrastructure, which has traditionally been disruptive for businesses to take on in advance. Within the context of COVID-19, the disruption from external sources are propelling huge amounts of change that can, and should be leveraged for service purposes in order to expand their usefulness. It’s a damaging crisis, undoubtedly, but it’s also a unique opportunity to use these new changes to restructure businesses, diversify revenue, and deliver more value to customers.

None of us want to the in the position we currently find ourselves in. But from that position, we are rewarded with new options and avenues for success.

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4 Predictions of How Service Will Be Meaningfully Changed by COVID-19

May 25, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

4 Predictions of How Service Will Be Meaningfully Changed by COVID-19

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Our lives, personal and professional, have been forever changed over the course of the last couple of months as we’ve grappled with COVID-19. As I’ve spoken with service leaders about what this crisis has meant for them and for their organizations, what I’ve taken away from those conversations is that while this situation is most certainly devastating and unfortunate, there are aspects of how service organizations are being forced to react that will result in some really positive, long-term changes in service. These changes will bring us into a new normal in which service can surface stronger and more resilient than ever. Here are four areas of change taking place that will only expand and progress as we recover from this crisis.

COVID-19 Accelerates Digital Transformation

Many leading service organizations have been on a digital transformation journey for some time – those companies have been well-positioned to quickly build upon their efforts to react to these new and challenging circumstances. Munters is a wonderful example of this – the company has been pragmatically deploying technology to enable its journey to servitization and was able to adeptly speed its plans to adopt IFS Remote Assistance for business continuity.

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

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

Service Organizations (Finally) Embrace Agile

Fear is a powerful tool, and in this situation, the fear of failing at business continuity is forcing service organizations to embrace agile. The ability to think, react, and pivot quickly is what is saving a lot of companies in today’s circumstances. For many service organizations, these characteristics aren’t necessarily ones that come naturally – many companies, particularly those with a long history, are fairly slow to react and adopt change.

The need to be nimble in order to successfully navigate today’s challenges is showing service organizations, by practice, that doing so isn’t a bad thing. It’s forcing leaders and companies alike outside of their comfort zones and, while the circumstances are unfortunate, the result is that they will come back from this with a new perspective and a wealth of experiences that will equip them to operate in a more agile manner – bringing them up to speed with customer expectations and consumer industries far faster than had this situation never occurred.

Remote Work Becomes the New Norm

With isolation orders in place across the globe with exceptions only for essential workers, many service businesses have had to quickly adapt to allowing and enabling employees to work from home. This is pervasive across many functions, from office staff to customer support to field technicians. This adjustment is causing companies to deploy technologies that allow constant, effective, and collaborative communication – from conferencing tools to more sophisticated technologies like merged reality. The Samaritans – a registered charity aimed at providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope, or at risk of suicide throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland – is using IFS Customer Engagement to allow a percentage of its volunteer network that is unable to come into location due to COVID-19 to operate from home.

The quick pivot to remote work is bringing to light a number of factors for organizations – how productive a remote workforce can be (not to mention less expensive), how trusting you can be of a good staff to do their jobs even when you aren’t face-to-face, and how empowered employees become when given this sort of trust. Between the learnings taking place and the technologies being deployed, the idea of returning all the workers that have become remote to in-office work is highly unlikely.  The reality is, while some workers will most certainly return to their pre-crisis normal, much of the remote work that has begun out of necessity due to COVID-19 will continue and expand as we recover.

Safety Will Be a Key Differentiator

As recovery ramps up and service organizations that haven’t been doing in-person visits get back to it, we’ll see safety become a key differentiator for service organizations. Pre-COVID-19, a customer asking, “what is your safety protocol?” probably wasn’t incredibly common – but it will be as we move forward. Not only do experts say the Coronavirus itself will take quite some time to go away, or for a vaccine to be developed – but the emotional impact it has had on individuals will persist even longer.

An employee isn’t going to want to return to work if he or she doesn’t feel safe and well protected. Moreover, customers won’t want a field technician coming into their home or business if they aren’t fully confident in how the service organization is protecting their safety. This of course begins with proper PPE and disinfecting processes, but it should be considered far beyond that. Much of what puts people at ease is communication, so thinking about how you’ll communicate with customers regularly about what your safety practices are, who will be arriving on site and what protocol they’ll follow, and how you’re handing issues that inevitably arise will be of critical importance.

I hear people ask often, “when do you think we’ll get back to normal?” I’ve even said it myself. But in reality, I don’t think we will return to normal – I think we’ll find a new normal. And service organizations most certainly will. If there’s a silver lining in all of this, though, it’s that with the experiences of navigating this crisis, I really believe service organizations will emerge stronger than ever

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Understanding AI With the Help of Video Games

May 22, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

Understanding AI With the Help of Video Games

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By Tom Paquin

I’ve been pleased and proud of the content that The Future of Field Service has delivered over the course of the last few months to help support businesses as they navigate the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. Through shaky economic times, fear, and uncertainty, I hope that we have been able to provide some guidance and some optimism for how we, as a service community, can emerge from this crisis with a new focus on transformative service delivery.

Having said all that, there are obviously two sides to the crisis. One is tackling these challenges head-on in writing, advisement, and adjustments to the way we do business and live our daily lives. The other is filling the wealth of time that we have not sitting in traffic, not going out to eat, and not puttering around Target for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.

For me, that extra time has been filled in three ways:

  1. Working earlier/later/weirder hours than usual
  2. Remodeling a bathroom
  3. Playing video games

The third of these things (I play quite a bit of Sid Meier’s Civilization 6, in case you’re curious about just how big of a nerd I am) reminded me of an article that I wrote a few years ago while at Aberdeen about the relationship of AI in video games and the world of service. In the opening of that article I said:

Back in 2002, developer Monolith Productions was showing off a technical demo of the AI systems in its upcoming game, No One Lives Forever: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way. The Artificial Intelligence in this game was a pretty substantial leap forward compared to its contemporaries. Rather than simply stand around until the player character walked by, in this game, non-player characters would behave, seemingly, like real people. They’d step outside for a cigarette, engage in idle chatter, go to a nearby soda machine for a drink, and even use the bathroom (characters inside would use toilets, characters outside would find the nearest bush).

Monolith’s head of AI, Jeff Orkin, demonstrated how characters would make dynamic adjustments to environmental changes. He identified a character heading towards the bathroom, and before they arrived, Orkin dropped a grenade in the toilet and blew it up. The guard stepped into the bathroom, saw there was no toilet, and walked back out into the hallway. Then, he dutifully walked up to a nearby potted plant and relieved himself there.

This somewhat embarrassing example illustrated the concept of emergent gameplay, taking three elements—AI goals, the external environment, and player input—and using them to determine a set of actions. The behavior of the character in that instance was built off of a system known as goal-oriented action planning, or GOAP. GOAP replaced more linear automation systems in the early 2000s in video games.

The amazing thing about goal-oriented action planning is that even though it’s a concept borne out of the controlled world of video games, it has a direct connection to service system as well.

The basic concept of GOAP is taking traditional automation inputs and making them more efficient. Traditional process automation strings together a set of goals in a sequence. For example, imagine that your service technician is an AI (This is just an example…I’m not advocating for the use of robo-technicians). Using traditional automation, their sequence of daily actions looks like:

So each behavior (the circles) need to emanate directly along a specific path in order to be completed. There is no direct line between “Service Appointment” and “Break”. You need to pass through “Drive” in order to get there, meaning that a technician would need to drive to their break. “Type Notes” only connects to “Service Appointment”, so it needs that behavior to have been completed in order to be initiated.

See the issue with this?

The biggest problem that programmers run into with traditional automation when it comes to video games is that introducing a new behavior to an AI (Remote assistance, for instance) creates dozens of broken logic chains unless you go back and remap all the paths above, and even so, the pathways are so finnicky that they often break themselves. What happens, for instance, if your technician has two appointments at the same site? What if your technician needs to reallocate parts? What if they decide to eat a sandwich in their truck? What if they call a customer who has to reschedule? What if a technician doesn’t have time to type notes before their next appointment? The sequence is too rigid.

That is why, in contrast, goal-oriented action planning looks like this:

Same behaviors, no path. Instead, the AI evaluates the current conditions, and makes an evaluation to initiate any of its available behaviors based on that condition. This naturally leads to improved efficiency, often beyond what programmers had intended, which explains how a security guard ends up relieving themselves in a plant in the example I wrote about above.

I imagine you might be a bit skeptical, especially since the theoretical utilization of goal-oriented logic is what led HAL to murder everyone in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is where simulation comes in. These AI systems, by design, run a scenario thousands of times, each time “evolving” their approach to produce a more efficient outcomes.

How do you make sure those “evolutions” don’t turn murderous? Or make sure your technicians have time to eat? You set rules. Let’s take this example away from an individual tech and talk about an actual, practical use of AI: Planning and Scheduling. To optimize scheduling (as I spoke about just last week), you give locations of specific objectives, define the criteria that needs to be met to accomplish those objectives (parts needed, safety precautions, required breaks, hours of operation, travel time, available staff, etc) and you allow the systems to find the most efficient way to complete all of their goals within the context of the rules. Further, you can rank goals, and you can update in real-time.

This is how the best PSO systems function, with AI under the hood doing the work for you. Most can do that for your day. The best are able to provide multi-time horizon planning that takes into account an extremely wide variety of factors and can map well in advance.

Under most normal circumstances, developing this system will not be the job of the deliverer of service, but it’s nevertheless a useful concept to understand, especially when evaluating a PSO solution, not to mention thinking about asset management, or any other number of systems that will take advantage of AI. By understanding its capabilities, you can plan your criteria, inputs, and goals appropriately to take full advantage of what this amazing technology has to offer. And maybe it’ll make you waste a few less coins the next time you boot up Pac-Man.

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3 Tactics That Have Enabled Park Place Technologies to Thrive Amidst COVID-19 Chaos

May 18, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

3 Tactics That Have Enabled Park Place Technologies to Thrive Amidst COVID-19 Chaos

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Park Place Technologies (PPT) has provided third party management of IT data center equipment since 1991, currently operating in 58,000 data centers in more than 150 countries. The company strives to simplify the management of complex hybrid environments to maximize uptime, improve operational speed and accelerate business transformation for its customers.

As companies pivot to remote work as a result of COVID-19 restrictions, their reliance on technology infrastructure is even greater. So too, though, are the challenges for PPT in providing its services. PPT has stepped up to the challenge and has relied on three key tactics to not only weather the COVID-19 storm, but to grow its business during the pandemic.

Nicola Buckley, Executive Vice President of Global Service Delivery at PPT, is responsible for the field engineering and remote technical support teams, and the research and development organization. She says of the challenges presented by the onset of the Coronavirus, “Our primary business is hardware maintenance. We fix machines when they break by delivering hardware and by sending field resources to data centers to resolve issues. So obviously, the restrictions and the lockdowns presented a huge physical challenge from that perspective. Our culture is built on people: team members and customers. So, our priority as COVID-19 was revealing its impact was first and foremost the safety of those people, followed by the ability to continue to serve in essential ways.”

A Proactive Business Continuity Plan Pays Off

Buckley attributes the success of how PPT has navigated this crisis to three critical components. The first  is the fact that PPT had a strong business continuity plan in place before the crisis began, which enabled the company to be proactive and nimble in its response to evolving circumstances. “We were prepared for this,” Buckley says. “We have a business continuity plan in place that was developed a couple of years ago and did include the concept of a pandemic. I would say, personally, I'm shocked that we're exercising the business continuity plan for a pandemic, but it was there, and we were ready.”

Simply having a business continuity plan documented, however, likely wouldn’t have assisted PPT to the degree it has – what made all the difference is how the plan was communicated and practiced throughout the company. “The plan was well socialized across the organization, including training and exercising the actions in testing mode. It wasn't a strange process for anyone to follow because it was so well circulated and well socialized,” Buckley explains. “We observed the situation unfolding in early February, created an internal task force by the middle of February, and we were pretty much all working remotely by March 16th. For an organization that openly very much emphasizes working in the office, to pivot to 100% employees working remotely within a couple of weeks was proof of the strength of our business continuity plan.”

At the heart of the plan is clear, consistent communication. “We have executive leadership calls every morning. We have team meetings with all of our team members every single day. We are constantly checking in on the teams on the road, making sure they have the right levels of protective equipment, making sure that they have the right sense of safety and support from the leadership team,” Buckley says.

The Value of a Digital-First Approach

The second factor to which Buckley credits PPT’s ability to adapt to these new challenging circumstances is a strong technological foundation. “We’d standardized on Alliance as our global platform, which replaced an outdated homegrown solution. As PPT grew and scaled, we needed an industry-leading platform for service delivery. Alliance allows us to communicate with our customers, our field service engineers as well as our remote technical support teams cohesively and tied in with our back office,” Buckley says. “This enables our team to scale, optimize, and to be very efficient in workflow.”

“Alliance also served as the platform for us to launch our E-services program, which is focused on supporting our scale and growth by ensuring our customers globally have the same accessibility and agility to interact with our services organization,” adds Buckley. “We transact roughly 11,000 service events a month, and Alliance helps us manage that volume while presenting a seamless service experience to our customers.” Two of the E-services PPT has built on the Alliance platform have proven especially valuable as working conditions and customer preferences have evolved. The first is its customer mobile app, PPTechMobile, which provides access to Central Park, its customer portal. The second is ParkView™, a remote monitoring solution that provides proactive hardware fault detection and automatically initiates service tickets without human intervention. Since the pandemic began, PPT has seen a 30-percent increase in ticket volume through ParkView.

“In light of this pandemic, digital capability is more important now than ever. It’s been instrumental in our ability to make sure that our customers can safely work remotely, but at the same time know that their data centers, for example, are running healthy and they can support their end users, and their customers, and their essential services,” Buckley says.

Quick Pivots to Meet Evolving Customer Needs Spur Growth

The third and final key ingredient in PPT’s recipe for navigating this crisis is making quick pivots to meet customers’ evolving needs. “We’ve led with flexibility,” Buckley says. “We’ve worked with our customers to be able to deliver within their requirements. We quickly realized that capital spend will ultimately be restricted and IT budgets are going to be squeezed. This demanded our flexibility in terms of how our customers need to engage with us in this time.”

To address these evolving needs, PPT has emphasized how its E-services can help companies as remote work becomes the norm. The company has also introduced new contract terms with even greater flexibility than before, to make customers feel at ease in uncertain times. “We've introduced new terms where customers can have very short-term contracts based on budget or based on their inability to make a broader strategic decision,” Buckley says“Our willingness to be flexible increases the trust we have from our customers. We know they are restricted in capital spend and strategic decisions, but they also can’t afford outages or risk – it’s our job to simplify this challenge for them and help them be less overwhelmed.”

Giving customers choice in services, including remote monitoring, along with prioritizing the customer perspective and challenge when determining how best to be flexible and simplify complexity has put PPT in a strong position despite the challenging circumstances. Even under the pressure of the pandemic, the company has grown.

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Your Service Schedule is Going to get Busy. Planning Optimization Will Help

May 15, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Your Service Schedule is Going to get Busy. Planning Optimization Will Help

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By Tom Paquin

As commerce slowly begins to open up, serviceable assets, many of which have been sitting dormant for two months or longer, will again enter an active state, and certainly there will be an influx of field service needs to accompany them. To navigate a sudden surge in business, organizations will need to think on their feet, make smart personnel decisions, and plan, schedule, and route with finesse. Doing that alone is fine, but doing that will the help of a planning and scheduling optimization engine will make your job exponentially more effective.

The time to adopt these systems was two months ago, but many software providers are stepping up to offer fast-track solutions that can be implemented in days, and provide the necessary functionality to supercharge your planning needs.

When preparing to adopt any new system, it’s of course key to ensure that your business is appropriately prepared. What are the key considerations facing businesses when it comes to planning and scheduling optimization?

As with any technology, the tool itself needs to be complimented by the right internal systems. There are a great many that will need to be considered, and that is a conversation to have with your team, and with the vendors that you’re considering, but here are three key points to keep in mind as you’re preparing to adopt a new optimization system:

  1. Make sure your data house is in order.
  2. Find the right technology partner.
  3. Identify and benchmark the outcomes for success.

We’ll start with number one, which is key to managing your planning system effectively. An AI-powered system is only as capable as the inputs being fed into it. While a best-in-class system will come with a wide variety of inputs out of the box, even more if attached to a full suite of field service management (FSM) tools, the system’s effectiveness is further enhanced through a strong system of APIs that are derived from different triggers in your business.

Depending on your scale and industry, this could include parts and dealer management, asset performance management, or resource management across your business. Your planning and scheduling system, like any growing intellect, gets smarter the more intellectual material it’s able to consume. Furthermore, good data is key. Bad data begets bad data in a negative feedback loop that can undermine the whole system.

Much of this can be assuaged with point number two: finding the right technology partner. And while the software is key, and should have the right triggers and management systems inherent, implementation, especially in terms of a planning and scheduling system, are just—if not more—important. With dozens of business rules to consume, finding a partner who will support connecting the dots, both out-of-the-box and down the road, often is the difference between success and failure.

To that end (and with guidance from your technology partner) point number three stresses the importance of regular audits. Truthfully, KPI criteria can often be preprogrammed with implicit bias in order to lean into specific metrics. Uncovering the potential bias in reporting or metering those metrics takes time, and often an independent eye. Any technology purchase reflects an ongoing process, which is why it’s so important to create smart, repeatable criteria for evaluation.

For forward-thinking organizations, planning and scheduling optimization in many ways represents the backbone of successful service delivery. Getting planning and scheduling optimization right means that the onus of operations management is no longer a time sink, allowing businesses to free up back office resources and concentrate more of their time and effort on delivering exceptional service, instead of the means to deliver that service. With this in mind, planning and scheduling optimization not only helps align your operational resources, but your business development ones as well, and rightly puts the focus on your efforts where they belong: on your customer.

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