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January 13, 2020 | 6 Mins Read

A Look at Field Service in 2020

January 13, 2020 | 6 Mins Read

A Look at Field Service in 2020

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Field service is evolving enormously in recent years and technology and customer expectations will continue to advance just as quickly. Twenty years ago, field service may have been centered on break-fix repair, but the velocity now is towards long-term, contractual arrangements that are more satisfying for the customer and more lucrative for the service provider. Transformational technologies can enable whole new revenue models that make field service organizations stickier and more intimate with their customer even while generating more value. Here are four ways leading service organizations are adapting.

Prediction 1: Outcomes-based service takes hold

We will see more companies selling annual maintenance contracts. These contracts are attractive because they give a field service organization predictable revenue and demand and can deliver high margins.

For decades, product-centric businesses have been transitioning towards servitizing what they sell. First it was the addition of a warranty and the availability of after-market parts. Then it was reactive field service or depot repair. As early as 2018, IFS data suggests that 62 percent of manufacturers were already pursuing some form of aftermarket revenue. But manufacturers are now adopting more advanced forms of aftermarket service, with 16 percent of respondents offering maintenance contracts with specific service-level agreements (SLAs).

It is notable that modern customers not only demand a better service experience, but a holistic outcome. They expect to be left feeling positive as well as have their specific issue remedied. Technology is a mechanism whereby this change can be implemented, but nobody should overlook the people element as well.

I predict that that while 16 percent of manufacturers were involved in service contracting in 2018, that number will reach 25 to 30 percent in 2020.

Complete Servitization

The move towards servitization in most cases will deliver value-added revenue on top of product sales. In some cases, where it is attractive to the consumer, a product may be completely servitized, and the end user pays for metered usage or other metric captured in real time. In the 2018 IFS data, only 4 percent of manufacturers were fully servitized, including companies from the medical device, metal fabrication and oil and gas industries.

For customers who want to push enterprise risk off on their vendors, servitization will be an attractive way to buy. But actually realizing a profit on these contracts poses some significant management and enterprise software problems. When the service agreement is sold, a company will be committing to deliver against a contract that they could make or lose money on for years. Executives will need to make sure they have adequate what-if-scenario planning capabilities to enable them to deliver quotes that are competitive with minimal risk.

Companies can turn their data into a strategic tool that facilitates service sales while improving the customer experience. For this shift to be successful for companies, they’ve had to put some foundational technologies in place. Research IFS and Future of Field Service recently conducted with Bill Pollock of Strategies for Growth shows that outcomes-based service operations rely on the foundation of the service management platform, ERP, predictive maintenance, and IoT in particular.

More than half of respondents were running some type of enterprise system of record that handled the core service transactional business

54 percent are running their service business on a “Dedicated Service Management platform” like field service management (FSM) or enterprise asset management, just ahead of enterprise resource planning (ERP) at 50.8 percent

6 percent said they were using software for predictive maintenance and 42.8 percent were leveraging data from the internet of things (IoT)

With these tools in place, I forecast that an increasing emphasis on complete servitization, and that in 2020 we will see the percentage of manufacturers selling products by subscription or metered use will surpass 10 percent (from 4 percent in 2018).

Prediction 2: Digital Transformation Gets Harder Before It Gets Easier

People use the term “digital transformation” to sell any number of technologies, but we are dealing here not with a technology that can be bought but a fundamentally different way of looking at and doing business. The truth is that, to do it properly, it is a complex journey for service organizations and one that involves a departure from siloed operations, legacy tools, and outdated business processes. The change management obstacles that surround this are many, as individuals can find the old ways comforting even as the competition is overtaking a business.

What we have seen so far is rollout of transformational technologies at the edge. We track our field technicians’ location through IoT. We schedule them using AI. We may have an AI chatbot fielding inquiries online. Maybe we have some AI functionality in our inventory management processes. We’ll continue to see point solutions using AI and IoT. Where we are going next, though, is the introduction of AI in particular to the front office and administrative processes.

In its “Top Predictions for 2020” report, Gartner said: “Through 2021, digital transformation initiatives will take large traditional enterprises, on average, twice as long and cost twice as much as anticipated. Large organizations will struggle with digital innovation as they recognize the challenges of technology modernization and the costs of simplifying operational interdependence. Smaller, more agile organizations, by contrast, will have an opportunity to be first to market as larger organizations exhibit lackluster immediate benefits.”

History is littered with companies that couldn’t change as they needed to: Kodak in the face of digital photography, Blockbuster Video in the face of servitized and downloadable media. Today, we are at a point where disruptive technologies are embedded at the tip of the spear of forward-thinking service organizations. IoT sensors capture condition-based maintenance information, or an AI algorithm adjusts the field service schedule in real time based on constantly changing conditions.

In 2020, we will see more companies adopt these disruptive technologies in customer and service-facing settings. But I believe we will also see enterprise software vendors move further towards AI-driven automation of the front office in areas like service finance, inventory management, what-if scenario planning and customer interaction. And those who adopt AI as part of a commercial-off-the-shelf solution will win the race against those who take a go-it-alone approach.

Prediction 3: IoT Grows Up and We’re Left With All The Data

With more and more organizations saying they have some degree of remote connectivity for their assets, their drivers, and their parts, IoT is now mainstream. We are collecting large amounts of data and can now develop and apply analytics.

In our study conducted with Strategies for Growth, the biggest area of implementation interest across all industries is in predictive and prescriptive maintenance. Connected assets are the start of the story rather than the destination and customers are starting to realize that the old adage of “garbage in, garbage out” applies if data collection and hoarding becomes an end in itself.

A good example is multinational telecom company Telefonica, a provider of smart technology to collect data from assets (such as vending machines). The data is then fed into their existing analytics for decision support. The power of analytics is significant enough that it will also be important to assure customers that you respect their privacy and data rights. Google faced controversy after its 2019 purchase of Fitbit due to concern over how Google would use and monetize end user data.

During 2020, my forecast is that businesses will focus less attention on methods by which to collect additional data and more on making valuable use of the data they are already collecting.

Prediction 4: Companies Work to Balance AI vs. Human Experience

As advanced AI becomes more widely adopted among service organizations, companies will seek an equilibrium between the efficiencies of AI and contact with humans that customers and other stakeholders crave. On one hand, greater AI use not only reduces costs but also enables organizations to make better use of resources in sectors facing labor shortages. AI will do a better job meeting certain deliverables and should automate many repetitive tasks. Will this free up staff for more customer-facing work?

In various service settings, this is exactly what AI has already done. AI-driven schedule optimization for instance enables a single dispatcher to support a larger number of field service technicians, enabling them to manage by exception, perhaps spending more time with customers when they need a human touchpoint.

Service intelligence vendor Aquant in this Field Services Online article, while acknowledging Fortune had in 2016 warned that 48 percent of jobs would be lost to artificial intelligence and robotics, says the true future lies in a hybrid between people and AI. As noted by Deloitte in its report Smart Field Service: Connecting Customers, Assets and Employees, “In a digital world, it’s emotional connections that make the difference between satisfying experiences and those that delight the customers and build strong long-term customer relationships.”

Our job now is to use AI to engineer seamless, satisfying automated processes into our business without engineering the human contact out.

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January 9, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Avoiding Bias in your Technical Criteria

January 9, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Avoiding Bias in your Technical Criteria

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By Tom Paquin

In the mid-1990’s, organizations began building software designed to track different metrics for their employees. About an hour after any one of those systems were implemented, at least one employee would have figured out a way to game the system.

I was not one of those employees. I was, by contrast, a vehement rule-follower who was aghast that a fellow employee (We’ll call him Jeremy) would return and re-sell warranties at the end of a shift. Jeremy noted that the system was designed to count every new sale towards our quota, and didn’t discount returns from that number, so he had found a way to meet our excessive sales metrics without putting in the work—or, in some cases, putting in more work.

This particular example requires some human interference, but nevertheless represents a truth in the way that we collect data, one that becomes of even greater importance if you want to use that data to benchmark outcomes-based service: You need to plan against bias when you’re developing your technical criteria. It’s very easy to lean your reporting in a bit to make it more favorable towards a specific sales-level agreement, for instance, but there are, in fact, major consequences to doing that.

Let’s think about the repercussions of the example above. Sure—Jeremy hit his number, but there’s now a misrepresentation in the system of the total number of warranties sold. Research has shown that increased warranty usage has a direct tie to customer loyalty, so that means that any piece of forecasting is now inaccurate. And, of course, now there’s an inflated percentage of warranties sold on that date last year, so when next year came around, and we weren’t able to beat last year’s number, it actually makes us look worse.

This is something that Mike Gosling from Cubic mentioned in this week’s excellent episode of the podcast (rate, comment, and subscribe). In it, he talks about setting up systems because, politically, they’re favorable for your company. While that can often be a good consideration, especially when developing SLAs, he warned privately around setting up data collection systems that were engineered in a way to produce a politically-favorable result. In the example above, the employee figured out how to rig the system. In many cases, the bug is actually a feature of the software.

Here’s a simple example of how this could happen in practice even without a Jeremy: Imagine you have two facilities that you manage, one that requires 50 repairs a year, and one that requires 10. The larger facility has an 80% SLA compliance rate. The smaller one has a 50% rate. Organizationally, you’re shooting for 75%. How will you calculate the performance of these two locations?

If you take the numbers in aggregate (45 of 60 jobs met SLA requirements), then horray, you’ve hit your quota. Enjoy your bonus. Measuring that specific way, though favorable, ignores the fact that there may be serious regional, logistical, or workforce challenges that you’re ignoring at one specific jobsite. You’re not getting an accurate picture of your business, and you’re doing your business and your customer a disservice.

This oversight is easy to see with less than a hundred jobs and only two job sites, but for an actual business, who then has to layer in additional layers of complexity, and hundreds, if not thousands of jobs a year, it’s easy to see how biased thinking and aligning numbers to meet your narrative can be so easy.

So what do you do? Here are a few things that we’ve seen businesses find success with.

From many data sources, build one source of truth. I rarely stop talking about the importance of having a single source of truth for your business that runs through service, sales, operations, and so on. That truth, though, is only as powerful as the data powering it. Garbage-in-garbage-out is even an oversimplification in this case. The data needs to come from good sources, yes, but it needs to come from diverse sources, and, importantly, if some of your customers aren’t as sophisticated as others, perhaps your business has a blind spot.

Audit your processes on a rolling basis. Take any one technician, account, site, or day, and see how it anecdotally matches up to your numbers. Is it way off? Are technicians logging their appointments properly? I spoke to a guy not too long ago who discovered that an entire branch was logging appointments at the end of the day, rather than starting and ending them in real-time. Any time you turn over a rock it’s incredible to see what sort of worms wriggle out.

Rethink your workflow. Sometimes it’s hard to see that we’re doing things simply because that’s the way that we’ve always done them. Oftentimes, it takes a head-cracker to come in and shake things up. Don’t be afraid to look outside your division—or your business—for the talent to think about the data you’re collecting in new and different ways.

Even if you do all of this, there’s still going to be the potential of drift, and there may always be a Jeremy skulking about to step on the scales. Because of them, improvement is never done. The company eventually patched out his exploit, but it took nearly a year for them to address it. We are all tasked with making our businesses a little better today than it was yesterday, and that’ll never change, but it’s a lot easier to do if you start out on the right foot.

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January 6, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

The 4 Resolutions You Need for Service Success in 2020

January 6, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

The 4 Resolutions You Need for Service Success in 2020

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

There’s much debate on whether New Year’s resolutions are worthwhile, but in my opinion, it can never hurt to pause and set some intentions. Service has made strides in the past couple of years when it comes to being seen for its competitive worth and being prioritized within businesses, so there is more focus than ever on how to succeed in service. This comes at the perfect time, because there is also more pressure from customers to deliver not only better service, but new and unique experiences. As we kick off 2020, here are four areas of focus that will help you capitalize on the opportunity of service this year.

1: Become More Agile

Agility is a key theme for 2020 and is important in numerous areas of the business. Today’s fast-paced world is demanding a more nimble response from those looking to remain competitive. Focusing on the ability to more quickly respond to your customers’ needs is important. Adopting the mentality of being more agile in course correcting your objectives and strategy is necessary. And migrating to more agile technology methodology is important to leverage today’s latest advancements. Agility isn’t a word that would historically be associated with service organizations – many have been doing things the same way for a long time and have been pretty slow to make changes. That means of operating is a thing of the past – if you want to survive, let alone succeed, in today’s environment you must work on becoming more agile.

2: Improve Your Company Culture

A focus on company culture has become increasingly important for service organizations and will continue to need to be prioritized. Why? Well, for a few reasons. First, for your vision of service success to be achieved, you are relying on your frontline employees to be on board and carry it out. You can’t do this without employees that are engaged, feel valued, and feel heard. Second, with all the changes taking place in service today as company’s redefine themselves and their offerings, you are asking more of your employees – you are asking them to step outside of their comfort zones, and they won’t be willing to do that in a poor culture. Finally, as companies struggle to recruit, hire, and retain new talent, creating a culture that people want to be a part of becomes an important part of your value proposition. So, in 2020, take stock of your company culture (what it really is – not what you’d like to think it is). Determine where you can make some improvements and prioritize doing so. This could be more methods of making employees feel appreciated, it could be better defining career paths, it could be more ample training, more effective onboarding, gathering and implementing more feedback. It could be mentorship programs, revisiting incentives, or thinking of new perks. The answer will be different for every company, but the point is – as you go into 2020 expecting more of your employees, make sure you prioritize giving more back to them as well.

3: Up Your Tech Game

To progress your business in the ways you would like to, you must embrace technology as your key enabler. While a solid technology strategy was once in its own right a competitive advantage, it has become table stakes for effectively doing business today. Digital transformation isn’t a finish line that you will cross, but a forever journey of continuous improvement and ongoing advancements. Tying back to the resolution of becoming more agile, you have to become comfortable iterating technology advancements regularly. What this looks like for your organization depends on what your current state is – but the opportunities are endless. From AI-powered scheduling and IoT-enabled predictive maintenance to AR-based remote service and ML-powered knowledge management, the tools you have at your disposal to take your service to the next level are powerful and attainable. What new technology will you use in 2020 to better equip your employees and delight your customers?

4: Chart Your Path to Outcomes-Based Service

If your main objective for 2020 is reducing your service windows to less than four hours, you are drastically missing the mark. Service success is no longer measured by incremental improvements, but by the ability to provide outcomes and experiences to your customers. Outcomes-based service is the end game, and you need to figure out how you’re going to get there. This is an easier adjustment for some industries and some organizations than others, but it is the reality for everyone. Customers no longer want a good service visit – they want peace of mind, a seamlessness meeting of their needs, an exceptional experience. I’ve witnessed powerful examples of companies getting this right, like Cubic Transportation Systems, Tetra Pak, and KONE. I’ve also talked with service leaders struggling to determine what this looks like for their organizations. In 2020, you need to prioritize charting your path to outcomes-based service – your future relies on it.

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January 3, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

It’s 2020, So We Can Start Talking About 5G

January 3, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

It’s 2020, So We Can Start Talking About 5G

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By Tom Paquin

As we all shamble, bleary-eyed back to our desks, I know what your first thought is: We can officially start unwrapping some of those technologies that have been a little too cutting-edge to be worth considering in 2019.

There’s certainly no shortage of digital ink that’s already been spilled about 5G, something that’s existed more as a marketing gimmick up until this point (I don’t remember such self-congratulatory fanfare for LTE). But now that it’s actually being rolled out (though most hardware isn’t yet compatible) we have a better idea of what the capabilities deliver in practice, and what it might actually mean for service. The short answer? A lot.

I should probably start by saying what 5G is. At its core, it’s really, really, really fast internet. What does that actually mean? Here’s a comparison: 4G LTE at maximum speed caps at 50 megabytes per second. The average cable internet connection caps somewhere between 20 and 150, depending on where you live and how much you pay. 5G is said to max out at 20 Gigabytes per second (It’s notable that current builds cap at about 5gbps but 20 is the potential built into the radio bands).

All those megas and gigas mean a lot to those of us who were excited to add 16 megabytes of RAM into our PCs in 1996 but for those of you who actually had friends, here’s some super basic computer math: 1 Gigabyte is equal to 1,000 megabytes, which means 5G has the potential of reaching speeds that are 400 times faster than what we have today. Imagine if your next car didn’t top out at 160 or whatever, but instead could get you from New York to London in 45 minutes.

So—what can we do with really, really, really fast internet? I’ll start with a very basic example:

While attending Field Service USA back in April, I had a chance to speak to a gentleman who worked for a component manufacturer. They had recently deployed an augmented reality solution but were seeing dismal utilization rates in the field. What the business hadn’t taken into consideration was that many of the plants that they service are in fairly remote areas, often with middling cellular service, so the technicians couldn’t effectively use the streaming services of their AR devices in an effective way, thus rendering them useless.

There’s obviously a few teachable elements at play here but the most fundamental is that, as I’ve said many times before, technology adoption needs to progress in a logical sequence. Artificial Intelligence needs strong data sources, connected devices need the right sensors, and so on. At the very core of that, the floor that your technologies are built on, is solid internet connectivity. Misunderstanding the scope of that or having a blind spot to some of its failings will undermine any attempts at technology superiority.

Theoretically, 5G could be the silver bullet that resolves some of these connectivity issues, assuming that it offers lower latency and improved coverage in the areas in which these technicians are working. Of course, to compensate for that, all of this businesses’ handsets need to be updated to 5G, and we’re still, I’d expect, about eighteen months out from that being a reasonable standard. This example is a pretty obvious use case for 5G—Things move faster, you can therefore do more with streaming services. There’s a less explicitly obvious change coming, though.

Today, your main computing power sits on your desk or in your pocket. The internal CPUs of these devices, even if enhanced through connectivity, do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to complex processes. Sure, your CRM is cloud-based, great, but if you’re running any sort of complex infrastructure management, the whole of the picture needs to be hybrid-ized in some way. The interconnectivity of 5G hopes to upend that, allowing for much more complexity to be managed directly over networks. More networked computing means faster, more accurate to-the-second data collecting, and it means faster responses to exceptions that might not require a technician dispatch. At its core, (when partnered with the right software) it means centralizing more data collected from more sources and creating a single source of truth from which not just service, but all areas of the business, can work in the same langauge.

Is that a bit optimistic? Yes, and it requires a lot of work to put the right utilities inside your serviceable assets, in the hands, and on the vehicles of your technicians. 5G is coming, will dramatically impact service’s effectiveness in likely hundreds of small ways, and only those companies taking stock of what they have today will be ready when it’s time.

Infrastructure, security, and hardware challenges still remain (and warrant a future discussion when we understand the repercussions better), which means that the full promise of 5G is probably still a few years away. But if you’re thinking about the sequence of technology adoption that your business needs to be ready, you know that you’ll need to start moving soon.

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December 30, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

My Favorite Future of Field Service Moments of 2019

December 30, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

My Favorite Future of Field Service Moments of 2019

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

It’s been an honor to be at the helm of Future of Field Service in 2019, and a pleasure to watch it grow. Since it’s inception at the very end of 2018, we’ve had immense support and interest from the industry – so thank you for that! I’m very passionate about giving the service community a platform to share, learn, and grow and I’m thankful for the opportunity Future of Field Service gives to do just that. Looking back on 2019 I’ve been thinking about how much we’ve accomplished this year and wanted to share with you all my personal favorite Future of Field Service moments of 2019.

First is the Future of Field Service Podcast launch! Since April 3rd, we’ve released a new podcast each Wednesday (with a few bonus episodes thrown in). I’ve wanted to launch a podcast for a very long time – I’ve long felt that the conversations I get to have with folks within the service community are just awesome, easily my favorite part of my job. Being able to share those conversations with our audience and enable all of you to feel a part of them is a lot of fun. We’ve been fortunate to have some amazing guests on to share their own journeys, their wins and struggles, and their valuable insights. I absolutely love the podcast platform and look forward to keeping the momentum going.

Next is our Women in Field Service series – a series we began in March in honor of International Women’s Day but decided to keep going all year long because of how interesting it has been to hear women’s journeys. I hope we all get to a point where there doesn’t need to be a “women in” callout, but particularly in field service I don’t think we’re there yet – there is work to be done to make the service industries a more equal ground, and a strong desire from many to work diligently to foster greater diversity. Until we accomplish those objectives, I think the practice of hearing and telling women’s journeys – what brought them to service, what their challenges have been, how they see the opportunity for women in this industry, and what they’ve learned – is important, and enjoyable. I’ve loved each of these interviews – you can find them all by searching “Women in Field Service” at www.futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. I especially loved this podcast episode, recorded live at Field Service Amelia Island. Check it out!

Third, I was honored to be invited to the grand opening of DHL’s Americas Innovation Center in Chicago to keynote the company’s The Future of The Services Supply Chain event. It was a gathering of a number of companies leading innovation within the service industries. It was interesting to hear what is on their minds, and it was also a pleasure to share with the audience some of what I’ve learned while interviewing service leaders throughout this year. DHL extended this invitation after finding value in Future of Field Service content, and this to me was a testament of how well the platform has taken off.

Finally, I was thrilled to attend my first Field Service Europe event. I’ve been attending Field Service Palm Springs for a decade, but had never before been to the European event. I was happy to represent Future of Field Service on the mainstage, first interviewing IFS customer Cubic Transportation and then moderating a great panel on AI and ML. Future of Field Service was well-received by the attendees of the event and we look forward to expanding further in the New Year.

There are many more moments I could list, but these four came to mind first. I owe a big thank you to IFS for trusting me to lead this resource and for working collaboratively to bring a valuable platform to the service community. I also owe a big thank you to contributor/podcast producer/jack-of-all-trades Tom Paquin for keeping this ship afloat. Finally, I owe each of YOU a big thank you for being a part of this journey. We have some wonderful plans for 2020 and I look forward to what’s in store.

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December 26, 2019 | 6 Mins Read

Servitizing Star Wars

December 26, 2019 | 6 Mins Read

Servitizing Star Wars

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By Tom Paquin

It’s the end of December and that means one thing: There’s probably a new Star Wars movie coming out. Rapt as I am about the many technologies disrupting the world of service, my love for Star Wars stretches back slightly further in my life, so I thought it'd be fun to take the quiet time between Christmas and New Years to mash them together.

For as technologically advanced a society as we see in the Star Wars films, there are certain modern luxuries that they lack. There is, for instance, no internet in a galaxy far, far away, though I doubt the films would carry as much cultural cachet as they have if Harrison Ford kept pulling over the Millennium Falcon to check his Instagram likes. Imagine, then, how woefully undermanaged their field service systems must be.

Don’t worry—I’ve done the imagining for you! I've thought up a few scenarios from the original Star Wars trilogy and how they might be improved with a service-oriented overhaul (a sentence I honestly never expected to write). And hey, just like Luke’s journey through those films mirrors myths and stories passed down from generation to generation, perhaps you’ll see some of your own business in these scenarios.

Moisture Farming

Before Luke goes on his adventure and becomes a Jedi Knight, he’s just a regular schlub like you and me, working for a living. Luke lives on Tatooine, a desert planet, and unsurprisingly, the crop of choice in this arid wasteland is water, which is what he and his aunt and uncle harvest (In a galaxy of infinite planets, it’s often seemed bizarre to me that anyone would move to a dust ball like Tatooine, but hey, people move to Nevada all the time).

When it comes to managing the farm, Luke’s uncle Owen has some serious labor issues. He relies exclusively on “automation” (literal robots) for non-Luke headcount, as far as we can tell. Their primary job is traveling out to the various moisture vaporators—large tower-like structures used to harvest water—and servicing them. For that purpose, he’s purchased C-3PO, a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators.

Here’s the problem—C-3PO can diagnose issues with the vaporators, but he’s not actually equipped with the utilities to service them. His counterpart, R2-D2, has the toolset to resolve issues as they arise. But because of the lack of connectivity inherent in the vaporator infrastructure, both droids need to physically visit each location, C-3PO needs to talk to the moisture vaporator, and then R2-D2 will attach his multi-tool and spin it around if necessary, which apparently fixes things.

There are a few obvious efficiency fixes available off the bat. Remote connectivity is the one we’ve already mentioned, and would arguably be the most useful. We can assume that moisture vaporators are already smart devices, as they apparently are capable of speech. It would behoove Luke’s family to figure out a way to connect these systems to an internal hub, where they can be more effectively managed.

C-3PO’s field readiness is questionable at best, what with his lack of repair knowledge and his inability to flex his arms more than 45 degrees. Imagine how much more effective their job could be with 3PO in a call center environment. It would be an excellent use of his fluency of more than 6 million forms of communication. Couple that with a shared view with R2-D2, and C-3PO could spend his day running operations from the comfort of the Lars homestead.

Tibanna Gas Mining

In The Empire Strikes Back, our heroes take refuge in Cloud City, a structure floating in the atmosphere of a gas giant planet called Bespin. Cloud City itself is a Tibanna gas mine, run by Han Solo’s old friend, Lando Calrissian.

Lando spends several of his first minutes onscreen griping about labor, supply, and trade issues on Cloud City. This is the inherent issue with packaging and selling a commodity, especially one requiring the scale of trade operations that intergalactic travel requires—and trade disputes are actually a huge problem in the Star Wars universe.

The regulatory challenges are another issue. As a self-proclaimed “small operation”, Lando has run into growing pains as Cloud City’s success catches the eye of the Imperial Alliance, the tyrannical empire that Darth Vader operates from.

Lando strikes a dangerous bargain with Vader—He betrays his friends to win the empire’s favor, a plan which almost immediately backfires as Vader continually rearranges the conditions of the deal, which, frankly, should be expected when you’re dealing with space fascists who practice a religion that they call “The Dark Side”.

This is an instance where smart contract management could really make a difference. A conditional SLA that is triggered in the event of an exception, like an imperial Star Destroyer orbiting Bespin, could help the entire organization understand the threat level, and agreed-upon conditions thought which to handle this.

With respect to the trade issues, this is a great opportunity for servitization. Lando could practically step away from offering a bare commodity, and, with solid planning, scheduling, parts management, and optimization services build a service platform around delivery and implementation of tibanna for whatever it is the gas is used for. By diversifying their business portfolio, not only can they bypass trade route restrictions by building their own fleet, but also offer a more viable, scalable product in the long run. It’s new revenue, new opportunities, and precipitously low overhead, no need to hand over his friend to a bounty hunter.

Death Star Construction

Switching to the bad guys, we actually see them building Death Stars or Death Star-adjacent things in at least four films over the course of series history, so you could argue that for Star Wars, Death Stars are as ubiquitous as trade disputes. We’re going to talk about the second Death Star, still in construction in 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

In the first scene of the film, Darth Vader checks on progress of the construction, only to learn that they’re behind schedule. In response, commander Jerjerrod, who is in charge of the opration, indicates that he needs more men.

Legal scholars have actually weighed in on some of the labor challenges with this Death Star, and it’s important to remember that in addition to being a planet-destroying weapon wielded by a totalitarian regime, it’s also an active construction site.

Labor constrictions are not in any way new to service operations, and while Vader promises “New ways to motivate” the crew, his strategy will likely boil down to a lot of force choking, which I feel doesn’t promote a positive culture.

Proper project management software can help organizations like the empire do more with less, which will help support maintaining the sort of tight schedules that military contracts require. There’s also a huge opportunity here to leverage a contingent labor force. With the right utilities, organizations can dispatch skilled labor effectively, track their productivity, and also keep an eye on whether or not they’re blown up when the rebels destroy the base after deactivating the shield generator with the help of the Ewoks.

Incredibly, there are dozens of other Star Wars related topics that could be discussed here (2002’s Attack of the Clones has three lengthy sequences in factories) but for now, I’ll leave you with this: There’s plenty to be learned from the poorly-managed service practices in the Star Wars universe. From mismanaged labor to developing servitized products, the contrasts abound to businesses in our own galaxy. Make sure your own service operation isn’t stuck in the mindset of “A long time ago.”

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December 23, 2019 | 4 Mins Read

The Top 5 Challenges of Digital Service Transformation

December 23, 2019 | 4 Mins Read

The Top 5 Challenges of Digital Service Transformation

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

recently interviewed Hilbrand Rustema, Founder of Noventum Service Management – a consulting firm dedicated to unlocking the value of service business for organizations. Noventum has more than 75 consultants worldwide serving all major industry regions including Germany, France, Spain, Benelux, Scandinavia, UK, North America and China. The firm has led successful transformations for more than 200 clients, giving Hilbrand a unique collective look at the state of service. Stay tuned for his podcast episode coming in early January, but leading up to I wanted to share his opinion of the top five challenges service organizations face today:

1: Alignment among senior management within a company. “The first critical step to successful transformation is that there has to be alignment on what the service vision is and what the strategy should be. That is a top challenge — alignment not just among service leadership but all the way up to the to the C-suite. This is imperative to transformation but quite a challenge to achieve,” says Hilbrand.

This is representative of many discussions I’ve had about the fact that for companies to bring to fruition the opportunity of service, service can no longer be a siloed function of the company. For organizations that have operated in a siloed manner historically, getting on the same page about the role service can play and the growth opportunity it provides is an essential first step – then comes digging into how to evolve the company to get to that end goal.

2: Harmonizing and digitizing the service operating model. “For a company operating across all different countries, creating a platform for profitable growth and of course to be able to provide superior customer experience is a foundational but challenging starting point. It’s also important to consider, simultaneously, providing a good people experience for those that work in your service organization.”

Only once alignment is achieved should the work begin on harmonizing and digitizing the service operating model, and this shouldn’t be done in a vacuum – but as a strategic part of the company’s overall strategy. As you harmonize, a lot of change management comes into play as you’re asking regions and business units to do things different than they’ve always done. As you digitize, you must do so pragmatically and in a way that builds the trust and respect – and therefore cooperation – of your frontline employees.

3: To design and implement new digital service propositions. “This is the future for the industry. Through digital services, companies can answer real customer needs in a way that represents let's say double-digit growth opportunity. But to be successful, there are challenges in think about what the offering is, what the sales model for it is, what the delivery model would be, and so on.”

Companies that see the wealth of opportunity service provides are tapping into the world of digital services. Looking for adjacent services to provide is one thing but thinking about how you can turn insights and experiences into value your customers are willing to pay for is the future.

4: Building the right IT infrastructure. “When you get into the enabling aspects of digital service, it’s imperative to get the right IT solution architecture in place for the company at large and then particularly to enable service.”

We’ve talked a lot on Future of Field Service about setting a solid foundation for your service growth. Having the right systems in place to serve your customers seamlessly is essential before you begin looking at how to diversify, grow, and expand.

5: Fostering and nurturing the right talent. “When you really get into implementation mode, you often come across the needs for different competencies of people. It becomes increasingly important – and challenging – to attract, train, and develop your talent.”

Talent is a major topic among service leaders, and that is because it is a major pain point. Not only are many companies having trouble finding enough talent interested in service, but at the same time the skills and characteristics companies need of their field workforce are evolving. It’s important to both review your recruiting, hiring, and retention practices to see where you can improve while also putting a lot of thinking and planning into how it’s all changing for the future.

I think Hilbrand’s summary of the top challenges is spot on, what do you think? To hear more from him on these points as well as his thoughts on how to tackle these challenges and set yourself up for success, stay tuned for his podcast episode coming soon.

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December 19, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

Last-Mile Customer Communication is Ready for Prime Time

December 19, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

Last-Mile Customer Communication is Ready for Prime Time

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By Tom Paquin

Around this time two years ago, I wrote an article about the frustration associated with consumer location tracking for field operations, as organizations were, at the time, tinkering with Uber-style city overlays with real-time vehicle tracking.

I stressed how important it was to be thoughtful about what—and how—you’re sharing information with your customer. Vehicle tracking may seem initially like a good idea, but as a technician takes turns moving them away from a customer site, trips through drive-throughs, and the occasional potty break, research showed that too much last-mile information actually had the effect of lowering customer satisfaction rates. Yikes!

This isn’t any less true than it was in 2017, but the good news is that the tools allowing for a much more informed customer communication strategy are here, and it goes way beyond location tracking.

Let’s start with location tracking, though. While the technology remains fairly static from two years ago, the ways that it’s presented to customers have changed, owing to the fact that more organizations are wielding the same tools, but doing so in different ways. So, when once a technician’s location lived within an avatar on a map, now an individual will get a notification that a technician is three stops away. Those with more sophisticated field service management utilities who can more accurately estimate job time are able to use that queue data to shrink the size of an arrival window as the technician makes their way through that queue.

It’s a simple change that while not explicitly providing location information, provides an arguably more valuable service to the customer. To get an accurate estimate, though, as we often discuss, you need to understand your people, parts, and processes thoroughly.

That estimate, however, is a distillation of several different potentially relevant pieces of information that could benefit a customer, and organizations looking to set themselves apart have used their data as a means of differentiation.

While there are a number of salient examples of this, my favorite is what Rudy Goedhart told Sarah back in May about how Spencer Technologies is making data dashboards available to customers. Because Spencer has a sophisticated infrastructure of devices, they can provide live updates on turnaround times, uptime, and technician performance. They even use these lobbies on screens in the actual physical lobbies of their office, a tantalizing window into the inner workings of their service systems.

In order to do this, you need to be pretty confident about the data that you’re collecting. There are a few important further considerations about that data, as well, that will be the subject of an upcoming article. Frankly, it’s easy to build data collection in a way that provides a favorable view of your service performance…that is totally inaccurate. This is a disservice to both you, and your customer, and requires a real, thoughtful understanding of your business process. You need to get your house in order before you open the curtains and show your customers what you’re up to But if you do, you can really set yourself apart.

But are people actually doing this? How many people are, realistically, putting location, performance, and parts information in front of customers? According to a recent study that IFS completed in partnership with Strategies for Growth, about 13% of organizations are funneling operational data into customer-facing utilities. That might not seem like a lot, but when I look at similar data that I’ve put together on these topics, that’s double where we were just three years ago.

Given that growth, but thinking about it relative to today’s comparatively meager percentage, it seems like customer-facing functionality could be a powerful—and unique—tool in your efforts towards differentiation. You just have to make sure not only that you have the data behind it to provide accurate—not just favorable—information, but also that you’re articulating that information in a way that is actually constructive for the customer.

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December 16, 2019 | 5 Mins Read

Field Service Europe 2019 Key Themes & Takeaways

December 16, 2019 | 5 Mins Read

Field Service Europe 2019 Key Themes & Takeaways

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

While I could be considered a mainstay of the US WBR event circuit, last week was my first time not only attending but also speaking at WBR Field Service Europe in Amsterdam. It was exciting to experience a Field Service event through a slightly different lens but also reassuring that — regardless of geography — the challenges, changes, and demands that are facing service leaders remain consistent. While there are of course variations on objectives and strategy from industry to industry and business to business, the key themes among service organizations are shared. Here are some thoughts on how three of those key themes were presented this past week at Field Service Europe.

1: CX Focus Leads to An Outcomes-Based Service Journey

If you visit Future of Field Service, you’ll see that an increased focus on CX as well as the journey to outcomes-based service are both topics that are very well represented. This is because they are arguably two of the most important topics in field service today, and they are really quite interconnected. The increase in focus on CX that we saw begin about three or four years ago has led us to the point of clarity that outcomes-based service is our future. This is because once we began really listening to what our customers want, we learned that they don’t simply want a better experience – they want a different one. They will no longer settle for good service, they want seamlessness and peace of mind that can only be delivered when guaranteeing outcomes.

Miguel Ángel Hernanz, VP, Head of Global Service Delivery Transformation at Philips led a presentation on Tuesday during which he provided insight into how Philips has worked to master CX. He discussed the importance of a “seamlessly orchestrated” CX and described how the company set criteria to guide its evolution from transaction to relationship, fragmented information to a connected customer view, generic experiences to personalized journeys, scattered self-help to end-to-end self-help, and a reactive model to a preventative and proactive approach.

It was apparent that the majority of attendees at the event have come to understand that their focus on CX is forcing the need to migrate to an outcomes-based service model. What is less clear, it seems, is how to smoothly pave the path from a traditional service model to an outcomes-based model. It’s not a quick or easy transition, of course, and I observed that, while resigned to the need to embrace outcomes, there’s a fairly universal struggle with the “how.” Jan Van Dijk, Regional Connected Services Sales Leader for Benelux at Honeywell BV offered some words of wisdom in his session on Tuesday afternoon, which was that siloes within the organization and disparate systems are two major issues that create a lack of measurable KPIs that will inhibit your ability to transform.

Another outcomes-based-related theme that came up in multiple sessions over the course of the event is the recognition that as service organizations progress on the path to delivering outcomes, it will become increasingly important to partner with other companies and create an ecosystem that delivers a truly seamless experience/outcome to the customer. It was mentioned that aligning strategically with partners and determining the right fit and competitive mix of that ecosystem are realities that will inevitably need to be grappled with and worked through.

2: Technology Is a Critical Enabler

There was a more simpler time in field service when technology was an impressive tool to use from a competitive standpoint and enabled significant productivity improvements and cost savings for companies – but arguably wasn’t an essential. That time has come and gone, and in today’s landscape while technology is still just an enabler, it has become a critical one. Perhaps 10 years ago it wasn’t impossible to deliver a strong CX without the latest tech at work, but for todays’ customers that are demanding outcomes it is most certainly impossible. Companies now must rely on technology to help meet the growing needs and increasing demands of their customers – you can’t simply work harder to keep up, you have to leverage technology to work smarter.

I interviewed IFS customer Mike Gosling, IT Service Platforms manager at Cubic Transportation Systems for a keynote session on Wednesday morning. Cubic has moved to outcomes-based service and relies in part on IFS Field Service Management and AI-based Planning & Scheduling Optimization to deliver those outcomes. When preparing for our session, Mike pointed out that in an outcomes-based model it become impossible to just work harder than you have before to meet those demands – his experience has illustrated firsthand that you have to rely heavier on technology. “Technology is the path to outcomes-based service,” says Mike. “Adding field engineers to meet the demands of outcomes is not reasonable – technology is critical in today’s service landscape.”

3: Changes to The Technician Role Are Inevitable, Although Unclear

I moderated a panel Wednesday morning on AI and ML that included Henrietta Haavisto, Head of Service Transformation Change Management, Global Maintenance at KONE, Rajat Kakar, VP Services Business at Fujitsu, Norbert Kamberg, Director, Global Operations - Field Services & Tools at Siemens Power & Gas, as well as Mike of Cubic. We discussed where each of these organizations stands in leveraging AI and ML, which was interesting. But where the debate heated up is not if these tools are important (they are) or whether they’ll be used (they are, and they will be further) but how the use will impact the role of the field technician. Some panelists held firm that field techs remain the company’s most valuable resource. This camp maintained that while the technicians’ roles may shift to be more centered on relationship building and nurturing, a consultative approach, and the need to deliver a positive human experience as the face of the brand; they will never be, in any way, replaced by AI.

Other panelists felt less certain of this truth, pointing to examples where advanced AI and robotics could actually eliminate technicians’ roles. This made for a lively conversation that ultimately concluded with the point that while it is impossible to predict the future, what is certain is that changes to the field technician role are inevitable. This is due to the evolution of how service is delivered as we move to outcomes, because of the increased reliance on technology moving forward and the possibility of automating (at least some) tasks, and even related to the differences in skill sets among newer technicians that will be joining the workforce as all of these changes unfold.

There was plenty more food for thought at Field Service Europe that I plan to share in the coming weeks! Stay tuned.

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December 13, 2019 | 4 Mins Read

In Service, the Death of the App Has Been (Somewhat) Exaggerated

December 13, 2019 | 4 Mins Read

In Service, the Death of the App Has Been (Somewhat) Exaggerated

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By Tom Paquin

Take a look at your phone. Specifically, take a look at the apps on your phone. Go ahead and minimize this for a second. I’ll wait.

Are they a mess?

The average phone is inundated with a minimum of five apps that are so old and unused that they aren’t even compatible with the current device that they're on. What do you think is the longest you’ve gone without opening an app? I admit that I’m a bit of an app drawer neat freak, but my wife has pages upon pages of shovelware games, decade-old event utilities, (I think it’s okay to delete the Coachella 2011 event portal) and assorted novelties from the early iPhone era that trying to find something actually important for her is an emotional journey.

I feel like all of that app clutter contributes to a true fact about apps—People don’t take advantage of apps from brands that they interact with in the real world. They might download the app, sure, but it’s rare that they’ll interact with it in a practical way. Because of this, corporate entities have grown cynical of mobile apps, emphasizing them less than they did in their heyday and marginalizing their usefulness.

There are, however, a ton of opportunities to leverage apps for service, especially home service, in ways that provide value to your customer as well as your organization. The hard part is getting people to care. The next hardest part is figuring out what to do with the app.

Getting People to Care

What corporate apps do you actually use on a regular basis? For me, it’s the Dunkin’ Donuts app, credit card apps, and airline apps. These apps serve a fundamental purpose better supported not just by a mobile form factor but also explicitly by what the app infrastructure is capable of (because if you’re delivering functionality that isn’t app-optimized, people will just go to your mobile site).

Dunkin Donuts, and I assume Starbucks too, if you must (Sarah and I continue to bicker about the superior coffee) offer one-touch ordering of your favorites, allowing you to skip the line. Other restaurants are jumping on this successful trend, to varying degrees of success. For airlines, a mobile pass means one-touch access to your ticket, no paper to fiddle with, no kiosk to wait in line for. Credit card sites often have higher security, so touch or face ID access is a huge benefit, as is having your spending history and balance available if you ever have the misfortune of standing in a Louis Vuitton with a wide-eye person that you love very dearly.

And the benefits go both ways, too! These apps can tell organizations a lot more than a website about consumer behavior, peak order times, and, paired with geolocation data (creepy as it might be) can tell us a lot about how people move through a physical space. Done right, the benefit is there for both groups.

Deriving benefits for services might be a slightly more complex ask, depending on the types of business that you operate in, but there are a few things that organizations have proven work very well.

Building a Beneficial App

Right off the bat, people will be more reluctant to download an app from a straight service play. Nobody wants to think about when they’ll need service, so the key, in many instances, is to get them to do it when they need service.

Imagine this: An industrial manufacturer calls up a call center and says a piece of equipment isn’t working. The call center employee says they can ping them a link to their phone to download the app and they can register with their phone number. At this point they’ll be reconnected to the call center worker. The app’s first function is to provide that call center access to the phone camera to get a visual, and to walk the customer through diagnostics. Pop in some augmented reality with the shared view and you have an engine for remote repairs, ideally saving time for both the service team and the customer.

The other app functionality that is immensely valuable is push notifications. Push notifications are of course cheaper than SMS, and read with much higher frequency than email, so it allows the customer to have the information that you want them to have at a price more equitable tot he company. This can be things like promotional messages, though I’d advise that you have an extremely light hand with those. What’s more beneficial are appointment updates, exception alerts, and technician location information. Push can therefore save on the bottom line, provide a new channel to retain customers, and also give customers a view that helps set your firm apart.

The final important thing about your app is to ensure that it offers all the functionality of your desktop utilities and more. This includes account consistency across devices. Is there anything more infuriating than completing a task on a desktop and have it not reflected in mobile? You need to build in the same language, and consider that some customers might start a task in one location and complete them in another.

There are dozens of other topics we can cover around this, like build or buy, security, and APIs, so I’m certain that we will revisit this in the future. For now, though, I’ll leave you with this: If you’re considering creating an app, or revamping your current one, think very carefully about the value, the messaging, but above all, the function.

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