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July 7, 2021 | 25 Mins Read

How to Change to Win

July 7, 2021 | 25 Mins Read

How to Change to Win

Sarah welcomes Rias Attar, accomplished business strategist, transformation expert, operational excellence leader, project and change management professional and author of the new book Change to Win, to discuss how strategy, delivery mechanism, and culture all play a part in embracing change to respond successfully to market pressures.

Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we are going to be talking about how to change to win. Many of you are on some path of change. You're transforming your businesses. You're transforming your departments. You're transforming the service that you provide to customers. We know that change is very important but can be challenging. So today, on the podcast, I'm excited to welcome Rias Attar. He is an accomplished business strategist, transformation expert, operational excellence leader, and project and change management professional who is also the author of the new book Change to Win. Rias, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Rias Attar: Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for having me here.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks for being here. So before we dig into the conversation about change and how to change to win, tell our listeners a bit about yourself.

Rias Attar: Well, I have been in the project management, transformation business optimization field for the past 25 years or so. I started in finance, and then I moved into project management and turnaround and transformation, being inspired by a couple of CEOs who I've seen doing magic at their organizations, turning around their businesses and moving them from deficient to profitable. I worked for different companies like General Electric, DHL Express, Caesars Entertainment. I also have done some work for companies like Dannon, the yogurt company, Maple Leaf Foods in Canada, some other smaller organizations as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Interesting. Yeah, I like that you referred to it as magic because it certainly does seem that way sometimes. I wrote an article not too long ago talking about how much of this is art and how much of it is science, right? It's really a little bit of both, but there might be some magic sprinkled in there too, for sure. Good.

Sarah Nicastro: As I said, I've been in this space for about 14-ish years and there's so much change that's happened. And while it is really exciting in a lot of ways, I realize that it is also incredibly taxing and challenging for the people that are required to spearhead that change. So one of the things that happens, I think, is that people and/or companies or both can get stuck in the, "Nope, we've always done it this way. We can keep doing it this way," mentality. As the pace of change, I think, in the overall environment speeds, those people with that mentality sort of fall further and further behind. What do you see in that regard? How many of those people or organizations do you think there are compared to those that are willing to embrace change? And what is it, do you think, that keeps people stuck in that mindset?

Rias Attar: Excellent question, Sarah. We are part of a constant change. The problem though is I think over the past maybe 20 years or so, that change has accelerated significantly. And I have to say probably over the past maybe year now with COVID, things have even accelerated at a much faster pace. The issue that I see most of the time is as human beings and even businesses, we start small, we start aggressive. We want to conquer the world. We want to learn things. We want to do something good. So we reach a point where we actually are successful and doing very well. And then we start building walls around us and build that comfort zone.

Rias Attar: So as we think that we are now great and we know everything and we are doing very well, we start to get very kind of complacent a little bit, may be the term, and maybe a little bit of resistant to change, because we now have this comfort zone. We feel happy and easy and safe and familiar. The newer companies that are now coming with cutting-edge technology and they're nimble, they're coming now with their own phase of, call it, conquering the new world. So that's where they start to get into the customer mindset a lot easier, and maybe adapt quicker while we are kind of somehow stuck in that comfort zone.

Rias Attar: So I feel that organizations that feel that change is a threat may suffer versus the ones who actually see the change as an opportunity generally succeed. They try to get out of that comfort zone to learn new tricks. They expose themselves a little bit into that danger zone and then to that learning zone. And then they start realizing their new growth zone. Once they get into that limit, they look back, and they will say, "Why did I not start earlier? I wish I started earlier. Oh my God, I don't believe I was locked in that comfort zone. Now I see a whole new horizon." This is kind of what you just mentioned, because this is what I refer to in my book, Change to Win. I ask the leaders, "Do you know what the business death sentence is?" It's actually a sentence that business leaders and owners often repeat, which is, "We have always done it this way." That sentence becomes their own death sentence, their business death sentence.

Sarah Nicastro: That's really good perspective. I think you could almost say that there's even a less obvious death sentence of today's businesses, which is, "It's working well." Right?

Rias Attar: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: To the point you just mentioned, if you look at this almost as a continuum, I mean, there's these people that are, "No, we're in our comfort zone. We've always done it this way. We're going to continue to do it this way," either out of fear or pride or ego or complacency, whatever those things are. And then there's people who don't perceive themselves as averse to change but have achieved that level of success you referred to where they say, "No, I mean, we did innovate and we're doing great, so we can stop it here and just bask in our success."

Sarah Nicastro: It reminds me of a conversation I had with a gentleman named Sae (Kwon) who at the time was with Cisco. We talked about weighing the decision of disruption, right? So when do you decide to disrupt things? But talking about the fact that in the world we live in today, as prevalent and fast as innovation occurs, if you wait until you recognize the need to change to change, you're at best keeping pace, right? So for you to really be ahead of the curve, you need to be doing it when you are successful. Does that make sense?

Rias Attar: Yeah. I mean, you see the thing is there are maybe two phases here. The first phase is realizing that you actually have to change and realize that fact because, again, you're faced with market conditions or you are faced with customer demands, with newer technologies, with competition, with a higher input cost, with new mergers and acquisitions in your industry that are posing stress, maybe with crisis and catastrophic events like COVID-19 and else. So you realize that there is a need for change. So this is the first hurdle, you realizing that, "Okay, well, I have to change." Right? That's the one thing. Because many people do not actually that shift. To your point, they will just get stuck with that, "This has worked in the past. Maybe we just need to continue." Well, maybe. Maybe you can still maybe are able to succeed at the limited success factor here, but how about maybe if we can multifold, maybe if we can increase that success? How about maybe you don't yet realized the opportunities you have? And maybe that success that you currently enjoy has a limitation maybe a couple of years, three, four years. If you do not do something about it today, you would be way behind in a couple of years or so.

Rias Attar: That's the first hurdle, realizing that you actually need to get out of that comfort zone and get into that change. The issue that we find most of the time is that companies and individuals, sometimes, when they realize that they need to change, okay, they say, "Okay, got it. We decided to change." They leave that comfort zone, they get exposed a little bit into that danger zone. They hit the break, and they go back to their comfort zone, all right, because they see so many issues. I mean, we can talk a lot about this. They may have legacy systems. They may have issues with their culture and internal culture, maybe there's industry, whatever it is. So they pull back without really continuing that momentum. And that's kind of another aspect of, okay, you started change, and somehow you either face some limitations and decide to pull back, or you're stuck in that endless gray phase, which is always not reaching your future state. You're always lingering in that interim state, which is what we sometimes we get stuck into, right? So there's really those two phases, I really feel, happening.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. If we look at the differing opinions or emotions around change, so you have people that view it as a threat, and then you have people that view it as an opportunity. Let's use the term people and businesses interchangeably in this context, right? So what do you think is the key to shifting the mindset to perceiving change more as an opportunity than a threat?

Rias Attar: I mean, these days, if we don't change, really, I don't know how long we will be able to survive. I mean, the thing is with everything that's happening to us, I mean... Again, I hate to always refer to COVID-19, but because this is where we are at this point of time. But when you're faced with something like this, the companies who are nimble or that are nimble and able to adapt quickly, those are the ones that are actually increasing their market reach. They are increasing their market segments. They're hitting record-breaking profits because those are the ones who actually were able to adapt quickly and leverage the new environment to their advantage. So if you do not really change, there's so many companies that just filed for bankruptcy because they couldn't adapt to that change. I'm just giving you an example.

Rias Attar: So it's really a necessity, but at the same time, I always go back to the vision of the senior leadership team or the owner of that organization. Are they there for the long term? Are they there for years and decades and generations or are there for months, or maybe just a couple of years? I guess it depends on their priorities. So that vision and mission really set the tone. If their mission and vision is long-term, then yes, they need to figure out how they can leverage those threats and turn them into opportunities. I always also refer to this as reversing the risk from negative risk to positive risk and capitalize on those and potentially either introduce a new product line, a new service, a new way of thinking, a new culture, a new innovation, or something like that.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Talk to me a little bit more about that concept of negative risk versus positive risk. And maybe just contextualize that a little bit more for the listeners and talk about why one is really good for the business and the other is not, right? Talk about that a little bit more.

Rias Attar: Yeah, I mean, definitely. Look, when you are in any market environment, there are just so many, again factors, new interest to the markets. Globalization is another one, right? Now we're borderless with the internet and with connectivity. I mean, companies in China and India and somewhere, they're competing for the same products and services that the companies that are in here in the United States because they can provide maybe similar services. Maybe not the product, like physical product, but maybe a service per se. So how can you compete when you're seeing all those companies who are providing the same or similar service or product at a fraction of a cost? How can you? You see this as a risk, and then you come back and it's like, "Okay, well, I'm going to lose my business if I don't do anything about it. So how can I leverage that as an opportunity?"

Rias Attar: Many times when we are the only company in the field, we don't really need to innovate. We don't really need to think outside of the box. We don't need to bring new products or services. We're just happy because we're the only ones. But the interesting element is when we are faced with threats. The companies that generally succeed will take those as an input. And they start to generate even more products or complementary services or something similar to that, that would make them superior in that marketplace and even a better profit margin and a better customer segment and so and so forth. When I refer to the negative risk, turning that into a positive risk, that is particularly something that those market leaders... And again, you don't need to be a market leader sometimes. Maybe you don't have the capital or the money to be a market leader. You can probably be a strong follower. Maybe you can see a leader in the market who is doing something, and then you learn from their mistakes, and then you go there and capitalize on that, and you become also successful in your industry.

Rias Attar: But the point here is we should never stop. We should always seek improvement. And that's how we call it continuous improvement. You should always seek opportunities to improve, whether in innovation, whether in technology, whether in reprocessing, maybe in different people, like training and bringing your people skillset to another level, whatever. It is people, process, technology, and data. We'll talk about data also in a second, yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. All right, so I like that point of negative risk versus positive risk. All right, so let's talk a little bit, Rias, about the insight you provide in the book. So we're talking about how businesses can succeed in transforming operations to meet evolving market demand, so how can they change to win? So you talk about some different elements that you know people need to address with some balance. So let's walk through these a bit. We have strategy, delivery mechanism, and culture, and change management. Talk a little bit about each of those. Obviously, you can't give the contents of the book away in a 30-minute podcast, but give us some food for thought.

Rias Attar: Yeah. So remember, we just talked about realizing the need for change and bringing that mindset that I need, or as a business, I need to do something safer, better, faster, maybe cheaper, right? So let's say you recognize that need... And again, there's a whole section in the book about resistance to change and what that means as so on and so forth. But let's say you realize that, "Yes, I need to change." Many companies they realize that need, they hire consultants. They put neat presentations. They assign fat budget for that transformation. They tell their employees that they need to change. And then few months later, nothing happens or it happens very, very slowly.

Rias Attar: What I noticed was there is the three, I call it, the three-legged stools in my book, which, as you just mentioned, the strategy, the delivery, and culture. I would actually like to explain this in an example. Where are you located at Sarah now?

Sarah Nicastro: I'm in Pennsylvania.

Rias Attar: Okay. So you're in Pennsylvania, and you decided to go to New York City. You have a powerful vehicle, a good engine, a powerful vehicle, and you hit the road but you don't have a Northern star. You don't have a navigation system. You don't have a map. You don't have a strategy. You don't have a vision of where you're going. You may end up in Miami, not in New York City. Because, again, you don't have that Northern star that guides you. You have a powerful engine. You're doing work. You're burning tires, you're burning fuel. You're wasting time, but you end up in a whole different place. And that may not be ideal. That place may be actually not optimal for you, or it could present some danger as well to your business.

Rias Attar: The first thing I talk about is let's have a set strategy. Let's make sure that our strategy is good and it's aligned, and we have a good one solid roadmap for the future. Now suppose that you have that roadmap, but you don't have a good vehicle, and that vehicle stalls every few miles or so. Run out of gas, there's something wrong with tires or whatever, or mechanics. You may never reach your destiny. Even if you know exactly where you're going, and you have perfect roadmap, you may never reach that destination, and you may actually reach that destination, but it would probably be too late. That boat may have sailed. So you may need to have that balance between, "Okay, I have the right strategy. Now I have that good delivery mechanism."

Rias Attar: In business, you cannot do things alone. You need to have people around you. You need to have people smarter than you and better than you to help you deliver your objectives. So you need to have, or you should have, the good culture and build so that people will not jump ship along that journey, and then you will be alone and probably never make it to the finish line. So that's why you always need to have that equilibrium, or maybe balance, between strategy efforts, delivery effort, and cultural efforts. Sometimes you put way too much money and effort on strategy, but we don't do a good job on, "How can we put a good project management methodology? How can we put a good operational excellence methodology? How can we make sure that we actually deliver those objectives?" And sometimes we do, but we don't really do change management very well so we don't really help our people adapt to change quickly or properly for us to reach that end state.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. So that makes perfect sense, but I want to challenge you a bit on the change management topic because this is a topic that comes up all the time in our conversations. It is probably the go-to answer when I ask, "Well, what went wrong?" That being said, while it is widely recognized as an area of importance, it continues to be under-prioritized, under-invested in, and under-executed. Do you have any tactical advice for this whole concept of creating a culture of change and managing change well?

Rias Attar: Yeah, I mean, there are many concepts for change management. The one I normally use is called ADKAR, which goes for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and then reinforcement. When we are introducing any change from current state to any future state, the first thing we do is we want to bring awareness to people, to have that awareness element. And we announce it. We announce this initiative that we want to change, right? You want to hear people saying, "Yes, now I know what you're doing."

Rias Attar: Next one is desire. You want to move from just awareness to the people desire to be in that journey. And you want to hear people saying, "I decided to help." Right?

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rias Attar: And then when you reach that point, the next phase is knowledge. You want to provide them with training, with coaching, with support to help them cope with that change. So then you will hear something from them like, "Now I know how to do it." Now, the most important element is that there's a huge difference between knowledge and ability, which is the next phase. Now, Sarah, you and I may be, let's say, the last people on earth. I may have some issues with my heart. And I will say, "Sarah, in order for you to save me, I'm going to give you 17 books on how to do an open heart surgery for me. Will you be able to operate on me after reading 17 books?" Probably not.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Rias Attar: You may need years of practice. I would actually be scared to have you operating on me-

Sarah Nicastro: You should be.

Rias Attar: ... because that ability, that difference between knowledge... You acquired the knowledge, you already read 17 books. But there's a huge difference between knowledge and ability. That's why we say change management is important because you have to go through all those phases. And then of course, data is reinforcement. Reinforce that message. Reinforce that change. Many organizations realize that change management need maybe at the 11th hour. And then they were like, "Oh, wait a second, we need to work with our people. And we need to bring that adaptability. We need them to gain that change adoption." But probably they're too late. So why investing in people is so important? Because there are the ones, most of the time, that are using the system. They are the ones who are facing customers every single day.

Rias Attar: Investing in people increases competitive advantage. It ensures happier customers. It actually solidify the business growth. It increases the efficiency in work and actually attracts more quality talents. I mean, good people attract good people. So that's why investing in people and investing in change management will pay its dividends because you will be able to reach your destination faster and better and more efficient.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay, all right. Another question I want to ask you related to change management, so you brought up COVID a couple of times, and one of the things that I've noticed is when COVID first began unfolding, I wrote a few articles about how situationally, it was actually increasing open-mindedness and making people more receptive to the idea that we need to change because it was this huge force that came through. For companies that needed to quickly adapt, it just was something that they changed. And then I think there was a number of people that were like, "We can do it."

Sarah Nicastro: As time went on, though, another conversation that started to surface is the idea of how weary people are at this point, right? So now that we're 15, 16 months into this whole thing different industries, obviously different regions, the journey has looked different for different folks, but just the idea that a lot of frontline employees are weary. COVID has taken its toll on them as it has on us all. So the question is, with that in mind, how do you continue the necessary journey of change while being conscious of maybe some of the emotional exhaustion or mental burnout of the people that you ultimately need to get on board?

Rias Attar: That's actually a good question as well. I mean, it's definitely something that businesses are seeing. People may have lost some loved ones as well, and that may have also added some pressure, and to your point, they are tired. Many people have went through furloughs, and now they feel the need to go back and think about job security and so on and so forth. I mean, it's always nice to keep close to your people and hear what they're saying and what's bothering them, what ideas they may have as well. Because remember, the brightest ideas come from the frontline. They're the ones who actually see customers every day. They're the ones who actually use the systems and tools every single day, so not the executives. We sit in our offices.

Rias Attar: Sometimes we have that visions, but if we do not listen to the feedback. And that's the power of data. I think collecting data, collecting feedback from people would help us understand where to navigate, whether it is some sort of like, "Should we train them on new tools, like the science aspect, or is it more about like comforting and more about maybe just maybe train them and coach them on the art, which is like how to deal with new different situations. Maybe it's just more about providing them with other ways to do their business and how they can do it efficiently. I think the message here is, again, remember, it's continuous improvement.

Rias Attar: Many organizations now post COVID, and again, remember, those are the many, many successful organizations who were able to bring new tools and techniques and made them so efficient, they're looking back, and it's like, "Why we didn't do this before COVID? I wonder why we haven't done this now." So now they're thinking about this now post COVID era, it's like, "You know what? We should probably continue doing this. Many organizations, for example, are now utilizing Zoom and other video conferencing tools and maybe not leasing expensive space anymore because they feel, I mean, it's unnecessary.

Rias Attar: So going back to your original question about the people and how weary they are after COVID, I think it's important to retrospect a little bit and look at the positive side and think about... And now we're towards the end of that, hopefully, that cycle, and now we're posing for a new growth hopefully, and what that looked like, what will be the next phase? Let's think about that. Let's think forward. But realize that if soliciting feedback and listening to your customers, your employees would hopefully help you significantly position your business for success.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It makes sense. It's just a point I wanted to bring up, because to your point, you can't overlook the people, part of this, right? So depending on the industry, the company, the region, the role, what have you, I think it's important to take that temperature check and just be cognizant of the fact that we as humans have gone through a lot. And so maybe there's an element of this next wave of change where you need to put some effort into re-energizing or giving people some reassurance or whatever that looks like for your team. Okay. Rias, I wanted to ask, I'm curious your thoughts on the role of technology when it comes to changing to win.

Rias Attar: Yes. It's no secret that technology, especially over the past 20-plus years, it's improved significantly. Everything from a technology perspective really starts with data. I always like to bring that topic because before maybe the internet era, data was so precious. We used to lock those data in our offices. And now, since we are plugged in, probably there's not so much data that we can hide or we don't have access to. But the problem now there has been an explosion of data. And so what do we do with all this data? So this is where you start, from a technology perspective, you probably need to collect the data, whether it's in regards to your current technology that you're using, your competitor's technology, or your customer's needs, what they want.

Rias Attar: It always starts with data. What exactly I need to do based on current benchmarking, where I am compared to my customers, where I am compared to... sorry, compared to competition, compared to trends, compared to customers' expectations, and so on and so forth. So after collecting this data, you start to transform this and work on changing from just simple data to information. What does this data tells me? So moving from data to information, and then that information tells me, "Okay, you may need to move from servers to cloud." So maybe you need to move from, I don't know, green screens to what we call green screens, which is like the old Microsoft AS400 system to the new maybe Windows or latest systems. That gives us a knowledge. Now, the information becomes a knowledge. Now we know what to do with it.

Rias Attar: Now, the art is using that knowledge and create a wisdom. So what exactly we want to do with it? So now we collected the data, we formed some information. We now acquire the knowledge. Now we have to do something about it. When we talk about technology, the newer organizations, Sarah, usually are quite nimble. They kind of have the latest and greatest tools and techniques. They don't have that technical debt. We call it technical debt, just the old codes and systems, and solutions. So they are able to move quickly and swiftly between different demands or market changes and so on and so forth versus the fairly older organizations who have huge systems in place. They're finding it very hard to change that technology that they have to adapt to the newer customer demands and customer needs.

Rias Attar: Sometimes they may have to reap and replace this whole technology, which that journey takes years of preparation. It's not that easy. Everything is connected, most of the time, in that kind of spaghetti-like diagrams. The one thing that I think COVID taught us was the roadmap that used to take us 10 years or five years, now we have to do it in months. There's a lot of urgency. There's a lot of now we're doing this at a much-accelerated pace. Because we probably do not have time. If we do not do this now, new competitors will potentially eat our market share and will drive us out of business. So technology becomes not only a need, it becomes a necessity. And now you don't have to always have the cutting-edge technology because you may not really be able to afford it. Or it may be very expensive for you. So you have to balance. Do you need to have the Toyota or you need to have the Ferrari? That's where, I guess, the business, it depends on the industry, but sometimes you just need a vehicle to move you from point A to point B. Sometimes you may actually need that higher cutting-edge technology. Technology becomes not only a need, it becomes a necessity and opportunity for success in the new era.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I like the point you made about a lot of the newer, more innovative by nature companies have less of a technological legacy to overcome, right? So they're starting fresher in that regard, which makes it easier to iterate and continue to modernize versus someone who's trying to do this wholesale upgrade to current times and then go from there. Okay. All right.

Sarah Nicastro: We're almost out of time. I just want to talk about one last point, which is we were talking at the beginning about the, "We've always done it this way," mentality and breaking out of that, right? We talked a lot about the recognition that it's time to change. But the reality for 2021 and beyond is that it is never not time to change, right? This isn't a situation where you break out of that mindset once, you chart the path, you walk the path, and then you are done with it, and that's that. This is really a more ongoing situation at this point. So talk about that and what you advise in terms of having that continuous improvement mindset and looking at this less as a project and more a state of mind, I guess.

Rias Attar: Yeah, an excellent point. I highly recommend that the strategy also becomes a little bit fluid. It depends on what's going on. Sometimes you may set a five-year strategy, which is good, but sometimes things happen, and you may need to adjust mid-course a little bit and adjust your roadmap based on things that happen. I mean, there's this agile kind of mindset, which is like, "Okay, let's go through an iterative delivery. Let's not keep stuck in this. Okay, we set that strategy for five years." Now, this is good. I'm not saying this is not good, but sometimes things happen. And when things happen, you may want to adjust mid-course a little bit in order to hit that bullseye. My recommendation is to always stay close to customers, understand your market needs, understand what the customers are saying, what they are demanding, who are the new players in the market. You may probably not know unless you start learning from customers. You may need to reevaluate your own processes and your own technologies and your own way your people are dealing with customers based on feedback that you're getting from customers.

Rias Attar: Now, again, sometimes you may get an overwhelming feedback. You just need to filter exactly what actually makes sense to your business. You may sometimes need to draw that some sort of customer journey for your customers, starting from the need, or want, or awareness all the way through like research and concentration purchase, maybe returns, maybe disposal, and then maybe advocate or promote of your service and product. The point here that I'm trying to say is try to stay close to your customers, listen to them very well. Try to stay close to your employees, and also listen to them very well. Have a good strategy that you set in mind. And the same time, make sure that you always, maybe every year or so, try to revisit that strategy and see if it actually makes sense.

Rias Attar: And then as you go along, make sure that you have that delivery mechanism. You want to make sure that you are advancing towards that strategy, whether that strategy is organic or inorganic, what exactly you're trying to achieve, and then how you're going to achieve that. And then, as I mentioned, that continuous improvement mindset is based on continuous feedback that you get throughout your journey from your customers, from your employees. Make sure that you are actually hitting that mark. If we continue to realize that we always need to think strategically and think about how we can get out of that comfort zone to that growth zone, and during that path, we realize the feedback, or we re-evaluate the feedback and we change mid-course, and then we actually capitalize on certain things, I think, generally speaking, you will be able... or those businesses will be able to be positioned for success and realize sustainable competitive advantage. It's not only periodic competitive advantage but sustainable competitive advantage.

Sarah Nicastro: It makes sense. Rias, let folks know where they can learn more about you and where they can find the book, Change to Win.

Rias Attar: Yeah, so they can always go to riasattar.com, R-I-A-S-A-T-T-A-R.com, or they can find the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, on Target, like anywhere. They can just Google Change to Win, Rias Attar, and they will find it anywhere there. They can also reach out to me on LinkedIn or through my website, www.sayaplus.com, S-A-Y-A-P-L-U-S.com as well. They are more than welcome to ask any questions.

Sarah Nicastro: Excellent. Well, I appreciate you being here very much. Thank you for sharing some tidbits. And everyone, be sure to say hello to Rias on LinkedIn, and also to check out the book. In the meantime, you can find more content by visiting us at futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn, as well as Twitter @thefutureoffs. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS by visiting ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening!

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AT&T on The Future of The Call Center

Ian Schmehl, Vice President, Sales, Service, and Digital Operations – AT&T Mexico, talks with Sarah about the criticality of call center and field service collaboration, the growing role AI is playing in the call center, and what the future of a “no-call” center will look like.   Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be talking about the future of the call center.` The call center and the field service functions are inextricably linked. Today we're going to be talking a bit about how the call center has evolved and how it will continue to evolve into the future and what that relationship with service should look like. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today, Ian Schmehl, who's the Vice President of Sales, Service and Digital Operations for AT&T Mexico. Ian, welcome to The Future of Field Service podcast.   Ian Schmehl: Thanks Sarah. Good to be with you.   Sarah Nicastro: Before we get into the nitty-gritty, tell us a little bit about yourself.   Ian Schmehl: So you're correct, as far as my opera area of operation right now, I have responsibility for AT&T Mexico. Basically it is the call center operation, including digital. I live in Mexico City. I have a very supportive wife and two growing daughters who are seven and eight, and we've been located there for almost five years.   Sarah Nicastro: Cool. How far apart in age are your daughters?   Ian Schmehl: They're 18 months apart.   Sarah Nicastro: 18 months. I have two boys and they're 16 months apart. So totally get that life. Speaking of which, I shared this with Ian before we got started, but it is raining here in Erie, Pennsylvania today. I do have not only my two children, but a couple of extras playing in the house. If you hear any background noise, just know that they are fully supervised and please disregard. Good. So, Ian, you've been with AT&T for a long time, I think around 21 years in a variety of roles. So tell us a little bit about your trajectory with the company. Some of the different functions that you've served in and how that led to the role that you hold today.   Ian Schmehl: Sure. You're spot on, it's been 21 years. That seems like a sort of flew by. I've had probably 16 different jobs working in pretty much every area of the company. From network operations, to marketing, business development, technical roles, business development, and product development. Even HR, where I had a labor role, including negotiating with the union. I've moved. I lived in seven different cities, six in the US and now the current location in Mexico City.   Ian Schmehl: As far as trajectory goes, I've been very blessed to have these opportunities and it moved up to the point that now I'm at the Vice-President level. When I would go through the different roles, it wasn't always a promotion. It was just getting more and more experience. I think that that's allowed me to have the perspective I do today. Because I really am not a specialist. I'm a generalist. I would do different roles and learn about the company and the industry. And now I think that one of the most critical parts tied to service in general, whether it's field service or call center, customer services, getting that relationship right. And that's what really excites me today, as far as the opportunities we have to do better in that area.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I think that being in those different roles and seeing the organization from different perspectives, it gives you some really good context for different areas of the business. It's interesting because we see... To really keep pace with the change that exists today and to succeed in service and realize its potential. There's a lot of silos within the business that have had to, and continue to need to be broken down. Right. And that situation of a call center in a silo field service, in a silo, you know, these different things, based on the customer experience, but then also the nature of digital transformation and just how the business needs to collaborate better. Those things are really... Those lines are blurring in a lot of ways. I would imagine your experience outside of the function you're in today and being able to see that from different perspectives is helpful.   Ian Schmehl: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the piece of it, when you intertwine technology with it, the adoption of technology, the implementation of technology. Ends up being a really key skill set, not just to understand that sometimes it takes time, right? Sometimes it doesn't work and being able to adapt and overcome based upon that experience has been a real key.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting even the name of this podcast is, Future of Field Service. Right? But in some ways the name in and of itself is misleading because it's not about field service. If you look through the content we're discussing, it's really a service as a whole and the customer experience in its entirety. Right? I think that we've even had conversations about that, like should we call it something different? But the reality is the name is still applicable in terms of what people look for and the types of things we're talking about. It's just far more encompassing then it was 10 or 15 years ago. Right? So all of that being said, we know the call center is certainly a critical aspect of the customer experience. What would you describe the relationship that you typically see between the call center and field service?   Ian Schmehl: I think I see our role as being a support to the field. While there are issues relative to the wireless network, as it relates to the customer, the field for us is the retail store. What I can say is it's an extremely close relationship. My peer is the Chief Revenue Officer. I'm in very constant communication with him. And our role, right, is to provide feedback to them. I see ourselves, our team as service for the field. So we have two customers, right? Internal and external. Us being able to provide that feedback based upon an interaction with a customer makes it such that the field can get better and we can get better by giving them that feedback.   Ian Schmehl: I think that that's critical because as service evolves in today's age, the idea of measurement and the things around how those two teams work together and function together, is critical. And to your point, it starts to blend. Right? Because if the interaction is occurring in the store and then it necessitates a call, right? And we don't want to call, right? Because it typically means there's a problem. Then my obligation is to make it so that that field experience is better and maybe there's an adjustment that's made there as well.   Sarah Nicastro: So as we look at the interdependency and the connectedness of those functions and what I mentioned earlier in terms... For organizations, they're really looking to impact the customer experience. You have to look at how you break down silos. What would you say organizations can do to improve the relationship between the call center and field service and make that codependency more effective? And really drive better customer outcomes?   Ian Schmehl: Yeah. It's top of mind. Because there absolutely are silos and it's a lot of work to break them down. And many times the call center is viewed as beneath the retail experience, right? Oh, you're just in the call center. I think there's two pieces to it. The first is teamwork and accepting that you have to operate as a team. And the second is data. So go into teamwork, one of the things we've done is we've literally had learning sessions for the field. For the sales organization to better educate, what does the call center do? What does the day in a call center look like because they're totally different. The retail experience is simply productivity. How many widgets, right? Hitting my number versus a call center, and that measurement being totally different. And what do I see? And what's my experience. They're having the customers in front of them, and we're hearing the customer. And many times what we're hearing is feedback relative to what went right, or what went wrong with that first touch and that first experience. The second bucket I see is data.   Ian Schmehl: I once heard a gentleman, I work with say that, "Never believe anything unless you're coming with data," right? Everybody else is not of as much value. The reason I site data is because if you can educate the team member who you're working with and tell them the why behind what you're saying and bring them proof, I think it's an easier conversation because you know what the problem is. If you can identify... Or frankly what they're doing well. I think that the relationship can become better and has become better because you're giving everything. You're telling the whole story. It's not just, well, in this particular store, we had 17% of our calls or this region, and that's tied to this leader and that was bad. It's okay. Where are we doing right? So when I talked to my peer and I say, "Hey, here's an area of opportunity, but did you know this? And did you know this is where we never get a call?" That's how I see you break down the silos, teamwork and data.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Okay. So if you think about your history and AT&T and the different roles that you've had, and the perspective that gives you, related with the current initiatives that you're leading in the call center. All of that gives you a unique perspective on what you feel the future of the call center will be and will look like. I want to talk a little bit about some of those key, I guess, predictions or considerations or things to think about. The first are around really operations and skill sets. Tell us a little bit about some of the opportunity for evolution that you see here, or some of the things that you have underway at AT&T.   Ian Schmehl: Sure. The traditional notion of a brick and mortar call center, I think is going to be rethought and analyzed. I'm not going to say that I think that we're going to move to a virtual distributed model, a hundred percent. I know there are companies in the industry. There's one in the airline industry that did that. But I think rethinking that with respect to the benefits, is a key theme now. And the really easy benefit to look at is cost, right? If I don't need to have this building and I don't need to pay this rent or lease or whatever, then why wouldn't I focus on that because I don't want the high cost. But the other piece of it ends up being tied to recruiting. And so if you don't have to be in one city and you could actually recruit in a specific demographic area, say... Have call center experience where there are a number of people concentrated in that particular city.   Ian Schmehl: I think that's a big help. But the key part of this is you have to still be able to achieve the operational excellence with respect to quality. Monitoring, and the hard one, honestly, is the teaming. The teamwork. Being able to see somebody, being able to relate to the people. And then frankly, that goes back to leadership. You can get the new talent pool, you can have the geography, you can cut your costs, but if you can't drive the results, then you're not going to necessarily see this huge seismic shift. I think what you're going to do is you're going to see adoption of technology and you'll see monitoring become more important speech analytics, AI. But the call center itself for it to shift, it's going to need those things.   Sarah Nicastro: Now, what does that look like in terms of the skill sets? How do you see the skills needed for, let's say the ultimate call center. What will that look like five years from now, or 10 years from now?   Ian Schmehl: I think with the adoption of AI and psychometric or personality testing, you're going to see a shift toward personality profile and matching. Said differently, if I get a call and I know that Sarah has this disposition, or as good at this, I think you're going to become more targeted with respect to who gets the call. But to your question regarding profile, I think that there has to be a passion for the job. I think there has to be a deep understanding of the experience. So you're not just answering the call and solving the problem. You understand the customer journey better.   Ian Schmehl: I think you end up having more holistic understanding of that customer experience in order to solve it. And it's no different than today, but I think you have to have people who love their job. So that will never change. I think that the obligation of companies is to make that easier. Many times what happens is the call center is the last place people go and they end up not getting their problem solved. Irritated with the company and never want to call because they're on the phone and they're told they have to wait for two hours.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Okay. So as you think about the change in the matching of skills, the change in use of technology, the change in maybe a more distributed structure versus a central call center. How do all of those things impact the ability to successfully measure effectiveness? What needs to change related to how we look at or modernize the measurement of call center?   Ian Schmehl: I think that to my previous point, we need to be looking more holistically at the customer journey. Identifying the pain points and providing the feedback loop. There's an opportunity to measure service resolution based upon that journey. And what this means is you have to have that partnership across the customer life cycle. Now, with respect to measurement, I see an opportunity to measure the journey. Let's go back to what I said, as far as the partnership with retail.   Ian Schmehl: What I see in the future is the ability to measure the buy, the use, the pay, the service, as a team. If I live in Phoenix, right? And I'm part of the Phoenix team, we all succeed and fail together. Now, there are people in the industry who've done this at a more micro level with pods. I do think that's an innovative way to measure. You get away from AHT. While a net promoter score is important, I think that you would look more closely at churn lifetime value and ARPU with respect to the revenue that's being brought in.   Sarah Nicastro: You saying that makes me think that's almost a further progression of breaking down those silos. Right? It makes everyone have to think about the context outside of their own point of impact, right? And to really see that bigger picture. And not only see it, but feel in some way responsible for that bigger picture. Right? That's the goal.   Ian Schmehl: It is.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay. All right. So I know when we talked previously, you mentioned the vision you have for what you refer to as a zero touch approach or a no call center. Tell our listeners a little bit about what that means, what you think related to this and what you see that the future might bring.   Ian Schmehl: Sure. And so this is nirvana. This isn't necessarily tomorrow. It's a lofty goal. I see this starting with data and access to data. So everything hinges upon data and you can't make good business decisions if you don't have it. So you start with the access to data. You move into operational control. What does operational control means? Means you understand your operation, where you're going to improve it. With respect to what you now understand because of that data. From there, your goal is to drive operational efficiency through the analysis or those data analytics. That you're able to... Basically glean, the learnings that you can glean from that. From there, and this is where a number of people are today, is you need to push on digital adoption and automation. You'll hear it. You'll hear it called digital transformation, or omni-channel from a number of years ago. But that's the sweet spot that you were able to move up.   Ian Schmehl: The reason it's important is because what I do in that area with respect to digital needs to be the right thing. And what I do with respect to automation, where I'm not going to have a contact also needs to be right. The last step in this is customer delight and resource optimization. So what that means is I'm going to be able to make sure that every time I have a contact with a customer, it's going to be a delightful experience.   Ian Schmehl: If they have to call us, it's going to be great, right? And I'm going to have the correct resources assigned. So how do you get to zero touch? You have the balance between digital and automation with that end goal of that delight with the customer. Nobody wants to call a call center. What I'm going to do is I'm going to have predictive, proactive versus reactive. Leading to no touch. So what we've been able to do following this principle is to decrease our calls. They're now one-third of what they were three years ago. A digital adoption has moved up to 31%. So pushing that envelope is the vision. Like I said, it's nirvana and it's a goal, but it's out there.   Sarah Nicastro: From a digital tool perspective, what are the key ingredients? I mean, what are the tools that are foundationally critical to building out that vision?   Ian Schmehl: You have to solve for what your universe is. And what I mean by that is if you're a contact center, you have to identify which contact method you're going to go after optimizing. Most people traditionally had been used to calling a call center, right? Pretty much everyone has an IVR because you need to route efficiently. However what's happened in the future... Most recently is people are willing to text or they're willing to chat, or they're willing to interface with an IVR that has intelligence tied to it. Such that you can create a ticket. The answer to your question is that you need to figure out what the smart meds are based upon your operation, where you're going to yield initially the most savings. With a balance toward the customer experience, such that you're moving toward that delight. One of the things you can do is, make sure you're optimized first in your IVR, relative to workforce.   Ian Schmehl: Then you take your call reasons and you identify, how is it that I'm going to drive down the number one reason for my calls? An example would be, pretty typical example is bill inquiry. People call about their bill. They don't understand it. They don't know why a charge is there. They can't understand why they're being overcharged or what changed in their plan, et cetera, right? What do you have to do to explain the bill better? Or you have to fix the bill. So as it relates to digital and tools, what you could do is you say, "If you're calling for this reason, you can do this." So now you're identifying what area of pain the customer's having communicating back with them that you're solving that problem. And you're doing it as fast as you can.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay. I know that you have said you see the call center of the future as a profit center versus a cost center. How will that occur and where do you feel you are on that continuum today?   Ian Schmehl: Yeah, this is a heavy lift. It depends upon the market segment industry that you're sitting in. So this is one size fits all and you can do it everywhere. I can say that relative to where we are in the continuum, we made that shift. We did it relatively quickly. But going back to your question about what's the profile for the future, what is that call center resource look like? This is tied to personality. So the number one goal is still is absolutely serving. Resolving the customer's issue the first time they call you and making it as whizzbang, amazing as you can. Right? But then what has to happen is you have to get that broader understanding so that they know Sarah does this with my product. Sarah has bought 10 pair of red shoes in the past four years. So I'm going to offer her a discounted pair of red shoes.   Ian Schmehl: When you're able to solve the customer's next problem, it's a better experience. And it doesn't feel like it's a sale. You're actually making their life better. I'll give you an industry specific example. Let's just say you called Sarah and you've gone over your data. You've done that for the last three months and you're irritated. You don't know how this happened. You didn't know that you could go over your data. You're calling me. So what do I do? I sell you a control so that you can't go over your data. So it's simple. Or if I know that you actually have not had a new phone in X period of time, I look at your profile and I'm intelligently trying to offer something. So in the call center, it's not... Unless you're doing outbound sales, you're not going to be doing new customer acquisition, and that's not what we do. We do service, so it's upsell, cross sell and add-ons.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Makes sense. What would you say in... You said you've been in your current role about five years, right?   Ian Schmehl: Yes.   Sarah Nicastro: What would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned specifically related to optimizing and modernizing the call center?   Ian Schmehl: I think that the call center is misunderstood. First thing I recognized and frankly it came from my own perspective because I didn't understand it. I'd like to think I understand it now. It sounds like I'm repeating the same thing, but I learned just how valuable data is for the call center operation. I learned that making decisions that are data-driven is critically important. And I also learned that partnership, to your point with the field, you will not succeed without it. Because if you tried to operate in your own little silo, to your point, you're just going to stay in your own little silo. And you're going to be stuck managing and measuring in the old ways.   Sarah Nicastro: What do you think... If you think about from a technology perspective, again, looking at the future. Not what's been done so far, but what becomes possible say in the next five years. What do you think is the most exciting thing to pay attention to?   Ian Schmehl: I think AI, prediction, matching. I think those are very interesting areas. I think that if you can provide, if you can anticipate needs, if you can anticipate contacts. Such that you are predictive. Proactive versus reactive, all tied to that. But absolutely AI I see as a really interesting area. I also think that where we are today, we're not there. Particularly in the call center space. There are some interesting tools that can match personas, but I think that when we get really good at that it's going to become much more personalized. It's not going to be a cookie cutter matching with respect to that. I think it's going to be, I know, it's you Sarah, that likes red shoes.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, that's a really interesting point that you brought up that I think could be useful. I'm just thinking some of my own experiences. Where you talk about like the personality matching and stuff like that. And to your point, if you have people calling that are frustrated, what are the different ways to not only diffuse that but get ahead of it. And be proactive in offering different solutions and things like that. So, okay. So 21 years AT&T. Looking at the history overall, not just call center specific, but in general, what would you say are the biggest lessons you've learned in that time? And as a leader.   Ian Schmehl: First thing is it went by quick. I learned that. I think that the different roles and leading different teams, I've recognized, and this was... My mom taught me this actually that the two most valuable things dealing with people are patience and humility. Having the different roles I have, being able to tag onto that, hold on to that and understand that, has been very valuable. That's one of the biggest lessons. Related to it, I've always looked at it that if I've had a team, people don't work for me, they work with me. I think that realizing that you're kind of all have a common goal and while you may be identified as a leader and you have the obligation to lead and the responsibility it's all about people. And all about relationships and how you treat people is very important. I don't think that necessarily has just to do with one company. It's probably more of a bigger lesson, but that's what I've learned.   Sarah Nicastro: Good. Well, definitely true too. All right, Ian, any closing thoughts or comments?   Ian Schmehl: I just want to thank you. I really appreciate this. I think it was a great conversation. You ask some really, really good questions and obviously have a very, very good insight with respect to the industry and this area. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.   Sarah Nicastro: Well, thank you. That's very nice. I appreciate you being here and sharing your experience. Thank you for coming on. You can find more content by visiting us at futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @TheFutureofFS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening! </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-12 col-lg-3"> <div class="form-wrapper"> <h2 class="form-tittle">Stay Connected</h2> <iframe src="https://info.ifs.com/GM-CP-CU-2012-12-FoFS-Newsletter_IFrame.html">

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Lenovo On Embracing the Opportunity of Service

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Lenovo On Embracing the Opportunity of Service

Jimmy Auw, Director of Central Asia Pacific Services at Lenovo, talks with Sarah about four major focus areas that come into play as Lenovo looks to seize the potential of service.   Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast, I'm your host Sarah Nicastro. Today I'm going to be talking a bit about the opportunity of embracing service and the potential it can bring to your business with Lenovo. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today Jimmy Auw who is the director of service operations for Central Asia-Pacific at Lenovo. Jimmy welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast.   Jimmy Auw: Hey Sarah thank you for having me in this call, interesting podcast right?   Sarah Nicastro: Yes.   Jimmy Auw: So thank you for making time, I know it's a bit late in your time zone and thank you for making up the time for this event.   Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely, my kids are in bed for the night and I'm ready to party, so that sounds good to me all right. Jimmy thank you for being here, I appreciate it. We have a lot of folks on this podcast and we're talking across industries, across geographies about this potential that service presents for business growth, business transformation, business expansion, business differentiation. And I think these conversations are really, really interesting because they vary a bit industry to industry, company to company but there is this major trend and common thread of this huge potential.   Sarah Nicastro: I think that there is this energy right now around almost being in the cusp of a real evolution of service and what is possible in terms of transforming customer relationships and really just growing business in new and exciting ways. So I love having this conversation and I'm excited to talk about what you see. But before we do that let's just talk a little bit about your history, your background. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Lenovo.   Jimmy Auw: Okay thank you Sarah. My name is Jimmy Auw. I'm currently leading Central Asia-Pacific service operation in Lenovo like you already shared earlier. So basically I'm managing the customer service operation end to end, covering the Central Asian-Pacific countries. Maybe to be precise ASEAN countries and covering also Hong Kong, Taiwan, Koreas and surrounding smaller markets, approximately for 14, 15 markets in my region.   Jimmy Auw: And personally I've been in this industry services for 15 years plus, mainly in the IT, computer and telecom industry. I'm a married man, two kids, one boy one girl. They're starting to grow up, I think that's a short introduction about myself.   Sarah Nicastro: How old are your children?   Jimmy Auw: 10 and seven.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay.   Jimmy Auw: The boy one is 10 and the daughter one is seven.   Sarah Nicastro: Mine are two sons, and my oldest will be six this month and then my youngest will be 5 this year, so they keep me busy.   Jimmy Auw: Enjoy the moment.   Sarah Nicastro: Yes, I know it goes fast. Okay, good. And how long have you been at Lenovo?   Jimmy Auw: About six years plus, I think six years and couple of months.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay, great. Let’s talk a little bit then Jimmy about your perception of this opportunity around service that I spoke about. Tell me what your thoughts are on it. Just based on your own personal experience in the different roles you've had at the industry level, what you see specifically within Lenovo. Talk a little bit about that potential that exists and your perspective on that.   Jimmy Auw: Okay, of course when you talk about services, there are some company that's specializing in the like hospitality, of course service will be their nature. But when it comes to the IT industry, the company that's usually selling hardware, services is after sales. We quite be familiar with people calling after-sales services. Service only happens after-sales, In fact maybe not all customers will ever experience the services in the past.   Jimmy Auw: Let’s say maybe the failure rate is 2%, 3% percent, assume if you're selling a million machine maybe only 2%, 3% customer will ever see you with services. I mean that could be something in the past but I think seeing the future, maybe it's happening now services is starting to change, they are transforming, at least from my own view. Now we are seeing services as something that may start as the starting point when we want to talk to our customers. It could be if you also feel everything now being take like services. People are quite familiar with device as a services even now you're buying software, in the past you're buying application you need to pay upfront, very expensive.   Jimmy Auw: But now you can buy with a subscription. It's also part of the service, so you buy per your usage. I think people are also start to shift the perception from services as after sales, with services as something to start immobilization. And if people in the past were always thinking services as a call center, I think people need to change the mindset that it's not about the cost anymore, it's about how will the image of your company with the services, in fact, how you can start making revenue, making the profit itself from selling services.   Jimmy Auw: So pretty much what I can feel from my own view, service has transformed and the transformation is now getting even faster, not sure if the COVID could be the reason but I guess once we start to do this working from home, school from home, most of the customers of a company they're expecting to have more solution. So solution itself might not be just a PC, I mean, you can always buy PC, you can always buy laptop, smartphone, but what is the solution provided to accompany those devices to meet the requirement?   Jimmy Auw: That's definitely something that is hitting up. I saw some of the market and quite interesting. It's the education, how we tried to provide solution to our education, the school government, how they can make the remote learning, remote working to be more effective. How the teacher could use some whiteboard but it's going to be online so that kids could see what the teachers are writing. I think it's better than you just send a PDF file. Like it or not, we're definitely be going there, pretty much very fast.   Sarah Nicastro: I think that's a really good point Jimmy about to what degree did COVID amplifier, multiply this potential for service. And the example that you shared around education, it makes me think, when you think about as a product based business looking to embrace the service opportunity, right? There's a lot of layers to that. Because on one side of the coin you have businesses that really see that potential and they're very intent on leading that charge and leveraging service to seize that potential.   Sarah Nicastro: And then there's businesses on the other hand that are very comfortable with the product centric approach and they're very rooted to how they've historically done things. That's tough, right? What that mindset is dictates a really different path. But if you want to really leverage the service opportunity, you have to become more customer focus. It's one thing to know as a product manufacturer, here's a product that our customers want to buy. But to your point, customers can buy that product a lot of different places.   Jimmy Auw: Yeah.   Sarah Nicastro: I think when you look at leveraging service strategically, what you're really talking about is problem solving. And I think that what happened with COVID, particularly around the education topic is it surfaced very apparently a challenge that was easy to see, identify and start to innovate around. But the reality is those opportunities in the form of the challenges your customers have are in every industry that you sell into, in every situation that your customers are in. It was just a really good exercise, I think for companies that haven't already started this path to dip their toes into thinking as a service company or a solution provider instead of just a product manufacturer. Does that make sense?   Jimmy Auw: Yes, I agree. I mean, there could be a challenge on some companies that they are very familiar, I'm not saying traditional but if you're working in the hospitality industry, it's very easy because you know everything about services, everything about knowing your customers, customer is always right, how you can give the right things to comfort for the customers. But when you think about the other company or the other businesses, they might not have this, how to say it, the nature is not like that.   Jimmy Auw: It will require some mindset change, it will require a lot of support from leadership to understand that this is the right vision of the company, we need to transform. I mean, having said that, Lenovo Luckily, we have a great support from our leadership. In fact, I'm not sure if you read the news, we did the reorg again in the last couple of months, we set up a new organization, we call it SSG, Solution and Services Group.   Jimmy Auw: So basically, we will start focusing this organization to think how we can give solution and services to our customers. So we have a different organization running the basic hardware of box solution, but then we have another organization, they're specifically running to see how they can combine all the solution, all the innovative thing from the company and sell to our customers.   Jimmy Auw: I think we believe if we have someone dedicated to really spend time meeting our customers, understand their requirement by analyzing the industry trend, they could definitely understand more. And by doing so, we expect things to definitely helping us to understand better and sell more solution to our customers. Of course, the result itself, we have a very strong year on improvement on the revenue that really set things that the company has done the absolutely right direction now, that's I think what we are trying to do.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.   Jimmy Auw: I talk with a lot of peers in the industry, they also share similar challenges. It's not easy to change the mindset not only of the leaders but the team itself. Once you’re very used to selling something physical, maybe hardware, devices. Then you need to sell something that is not yet there, even maybe you need to operate a solution architect, how they can make a solution for the customers can be very customized from customer A customer B. But it might be a bit challenging at the very beginning. You are really right, that is definitely not easy.   Sarah Nicastro: There's a couple things I want to talk about, first of all that mindset shift. Lenovo is there, right? And I want to go back to that, but what do you think it is that gives organizations that lightbulb moment to see this potential and want to undergo the transformation versus just staying very set in their ways?   Jimmy Auw: Okay, I think there could be lots of starting point. First, maybe something is always like a retention, maybe you want to hire new people, so new people start to explore the ideas, represent the leadership, and leadership started picking up the opportunity. It could be also the leadership itself, maybe they start to change the rest of the company. They know maybe selling boxes is going to be very challenging in the future because everyone could sell similar products, just different colors, different maybe physical appearance but whatever is the same CPU, same memory, same hard drive.   Jimmy Auw: That doesn't make a difference except the brand itself and the logo and maybe some color thinking. So there could be a lot of starting points. But I really think that there could be somewhere that a company need to start. Of course, the starting point could be very different, it depends on the company itself. But once the trigger is there and if you started maybe from the team, from the employee or from some new hire that tried to propose the idea and it start to be picked up by the rest of the team member, then I think that could start getting bigger and bigger.   Jimmy Auw: But of course, you always need support from the people around you, assuming that you're starting from somewhere inside the company. And then make sure that it can be amplified once the team or the people could show some result, then people will say, "Oh, somehow it's working, maybe in the past we never thought someone could do it" But once the team start to show the result... Sometime I heard in some company the leadership itself might not be supporting because maybe some of them are quite traditional, it is okay, I'm just selling boxes, I don't really care about that.   Jimmy Auw: But maybe once this has being presented and being amplified and the people have to see oh, amazing, right, we never thought we could do things like this, that may be the start to become bigger and bigger then the company will start to pick up. I believe they could a lot of starting point but the key thing is definitely the company, the executive, the leaders must support that. Otherwise, you can easily say, it's not our bread and butter, so we're not going to be doing that. So that will be a big challenge.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, you're absolutely right that whether the catalyst for the change happens from the top down or from the bottom up, you have to have that executive support. And I think that's because this isn't a transformation that can happen in a vacuum or in a department, it's something that you have to have that company wide alignment on or you're just not going to make the progress you need to make. You could have someone that really spearheads the effort and articulates the business case and is very passionate about it that brings it to leadership but ultimately, they have to be supportive of that effort, that makes sense.   Sarah Nicastro: The other thing I wanted to go back to is the group you mentioned, remind me the name again, the services group, what was the first part?   Jimmy Auw: SSG, Solution and Services Group.   Sarah Nicastro: Solution and Services Group, yeah. I see more and more of that, of companies introducing a dedicated team, group, function to really take the lead on this. And I think it's you know Madhu from Abbott, who is in the group that we're a part of, she was on the podcast and we had a whole conversation around what's the best organizational structure for service transformation. And you can argue different ways, but I think that particularly for very large companies and particularly for companies that have that really deep rich history and product, I think the idea of this dedicated team to really get it off the ground is a very smart one.   Sarah Nicastro: Because the folks that are in roles still have to focus on the day to day, so until you get this new go to market in place and until you start to make traction with the customers and the teams, there's still a business to be run and expecting someone to do both of those things is really hard. So I think this idea of, no I'm not saying it's an easy job, when you have a new function like that in the business and of, course you're going to have people that are resistant to the ideas, I'm sure it's not a walk in the park.   Sarah Nicastro: But I think that from Lenovo's perspective, being strategic about creating that group to really drive this, I think you will get better progress that way than if you tried to do it in the existing structure.   Jimmy Auw: Yeah.   Sarah Nicastro: What do you think about that?   Jimmy Auw: Yeah, I completely agree with that. Definitely that is the right thing to do. And I think you are also quite familiar when we typically think or see sales person and services person, they tend to be very different. The salespeople are very outspoken, they easygoing so they can easily catch up and mingle with people. But services, they tend to be more introvert, maybe not more, maybe it's just my assumption but it's two different type of people. But now we need to sell services, so you need someone that can come with both style. You need to be outspoken, you need to meet people, but at the same time you need to understand how to sell the services.   Jimmy Auw: So definitely, there could be a challenge but I think it's a matter of how you find the right people, how you continuously giving the right training, right education and combine with a good success story. People will get the confidence, maybe in the past the services tend to be very introvert but now they've meet a lot of people now, they start to see some engagement so they can be more proactive. Same as a salesperson, they learn about services, they understand, hmm this is also quite interesting, but they can easily talk about services, settle the customers, always bring the conversation about services when they meet the customers.   Jimmy Auw: We also took quite some time in this few years to start this collaboration but luckily, because we also have a great team inside, so those transformation was not the difficult part, for sure.   Sarah Nicastro: Mn-hmm(affirmative)   Jimmy Auw: So I understand. I mean, if you're not getting the right person and the team itself may be not so flexible, you will see some, like you said earlier, some resistance, some people saying it's not my cup of tea, I don't know how to sell services. So if they don't really learn and have intention to improve, that will be challenge.   Sarah Nicastro: Going back to the first point we made, a lot of it is just mindset. And I think that people's mindsets can change when they understand new insights. We talked at the beginning about the fact that just historically, service is an afterthought to sales, it just hasn't been their job to sell service, it's been their job to sell hardware. And so if you have this team that can help them understand no, no, no, here is why you should care, here is how this can help you sell more, here's why this is the future of the business, maybe not 100% but a good amount of those people may very well be excited about that and get on board and get behind it.   Sarah Nicastro: And it is interesting, the conversation around the need that exists not just at Lenovo, in every company that's on this journey to upscale and rescale talent. And then also, what new positions, new roles, new skill sets, do you need to bring into the business related to this change? It's a really interesting conversation.   Jimmy Auw: I agree.   Sarah Nicastro: One of the other things we talked about before, Jimmy is the idea that if you want to focus on growing service revenue, you have to be careful not to cannibalize your own ability to do that by over servicing. So let's talk a little bit about what you mean by that.   Jimmy Auw: Yeah, I think when you start to make clear products, you need to really understand what will be your customers, that's when you design a product. But when you design a solution services, you need to understand what your customers need. It could be in the past you were giving everything for free, actually not for free because there's no sense of free lunch, we know that. So there's always be the cost being factoring inside your products. It could be some customers, they don't need all the basic features that you already incorporate inside the pricing. So I think by doing more upsell, we can really customize the solution to our customers.   Jimmy Auw: It's not about always getting more money from customers but it also can let go some of the solution that they don't need. Of course we keep upselling, the sales will not be letting go business with the upsell, but it's more like we are selling the right thing to them instead of okay we give this package for you at a single price, but then the customer will say I don't need these things but I need this things, but they are still paying the same amount but they're getting what they need.   Jimmy Auw: By doing so we need to make sure that we are not cannibalizing our own because maybe some customer will be thinking in the past these things is always for free, but actually the customer maybe they just don't know what we have inside the costs, maybe they're just paying up front, they thought it's all free, whatever they ask is for free, but we need to make sure that we give what they need and those things that we are selling is cannibalizing our own basic operation or the service function that we are selling to them.   Sarah Nicastro: Mn-hmm (affirmative).   Jimmy Auw: Maybe in some country definitely customer expecting very high level means that everything must be free because that is the standard. So once we downgrade some of it customer will feel oh, why you are downgrading my services? I think it's not about downgrading but it could be we have more detail on what you can buy or what you can decide not to buy. Maybe if you have a big country with different cities, in the past maybe give some single price for every city. But now if they realize I have more machines in a certain location, can you give me better pricing for that? Maybe you can give me other pricing for the remote location, something like that. Good customer service.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that makes sense. This becomes a big challenge when you look at organizations that are trying to move toward more advanced services, more service contracts offering more outcomes based service because as you begin that journey, it's almost like when you're introducing some of the functionality that enables you to do that, it seems there's a period of time where you're not quite ready to charge for it. You're getting your bearings, and then all of a sudden you want to introduce these new offerings and your customers are saying, "Hey, wait a minute why are you charging me for this now?" It does take some thought to think about what are the best? Is it tiered offerings? Or is it completely customized customer to customer? or what that looks like.   Sarah Nicastro: But this is an area of frustration for a lot of folks. I think this idea around we've made these improvements. When you think about things like Internet of Things and remote monitoring and remote resolution and people put these technologies in place to allow that functionality, and then get a little bit stuck on how they monetize that functionality. And another maybe topic of conversation is you can't look at this idea of incrementally improving functionality and then trying to just incrementally charge more along the way.   Sarah Nicastro: The way I look at that is you're on your own agenda, you're adding functionality and just trying to incrementally increase the revenue you're making simply because you have an objective to grow your service revenue. And that is the objective but the companies that are having more success doing that are stepping back from those incremental changes or those internal metrics and they're really going back to what are the customer pain points and what do we do to solve those? And then looking at whether it's custom offerings or more standard offerings but tied back to the customer needs. Does that make sense?   Jimmy Auw: Yes, I think the first thing is always right. I mean, every company wants to sell, want to gain more revenue, more profit, but we should not always use that as a starting point. Of course, first is you need to understand what is the customer pain point, what they need. Maybe now when we are talking about everything remote, first is security, the rest maybe is example. When you're talking about your remote working, you need to bolster your security.   Jimmy Auw: That could be one pain point that customer may think, now I know everyone's working from home, they're computer may be accessed by anyone so how do I ensure safety is not compromised? And so when we start with that we can see okay, maybe we have some solution, some VPN, some other application that can help you, that could be the starting point how the team will start thinking about the solution.   Jimmy Auw: Of course, it's always chargeable but something that not always about we want to get every single penny from customers. Of course, again, nothing is free but we need to start from when customer is thinking, what's in it for me, I'm paying this okay, what will I get? Okay, maybe they will think it's expensive or it's not expensive, but the values could be different. Maybe if you're talking about security to small business, they might think I don't need that.   Jimmy Auw: But when we talk to the medium sized company, it's everything about security. So again, I cannot be more transparent than this. Everyone will definitely be happy with more revenue but I don't think that should be the starting point, because when you talk about services it's about trust. You're not just trying to get money from the customers but how you can become a good advisor for the customer, every time they have some problem will come to you.   Jimmy Auw: And you're not always about the money or charging them or something, give them solution, some feedback, some idea, we can always try first if they fit the requirement. So I think that could be avoided when you can work the relationship better where they have more things to learn or to understand, they can always come to our team, okay. I trust you because it's not about the money but how you can help me running my business better. I think this will be the right starting point when we engage the customers.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. When done well, it's really a mutually beneficial value proposition. I mean, the companies that are doing this well, they are increasing revenue but they're doing it by helping their customers. And when you can figure out that right alignment, I mean, it really, really is cool to see how it comes together.   Sarah Nicastro: On the flip side, I've talked to people that say, "Well, I'm just really frustrated, because we invested in IoT, and nobody wants to buy it." And it's like, well, no, they don't want to buy it, because why would they care about IoT? They might not even know what IoT is.   Sarah Nicastro: So what value is it providing to them? And I think that goes back to one of the points we touched on earlier, which is the criticality of really talented sales individuals having these conversations to be able to dig in and identify those customer need and look at how you align value and create a go to market. You might need new people doing that than but just the people that are used to selling just the boxes. It's an interesting thing, it's like what comes first, the chicken or the egg?   Jimmy Auw: I mean, this thing is like an art. Leadership, managerial things, is always an art, there's no single way to get the job done. I'm not a believer that by reading book or by copying someone's style that always drive the same result because there's always a difference in the company culture, in the people who are managing, their maturity, the job scope. So you might need to be more flexible. Of course, like you said, developing the team. And then next to it is how to retain them, once you have develop them, they're doing good, okay, maybe other company be, okay, I want to copy the same, I just hired those guys.   Jimmy Auw: I think that could be a great short cut. But again, how we as leaders need to retain those people to make sure people feel comfortable working with us, they keep innovating, want to contributes to the company, that will be an honor, at least for myself. And there's no single answer how to do that. You need to be more flexible, maybe with employee, A employee B, you might need to have a different style, but that's something you can avoid, but it's always challenging people are moving out, they feel okay, I've done enough in this company, I want to explore something more.   Jimmy Auw: So there's something that the company likely again, will not let off. We have this culture, we allow people to move between organization, between functions. We prefer them to stay in the company in many very different role rather than they move out because we trust Lenovo and we really consider people, employee as something that is really important.   Sarah Nicastro: Mn-hmm(affirmative).   Jimmy Auw: Yeah, that's something I think, very interesting to share because there's no single answer for such problem.   Sarah Nicastro: Right. Another thing we talked about is this idea of needing to create greater appeal for new talent. We talked a little bit earlier about the fact that the service role is really changing, it can't just be that more introverted show up, fix something, and I'm on my way type persona, it needs to be a different type of experience. And there's also, I think some perceptions around service and field service and what that means, and are those appealing career paths? And things like that.   Sarah Nicastro: What are your thoughts around, as both the skill sets needed evolve and mature and then also a lot of existing talent ages out of the workforce, what's your thoughts on how we make service and this industry appealing for new folks?   Jimmy Auw: Okay, interesting question. Maybe it's just me, but if I recall back during the young age, services might not be something in the top of the mind for a student in the university. Maybe they want to become a doctor an engineer, a pilot, scientists, all of them think about these services. The people who work in the hospitality industry, they're not really like the majority of the people, and I'm not saying they are not successful in the other industry but some of them are really thinking about, hey, I want to do these things.   Jimmy Auw: Especially when you see in some countries, I believe, people working as an engineer on the ground might not have the higher rank, and maybe be different in Europe or US from an Asian country. So people working on the ground as a field engineer might not be something that's quite prestigious for some people. I mean, that's not totally right but also not totally wrong, it's about what will be the main interest, right? People always have their own aspiration.   Jimmy Auw: So of course, by seeing the changing in trend, I think we need to start really seeing who is the right candidate? Some companies start to look for a trainee right from the university, they try to educate him since the service industry you can meet a lot of people, you can selling being solution and the bigger picture of the services. So it's not about you do a break and fix, you come to the customer side, fix the machine, you're being paid for the labor, I think the scope will not be small thing anymore. But of course, some people still think, okay, I becoming an engineer, I need to go to the customer side, we'll break and fix, go back, meet another customer.   Jimmy Auw: So the scope maybe, I don't know, I feel this will in the most of people mindset, right? And then we start looking to university, we give some in the job training to some interested students, so we try to give them a bigger view of what services, not about you fixing a machine anymore but how you can sell solution, how you can learn new technology earlier than anyone in this industry, And how you can contribute more to the company.   Sarah Nicastro: Mn-hmm (affirmative).   Jimmy Auw: Maybe we start with some education to the university student, trying to get some good talent, they can do the on the job training, once they graduate, they can stop being shortlisted prior to starting a career in a corporate life. And the same time, I think we also need to look for some knowledge sharing from the experienced people in a webinar, at a event to share what actually the service industry insight, what about again doing a small thing, there's something called after sales, it can be a starting point for someone to make a new business or new or a new product.   Sarah Nicastro: And also, what do they like about it? And how has it provided for them? And what has their career path been? Things like that. You could even do an ad campaign out of that, that you use for recruiting. I think those are some good points and a couple others that you mentioned earlier. One is flexibility, so just thinking about not only how you're flexible with employees but as the role changes, as the industry changes, what words are you using in your job descriptions? And what picture are you painting with what that looks like? And what parts are you playing up that might appeal to some of the folks that haven't thought about service as a career or don't even know that it's an option.   Sarah Nicastro: And I think the other thing, like you said, within Lenovo you'd rather them stay and move to different positions within the company, I think, more and more starting a role with some idea of growth potential, and what that career trajectory could look like is really important to folks. So thinking ahead about how you articulate from the beginning that there is a lot of opportunity within the company for them is another really smart point.   Jimmy Auw: Yes.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So, here's another area I want to make sure we talk about because this is a tough one. This whole conversation is centered around this idea of service becoming a profit center and all of the potential that that exists there. But to do that, you have to innovate, you have to transform, and that requires investment. And so this is where it can get tricky because you can have these leaders that say, "Okay, great, there's a big opportunity here, go make it happen." And then you say good, well, we just need to do X, And then it's like, whoa, whoa. How do you strike that balance between not continually looking service as an opportunity to cut costs and looking at obviously managing costs, but making some intelligent investments in the ability to evolve and grow.   Jimmy Auw: Okay, so again, the question will have a myriad of answer.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.   Jimmy Auw: Because, again, it's more in and out rather than the single answer. But I will say, of course, at very beginning it's not easy to convince the leadership, the executives to support your investment. But luckily, we understand that we have shown that good traction, good result. So at the end of the day, when the company got confidence in the team, it will not be that difficult to gain investment. And of course, they trust it's going to be giving a good return. I will say there will be no single answer for that, but in general, it's more on how the team could innovate this? Something usually they got from meeting more customers, understanding the industry trend so they can start with something.   Jimmy Auw: And of course, when it comes to certain investment level, it may require more approval level, but normally when the thing is getting bigger, then people will always see return of investment, this will be the nature of the investment. But I will say it's not really a single answer to that, you're right is very tricky but it's more on the scope of the business itself and just about if you are investing a certain the amount the scope will be certain size, then you need to convince more people in the supportive level to support your project.   Jimmy Auw: But in general is always when you start with something and you could show really clear benefit for the company and it is allowing industry trends, normally, it won't be a big issue for the leaders to give a green light to the project itself but it's not easy to share how we can get them convinced but it just naturally flows. The bigger size of the innovation might definitely require bigger different investment and even approval level, but it's just naturally flowing like that. Maybe some level they just give a go ahead because it’s a small investment but when you're going bigger and bigger, you just need to talk with more people, convince more people.   Jimmy Auw: It takes months, sometimes years to get started, because sometimes we need regulatory approval, legal approval, country approval. So just about the size, the scope and the coverage, that just might be the nature of the green light of the project itself.   Sarah Nicastro: Mn-hmm (affirmative).   Jimmy Auw: I think that's something not easy to explain to be honest.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, some of the points that I took from there, one would be look for industry context. If you can show examples of how others are benefiting from similar investments, that type of research and information is helpful. The second thing is where you're able, start small and build momentum. So if there are certain areas that are either small or you are very confident in, start there so that you can show those successes because once you get that initial success, then going back and saying, "Okay, I did this, now you can trust me to do this next bigger thing." You're going to have better success that way.   Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense, and I think the third point is just, if it is something bigger that could require months, years... I did a podcast a few weeks ago with a gentleman from Schneider Electric Australia and the one thing he said is he just had to be tenacious, he just had to not accept no and continue to push because he was very confident in the opportunity and he just needed to win over enough minds to be able to move forward. He said, "It might have been easier for me to just give up, but I just wasn't going to." So that's the other thing, if it's something you're passionate about, just keep on it.   Sarah Nicastro: All right, last question for today Jimmy, two parts, what's the biggest lesson you would say you've learned as a service leader? And then part two is what are you most excited about looking to the future?   Jimmy Auw: Okay, let me start with the first one, the biggest lesson. I'm a believer in people, I think find the right people, you can connect and align with them, this will be very important. I'm not saying you need to have all the same people around you, that's not the idea but the key thing is you need to have the right people around you. They could always be the one challenging you, finding your blind spot, that should be fine. I'm not expecting people to say yes to all of my instructions, so I need to find the right people in the organization and a make sure they have the right mindset and right attitude.   Jimmy Auw: I mean, if you're working with people all having their own thinking, and that's okay but in terms of strategy, vision, aspiration, they should be carrying a similar agreement before we can move on. But as a team, they can be aggressive, they can be conservative, that's fine. People always say yes, that's also not good.   Sarah Nicastro: So you're not looking for the same people, you're looking for good people, but what would you characterize as the common traits?   Jimmy Auw: Okay, it's more on they need to be a fit for the role that I'm looking for.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay.   Jimmy Auw: Maybe as a sales they have to be a bit outspoken, but when you're looking for technical, they have to be very detailed in how to give a solution. And maybe if you need someone to become your right hand, he or she needs to be proactive, challenging you giving you some insight, this is what I say is the right people. Same style, because again if you have all people the same style then you always go to the same angle so that is definitely not something, at least for my personal view, I'm not doing things like that.   Jimmy Auw: I prefer to find the right people and the right roles so they can contribute to the company with their own style, but they will carry the same mindset, same attitude, in terms of how we agree on the goal and the future then we can move forward together as a team, they can contribute themselves inside the bigger ship as a company.   Jimmy Auw: The third, my view is you need to have the right strategy, this is very important because if people are thinking with their own and they don't have something they need to carry together, it will become things and also structure. So I really think as a leader you need to have the right strategy coming top down from the company, but the manager or the leader can cascade down a bit based on the organization itself. And the fourth one, again you need to have a control point. If anyone said central strategy, right people strategy everything you need to make sure you have the right control point.   Jimmy Auw: So make sure that whatever we agree, whatever we decide earlier, we need to make sure we execute. Otherwise, it's just okay, people are happy do but no one knows what they're doing. Maybe they can do at the end of the day, but if they're not doing constantly the things will move, from my own view can be a bit slower. So checkpoint for me again, is very important. It's not about not trusting the team, but to give them the sense of ownership, it's your responsibility you get paid, so I want to see your delivery. And last but not least, we can look back once we complete the whole cycle.   Sarah Nicastro: Mn-hmm(affirmative)   Jimmy Auw: We have understand, okay, we did great this year, but what we overlook? Maybe opportunities, some low line that we can learn for future to make our own strategy? Or maybe they are good story we can share. Again, as leader, I also have my own leaders, my other manager, so I also can share to him or to her, this is the key learning point from my region last year. So either he or she could copy or quote, share to the other bigger picture for a bigger region for the overall company or maybe there are some feedback that he or she will give to me.   Jimmy Auw: "Okay, Jimmy, I think you did something but you can try this area." Maybe he or she share from the other region, full end to end things that biggest learn for me and I will try my best to keep doing that because I believe that could be something can make a great success as leaders manager and as for the company itself.   Sarah Nicastro: Good. Okay, and what are you most excited about?   Jimmy Auw: I’m excited about new challenges. I mean, sometime when you see new technology, new idea, new opportunity, that makes me excited because I feel challenged, I like to set the challenge. Not about proving myself I could do but it's for my own pleasure. I like to accept a challenge and I also like to see how it can help to grow my team. So the success sometime is not about me doing the challenge, but how I can bring my whole team to get and accept the challenge together. Everyone could grow, and when I see they are growing, some of them even moving with the company. But they are doing even better.   Sarah Nicastro: Mn-hmm (affirmative).   Jimmy Auw: That makes me happy because I feel as a manager I've done my job, not about achieving the goal but also to help growing my team, make them even better. So I think that's the part of the excitement of my role and my own career things.   Sarah Nicastro: That's why you're the right person for the job Jimmy, because you're excited about those challenges and you want to see that progress. I mean, that's what it takes. I think everything we've talked about today requires people that are not fans of complacency and you're ready to take on those new challenges and work through problems and fail and learn and grow. I mean, that's what this is all about. So that makes sense. Well, thank you Jimmy so much for coming on and sharing your perspective. I appreciate it.   Jimmy Auw: Thank you. Appreciate your evening time.   Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. You can find more content by checking us out at futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn, as well as Twitter @TheFutureOfFS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS, you can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening. </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-12 col-lg-3"> <div class="form-wrapper"> <h2 class="form-tittle">Stay Connected</h2> <iframe src="https://info.ifs.com/GM-CP-CU-2012-12-FoFS-Newsletter_IFrame.html">

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Sarah talks with Scott Lowes, Construction Supervisor at FortisBC, about his love for technology, his excitement in seeing it permeate field service, and his advice as a change champion for how to make technology palatable, how to foster adoption versus just compliance, and the joy of the “aha” moment when it takes hold.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to The Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we are going to be getting some real world advice from a change champion. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today, Scott Lowes, who is a construction supervisor at FortisBC. Scott, welcome to the podcast.

Scott Lowes: Hey Sarah. Thanks for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks for being here. Before we dive in to our content for the day, tell our listeners a bit about yourself and your role at FortisBC.

Scott Lowes: Yeah. High level, I'm somebody that is always on the move but I'm always doing something, whether it's tinkering on stuff around my house, figuring out a way to brew better coffee, all that stuff. I'm always doing something in my personal life and then at work, I've been with FortisBC for about 14 years now, just over that. And throughout that time, I've had every job that we've gotten the field really. I've been through our construction department, putting in gas mains and services, then moving into our field customer service department, dealing with our customers forward, facing that way and then also working down at our liquefied natural gas plant. Pretty technical job there. And then most recently I have now made a change into our project management office as a construction supervisor. That's me in a nutshell.

Sarah Nicastro: And in case anyone isn't familiar with Fortis, give the overview of the organization.

Scott Lowes: Yeah. FortisBC is a natural gas and electrical utility in the province of British Columbia in Canada. We supply natural gas and electricity and I've been on the natural gas side of the industry. We operate and maintain our below ground gas utility and we provide all of the service for that. And so dealing with our customers that have gas meters on their houses and all that pertains to that. So there's a whole lot in there.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So you love a good project at home and at work. You like to stay busy.

Scott Lowes: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: I'm assuming you like to be just learning new things. It's what it sounds like.

Scott Lowes: Yeah. If I'm not learning a better way to do something in my personal life, it's like learning something new at work, right? A lot of people do Netflix and chill, I do like research and chill. It's usually like, my wife is watching Netflix, I'm watching or I'm like researching how to build concrete forms or do some something random around the house.

Sarah Nicastro: I'm laughing because this is very much parallel my home life. My husband spends a ton of time watching the most random things on YouTube, I'm like, what are you watching? "I'm watching how you..." Okay. Who cares? But he loves it.

Scott Lowes: There are those people that care. It makes it really good at parties and gatherings because when people are like, "I'm in like an aerospace..." I'm like, well, I've done carbon fiber repairing and they kind of give you this like, "what? Who are you?" But yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: And it's all come in handy. I mean, there's a lot of home projects and things like that that he's tackled that are far out of his comfort level that he literally just YouTubed and followed along and learned how to do it himself so it works.

Scott Lowes: Yeah. It's handy that way. But my disclaimer is don't do any gas work unless you're a ticketed gas fitter.

Sarah Nicastro: That's really good advice.

Scott Lowes: No. But yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: We did draw the line at gas. Actually, last summer we put in a pool in our backyard and he did all of the electrical himself. Which he was pretty comfortable with but we had someone come in and run the gas line and all of that stuff.

Scott Lowes: That's a good call.

Sarah Nicastro: We have to draw the line somewhere, right?

Scott Lowes: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Scott and I were introduced by a part of the IFS team which is Clevest and we were introduced to related to FortisBC's use of remote service technology. That's how we got in touch with one another. But as I was talking to Scott, I realized there was a lot more about our conversation that stood out and I felt like if we were to do a podcast talking only about the remote service topic might be leaving some good content on the table. Before we talk a bit about how you've leveraged remote service at FortisBC, I want to talk about some of those other things. The first thing that stood out to me Scott is your passion for technology, which was very clear. Tell us a little bit about why you love tech and why you're so passionate about it to use in Field Service.

Scott Lowes: Yeah. Passion with technology started once... Okay. If we go way back, it's probably I think when my parents had I think it was our first computers, either at 286 or 386. The power switch was like the size of my head type thing. It's just like a giant toggle, the lights dim when you turn the thing on but then it powers up and it's all text-based DOS right? That was my first introduction to computers. Fast forward a few years, I'm learning a lot more about computers but I'm breaking them all the time. It was like a non-stop, revolving door of having like my dad's tech support guy in the house fixing the computers because Scott broke the computer again. And now I'm the tech support guy for my parents for their computers so it's come full circle but it was probably a painful for that period.

Scott Lowes: But yeah. In terms of technology, I've been around it for a while, I've seen it, used it, always trying to be early adopter, right? Like, okay. Something new is showing up. I want to have the newest, latest, greatest. Or if I can't have the newest iPhone I'll leverage the older iPhone to extend that lifespan right?

Sarah Nicastro: Mhhmm

Scott Lowes: Everything from back in the day when jail breaking iPhones was a thing so you could get all the little tweaks and stuff. I nerd out on that stuff and so that's where the technology for me, my passion for it I guess came. And then I guess in terms of where I think the use with Field Service stuff, it's probably one of the one... If you think of technology, everybody's using technology except the guys that are swinging the wrenches. The field techs aren't using technology to the same extent that the rest of the globe is.

Scott Lowes: If you think of like okay. We've got such high horsepower in terms of technology and stuff that's out there, why not utilize it in a field that isn't really utilizing it yet? Or to its fullest potential right? Because there's lots of cases where it could just make their job or, and make my old job a lot easier and just... Yeah. It's pretty neat to see what's out there in the marketplace right now and where we're going. I'm excited for that part too.

Sarah Nicastro: You are the epitome of the young guy in Field Service that loves technology right? When we talk to different service leaders on the podcast, one of the topics that comes up is the challenge of managing a multi-generational workforce right? And so there's folks like you on one end of the spectrum that are, technology's awesome. I love it. I want to use all the newest, latest, greatest things and then as you well know based on some of your team members, there's people that want nothing to do with that right?

Scott Lowes: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: It is challenging for organizations to strike the right balance and I think that when we spoke initially, one of the things that I thought would be interesting to share on this episode is, you very much are a change champion within FortisBC for greater adoption of technology in the field and you have a lot of firsthand experience introducing these things to some of the people that are a little bit more resistant or less excited about the tools right? One of the things you said to me that I'm hoping you can talk a little bit about is, when you introduce a new tool to one of the people that's less passionate about technology or really against the idea of it, I guess on a continuum, you mentioned you love when you can see an aha moment, where it just clicks and that resistance fades away a little bit. What do you think it is that prompts that aha moment?

Scott Lowes: I think it's the magic really. Because I've grown up with technology, I don't want to say the magic is lost but I'm expecting a groundbreaking thing and it's not like this huge thing. But the aha moment for me that I've seen, we just did finished up a pilot using some VR headsets for training and so a guy, I think he said to like retire in November right? He's on the complete opposite end of the spectrum as myself. We've got a great working relationship and I was like hey. I want you to try this out and put on this VR headset. And I'm able to walk him through all the controls because he doesn't know how to use the hand controls and all that stuff.

Scott Lowes: And he's like, "I just want to see it." He puts the thing on and his mind is blown. He's like freaking out. And so for him, he's like, "wow. This is crazy." And then next thing you know, he takes it off and he's going around the office, "hey. Go see Scott and you got to go try this thing. It's really cool." And so his little aha moment was the barrier was broken because he didn't have to learn how to use the controls of a VR headset or try to navigate into the software, he just got to get plunked into this virtual world and he's looking around and his mind is blown. Those aha moments I think it would come in all of our different texts, when there is no barriers to entry right?

Scott Lowes: When it's not like, I got to figure out how to use Windows 10 just to use a software, if we can remove that, that's when I think the most success has happened and yeah. It's that interface. Having that smooth interface so once somebody can use it, it's not cumbersome I guess. And that's like I've seen have happened where it's just... they can use the software and it works. That's probably one of the bigger things.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, user interface is obviously super important but what you just said also made me think of, and I've talked to companies that have done this as part of their change management strategy. Prior to actual rollout of a new solution, having more of a low pressure, even making it fun, introductory phase to the technology, where it's that ability to casually familiarize yourself with it and looking for different ways to maybe make that bad idea even fun for people that aren't as excited about that new thing. But having a period prior to roll out where you're going to be driving toward a very specific outcome but more of like a familiarization period where that barrier to entry is low because there isn't an expectation of immediate outcome. Does that make sense?

Scott Lowes: Yeah. And I think you hit the nail on the head there, where it's like having it fun is key because for me, I can get over if it's not fun or not because I've been around it for so long and I know the leverage that's there, I can get on board with a little bit of pain to get there. But to get the mass of really who we're wanting to push this technology towards, is the mass workforce and to get it there, it's got to be fun. It's got to be engaging and it's got to be a way that these individuals are going to say, hey. Man. I really want to use that. That's a really cool piece of software. That's a really cool piece of technology. I'm like, that makes my job easy or that's a really cool whatever it is, but if it's not fun, why would anybody like to use that boring thing over what they've been doing for the last decade or two decades or four decades. If it's not fun and engaging, they're never going to use the technology or the tool or whatever it is right?

Sarah Nicastro: One of the other words that you used in our initial conversation that I really liked is that, really for change to be successful, the technology that's being introduced needs to be palatable. What would your advice for listeners be on, how do you make the introduction of a new technology palatable?

Scott Lowes: That? Man. That is the magic question. And that is like the key. And I think the way it becomes palatable is having somebody that is not only passionate but willing to educate and willing to go through the tech support aspect. I remember I broke my arm so I couldn't work in the field and they said, "hey. You're good with technology, can you go sit on the tech support desk?" And said yeah. Sure. And we're rolling out a new software. This is probably 10 years ago now. And one of the guy comes on the phone and he starts griping. He's like, "computers are the damnation of the world. I don't have a computer at home so why do I need to use one at work? I just want to throw this thing off the bridge." And that just really stuck out to me.

Scott Lowes: And I was like okay. Everybody's feeling that at some point that it's not going to work. Having somebody that is aware of that as well, isn't just somebody that's going to say hey. This is a new technology we're using, you got to use it or you're done. That's not an option when you're rolling out technology especially when you've got an already effective workforce and you want to see them become more effective, the way you do it is, you've got to really have somebody that is passionate about the technology that's willing to be that change champion then says hey. You know what? I'm going to go through the hard stuff. I'm going to figure this out. But then also, they're going to see or foresee those roadblocks and those speed bumps that are going to come along and help the people through that and say hey. This is what we can do or just being available as somebody to just go through that so they're not stuck struggling, right?

Scott Lowes: Because the way that you can take any technology rollout and make it just fall flat on its face is you come up with this great idea and you say, hey. We're going to release this technology to the guys or to the girls or to whoever and you're just going to release this technology and then there's no support. And there's nobody that is... Another term I've used is the tech expert, right? Because you got to have somebody that knows just that much more than everyone else that they're always getting the call, they can say hey. Scott. How do I do this? How do I do that? You've got to have that person that you've identified that says okay. I'm going to learn this technology and all the nuances and I'm not going to learn it from a book, I'm going to learn it by using it and finding out the problems and the success with it and then they become really your technical expert on that software or technology.

Scott Lowes: When they understand it and they love it then they can make it palatable just through, "how would you teach your grandma how to use this." In some aspects right? You don't care about the gigabytes that this thing has or all that stuff. You just want to know how to turn the thing on, how to work it, how to make it work for you and make your life easier not make it more complicated. Having that change champion or somebody, your technical expert identified with anything, with software or tech or hardware to then make it palatable for those individuals to actually use right?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I think that's a good point. I also think going back to what you said previous to that, no company is going to deploy a new technology just because it's cool or fun right? There's obviously a objective that's being worked towards and value that that needs to be achieved but the idea of leading a little bit with fun and trying to think about how to make it fun, to at least get people engaged enough to hear what that value to them might look like right? And to warm them up to talking about, here's how this fits, here's how this ultimately can help you be more effective at your job so that they warm up to even entertaining that discussion right? In the early phases, I think the idea of considering okay. How can we take some of the pressure off? How can we make this process fun? How can we get people engaged? And then get into to the heavier outcomes of the project makes sense as well.

Scott Lowes: I definitely agree. And so with that, we just wrapped up our pilot for this VR software and we were using it for training. Right? Or that was the intent. But how I pitched it, I said. Okay. The people I want to actually have use this technology, they're not the people that are going to look at the, does it meet our requirements for the training and all the nuance. I'm like, I want the people that are going to try it on this VR headset and they're going to get so excited and so jazzed on this that now all of a sudden they don't care if it meets the requirements, that's for later on in the project but they're like wow. This is exciting. I tried it. Scott showed it to me, I'm blown away. I want to see that thing go.

Scott Lowes: And then now all of a sudden, you have people that have bought in throughout the organization that can help push it through those roadblocks and those speed bumps that you're going to get when you say, well, it doesn't have XYZ or it doesn't meet our requirements here or there. That early stage of having it fun and exciting and just something new and cool to try, you've got to get to that first before it can go through the nitty because sometimes that nitty gritty takes a week, sometimes it might take three years to get through whatever it is in your deployment. To have somebody or a group of people that are passionate to push you through that phase to get you to the deployment, yeah. I think that's key for sure.

Sarah Nicastro: It just made me think of a point when you were saying that, taking a step back and thinking about where you want to put the pressure of the project right? Ultimately like I said, whenever a new technology as it's being introduced it's being introduced to drive a certain outcome right? And there's a business case, and there's a desired state that you're changing from and to but at the end of the day that frontline worker who you need to ultimately accept and adopt that technology, the overarching outcome of that entire project is not their responsibility, their responsibility is to leverage the new tool and to do that, it needs to be useful to them, it needs to have a good user interface et cetera. But maybe it's not a good idea to put even implied pressure of the entire project on their shoulders. Do you know what I mean?

Sarah Nicastro: I'm just thinking about a conversation I had recently with a leader within an organization that has taken a really big hit in business since COVID. And he was talking about the fact that their frontline workforce is so disheartened because the company is struggling but his point was the company's struggles aren't that worker's responsibility, they're still doing a really good job, they're hitting all of their milestones and their performance is above average and above expectation and so how do we as an organization separate the overall situation and outcome from individual performance right? I'm just thinking, when you think about managing change related to technology adoption within an organization, looking at the project outcome versus the individual contribution and making sure that you're either rewarding or coaching individuals based on their individual adoption and use and engagement versus maybe some of the complexity of the overall project. Just a thought.

Scott Lowes: Yeah. No. It does. And I think that where it gets tricky is, sometimes we come up with this project or we have this idea and we just want to see it implemented but we forget about the people that have to use it. And so when the software that we rolled out at Fortis was used, I was still in the tech role and I was the guy that had to use it. And I wanted to see it rolled out in a way that... It wasn't like, you've got to use this no ifs, ands or buts. It was like, here's the tool in your toolbox that is valuable and I'm going to show you how cool it is and how valuable it is. And the people that were willing to use it, they got to see the benefit from it.

Scott Lowes: And it's that snowball effect, right?

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Scott Lowes: Because you got to think if you've been doing your job for 20, 30 and 35 years and some young kid comes in and says hey. We want you to use this software, you're going to get clocked right? It's that figuring out, okay. We got to get the snowball moving down the hill and once it's going, it's picking up steam but we also got to be careful that anybody that is at the bottom of the mountain, that we're not going to just mow them over either right? We got to get them on board rather than just say, this technology is coming whether you like it or not, get on board or get out right? You can't say, get off the bus, because if everybody hops off the bus because they don't want to use the software guess what? You got no workforce right?

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Scott Lowes: It's that really tricky balance of saying okay. How do we get people to come on the bus? And maybe you don't get on the first bus, maybe you're on the second or the third. And when I think about how technology would be best deployed to a workforce like Fortis is for instance, is it's not all at once because you've got to get these people onboard that are then going to get the others on board right? And it's like with the iPhone, you get a bunch of people that started with the iPhone 3G or, and then it's like, wow. Look at this cool thing. And they show their so somebody is like, okay. Well, you can play a fun game. But now everybody's got a smartphone in their pocket because the momentum is there.

Scott Lowes: The same thing is when we're starting especially in Field Service where historically we've never used technology to the level that we can use it now. To just say hey. You got to use this or you're done, it's not fair because everybody also has that for whatever reason a differing length of time they're going to take to get used to utilizing a new software or be willing to. There's multiple buses, don't just think it's one bus and everybody's got to get on because if you think about it that way, you'll be on the bus and you'll be thinking everything's all great and then you'll look behind you and you'll realize that nobody else is on the bus with you right?

Sarah Nicastro: And I always say the goal needs to be commitment not compliance right? You're not going to get the outcome you want if you're just driving compliance, it needs to be actually them seeing the value and being more bought into its purpose and its use.

Scott Lowes: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Scott, talk to me a little bit about how FortisBC has leveraged remote service to navigate the pandemic.

Scott Lowes: Yeah. This is where I guess all this came about. Early days pandemic, just so everybody understands, our job as technicians at Fortis basically, we've got to change out our gas meters at customers' houses, which then means we'd have to shut off the gas then we have to enter the customer's house and return on all the equipment that would have been shut down. But pandemic hits, nobody wants anyone in their house for obvious reasons. Now, we're still trying to maintain this work because it's regulatory requirement and all this sort of thing. We had guys that were... They would get the customer to open windows, they're hollering through doors, trying to walk customers through how to relight a hot water tank. Even heard stories where guys were just okay. Do you have FaceTime?

Scott Lowes: Yeah. I got FaceTime. And so they just FaceTime and they do exactly what this software that we've started using, they started using that. What it was, essentially the software we're using, it allows us to have a video and audio feed much like FaceTime but we can pause the video, we can draw little circles on it or point to stuff and turn on and off the customer's flashlight. All this kind of neat stuff. I always called at FaceTime on steroids anytime I was training on the software. And so we rolled this out early days pandemic and said okay. Let's get this thing going and we're still rolling it out as we're getting more and more guys using the software. Again, it's that like, that you can't just have everybody on the bus in the first kick of the cat.

Scott Lowes: And yeah. We rolled this out and we're still going through that as we progress and we're still dealing with pandemic fears, obviously ongoing. I don't foresee this tool as I've always called it, this tool in our toolbox ever going away, I think through further iterations, there may be a different particular softwares that we use or we leverage but I think the premise is just... The thing that was probably the most exciting about it was the fact that I go up to a customer's house and say hey. I've got this cool software that allows me to just send you a text message, you click the link and then we get an audio video feed and I could walk you through relighting their fireplace or their hot water tank and they said, "really?" And I said, yeah. It's easy. And when you pitch it that way and the customers do it and then at the end of the call I'm like, how was that?

Scott Lowes: And they're like, "that was actually really easy. I really enjoyed that. That was pleasant." Obviously there were the ones where the customers were more frustrated because the technology wasn't working but again, that's just getting through those roadblocks and those speed bumps but the coolest thing for me was the fact that our technicians could use it and our customers were able to use it. And it just not just that customer service level just up another, right? Because now those customers that say, "I don't want anybody in my house but I'm willing to have you walk me through it." That for me, it was a big aha moment in that regard, that wow. Our customers can do it and our techs can do it. Is it going to work every time? No. And that's okay. But it works. And yeah. It was a pretty exciting as the software has been rolling out and we're going through it.

Sarah Nicastro: So it was put in place initially because people didn't want folks in their home due to COVID, as that continues to normalize and becomes less of a concern over time, how do you expect it will be leveraged?

Scott Lowes: Yeah. That's where I get into dreamer mode a little bit but I think it's definitely still a tool in the technician's toolbox but I think as the technology gets more refined, as stuff like that happens and whether it's for us changing our gas meters or any of anyone else in field service, I definitely think it's this really... We're right at this tipping point of saying, wow. All of a sudden, we don't have to send a technician every time because when a customer calls in and I know this isn't gas related world, customer calls in and says, my hot water tanks not working, well now, before I even roll out to that job site, I can flash up this video assist software and I can say okay. Well, it actually looks like...

Scott Lowes: Do you mind if I just walk you through trying to relight the pilot light, walk the customer through relating in the pilot light and guess what? You spent 15 minutes on a phone with some technical expert to walk the customer through that without having to roll a truck, without having to dispatch a technician onto those sites, when you think about that, it's like okay. How do you scale that up in every tech?

Scott Lowes: And I foresee a future where you've got a technical expert, whether it's some central organization, they've got a technical expert in multiple fields that now all of a sudden a customer call them, they've got a concern about electrical or a gas or whatever it may be, they can now call the technician, that technician can walk them through a very preliminary high level troubleshooting, get a good picture of the trouble shooting that needs to happen.

Scott Lowes: And then now when you dispatch a technician, you're making one visit rather than two or three. There's no parts that need to be grabbed, the technician going in knows that he's going to be working on this model of appliance or whatever it is and it really reduces not only a carbon footprint again, with driving back and forth to customer's houses and here and there and everywhere but also it's just quick, it's easy. The customers get immediate answers to their questions and I think that if we think of just how do we do customer service better, everybody wants to be able to be connected with somebody right now. Look at what COVID has done now. Now you can meet with your-

Sarah Nicastro: Instant gratification.

Scott Lowes: Yeah. It's instant gratification. But at the same time too it's like, if the technology is there, why aren't we using it? It's no different than if you need to go see your doctor now, you can set up a video chat with your doctor and yeah. Sure. He might not be able to diagnose everything but it's like hey. I've got this or that. He can get you through... or he or she can get you through whatever it is. When I think of the future of where this field service and tech in that regard, man, it's massive and I think we're right on that tipping point of where we're going to go in. And COVID as much as it's been really tricky and really hard, I think it's allowed those technologies that we're just waiting in the wings that there was one person using or a couple of people using have now really been elevated to another level where people are like, wow. Okay. This is actually really cool. We can use this.

Sarah Nicastro: You said that you see the future of field service as less field and more tech. Are there any other major I guess, technology trends or aspects of what you think this will all look like in say five years’ time?

Scott Lowes: It's hard to say, right? Technology, it's so bleeding edge but as we tried this pilot for the VR, you've got VR software then you got mixed reality and augmented reality, all these sorts of things, as these just become so easy for the technology that we're using to actually execute. I think really the sky's the limit. It's going to be exciting but the flip side with that is we got to remember that we have a huge working force that may not love technology or may not want to use it.

Scott Lowes: It's being aware of that in any future deployment to say okay. These are the people that if we can sell it and if we can make it fun and if we can engage these people, they become the change champions and they become the ones that now all of a sudden are utilizing it even more than they would have in the past. I think that's probably the biggest key, is just being in control of the change. Because that's the biggest thing where you're going to see the biggest hurdles is, with anything, rolling out change is hard but if you can do it well and efficiently and get the right people on board then yeah. You're jamming.

Sarah Nicastro: Awesome. All right Scott. Well, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your experience and insights with us. I really appreciate it.

Scott Lowes: Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome. You can find more by visiting us at https://futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @TheFutureOfFS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS technology by visiting https://www.ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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Let's talk a little bit about operationally what you needed to address to be able to bring the model to life.   Howard Bowland: Oh, okay. It's actually ... I say go to market is the most challenging item, and I know if I talked to my people building the operational side, they'd maybe have a difference point-of-view. The way I think about it a little bit is it's a little more well defined, the operational challenge. We've got a gap in our operational capability that we've got to fill. When you're talking about having to go to market, it's a little softer about exactly what's required and the skills, and how do you develop the people? How do you reach the right customer? It's a little less well defined. That's why I see the go to market as the bigger challenge. And you're talking about compensation or salespeople, and that's always complicated as well. Are you motivating the right behavior? It's one thing, as you pointed out, if everything was sold as a service, then that would be simple, but because we've got different offerings as well different business models.   Howard Bowland: On the operational side, what we're able to leverage is a lot of core building blocks of Schneider Electric service. The ability for field service, the organization itself, the digital connections into that infrastructure and the data lake that monitors that. We have connected service hubs around the globe that are able to roll a truck on the basis of some outage, for example. Putting together that ability to monitor the infrastructure and make sure it's running. We had to shift, also, the metering, the measuring, of what is the consumption that we're going to bill the customer for, so that required a bit of development and a bit discovery about who does what in Schneider. Some good building blocks, but then, as we try to connect, well, we need something different to fill in this piece, and it was quite a challenge navigating who is the person that can give approval to our person to get that piece of data?   Howard Bowland: There's quite a lot of navigating, finding the owners of different pieces of capability. I'm not saying connecting the capability was easy afterwards, but it was as significant piece to find, who owns what. We've got good service capability. We can make a call, go visit a customer, fix something, replace something, install something. All those basic capabilities are in place. It's about putting them in the right stack and connecting them now to a control tower that understands where everything is operating. A big shift for one of our first customers was getting thousands of alarms on new infrastructure that was running hot in places they didn't know, and so having us come and just simply take control of that and eliminate the alarms and identify the devices that are in danger of not working properly because they're environments were wrong was a really big, important improvement.   Howard Bowland: That capability to do that actually more or less exists. We've added that customer success management and a layer of advisory and evaluating pieces that. We've got some software or analytics developed with Mossrake to enable us to do metering, billing. Converting those readings into actual variable invoices for customers is itself a challenge, which we get done. So if I talk to my operations manager for this piece, she will say, "There's a lot of ... It won't really scale. We need a system-based solution," so we're ... Again, it's this agile method. We're making this thing work. The customer sees a good outcome. Inside, we've got people running around on treadmills, but we'll replace that with systems and automation and so on at the right times.   Howard Bowland: It's just keeping ahead of that curve. That makes it an affordable way to develop it. If we tried to develop all the capability and have it readied and put in place so that we could cut the ribbon it, it would be a much more challenging assignment to get the investment for it. That's a bit of a summary.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and I almost wonder if, going back to some of the common challenges I hear of others struggling with, I wonder if there is more of the: Let's build it, then we'll develop the go to market, right? It's a delicate balance in the sense of you can't go out there selling outcomes you can't deliver on, right, so you have to be sure of that, but I think it's also nice in terms of how it can snowball your success, right? If we get the go to market right, find the right people, have the right conversations, and give them a good experience however that needs to happen, right, then we're getting success, and we build on that success, and then we build out the backend of everything. Yeah, that makes sense.   Howard Bowland: That's, again, why you have to have this ... It's really useful to have this passionate group of explorers, adventurers who are willing to do the painful thing on the inside to make this a success. Then we can develop the ... We can take that pain away internally over a bit longer period of time. But also talked earlier about the idea that we need to start with that MVP, the minimum product that can be useful, because building something that's ... If it took too long to build something that was more material, it may be we wouldn't get there. But, ultimately, the opportunity of ... Shifting this business model to other parts of the technology set is quite a logical extension, yeah.   Sarah Nicastro: Howard, you've talked about agile a lot and how important it was here to have the success you've had. How is it possible, though? What would you say are the keys to doing this in an agile manner?   Howard Bowland: Okay, I think you have to have a core group of competents, I guess. For us, that was mainly Mossrake and maybe a little bit internally. You could do it internally, but you'd probably have to stand up a few people that knew what they were doing. Then, getting people to enlist on the vision, the journey, and be ... You could simply assign agile people in an agile way to the team and say, "Your job is X or Y," but we really were defining a lot as we went, and so that wasn't itself even perhaps quite possible. Having people that are really excited about what we're trying to achieve and are willing to give that discretionary effort ... I had people, yes, I'd assigned, carving out some of their time, and other people who were willing to do it on top of their main job and nobody's giving them a relief from their main job.   Howard Bowland: They wanted to do that. Their desire to want to contribute and be part of it was really, really important. I think good clarity around not defining too much to do, some knowledge that gives us confidence that we know, generally, the direction, but we're going to go a piece at a time, and having people who are highly enthusiastic and agile and are invigorated by the vision I think are key ingredients to that. Then celebrating a bit of success, we obviously were making progress as we went through. That always helps the next sprint, if you've achieved something.   Howard Bowland: One other point I wanted to make: wouldn't underestimate how important it is, and I've talked about this, the importance of not taking no as the answer. So many times, Scott will attest to this, went out and said, "Can we access to that data? Can we do this?" "No." You've got to find the person that can say yes and get support. You could easily have stopped at various points because it looked like it wasn't going to be possible to do what we wanted to do. It was some incident contacts that I'd personally made when I traveled that turned out to be people that were critical, and it was just a little bit of luck that I'd bumped into them, and a bit of tenacity, as Scott points out, to make sure you can continue to look for the way.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I'll tell you a funny story. My husband, one time, we were in the car, I don't know what made me ask this question. It's one of those questions a wife should never ask her husband, but I said, "Hey, babe, if you had to describe me in one word, what would it be?" Right? There's no right answer. You know that it's just ... It was a complete trap, but he said, "Tenacious."   Howard Bowland: I agree. Scott first coined this for me, I think, but tenacity, for me, is the balance between ... It's not stubbornness, which says, "I'm not going to shift from my position no matter what you say." It's actually about, "I've got a strong point-of-view about why this is my position, and I can be convinced when the facts bring that to bear," but getting through what can be a pretty challenging time, it's an important attribute, for sure, Sarah.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I always say I don't mind if the answer isn't what I want it to be as long as I feel like I've fully stated my case or have been heard, right? That's ... Okay, so on the agile topic, Scott, what would you add in terms of for folks looking to do this in an agile way? Any other keys to that that you would add to what Howard mentioned?   Scott Weller: I think the software industry has now embraced agile for so many years that it's not seen as a random walk. Even in this case, applied to a different kind of problem, agile doesn't mean just winging it. You have to have a sense of where you're trying to get to. You have to have a fundamental vision and a belief, as Howard mentioned, and then that guides you. Even though, on any given day, you might be working on pricing, or you might be working on a revised channel program, which itself takes several steps to mature through, but you know where you're going. It's just a matter of accepting that you won't have a completely finished product on day one. You've already stated that. You've got a minimum product. That's going to be good enough to have a conversation with the customer about ... And even sell to them, in a pilot sense.   Scott Weller: And customers, just like you said you might want to come along as an adventurer next time Howard does this, there are customers who want to be part of that too. They're quite excited about being pilot customer number one or at least in a pilot program because they themselves are that kind of person, that kind of mindset. It is a bit of luck, finding the right people on your team, finding the right consulting partner, or finding the right first or second customer, but, really, those are the things that you can never count on. They do happen, but, really, having the strength of a great vision is so key to this, and then being willing to learn along the way. That, I would say, is the second secret to success.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's you know your objective. You just don't know every step you're going to take to get there, right?   Scott Weller: Right.   Sarah Nicastro: So I think, as a mindset, just in life, that concept prohibits so many people from moving in a direction, right? They want to see the whole map of not just where they're getting there, and then, if you don't have that, you just stay stuck, right? I think it makes sense to go about it that way, especially because, on these journeys, there's so much to learn, so the more up-front work you put into doing the way you think you need to do it, and then you start doing it and realize you weren't quite right, then you're out all of that time and effort, rather than, to some degree, learning as you go along.   Sarah Nicastro: That being said, I ... Sorry, Howard, we're you going to say something?   Howard Bowland: A little anecdote around enlisting people. I remember, as we're going through this process, here at Schneider, we have a very good intern and graduate program, so I was able to pick a few people. People, in fact, working in my organization wanted to be part of it. I was at a town hall. We have these town halls every quarter. Pre-COVID, of course, we're doing those face to face and had an audience of people. I was thanking people as we were making some progress on this journey, and I named a few people and thanked them. Even Ben, who's on the call here, was one of those.   Howard Bowland: Then, in the second row, there was this couple of interns there that I could see their faces drop because I hadn't mentioned their names, and they'd worked on the project a little bit. So this triggered in me, "Oh, yes, of course, there's also X and Y," and their faces lit up. It just triggered for me how excited they were about working on something innovative. They were interns and graduates that had just joined this company, and that kind of journey was really a big motivator for them.   Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Yeah. It's a good point, too, on acknowledging the progress and the hard work, right, especially, to your point, in the early phase of this when everyone's going above and beyond to chip into this new mission. You want to let know you appreciate that sacrifice and that extra time and all of those things.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay, we said this a little bit earlier, but this was done in a way within your region that it was almost like a pilot for Schneider Electric, right? It can be adopted by other regions, globally, et cetera. I think, though, I want to talk about that concept in the sense of why that approach may work better for other organizations than trying to do a global, wholesale shift.   Sarah Nicastro: Then I think it makes me think of the agile conversation in the sense of the criticality of documentation, right? I would think one of the things that makes the agile approach work is keeping such good track of: Here's what we did. Here's what we learned. We're going to incorporate this. Now here's what we did. Here's what we learned. Right, it's you're doing that for the purpose of being successful in your region, but you're also doing it with the intent of documenting this so that it's replicable across the business. Talk to me a little bit about the idea of doing this with it in mind that it can be done across Schneider, not just in a specific region.   Howard Bowland: I'll go first. Yeah, quite right. What was interesting ... First of all, I was able to secure some funding globally. As part of that, of course, I felt that it was important that this be repeatable and we document our journey, as well, as you say, to make ourselves successful. That with important to do. As we went on this journey as well, we, I'd say, strengthened our existing process documentation for just our regular bricks of service capability. We were able to leverage on some of that, but actually just discover that, in fact, that wasn't as probably robust as it should be as well, so able to add to that.   Howard Bowland: As part of this journey, there was a systematic approach to building out the blueprint for how to do this and document that, and that was a key part of what Mossrake brought to us, what our team worked on, and we've created that repository of documentation and learnings and insights, as well as what's in paper, it's actually in writing as well, which has been really useful to keep us on track and will be useful as other regions of Schneider, for example, might want to replicate what we're doing here.   Scott Weller: Yeah, as you say, one of the key deliverables from our work together, Howard, is this operational blueprint, which covers every aspect of the value chain, and then, on top of that, the operational description for actually how the run what's effectively an engagement with the customer. As a service ends up looking like a consulting engagement that just doesn't necessarily have an endpoint. All of that is what, in our conversations with other countries and regions within Schneider, that's the foundational element is that operational blueprint. By the way, when we talk with them, we never characterize this as, "Okay, it's a slam dunk. Now that Howard's done this in Pacific zone, you can do this anywhere. It's just a couple of weeks, and you can go start selling."   Sarah Nicastro: Sure.   Scott Weller: It's quite involved, and every company is different. Schneider tends to be a lot more, I would say, operationally independent. Of course, they share systems and so on, but the regions and the countries tend to have a lot more autonomy than we see in other multinationals, so that just means that there's a bit more work to land something like this because the nuances, the difference in processes, the different tools and so on that have to be integrated to make this work is a little bit of a restart. Certainly not a true restart, but there are the nuances that have to be accommodated.   Sarah Nicastro: Scott, is this approach of starting in a region and almost using that as a pilot for a multinational, is that a common approach? Is it a suggested approach? You, as the person that does this with other businesses, what is your take on that as others are listening?   Scott Weller: Well, it's certainly the way we did it back at HP, and we do it. We've done it with Howard, and we're working on a couple of other clients as well. There is ... I would say the beauty of this is being able to do this in a microcosm, where if, God forbid, it were to fail for some reason, the risk to company is small. The reputational risk, primarily, but even operationally, even financially, the risk is very small. It lets you learn, because inevitably you're going to learn. No two companies are the same. No two as-a-service offers are going to be the same, so you have to allow for that.   Scott Weller: Being able to de-risk it and particularly a lot of companies, when they think about moving to this model, they start thinking about, well, stakeholder perception. If you think about yourself as a dividends-value company, moving to a model like this may really upset stakeholder perception, so it gives you time to succeed, learn, and really be planful about how you want to pivot the company around something like this in a way that you can talk to your stakeholders about, you can talk to your employees about. It's really, we think, is really the right approach.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that makes sense. Howard, what would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned in leading this transformation at Schneider?   Howard Bowland: Yeah, I think it's something we talked a bit about earlier. I think it's the change, the management of change. Don't underestimate how persistent you need to be, the importance of clarity in the vision on bringing people on that journey. Yes, there's particular challenges around the go-to-market or the sales process or quoting or operationally, but that management of change across the stakeholder group, across the people that you need to do something is really critical. Understanding ... It's not, as we know, it's not one-shot thing about explaining it one time or ... It's about making, particularly, when we're going through developing MVP, making smaller achievements over time, it's continuing to bring people on that journey of change and have a coherent program of work around that. That, for me, is the most critical thing to get right. It leads to identifying what I've said earlier about getting the right customers with the right sales conversation.   Howard Bowland: If I think about transferring this to, just to comment on that, another geography of Schneider, to me, actually, the operational capability is the most easily translatable. All the bricks that we've got here largely are elsewhere. In fact, I think you could almost run it out of a more central operation. We, for example, run here out of Sydney, and we have customer sites in New Zealand and all over Australia, or they could be in another country. Well, they are in another country, New Zealand, right? But the customer interface, the customer success management, the things that Scott talked about, about the advisory, the engagement with the customer, obviously the pre-sales and sales engagements are the really critical pieces that you've got to have localized.   Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Yeah, that makes sense, and I think part of that change management puzzle is the volunteers you had, right? As you have people from the business who are opting in and doing it because they think it's a great idea, a cool journey, a new challenge, whatever their personal reason is, then others see that, right, and then they see them excited about where you're going, and that builds. I think that those two things help each other out, right? You build some traction through the folks that are involved and engaged.   Howard Bowland: That's not to say that there aren't a few stakeholder groups or individuals which we haven't quite converted. What happens, of course, is you get the passive resistance or the undermining that you can't see. We talked about it earlier. If somebody is much more comfortable with positioning their traditional offer, they'll find every way they can to do that, even if the best thing for the customer and for us is actually a different engagement. Then the payoff for the company ... The payoff for the customer is clear, I think, although that's often more difficult to translate to them. The payoff, obviously, is that we know ... Instead of selling the customer some assets and getting 10 or 20% of that value in related services, you're talking about five- to 10-year engagement where the customer is probably going to pay 1.5 to 2X for that because they're getting the value out if it. Scott alluded to this a little bit, so at the beginning, it's a challenge, but the flywheel takes over as you scale, and it creates a lot of good things.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, it goes back to the point that's been made a few times about just being persistent and tenacious, right? Some of this is just people need to see it in action, and it takes time to convert the people most resistant to the task underway. You just have to keep at it and not be easily deterred from the mission. Okay, last question that I want to ask both of you, is ... Scott, I'm going to start with you. What do you think the future of outcome-based service holds?   Scott Weller: Well, in many ways, we're at the beginning. When you can only point to a few of the bigger companies doing this, as I mentioned at the beginning, that are well known, when so many products that are part of our everyday lives on the business side, as well as the consumer side, are still transactionally bought, transactionally dispose of, we're not really focused on the value that they create in our lives. We're focused on, okay, how do I get this thing? How do I take care of it? Even our phones require us to pay attention to updates and so on, but I think the world is going to move to this model, and you see it in the strangest places sometimes. But I think every technology-product company is going to eventually move to a model like this. It's just a matter of time.   Sarah Nicastro: What's a strange example?   Scott Weller: Well, I'm still surprised that people are willing to let their car leave their driveway and let somebody borrow it for a few hours for a fee. To my mind, that's very strange, but that was the last one I saw. Apparently, that company is doing very well.   Sarah Nicastro: Interesting. Okay, yeah, it is very interesting to see how it pops up and where it pops up. I agree that it is really the early stages. I think the fact that this is a topic of conversation among so many organizations in service right now is indicative of where we're headed, but, to your point, there are a lot of people on the journey. There are not a lot of people that have really crossed a finish line yet, right? I think there's a lot of learnings and a lot of growth to come.   Scott Weller: Yeah, that's right. I think that one of the biggest inhibitors is a question of identity. If you've grown up in a company that's product ... We call it product first or product leaning, your whole identity is about we make cool stuff. That is, I think, probably the biggest challenge, the biggest, let's say, inhibitor to moving to a model like this, where you've got, really super-smart engineers now feeling like they're part of the supply chain. They're not the forefront of the model anymore.   Sarah Nicastro: Right.   Scott Weller: But I think, somehow, we have to come to grips with that because the human element of all this, both on, as I said, on the supplier and the customer side, have to be addressed. We can't pretend it's not there. In any case, yeah, as you say, it's the future.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, it's interesting because it shifts from, "We make cool stuff," to, "We help people," right?   Scott Weller: Right.   Sarah Nicastro: Then, when you think about what that means in terms of all of these layers of change we've talked about today, but particularly in terms of skillset and those interpersonal skills and being able to interface with customers, being able to move upline in customer engagements, being able to nurture longstanding relationships. All of those things, it is interesting to see how you start to skew to those things becoming increasingly important, and then there was probably a whole other conversation of: How readily available are those skills compared to some of the traditional skills that we would be talking about having as a priority within either product manufacturers or even service organizations, right?   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, it's a very interesting conversation. Okay, Howard, what do you think the future of outcome-based service holds?   Howard Bowland: As the demand grows, the focus on developing the technology will be focused around making it as-a-service capable already and less about color and shape and lights and customer user features. Making cool things that have got great features would be replaced by, well, it doesn't matter if it's a black brick in the corner if it's got all the attributes we need to make it scalable, for example, and accessible and so on. The product design and development that has good outcomes as its first thought would change the way they evolve. It would change the way you manufacture, potentially, and the costs of those things, the consumption of products, which is the second one, which I think is the sustainability push. While you're making products that perhaps are designed for as a service, they consume less on their input side because a lot of the smarts is maybe remote and so on, and you might have built them now to have a variable capacity that you didn't do before.   Howard Bowland: You also move to, "Actually, you don't have to worry about the life cycle, Mr. Customer." You're no longer over-provisioning it. You're going to get what you need just when you need it, and we're going to take care of it when the time is right, so cradle to cradle. We're certainly seeing, here in this zone, the very strong shift towards ... It's not just revenue growth, cost reduction, risk reduction, it's sustainability as well. I think it's going to help deliver on that sustainability promise for customer. That would be the two things.   Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely, good. Well, thank you, Howard and Scott, for being here with me and sharing the story. It's very interesting story, would love to have you back maybe in six months or so and hear what else you've learned because you guys are on that agile path, and you've learned a lot so far and are having great success, but I know you'll continue looking for those learnings and incorporating them into what you're doing. Thank you for being here and sharing, really appreciate it.   Scott Weller: Thank you.   Howard Bowland: Yeah, thanks for the opportunity.   Sarah Nicastro: You can learn more by visiting us at FutureofFieldService.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @TheFutureofFS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more by visiting IFS.com. As always, thank you for listening. </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-12 col-lg-3"> <div class="form-wrapper"> <h2 class="form-tittle">Stay Connected</h2> <iframe src="https://info.ifs.com/GM-CP-CU-2012-12-FoFS-Newsletter_IFrame.html">

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Schneider Electric’s Journey To As-A-Service: Part 1

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Schneider Electric’s Journey To As-A-Service: Part 1

Howard Bowland, VP Field Services Australia at Schneider Electric and Scott Weller, Partner at Mossrake, talk with Sarah about how various industries are adopting as-a-service models, Schneider’s introduction of its as-a-service value proposition, and how critical your go-to-market is in this journey.   Click on the link for more information on Schneider Electric’s innovative aaS offer EcoStruxure Outcomes: Secure Power as a Service - <a href="http://www.se.com/au/outcomes">www.se.com/au/outcomes</a>   Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host Sarah Nicastro. Today, I'm talking with Schneider Electric, and talking to them about their journey to delivering outcomes. I'm joined today by Howard Bowland, vice president of field services Australia for Schneider Electric, and Scott Weller, who is a Mossrake partner. Howard and Scott, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.   Scott Weller: Thanks, Sarah.   Sarah Nicastro: Thank you for joining me. We have a really cool story to talk through today and share some insights on how Schneider in Australia has really not only embraced but made some significant strides in the journey to outcomes-based service. Before we dig into the topic at hand, let's just start with some introductions. Tell us a little bit about yourselves, your backgrounds, current roles. Howard, I'm going to start with you.   Howard Bowland: I’m Howard Bowland, running the field services business here in what we call the Pacific zone, actually, which is a slightly romantic name for Australia plus New Zealand, I think because it includes some of the Pacific islands. I mention that because some of our customers for this offering now actually have offices across international boundaries, and this actually is an interesting solution for them as well.   Howard Bowland: My history is almost three years with Schneider Electric now, having joined from the IT industry. About 20 years in the IT industry, working for Hewlett-Packard in its various forms, and most recently with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise before joining Schneider.   Sarah Nicastro: Excellent. All right, great, and Scott, can you tell us about yourself?   Scott Weller: Sure, Scott Weller. I'm a partner with Mossrake Group, and we focus on technology-product companies that are looking to grow through services. These days, a lot of the conversations do go to as-a-service models and consumption and so on. Previously, I ran the global support services business in Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. During that time, I built a multi-billion-dollar IT as a service business that's now known as GreenLake.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay, excellent. Well, thank you both for being here. I'm excited to talk about what you're working on at Schneider. It's interesting to me you both have experience at HP, and this is a theme that comes up a lot in the conversations I'm having with service leaders across a wide variety of industries is looking to the IT space for inspiration in how to adopt some of these ways of thinking, mindset, culture, model, delivery, et cetera. What are your thoughts on that? What do you feel like you brought from those experiences, or how do you see that parallel? Howard, I'll start with you again.   Howard Bowland: Sure, it's interesting. I think there's a strong probably view that the as-a-service model was born out of cloud economics and cloud computing and so on in the IT industry. Lots of good innovation came from there, and it's very widely known, the big cloud providers, Google and Amazon and so on. But, really, it didn't really start there, but that speed of change in the IT industry, those innovations around software, and the impetus to really have the change the business model there because of commoditization probably accelerated the shift towards as a service and servitization in that industry. Really, it comes from much earlier than that, I think. Although, my first exposure was really working with Scott in HP around that. Scott, I think that's how I came to get really deeply involved in it.   Sarah Nicastro: Scott, what are your thoughts on what different industries are learning from the experiences that the IT space has had?   Scott Weller: The idea isn't really new. If you look at Otis, the elevator company, almost since their inception, you couldn't buy an elevator. You would only pay for it by the passenger car move or lift. Caterpillar, their largest earth-movers, you can't buy them. You pay by the load. Nowadays, like Rolls Royce, jet engines, you can acquire them, air quotes, acquire them through paying by propulsion hour. Xerox, HP have had print pay by the page for a long time. So really not a new idea. What I think is that any time you have a long-lived asset that may require specialty skills to maintain, it's a perfect setup for pay-as-you-go pricing. Then, if you think about a business that thinks of these assets as critical but not core, it's not the business they're in. It's not a core competency. It's very clear that this is a perfect setup for as-a-service models and really a shift to a focus to outcomes.   Sarah Nicastro: Yes, and we're going to talk a little bit about the difference there, right? We'll get into that, but that makes sense. I'm curious, Howard, if you can talk a little bit about ... So the program within Schneider is called EcoStruxure, okay, so tell us a little bit about the premise of EcoStruxure and how the idea to bring this concept to Schneider originated. How did it go over initially?   Howard Bowland: So EcoStruxure in Schneider is really the framework for a lot of the digital enablement of the kind of infrastructure that Schneider Electric provides to customers and assist them in getting value. The evolution of that was offering EcoStruxured outcomes, which is about using that technology to provide the customer an outcome-based service contract rather than the traditional approach to it.   Howard Bowland: Coming into this company, a slightly different segment from the IT industry, I was coming from having worked with the IT industry in developing that cloud economics for IT assets and for really operationalizing that in the Asian Pacific theater. But as I came into Schneider Electric, again, it's a technology company, much like other technology companies, like HP, has software and services. But there really wasn't anything currently in place around providing customer greater value over and above the traditional asset-ownership model. It first started with the thought of, "Could we do this? Why couldn't we do this with the kind of assets that the customers are acquiring from Schneider Electric?"   Howard Bowland: Floated that idea here locally. Started talking to Scott about it, and we felt that there was a really big opportunity to start with the secure power technology. Talked to a few people inside Schneider, and, as usually happens when you start talking about outcomes and as a service, people confuse, really, the kind of offering that you're making. It's not ... There's a place for subscription, and there's a place for leasing. There's a place for asset ownership, but they're not the same thing. I remember talking to a few people, go, "Oh, yes, we've tried that. That doesn't really work," or, "You'll never get anyone to sign a lease," and all sorts of interesting comments about what perhaps had been tried in the past.   Howard Bowland: I think a couple of things were happening at this point for me and for the company. Schneider Electric is on a journey of transformation itself and the way it's creating value for customers, so the time was right for the company to be considering innovation as well. I arrived at a time when proposing the idea again, perhaps, or in a slightly different way was actually well received by senior folks in the company, and I was able to get some investment to pilot the idea here locally and to develop the offer.   Howard Bowland: It was interesting. I do recall talking to a couple of people, really being told that, A, you couldn't. We've tried it, and, B, anyway, you won't get people to agree to what you want to do. But, actually, it's not been the case, not been my experience. It's been well supported and not without its challenges, but that was the experience bringing the idea forward here.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay, and Scott, tell us a little bit about Mossrake's role in this project and servitizing the assets at Schneider.   Scott Weller: Well, we came into this opportunity with Howard having all that experience back at HPE, so we knew, certainly lived through, the trenches of trying to introduce a new business model like this into a large, multinational company. Of course, we started with a look at the market but then quickly turned to an internal view: the culture, the appetite for innovation, the process for innovation, looking at the full value chain from sales channel, delivery operations. Came to the conclusion, as Howard mentioned, that there's a huge opportunity for the company. Really, as far as we can tell even now, no one is doing this but Schneider Electric. So we built a plan, and the plan was really based on the premise of agile development, so minimum viable product to find, looking at how could we pilot this and learn as we go.   Scott Weller: Of course, over about 18 months, we got through that process and got it to general availability, but it was ... There's a piece of this is accepting that you don't know everything at the beginning. Howard and team were great to work with and had the same vision and the same attitude toward the process. Yeah, I think it's been a great success.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, it's interesting to me. We're interviewing people on this podcast all the time that are working toward the goals of servitizing and delivering more outcomes, and what exactly does that mean? What are all of the outcomes you could work to deliver to your customers, et cetera? I think the ... I wouldn't say that I don't know of anyone that's had help from a consulting firm or outside expertise. I would say it hasn't been regularly discussed, and it's just making me think of the value that would exist in bringing an outside perspective into the organization.   Sarah Nicastro: I know, in this situation, you knew each other and had worked together previously, but one of the very common challenges that I pick up on in these conversations is just how difficult it can be to see the big picture when you're really in the day to day. It's just interesting to me, the role Mossrake has played in terms of just bringing a fresh perspective. You obviously have experience doing this, but also coming into a business and maybe seeing things or uncovering opportunities that it would be difficult to do when you're on the inside, if that makes sense. Okay.   Scott Weller: I could add I have to give a lot of credit to Howard. It takes a lot of stamina, tenacity, to really navigate this into a big company, especially if you're sitting in a region. You're not at worldwide, where a lot of the innovation is expected to come from. Yeah, and I was say, not to give ourselves too much credit, but I would say there are a lot of consultancies in the world, and the big names are there. It's really difficult to find a company, even among the majors, that have actually done this. They can talk about it. They're smart people. Taking nothing away from them, but finding a group of people who've actually done this across industry is very difficult, so I would say that's a key success factor in having this work.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, so you bring up a really good point, Scott. Howard, I'm just curious. That tenacity that Scott mentioned, it's a really good point. I've had a number of conversations with folks. We often talk about the fact that, to really embrace servitization, it needs to be a company-wide objective, right? It is very, very difficult to be in service and be the one evangelizing the value of servitization. I've had conversations with a number of people that are in that position that have ... I don't want to say given up, but they're incredibly frustrated, and I think ... I'm sure there's many, many elements here, right? Obviously, the willingness of leadership to listen, to hear out ideas, et cetera, that's a sliding scale, I'm sure, right?   Sarah Nicastro: Some of these people maybe are in a situation where it's just not happening, but Scott's point made me just want to ask you: What made you ... How did you find that tenacity? What made you listen to some of the, "No, we've tried that. It didn't work," and just keep pushing, instead of saying, "Okay"?   Howard Bowland: The easier path probably would have been to accept that, I guess. I think a couple of things. Yes, definitely a lot of energy required managing stakeholders and finding a pathway. It's important, if I go back, why did I have that energy? I think one of the reasons was on the back of success I'd previously had with Scott and with Hewlett-Packard in changing the business model inside that company. To be honest, it was difficult at the beginning there. We had almost a lost year, or I did, in terms of finding the way through, but, in the end, it was very successful. I understood it was challenging. Understood, though, it could be done. And trying to draw the parallels to see is this vision really doable here? Believed it was.   Howard Bowland: I had the advantage, I guess, of my upstream management being open to discussions and then ultimately finding a global leader that was really passionate about it as well to help the funding. But there's a lot of people between that person and getting it done, and that's where it takes a lot of energy. You're right. In large, particularly in large technology companies, there's obviously the traditional product sales method, and there's a lot invested in that. That's still an important model, so managing in a non-threatening way how this can be an additive offering that is really customer driven, and the ability to bring in ...   Howard Bowland: You talked about consultants, and some people might think of consultants as advisors that can write a report, for example, but, really, the Mossrake team and Scott were in the trenches actually developing the offer. What it gave me the opportunity to do was to have confidence that we had done it, that we had people that knew how we could navigate it in a new location, and then to bring my own people on that journey and see and learn from being part of that. What I found was that people wanted to join the team and wanted to be part of it because they saw the excitement through in the innovation, the learning opportunity to do something really quite new. And introducing a new business model into a company of any kind is even more challenging than you think even if you've done it before.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so let's talk a little bit. Howard, can you summarize the value proposition of the offering and let's just talk a little bit about ... We alluded earlier to some of the perhaps ... Maybe not misconceptions, but interchanging of terms that can cause some confusion when you're talking about this evolution.   Howard Bowland: Yeah. Yeah, okay, thanks, Sarah. Yeah, often people will use a finance company and call something as a service or a subscription as a service, and that tends to muddy the water a bit about what really does it mean to be consuming something as a service or getting an outcome for your service contractors, opposed to piling together the hardware, software, and services and just financing that.   Howard Bowland: There's a number of key value points, I guess, for the offering. What we found is that any given customer might resonate strongly with a few of those, some with all of them, but it varies across customers. Firstly, there's an OpEx orientation. There is the ability to change the way that people spend their capital into possibly an OpEx classification, but in a time-based way rather than committing their capital budgets up front, and then they're able to use that released capital to do other things with. It lines up their costs with their business model, particularly, or their needs. The way they get billed and charged is in accordance with their business model, and so it can line up the costs for them of running things like secure power to the way that their business model runs. That's a benefit for them as well.   Howard Bowland: It's much more scalable. One of the big ... And sustainable. What I mean is that, as in IT, we found that there's a lot of over-provisioning going on in technology because people are either not experienced in sizing it or don't have the time to size it right or don't want to take the risk because changing it is really difficult. So you end up with over-provisioning and therefore over-consumption of things that is unnecessary. You end up with possibly a less-scalable model. Through an outcome-based orientation, as the needs change for the customers, so we can change the provisioning of the technology to match those needs in a much better way   Howard Bowland: Another big point we found was that customers were consuming a lot of their own resources in managing this asset. It seems to be complex. We saw that there were two classes, broadly. Customers where having critical support for their power was really important but not their core business. They did something else. They're a healthcare agency, for example, or a manufacturing company. They really needed it, but they didn't really want to be bothered with the technology. Then there's another class where it's really core to what they do.   Howard Bowland: In that first category, customers were consuming a lot of their internal resources looking after this infrastructure and offloading that burden to somebody is actually a better place to do it because we understand the technology better with a really important piece. That helps them and we see that doubling down here in this theater, anyway, the ability to get talented people in the market is really challenged because of the growth that's coming in places like data centers and so on.   Howard Bowland: Operational risk is reduced because the aging of the assets and the life-cycle management are no longer the problem of the customer. It's something that we manage. With a digital connection and analytics, we're able to do that in a much more effective way. Of course, there's the resilience of the infrastructure because we're monitoring it and managing it on a 24-by-seven basis. They're the core pieces, and one or other of those would tend to resonate more strongly with a customer than another, but, in the end, they all go to making a strong value proposition that resonates.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay. You said earlier this isn't for everyone, right? This isn't a situation where Schneider is deciding to only offer the outcomes-based model. You are adding it in addition to. Talk a little bit about why that is and the need to be able to meet the needs of customers that are on either side of that equation.   Howard Bowland: It's the case that there are customers who obviously manage their capital, their balance sheets, and so on in different ways. So owning capital items or not, having assets or not is sometimes a business decision for the customer which is unrelated to IT or unrelated to secure power, and so there are reasons why that's what they will want to do. They will want to perhaps be close to their infrastructure and manage and operate it themselves, and so there's a need there. The go-to-market model itself is the ability to reach a large number of customers. We have an indirect go-to-market model. There are customers that prefer to transact in different ways.   Howard Bowland: The traditional capital asset-ownership model is still alive and well and still fits a portion of the market. As customers are looking to maybe shift their risks to get greater value, to get probably a bit more mature in understanding how their business model works, would be looking to move to this outcome-based model. There's going to be horses for course there: size and importance of these assets to customers. There's always going to be smaller footprints that perhaps it doesn't make sense to do it with, and there will be customers that are major, hyper-scale customers, for example, that will always want to have a much different relationship there. There are a few thoughts from me on that.   Sarah Nicastro: Now, is it more complex for you to, as an organization, offer both choices than it would be to just pick a path, or does it not so much matter once you've made the transition to both, phasing one out would be neither here nor there?   Howard Bowland: Yeah, I think my view is that there's no added complexity by having both models available. The complexity perhaps comes in how the go-to-market model works. If you decide you're going to have an outcome-based model that's asset free for the customer, that has a whole lot of value-adding services, we need to be able to manage and record and deliver against, that's a piece of complexity that, once you've decided to go there, you have to solve for.   Howard Bowland: Whether or not you continue to have an asset model for capital purchase doesn't really add to that complexity a whole lot except perhaps to say that you could redesign your entire supply chains and manufacturing processes just for as-a-service model, and that perhaps would ultimately simplify things.   Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.   Howard Bowland: In fact, the opportunity with something like an outcome-based offering is to start thinking about building your products so that they're fit for, designed for servitization, and this could mean you need fewer customer-facing features, and you could create a lower cost, potentially, or something that's more suited to this flexible outcome orientation.   Howard Bowland: In some ways, there isn't extra complexity once you've decided to go that way, but probably you could ultimately simplify things. That sounds a bit contradictory, but that how I think about it.   Sarah Nicastro: No, it makes sense, and I think what made me ask that question ... I was just recently recorded a podcast with Phillips and was talking in a similar vein about the fact that they too are offering outcomes, but they have not shied away from their traditional business model. It's similar to what you were saying, which is they want to offer the choice, and that's why I was asking that. I don't know in their situation, I don't think that I asked if he envisions everyone migrating at some point to the outcomes model. You just said that you'll always have customers that you feel keep the capital model.   Sarah Nicastro: It's just interesting, I think, to talk about these things because, again, I think organizations that are looking at how to progress through this journey maybe look at it as an either or, not necessarily a both, right? Just looking at these two examples, yourselves and Phillips, those two examples of people that really is leading with the customer-centricity of choice, right? You're basically saying, "Great. If you want this, we can do this. If you want this, we can do this." It's just an interesting aspect of ... It doesn't have to be you put all your eggs in one basket.   Howard Bowland: Yeah, I think I'd be interested in Scott's view. If I just maybe reflect a little bit more on that comment that it's very challenging to switch the business model to as a service and let go of your traditional model because you need to obviously feed the machine. At some point, I do think, yes, a company could make a decision, so this is not speaking for Schneider, but you could make a decision to say, "Our future is in as-a-service consumption-based models, and we're going to retire the traditional capital way of doing things. Those customers that need that, we feel that there's a bigger opportunity to stay here. It's going to simplify our operations. It's going to simplify our go to market," because it's true.   Howard Bowland: As we go out there, and we think about our customers and what they need, we have to make a choice about how do we position the best value to them as we go option A or option B. If you offer everything to a customer as a big menu, it can become confusing, so it's important to be clear about what you think the best value is for them. There's definitely complexity, and we found that as well on this journey of migrating our go-to-market model to understanding how compensation works, how people are motivated, their own skillset, what their knowledge base is, and shifting to talking to ...   Howard Bowland: You need to talk to a different part of the customer about this proposition. The traditional people you engage with aren't necessarily the people that make this decision. Sometimes you're displacing somebody's job because, actually, in a sense, you may be moving work from them to us. Scott, I'd be interested in your view, though, on that, please.   Scott Weller: Yeah, I think you said it well, Howard. The reality is this new business model changes your company. It also changes your customer. They have to think differently about who Schneider is, how to interact with you, how their operation marries up to you as a supplier, and so all those changes are when really they're onboarding in the midst of changing to what looks like a pretty straightforward shift to paying differently for an asset, if you will. Being able to think more in terms of outcomes than managing assets, but it's that wholesale change on both sides that I think is one of the reasons of many, as you mentioned, that companies need to continue, suppliers need to continue providing both ways. The market is mart. Customers are smart. They figure out what they want, and, when the time is right ... And our experience in the past is, when the time is right, they begin to adopt more quickly into this need model.   Sarah Nicastro: Scott, can you talk a little bit about what is involved in developing that new go to market, right? You come in, and you did this at HP, but you come into Schneider, and it's a whole new world, right? What are some of those considerations in developing the go-to-market strategy and the different points that companies need to be aware of examining?   Scott Weller: Well, I like say, and not entirely in jest, that a new model like this into a big, mature business breaks everything, including the go to make, so you can imagine the go to market is one of those places that people are paid very closely aligned to their performance. So you can think of that part of the operation as being highly optimized for the outcome, and now you're asking them to tell very different stories. Maybe they're not stories that they're comfortable telling or you need a different mindset in those roles to tell this new story and have those kinds of customer dialogues, as Howard said, with different people. Instead of maybe someone in procurement or someone on the front lines of operations, now you're talking to somebody in the CFO's office, let's say.   Scott Weller: That's the start of it, so the sales enablement for a different kind of sales operation is a big piece of this. Can't forget the channel implications, particularly companies that are heavily channel oriented. You have a whole set of different issues to resolve, but it really starts with: What is the story; what is the vision; what is the pitch for the offer? Then bringing them through that journey so that they can tell the story, be effective at doing that.   Scott Weller: The sale cycle is completely different, much longer, typically. They have to be accustomed to doing that. If they're more transactional, it's very difficult for those individuals to transition, and so there's just a lot of work involved in bringing the go to market around. What I had to do is build a SWAT force, a global SWAT force, because you couldn't rely on bringing people along fast enough. You had to show and do and bring people along that way, figure out who could come along on the journey to this new kind of go to market. In a way, with Howard, we've done a little bit of that, injecting people who, both from our firm and other folks within the organization, to be that SWAT deployment to go after the early deals and bring the rest of the organization along.   Sarah Nicastro: It's almost like train the trainer. You're doing that initial push yourself so that they can see how it's done, and then you can see how they do it and if they're capable of bridging that gap.   Scott Weller: Yes.   Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense, and I want to come back to that, but, real quick, what would you say the ... I know I'm asking you to really generalize here, but what would you say is most important when you shift the conversation from talking to purchasing or operations to the CFO. For companies that are adjusting to having the CFO-type conversations, what have you learned is the key to your best chance of success there?   Scott Weller: I think the appetite to move to a model that doesn't tie up capital is a way into the conversation because capital lock-in, in many cases, not everyone, because there are capital-intensive companies that intend to remain that way, but that a hook for someone in the CFO's office is just to explain to them that this gives them flexibility in an uncertain world. But then, also, to think about it operationally, that their people are focused, perhaps, on the wrong things. Get the people you have focused on things that are actually core to business. Those are really the interesting conversations you can have. Of course, you can have that with someone who is, today, operating the equipment or managing the equipment.   Sarah Nicastro: Sure. What about risk as well, right? I would think that would be another significant aspect of the conversation that would be appealing.   Scott Weller: Well, certainly, in a lot of industrial products, they tend to get sweated. They run longer than they should or they're operating without all the care and keeping that they need. So, yeah, there is definitely a risk element. We would never want to say that their current operations are sub-par or anything like that, but, for sure, having experts keeping an eye on things, making sure that when certain elements or certain entire products really need to be replaced or refurbished or what have you, that that gets done timely, yeah, absolutely, that's a risk element that we can address with an offer like this.   Sarah Nicastro: Okay. All right, and then going back to the SWAT, I think it's a great idea, and we're going to talk in a bit about the fact that, for Schneider, doing this in a region is a really smart approach, right? Because I'm just thinking that SWAT model is something that you couldn't do if you were doing this all at once on a global scale, right? That idea of creating success and then replicating it, versus trying to create massive, wholesale success all at once is important, and we're going to come back to that. But that SWAT idea makes a lot of sense in terms of the specific skill it takes to initiate those different types of discussions, to map and to articulate that value proposition, and then to be able to tailor it to specific customers you're speaking with.   Sarah Nicastro: That's a super-smart idea, versus just saying, "Hey, here's a really important customer, so hey, sales rep that's been selling capital sales for however long, go give this a shot and let us see how it goes," right? I like that point. Howard, in terms of the go to market and adjusting to this new world of conducting business, what other points would you touch on?   Howard Bowland: That's a good point you just made as well. In the early stages, in fact, you want to keep the uneducated or uninitiated salespeople away from the customer conversation until ... Because there's the opportunity to actually spoil the ground by misrepresenting what's happening, for example. The most common thing that gives you a signal that something's going wrong is that the sales guy will say, "Look, the customer wants a capital quote, and he wants your as-a-service quote." Okay, well, straightaway we know you haven't had the real conversation because it's not about getting cheap hardware. That's not ... If you want cheap hardware, this isn't the way to get it. This is getting an outcome, which is more cost effective for all these other business reasons. You're either talking to the wrong person, or you've talked about the wrong things.   Howard Bowland: The go-to-market change is a really important. You do need the specialization, the SWAT, to come and start profiling the customers before you go meet them with the salespeople, and then introduce ... In the early days, at least, have the topic introduced by the specialist to detect whether there's real interest. We've since offered some sales tools and some training and so on that helps the general sales force understand the concept better, helps us profile the customer better, and can start those conversations. But to work them through the pipeline, we need to still have a pretty high degree of specialization.   Sarah Nicastro: Now, just a quick point on that, Howard. Did you find that, again, this is a general question, have you found that you've been comfortable looking to transition to this new strategy with the type of people you had already had on staff, or have you started in recruiting to look for different skillsets?   Howard Bowland: Yeah, so it's a sensitive question, I guess, perhaps it depends who's watching. It's a bit of both. As you look across the existing sales force or the go-to-market people, we can see there are people that can go on the journey of understanding the proposition and be able to articulate in a way. So a small number of people we can highlight in our organization that can go on that journey, and we need to recruit specialist salespeople to support that and to drive that last mile. It's a bit of a combination, and there's definitely people who it's not their core competency to be able to do this, so again, selecting the right customers and preparing them the right way and the resources around that to get scale is important to do.   Sarah Nicastro: Well, and going back to the fact that you're still doing the capital side of the business, right, so the people that don't necessarily want a new challenge don't have to embark on this journey, but, yeah, that makes sense. Not everyone likes change, right? Some people think, "Oh, this is cool. This is new. I want to learn this, and this could be a really interesting opportunity for me to do something different," and other people are going to say, "No, thank you. I'll just keep doing this thing that I like to do."   Howard Bowland: Even the people who say they like change don't really like it. It is a challenge, and so you're right. Some people are definitely happy doing a good job that they've done for a while. Others are really looking for growth in themselves and are excited by the innovation. Now coming back to the notion of the SWAT team and the way we've been successful. You do need high levels of energy and commitment and belief. You've got to, as Scott talked about in his previous experience, believing in what you're doing is important. If we were to move any other geography, you have to have some visionary or somebody who really wants to take on the ownership and the belief to ... Because it will take a fair bit of energy. We've been able to do a lot with what we have, but it also has, as Scott mentioned, it breaks most pieces you touch, and you have to do something to put it back in a different way.   Sarah Nicastro: That's good point, Howard, because, obviously, as you're spearheading this evolution, you're still doing your other, quote, day job, right? A lot of other folks are as well, right? How did you enlist people to help run those things in parallel, right? When you're in that exploratory and design and build phase, you're still doing all of the normal things you're doing while you're also working hard to innovate and build something different. You have Mossrake, and so you have external help. You're committed to it because you're the one with the passion behind it, but how did you bring other people on board to buy in early and be a part of bringing it to life.   Howard Bowland: It's interesting. It was a couple things, I guess. Being able to tap into my own experience, but people that I'd worked with and trusted, enabled me to go find some people in my organization who were willing and enthusiastic but maybe not experienced to put those two things together. Without either of those things, it would have been very difficult to do. At the same time, we took the decision, as we're building out and changing things, documenting them, all the service processes, all the changes, in a structured way, so they could be reused both internally in our operation here, but also it could be translated elsewhere.   Howard Bowland: What I found in talking to people about the vision and the idea was, actually, there were some pretty enthusiastic people in my team or in my organization that really wanted to do something different. I could ... We got them ... It enabled me not to have to build a structure internally that was dedicated to this mission. We could leverage some external resource, use some agile resource, maybe I appointed one full-time person initially, and then we had people ... Actually, I asked them to spend their time on it, and I directed the traffic a bit and freed up their resources, but then we had people volunteering, really to spend discretionary effort on it, and they were excited about what we were doing because it was new and different, and they could see the vision. They saw themselves learning and getting a fabulous professional experience as well, so that's enabled us, this journey over the last 18 months, to use this agile ... Agile doesn't mean ad hoc. It means that you've got, perhaps, people coming and going from team and achieving the things in smaller timeframes.   Howard Bowland: That's really the approach we took that I think ... I'm very proud that the team locally actually has stepped up, the people, to be part of it. Subsequent to that, I've now appointed a digital transformation manager that oversees all the operational capability development, and we've reached out to other parts of Schneider to understand how their system development can now fix some of the manual processes that we've had to develop and so on. So restacking the bricks of Schneider service actually was, in some ways, not the most difficult thing, although it's challenging. I would still, on balance, getting the go-to-market model right, talking to right part of the customer with the right message, that's still the most challenging thing in this business-model change, I would say.   Sarah Nicastro: It makes sense, makes sense.   Howard Bowland: You could have a great offering, right, but if you can't get it to the market, then it doesn't really matter.   Sarah Nicastro: Scott, would you say, based on your experience going through this process with other organizations, do you think those, I don't know, for lack of better term, change agents or the people that you could enlist to help get this off the ground, do you think they're ... Can you usually spot them? Are there commonalities where you can say, "Okay, this person, this person, and this person, let's approach them and see if they want to get on board," or is it just you have to get started and see who shows interest?   Scott Weller: Well, my experience is just that. You know who the adventurers are. Now, not everybody who's excited to go on a journey is really the right person at that time.   Sarah Nicastro: Up for it, yeah.   Scott Weller: Well, they may be up for it, but really not the right person, not the person you need at that moment, but in big companies, adventurers are hard to find. People get pretty siloed, and even I would call professionals in the sense of what they do they do very well, and change, as you said, is difficult, so that is really key. Fortunately, Howard had a number of adventurers in his organization who he could tap. The other thing is they have to keep doing their day job as well, in many cases, as they come on board. And eventually can be assigned full time, but it takes a lot of commitment, tenacity, and a curiosity about how things work to really thrive in that kind of environment.   Sarah Nicastro:   Yeah, it sounds really interesting to me. I think I would be a volunteer, Howard, if you're doing it again. Okay ...   This is part one of a two-part podcast. Be sure to tune back in next week for part two! </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-12 col-lg-3"> <div class="form-wrapper"> <h2 class="form-tittle">Stay Connected</h2> <iframe src="https://info.ifs.com/GM-CP-CU-2012-12-FoFS-Newsletter_IFrame.html">

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Sarah welcomes Johnny Crowder, suicide/abuse survivor, TEDx speaker, touring musician, mental health and sobriety advocate, and the Founder & CEO of Cope Notes, a text-based mental health platform that provides daily support to users in nearly 100 countries across the globe, to discuss the criticality of prioritizing mental health in the workplace.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we are going to be talking about the need to de-stigmatize, normalize and prioritize mental health in the workplace. Hopefully you are aware that this month, May, is mental health awareness month. Those of you that listen to the podcast regularly or read our content, know that this is a very important topic to me. And I am thrilled to have here with me today, Johnny Crowder. Johnny is a TEDx speaker, touring musician, mental health and sobriety advocate, as well as the founder and CEO of Cope Notes, which is a text-based mental health platform that provides daily support to users in nearly a hundred countries. Johnny, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Johnny Crowder: Thank you for having me. I'm pumped up.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you for being here. So I found Johnny on LinkedIn and I am a big fan of his content and messages. I'm also a big fan in general, about how mental health is something that you see discussed more and more on LinkedIn, right? I think that's kind of a bit of what we're going to talk about today is this is not needed to be a conversation that you reserve for Facebook or Instagram or whatever your personal social media platform is of choice, it is a conversation that is important for us to be discussing in professional forums as well. So Johnny, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and your journey and how you got to the point of becoming a mental health advocate and public speaker.

Johnny Crowder: Yeah. So the short version, I'll tell you the short version. The long version, I have a TEDx talk. So if you want to go listen to that, that's like an 18 minute breakdown of how the heck I got here.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay.

Johnny Crowder: But the short version, I'm going to leave out a lot of details here, but essentially I grew up in an abusive home and I learned all the wrong things about myself at a very young age, started developing symptoms of mental illness much, much younger than most people. So I'm talking like toddler years, elementary school, middle school. So I never really had like a normal day, that like childhood day where you go play soccer and you eat a freezer pop or whatever. I had a lot of trauma and a lot of illness at a really young age. And it kept me from performing daily tasks for a long time.

Johnny Crowder: So like any child would I resisted treatment for like 10 whole years. I just wouldn't touch it. And then I started mandatory treatment in high school because of some behavior issues. And then I wound up taking psychology courses to prove my doctors wrong. It turns out they were right. And then I took more psychology courses, eventually got a degree from the University of Central Florida in psychology. And then I switched. The big shift was thinking that I wanted to become a clinician to realizing the power of peer support and just using what I had been through to employ empathy. So now instead of being a doctor, I just work with doctors and then I provide that peer perspective from someone who's actually been through it firsthand. And then those doctors can provide the book learn inside.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes. Okay, good. So when did you do your first, I guess, public speaking thing related to this topic? How old were you, what was kind of the... how did that come to be? Was it your TED talk, or I'm assuming you've been speaking before that?

Johnny Crowder: No. I can't imagine the TED talk being like my first time talking about it. Well, I think, so it started, it's a really unglamorous start. I found out about NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, when I was in college and I was like performing, I was teaching and performing improv and I was in a band and we were touring and stuff. So I was a little bit familiar with stage, but definitely not talking about my own personal mental health on stage. And I met NAMI greater Orlando when I was in school, and they were like, "Yeah, we have people come up and speak at events and schools just about what they've been through," and I was like, "Oh, well, I'm still really sick. So like, can I participate while I'm still having a lot of issues?" And they were like, "Definitely, come get involved and volunteer."

Johnny Crowder: So I actually just got a LinkedIn notification that my 10 year anniversary with NAMI was this month. So literally 10 years ago. You got to picture me. I'm 18, still have pimples. I'm still trying to figure out the chest hair situation, whether or not I'm going to grow any. And I just started getting on stage at these really small, local volunteer type events and just trying to awkwardly share what I had been through. And over time it became... it started feeling more and more natural to the point now where if someone asks me about my mental health in a professional setting, I'm not like, bah, but they're seriously when I would apply to jobs, I would try to do everything within my power to prevent my employer from learning that I was taking anti-psychotic medication or seeing a therapist and so on, so the stigma was real.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And I think, going back to what I mentioned in the introduction with some of the content you see come up on LinkedIn and some of the conversations we've had even on this podcast, that dialogue is changing and I'm very grateful for that, but there's a long way to go. There's a long way to go. And there's a couple points in what you just said that I think are important. One is, normalizing this topic is everyone's responsibility, right? And it's not just if you struggle with it and it's not just if you don't, right? It's sort of understanding that collectively is how we make more progress in making this a more normal part of dialogue and a more normal part of our professional lives.

Sarah Nicastro: The other thing is, I like what you said about sharing even though you were still struggling. Right? I mean, I know when you and I connected last, I told you there's a woman, Glennon Doyle, for anyone that is not familiar with her, she has been a writer and a public speaker and an activist in different ways. She wrote a book in 2013 called Carry on Warrior that really, really changed my life. I read it on an airplane rides in California. And I remember I just had tears streaming down my face, but it was talking about her experiences with anxiety and depression. And it was really the first time in my life I felt that it was okay that I wasn't okay. Do you know what I mean? And it was, 2013 doesn't sound so long ago to me, but really it was before there was as much open dialogue about this in, whether it's blogs or podcasts or just on social media. It was huge.

Sarah Nicastro: She actually just launched a podcast and the first episode was last week. And one of the listeners asked something about her coping mechanisms for anxiety. And she said, "Well, the first thing is I had to admit I'm never getting better. It is who I am and it's not going to go away. So once I could stop waiting for it to disappear, I could breathe again, because I wasn't trying to fundamentally change who I am as a person. And then I could actually look at, okay, how can I cope with this? Not how can I wish it away?" And I thought that was super powerful. But anyway, all of that to say, you never know when sharing your own experience or being open to listening to someone else's struggles is going to really, really change things for someone. And so it's important for us to all acknowledge the role we can play in this topic. Does that make sense? That was a lot of me babbling. I'm sorry.

Johnny Crowder: No, I specifically remember clarifying with NAMI before I... I have really bad memory loss from medication like long-term, but this is one thing that I specifically remember. I was quadruple checking with one of the organizers before I first started sharing it, like in a peer support setting. I'm like, "Are you sure it's okay? Because I'm still pretty in the thick of everything and trying to figure stuff out." And they were saying, "That's actually great because you're not so far out of it that you're saying, 'Oh yeah, dude, read this book and take this vitamin and you'll be fine. And I'm fine. Look at me now.'" That doesn't help as much as someone explaining to you what they're going through and you're going, "Holy crap. Yeah, exactly. It is really complicated. I wish it was that easy, but it's not," like that is the essence of peer support.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. So in terms of peer support, not only do you public speak and advocate yourself, but you've also created Cope Notes. So tell the people listening a little bit about what Cope Notes is and why it exists.

Johnny Crowder: Yeah. So Cope Notes uses daily text messages to improve mental and emotional health. And the whole reason we're doing that is because a lot of people don't have time for like an hour appointment or they don't know what their schedule is going to be like, so it's hard to plan for traditional mental health services. Or they have privacy concerns. I know that that's something that I was pretty concerned with when I was first starting to use some online digital mental health supports. And then it's also for people who struggle with consistency like me. So I'm the kind of person who, with all the best intentions, I either over commit or under commit and the under committing is a result of over-committing. So I'll be like, okay, I'm going to run seven miles every day for the whole year. And it's like, dude, that's such a bad plan.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Johnny Crowder: Like you're going to burn out, you're going to... It's not going to work long-term. So I wanted to create something that could sustain the consistency necessary to improve mental health long term. So Cope Notes, one thing I want to clarify is Cope Notes isn't like a magical, it'll make you better overnight. This is something that, we're investing in you a year from now. Just like if you brush your teeth every day, it's not going to magically get rid of cavities, but over time it will prevent you from getting cavities. And Cope Notes is kind of the same thing, like low effort. There's a low threshold, low barrier to entry and it's pretty passive. So these texts come to you. It's not like you have to remember to use the tool, and over time, it literally trains your brain to think in healthier patterns.

Sarah Nicastro: Cool. Very cool. Okay. We've both shared a little bit about ourselves. And let's talk though, let's start talking about why it's so important to de-stigmatize mental health issues in the workplace. So as you know, most of the people listening to this podcast are in the business world and responsible for teams and responsible for employees, and we probably have people from different ends of the spectrum, people that are like, "Yeah, let's normalize mental health," and then people that are like, "What? I don't want to talk about that or think about that or address that." So let's talk about why it's important to commit to de-stigmatizing this topic.

Johnny Crowder: Well, I'm thinking if you're a leader right now, you're listening and you are a manager, you have a team, picture yourself like a coach for a second. So you're the coach of a soccer team. Because I mentioned soccer earlier. How important is it for you as a coach to create an atmosphere, an environment for your team to let you know if they're hurt? Like imagine if you were the type of coach... and this is what's happening in the corporate world, by the way, we have coaches proverbially who are saying, if you break your ankle, I don't want to hear about it. Your team doesn't want to hear about it. Don't show weakness, get back out there on the field and crush the opponent no matter what. And what you're doing is guaranteeing that you will lose the game. And you're guaranteeing that you will lose a star player. Because he only thing that will make a broken ankle worse is continuing to play on the broken ankle.

Johnny Crowder: And a lot of people who are in a corporate environment, they'll start experiencing like crippling OCD to where it's interfering with their, it's not only interfering with their work, but also with their work-life balance. And then that's affecting their sleep and it's affecting their eating, and then that's affecting their performance. And we have leaders who are saying that's personal stuff. No, it's not. No, it's not. If it's affecting work performance, it is not a purely personal matter. Anyone... And you know what I've seen, there's a little more talk about this lately, which I think is important, divorce. When someone is going through a divorce, have you ever met someone who was going through a divorce and it didn't affect their work performance?

Sarah Nicastro: Right. No.

Johnny Crowder: So you can't... It's important to establish work-life balance. But also leaders are in a position where, I mean, if they actually care about their company, they actually care about the progress of what they're building and they care about their team, you don't even have to have a heart for the people. Even if you're like this cold calculated spreadsheet person, you don't give a crap about how people feel, you should still care about de-stigmatizing mental health. Because imagine if you were in a boat that had a hole and you couldn't find it, and the boat was going down and you couldn't find it because none of the people on the boat would want to tell you where the hole was because they were afraid to get in trouble or get judged. Your boat's going to sink, period.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. So that's it, that's a good point. I mean, hopefully you care because you care about people.

Johnny Crowder: Yeah, definitely

Sarah Nicastro: But for anyone that's listening that doesn't... No. But I mean, it is a good point that this is, you can care, and let's say that's the warm, fuzzy side of it, right? Like I really care about my team or my employees, but there's also an element of needing to realize the impact on performance and looking at it strategically in the sense of it isn't just about being a warm, fuzzy, I care about my people thing, it is also an element of the same way that you... A lot of companies have programs that help employees with their physical health because they want people to be healthy and they want people to show up and feel good and be able to do their work. It's the same idea with the mental health, right? It's maybe not as visible in some ways as physical ailments, but it's certainly just as important.

Sarah Nicastro: And I would say, with everything that's gone on in the past year, pro and con. Pro is, I think even companies that before weren't acknowledging the criticality of this topic have realized that they need to. Con is, people are a bit more stressed, burned out and struggling than they ever have been, right? So I said this earlier, we all have a responsibility in this, but let me hear from your perspective. Why is it everyone's job to normalize and prioritize mental health within a business?

Johnny Crowder: Well, you can either be an example or a non-example. And I know that for myself, if I ever had a non-example, I would cling to that. So I'm trying to think when I was in college, if I knew nine people, this is hypothetical, if I knew nine other students who were engaging with mental health services, and I knew nine teachers who are opening up about mental health, but I knew one student and one teacher that didn't want to talk about it, that's it. "Oh, that's not for me. And I'm actually good." I would identify with that person every single time, because people are naturally looking for an excuse not to work on themselves. They're always sure. Yesterday I had a sunburn. I still have one. I don't know if you can see it. It's mostly on my shoulders.

Sarah Nicastro: You don't even look red.

Johnny Crowder: But it was a real sunburn and I wanted ice cream because I was so hot. And I had ice cream, and it was great. And I can virtually guarantee you that if I wasn't sunburned, I would have found another reason to have ice cream, because I wanted it. It works the same way with something, I'll relate this to physical health as well, exercise. I can find a reason not to exercise. I've been working out forever and I can find a reason to be like, oh, you know what? Well, today is Monday. And maybe I should start working on organizing my closet because I've been meaning to do that for a while. I will avoid working out when I'm tired. And if I have a friend who says, "Oh yeah, I skip the gym a lot." I say, "Oh, I identify with that person."

Johnny Crowder: So each time you turn down the opportunity to share about yourself, or you turn down the opportunity to engage in a mental health conversation, you are providing a, it's not even a safe haven, it's a danger Haven. I don't even know if that's a thing, but you're giving someone who might need genuine help and support an opportunity to not engage by setting the wrong example. So no one is exempt from this. Like kids, trust me, if you have an eight year old who's talking to you about feeling anxious, that'll change a parent. So forget status roles or forget ages or demographics. Everyone has an opportunity to lead by example. And by choosing to not lead by example, you are accidentally still leading by example, you're just leading by the wrong one.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Right. Yes. And it's, I think a recognition that you don't know when or how you're going to help someone in a significant way, but guaranteed, if you're avoiding, consciously avoiding the opportunity to do that, then you're not going to help someone, right? It is important for everyone to understand the role they play in normalizing these conversations and making this a priority within organizations. And I think that those negative examples hopefully are becoming few fewer and further between, and also standing out more. Right? That's kind of the flip side of this is as this conversation does normalize, those perceptions of this as a taboo topic or whatever are becoming less and less mainstream, that's... Yeah. So what would be your best advice for listeners on to create a company culture that's mental health friendly and/or what are some of the biggest mistakes you see companies make as they're making an effort to do that?

Johnny Crowder: So I'll start with mistakes. What I see really commonly is something like, "Oh, it's mental health awareness month. And for mental health awareness month, we're going to send an e-blast out to everybody. And then maybe if you reply to a poll, you can get entered for a chance to win a water bottle." And that's it. And then at the end of May, all the executives are patting themselves on the back like, "Yeah, we're so good. We're such good people." Or they'll do like, as for mental health awareness month, we donated $500 to a local mental health charity, and then pat, pat, pat on my back and then we'll do a press release about it. And then everybody's happy. I see a lot of that. And I also see it. I don't even have to tell listeners why that's not enough. So I'm not going to use time talking about that.

Johnny Crowder: But I will say that what I do see commonly as kind of like too much, too soon. So people going like, "Oh, now we're going to have yoga every morning. And then before the beginning of every meeting we're going to have this namaste moment where everyone goes around the table and talks about how they feel." And then productivity is lowered and people are like, "Am I really supposed to be honest in this setting?" So I see a lot of that, like too much, too soon where they're not really thinking about culture, they're more thinking about policy. And the best policy in the world won't save you from a bad culture.

Johnny Crowder: When I'm looking at something like a company culture around mental health, I think small incremental steps and including it in existing policy rather than drafting a whole new policy. I remember I was in the Carolinas and I was with my buddies kids. He has five kids. Five.

Sarah Nicastro: Can't imagine.

Johnny Crowder: And they were making lunch for the kids and they just, they don't like spinach. It's like something in the house where they're like, "Ooh, spinach is gross." So what she did was she put slices of spinach in a grilled cheese sandwich. Not slices of spinach, you know what I'm talking about, leaves.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, yeah.

Johnny Crowder: In a grilled cheese sandwich. And then she had them take bites with their eyes closed to see which slice of grilled cheese they liked better, one with spinach one without. And they realized they couldn't tell the difference with their eyes closed. And I was blown away. I was like, this is such an innovative approach to getting these kids eat spinach. And she's like, "Well, yeah, if I just pour out a big bowl of spinach no one's going to eat any. You have to work it into things that they're familiar with that they like." And I think the same is true for mental health.

Johnny Crowder: Don't just dump it all into a bowl and push it out to all your employees. You have to... it's lots of casual mentions. So using a term like anxious or anxiety or depressed or depression, even just those two very basic things or asking people like how they are feeling, or if you're too scared of stuff like that, and you're a leader, you can literally start with asking people like for a minute at the top of a meeting, what they did over the weekend and then encouraging people to follow up with each other to ask, "Oh, you said you rode BMX this weekend. How did you even get into that?" And fostering those interpersonal conversations. Because if all your work conversations are about work, I can guarantee that people will never be fully honest in the work place.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That's a really good point. I think we had a gentleman from QIAGEN on the podcast a few months ago, and we talked specifically about how they've increased their focus on employee mental health, really seeing the opportunity or need that COVID presented, and making it a focus for their field service operations, and a lot... Go ahead, go ahead.

Johnny Crowder: I just wanted to mention, I just had a great idea. I mean, it's not even an idea, but it's, a lot of leaders that I speak to say, "Well, my people don't really know me like that" or, "I don't really want to be the one that initiates something like that." This is when you need a scapegoat.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay.

Johnny Crowder: So this is like, I am a professional scapegoat.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Johnny Crowder: Because, if you're a leader and you say something and it falls flat or lands wrong and you're in your head about it, things can go sideways. But if you, "Hey, we're going to have a speaker come in or we're going to have someone come, like a third party," then you offload that like nervous responsibility.

Sarah Nicastro: Responsibility, yeah.

Johnny Crowder: And then you get to refer to someone who's not you. So it doesn't seem like, "Steve is deciding that this is the way it is." You say, "The speaker the other day mentioned..." and then you have like stuff to pull from.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Johnny Crowder: So a lot of people are afraid of being like the bad guy or the mental health guy, the person to start the conversation. It's like the spooky taboo region of conversation for some reason. And I always tell people that's exactly when you need a third party to come in and start it so that you can work off the momentum of that conversation rather than you being like, "I don't know what to say or don't know what to do." Let somebody else start the engine.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes, yes. That's a good point. And I think, probably a necessity for some personality types or comfort levels, but I also think, don't be a chicken and don't try and shirk your own responsibility for contributing. Now, that could be following on a speaker or it could just be taking the initiative flat out. But I think that what you said is it's really a matter of baby steps into the already existing processes, right? And that can feel uncomfortable at first, but the stakes are low. I mean, you ask how everyone's feeling in a meeting and you might get a couple of weird looks, but if you do it often enough, then people will start to engage.

Sarah Nicastro: I also think that leaders have to understand that it's a two-way street. So it can't just be you asking, how do you feel, how do you feel, how do you feel, if you're never willing to kind of engage on that personal level in an authentic way, whatever that looks like for you, but you have to be willing to share some of your own feelings, thoughts, struggles, as well, so that you model the fact that that level of engagement is not just accepted within the organization, but encouraged.

Johnny Crowder: Yeah. I'm thinking of one particular board that I serve on where there's a doctor that leads the board and she will kind of, at the top of the meeting, everyone will like share for about a minute or so just very brief, very quick talking about stuff. And she did this thing especially early on when the board was new. I've been with them for a couple of years now, but early on, I was like, I don't know basically anyone here, so I don't know what I'm supposed to share and when I'm not supposed to share.

Johnny Crowder: And she did this thing where she was explaining, like we go around and share and she's like, "I'll go first. I had a paper due last Thursday and it was due for publication and someone messed up a submission number somewhere and it's been pushed off. And I thought about it the entire weekend. That happened on Thursday. Today's Monday. And I feel like I couldn't get my brain to think about other things because I was so anxious about the thing on Thursday and whether or not they'll let us submit late. So honestly I'm a little wiped out, but I'm looking forward to getting energy back from this meeting." And I was just like, holy crap, this is the leader of the whole thing. And then as people started sharing, I mean, you don't have to tell people to share something similar, they will do it naturally because they saw that there was no consequence.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Yes. But you have to humanize yourself, right?

Johnny Crowder: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sarah Nicastro: So let's talk then about why sometimes I think people don't do that, which is this sort of misconception that leaders have to kind of have that stiff upper lip, that I needed to be in a position where I command respect and I shouldn't let any cracks in the foundation show or signs of weakness or what have you. So what would you say to that misconception and why that is sort of an incorrect or outdated view of what leadership should look like?

Johnny Crowder: I think outdated is the right word, because that used to be a thing. Think back in the previous century and people were going through a lot of stuff, they needed a fearless leader, strong. And they're like, "Oh, we have to cut a thousand jobs this week," and the leader is like, "I will make it happen." That was kind of, I guess it worked for a long time, but now it's you see something like that and you just think, did they even hear? That's bad news. The thing that I think maybe a few decades ago what people feared most in a work setting was like a spineless leader or a leader that couldn't take action or a leader that couldn't command authority. Now people's fear is like a careless, cold, callous leader. They don't want to follow a robot. Why do you think there's like authenticity and vulnerability trainings and all this stuff for leaders? It's because people want to work for somebody who they know is a real person.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Johnny Crowder: And that's why I think, in the modern era, like before technology, I think strength was important. But now with everyone being able to access, basically they can look you up and find out all this stuff about you, they don't want to see that, they don't want to see your resume in a work setting or what you've accomplished. They want to see, oh dang, okay, he has a three-year-old and his three-year-old threw up on him. And that's, I've been through that, too.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Who you are underneath.

Johnny Crowder: And all of a sudden you're like, "Man, you know what? I remember when my kid was three and I... Yeah, I want to give a little extra juice this week because I remember going through that" or, "Man, my kid is going to be three next year and I want to learn from this guy." So there's all of these opportunities to shift the way that you portray yourself in a work setting in order to provide more value. And in fact, most people think they're compromising authority and you're not. You're not. The people who have the most authority, if you think about virtually anything, the people who have the most authority are the people you like the most.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Johnny Crowder: For example, in my mind, if I've met you and I know you, you have more authority than the mayor of my city. Because I've never met the mayor of my city. So that, don't compromise, don't think that you have to compromise authority for showing your personality, because think about the people with the most authority in your life, they're most likely your friends and family.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. I was just going to say, I think the goal of authority in many cases is influence, right? And so I think that's going back to what we talked about earlier. Like hopefully you care about this topic because you just care. Right? But there is also an element of normalizing mental health discussions, not only because you care about your people, but because you don't need that hole in the boat, as you said. Same thing goes here. I wouldn't suggest trying to become more vulnerable as a leader just to exercise influence over people. Okay? It needs to be authentic. But when you can authentically connect with people in a human way, you do increase your influence over them. Do you know what I mean? There is also a correlation in terms of the positive impact on people, but also the positive impact on outcome. Right? So, that's a good point as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. I know we're going to run out of time. I want to ask two other quick questions, Johnny. The first is, if you see an employee is struggling or if you know an employee, hopefully at some point it feels comfortable coming to you and saying that they are struggling, what is the best ways for a company or a leader to offer support?

Johnny Crowder: So, number one, don't be empty handed. Like don't say, "Well, no one's ever asked us for stuff so we don't need stuff." Wrong. Now is the time to have a few go-to resources. And I would say, make sure those resources are tiered. Don't give them three of the same type of thing. Like we have a red one, a blue one and a yellow one. Be like, what is your scale of need right now? Are you like a one to three? Are you a four to six? Are you a seven to 10? And then have at least one option in each of those categories? So I would say if you... Most people say, I want a suite of products to hand people, just make sure that they're covering different bases.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Johnny Crowder: And then I'll say, if you're identifying someone who might be struggling, the best thing you can do, best thing you can do is take them out to lunch. Best thing you can do. And no pretense, no anything like that, and just like spend time with them. Because I can almost guarantee, like food makes people let their guard down. If you take them out, you don't have to be like, "So how's your mental health lately?"

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Johnny Crowder: Just be like, "Hey, just wanted to take you out. And I had a gift card to Chili's, so I thought it would be nice for you to get out of the office for a little while," and just talk. But I would say in either scenario, make clear that if they share something, make it clear like, "Hey, you're not going to get in trouble for what you just said to me. So don't leave this office and wonder if you made a mistake or anything. You got to know, we're not going to be... I'm not going to like go to all these higher ups and be like, oh, listen, this is what this guy is going through." Just remind them as they leave like, what you just did was really important, now I'm clued in. I can help and we can see, we can actually work together to solve this rather than you trying to figure it out on your own. So you just made the best decision you could make, like reinforce that

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Positive reinforcement of articulating that need. Right? Yeah. That's a good point. Okay. Last question. Tell listeners what resources, offhand, do you recommend for folks that want to either expand their own knowledge on mental health or look at different resources for their organizations. What are your suggestions there?

Johnny Crowder: So I'm going to be biased and recommend Cope Notes and also my TED talk. But outside of that, I would recommend NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I can guarantee there's an affiliate close to you and they'll have a pretty good finger on the pulse of what resources are available in your area. And also TED talks in general. They have a way of taking these really complicated like subjects and then distilling them down into like 15, 10, 20 minutes. And that helps. Even if you, from now on, you send one TED talk a month, or you watch it with your employees over lunch, or you send it out via email or whatever, you have it on your internal employee board and you have the TED talk of the month and it's related to mental health, people will watch that and it will make a difference, because education is key.

Johnny Crowder: If you make health education easy and communal in that, "Hey everyone, homework for over the weekend, you watch this TED talk, it will take 15 minutes. And then on Monday morning at the first 10 minutes of our all hands meeting, we're going to just talk about some insights that we gleaned from the TED talk." That's the stuff that changes culture.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Very good points. All right, Johnny. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I really appreciate you being here.

Johnny Crowder: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: You can learn more by visiting us at futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. If you within your organization are taking strides to de-stigmatize and normalize mental health, I would love to talk with you about that and have you on the podcast as well. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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Foxtel Masters The Contract Workforce Model

May 19, 2021 | 31 Mins Read

Foxtel Masters The Contract Workforce Model

Nunzio Bagnato, Director of Home Service & Advance Servicing At Foxtel, describes how the company has motivated its contract workers to be highly engaged, effective, and empowered to deliver the Foxtel brand experience.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to be discussing a topic that comes up, conversation after conversation with opposing views and a lot of questions. I think we're going to answer some of those here today, so we're going to be talking about how Foxtel has mastered the contract workforce model.

Sarah Nicastro: I'm excited to be joined today by Nunzio Bagnato who is the Director of Home Service and Advanced Servicing for Foxtel. Nunzio, welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast.

Nunzio Bagnato: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you for being here.

Nunzio Bagnato: How are you?

Sarah Nicastro: Good, good. Doing great. All right, so before we get into the contract workforce discussion, start by just telling our listeners a bit about yourself and your role and your background and anything you want to share related to Foxtel.

Nunzio Bagnato: Yeah, thank you. Look, as you said, I look after the home service part of our business as well as the advanced servicing. Advanced servicing is more to do with our case, technical case management and secondary activities that require some additional case management. But around 50% of my role, even 60% of my role is the home service, field service part of the business, and I oversee the field service part of that business as well as the contract relationship, all the field activities that involve installation, servicing the customer, upgrading the customer.

Nunzio Bagnato: I've been at Foxtel for 23 years, I've got 30 years experience in field service, originally started as a field technician at one of our first pay TV companies when I was about 20, and have been in the industry ever since and made my way up the ladder, and have now enjoy running a successful home service team here at Foxtel.

Sarah Nicastro: Awesome. Okay, so 23 years, that's a heck of a tenure, and you have that first hand perspective of what the front line job is all about. So I think that's really cool as well. I want to start by saying the audience of this podcast is a global audience and so we talked about the fact, Nunzio, when you and I connected previously, that the contract model is a more common model in Australia, and so I think that factors in to this discussion in the sense of maybe giving you a little bit more of a comfort level around it, but I think the practices that you have put in place at Foxtel for really mastering and optimizing this model, or something that is easily transferable or good food for thought for any company in any region looking to better leverage the value of a contingent workforce.

Sarah Nicastro: That being said, there does seem to be some debate around, is our contract workers the way to go, are they not the way to go? Are they the way to go, or are they not the way to go? In Australia, it's more common. You had mention that when you talk with colleagues in the US, the number one issue seems to be concern over control. Why do you think is?

Nunzio Bagnato: Look, I understand that concern. For many, many years we had some of those challenges. We had a traditional contractor model. Very transactional, very volume based model and the field technician was probably single minded focusing on what they can get from the role. It was the way we shifted that model, moved up to a more service based model, less transactional. And transformed what the technician should do and what the contractor's responsibility is in that contract.

Nunzio Bagnato: And it wasn't until we actually shifted to the new model and changed the way we operate and the way we engage with our vendors or our contractors, that's when we started to see the results of what we see today. We needed to change the culture. Traditionally a contractor model is transactional, it's a master/servant sort of arrangement, and you're going to get those type of results, you're going to get that behavior, you're going to get that culture.

Nunzio Bagnato: So, how do get a contracted workforce to feel and behave like your own field workforce without crossing any of those legal lines and having a strategic partnership where you have your contracting workforce or your contractors in the same building, side-by-side, part of your team, an extension of my structure and then have the field workforce change the way they interact with the customer, the way they actually present themselves. Shifting that model, introducing a score card model. And I know that every organization has score cards, but we didn't want to introduce a score card that was just something that we look at and tick and flick, it really had to be a way of working. It was the Foxtel way, if you like.

Nunzio Bagnato: And it was the program of work that we married with the score card and the rankings, and I'll talk a bit more about the score card. We did away with all those penalties in a traditional contracted model. In the past technicians will be penalized for not hitting KPIs or milestones. We did away with that. Our view was that we're dealing with adults. We want to have adult conversations with our vendors, our technicians or our contracting leadership team and have meaningful collaborative conversations.

Nunzio Bagnato: If they're an extension of my team, then we're having the same operating with them. We have those weekly meetings, we have those strategic meetings that actually drives us to meet our strategic goals. So, they are the key areas that we changed. To colocation, the extension of our team, the score card and the culture, and by the way, it wasn't like we just flicked it overnight. It was a journey, especially the culture phase. Shifting an entire workforce from a traditional contractor model to the model that we have today, we still have challenges today, but by large, we have been able to shift the workforce.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, we're going to dig into all of that a little bit more, but I think one of the key messages that I want to get across to listeners here is that not only would you say that the cost efficiency of the model outweigh some of those concerns, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a trade-off. There are steps you can take and measures you can put in place to circumvent and alleviate a lot of the concerns that I think prohibit people from taking a deeper look at this model. Would you agree with that?

Nunzio Bagnato: Yeah. I don't disagree, no. You're right.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, so let's talk then about some of those steps that Foxtel has taken to really shift things from that transactional more penalty based environment to one that's more collaborative, and when you said that we've gotten away from penalties and we've shifted, I know what you've shifted to, so I have a little bit of a sneak peek, but it made me think of parenting. They say that when you can give positive reinforcement, it's much more effective than punishment, punishment, punishment. So that seems to be a theme here as well.

Nunzio Bagnato: Well, it's an interesting point you make there. That exact point was pretty much when it came to the score card and how we actually managed the score card and the conversation we have with our field technicians. We wanted to focus on the positives. Every conversation had to be around the positives. What are we doing really, really well? And how? First of all, how did you get there? Not by luck. Not by sheer luck. You got there because you did something, you followed a particular sequence or you followed the process, or whatever it may be.

Nunzio Bagnato: Understanding how you got there, so we can continue to do that or improve on that is critical, so positively reinforcement and then what else can we do to improve? What are some of the other areas we can improve on? That is definitely how we approach our conversations. And that is at all levels. What I do when talking to my direct reports, when they're talking to the vendor or leadership team, we're talking to the field leadership team, when we're talking to the tech leadership team, it's the same, same conversation.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes. And I think that another aspect here is, if you're looking more for positive reinforcement, then how do you incentivize or reward these workers in a way that promotes those positive behaviors rather than simply penalizing them for a negative outcome. We're going to dig into that. Before we do, you mentioned that the score card was one pillar of this overall journey. Walk us back through the different areas of this, and then we'll dig into the score card specifically.

Nunzio Bagnato: We really needed to shift the way that the technician focused on the day. And prior to the score card or prior to our command center model being rolled out, our technicians focused on the traditional metrics like the completion rates, the misdeployment, blah, blah, blah. Really important, really important, but it was definitely drove a volume base behavior. Bang, bang, bang, bang, just get through the day as quick as I can, get the volumes through, because the more I do, the more I get paid.

Nunzio Bagnato: But that obviously impacted the way we actually serviced our customers, it impacted quality, it impacted safety, it impacted a number different areas of our business that we felt that needed to be addressed. And we lost the reason, we lost focus on why we're here. We needed to realize, we needed to take a step back and really make sure that everyone in our business understands why we're here. We're here to provide a service to a customer. In my case, we're providing entertainment to a customer.

Nunzio Bagnato: There was no focus on the customer when we're out there, so let's focus on the customer. We introduced the score card collectively with the leadership team, we introduced the score card that focused on four quadrants. And the first quadrant was all about the customer. It's about customer surveys and arrival on time. That's it. That's all I want to know about. If we go out there and we get a really good survey and great verbatims to go with that, and we've met their expectations by arriving on time, we've done what we had to do in that particular quadrant.

Nunzio Bagnato: And then we have our cycle quadrant, which is your traditional metrics, which is your completion rates and that type of stuff. The other quadrant is finance, and we wanted to focus on the finance component of what the technician does, because we do have a free issue model in our business. There are things that we need to keep an eye on and the contractors are a sub-contractor, their own business. So they need to understand how they impact the financial component of the score card. Nothing major, just something small, just for them to keep an eye on, but it's really important for us to keep track of our free issue and inventory.

Nunzio Bagnato: And then the last quadrant is quality and safety, of quality mainly. I'll talk about safety a second. Safety doesn't sit in the score card for us, safety is the qualifier, the gateway. If you fail any safety audits, then you are disqualified from your score card for the month. It's irrelevant how good you are in your score card, you fail safety, then you fail the whole lot. So safety is a gateway into the score card.

Nunzio Bagnato: And in the quality quadrant we have revisit, so the amount of times a job needs to be returned within 30 days. And what's important for us is having the set top box connected to the internet and the work involved in doing that. There isn't a lot of KPIs and it was by design. We don't want to have too many, but we've identified the key areas of our business that we want the technician to focus on. And each quadrant has a 25 point rating. So you can get a maximum of 25 and there are some thresholds.

Nunzio Bagnato: That score card is important to the field technician, because we lend idea from Uber and have a ranking, and the ranking, which is our bronze, our silver, gold and platinum, determines the priority of routing. So when it comes to routing, if you're a platinum technician, and you're been a platinum technician for that month, then for the next month you're going to enjoy priority routing, so you'll be the first technician to be routed. So all the platinum technicians get routed, all the gold guys next, all the silver guys and if there's anything left, the bronze guys will get the rest.

Nunzio Bagnato: That's really important for our business. Especially important for a contractor, a sub-contractor if you like, because this is their business. They have to ensure that they've got continuous work coming in so they can actually run their business. And for us, we're driving a culture. We're shifting the way the technician manages the customer. They sit down with the customer, they have that interaction with the customer, they service the customer, they really deliver what we want them to deliver and then they're doing everything else on the job they need to do. Making sure they complete the job, making sure they do this, they do that, from a quality point of view.

Nunzio Bagnato: When we first started this journey, it was five years ago, and we launched the score card model, 70 odd percent of our field workforce were bronze technicians. And we're really proud that right now, 70 odd percent of our field workforce is predominantly platinum and a little bit of gold. And that's taken a lot of work from our leadership team as well as the contractor leadership team. It is a lot of side-by-side compensations to get that team, the field team to operate where they need to be today.

Nunzio Bagnato: The score card really is identifying those KPIs that you want to focus on as a group, and introducing that KPI that's going to shift the way you operate, the way you service the customer and not put in any type of KPI, I mean, you can have a laundry list of KPIs, you can really get carried away, but we chose the eight. And we chose the eight for a reason, because we wanted to shift the way we operated, shift the way we serviced our customers, and we felt these KPIs did that.

Sarah Nicastro: There's couple things that I think are really interesting. The first is this recognition that I think a lot of the hesitancy around the contractor model, when you look at why do people feel they need to maintain that control. At least in my conversations it's primarily to protect the customer experience. Yet, when you're running a volume based business, you're working against that objective to some degree, just by incentivizing volume, volume, volume.

Sarah Nicastro: The incorporation of those customer focused metrics was an important step in helping your contract workforce understand, "Okay wait, we've realized the volume is not the only thing that's important here, and we need to prioritize the customer experience a bit more." I also think though there's something to be said about the simplicity of what you're choosing to track and how. So to your point, if you had a quadrant with eight KPIs in each square, it just becomes convoluted, it's harder for people to understand, they might not be as engaged in paying attention to what their rank is, and really simplifying that.

Sarah Nicastro: Now, one of the things we talked about though, is that those KPIs, you like to focus on two per quadrant, so the quadrants are identified, you like to set two KPIs for a quadrant to keep things simple, but those KPIs can change based on what the business' biggest priorities are. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Nunzio Bagnato: Absolutely, and it's really important to know that this score card is, all the KPIs that make up the score card, is fluid. There are some KPIs that will not be removed. I mean, customer satisfaction is one of them, that is always, that's cemented in, and that's important that we understand that, that is a number one focus.

Nunzio Bagnato: But from the moment we raised or launched the score card to where we are now, we've replaced these KPIs. In the early days when we launched the model, that's the command center model, and we introduced a new field service scheduling system, we needed the technicians to change the way they interacted with us and how they use the system, and I required them to follow a couple of different steps, click button here, click button there. And we just couldn't get the field workforce to do that. So we included it in the score card. Button compliance was critical to our success. Especially when you're working a workforce scheduling system that we share that depends on the technician clicking on-site and clicking off-site, so we can get accurate timings, get the data we need to be able to run an efficient business.

Nunzio Bagnato: So we had button compliance. We also had time on the job. We identified early on that technicians were doing seven minute service calls. And in a contract in the old world, that make sense, because you're pumping through a lot of volume, but in our world now, it's like, seven minutes, how do you actually knock on the customer's door, rate the customer, diagnose the problem, fix the problem, explain the problem and then take the customer through the ending of the interaction in seven minutes? It's not possible.

Nunzio Bagnato: So job timing were as important and trying to change, not asking the technician stop doing jobs quickly, it's about can you explain to me how this seven minutes service call happened? Can you please explain to me how we can actually increase the time? Have you gone through each of the steps on the scope of work? And it's just educating the technician on what we expect from them, and what our customers expect from them and what you should be doing in each of your jobs.

Nunzio Bagnato: And we're not suggesting for a moment that every technician spend an hour, an hour and a half on every job, you're going to have different technicians spending different times, but ruling out those little job times or those smaller job times, because you know we're not offering the customer the level service we need, was important. So we introduced things that we needed to focus on, that we knew that needed to shift. Either shifted from a performance point of view or shift from a behavior slash culture point of view. And we continue to look at what kind of areas of our business do we need to now reintroduce.

Nunzio Bagnato: Now, we don't do it as often as monthly, in actual fact, we went early days we did six months, now we've extended it out every year. So every year when we enter into our new financial year, we will review our score card and we will have a look at what we're going to include this year, what is our focus, so what is our strategic focus this year, and how does the field actually contribute to that. Do we need to change our score card, or do we need to change the target, and do that.

Nunzio Bagnato: And by the way, we don't just decide in this office and then roll it out, we have the conversation with our service provider or our contracting company, then we pressure test it with our field leaders and then we pressure test it with a focus group of technicians and we get feedback. And when they're comfortable, we're all on the same page and we got the right feedback and we're going to achieve what we need to achieve, then we'll formally roll it out as a change. In our model, we don't just do things for the sake of doing it, or we don't just change things and expect the rest of the business to fall in line. They're the ones that actually going to be delivering this, so we need to understand, is it something we're going to be able to successfully achieve?

Nunzio Bagnato: The score card is not only for the technicians. The score card is aggregated all the way up to me. So the score card the technicians look at, and we'll talk about the other score cards in a second, that is how everyone's measured. It's not only for the field techs, the score card model is aggregated all the way up to me, so everyone's got skin in the game here. I don't have a different set of KPIs, we all got the same KPIs, we work off the one score card.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, tell us about the other score cards.

Nunzio Bagnato: We've got a command center and planning team that's co-located as I said to you earlier, and they have their own score cards. So the command center have their own score card and the planning team have their score card. There are shared measures or shared KPIs, things like customer satisfaction, completion rates, they are shared. They are things that we believe that everyone in this group has the ability to influence, and there's a couple of other KPIs that are shared. And then there are KPIs that are specific to their role.

Nunzio Bagnato: The difference with that score card is, they're employees of the contracting company, so they're not sub-contractors, so they're on salary. Their score card is linked to their bonus. For example this year, the target is gold. If they achieve a gold average throughout the year, they get a 100% of their bonus. If they don't then they get a percentage of their bonus, and it's really, again, same sort of operating rhythm, a weekly side-by-side conversation. Going through the score card, focusing on the positives, identifying the opportunities, having a look at other peers and bringing in those peer-to-peer conversations, the coaching, the mentoring to help that individual be successful.

Nunzio Bagnato: But the way it operates here, is that we have, an example be the Victorian Command Center Optimizer, we'd sit down with the Victorian Planner, we'd sit down with the Victorian Field Leadership Team in their weekly meeting and they would share their KPIs and work through their plan of attack for the week. Now, there is a focus, and then they go away and hopefully that plan they put in place is going to yield them the results they planned and then happy days. We keep moving and get better and better with it. So they work really closely together.

Nunzio Bagnato: And you've got a combination of contractor versus Foxtel employee in those conversations as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that's one of the things you said earlier about even when you're making changes to the field score card, you're asking for feedback, and I think that's another good point, is just because you choose to leverage a contractor model, does it mean that you can't value and treat those employees as a part of the business. I think there's sometimes this perception that its internal or external and it sounds like you guys are doing a good job of making sure that you're listening to that feedback, incorporating that feedback and prioritizing those employees' voice in a similar sense of W2 employees.

Nunzio Bagnato: Well, we value the technicians, we value... My view is they have a voice. They have a very strong voice. They're the only face-to-face contact we have.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Nunzio Bagnato: When you look at our business, every interaction the customer has, is going to be over the phone or via chat or online. The field technician is the only face-to-face they have. So they are prime to tell us exactly how we can improve the customer experience, they are in a perfect position to tell us how to improve our business, because they are doing what they need to do to get the jobs done at the standard that we expect from them. They've got a voice in our business. Our field and myself, my field leadership team, my leadership team, have always been front and center in toolbox meetings or any type of technician gathering. They're out and about. We don't just sit in an office and cut ourselves off from the world, because I think having those face-to-face relationships, not only are you getting the feedback from them, you're helping them understand our strategy, the reasons why we make decisions.

Nunzio Bagnato: We are helping them with our message. We're actually developing a really strong relationship at every level. We're not hierarchical at all. I mean, I've had conversations with multiple technicians. I have technicians call me, text me, and I'm okay with that, because that is a window, that is a portal into their world that I need. So how do I improve my business if I don't have the relationship with the guys and girls that are doing the hard yards every single day?

Nunzio Bagnato: And I was a technical as well, so I've got a soft spot for them as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Right, right. Now, we talked about the tiers of technicians and the prioritization of routes. So the platinum technicians get the best routes. Are there other incentives tied to their achieved tier or is that the primary, I guess, incentive for them to work toward platinum, gold, etc?

Nunzio Bagnato: Well, as soon as you're a platinum technician, you've been given the opportunity to actually take on additional work or other types of work, for example, our VIPs and escalated customers are only serviced by platinum technicians. When we make a promise to our VIPs and we're sending out a technician, we're sending the best of the best, because they have a proven record. They're excellent customer experienced, they're excellent in every other KPI on the score card, but they've got a history of being a platinum technician.

Nunzio Bagnato: And any other type of additional event sort of work or any type of additional work that we need highly skilled technicians, they've been the first guys we go to. So there's a benefit of being a platinum technician outside of just the usual work. We just recently introduced the platinum plus, and that is because we identified that there is a group of platinum technicians who have been platinum for a very long time and they go the extra mile, but it's not captured in the score card. Like, they've always getting five out of five in their surveys and then another platinum technician is getting four point nine or four point eight, but they're always achieving, so they are high achievers. And we felt there's an opportunity for us to introduce platinum plus for those high achieving technicians. Allow those platinum guys to go the next level, to provide the next level of service. Really drive that customer interaction, really drive the way they service the customers and the way they operate, and recognize those guys that are continually hitting platinum. So we introduced platinum plus.

Nunzio Bagnato: From a routing perspective, it doesn't change, but we've got other benefits. Benefits like tickets to premiers, tickets to the football, any of that type of additional benefit, we're happy to provide to those platinum plus guys. And we've already got, we introduced this, what, in June? Sorry July, and we've already got close to 10% of our workforce sitting at platinum plus.

Sarah Nicastro: That’s great.

Nunzio Bagnato: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: So talk a little bit more about the impact this journey, the score card has had on I guess A, service delivery and B, the contractor engagement.

Nunzio Bagnato: Well, from a service delivery perspective, I mean, we have achieved and we're enjoying probably the best patch of our journey ever. Our KPIs, our performance, the way we operate from an efficiency point of view, the level of service we offer our internal customers here at Foxtel and external customers, is probably the best that it's ever been. So when I just sweep through the KPIs in our business, we're not just improved, we've blind them out of water in a lot of cases, but for me, what's really important about that is sustaining that type of level of performance and keep the team striving for more.

Nunzio Bagnato: Our completion rates for example in the early days when we first launched this, now five years ago, we were kissing 87% completion rate, which means 38% of our customers were being not missed, but jobs waiting to get done. We're enjoying now an average of 94, 95%. It's not unusual for us to hit 95%. In actual fact, when we don't hit 95%, we scratch it and say, "What went wrong?". But that's where we are right now. Customer satisfaction, we never used to measure that, we introduced that as part of the command center launch, but in the early days that was sitting at three out of five. We are now averaging four point nine and four point nine five. And the verbatims we're getting from our customers is nothing but complementary about the level of service we provide our customers, the time we do, turning up on time, spending the time going through each of the scoping out of the job, providing the level of service that they expect from an organization like ours. And that's what we want to see. But there are other opportunities for us to improve on that.

Nunzio Bagnato: We're enjoying a patch right now that we've never experienced at Foxtel and we're not done. We believe we can do a lot more, a lot more. This is an ever changing environment, especially pay TV, field services is becoming tougher and tougher every single day. There are pressures that every field service organization around the world is dealing with. And we believe there is another iteration of what we've got here. We call it the command center model, but we believe there's another iteration that we want to tap into that is organic to where we need to go to.

Nunzio Bagnato: But from a partnership point of way, I think we've identified that the level of engagement we have with our field team, as well our contracting team, it's the best it's ever been. And that's because we moved away from that master servant model, allowed them to be in the driver seat. Sit beside me, let's work through this together, my KPI is your KPI, that type of stuff. But what's more important is that they drive the program of work. They focus on, they provide the areas of focus. They're the ones that are actually driving the change on our behalf, and we're giving them that control in allowing our vendors or our contracting company to set the agenda, so they're highly engaged.

Nunzio Bagnato: And that's because they're running this like their own business.

Sarah Nicastro: Now, when you decided to make this shift, the whole journey, part of that was a plaids word customer-centricity, and you talked about the fact that the technicians are the face of Foxtel, they're the ones that are interfacing directly with the customers, and so part of this was moving from that transaction and volume based approach to having them present and interact in a way that was in line with Foxtel's brand and persona and quality levels.

Sarah Nicastro: How did the score card method help in achieving that outcome?

Nunzio Bagnato: Well, we had to take a step back and we had to look at the Foxtel technician. What does a Foxtel technician look like? What is the future of the... What's the Foxtel technician of the future look like? And at that point in time the Foxtel technician looked like a standard trainee. I mean, if you had a plumber stand beside one of our Foxtel technicians, you wouldn't know the difference. They looked the same, they spoke the same and they serviced the customers the same way.

Nunzio Bagnato: And I'm not suggesting that plumbers don't service customers, but I was trying to illustrate here is that the Foxtel technician felt and look like a trainee. And when you look at what we were delivering, we're delivering entertainment. That's what we do, and we're providing a customer a form of entertainment. And does a Foxtel technician need to be in a trading uniform. Our old technician used to be in high V's vest with, we call them silicone snot marks all over his uniform, scruffy looking dot dude, turn up to the customer's house, grunt his wife through the job and get the hell out of there as quickly as he possibly can.

Nunzio Bagnato: That wasn't in line with the product we were providing. It wasn't in line with our brand. So we had a look at what does a Foxtel technician, what should it look like? And it needed to be somebody who was groomed, well groomed. Who presented himself really, really well in a standard Foxtel uniform who had really good soft skills. So we changed the way we recruited our technicians. We had technicians that were highly skilled when it came to installing Foxtel and servicing Foxtel, but when it came to the soft skills, there was an area of opportunity. So either we had to train up those guys in their soft skills, or when we were recruiting new technicians, they were really good with the soft skills stuff, really good with the customer experience, really good with the interaction stuff.

Nunzio Bagnato: And we can train them on the technical stuff. We've got a really good training program to get them right up to the standards we need to provide them that highly technical ability, but that soft skill stuff, that interaction, that was critical to us. So we made sure that our recruitment strategy shifted and we focused on those type of men and women. And that, together with the score card and the way we actually discussed the score card, a program of work with the score card, shifted the type of technician we had out there.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nunzio Bagnato: They are 100% focused on providing a service to a customer and they know that they need to turn up with their ID, with their uniform, well-groomed and interacting to follow the scope from A all the way through to Z, because that is what we expect from a Foxtel technician. That is what's getting sure that they provide the level of service the customer expects from us. That is what helps them achieve a good score card. And if that all goes into plan, then they are almost guaranteed work.

Sarah Nicastro: It makes sense.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So the other thing that you've mentioned that was key to all of this is the command center. The score card method and the command center work together to give the technicians the ability to focus more on that service experience. Talk about the command center's role in allowing the technicians to focus as much as possible on that customer interaction.

Nunzio Bagnato: When we designed the command center, we designed the field component to empower the technician to have full control over it, his or her day. We wanted the technician to be able to do everything from their device, control their day. But we also said is that we want you to focus on the job that you have in front of you. The old technician would be doing the routing, the jeopardy management, the rescheduling, the whole lot. Your role, let's define your role, your role is to go into a customer's house and service them and do what you need to do, do whatever is on the work order, but when you're at that house, you are 100% focused on that customer. You're not worrying about your next job or your route or whatever, tomorrow's route or whatever, 100% focused. But I'm giving you full control over that job.

Nunzio Bagnato: If a technician's day goes to plan, the command center will never interact with the technician. And we have technicians that go through days where they're not interacting with the command center. The command center only gets involved when the job or the route goes off path. And they only manage by exception. They're there to provide them support, but they're also there to take away all those admin type of tasks. If the day doesn't go to plan, the command center will identify that before the technician knows that your day is going off track. A job or some jobs in the afternoon present themselves at risk. The command center will reach out, the technician validate that, that's the case, because sometimes it's not exactly, the technician may be finishing off a job and as soon as he finishes that job off, the day corrects itself. We just want to reach out and make sure, the technician confirms that he's still on the job and may be out there for a while, and the command center will manage those jobs that are at risk, utilize or reroute them to another technician in the area to make that point of window.

Nunzio Bagnato: In most cases we will do that or bring another technician to the area to meet that time stop. In worst case scenarios that we're not able to meet that time slot and the command center will manage the customer.

Nunzio Bagnato: But there also is a where's my tech solution out there when the customer can self-service as well, so they can actually have a look the way the technician is and work out exactly when he or she is estimated to arrive and obviously job out their day to ensure that they, they do not have any inconvenience any way. So the command center really is there to provide them that support and level service and manage by exception. Again, if the day goes to plan, the technician would not speak to the command center. But there are scenarios where they have it.

Nunzio Bagnato: You've also got a planning team which is part of the command center and they are all part of the planning component leading into the day and they are highly important to the technician's score card, arriving on time, it's all about the planning, completing your job, it's all about the planning. Planning team have weekly discussions with the field leadership team about improving the quality of routes, improving the capacity, utilization rates and all that type of stuff.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I think what's interesting to me is, you've recognized the need to enable your technicians to focus more on the customers, you've incentivized them to do that through the score card, but you've enabled them to do that by eliminating a lot of that administrative parts of the job so that they have the capacity to focus more on that interaction instead of those other manual or time consuming tasks.

Nunzio Bagnato: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Okay, all right, last question is, if someone's listening who is thinking through how to begin to leverage or how to better leverage contract workers, can you first summarize the value. What is the reason that this model can work and work well for organizations?

Nunzio Bagnato: I think a contractor model and the reason why a lot of organizations go to a contractor model is because it's not a fixed model from a cost perspective, and the attractive component of that is it becomes variable. And it depends on what kind of contractor arrangement you have, but most contractor models are variable and that's the attractive component of it. But with that comes a lot of pain if you don't manage it right. If you don't have the right relationship, if you don't have the right partner and you don't treat them like a partner.

Nunzio Bagnato: If you treat them like a contractor, you're going to get contractor results, guaranteed. So we've been able to take a trade-like sort of service and make it feel like a Foxtel service. But it's not unique to us, I mean, we can take this model anywhere, because it's not specific to Foxtel. What we've introduced, what we've built is transferable to any type of industry or any type of work I should say.

Nunzio Bagnato: If you treat your vendors like a contractor, you're going to get contractor results. It's about having a really strong strategical partner that can work with you and work side-by-side. And you're going to have to be okay with being challenged. In actual fact, we get frustrated, because we know we don't get challenged enough. We want to be challenged. I don't have all the answers, but the contracting company that we've engaged to do this type of work, that's what they specialize in, that's what they do really, really well. So they need to bring that to the game. They need to bring that to the table and you need to allow them to do that. And it's okay if they challenge you.

Sarah Nicastro: What's your best advice for someone to get started with incorporating a model like this, a score card model? How can you begin that transition from, all right, we're looking at this like a contractor thing, it's a volume based thing. We realize we need more. What's the best advice to begin that journey?

Nunzio Bagnato: For me it's don't try to do too much too soon. Understand exactly what is your desired end state. What is your desired outcome from that field workforce, and just keep it simple. Just really start off simple and then try to remove any of that complication. Allow your field, your leaders to understand exactly what you're trying to achieve and then build on that. Just start off slow and build on that.

Nunzio Bagnato: Focus on what you want to do and be very clear with that message, and everybody involved, from you down, needs to be singing from the same hymn sheet, they need to be with the same messaging. And it's okay to mess up, it's okay to mess up. In actual fact, as long as you don't break something, it's okay to mess up. Go ahead, mess it up, because it will only get better by messing up. Got to give them the freedom, you've got to make sure that they feel safe in the environment to do what they need to do, but they're not going to be losing their job over it.

Nunzio Bagnato: You can't penalize somebody for having good intent. I'll never remove a technician from the platform if his or her intent was to service the hell out of a customer and they've gone outside of the process. Processes are guidelines. I'm taking them as a guideline. As long as you've done what you needed to do to get the customer online, happy, enjoying Foxtel, it may not be the standard process, but I'm okay with that. That's what we're in the business to do.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that's another good point, is that empowerment, because empowering the technicians to deliver the customer experience in a good way, even if that isn't picture perfect or whatever, it shows that you trust them and value them which goes back to that engagement and that buy in of what the mission is. But I like the point of keeping it simple. Again, the way that you've se the KPIs so that it's a consumable amount of things to focus on at once and if you can prioritize, here is what's most critical, then incorporate that, start there, and as you start to see progress and improve, then swap out some of those KPIs to get to that next wave.

Sarah Nicastro: You're not set in stone, you just need to figure out where to start and get started.

Nunzio Bagnato: But then I need the KPIs and score card, it's the processes or the way you've structured the team. I mean, start off small. Start off in a controlled environment and then keep adjusting. Don't stand still, keep adjusting and then you'll find your sweet spot. Once you found that sweet spot, bang, you're off and running.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. All right, Nunzio, well thank you so much for joining and sharing, I really appreciate it.

Nunzio Bagnato: Pleasure. Thank you for the conversation.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. You can learn more by visiting us at www.futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com, you can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @TheFutureOfFS. The Future of Field Service Podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more by visiting www.ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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Cimcorp’s IT Strategy for Working Smarter

May 12, 2021 | 24 Mins Read

Cimcorp’s IT Strategy for Working Smarter

Pekka Nurmi, Director of Corporate IT at Cimcorp, talks with Sarah about the company’s efforts to modernize IT to increase its ability to be strategic, nimble, and most impactful.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be talking about how organizations can work smarter when it comes to their IT strategy and IT operations. I'm joined today by Pekka Nurmi, who is the Director of Corporate IT at Cimcorp. Pekka, thank you for joining us today.

Pekka Nurmi: Thank you. Nice to be here.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Okay, so we're going to talk about how Cimcorp has made some changes in IT to work smarter instead of harder. Before we do that, tell us a bit about yourself, your background, and your role at Cimcorp.

Pekka Nurmi: Well, like you mentioned, I'm head of the whole of our corporate IT systems in six countries and three continents. And maybe a little bit different about my background is that I was actually a management consultant prior to working as a IT director, and I think has helped me a little bit in this transformation.

Sarah Nicastro: So your consulting background was in management? So on the business side or on the IT side?

Pekka Nurmi: In the business side, but I always ended up doing something with IT. So I sort of all the time, every year, I gravitated closer toward the IT topics all the time. I did have IT background. I'd been programming some software to couple of companies in way, way, way down the line, but the IT, of course, always something that I'm always seem to be gravitating toward that, so I think the current position came naturally.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And I think some of the conversations we've had on this podcast, folks talk a lot about how traditionally IT and the business side, in many instances, were fairly siloed, and there's more of a need to really merge that together. So I think having that business background and bringing that to an IT role could be really helpful in creating that closer collaboration.

Pekka Nurmi: I really think so, that that is the case, and a really good idea I think to having the background.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah, I've talked to folks where the two within a company are at odds, and it doesn't work very well, right? So everyone needs to be friendly and work together, and I think when you have some experience seeing the other person's viewpoints, it's helpful in being able to do that.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. So tell us, how would you describe Cimcorp's IT strategy overall?

Pekka Nurmi: Well, I think the big idea, like a really big scale, is that we have six offices all around the globe, and the idea is that no matter where you go, you would always have that similar technology and back-end systems waiting for you, so you can just hop on the plane and arrive to another continent, and start working. That's the big idea.

Pekka Nurmi: But more about the strategy is that we seem to be and we are always reducing the number of the systems in house, because we really started from a situation where the number of different systems was just immense. And we were in the continuous loop that update, upgrade, and then you would [inaudible 00:03:56] to lag so much in behind. So we really decided, okay, we need to cut down the number of systems and concentrate on the core systems in general.

Pekka Nurmi: And also what we're doing at the moment is we're trying always to find things to outsource, and there is so much of new stuff we have to take care of, like a compliance, information security, and embedding IT and IT processes to be since development. And that seems to be the core, so we really always are trying to find things that, okay, we don't have to do this anymore. This is a ... Well, it wouldn't be fair to say trivial things, but less important stuff.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Outside of your core competency, right? You want to be able to focus on what matters most, and not have to become an expert in everything.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. And I've been discussing with many of my colleagues in similar positions at similar companies, and we seem to agree on the thing that unless you're a little bit proactive in replacing and updating and upgrading, you will be on the worst side of the slope, and you always are playing catch. And that's not a good place to be.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. And so from a high level, it sounds like global consistency is important, and then looking at simplification of complexity in the systems that you're using. And simplification in management, so that you're focusing on what matters most instead of trying to focus on every single thing.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. It's like when we start discussing with business, okay, what can we do and where can we improve? I really hate to say that. We could do that, but then I'd have to update system number one, system number two, and system number three, and maybe then, if all things go forward, we can do that. And that would be six months later. I prefer to be able to say that, okay, we are almost there. We have this one system, maybe two if things aren't bad, and then we can move forward. But the complexities, that can drag you down a lot.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and so the idea of consolidating to less systems and also the idea of outsourcing in the areas where you can leverage external expertise, it's almost the management of IT, the planning, the strategy has become the job versus the management of systems, right?

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: So it's more of, like you said, staying ahead of things and looking at, okay, where do we need to be in six months? Where do we need to be in a year? So the more you can rely on folks to be a part of getting you there, then the more you can focus on staying ahead of that strategy, right?

Pekka Nurmi: Yes. And finding suppliers and partners who have a vision of the future, what can it be, because we cannot be inventing everything in-house. We are relying on our partners insights on many of the topics, so it's about finding who has the right vision, who has the capability to execute that, and things like that. So it's like managing a network of partners who are on the same page with you.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So I'm curious to ask you, Pekka, though, I would say the majority of companies that we would have listening to this podcast would agree with the concept of focusing more on core competencies, right? So however you get there. Simplification of systems, outsourcing of different areas of expertise. But I think there are some that really, really struggle with the concept of relinquishing control, and so they're fighting their desire to do it all, and that all is growing and growing and growing and growing, and it becomes harder and harder and harder to do it all. Because as digital matures, there's just more sophistication, more capabilities, more opportunities. And so the world is expanding, and they're trying desperately to keep it all within their grasp.

Sarah Nicastro: So what would you say to those folks about the value of letting go, and then also how to shift the mindset, and know that it actually could help you more to not try and control everything in-house?

Pekka Nurmi: That's very familiar topic. That's where I started when I got this position. The IT department that, okay, we've done all, everything in-house, and this is how we want to operate, but through a lot of discussion and opening the idea that how management sees IT department, I think that opened up the idea that ... Like if we're trying always to do everything, we will be so slow that ... We would be a focus of top management, like a gaze on the IT department. "Why are you so slow all these things?" And through that, and a lot of discussion, and more discussion, and meetings, and staying in the different offices and talking to IT people, we gradually were able to see that. Okay, we just cannot go on like this. There's just too much to do, and being able to prove the point that, hey, we actually are quite slow on certain topics. So my team gradually realized that you have to do something.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. It's the idea, I think, that in today's landscape, the pace of innovation I so fast that it becomes almost impossible to keep up if you're trying to become a master of all, right? It becomes advantageous to rely on the experts in those different areas versus ... It's almost unrealistic to think that you can take the time to do all of those things and stay ahead to the degree you need to be competitive and all of those things.

Pekka Nurmi: And it's fantastic to see those small wins. Being able to prove that we're on the right path because being able to do something in two weeks with our partner that would have taken six months in some other way. So it's like, okay, this is good. This is a good way. People are happy about it, and we get compliments from the management. "How did you guys able to do that in such a short note and timeline," and the cost wasn't actually that bad.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and it comes back to the idea of any change, right, or any evolution. If Cimcorp was used to doing this all itself, and you come in and you say, "No, we really need to shift and look at outsourcing more," the first few times you have those wins, you have more and more light bulbs of, "Oh, okay. This can work. It wasn't a failure. Everything's okay," and then the comfort level increases, and you start to see how you can really expand there. That makes sense.

Sarah Nicastro: So talking about innovation, I came into this space, Pekka, in 2008, and have been interviewing folks like yourself on a daily basis since then. And it's been really interesting to see how digital environments have matured and become more sophisticated, and just the wealth of opportunity that exists to companies today with the technology that's out there. How would you say the focus of IT innovation today differs from IT innovation of a decade ago? What are the major shifts?

Pekka Nurmi: I had a fantastic discussion with one of the colleagues from another company regarding this exact topic, and we were thinking, okay, 10 years ago how we would have solved this item at the time. And we would be selecting really dedicated IT people that is into IT, but they're probably thinking that, hmm, actually regarding one of the topics we were discussing about, we decided that actually we don't want to have IT staff on that at all. It's more like we were starting to discuss that wouldn't there be some business consultant that has some capability in IT that would define that area?

Pekka Nurmi: So I think that this goes back a little bit to where we originally discussed about the consulting background and things like that. So the business is much more involved and should be much more involved. It's not like the IT side has become any less important, but in order to get things done and the complete ideas, it's like the scope of things has increased. It might be 10 years, but it's enough that you solve the IT side. But today, you have to solve the IT and business side on the same time.

Pekka Nurmi: So I think that this is the core change that has happened in the 10 years.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, that makes sense. I think the importance of it is has it even increased significantly. You look at all of the digital transformation that's underway in every business today. I think the importance is critical, but I think what we're talking about here is the idea that it's shifting from the criticality of internal execution to the criticality of strategy, right? And how that allows you to scale the way that you need to be innovative and competitive.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So I wanted to come back to the title of the podcast, so talking about working smarter, right? So I think we've touched on some of those things, and we're going to dig in a little bit more. So we talked about simplification of systems. We've talked about outsourcing in areas where you can really benefit from leveraging external expertise. Is there anything else you would say is a characteristic of how Cimcorp is looking at IT in terms of working smarter instead of working harder?

Pekka Nurmi: Yes. We've done a lot of work on that topic, and I think the core thing is trying not to over-complicate any of the processes and topics. If we look at ERP systems or software in general, they already have a built-in processes, and tried out ways to work. And all the jobs I've had and all the customers I've had, I always saw that idea that everybody was trying to over-complicate that. "My process is so special. Our business is so special." And as an outsider, you could always say that I've seen this a thousand times. It's the exact same process repeating itself time and a time and a time and again, but the people running it are always saying that this is special. "We need special software." And the loop starts from there.

Pekka Nurmi: So the idea is to have an open mind that maybe somebody has found the golden nugget or golden egg of approaches that's already built into the system. Like ERP systems, they have tens of thousands of clients, and that have been running for decades actually. So the process, it might have been already evolved. And in many cases, I've found that accepting the ERP system might actually be already really smart.

Pekka Nurmi: And having the talks with the people that "This is really so special," or is there someone we can do a benchmarking on? And finding the ways that, could we just use this? There might be some idea in the background, and try it out, and if it's not, then we do something.

Sarah Nicastro: It's such a good point, Pekka, because I think the sense I get in talking with people is almost customization is a badge of honor. It's like, "No, we could never use an out-of-the-box solution. That's just preposterous. Our business is far too important for that," right? And I think, again, going back to evolution over the last 10 years, there probably was a point in time where that was more accurate than it is today.

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: Where the solutions were not sophisticated enough, or weren't incorporating best practices from 10,000 customers, or what have you. To the degree where it was x-percent there, but you needed to add onto that. I think you're making a really good point in that, while businesses have been maturing and evolving and transforming, so too have technology providers, right? So the point you're making about, hey, maybe it's worth taking off that badge of honor and not looking at it from the context of we need to make this super complicated because we're important and we're different and all of these things. And looking at, wow, could we make our lives a lot easier, maybe spend less money, have a faster implementation, maybe get better value if we open our perspective a bit and just consider that.

Sarah Nicastro: I think that's a really, really important point, just to think about the progression that's occurred, and next time you're evaluating software, why don't you think about looking at it a little bit differently, and not staying stuck in the history of it, but looking at what is out there right now.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. And also in my career, I've had a chance to look at ERP systems that were implemented two or three years ago, and I was invited to check that, how are we doing today with the system? And that always ended up like 60 to 80% of those modifications, the customer started paying for the ERP provider that, okay, we remove these customizations because the ERP system was right in the first place. But they just didn't accept that. So I've been seeing that happening so many times over.

Sarah Nicastro: And to your point, it's probably beneficial to, like you said, try it and if you do find areas, proven areas, where you need something, that's fine. But don't go into it with the expectation that you could never, because you might find that you could make things a lot easier. Okay.

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: Very good.

Sarah Nicastro: So from an IT perspective, part of your job is helping Cimcorp to stay ahead of customer demands, and to enable internal operations and enable externally for a good customer experience. What would you say are the top demands of today's customers that end up falling into necessity from IT? You take customer expectations. How does that translate into what you're expected to deliver?

Pekka Nurmi: We are using IFS ERP system, and they are talking about moment of service in their topics, and I actually fell in love with that slogan, "moment of service." Because that describes quite accurately what we need and what the customers need. So the IT systems really have to be there, present, and have a real-time information that you can provide that. There's no other way. When the customer contacts you, they might have a spare part they would need desperately delivered overnight, or something, other issues going there, and what the customer wants to hear is that, okay, it's a can-do answer. And within that first email, phone call, whatever support ticket you might have done, and they really want to hear that, that, okay, we are on that, and we know what's going to happen, and when we going to be able to fix it.

Pekka Nurmi: So the moment of service is actually really fantastic word to describe the need of IT.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I agree, and I think there's a lot that relates to that moment of service in the sense of it's a moment, but it's far more than that, right? So that moment of service is a moment of experience, but what happens in that moment, that can mean it's brand perception, right? It can be customer loyalty. It can be the difference between revenue growth or revenue loss. Service as a differentiator is where we are, right? And so how you align your infrastructure and your people to be able to, like you said, what do they want? Boom. We're ready. We have it. We're there. We're giving them what they need. It really is the name of the game. Everything you're doing is working to ...

Sarah Nicastro: And we're going to talk about this in a minute, but it's really this game of mastering complexity. And I say "mastering," not "simplifying," because you can simplify to a degree through some of the steps you've talked about so far, but the rest of it you have to master. Customers don't care. They don't care how much effort you're putting into delivering when they need it, but you have to be able to do it, right? So, yeah, that's a good point.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. There is a huge amount of complexity in the background, but like you said, the customer doesn't care. They want their issue solved in as fast as it's possible.

Sarah Nicastro: Huge and only multiplying. It's not a huge amount of complexity that's going to stay level, right? The more sophisticated everything gets technology-wise, and the more consumer experiences that impact what customers want, that level of complexity keeps climbing and climbing and climbing.

Sarah Nicastro: And going back to the beginning of our discussion, that's why I think it's such a good point for folks to understand the idea of mastering it all yourself is not sustainable, right? You have to start looking at how to work smarter instead of harder because you can't do what you need to do in that moment if you're trying to ... I'm thinking about little people inside trying to master all of this complexity. You have to look for ways to streamline that.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So let's talk about the IFS ERP and then your recent transition to IFS Cloud as a real world example of the things that we've been talking about so far in action, right? So this is an example of how you're walking the talk of what your strategy is in real life. So just tell us a little bit about the migration from IFS ERP, which I think you deployed around 2016, and then transitioning to the new IFS Cloud, and how that touches on some of these themes.

Pekka Nurmi: Well, I've been doing exactly like we discussed before that. What I've been getting people to accept is that the baseline in the IFS might be acceptable for the business process. And for us, IFS has been able to provide many of those. I'd say they're like blueprints for our operations, and they've been giving us areas where we can work smarter. We've been even getting ideas on how to set up our VDM systems in the background based on what IFS, how the architecture has been formed in that system.

Pekka Nurmi: Really, the idea is that we've been trying to accept that what the platform enables, and we've been trying to channel our energy to provide value to the customer using that. But the innovation in that is really about we are accepting IFS as a platform, and we already discuss about limiting the number of those systems. We did our homework, and we decided that IFS is a good platform for us.

Pekka Nurmi: So it all comes together. And in our case, it seems to be working quite well.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Now, how would you articulate the difference between the IFS ERP deployment circa 2016 to what IFS Cloud offers?

Pekka Nurmi: The change has been immense. The first feedback we are getting is that the HTML5 interface is huge improvement. People love the face that you can access with your mobile phone all the time. That's big plus. And it has developed a lot.

Pekka Nurmi: Back in 2016, we knew where IFS was going in the future, and I think with IFS Cloud, we are getting that system that we bought in 2016. So I'm really happy about the roadmap for IFS really came to reality for us.

Sarah Nicastro: And that goes back to the point you made at the beginning about if you're going to rely more on partners ... So if you can acknowledge the fact that you can't do it all, and then you know that you need to choose smartly who you want to work with, right? Because you're trying to work with less people. As you said, you're trying to really simplify the ecosystem in terms of eliminating too many disparate systems and looking for more of a platform relationship. It's a good point of don't just look at what's there now. Look at what that roadmap looks like, and think about how the organizations that you're choosing to work with, how are they innovating and what are their plans, right? Because you want to future-proof yourself in the sense of, do they have what you need now to run the business and deliver the moment of service the way you need to, but then also as your business evolves, are they evolving too so that you're not in a position where in too short of a time you're like, okay, well, this worked, but now we've outgrown it, right?

Sarah Nicastro: Really it's the same concept we talk about with a lot of the folks that we have as guests on the podcast of moving away from a transactional relationship and moving more toward delivering outcomes and building partnerships, right?

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: Good.

Pekka Nurmi: And I think one third of the decision to select IFS back in 2016 was actually that. How do we see IFS as a partner for our future? So we have a pre-finalist system in that one, and that this was really clear that with IFS we decided that we can trust them to be our partner and guide in the future as well. And that's really important.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Okay, so we talked a little bit about the fact that a lot of what IT is responsible for today is that concept of minimizing but also mastering complexity. So like we said, customers don't care how hard Pekka is working every day, how hard Cimcorp across the board is working every day. They just care that you're delivering what they need when they need it, right?

Sarah Nicastro: So when it comes to delivering that ultimate simplicity to customers, what are the keys to doing that? So how does a solution like IFS Cloud or other tools that you use ... What are the key ingredients to mastering that complexity to be able to deliver an experience that really hides all of that complexity from the customers?

Pekka Nurmi: I think I'm getting back to the basics that we cannot invent everything in-house. We absolutely have to be able to trust to the partners we select and the people we do business with. And we don't want to select partners that wouldn't be giving us anything in return. Like, okay, we pay you money, and you provide us the service, but we really want them to be providing innovation and the platform actually. Like with IFS, they are giving us the service platform in so many ways.

Sarah Nicastro: And I think it's worth revisiting that point of why a platform play versus disparate solutions makes sense. And I think what it really comes down to at the root of it all ... There's many reasons, right? Part of it is just for you the complexity of managing multiple relationships instead of one relationship. But I think when you look at it from the customer perspective, and when you look at it from the ability to deliver in that moment of service, it comes down to eliminating failure points. The more systems you have tied together, the more opportunity there is to falter in mastering that complexity, right? The more cohesiveness you can create behind the scenes, the better your chances of delivering that simplicity to customers.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. Of course, we do alternative scenarios. That's what we do, and we started one alternative. And when we discovered that we would have to build 19 interfaces between two systems, and most of them two-way interfaces, so that was immediately the point that we don't want to do that. We don't want to be spending the time working the interfaces, all the changes in the system that will affect the interfaces. So, once again, we found a position where we would be digging a hole underneath us with those interfaces.

Pekka Nurmi: So, once again, one platform, one solution will help us to focus on the business actually.

Sarah Nicastro: So another area I want to talk about, Pekka, is around data. So we talked about how complexity has increased and it's continuing to multiply, and I think a lot of that has to do with the criticality of data, and data as a resource. So you mentioned the real time data is essential for delivering what you need to in the moment of service. So there's leveraging data within Cimcorp to do that, right? And then there's the idea of the potential for leveraging data externally, right? So with a customer base.

Sarah Nicastro: So tell us a little bit about what that looks like, and how you're looking at data and its limitless potential both internally and externally.

Pekka Nurmi: Oh, this is a topic. We always seem to have multiple data improvement programs ongoing all the time everywhere. That seems to be the thing of today. There's always something to fix, and especially now that we've expanded to new countries, and there's different cultures and people with very different backgrounds. And the most reason we have found that we need to have a ... What would be a right way to say it? We want to enable people to understand that the importance of why they are entering the data, and if I'm not entering this, this will affect this and this many departments after themselves.

Pekka Nurmi: And we've been finding that when it comes to data, we have to provide more understanding to the whole organization around the data, and also we've invested heavily into data warehousing because that is the big thing in future development.

Pekka Nurmi: But it's a really big topic, data, but that's a big focus area, and in my mind, I return to the situation where we have multiple systems. And with multiple systems, we would have to worry about the data. And, once again, we would find ourselves being farther away from the core idea.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. And I think there's so much to sort out yet about the real potential for all of the data people are gathering now, right? And how to make use of it, like I said, both within the company and within the customer base. And I think part of why it's important to relinquish some of the control of the systems that allow your business to run is so that you can focus more of your energy and efforts on sorting out how do we leverage data better in the future, right?

Sarah Nicastro: So that's a strategic focus, right? That's something that is worthy of thinking and time and resources and energy, whereas you don't want to spend those time and resources and energy managing a bunch of configurations on a bunch of different systems because it's not bringing value to the future of the business.

Sarah Nicastro: And I don't think anyone has a real good handle on exactly how powerful the data side can be into the future, but that is a really good argument for why you need to focus less on systems and more on strategy, right?

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly. I'd say this is exactly the way.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So I wanted to ask, Pekka, you mentioned a couple times throughout the conversation interacting with some of your peers, and I think that's a really good point because that's the premise, honestly, of Future of Field Service is being able to learn what other folks are doing. But how do you do that and how is that important to you being able to stay in tune with how other companies are tackling challenges and handling their own innovation?

Pekka Nurmi: What I actually do is I continuously encourage my staff to find these benchmarking companies, and be active in ... There's these end user groups we are finding. There's an internet-based communities where people have discussions, and I've granted them time to help other companies, and also search help from other companies. So I think we don't want to be stuck inside the walls of our department, and I think it's more like encouraging that we discuss with the outside all the time, more and more, because we can only win. Of course, you cannot spend 90% of your time discussing with some other companies. You have to have some limits on that, but still the basic idea is that every week you should try to find somebody to help, find somebody to get insight on what you do.

Pekka Nurmi: And we seem to be finding. Today, we are getting emails from other companies that have heard about us and want to discuss. So it took one or two years to get us started, but we're finding really good partner companies we can discuss with. And also some of the partners have active ... They provide also insight that this company might be benefiting you, and maybe you two companies should discuss.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Right. Yeah, I think there's so much power in building that collective knowledge, and it is very important to make the time to look outside of your own company and your own day-to-day. Because I think creating that space is what allows you to not mimic what someone else is doing, but survey the landscape to get different ideas to bring back into your own business. I'm a huge advocate of that, and I think it's a really good point, particularly if there are folks listening that some of the things we've talked about relinquishing control and outsourcing makes them nervous. Talk to some other people that are doing it to see if you can increase your comfort level a bit.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. Of course, you have to be really careful to which companies you talk to and which people, but generally, I'd say I really recommend that. It has provided a lot of value for us.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Okay.

Sarah Nicastro: Last question for today is what do you envision the IT strategy of 2031 looking like?

Pekka Nurmi: That's a big question. First thing that comes to mind is obvious there's going to be more public clouds being used, and information security will by any mean be of lesser importance than it's today. But I think along the lines about what we discussed earlier, it's going to be more about businesses' IT strategies aligning in many ways. And I would say that there would be more partnerships with the IT suppliers, just like we discussed before, as sources of innovation and platforms and new ways of working.

Pekka Nurmi: And maybe there would be more deeper level partnerships on IT with our customers, too, just thinking about all the IOT data that we discuss about. All of that I see as a big part of IT strategy for in about 10 years' time.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So that will keep you busy.

Pekka Nurmi: Oh, I'm sure.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Well, Pekka, thank you so much for joining and sharing your story today. I really appreciate it.

Pekka Nurmi: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: I think there's some excellent points in here for people to consider, and I certainly appreciate your perspective.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah, thank you. It was nice to be here. So very good discussion. Gave me a lot of ideas, too.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Thank you. Yes, yes. All right, you can find more by visiting us at futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter, @thefutureoffs. The Future of Field Service Podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more by visiting IFS.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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