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Hot on the heels of its launch last year, Field Service Connect 2019 focuses on the UK field service industry and its challenges, bringing fresh insights and differing perspectives to this often under-appreciated sector.

Set against a backdrop of rolling Welsh countryside, this invitation only summit will see senior field service executives debate, discuss and divulge their successes and challenges in 2019.

Customer Service and Mindset
There can be no doubt that the traditional interpretation of Field Service is changing: a fundamental shift is being made to focus on service and its incorporation and development into existing, more product-centric, business models. Where once it was enough to rely on a stellar product, now competition is fierce and margins are being squeezed this is no longer the case. Where excellent service is being provided and taken for granted in everyday life, it makes sense that this is now being expected, if not demanded, within business transactions.

A new age is dawning and customers are continuing to ask how a product and company ‘adds value’. Engineers in the field have access to, and interactions with, potentially hundreds of contacts within a specific customer base. So it’s no surprise that those customers will come to associate a product’s ‘worth’ based on the dealings they have had with these field service representatives. As the American poet Maya Angelou is attributed to have said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

By 2020 customer experience is slated to overtake price and product as a key brand differentiator. 

Women in Field Service and Brand
With this shift to customer centricity there must also be a shift in perception. Traditionally seen as male dominated, a career in field service has not attracted women. However, with service coming to the fore this situation is starting to change and the skills that women offer are becoming more vital than ever. The ‘soft skills’ required for customer service roles are often attributed to women, but it’s not a question of gender, the focus must be on what skills can be brought to the table as a whole and how these can be used to improve a company’s field service offering.

"Traditionally seen as male dominated, a career in field service has not attracted women..."

In order to ensure that quality talent is acquired and retained Field Service must also diversify so that the next generation of bright minds can see themselves working in this sector. If a certain demographic is only ever highlighted and portrayed then it is no wonder that it is presumed that this is all there is. As you would market a brand, the same must be done throughout Field Service. Why would you choose this career? What is there to offer? What is the long term career outlook?

In order to keep up with rising expectations it will require a massive change in mindset, starting at board level and moving downwards, to truly transform a company ethos. For some this will mean a transformation in culture that has formed over decades but must now be changed rapidly if they are not to be left behind by the competition. This will be easier said than done; as change is happening so fast it’s fundamentally hard to move quickly enough! However, as the old adage goes, ‘just because something is difficult, it doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing’.

Digital Transformation
Alongside the cultural shift needed to meet customer expectations, Field Service is also being driven by digital. Gartner defines digitalisation as ‘the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business.’ ‘Digitalisation’ and ‘digital transformation’ have become such buzz words in recent years that some have lost sight of not only what it means but what they are actually trying to do.

Digitalisation is a tool by which to achieve an end goal, not the goal itself. Gartner predicts that by 2020 10% of emergency field service work will be both triaged and scheduled by artificial intelligence. With AI assisting with everything from scheduling to predictive maintenance to using past data to make future plans.

The human element within Field Service is still very much relied on and future technologies and solutions will be there to support these interactions - to make life easier and more efficient, not to replace humans altogether.

People still want to do business with people and until the customer becomes more Terminator than terrestrial this will probably always be the case.

You can find out more more information about Field Service Connect UK 2019, including how to register here.

A panel debate on the best digital tools for achieving top-end service, strayed from shortlisting technologies and focused more on the end-user impact. Field Service News’ Deputy Editor Mark Glover attended the session – part of Field Service Europe 2018 – and saw discussion range from strategy to data, but always swinging back to the customer.
Among the many highlights from Field Service Europe, held in Amsterdam before Christmas, was a debate attempting to shortlist digital tools that can contribute to a world-class service process.

Panellists included Miguel Angel Hernanz, VP Head of Global Service Delivery Transformation at Phillips Healthcare; Karen Mehal, VP Field Service Lightning at Salesforce and David Nedohin, President at Scope Augmented Reality.

Chairing the debate, Field Service News’ Editor-in-Chief Kris Oldland began by defining world-class service and more specifically what it means to customers used to high-end service delivery from the likes of Uber and Amazon. “Service is no longer how we compete with our direct competitors,” he told delegates. “We’re now constantly at competition with the best service experiences customers have ever had. We’re now moving into a world where customer satisfaction is perhaps no longer the right phrase anymore.    
"It has to be about customer experience and understanding what the experience is to the customer and working back from there. Only then can we really start thinking about what world class service is,” he posed.  

Oldland put it to the panel that technology and digitisation in service should be perceived as “one continuous eco-system that compliments and feeds off one-another" rather than separate tools. Hernanz, who recently oversaw a large B2B and B2C contact center service transformation at Phillips Healthcare, was keen to set the focus on strategy and away from the tools. “The different tools are enablers," he said. You should first of all take a look at your strategy and secondly re-define your processes end-to-end, then use the different solutions or tools that are available in the market to make it happen.”    

He continued: “The problem with digitisation and the variety of tools in the market is that you get overloaded with information; you find opportunities all over the place and you want it all and you want it now and that is a big mistake.    “You should start doing a proof of concept. You try it, you learn, you correct and you scale up; if it is scalable. Or you dismiss it and you try something else” he urged.    

Servicecloud’s Karen Mehal agreed: “If you don’t understand what your objective is, how do you know you’re getting there? she asked, going on to question the use of the term digitisation. “We digitised field service technicians with laptops 20 years ago, did we not? We gave them a laptop. That was digitisation."   

It's a good point. The industry can be guilty of getting swept up in buzzwords without fully understanding what they mean, and more importantly how they can impact on customer service. “What’s the objective?” Mehal continued, “Is it around your customer? Is digitisation serving your customer? If it isn’t, it really should be. Or are you just taking your ERP and digitising it?    

If the customer service is the end goal, then digital tools should be used to empower that process. Putting this theory to David Nedohin, the co-founder and president of an Augmented Reality company, Oldland asked how such a new and innovative technology such as Augmented Reality can cut through the excitement and intrigue to become a genuine ROI. “It’s about identifying what the problems are but to also make sure there are measurements to it,” Nehan explained. “For example, if you are currently sending out your field service team to help support your customer on a certain percentage of problems, what is that costing you right now? And if you could implement a technology that could help reduce a certain percentage of those, then what is the actual cost savings?    

“If they don’t have those numbers, we work with them to find out what those numbers are so there’s a business case that can be presented to management,” he says, before adding: “It’s a strategy they need to put together to understand exactly why they’re solving that problem. You have to start with the problem, you have to start with the use-case.”     

Concurring, Oldland suggested that technology should underpin a wider business plan of evolution. “Digitisation is not a one-off process,” he said. “In a sense, we’re talking about a continuous improvement journey, it’s just that the tools behind that evolve too.”    

“I see a lot of people get lost in that,” offered Mehan, who by her own admission is customer-facing, “They get lost in the shiny object, such as Augmented Reality. But if your strategy is around customer support, better customer service, wouldn’t it be better to use digitisation to look at someone’s asset now and fix it now, rather than scheduling someone to go out there and fix it?    

“Our world is no longer traditional. We’re not in a traditional world, we’re not in a traditional software world, we’re not in a traditional field service world. We should not be bound by EAPs or by software. We should by bound by what serves out the customer,” she argued. “My questions are: are you doing that with your digitisation. Are you really taking care of the customer when you’re doing your strategy?” She said.   

Philips’ Hernanz admitted working in large organisations ,where many different stakeholders have many ideas can be difficult. However, all these opinions come second to that of the most important stakeholder: the customer. “You need to put the customer at the centre and listen to them,” he said. “This is very important. You must find out what they need and then start building solutions which are suitable for today, but also for the future because the whole process is also an evolution.”   

 

"We're not in a traditional software world, we're not in a traditional field service world..." (Mehal)

 

 

One digital tool that has made a significant impression on this process is data and, in particular, big data. Filtering the most useful information remains the challenge, given the reams of information that smart assets churn out. “There’s no point in having data if it’s not providing the right insight,” Oldland said to the panel, all of whom agreed and acknowledged all the customer cares about is fixing what needs fixing.   

Referencing a client who made industrial cooking equipment for fast food restaurants including Burger King and Macdonald’s, Mehner told the audience that when their client's equipment – such as a bun toaster – produced a fault the restaurant would call out a contract worker ill-equipped to isolate and solve the issue. “This piece of equipment,” Nedohin explained, “now has 20 or 30 tickets associated with it because the technician doesn’t know how to diagnose the problem, let alone fix it. The message is clear: we need to find a better way of fixing the assets.”    

The restaurant now uses remote support tools to directly contact the manufacturer, who can identify the model, the fault, diagnose the problem and send the right technician with the correct parts and asset knowledge   “There is data with this such as preventative maintenance,” Nedohin said. “But the customer doesn’t care, all they care about is getting the equipment working. That data is important to somebody and that somebody is in the manufacturer's office.   “The person at the end just needs to know what to do,” he concluded, summing up a key take away from the debate.   

Enlightened delegates left the session without a list of digital tools but an idea of what to do before you choose them. Data collection, Augmented reality can all complement a process, but without a strategy that also encompasses your customer’s needs, those tools may as well be blunt.  

Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director for Service Management, IFS explores how service organisations can leverage digital transformation to improve customer service and exceed expectations...

Servitization. Uberization. Driverless cars. Drones. Digital transformation appears to be both a blessing and curse to the field service industry. The downside to digital revolution? Customer expectation rises as new technology makes a consumer’s life easier. But fundamentally, a service organisation strives to deliver the right products and services at the right time. The upside? Digital transformation can enable this endeavour.

CIO defines digital transformation as “the application of digital capabilities to processes, products, and assets to improve efficiency, enhance customer value, manage risk, and uncover new monetisation opportunities.” New technologies help field service organisations achieve their goals by enabling them to acquire and process the right data, deliver services and products more accurately and efficiently and provide an unrivalled customer experience.

According to a research study by The Raconteur, even in digitally rich 2017, 28% of field service operations (FSOs) are failing to attain at least 80% service level agreement (SLA) compliance, with 66% of these organisations also citing concern or serious concern over their current cost model. The challenge becomes this: how do organisations leverage digital transformation to exceed customer expectation and achieve long-term sustainability?

Customer-Driven Digital Transformation

The customer is the focal point of any field service operation. Traditional statistics state that by the year 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator (Walker) and by 2018, more than 50% of organisations will redirect their investments to customer experience innovations (Gartner). Making the customer the centre of your organisation’s digital transformation ensures that all changes will directly support your central goal of putting the customer first.

Technology can transform the customer experience in a multitude of ways including:

More accurate demand forecasting

Predicted demand, provided by the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data technology, allows an organisation to collect real-time data and utilise advanced forecasting algorithms to predict the optimal window for predictive maintenance or service visits, rather than relying on historical information or regression modelling.

Faster service times

IoT technology that is seamlessly integrated with intelligent field service management (FSM) software dispatches field service engineers automatically and predictively when an asset requires service, improving the customer experience and saving costs on time spent on wasted visits.

Seamless workflows

Real-time operational intelligence gives managers insight into all aspects of their service operations while end-to-end FSM automates the entire service supply chain. This eliminates paper processes and reduces the time from initiation to invoice, transforming service delivery from reactive to proactive. These technologies allow organisations to reduce operating costs and focus more on the overall customer experience.

At The Collision Point

So, your customer is one of the future; digitally savvy and increasingly demanding because of it. Digital transformation exasperates and solves this challenge at the same time. How can you use this to your advantage? Focus on growth and innovation.

According to new research, 47% of FSOs reported that growth opportunities in new markets were a driving factor for digital transformation, while 33% of organisations cited evolving customer needs and preferences as a top driving factor (Raconteur).

Facilitate Growth

Your organisation needs to grow internally and externally. Digital transformation can facilitate this by allowing you to offer new service models, appeal to new customer bases and enter new markets. But in order for this to be effective, you need to ensure that you have the right organisational and governance model to facilitate growth and embrace change. Internal buy-in and change management are imperative to leveraging digital transformation to ensure growth.

Leverage Innovation

Innovation gives your organisation an incredible competitive edge by providing services or products that are entirely different from the competition. Digital transformation doesn’t just fix current problems with logistics, customer service, delivery and more, it also presents alternative ways of doing business to better serve the customer.

Service organisations surveyed in Raconteur’s research were overwhelmingly convinced in the importance of investing in big data, analytics and IoT. These technologies are already working to help leverage innovations in service delivery, closing the loop between the customer and operations.

Now What?

Embracing digital technology requires a deep understanding of your organisational needs and your customers’ expectations.

Clear direction, internal buy-in and change management processes will help ensure your technological investments reap the most ROI and provide the best improvements for your organisation. Moreover, working with third-party vendors that understand your business and imperatives is key to success.

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  IFS
Title: The IFS Digital Change Survey

 

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Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly.

(Please note that by applying for your subscription via this link you accept the terms and conditions here and a plain english version is available from our main subscriptions page here) 

 

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Synopsis:

When a car leaves a factory, this no longer signifies the end of the relationship between manufacturer and vehicle. The car goes into the next stage of its lifecycle, where it must be maintained and serviced. Businesses are realising that this servicing offers a significant revenue stream. For example, automotive manufacturer margins on new vehicle sales range from eight to 14 per cent, whereas servicing a brake disc carries around a 65 per cent margin.

As businesses become service-oriented, digital transformation gives them the tools to change.

By enabling visibility of an asset using the Internet of Things (IoT), the provider can better understand its use in the real world and feed that back into its research and development (R&D) process. Any issues from the manufacturing process that affect usage and failure rates of equipment can be managed via the IoT feedback loop. Data analysis using business intelligence or big data and analytical tools can derive value from that data.

Historically, companies have seen service as a cost centre and a necessary evil. Now, Digital Transformation is enabling more organisations to realise the potential that service has as a profit centre. Yet there is considerable variation in maturity across the sector globally. This exclusive white paper by IFS offers key insights into their research of Digital Transformation and how it is being implemented.

Overview:

Service: Leading the Way

Across many industries, manufacturing and products have become commoditised; service is now the differentiator. The winners in the service sector are those able to stand apart through their ability to support a product across its lifecycle, or support a client whose services they manage.

When set against other sectors, service organisations are leading the field in innovation and transformation. It is the only sector in which respondents did not select ‘internal process efficiencies’ as being the key driver for digital transformation. The positive customer experience they offer is expected to allow them to increase margins and increase their customer base. Digital Transformation sits fully behind that growth, as it enables companies to innovate their offering, automate workload and build a picture of a customer’s world based on the data they receive.

 

The top five factors behind digital transformation reflect this potential, with four of the five being sales, innovation and customer relationship-driven. Chief among these is ‘growth opportunities in new markets’. In reality, these growth opportunities are not new but have been expanding for some 20+ years. What is changing is recognition of these opportunities. Many organisations have been slow to recognise service as being a key driver to their overall business success.

A  New Hope:

The service industry is reaching a critical point with its ageing workforce. An enormous level of knowledge, possessed by the veterans and gurus of the industry, is walking out of the door as these workers reach retirement, or are no longer effectively supported by the business. This can have more of an impact in service than anywhere else, as the level and quality of service on offer can be directly impacted by the individual that performs the service.

In developing and recruiting talent, DT has a significant role to play. Intelligent knowledge management systems can enable a six-month recruit to perform those maintenance or repair services that would have previously been the [quote float="right"]Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer

domain of a 10+ year veteran. Technologies such as augmented reality (in the form of Google Glass or Microsoft HoloLens), can be usedto virtually project onto the physical equipment an animated disassembly procedure for swapping out a part onto the physical equipment.

 

The greatest talent gaps reported by service providers are in the areas of business intelligence (BI) and cybersecurity, with the former particularly keenly felt in North America.

Big data/analytics and BI are crucial in supporting a quantifiable business, and unlike many other industries, service is very easy to measure. Metrics such as first-time fix rate, mean time to repair, mean time between services, and service level agreements are commonplace. It is crucial when marketing a service that the provider is able to cite a percentage level of service and agree that level with customers in their SLA.

Joining Forces:

The need for collaboration is higher in the services sector than in any other, based on the IFS cross-industry research. At a sector-wide level, the delta between desired levels of collaboration and actual levels of collaboration is 2.7 points on a ten-point scale, meaning there is a desire to increase levels of collaboration by 49 per cent.

 

Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer

 

The demand for close collaboration is not surprising – firms such as Dell have a fully outsourced service provision for their field technicians, which means a considerable source of potential revenue is in the hands of trusted third parties.

 

Where firms operate a service within a service, such as an elevator in a hotel, it is in the interest of both the hotel operator and the elevator service organisation to create the optimum customer experience, because they share the same end consumer, who is jointly judging the product and judging the service.

Given the delta, many firms are clearly still not optimised in their digital transformation and will need to achieve a stronger bond between their partners and their internal teams to realise the full value of servitization.

 

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Want to know more? Access to this resource is available to Field Service News subscribers only - but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription!

If you are a field service professional you can apply for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription and we will send you a copy of this white paper along instantly.

(Please note that by applying for your subscription via this link you accept the terms and conditions here and a plain english version is available from our main subscriptions page here) 

 

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Bosch Group, a leading global supplier of technology and services, have announced the expansion of its partnership with Avaya to help support Bosch’s digital transformation strategy across its global operations.

Avaya Private Cloud Services (APCS) has signed a $60 million agreement with Bosch to provide a range of business communications solutions to 160,000 Bosch associates worldwide.

The five-year deal builds on Avaya’s existing relationship with Bosch and is part of the group’s wider “Next Generation Workplace” project, designed to further support a globally connected and agile workforce. The "Next Generation Workplace" is a long-term project for Bosch that aims to make efficient mobile working even easier for associates. Through the Avaya APCS solution provided, Bosch can reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) for the provision of voice services by as much as 20%.

Avaya will provide a range of private cloud-based voice, contact centre and collaboration services, helping Bosch’s central IT department to roll out standardised solutions to all Bosch group companies worldwide. Avaya’s infrastructure integration solution will also provide enterprise-class assured voice services to Bosch users where they are interfacing through the Skype for Business desktop client.

Bosch, which employs 390,000 associates worldwide, operates in four business sectors: Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. As a leading Internet of Things (IoT) company, Bosch offers solutions for smart homes, smart cities, connected mobility, and connected manufacturing, delivering innovations for a connected life.

 

“We have made a major commitment to drive agility by investing in our IT infrastructure. Accordingly, we need trusted partners that can help us deliver on our vision of the “Next Generation Workplace” and deliver the required levels of quality and service to our associates. Avaya’s proven ability to deliver to demanding deadlines, deep knowledge of our business needs and the technical expertise to execute flawlessly makes them a natural choice to be one of those trusted partners. They are helping us to create a global standard solution that will be made available to Bosch’s 440+ subsidiaries and regional companies.” Klaus Hüftle, Senior VP, Bosch GmbH

“This new agreement reflects the confidence and trust that Bosch has built up in Avaya, our capability to deliver on this scale of project, and our ability to create innovative solutions that go beyond our own product space. We are strengthening our relationship with a world-leading technology company, and playing our part in helping Bosch to achieve its digital transformation objectives and empower its workforce. Avaya is proud of the endorsement in us that this agreement reflects and we look forward to working more closely with them over the coming years.” Nidal Abou-Ltaif, President, Avaya International.

The contract with Avaya will also enable Bosch to deliver future innovation, through the introduction of Avaya Breeze applications and Avaya Oceana customer experience solutions.

Avaya Private Cloud Services (APCS) enable companies to create simple, dynamic environments that allow them to roll out new applications and services faster, support new devices, improve application uptime, and gain significantly reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and better return on investment (ROI).

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  IFS
Title: Digital Transformation and enterprise service management - what's next?

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Want to know more? This white paper is available to Field Service News subscribers but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription! Click here to apply for a subscription now and we’ll send you this white paper to your inbox now instantly as a welcome gift!

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Synopsis:

Digital transformation is the predominant trend impacting today’s global business. Broadly speaking, digital transformation speaks to the changes produced by the application of digital technology to society at large—just walk down a street or go into a coffee shop and look at the eyes focused on the ubiquitous smartphone.

But for business, digital transformation goes beyond the tactical application of technology—something that has been happening in enterprises for years—to the strategic incorporation of digital technology as the very basis for competition. It is transforming business models by speeding innovation and making ongoing practical gains in operational efficiencies, product design, development and delivery, and customer relationships. It’s changing the way companies think about coming to market.

In this age of digital transformation, the old methods of service simply don’t apply anymore. World-class organisations must now anticipate service needs before they manifest as problems by taking a proactive approach to service delivery. To be sure, the technologies driving the digital transformation are both ratcheting up the pressure on service while providing new opportunities. Those companies looking to what’s next as service continues to evolve will benefit greatly as the digital transformation continues.

Overview

The white paper focusses on three core elements of digital transformation in a field service context:

Impact of Digital Transformation on Field Service 

For service providers, the digital transformation will mean increasing competitive pressure in terms of time to response. At IFS, we believe there will be a rapid escalation in response time competition across the service provider industry. Response times are shortening because of customer expectations, technology capabilities, and competitive pressure .

Because of the disruptive nature of technologies such as IoT, the change will not be incremental. I

f your current response time is a week, it’s not enough to reduce it to six days. It will have to be a more dramatic reduction, and those that move first will have an advantage. Expectations are changing from days to hours or minutes, and those that are left behind will lose business.

Supporting the Digital Transformation in Service

A company pursuing digital transformation must have tools that allow executives and managers to review and orchestrate processes that align with their business strategy to ensure process execution delivers that strategy.

This means bringing data to the desktop, visually, to provide decision makers a complete understanding of which functions deliver real customer value, which are less effective, and which waste both time and resources in terms of meeting organisational goals. Ultimately, this enables businesses to accelerate the realisation of their business strategy—in this case, by moving to become a digitally transformed business—by making better decisions, faster.

 

This can happen by assessing real-time business performance in the context of how it affects key business processes and goals, giving managers real-time operational intelligence and actionable controls to solve issues before they become problems. The solution is about strategy acceleration and execution.

What's next?

A recent report on the state of digital transformation had some interesting results: 88 percent of companies surveyed said they were undergoing digital transformation efforts, but only a quarter had an understanding of what it is.

The challenge creating this gap, according to Forbes, was not investment in technology but rather the realignment of business models to reflect the transformation being sought. This underscores the point made by IDC: digital transformation is not just a technology trend, but rather a core business approach at the center of enterprise strategies across all industry segments and markets.

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Want to know more? This white paper is available to Field Service News subscribers but if you are a Field Service Professional you may qualify for a complimentary industry practitioner subscription! Click here to apply for a subscription now and we’ll send you this white paper to your inbox now instantly as a welcome gift!

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New research which examined how organisations are evolving from a traditional office environment to a digital workplace reveals that gaining competitive advantage and improving business process are among the top goals of their digital transformation strategy.

This is according to 40% of 800 organisations in 15 countries on five continents that were interviewed for Dimension Data’s Digital Workplace Report: Transforming Your Business which was published this week.

Another insight in the Report is that digital transformation is not just about adopting the technologies of the past: 62% of research participants expect to have technology such as virtual advisors in their organisations within the next two years. In addition, 58% expect to start actively investing in technology that powers virtual advisors in the next two years.

Today, the digital workplace is no longer just made up of managers and those managed; co-workers collaborating with one another to complete projects; and employees interacting with customers and partners. It’s increasingly populated by ‘virtual employees’ who do not exist in a physical sense, but nonetheless play an important role in the organisation.

While artificial intelligence (AI) technology is still in its infancy, it is sufficiently advanced to be working its way into companies in the form of virtual assistants, and, in certain industries such as banking, virtual tellers and virtual advisors. Manifested as bots embedded into specific applications, virtual assistants draw on AI engines and machine learning technology to respond to basic queries.

 

“It’s no longer enough to simply implement these technologies,” says Krista Brown, Dimension Data’s Group End-user Computing SVP. “Organisations have grown their use of analytics to understand how these technologies impact their business performance:  64% use analytics to improve their customer services, and 58% use analytics to benchmark their workplace technologies.”

Meanwhile, around 30% of organisations said they’re far along in their digital transformation initiatives and are already reaping the benefits, while others are still in the early stages of developing a plan.

Brown says one reason that could be holding companies back from implementing a digital workplace is their corporate culture. Often, technology and corporate culture inhibit – rather than encourage – workstyle change.  However, the number one barrier to successful adoption of new workstyles was IT issues, and research participants cited organisational issues as another.

“The complexity of the existing IT infrastructure can present a major hurdle to implementing new collaboration and productivity tools to support flexible workstyles. Successful transformation implementations are achieved when IT works closely with line-of-business heads,” says Brown and adds that these transformations are supporting new ways of doing business or supporting clients.

IT leaders were asked to rank which technologies were most important to their digital workplace strategies.

Robert Allman, Group Senior Vice President, Customer Experience and Collaboration believes that mobility is pivotal to a digital workplace. “Business leaders and CIOs are switched on to the importance of mobility in the digital workplace, with an even mix of companies supporting company-provided and employee-owned devices in the work environment.”

Enterprises are also turning to new workplace technologies to drive increased customer service, with 45% of respondents saying they’ve improved customer satisfaction as a result of their use of digital workplace technology.

 

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If the key to adoption of new technologies in Field Services lies more in people than technology itself, then embedding the self-learning DNA gene must be the priority for all organisations wanting to be winners writes Nick Frank, Si2 Partners...

Previously we have observed that those field service organisations that have been able to quickly adapt to the fast evolving digital environment display a common trait “the self-learning gene”.

This is the innate ability to continually move through the problem, solution, problem, solution learning loop that propels organisations forward, such that they are comfortable experimenting with new approaches, have an outside-in perspective, are able to solve problems systematically and generally embrace change as an exciting part of business life.

There are many change methodologies that can be used to achieve this goal, but if leaders are not careful, they can find themselves hiding behind the process. It doesn’t matter if we are the CEO or on the shop floor, change starts with us ‘the person’. If we as an individual can become solution focussed, then it becomes possible to unleash the natural creativity that lies within most of our people. The good news is that most of us intuitively know the right things to do, we just struggle to implement our thoughts.

 

Perhaps harder to grasp is that there is no defined roadmap to follow, but there are guidelines, which we can apply to our particular situation. If you want to achieve a high performing, adaptive organisation through developing your ’self-learning genes’, then these are seven principals you may consider:

Communicate, collaborate and communicate again:

This is the mind-set of leadership change. Get comfortable with being out there, in front of your team providing a clear direction, but with the clear understanding that it is your team members who will deliver a great solution.

As Dwight Eisenhower US president and Army General said: “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done, because they want to do it”

Ensure your team has a sense of purpose:

A sense of purpose is what drives us all forward in both a private and work environments. It comes from 3 perspectives:

• Know why we are here!
• Feel that the business we work for stands for the things we believe in
• That there is consistency between what a business says and what it does.

By constantly focussing on these three elements, sharing experiences, best practices and success stories people start to believe in an organisations purpose.

Focus on the language of solutions:

It is hard for many English speakers to appreciate, but language is the gateway to understanding culture. Without speaking French, it is challenging to truly understand what it means to be French. The same is true in companies, which means achieving a common solution focused language is a critical step in embedding a ‘way of thinking’ within the DNA of the organisation.

For example a phrase that was embedded in me while I was running a Field Service organisation was “Fix yourself, before you fix your customer”. It was used and applied to every person in the organisation and is still used today!

Be a role model in what you say and do:

It is important to remember that you cannot tell people how to think. They have to figure that out for themselves. The only tools you have is to influence your team by what you say and what you do! A great examples would be the key performance indicators you focus on to manage your business. These say a lot to your people about what are your priorities.

Relentless follow up and training:

Evolving a company intrinsic DNA is not a one shot event. It’s a journey, its relentless, be prepared for the long haul. In small teams it is possible to drive this as a manager, but within larger organisations, a more formalised programme is required to touch every individual.

Training and support programmes that emphasis and re-emphasis solution thinking should be embedded into your annual budget if you are really serious about change.

Be open to Outside-IN thinking:

It’s a sad fact, but people will often listen more to people outside their immediate organisation, whether that be another department, customer or consultant. Be aware of this and use it to your advantage to influence and embed the ‘Self-Learning gene’ in your people

Be prepared to manage people out of the organisation:

Sometime people for whatever reason are not prepared to change. In my experience more people than you might think can live with change (I am an optimist), but when it’s clear that its not working, be prepared to be ruthless and actively manage poor performers out of the organisation.

In a short article it is difficult to fully discuss all the aspects of the self learning culture and why it is important. So in co-operation with Field Service News, we propose to organise a virtual round table later in the year to discuss with peers how to embed the ‘Self-Learning gene’ into your organisational DNA.

If you would like to participate, please contact either Kris Oldland or Nick Frank.

Si2 ON-Demand is a unique advisory and support service that enables top performing leaders to solve problems and get things done, quickly, easily and cost effectively.

 

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Kris Oldland, talks to Lucio Golinelli, Senior Director of Service & Delivery with Sky Italia about the digital transformation they are undertaking and how it is helping to drive new profits....

There were a number of interesting case studies presented at the recent Maximize Europe event held by ServiceMax from companies across many different industry verticals.

However, one that really caught the eye was that of Sky Italia who worked closely with the field service management provider as part of an ambitious company wide digital transformation program.

As Europe’s largest Pay-TV company with dominant presence in the Pay TV sector across five European countries (UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy and Austria) Sky is a household name that resonates across the continent. However, the Pay-TV vertical has become increasingly competitive over the last few years and customer experience and satisfaction are two key differentiators in the sector.

So it was perhaps no surprise that improving customer experience through digital transformation was at the heart of the organisation’s move to dramatically change their business operating systems.

Indeed, Lucio Golinelli, a Senior Director of Service & Delivery with Sky Italia who has responsibility for both field services and the supply chain explained that the key benefits his organisation sought through the digital transformation - whereby they moved away from their traditional processes of field service delivery to a more digital centric process, were equally centred around both customer experience and financial KPIs.

However, from Golinelli’s side of the business this meant working closely with ServiceMax to find a solution that worked across their whole supply chain rather than simply adopting an off the shelf solution.

The main reason for this is that when it comes to installations, Sky Italia operate within the framework of an outsourced model.

“We have a multi level approach in that we have 400 company partners, which tend to be smaller companies or ‘entrepreneurs’ rather than large organisations - who then manage for Sky approximately 2500 installers,” Golinelli explained to me as he talked me through the challenges he faced throughout the transformation process.

“For Sky Italia, installation is not a revenue stream but a cost stream,” he continued. “Because for us the installation is just an enabler to provide the services to our customers.” So whilst traditional benefits of increased installer productivity may be a side effect of the implementation this was never an end-goal for Sky Italia.

Perhaps the biggest challenge Golinelli and his team faced was how to fully integrate their own needs - as an effectively B2B organisation dealing with the partner ecosystem, and their end users - who are a B2C market. Success here however, would provide Sky Italia with granular levels of information that can allow them to discover new up-sell opportunities.

 

In order to best achieve this Sky Italia simultaneously replaced their old FSM, CRM and marketing tools bringing them all together on one new Cloud based solution and working alongside ServiceMax to find a customised solution for their FSM tools.

Currently in the process of undertaking this transformation program, digital visibility will be built across the whole chain from Sky through to their end customers. This is vital as it means they are not just changing the way they interact with their customers, but even changing the interface with which they undertake such interactions.

Of course, the main challenge for any company that outsources its service is that they essentially need at least two flavours of the same solution. From a Global operation with a nationwide presence, Golinelli’s team will need different dashboards, KPIs and control rooms to those that the majority of their partners will require.

It has taken Sky Italia working directly with ServiceMax over two years to develop a solution that works across Sky themselves, their partners and their customers but it seems that all that effort is now beginning to reap it’s rewards.

They have already launched the initial phase of the development with almost 1,000 installers already on track - and Golinelli appears immensely proud to see his team flourishing.

“There are two aims, “Golinelli explains.

“Firstly, the real benefit of improved efficiency for us is less errors,and in particular less mistakes in administration - that has now been largely overcome and is being dramatically reduced.”

Secondly, it is also important that if Sky Italia’s new processes are to succeed, that the various new tools used in isolation.

“We moved from customised platform for CRM, custom FSM software, and a customised platform for marketing to a common cloud solution shared across all divisions,” Golinelli expands.

“Now we have all of the key operations based on the same cloud platform. This is very effective as the power of this system is the real-time exchange of information, from installer to an operator in a call centre or vice versa. We can also pick up a lot of anecdotal information from the installers and then feed that back to marketing, again in real-time.”

 

It is in this last concept that Sky Italia are truly seeing the largest benefit, the shared platform gives them a much better opportunity to upsell their products.

For example let’s say an installation is being undertaken and the installer can see there is a Manchester Utd flag. In real-time he can then check if the customer has the subscription for Sky Sports and can either try to make the upsell himself or feed that information straight back to his marketing department.

Although only mid-way through the process, the results so far have been impressive to say the least. The field service division is now responsible for generating more revenue than any other part of the business having seen a rise in the percentage of revenue generated by installers leap from 11% to 21%.

For Golinelli, the significant factor in their success so far is the easy movement of data from one business unit to the next. Meanwhile, for Sky Italia, the shift to a digital workflow is already beginning to reap it’s rewards as they move field service from a cost model to a cost + revenue model whilst customer satisfaction levels increase at the same time. Perfecto!

 

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