Today, on Earth Day, IFS announces its promise to sustainability through a plan to improve the company’s own operations, enable customers to achieve their sustainability goals, as well as influence the industry at large to improve its accountability to our environment.

IFS’s values, culture, and business model are linked to its vision to provide the best possible experience to its customers. The relationship between this vision, leading by example and providing sustainability technology are key to systematizing a sustainable mindset and behavior.

The multi-year plan lays out the company’s stepped approach and commitments for the next three years and brings IFS’s long-term thinking on the importance of sustainability internally and its ecosystem and owners to the fore.

The three-year plan will create positive impact in IFS’s own business, its customers’ and through industry-wide action

The stepped approach will be established around three core pillars:

1. Our own business

In line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, IFS has identified several areas where it increase its focus for greater impact.

• Education – the IFS Education Program already works with nearing 80 universities and higher education institutions globally. The program provides scholarships, grants, IT equipment, as well as practical knowledge through internships and mentorships for students. Over the course of the next three years, IFS plans to expand the program to 150 institutions globally.
• Carbon emissions – in a program started in 2019, IFS committed to reducing its carbon footprint in part through consolidating its real-estate and improving the green credentials of its properties. From mid-2019 to date, IFS has reduced the square meterage of its global real estate by 9.5 percent, shrunk its car fleet by 86 percent versus 2019 and is committing to reach carbon neutrality by 2025.
• Philanthropy – IFS champions and partners with the IFS Foundation to alleviate poverty and other social ills in Sri Lankan rural villages - Sri Lanka is home to the largest proportion of the IFS workforce. The IFS Foundation’s mission is to help improve the living standards of people in the countryside by addressing aspects of health, water and sanitation, education, and economy, and resulting in a self-sustained community. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Sri Lanka have already improved the lives of over 3,000 people. IFS supports the IFS Foundation’s planned expansion to encompass additional areas within remote and rural areas of Sri Lanka.
• Developing an Impact Mindset: IFS is looking for ways to further accelerate its employee awareness of and contribution to the sustainability agenda. We will be introducing a framework to trigger people's mindsets and to guide engagement. The framework will drive how the company is making it possible for its employees to impact sustainability as individuals and assess how successful IFS is at engaging its workforce behind the Impact Mindset.
  • Volunteering – all employees are given the opportunity to invest one workday a year to support a charitable cause of their choice. In 2023, we strive to have the equivalent of three years’ worth of work invested by our employees
  • Employees – IFS has set the bar high against peers in the industry in terms of diversity in employee mix sets. For example, women make up 34 percent of the business, above the industry average for tech
    • We will continue to drive grass-roots programs such as the IFS Education Program to foster diversity across the industry
    • The health and wellbeing of employees remains top of mind, with a new program being launched for employees across the world and measured by twice annual employee surveys
  • Governance – IFS has always maintained policies on Human Rights and Anti-Slavery and will further ensure that this is not only in line with UN criteria and reporting and but also pervasively included in the education of its employees.

2. Our customers’ businesses

Increase energy efficiency: In March 2021, IFS launched IFS Cloud, is a single platform that IFS customers can deploy on premise or in the cloud in a modular way taking advantage of the latest technologies and thus reducing needless computer processing and storage. When deployed in the cloud, such as on Azure, IFS Cloud is 52-79 percent more energy efficient than compute equivalents deployed in traditional data centers, and storage is 71-79 percent more energy efficient than storage equivalents deployed in traditional enterprise data centers*.

Sustainability technology to give back: Recognizing the need and pressures many customers must monitor, manage, and report on their own sustainability goals and commitments, IFS is producing a new module within IFS Cloud specifically for sustainability management. With so much information held within the value chains that IFS Cloud connects, this new module will be offered as standard, to all IFS Cloud customers in late 2021. IFS will donate a share of the license revenue generated by the module to sustainability causes.

Innovation for sustainability: To propel the ideation and delivery of added sustainability scenarios for IFS Cloud, a yearly hackathon will be launched on the 21^st April and will run for three days across Earth Day (Thursday 22^nd April). Teams from all over IFS’s research & development (R&D), customer-facing and internal divisions are taking part together with our partner ecosystem. Please contact us here if you are interested in joining one of our teams. IFS will also continue to strengthen its IFS Incubator program along the 10 principles are the key statements that describe how we implement sustainability at IFS at the corporate level, in our businesses and at the regional level.

3. Our industry at large

To raise awareness around the importance of sustainability at a macro level and to help improve its own approach to sustainability, IFS will be making two significant appointments, one internal in creating the role of Director Global Sustainability (ESG) and one external by appointing Lewis Pugh as its Sustainability Ambassador. Lewis Pugh is the UN Patron of the Oceans. Pugh will influence IFS’s sustainability plan, as well as engage with the IFS ecosystem to challenge and celebrate sustainability best practice.

Commenting on his appointment, IFS Sustainability Ambassador, Lewis Pugh said: “We need governments, businesses and individuals to all play a role in making positive change. I am pleased to be working with IFS whose team is clearly taking the issue of sustainability seriously. Having the ability to engage with their ecosystem of customers and partners presents an opportunity to have an impact at scale.” He continued, “Climate change is an existential threat to life on earth. We now need all hands-on deck to tackle this crisis.”

Darren Roos, CEO of IFS, added: “IFS has a long-term responsible approach to creating value for customers. By considering sustainability as an integral part of our business model we not only capture value creating opportunities, but we can mitigate risks so and stay on course to be successful in our sustainability strategy.” Roos continued, “The progress achieved over the last couple of years to improve IFS’s approach to sustainability has been meaningful, but with the launch of this multi-year plan we are making commitments and make ourselves accountable. This is meaningful to our customers, our employees, our owners and our community at large.”

To find out more about how IFS is helping customers achieve their sustainability goals, please visit: ifs.com/sustainability

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about Sustainability on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sustainability
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com/
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Learn more about IFS Commitment to Sustainability @ ifs.com/sustainability
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

 

In the first article of a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant, we look at the disruption and the challenges presented by he ongoing generational shift for service organizations of all sizes...

 

Your most seasoned service techs are retiring. Do you have a plan to replace them? And how do you know how to transfer years of experience to junior staff quickly?

How can organizations like yours attract, retain, and quickly bring up-to-speed younger workers before your seasoned pros retire? The solutions to these challenges, according to industry experts and leading service leaders, include:

• Leveraging the latest digital technologies that empower less experienced employees to succeed by democratizing knowledge
• Promoting continuous learning and development on your service teams
• Setting your people up for success in a post-pandemic world filled with uncertainty and accelerating change

 

 

An Ongoing Generational Shift

Further Reading:

In this new article for Field Service News, Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, discusses many aspects that field service organisations should consider and evaluate as we start existing the pandemic...

The pandemic still has the world in its grip, but it is becoming looser as vaccinations become more widespread. In some developed countries, we see signs of increased hiring and manufacturing output. And increasing manufacturing output means more demand for field service for installation, training, and warranty work as well as remedial repairs on equipment supporting the manufacturing ramp-up.

The big unknown is how B2B customers will react to field service continuing its emphasis on touchless service while they are thinking about the old normal. The answer to that question may impact how these customers think about our brand: which can have a major impact on our future business.

HOW B2B BUYERS SELECT A PRODUCT TO PURCHASE

As a service leader, you know about customers and their buying habits. You know that most products are becoming commodities and while there may be differences between products from different managers, those differences will disappear over time and new differences will emerge from other competitors. You also know that there is usually a minor difference in price and anyway, B2B businesses do not buy based on price.

So how do people choose who to purchase their new equipment from if not by price or features and functions? If we are totally honest, we would say the primary differentiator is service. Of course, our sales and marketing peers would disagree with you, but we know they are biased. They would probably agree with you if you said, “people buy based on the brand.”

WHAT IS A BRAND?

If you ever want to get into a good argument with sales and marketing people, just ask each person to write down their definition of brand. Do not be surprised if there is no agreement. During my research, I discovered a wonderful article “Defining What a Brand Is: Why Is It So Hard?" In the article the author, Tracy Lloyd, shared a few definitions:

1. David Ogilvy, the “Father of Advertising,” defined brand as “the inangible sum of a product’s attributes.”
2. The Dictionary of Brand defines brand as “a person’s perception of a product, service, experience, or organization.”
3.  Marty Neumeier, author and speaker on all things brand, defines brand by first laying out what a brand is not: “A brand is not a logo. A brand is not an identity. A brand is not a product.” Neumeier goes on to say that “a brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.”

Definitions 2 and 3 are remarkably similar yet hard to do anything with.

In late 2012, my friend Harry Klein, a professional Marketeer, and I decided to collaborate on a White Paper that we called “Because I’m The Customer!” A Guide to Managing Your Brand & Customer Experience in the Age of the Customer. Here is a paragraph from the White Paper:

As Brian Millar wrote in his FastCompany article Branding Talk Isn’t Helping Your Company. Here’s What Should Replace It:

“If you promise something clearly, deliver on that promise, and repeat the process, you build strong emotional links to your company with certain consumers. But that’s where the value resides: in my head and your head, and your mother’s head. And the stuff inside my head is my property. If brands exist at all, they exist in the minds of consumers. I can switch my brand of search engine at a moment’s notice. Bank accounts and makes of automobile are a bit more hassle to discard, but I can still change my mind about them.”

So, a brand is unique to each of us. It is the sum of all promises and experiences we had with a product, service, or company. This perception changes as we forget old or irrelevant promises or experiences and add newer ones to our memory. And to make matters worse, we might have different perceptions of different situations with the same product or service.

Here is an example: Think about your current car. If we are talking about design and ease of use, you might say “It took me only 30 minutes to figure out how to set up the infotainment system.” But if I ask you about the dealers training on all the new features, you might say “he was confused and so was I.” And if ask about fuel economy, you might say “It is great on the open road, crap in city driving, and does not come close to what was on the sticker.” But if I just ask, “how do you like your new car,” you might respond “I love it and feel like I rule the road when I drive it.”

ARE BRANDS REAL?

Even though brands only exist in our minds, they are real because we make our purchasing decisions based on our current perceptions of the promises the manufacturer makes and our experiences about how well these promises are met. In other words, brands drive how money is spent! That is as real as it gets.

In January 2021 McKinsey & Company released an interesting article “The Rising Value of Industrial Brands.”  One of the six main insights in the article is;

Visibility drives performance—but only for a few players. The top three brands in each segment average a total 60 percent of visibility, and the top brand typically has four times more visibility than the third-place competitor. Overall, 5 percent of companies capture 95 percent of total visibility. And top-quartile companies enjoy about 30 percent higher ROIC than those in the bottom quartile.

McKinsey & Company uses visibility (share of voice) as the measure of brand favoritism. They define visibility as “… brand name mentions in the media, including industry publications that customers read to learn about new products, systems, and technologies. Because B2B sales are increasingly held to the same standards as B2C sales channels, including the option to purchase online, we also tracked the growth of searches for the brands on major online search engines.”

Next, they show how share of voice impacts the company’s ROIC (Return on invested capital):

CLOSING THE CIRCLE

Since a brand is the sum of all promises (expectations) and experiences we had with a product, service, or company and brand visibility drives ROIC (and other financial metrics), then your promises and delivered experiences are driving your financial results. That raises two questions:

Question 1. Where do expectations come from?

There are six sources of customer expectations

1. Organizational promises
2. Competitor’s promises and/or performance
   
3. Personnel promises
4. B2C experiences
5. Previous experiences with your business
6. Comments from friends and associates

Unfortunately, you and your business can only influence #1 and #3. The other four are outside your control but you must be sensitive to them and if you or your team discovers that customers have expectations that differ from what you can routinely deliver, you must reset their expectations. Doing that professionally will prevent disappointment when the experiences are as you promised, not what they wanted.

Question 2. Where do experiences come from?

Every interaction your company has with a customer or prospect creates a new memory of an experience. The two most important steps you can take to make sure you are providing great experiences are

1. Train everyone on how what they do and say impacts how customers feel about doing business with your company
2. Follow up either all interactions or a randomly chosen subset of all interactions and talk about how the customers feel about their experience. Discussions are better than surveys because people are sicker of surveys than they are of being locked down at home. Do this every day with the same people making the calls and analyze the data using as many views as you can imagine. Then share the results with everyone in the company.

WHY IS MONITORING BRAND PERFORMANCE ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT AS WE EXIT COVID-19?

During the past year, we have all been busy implementing touchless service, a blended workforce, and trying to avoid sending our Field Engineers on calls for both health and safety and economic reasons. Many of us believe that these initiatives will continue into the future and become our permanent business model.

This was expected during the height of the pandemic and customers subconsciously adjusted their expectation to accept what you were providing. But what if customer’s expectations revert back to the 2019 business model and you continue to deliver on the 2020 model? A major gap will open up and customers will feel disappointed.

The solution is marketing communications. You and your team must proactively reset your customer’s expectations to be in line with your intended future deliveries. There might be some intense customer discussions and you may have to modify your plans if the pushback is too great. You must ensure that the experiences your business delivers either meets or exceeds your customer’s expectations.

Finally, when the folks in the C-suite start looking for more revenue and profits, don’t automatically jump on the cost-reduction train. Make sure your promises are being met and exceeded by your performance. It takes work but it is worth the efforts.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive FSN articles by Sam Klaidman @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sam-klaidman
• Read more about the impact of COVID-19 on the field service industry @ www.fieldservicenews.com/covid-19
• Connect to Sam Klaidman @ www.linkedin.com/samklaidman
• Find out more about Middlesex Consulting @ www.middlesexconsulting.com
• Read more from Sam Klaidman @ middlesexconsulting.com/blog

 

IFS today announces the appointment of Johan Made as Chief Commercial Officer. In the newly created role, Made will be responsible for driving IFS’s growth strategy through inorganic investments and development initiatives, including mergers & acquisitions. The appointment is a further signal of IFS’s ambition to extend its leadership as the technology platform of choice for companies who want to create and deliver amazing moments of service for their customers. Michael Ouissi, IFS’s Chief Customer Officer will continue to focus on driving growth organically.

Made will join the IFS Executive Leadership Team at an important time of IFS’s growth journey. With the recent launch of IFS Cloud, IFS is well positioned to help more customers realize value faster and drive the cost of ownership down. The powerful technology is not only a new proposition for customers, but IFS Cloud is also changing how IFS operates, with twice yearly updates that will keep customers evergreen, a Voice of the Customer program that sets a new industry benchmark, and rapid innovation-to-impact capabilities. Together with his team, Made will help drive growth opportunities for customers and accelerate IFS’s own growth journey.

IFS strenghtens its executive leadership team to further improve commercial strategies and capabilities

Commenting on the appointment, Darren Roos, CEO at IFS, said: “Johan is a passionate leader who is known for helping people and companies achieve their best. We have worked together before, so I have seen him in action. Johan will be a great addition to my Executive Leadership Team, and I’m looking forward to seeing his contribution help us build on the momentum we have achieved in the market, as well as further improve our commercial strategies and capabilities”.

Johan Made, Chief Commercial Officer at IFS, added: “IFS has been on my radar for many years. However most recently I have seen the company transform into the most agile and customer-committed vendor in the industry – clearly this was something that was attractive to me. There is a lot of opportunity for further growth and I believe IFS has the right people, technology, and partners to move faster and add more value to its customers than any of its peers. These are the ingredients that enable IFS itself to deliver amazing moments of service to its own customers.” He continued: “With the continued support from EQT and TA, I am looking forward to putting in motion new strategic initiatives that will achieve strong value for our customers, partners and employees.”

Chairperson of IFS, Jonas Persson, said: “Adding the industry’s best talent is hugely important for any growth business like IFS. Having achieved 26% YoY growth in software revenue in 2020, it makes perfect sense to have Johan join us. He has a stellar track record, really understands the market, and is hugely passionate in the way he leads.”

Made joins IFS from Infor where he was EVP for North, West & East Europe. Prior to Infor, Made was Managing Director for SAP in Sweden, and has also held senior leadership roles at Oracle, Hyperion and IBM.

Find out more about IFS’s leadership team here.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
• Find out more about IFS @ www.ifs.com/
• Learn more about IFS Cloud @ www.ifs.com/corp/ifs-cloud
• Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

 

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. After explaining the steps to define the service, in this fifth blog he looks at how to ensure the efficient engagement of the field service team.

In my previous blog, we considered the actions necessary to clearly define the service of our technicians making proactive recommendations. Now that we’ve defined the service we’re offering, it’s time to ensure that we have the support structures in place to ensure the efficient engagement of our field service team. There are a number of things to address here, so let’s consider three critical ones, processes, tools and training.

Processes

This is one that often gets overlooked, but we ignore it at our peril. Without a clear process, opportunities can fall through the cracks. When opportunities are not followed up in a timely fashion, this can cause embarrassment for the technician and send a clear signal that we’re not that serious about this new service of making recommendations. Some examples:

• How are opportunities captured?
• Who’s responsible for following up with the customer?
• What’s the tech’s involvement once the opportunity is identified?
• By whom and how is the technician kept informed of the status of an inquiry?
• Once a quote is issued, who is responsible for tracking outstanding quotations and inquiring into dormant ones?

Tools

What tools can be employed to help the field service team improve their efficiency? For example, what can be done to allow technicians to issue quotes in the field? How can opportunity status be relayed to the technicians so it’s readily available in a timely manner if needed? How can you alert technicians of outstanding opportunities so that they can follow up directly with the customer on their next maintenance visit?

Training

Most techs I know are comfortable engaging the customer in technical conversations, but fewer feel as comfortable talking about commercial issues. A tech that’s not comfortable discussing new opportunities with customers may avoid doing so. It’s important, therefore, that our technicians learn and gain comfort in conducting a conversation with the customer about products and services that will benefit them. A good training program and practice role plays can have a significant impact here.

Product and service training should also be considered. Often technicians have limited knowledge about their company’s capabilities beyond their own areas of expertise. If our techs don’t know about ALL of our products and services how will they identify an opportunity? And even if they have a general understanding of what we do, if they don’t have a conversational knowledge of a product or service they’ll likely avoid the conversation.

What hurdles stand in the way of fully engaging your field service technicians in making proactive recommendations that will help your customers to be better off?

How do your current processes and systems facilitate or detract from the implementation of your strategy to engage the techs in looking for opportunities to help your customers achieve their business goals?

Next time we will consider the interdependencies that we will rely on when making and delivering on our recommendations.

Reflection

Make a list of all the actions you can take to support your technicians’ efforts in making proactive recommendations that will help your customers to be better off. As you draft this list, think about each action’s impact on the following:

• How does this make the service easier for the technician?
• How does this minimize the amount of time required by the technician?
• How does this help improve the techs’ comfort level in completing this service?
• How does this help keep the technician informed?
• How does this prevent opportunities from falling through the cracks?
• How does this help ensure that every technician provides a comparable level of service?

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

Nick Frank, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Si2 Partners, discusses how companies can successfully integrate knowledge and data into their business processes in this new article for Field Service News.

While the vast majority of organisations recognise that managing Knowledge and Data is a key source of competitive advantage, how many equip their team members with the understanding to effectively integrate these solutions into their operating processes?

Within the Service Leaders Network, we recently ran a collaboration project with a small number of Service Leaders to look at this challenge. The result has been the development of a pragmatic framework and self-assessment tool, that all service professionals can apply in their day-to-day working environment. A simple management blueprint that encourages managers to ask incisive questions that will increase the likelihood of success of their Data or Knowledge projects

The conversation came about when we asked a group of service leaders about their Knowledge and Data challenges. The topics included access to expert product knowledge, sharing specialist competencies, knowledge retention, competency management, knowledge transfer... The list was indeed long and many of these challenges you no doubt can relate to.

As the collaboration project progressed, the group realised they needed a framework to judge what was good practice across different solutions and approaches. They recognised that most managers understand WHY knowledge and data is important to them and they know WHAT they need (hence the long list). But where there is a big hole is HOW to get there. Through a slow process of virtual meetings, one-on-one interviews (this was the time of COVID) and supporting analysis by a facilitator, we moved towards the framework you can see. A simple tool developed by managers, for managers that helps them take actions that will increase the likelihood of success for their data or knowledge solution.

The thinking framework consists of four interdependent factors that should be considered when integrating a data or knowledge solution into an organisation’s processes:

• Purpose
• Data Architecture
• Process and Tools
• People

For a business process to leverage data and knowledge to the full, all four factors should be considered and where necessary planned for. This is especially important where investment is made in specialist tools and technologies such as a Service Management Software, Human Resource IT solutions and Advanced Analytics Data Solutions. Let’s look at these four areas in a little more detail:

Purpose:

This is the “Why” of the data solution and can be articulated in different ways depending on where the project lies on the Strategy – Operations continuum. Purpose of the data solution should contain some, but not necessarily all the following components:

• Fit with the vision and strategy of the company
• The KPI’s or performance measures to be influenced
• The risk to be managed
• Value created, costs reduced, or loyalty created

Without a well-defined purpose, the project is likely to lack direction and so disappoint or fail in its return-on-investment objectives.

Common mistakes: A company who invests in SharePoint with a generic goal to ‘share data in the business’, without understanding the KPI’s being influences or the data being collected. They are often disappointed with the results.

Data Architecture:

With a clear understanding of Purpose, it is possible to define the data/knowledge to be collected by the process, or the data/knowledge required to support the process. Knowing whether this data is structured (numbers) or unstructured (text/words) is key to defining how it is collected and analysed within the business process.

Common mistakes: Defining Key Performance Metrics indicators without understanding if the data can be collected and analysed in a sustainable fashion.

Process & Tools:

The next component is to define how data/knowledge fits into business processes and the tools required to ensure it is presented in such a way such that decisions can be made. Often managers will jump to this step without understanding Purpose or Data Architecture resulting in sub-optimal data/knowledge solutions. Common mistakes: Remote Data Capture is a common data solution, but it does need to be built into the Service process if it is to deliver sustainable value. Too often it is seen as just another activity we do.

People:

Without people’s willingness to engage in the Knowledge management process, initiatives will fail. The key is to design this factor into the Knowledge/Data Project at the start, whether that is building a culture where knowledge is shared, developing the skills required to support the process or simply good old-fashioned change management to ensure engagement. This is the component that many business leaders miss when implementing knowledge management solutions.

Common mistakes: Within the Service CRM processes, users do not update master-data, or worse still, simply bypass specific data entry requirements to save time, as they do not understand the implications of their actions.

 

Want to know more about your own skills, take this very short 4 question self-assessment using this link: https://si2partners.outgrow.us/si2partners-3

If you want to know more the Knowledge and Data Implementation framework, then you can contact nick.frank@si2partners.com and he can support you with engaging workshops that will help you and your team identify how to integrate data into your business processes. Si2 also have run a series of workshops that help service professionals to become more data savvy. To date more than 200 professionals have participated in these programmes which aim to raise their bar in terms of how to use data.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more articles by Nick Frank on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/nick-frank
• Find out more about Si2 Partners @ si2partners.com
• Connect with Nick Frank on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/nick-frank
• Follow Si2 Partners on Twitter @ twitter.com/servitisation

• Contact Nick Frank by email @ nick.frank@si2partners.com

 

In this new article for Field Service News, Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, discusses the importance of setting realistic and achievable expectations when rolling out new services.

In 1988 Michael R. Mantell wrote a book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all Small Stuff.” Now we know that Mantell was wrong when it comes to Field Service.

Here is the real story! In the coming months and years, it is likely that your organization will be implementing a steady stream of changes to the way you do business. Some of these changes that are on most service leader’s minds are:

• Touchless service
• Blended workforce
• New business models – XaaS, IoT
• Circular economy
• Digital transformation
• Servitization
• Predictive maintenance
• Artificial intelligence

SOME USEFUL DEFINITIONS AND OTHER BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Before we jump into the details, it is necessary to understand an idea and three definitions.

The ideas expressed in this article originated in “How small service failures drive customer defection: Introducing the concept of microfailures” by Sean Sands, Colin Campbell, Lois Shedd, Carla Ferraro, and Alexis Mavrommati.

Service failure – any service that fails to meet a customer’s expectation. They come in two varieties – macrofailure and microfailure. Because services quality is influenced by individual’s emotions, the following definitions are imprecise and may leave you a little uncomfortable. Don’t worry!

Macrofailure – Sands et al define a macrofailure as a “negative service encounters in which customer expectations go unmet by a wide margin.”

Since each of us will react differently to any specific outcome, the best guidance we can provide is to quote from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward in a 1964 decision about whether a movie was pornographic:

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

Until you get customer feedback that a particular transaction did not meet their expectation, you or someone who works with you must be the internal judge as you design services and set the expectations you will share with your customers.

FIRST AN EXAMPLE OF A MICROFAILURE AND A MACROFAILURE

An example of a service technician going to a customer whose product equipment has failed and the production line had to be totally shut down.

A macrofailure - When technical support decided that a service technician had to be dispatched, the support person said “Joe Brown has just finished up his job and will be at your facility within 30 minutes.” Unfortunately, the dispatcher did not tell Joe that the whole factory was shut down, so Joe stopped for lunch. He arrived 45 minutes late. The plant manager was really mad and after Joe departed, she called the SVP Field Service and totally blasted him.

A microfailure – Another day, the field technician showed up within the promised window and immediately got to work. One of his repair steps was to reboot a controller. This step usually takes 8 to 10 minutes. During that time, he called the office to update his status, but the customer only saw Joe standing about 20 feet from the equipment talking on his mobile phone. She didn’t say anything to Joe, so he never had the opportunity to explain that the repair was still going on while he was on the phone and that he was watching the controller and ended the call as soon as the reboot was complete.

WHY ARE MICROFAILURES IMPORTANT?

When a customer experiences a macrofailure, their usual reaction is to complain to the company. And service departments are exceptionally good at quickly and efficiently solving big problems and communicating their results back to the customer. If done well, most customer’s either stay as loyal as they were before the incident or actually increase their loyalty! After all, the customer now knows how their service provider will act in a messy situation and the customer comes away with increased peace-of-mind.

But when a microfailure occurs, the customers usually suffer in silence. Usually because they are embarrassed to make a big deal over a minor problem and they don’t want to create a reputation of being a complainer. But there is another set of factors that come into play:

1. We remember negative situations and forget positive ones

2. The negative situations grow in our minds and the ill-will accumulates

When it comes time to renew their contract, the customer who has experiences a small number of microfailures blows them up in their mind and finally unloads on the service seller. Typical outcomes are:

• The salesperson is depressed or demotivated
• The customer declines to renew their contract
• The customer demands a discount before renewing
• The customer shares their frustration with other customers or prospects
• The service organization does not have an opportunity to make things right before the become highly visible at an inopportune time

HOW TO PREVENT MICROFAILURES FROM GROWING INTO A MAJOR ISSUE:

Strategy	Tactics
Detect microfailures	·      Encourage customer complaints ·      Reassure customers that you hear them and the concerns        are valid ·      Train staff on how to deal with complaints ·      Track complaints
Repair microfailures	·      Offer a small gesture & nonmonetary compensation ·      Train staff about how all failures are important ·      Empower the team to solve the problems in real-time ·      Make sure there are no repercussions for the customer
Prevent microfailures	·      Try and predict when a microfailure is likely to occur ·      Enhance your continuous improvement efforts ·      Consider under promising so you can over deliver ·      Cocreate services experience with your customers

 

A final comment

In the July-August 1990 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Christopher W.L. Hart, James Heskett, and W. Earl Stasser, Jr. published the classic article “The Profitable Art of Service Recovery.”

The second paragraph of the article states:

“While companies may not be able to prevent all problems, they can learn to recover from them. A good recovery can turn angry, frustrated customers into loyal ones. It can, in fact, create more goodwill than if things had gone smoothly in the first place.”

This is true for both macrofailures and microfailures. If you treat both of them the same way then you can’t go wrong.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive FSN articles by Sam Klaidman @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sam-klaidman
• Connect to Sam Klaidman @ www.linkedin.com/samklaidman
• Find out more about Middlesex Consulting @ www.middlesexconsulting.com
• Read more from Sam Klaidman @ middlesexconsulting.com/blog

 

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. In this fourth blog he looks at identifying specifically what actions we need to take in order to define the service.

In my last blog, we identified the following list of possible steps we can take to ensure that our field service team is successful in generating new business opportunities:

1. Define the service
2. Support the initiative
3. Get buy-in from supporting divisions
4. Talk the walk
5. Tell our customers
6. Maintain focus

In this blog, we will look at the first step on our list – Define the service – and identify specifically what actions we need to take in order to do this.

Consider one of the maintenance services that you offer to your customers. Imagine for the moment that you left the details of what the service entails to each individual field service tech. What do you think would happen? One tech includes an oil change with every service. Another changes the oil every two services and a third does not change the oil at all. One tech makes certain adjustments and another doesn’t make any. In other words the service work completed (and therefore the service levels) varies depending on the tech that went to do the work.

Now think about how your customers will view your service offering. Will they be happy that the level of service provided would be determined by the person you send? Will they have confidence that they’re receiving “excellent” service? Will you keep them as a customer for long? Somehow, I doubt it.

So, if making proactive recommendations to customers is a service, then it’s important that we define what that service is, just as we would any other service that we provide. How are the proactive efforts of your field service team defined?

It’s best to start with defining specifically what we are doing. What is the service we are providing through the proactive efforts of the field service team? Why is this a service at all? What is the benefit for the customer?

Next consider what specifically we want the field team to do. Are there definite actions that we want them to take that will help them uncover opportunities to help? Are there certain questions that they should ask the customer? Are there any environmental factors that they should be on the lookout for?, etc.

What do we want them to do if they see an opportunity to help? Do we want them to bring it to the attention of the customer or simply record it on the work order summary for someone else to follow up? Will this expectation change depending on the size and scope of the opportunity? If they do bring it to the attention of the customer and the customer would like to explore the opportunity further, how is the opportunity captured so that nothing falls through the cracks?

And, remember to define the components of the service in terms of what the customer can expect. Can we be more specific about what the customer will receive? For example, our service might include an annual review of our performance with the customer. At the beginning of a contract, it could include a formal meeting where the key customer operational goals are identified and evaluate how we can contribute to these. Future meetings might involve reviewing the results of the proactive efforts of the field team over the past period, revisiting open recommendations and re-establishing operational goals for the coming year.

Reflection

Think about the product promotion efforts of your field service team. What can the customer expect when they sign up for this service? How will you describe it on your website?

Consider:

• Why is what you are asking your technicians to do a service (and not a sale)?
• Why are the field service team’s actions of benefit to your customers?
• What specific steps should all your field service technicians take to uncover and capture opportunities? For example:
  • Should they make a special effort to visit with the customer before the service begins? After the service is completed?
  • What questions should they ask?
  • Are there specific things that the technician should look for or listen for that might provide them clues for opportunities to help?
• When an opportunity is found, what specifically do you want the technician to do with the lead?
• How and where do you want the technician to record the opportunity?

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

Mark Homer, Managing Partner, Field Service Associates, interviewed Mr Robert Smith MBA, Psychotherapist and Specialist in Clinical Psychology within Organisations on how we can look after service engineers and technicians' wellbeing during these challenging times.

In the somewhat crazy times that we are all living in, did you know that losing your sense of humour could well be an early sign of stress!

There are hundreds of thousands of service engineers and technicians supported by their colleagues, management and supply chain who continue to maintain, support the fabric of the critical infrastructure in our world. Behind every laboratory, hospital and utility are our dependable service hero’s. Yet are we doing enough preventive maintenance support to look after these professional’s wellbeing? Mental health problems, in particular stress, are affecting many service leaders. For some leaders, it becomes a critical illness. Field Service News investigates this topic.

My name is Mark Homer, Managing Partner, Field Service Associates. I have been asked by Field Service News to talk to Mr Robert Smith MBA, Psychotherapist and Specialist in Clinical Psychology within Organisations. I have known Robert Smith for several years. It was thirty plus years ago we first met at a communications training event, “Meet the Press”. Robert was my coach and mentor, I owe him for teaching me the art of communication, influencing and persuasion. What follows is our conversation on a topic that I think is impacting many service leaders today.

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Mark Homer: Mr Robert Smith, can I ask you to introduce yourself to our readers?

Robert Smith: Hello from snowy Scotland, and I'm Robert Smith. As Mark has already said, I've been in the people development business for most of my career. I started off working with professionals and then developing managers and leaders, but it's always been about people. I was kind of taken as being an organisation psychologist meaning everybody thought I knew about clinical psychology, which I do now. A regular scenario for me, was people coming up to me on courses and saying, “Robert, you know about people. Can I have a private word with you I need some advice.” If I could use a professional expression, I was quite worried I might (suggested ‘screw people up’) somebody up in the process of answering because messing around with people's brains when you don't know anything about it can be dangerous. So, I started formal education and training, developing my career within the Mental Health spectrum. I have had a brilliant and fascinating time working in hundreds of countries mentoring thousands of professionals. Over the years I have worked with many engineers and people in the service and IT industries. Our discussion topic today is extremely relevant.

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Mark Homer: The majority of Field Service News readers are in the service sector. Many are delivering services and managing corporate service organisations with hundreds of field technicians and engineers maintaining critical equipment. In the present Covid crisis, engineers and technicians are maintaining critical equipment in hospitals and laboratories. They have all got the normal working day pressures plus the new additional and extra complications that COVID has introduced. The topic of our conversation today is corporate mental health. I'm keen to understand from your perspective if you have seen an upturn in referrals and to ask what your advice would be to field service leaders at present?

Robert Smith:  My interest has been over the last few years to focus on Corporate Mental Health because it is becoming critical for every organisation. A report produced by Deloitte and Mind (the mental health charity) that was commissioned by the UK Government studies mental health and the corporate world. It was published in 2019 and covered the period between 2016 and 2019. The loss to the corporate world, because of poor mental health, not serious mental health, increased by 16%. It was recognised as a real problem before COVID came in. The amount of money they estimate that was lost to corporations in 2019 was forty-five billion pounds. This is an astonishing figure. It varies in the different industries on how much is lost, but typically due to poor mental health, in the services sector it is probably the equivalent to two thousand pounds (£2,000) per person. You can do the math yourself to work out how much that would cost your organisation. The amount of money that has been measured as lost is huge. Now that was in 2019. This is 2021. I can't imagine what the numbers are going to be for last year. There's another number I need to tell you about. The World Health Organisation predicted in 2019 that the leading disease burden globally in 2030 will be depression. This is frightening. If you look at the numbers of suicides in the UK, in the last three months this has gone up by 25%. There is enormous pressure on people, but people tend to sweep it under the carpet and ignore mental health problems. I saw on the news the other night that National Health were saying that they don’t have the mental health facilities to support their staff. I think that the onus has got to come onto organisations to look after their staff. Now what we're after is improving mental well-being and mental resilience, so that people can do their job, be successful and keep the company's operations running smoothly and growing.

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Mark Homer: Service leaders are very much used to running a deskless workforce; lots of engineers and technicians are on the road. In the current crisis, many back-office and supporting allied functions that were traditionally office-based are now working from home. Numerous organisations are running 24x7 operations. We are hearing of increasing break-fix work and Preventative Maintenance backlog of work because a lot of routine work in the early stages of the Covid crisis was deferred. A traditionally difficult job now also has the added mix of this deferment work. Add the new Brexit paperwork, which is in some cases complicating or delaying some supply chains. Then the added pressure of people falling ill, isolating or safeguarding. What signs should a service leader, service manager and colleagues who are supporting each other lookout for? What are the typical symptoms you should be aware of and what would your advice be?

Robert Smith: Let me just pick up what you're saying there. What's happened to the engineering world has happened in the mental health world as well. Because what has happened is that people have spent a lot of time fixing things, but not maintaining them. You need to maintain things to be able to make sure that you don't have to get into the serious end of things. I've spoken to many engineers about what the pressures are and one of the great pressures, and one of the reasons that their levels of stress have gone up, is that they're not doing the job that they've signed up to do but they're doing Red Alert work. Red Alert work included emergency and stand-by work and critical cover. It's causing a lot of problems for people because if you're on Red Alert all the time you are ready to fight the good fight at any time, and that drains your energy level dead.

The whole process is very similar to an engine of sorts. The human condition (our engine), it is about making sure that you maintain things because if you don't maintain things, then what happens is, things go wrong. You need to do something to keep it at the positive end of mental health.

Now, what do you need to look for. As I am sure you already know, engineers have got a good sense of humour. One of the quickest ways to identify that engineers are under stress is that their sense of humour has gone out of the window. I think this is true of most people, but service engineers usually have a very good wry sense of humour. Being able to notice that this is going or is lost in an engineer is a big sign that they are struggling.

 

"80% of the workforce turn up with their arms and their legs. 15% turn up with their arms and their legs and their brain. Only 5% turned up with their legs, arms, brain and heart..."

 

For a service manager, one of the first things to recognise is start with self.

Self-First, because there is a new thing that seems to come up, which is a bit of a strange thing which is called imposter syndrome. It's like you're under a great deal of pressure because you don't think you've got the skills or the capabilities that everybody else thinks you have. You are under personal stress because you feel as though you're inadequate. Yet you have to keep up a brave front and one of the quickest ways you know about there being a potential issue is that as a manager and a leader, you get disturbed sleep. That you wake up in the middle of the night, and you haven't left work, it's still going on.

The other thing that you could recognise maybe in yourself, and in staff as well, is called presenteeism, which is about being at work and working longer hours, but not actually being productive. The London Business School did a survey on it. They stated that about 80% of the workforce turn up with their arms and their legs. 15% turn up with their arms and their legs and their brain. Only 5% turned up with their legs, arms, brain and heart. What does that mean well? Imagine being in a warehouse and there's a box in the middle of a warehouse. 80% of the staff would just walk around the box. 15% would actually probably pick the box up and do something with it. However, only 5% would probably think “Why is this box here? What is going on?” and solve the mystery of the box being in the middle of the warehouse. So, what is happening is that people are turning up to work but not really being present. They are there in body but not necessarily in mind and spirit. This a growing problem in the workforce. One good way of identifying that someone is under a lot of stress is if they are spending too long at work. Does that make sense?

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Mark Homer: Yes, because if someone is not present in mind it will take them longer to complete a task and be efficient at work. The result of this will be someone having to increase the workday to complete their daily tasks. I know a lot of people articulate that they're worried about something, for example you can sometimes spot people repeating themselves in the context of worrying. I like the point you're making about waking up early in the morning. How can we help worriers? How can we recognise people that are under stress?

Robert Smith: It is a vicious circle. So, you're spending longer at work. You're going home but you are worried or thinking about work, meaning you're not actually leaving work. Plus, you are not sleeping well because you are stressed. Therefore, what happens is you come in tired. The next day you are not being effective and efficient meaning you worry causing the cycle to repeat.

We need to do something to train people to be able to sharpen their focus and their concentration so that they can get things done. Interestingly enough there's been some fabulous discoveries in neuroscience in recent years, the way that the nerves work for the fight and flight process, you can train people to use that. There are methods that you can use. That's part of what we do in our training is we teach people how to adapt your nervous system, in a way to be positive rather than negative because 95% of our behaviour is driven unconsciously, we don't think about it. Consider the way we breathe we do not think about it. For example, your heartbeats you don’t think about making sure your heart is beating or controlling the beats. If I raise my arm. I don't have to think about it, it just does it. If I had to do it consciously, that would be one large task having to think about all the muscles in the arm to make the arm raise. I have no idea how many muscles are even in an arm! It is important to recognise that most of our behaviour is driven by the unconscious, which most of the time is great because we don't have to think about it. When you are stressed, then your body automatically reacts in a certain way. The unconscious mind is making your body believed that a Sabre-toothed tiger is chasing you. However, there isn’t but that’s what your body thinks. How do you then calm that down, so that you can be running the bus rather than the bus running you? How can we control our bodies reaction? We've got to kick into action the 5% of the conscious mind that we can use to control the unconscious mind, which is running the rest of the body and telling you it's stressful. It all very interesting.

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Mark Homer: Would you say that there's typically not a huge amount of leadership management training in this area. For example, a lack of training on active listening skills, or the ability to develop techniques to ask good questions to discover the state of an employee’s mental health?

Robert Smith: Brilliant question. Let’s consider the communication. So, in rough figures about 55% of communication is the visual part. We've gone into doing more zoom meetings these days, which of course, doesn't actually give you visual because we only see head and shoulders. 38% is the qualities of the voice. Finally, you've got the words that people are using. When somebody video phones in to talk to you, you're missing half of the communication. So, the manager has to listen for what is different. For many years, whenever I phoned this one person I coached and I said, “how are you today?” he would always reply saying he was fine. I would say, sometimes “No you're not”. He asked me how I knew that he wasn’t fine. I said well just listening to your tone of voice I can tell you are not okay. It doesn't take a great deal of training to be able to understand the difference in people's voice tone. Now that starts another conversation, which comes back to answering your question. For managers, when they listen to somebody and say ‘how has it been today or this week’ they need to pick up the tone of the employee. If the engineer’s tone is low or down, then the manager can say “You're saying that you are fine and, is that true? What's really going on?”. The fact that you've taken the trouble to notice that they're not their normal chirpy self, then they will react to this. They might share their problems or stresses or worries with you. You are not just walking through the process of saying hello, how are you because we do that all the time - don’t we? it's just the social norm, but to take that further and listen with care and ask, genuinely what's going on because “you don't sound as though you're fine”. Now you'll find that people will react to that.

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Mark Homer: If I'm running a service organisation I might have potentially up to 1000 people in my organisation, is there anything as a service leader that I can start addressing now? Or can I introduce some form of training or regular check-ins?

Robert Smith: Okay, so the quick answer is you get us to come in and we'll spend time with you, and we'll design something because we don't do stuff that is off the shelf or the same for everybody because different organisations have different requirements. But there are things that you can do that are relatively simple and will help people. There needs to be a campaign of being able ‘self-maintenance’. The truth is you have got to take ownership of your mental health, that needs to be modelled from the top, that people have seen that they're doing things. So, there may become a need to have some sort of dialogue from the top through an organisation of what things can you do, I mean, simple things like having a walk somewhere during the day. If you have a brisk walk for 20 minutes, three times a week, enough to make your heart go a little bit faster not too fast, that has a profound positive effect on your mental health, because that stimulates the mirror neurons in the brain. One of the most effective, if not the most effective, way of changing your emotional state is breathing. When you're stressed, your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure goes up, you get clammy hands, and you can start getting a bit shaky. Your breathing changes and becomes quicker. Now what you need to do is deliberately use your conscious ability to change your breathing. By changing your breathing, you can control the nervous system and calm it down. The mind and body, which are interlinked, can be forced to calm down. Would you like to know how to do that?

Mark Homer: Yes, this sounds like an amazing technique.

Robert Smith: This technique does need discipline but it's something that can be done. If you think about it. For example, I've just got out of an irritating service customer (client) and I've got back in my van and I'm feeling frustrated. However, I cannot be frustrated or aggravated because I have got the drive off for next appointment. Yet, all you need to do is just two minutes and you can calm down.

 

"Meditation is another very good technique and the science on this is magnificent. Now meditation it can be done, relatively simply without travelling to the top of a faraway mountain..."

 

So, you'll breathe in one long breath in, for just hold it and then two more. Now let it out slowly while counting to six, but let it go out. Let it all the way out of the body. It is important to make sure you really empty your diaphragm . Now if you do that breathing exercise for two minutes that will bring down your stress levels. Now there are lots of techniques like this that you can master to make sure you are constantly maintaining your mental well-being. You can't get anybody else to do it.

Beginning with breathing exercise is a good way to start. Meditation is another very good technique and the science on this is magnificent. Now meditation it can be done, relatively simply without travelling to the top of a faraway mountain. We teach techniques from QiGong which of course is for the martial arts and is what you do before the battle. This is 3000 years old – this technique has got a very good track record! Before you go to battle you need to have a clear mind. It takes about 10 minutes to do, but you have guided meditations now. I would be very happy to share one of those with you and your readers. If your readers would like to send it in their email, we'll send it to them. They can share it amongst the staff, and it is a profoundly powerful way of becoming centred and back in your self again.

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Mark Homer: How would a corporate programme work?

Robert Smith: There are relatively short workshops that are spread over a few months. There are exercises both physical and mental because, you know, we're working as the mind and body. As I said that you know the process the neuro process that makes you stress can be reversed to make you relax, and we can teach you how to do that. We can teach how to control impulse mobile telephone activity. We each spend four hours according to Google, four hours a day on social media and email communications. Therefore, we teach you to control and have better control of your impulse, and how to use selective attention so you can deliberately have selective attention on things and lengthen the overall period of attention.

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Mark Homer: These workshops sound like a great way for service engineers to manage their stress. Robert, how would people get in touch with you?

Robert Smith: The best place to go is our web site [details are below for both contact and to obtain a meditation relaxation audio]

Mark Homer: Robert Smith, thank you very much been an absolute pleasure. The full interview has been recorded including links to other resources and can be found on the Field Service News Portal. I for one will be practising my breathing techniques and downloading the relaxation audio. I found the statistics that Robert shared quite shocking. I know for many; Mental Health is something we may take for granted but as I get older the more I come across friends and colleagues who talk about the impact mental health is having on their lives or family. I would recommend adding mental health in the context of health and welfare as a discussion item on your next service team meeting and actively listen to all the responses. Please do also try the beathing exercise before you turn the page.

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Robert Smith – Personal bio & contact details:

Corporate Mental Health Consultant

Robert has had an extraordinary career having received an MBA he went on to become a UKCP registered Psychotherapist adding Post Graduate Certificates in CBT and SFT and a Clinical Psychology Diploma. He is also a Master Trainer of NLP and Coaching. This powerful mix of business acumen and depth of psychology knowledge enabled him to design and deliver some of the most innovative Talent Development Programs in the world. So far, he has worked with people from 100+ countries, many different organisations and multi cultures. In some of those cultures Mental Resilience was necessary not only for work life but to stay alive. Robert and his team will stretch you, open your mind and transform you. All done in a no-nonsense practical way with even a dash of fun. But Robert will for sure, if you’re ready, prepare you for a new world.

Contact: info@lesleymackayassociates.com

Robert Smith LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-smith-6b94359/

• UKCP United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy
• CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• SFT Solution Focused Therapy
• NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming

Or contact:

Mark Homer, Managing Partner, Field Service Associates Limited, www.fsal.co.uk

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about Staff Wellbeing @ www.fieldservicenews.com/staff-wellbeing
• Learn more about Field Service Associates Limited @ www.fsal.co.uk
• Read more articled by Mark Homer on Field Service News  @ www.fieldservicenews.com/mark+homer
• Connect with Mark Homer on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/mark-homer/
• Connect with Robert Smith on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/robert-smith/