MASTERING FIELD SERVICE

IN MANUFACTURING
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................... 3
FIELD SERVICE GROWTH ENGINE .............................................................. 5
PRODUCT PURCHASE.......................................................................................... 6
SERVICE ISSUE REPORTING................................................................................7
PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE.............................................................................. 8
WORK ORDER CREATION AND DISPATCH..................................................... 9
REPAIR.......................................................................................................................10
INVENTORY..............................................................................................................11
WORK ORDER CLOSURE.....................................................................................12
ANALYZE.................................................................................................................. 13
MARKET AND SELL............................................................................................... 14

2
Another product rolls off the line and is delivered to your customer. It is
now a serviceable item, and its performance rests squarely in your field
service teams hands.

INTRODUCTION
The modern manufacturer and evolving service expectations
We are in a new era of the manufacturing business where profits no longer just come from
a company selling its products. Service is what truly drives new levels of profitability for
manufacturing organizations worldwide. On average, service contributes 10% more margin
annually than products1.

Amid the rise of service as a key business driver for manufacturing companies, there are
three fundamental shifts that have taken place in manufacturers service organizations that
offer some insight into new ways companies must now think about field service delivery:

1 Changing customer expectations for service

2 Service level agreements that only stipulate response times are a thing of the past.
With the evolution of predictive service in manufacturing, customers expectations
3 have risen. Its no longer just a matter of optimizing a technicians route and calendar.
Manufacturers must now tackle the entire end-to-end field service process with a sharp
focus on the end game: resolution.

SOURCE:: 1 Aberdeen Research 3

 1

2 The manufacturers aging workforce

3 Manufacturers are now faced with doing more with less. In a recent survey of more than
500 manufacturing firms, at least 40% of the current engineering and skill positions
are filled by people over 40 years old2. With an aging workforce and attrition due to
retirement, manufacturers faced with maintaining their field workforce must be more
1
efficient than ever.
2

3 Servitization of the manufacturing industry

Companies like GE are looking more and more like service providers than
manufacturers these days. Companies are still making products, but theyre selling
business outcomes and their ability to help the customer achieve them through service.
Whether its passenger hours on a train or hours of maximum thrust from a jet engine,
manufacturers are innovating when it comes to customer contracts, and service is at the
center of it all.

SOURCE:: 2 Aberdeen Research

4
 Field Service Growth Engine

SERVICE ISSUE/ WORK ORDER

PRODUCT MARKET
PREVENTIVE CREATION & REPAIR INVENTORY CLOSE ANALYZE
PURCHASE & SELL
MAINTENANCE DISPATCH

Tapping into your Manufacturing Field Service Engine

This e-book will help you think through every part of your service delivery value chain
with useful tips, data, and insights that will get your manufacturing service organization
started on the road to flawless field service. The traditional models of field service delivery
typically address break-fix processes that have dominated manufacturing service offerings.
By taking a step back and recognizing the intricate balance of each step in the extended
process of service delivery, you can start to appreciate how momentum builds for
improved customer satisfaction, increased loyalty, and greater revenue opportunities.

5
 PRODUCT PURCHASE
The product is sold and your customer is putting it to good use. Do you know exactly what product arrived, when
and how it got there, and in what condition? For many service organizations, knowing exactly how a customer is
using their companys product is a process of discovery. When the discovery is proactive, the customer notices. They
appreciate the time saved in not having to explain the configurations done at the time of installation or how long
theyve been using the product.

If you sell service contracts with each product, its even more important to track whats under warranty, when those
warranties expire, and when a customers contract can be renewed. The ability to profitably manage service contracts
always starts with solid product information.

Take the opportunity to build detailed installed base information:

n Gather all installed product data upon initial sale, and track all configuration or after sale add-ons.
n Know every warranty and entitlement on every part of the product that was sold to minimize warranty leakage and
guarantee profitable contracts.
n Get all installed base and entitlement information in one place for your call center agents and technicians so they
can access it all easily.
n Make service a focus of the sale. Focusing too much on the product will help your service-minded competitor win
the business.

THE MOBILE TECHNICIAN

Relying on technicians memories to document installed products after the repair can undermine
your efforts to keep an accurate account of your customers products. Putting a mobile device
in the field engineers hands for immediate capture of serialized replacement products,
assemblies, subassemblies, or key components adds a whole new level of accuracy.

70%
of companies do not have a data quality plan in
place for installed based information.
SOURCE::
ServiceSource

6
SERVICE ISSUE REPORTING
A machine breaks, and you fix it. That is simple enough, so why do so many manufacturing service organizations
struggle with fixing problems quickly?

The first thing to remember is that customers often only know the symptoms; its up to your team to provide the
diagnosis, and those two things should always be documented together. If you can draw on the inconsistencies in
the symptoms of the same type of failures or similar symptoms for very different failures, youll see the impact in
your mean time to repair and warranty costs.

To make the sure you can analyze the service issue activity and help make
your products more service friendly and useful to customers:
n Automate service issue reporting by enabling your machines with machine-to-machine technology, and connect
them to your service system.
n Categorize customer problems, and review symptom codes regularly, letting your team submit new categories
for review.
n Document all work orders and claims with detailed case information, and make sure to include the customer
problem category.
n Archive and analyze service issues with all information from customer problem to final root cause.
n If a customer does need to call, a call center agent has a better chance of helping solve the issue over the phone
if they have the customers service history in front of them.

Using customer and service data to guide the

design-to-value process can save manufacturers

10-15% in material costs

SOURCE::
McKinsey & Company

7
 PREVENTATIVE
MAINTENANCE

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE
Whether youre gathering product and service data directly from connected devices or from your technicians in
the field (or both!), dont just hand over information to your engineering team use it to predict what else could go
wrong. This may sound wildly idealistic, but if you are a part of a failure review board to improve product quality and
reliability, you already understand part of the process.

With the right data and insights, you can also add more focus to your preventative maintenance programs that
customers will appreciate. Instead of a calendar-based schedule, preventive maintenance occurs in a more efficient
as-needed basis, which will free up your technicians.

To kickstart your predictive maintenance program

n Shift your service contracts from break/fix and numbers of preventive maintenance visits to contracts that
guarantee business outcomes such as hours of peak performance per day or uptime.
n Move toward preventive maintenance schedules that are based on customer data instead of a calendar. For
example, usage based activity or key counter data that prompts a preventive maintenance visit as opposed to
an every 3 months visit regardless of the need for one.
n Build your models for prediction with the help of consultants or your internal business analyst resources.

15%
of field service leaders in manufacturing are initiating predictive
analytics to enable proactive service3

SOURCE:
Aberdeen Research

8
WORK ORDER CREATION & DISPATCH
No matter the issue, you still need to ensure that someone arrives on time, prepared and able to do the repair
or maintenance work. When you start to focus on fixing customer issues efficiently, the scheduling problem
becomes about whom you send and if they have the right equipment and parts with them. Even for the most
routine engineering change visits, sending a field service engineer with the best knowledge on a specific piece of
equipment with the appropriate parts will ensure minimal disruption to your customers operation.

In order to establish scheduling best practices and align service levels to

customers business imperatives:
n Keep technicians and service engineers qualifications, certifications, and product expertise at the fingertips of
dispatchers.
n Create easy processes for parts orders and stock swaps, and keep stock locations visible for service
administrators.
n Make the service process clear for engineers by giving them a step-by-step checklist for maintenance calls.
n Provide key equipment details for the job on a mobile device for quick and easy access.

THE SOCIAL TECHNICIAN

It may not be possible to send the perfect technician every time, so tools to help them
reach out to someone who is the expert will get you closer to a first-time fix. Equipping
technicians with social tools to help them reach out to other
organizations for information while on-site will ensure more
jobs are done right the first time.

9
 REPAIR
56% of manufacturing service organizations have adopted mobile device strategies for their field personnel4. Just
like a toolkit, a mobile tablet, laptop, or phone can be a one-stop shop for everything your field engineer needs to
access the information and systems to get his work orders closed right the first time. Access to this information both
online and offline on one device ensures technicians wont have to make multiple trips to the customer, which adds
costs for you and your customers.

To empower your technicians to get the job done right on the first visit:
n Make it easy for technicians to access a full 360-degree view of the customer directly from a mobile device
including all products purchased, work history, and contract details.
n Benchmark first-time fix rates and mean time to repair for your organization, and then manage across territories
and product lines to gain insights into comparative performance.
n Use comparative data to improve processes in the field for your technicians.
n Create workflows that technicians can follow for each type of service, and make them accessible from a
mobile device.

THE MOBILE TECHNICIAN

Manufacturers are starting to see a clear correlation between customer satisfaction and
increasing both customer and technician visibility to all service-related information in the
field. One of the best ways to promote this visibility is through mobile devices and apps.

Among mobility initiatives started at companies,

customer-facing priorities clearly stand out with

61% of c-level executives citing improved field

service and customer service delivery as most important.

SOURCE:
Accenture

SOURCE:: 4 Aberdeen Research

10
INVENTORY
When you have your own service-parts supply chain to manage, youll constantly try to find the right balance of
inventory that doesnt starve your field service business or break the bank. While centralized inventory costs less
for very disperse field service organizations spread over countries and continents, decentralized inventories ensure
faster response and resolution times. You always have to remember how costly missed opportunities can be, and
the last excuse you want to use is I didnt have the part. Likewise, if parts arent managed properly, technician
hoarding can occur, and costs can spin out of control quickly.

To establish your best parts-management baseline

n Never schedule field work without the benefit of parts visibility either in dispatch or in the field.
n Quantify lost opportunities due to parts misalignment, and use them to justify stocking quantities.
n Set up automatic reordering triggers for certain high-volume parts.
n Track technicians trunk stock automatically, if you have the right software, or through improved physical
inventory processes.

61% of leading
field service organizations
However Only

10% leverage parts

use parts management availability as a key scheduling
solutions/systems to factor.
aid the service delivery
process. SOURCE:
Aberdeen Research

11
 CLOSE
No one wants to move mountains to get a product working again just to have the customer turn around and dispute
all the hard work that was done. It defeats morale, damages your customer relationship, and stops cash flow.
Sometimes these issues have more to do with customer confusion than anything. Customers want to know exactly
what work was done, especially in cases where youve contacted them about a potential issue.

No matter what a technicians relationship is with the customer, he should always have a documented service report
ready with estimated time for repairs and parts needed. Upon completion, a customers signature is all thats needed
to ensure there are no hurt feelings or delays in cash flow from the customer.

Get your customers consent and have them sign off on all of your work while
a technician is on-site by:
n Documenting all tests performed and making it a part of your customers job history.
n Enabling service reporting on mobile devices and allowing summaries of service reports to be sent while on-site
via email.
n Collect electronic signatures on-site for attachment to or integration with a service report.
n Providing certifications and maintenance history updates on demand if the customer needs them to meet
government regulations or to pass an audit.
n Ensure digital signature capture and finalized work performed documentation is sent immediately to the customer,
preferably while the tech is still on-site

THE MOBILE TECHNICIAN

Leading field service teams are 46% more likely to provide variable compensation to their
technicians for positive customer feedback. Technicians equipped with mobile devices that
give them the right data they need to get the job done and close a work order with a customer
signature while on-site goes a long way to ensuring each of your customers is delighted.

SOURCE:
Aberdeen Research

12
ANALYZE
Now that your technicians are gathering data into a service system, you have a gold mine of information to help
your companys service managers and executives gain visibility that will help them make better business decisions.
But just because a company has data doesnt mean they have insights. Make sure you are able to consume this
data in a real-time and intuitive way, focusing on whats really important. That report from three months ago isnt
going to help take your business to the next level.

To generate real, actionable insights from service data:

n Choose a service system with proven analytics and reporting. The largest ROI impact will come from this datas
insights.
n Dont measure everything at once drill into the most important key performance metrics, and manage them
until you see results.
n Keep reporting simple summarize data by no more than two or three criteria, such as territory and technician
team, so you can deliver information quickly.
n Drive incentives for technicians performance by giving them a service dashboard of their own at the individual
or team level.

Only

21%
However

of field technicians
61% of
leading service
in manufacturing organizations organizations incentivizes
have access to personal technicians based on the
dashboards that reflect their service teams profitability.
performance.

SOURCE:
Aberdeen Research

13
 MARKET AND SELL
Offer more value to your customers
Just because you have to run a cost-effective field service operation doesnt mean you cant contribute to the top-
line. Field service is one of the manufacturing industrys biggest hidden revenue secrets.

More and more field service organizations in manufacturing companies are leading with service products as
manufacturers concede that there are better ways to keep customers longer and earn more of their lifetime
value through service. Some offer managed packages where equipment is leased and maintained by the original
equipment manufacturer. Some look to repurpose consumed resources and add waste disposal and recycling
services.

No matter what new service you provide, youll need a new way to start,
manage, and market these services effectively.
n Create data sheets, video, and a webpage about the great services you offer.
n Start a customer reference program. Ask your top 5 happiest, friendliest, most well-spoken customers if they will
serve as a reference for your company in the sales process.
n Incentivize your technicians to sell while onsite. Whether its replacement parts, consumables, or more service, give
them the motivation to sell, and they will.
n Have your technicians report all competitor equipment at customer sites, and your marketing team will love you

THE SOCIAL TECHNICIAN

More than half (56%) of manufacturing organizations are incentivizing technicians and
field engineers to identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. If technicians can make
recommendations based on what customers need in the moment, the greater the opportunity is
to make those sales happen. Link your service team with the sales team
via social collaboration to speed up the time to close new deals and
drive real service generated revenue.

SOURCE:
Aberdeen Research

14
 PARTS
SCHEDULING
CONTRACTS
MOBILE
ServiceMax Powers Flawless Field
Service in the Manufacturing Industry
Mobile, Social and Cloud-based Complete Field Service
What does flawless field service look like? CONTRACTS
Increase revenue by increasing
1. Complete Visibility: For the first time, service teams are gaining contract renewals and preventing
deep visibility into the entire service delivery operation, and its warranty leakage
changing the way they do business.
SCHEDULING
2. A Full Suite: Not only contract entitlements, scheduling & Minimize total cost of schedule
optimization, parts & reverse logistics, but also cuttingedge mobility, without impacting customer
social collaboration, and real-time customer & partner communities. satisfaction
3. Cloud-Based: Built on the proven Salesforce1 platform, customers PARTS
get up and running fast in a low cost subscription model. Reduce inventory costs by
minimizing parts leakage and
4. Access Everywhere: Mobile, anywhere access to ALL the write-offs
pertinent information.
SOCIAL
Ensure customer delight on every
call and increase first time fix rates
SOCIAL
COMMUNITIES
ANALYTICS
COMMUNITIES
Ensure transparency and control
to build loyalty and drive service
revenue
ANALYTICS
Meet your profitability goals with
insights on key operations metrics
that drive the right decisions
MOBILE
Anytime, anywhere access to
critical information reduces errors
and decreases repair time
Visit us online at servicemax.com or call

1-800-756-4960

Copyright 2014 ServiceMax, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.