Are You Ready For Field Services 4.0?

Next is AR/VR. These also will change the way we run our Field Services operation. If in the past and present, all engineers must master all the repair skill, then the future will say differently. Engineer can (or should) master only basic skill, while specific skill will be guided by Central Operation Team remotely. By using smartphones or wearing headsets with small LCDs and cameras, onsite engineers can just follow instruction from expert engineer located thousand miles away, thanks to faster 4G/5G Internet. So instead of having a lot of expert engineers doing onsite job (which are of high cost), now these expert engineers can be seated in central location and remotely assist multiple basic onsite engineers (lower cost resources).

Finally IoT is coming. Again, when everything is connected through high-speed line, then everything can communicate much faster. This will change what was called “reactive” to “proactive.” All devices will become “smarter” and “always connected.” I attended the Field Services conference in Singapore last month and talked to few colleagues from multiple industries. Interestingly, most of them have already started to incorporate a smart device to monitor the performance of the product then send notification before the product fails. Again, if currently preventive maintenance is done by our engineer visiting customers one by one, then in the future, there will be no need to even physically come unless there is a need to change physical hardware.

With above sample cases, can we imagine how much benefit a company can get? Customer can be served better (availability), scalability is there, while the cost to run will decrease (significantly). Of course there will be investment needed to have all of these, but can be easily justified on the business case.

Change in the Way We See Services

With the above facts, the way we manage our resources also will need to be changed. Services will be required to be able to provide “on-demand” basis and must be agile enough to scale up/down based on “market demand” without needing of huge ramp up/down cost. Apart from that, services also must be able to provide customize offering. If customers need only basic engineers, then they can pay less to get what they want.

Just consider services as an e-hailing business. The owner of an e-hailing business doesn’t need to own the fleet. But business can be ramped up or down fast enough at minimum cost (just recruit more drivers as needed or if business is declining, many drives will quit anyway, with no severance package). Offerings given also can be customized. Customers can choose different cars, from models (like Sedan or SUV) to capacity (4 to 6/7 seaters). Also if time is not critical, customer can share the ride (few customers in one car). I’m quite sure few years back, no one ever thought that there would be a taxi company without owning a single car.

Outsourcing is the Future

To support the agility of the business, outsourcing will again dominate the market. Companies will only keep really good talent and they don’t need a lot of these. It will be centralized and consolidated. These expert teams will manage lower skill engineers remotely (which are most likely to be outsourced labor).

So future fact, many people will lose their jobs or will need to accept pay cut or even movement from permanent to contractor role. At certain level, they are too expensive to run lower skill field engineer jobs, while at the other side, due to whatever reason, they are not chosen to be the expert engineers. They could be the Top five engineers in the company in the past. But now company only needs three centralized expert guys. So there will be no place for #4 and #5.

What brought you here, might not bring you there Seeing the fact, like it or not, life is changing fast, so is our business. What brought you here, might not bring you there. We might have a very solid organization structure for years. But again with the pressure of cost, while the need to maintain performance and also changes in our customers’ behavior, then we need to keep up-to-date, be super-efficient and super-agile in order to survive. In short, we need to accept the fact and be open-minded to listen, understand, and adept with the change. Sometime as human beings, we used to remember our past victory and confident could win another 100 wars with same previous strategy. Trust me, you could not!

We have seen self-checkout counter at some convenient stores already cut a lot of cashier job (or “transferred” to do other work). Rest assured, the change in field services will also create similar “casualties”. The question for both employer and employee: Are we ready for it?