Standardization vs Flexibility: How to Shape Your Service Transformation

Last month I celebrated my five year anniversary working for a field service software company. Having had a prior history of 25 years in service delivery and service sales, many service transformation engagements have been a trip down memory lane. As former business leader I too sought for modern tools to replace my legacy business processes. When software vendors showed me their capabilties, they showed the happy path. As service-firefighter I knew that real life needed contingencies for not-so-happy.

You are special

When you’ve run a service organisation for multiple years, you’ve built a routine of tools and processes to get the job done. If, like me, you had limited access to budget, your business processes will be a hodgepodge of makeshift tools.

And then, either by design or by the turn of events, your company is in a digital and service transformation process evaluating standard software. The happy path looks great. It’s easy and it’s efficient. But something doesn’t feel right. Your business is more complex. You have many variants and exceptions. You are special.

Of course you can ask the software vendor to demo all those exceptions, but do you really want to re-create your legacy business processes with modern tools? Or, do you want to make use of the new tool capabilities to challenge your legacy processes?

Common global process

One of the big drivers for new tooling is standardisation. Not only can you rationalise your current IT-stack, you can also ‘clean-up’ the sprawl of business process exceptions. In transformation journeys I often hear verbage like ‘common global process’. When I do hear this, I try to understand how will employees and customers will benefit from a common global process.

Do customers want a standard one-size-fits-all process, or do they want a contextual transaction? Do employees want a business process that is cast in iron, or do they need a level of flexibility to address the unforeseen? This brings me to the theme of this blog: is the happy path really so happy or do we essentially need something different?

Contextual processes

At the Copperberg Power of 50 event we talked about “managing the hybrid service paradigm”. If on the one end of the scale we have forces driving a common global process, then hyper-personalisation is pulling towards the other end. The good news is that technology can help us find the middle ground. One does not have to go at the expense of the other.

If we picture the blend of interests:

  • Business and IT leaders want to exercise control over the execution of business processes. 
  • Employees need a level of autonomy in how they deliver their work to cater to expecting and vocal customers.
  • Customer expect services to be delivered situational to their business impact … and those tend to fluctuate.

The above three actors operate in shifting contexts. Because priorities tend to change over time, we advise business leaders to enable and empower employees deploying contextual workflow beyond the happy path. Because it is beyond the happy path where friction, inefficiencies and dissastisfaction manisfests itself.

80% Global, 15% local and 5% situational

At the Copperberg Power of 50 event, we saw a video of service technicians Amy and Jake from DormaKaba. They talked about how every day is different, how they need trust and empowerment to get the work done. What this means? If we want happy customers and technicians, we need to abandon the belief in a happy path and move towards contextual business process behaviour.

Guiding many transformation journeys for our customers, we’ve seen we can strike a balance between business process standardisation and situational flexibility using modern workflow techniques. We call this 80% global, 15% local and 5% situational.

  • Global: Despite the uniqueness of service businesses there is a core of commonality in business processes. This core will ensure that global leaders are able to roll-up the data for decision making purposes.
  • Local: Instead of standardising everything, we have to be mindful that localisations exist for a reason. It’s often the commercial reality that a local product-market combination that dictates how we need to do business with those customers. Without localisations a company may not be able to do business.
  • Situational: Echoing the words of Amy “every day is different”, we may have agreed upon a process, but in day-to-day operations we encounter unforeseen situations. Instead of responding with a freeze we need enable and empower employees to make informed decisions to maintain a flow, to keep the world running.

Adoption drives Value   

The happy path is what any software tool can support. Implementing the happy path may even seem to be the preferred transformation path. The value-proof is in eating the pudding. When you deploy the happy path it is very likely you will encounter the adoption hurdles assosciated with local and situational variants. Needless to say: no adoption, no value.Thus, the way forward is to account for local, contextual and situational workflows. When you ask for your next demo, do ask to deviate from the happy path. Ask how the software facilitates the excpetions. What insights and visibility will be available to the users, such they can make informed decisions? Decisions that align with your overall company objectives.

This article is published on Field Service Digital.

The Value of doing a Ride Along

How are your service operations doing and where do you see the improvement potential?

In facilitating many transformation journeys, we are privy to conversations with excutives and people in the field alike. In bridging everything in between we discover a wealth of ideas and point of views. The instrument we use: the ride along.

Going in the field

In many organisations it is common for a manager/ executive to “go into the field” as part of the onboarding process; to get to know the business. The ride along builds and expands on similar learning objectives.

“Staple” yourself to a service request, follow each step in the process and observe

Merging different views on the business

Because executives, managers and people in the field have different experiences and scope of responsibility each has a different appraisal of the state op operations. The ride along taps into the diversity of views to create a more holistic and shared business objective. In parallel the discussion facilitates understanding and buy in.

A ride along has the potential to transcend priorities and experiences across functional silos and hierarchies. A ride along creates mutual understanding and paves the way for adoption and value delivery.

Understanding the As-Is

Doing a ride along is literally observing a process end-to-end and asking tonnes of “why” questions. We find that people are often able to explain “what” they do and “how” they do it. Getting to the “why” is important as it gives insight into people’s understanding of what they do and how that links to their perception of the overall business objectives.

As a very important adjacent benefit we see that the ride along instrument creates understanding and appreciation between all functions and roles involved in your service operation:

  • Horizontal: a process is typically a relay of activities spun across multiple functions. By sharing ride along findings across those functions any sub optimisation behaviour can be tabled.
  • Vertical: on the one hand we see executives/ managers operate at a greater distance from day-to-day service operations while on the other hand people in the field may feel detached from the office. Exchange of ride along findings brings your people closer to each other.

We see that people are genuinely inclined to change for the benefit of another person once they understand the issues & objectives of the other.

Small things having a big impact

When asking why people work as they do today with an open mindset, we tend to hear loads of smaller improvement opportunities that typically don’t make it to executive level. In the field people talk and care about the small things. Considering that most operational people in the service domain are customer facing, ideas from those people often have a proportionally large impact on customer satisfaction and thus customer value perception. Thus, those ideas are a valuable addition to the big things priming the agenda of executives.

“My management has a different perception on how we do our work. We use all kind of work arounds to get work done. Small things could make us so much more effective”

Technician during a ride along (2019)

Repeat and Improve

Transforming your business is a journey requiring frequent check points to see if everybody is still on board and if the original value promise materialises. The ride along proves to be a valuable instrument.

Thus, at ServiceMax we encourage and assist customers to perform ride along ‘s on a repetitive basis. In the first ride along we establish a baseline and project a trajectory of benefit potential. In all subsequent ride along’s we observe how the customer is using and adopting ServiceMax.

The repetition allows you to see progress and make it visible to all stakeholders. The repetition also allows you to spot obstacles and mitigate them in a timely fashion. Finally, the ride along facilitates the dialogue to push the needle for continuous improvement.

“Our people now better understand how each plays a role in the bigger picture. As a result, they feel part of a team and have inspired each other to improve. We will do a ride along next year.”

Customer medical industry (2019)

This article is published in ServiceMax Field Service Digital on July 24th, 2020