Managing Service Profitability in the Age of Digital Transformation

Editor’s note: This post was co-written by Joe Kenny and Coen Jeukens.

It is an age-old dilemma for Operations Managers. Your CEO wants XX% revenue growth, your CFO wants XX% cost reduction, your CRO wants better references and higher NPS scores, and you are supposed to deliver all of this with zero additional investment, because – of course – you have been doing this for years with no additional cash, so why would you need it now?

To top all of this off, you had very little idea of where you stood, operationally or financially, at any given time. And this was due to the fact that access to real-time data, a current view into work in process, and accurate financial information was all impossible to come by.

Historical challenges for service operations

I often speak at conferences and participate in webinars, and I often relate this anecdote – in March I would lay out my operational plan, based on the most recent P&L statement I had received (January’s), intending to address performance weaknesses I had uncovered. My team would execute the plan and in May I would receive my March P&L to see if the response to January’s performance shortfalls were successful or not. It was madness.

Now, layer onto that, the fact that 30, 60, 90-day invoicing accruals were also Operation’s responsibility, even though we had an AP department. This process greatly impacted both revenue and cost, as the cost of service was consumed, but the associated revenue may not have arrived in 90 days.

Impact of digital transformation

Fast forward to today, and service operations managers have been given a lifeline—digital transformation. Digital transformation can be like a light switch, illuminating what is happening in real time, allowing service operations leaders to adapt to circumstances immediately. They can reallocate precious resources instantly, validate payment status and credit status prior to service delivery, and see and understand the impact of operational plans in real time.

Digital asset and service management platforms can provide real-time performance measurements, both foundational and top line. This includes data round first-time fix rate, mean time to repair, mean time between failures, and equipment uptime. With this data, operations managers can organize and drive for peak utilization of labor resources while ensuring that the training and quality of work are optimal. This then increases the efficiency of their organization and lowers the cost to deliver excellent service.

With today’s technology, service operations are finally on par with our commercial partners and can see and act on upsell, cross sell, renewals, and service contract extensions instantaneously. In addition, we can support sales by identifying and helping them target competitors’ equipment for targeted replacement. We are the eyes of the commercial team on the customer’s location.

Newfound financial control

Utilizing a digital solution allows for real-time tracking of labor, parts consumed, travel, and any other costs associated with a service call, regardless of whether it is a T&M call or in support of a warranty/service contract entitlement. This is a key advantage that enables service operations leaders to manage labor and parts expenses far more granularly. In addition, they can evaluate the revenue associated with the service provided to validate if the pricing is correct based on their revenue and margin targets.

This ability to understand the cost to serve on an asset or entitlement agreement in real time is a huge step forward for service operations. It gives them the data they need to truly align entitlement pricing, cost control, operational efficiency, and productivity to accurately manage and forecast their performance and address fundamental issues that are obstacles to achieving their own performance objectives.

The evolution of equipment and asset service management platforms has greatly assisted service operations professionals in attaining the insight, visibility, and control that their commercial and financial counterparts have enjoyed for decades. As asset and equipment maintenance and service becomes a larger part of most organizations’ revenue and margin contributions, it is important that they equip teams with the technology that enables them to better manage and control their operations.

Published on PTC Blog.

How to Use Service Marketing to Grow Service Revenue

Over the last five to ten years, a growing number of Chief Service Officers (CSOs) have been assigned a service revenue growth target—a trend recently confirmed through research by Noventum, which found that more than 85% of product manufacturers have set a growth target for their service function. As this trend gains steam, we think it’s worth examining how CSOs can achieve service revenue growth and what they can learn from the sales side.

If you ask a salesperson to grow revenue, they will ask for two prerequisites:

  • More and newer products with more features at a better price point
  • A marketing budget to target the addressable market

What does a CSO ask for when receiving and accepting a service revenue growth target? For many CSO’s, growing service revenue and using service marketing is unchartered territory.

What’s your marketing budget?

Up to 2012, I managed my service operations at Bosch as a cost center. At that time service was the single largest margin contributor to the company. In 2012, I received service revenue growth objectives. Simultaneously my role transitioned from the service domain to the sales domain. In my first conversation with the chief revenue officer, I was asked: “What marketing budget do you need?”

Having run service operations for 25 years, my automatic response was to first focus on achieving excellence for the existing service delivery capabilities. After a crash course in sales and marketing, I revised my strategy. Sell first. Secure the revenue. Use the revenue to finance the maturing of your delivery capabilities.

The result: a quadrupling of service revenue in five years. How? By focusing on two items:

  1. Using the voice of the customer to develop a services portfolio
  2. Setting up service marketing for the installed base

Developing a services portfolio

Back in 2012, I was so focused on service delivery, it never crossed my mind to challenge my services portfolio. My sales colleagues explained to me that a portfolio with sufficient choice is the basis for revenue generation. We then set on a course to create a services portfolio with selectable features and differing price points. Our goal was to create an “a la carte” menu card.

The true test was to come. Would our customers buy the items from our menu card? This is where we realized our need for a true marketing function. A function to help us frame the value messaging and to reach out to the target audience.

Setting up service marketing

First, we looked at the value promise our company made to its customers. Is that value promise pertaining to owning the product and/or is it about using the product throughout its lifecycle? How does our menu card of lifecycle services fit in? And how do we facilitate product owners in making the right service lifecycle choices?

In setting up a marketing function for service, we used our sales colleagues as reference. In the world of sales, key metrics are Total Addressable Market (TAM) and Market Share. Marketing uses these two parameters to spearhead campaigns. In the world of service, these two metrics can be substituted by Installed Base penetration and Attach Rates.

Total addressable market

Suppose you have installed base visibility of 100% and all those units have an attached service contract. Suppose all those contracts are of the type gold-service. The sum of that equation is your maximum achievable service revenue. You could label this as your service-TAM. If your organization also services units of competing brands, the service-TAM will be bigger.

Market share

Your current actual service revenue is the compound result of two factors – your ability to drive installed base visibility and attach rates, in combination with the attractiveness of your services portfolio.

The gap

As mentioned in an earlier blog Mind the Gap, the delta between your service-TAM and your actual market share is your revenue gap. This gap encompasses your target audience for service marketing. The larger the gap, the bigger your compelling reason to review your services portfolio and to establish a service marketing function.

Targeting your audience

Service marketing has one big advantage over sales marketing: with a field service management system focused on asset-centric business models, marketing will have the perfect data set to drive targeted campaigns:

  • Knowing where your installed base is
  • Knowing the state of the asset and how the asset is being used
  • Having a record of the maintenance history
  • Knowing what engineering change orders and modernizations have been implemented
  • Visibility to the current service contract and entitlements

As one of our customers told us:

“We operated a model of sell and forget. Now we sell and service. We have invested in installed base visibility, attach rates, our services portfolio and service marketing. We are now on a deliberate and conscious path of service revenue growth.”

Setting a budget

Knowing what I know now, I would respond differently to my former chief revenue officer. I would request a service marketing budget to revisit my services portfolio and to initiate targeted marketing on my revenue gap.

I would not hesitate to commit to service revenue growth targets, knowing the service delivery organization had an asset-centric field service management system.

This article is published in ServiceMax Field Service Digital on August 25th, 2021

7 Tips for HVAC – Service Execution Excellence

Through sweltering heat and fierce blizzards, HVAC technicians are there to keep equipment running at peak performance. But how do you make sure you get peak performance out of your HVAC service organization year-round, year-after-year?

Here is a list of 7 tips to help you achieve excellence in your HVAC service organization.

  1. Manage resources through all seasons
  2. Maximize uptime of HVAC equipment
  3. Improve margin of service operations
  4. Drive cross & upsell
  5. Deploying (sub)contractors
  6. Dealing with increased HSE requirements
  7. Sustainability, dealing with HazMat

Manage resources through all seasons

A customer requirement for heating and cooling is seasonal, resulting in an equally seasonal pattern in technician demand. Typically, a service organisation will try to balance resource capacity by doing installations, retro-fit and preventive maintenance during low season and dedicate capacity in peak season to break-fix. 

Over the years HVAC organizations have acquired a lot of tribal knowledge to mitigate the daily resource juggle. Modern service execution systems will facilitate you to formalize this tribal knowledge and to upgrade your capacity planning process applying dynamic scheduling. As a result your customers will get the service they expect and your technicians will feel in control instead of being dragged from job to job.

Maximize uptime of HVAC equipment

The majority of today’s service level agreements are still stated in terms of Effort. “We will commence the fix of the malfunction in x hours”. Some contracts up the value promise to a Result. “We will deliver a fix within y hours”. To offset the risk of penalties, the latter contracts often have a section of fine print watering down the Result. What owners of HVAC equipment want is Uptime. 

Combining IoT connectivity and Service Execution Management allows a service organisation to both deliver the Uptime a customer expects and to deliver that service in a cost-effective way.

Improve margin of service operations

Competition in the HVAC industry is fierce. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), Third Party Maintainers (TPM) and Facility Management Companies (FCM) all operate in the same space to make a margin. A quick search on the internet tells us that a typical HVAC nett profit margin ranges from 1.4% for TPM/ FCM to 12% for OEMs. These numbers indicate that cost control is a constant driver in decision making.

To control cost you need visibility. To create visibility you need tools and processes. Though HVAC equipment may comprise of generic components, both the infinite number of configurations and wide range of commercial conditions agreed with customers define your requirements for agile service execution tools. Tools minimizing the dependency on IT support and maximizing flexibility for your markets & channels.

Link: https://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/betterbuildings/neighborhoods/pdfs/hvac_contractor_business_model.pdf

Drive cross & upsell

Although we see cost control having the primary focus in HVAC, we see maturing organizations driving for revenue increase. The service agreements with low margins won via a tender process, often only contain the basics. The basics being periodical maintenance, a response promise topped with contracted rates and material discounts. To make a customer account (more) profitable, service organisations depend on their ability to cross and upsell beyond the basic contract.

Technicians being trusted advisors to your customers can act as eyes and ears to detect revenue enhancing opportunities. Capturing leads, enabling technicians to quote on-site and ultimately being able to convert a quote into a work order will attribute to your revenue growth targets. In parallel you will see that both customer experience and technician empowerment will get a boost.

Deploying (sub)contractors

According to The Service Council approximately 32% all field service work is completed by partners/ subcontractors. Though this percentage may vary per market and product segment, subcontractors play an important role in getting all the work done. Subcontractors come in all shapes. Sometimes they will compete with you, in other markets they may complement your route-to-market.

Prioritizing and assigning jobs are most probably the two most important aspects of dispatching affecting both cost and service level attainment. Make sure your dispatching console supports you in decision making while simultaneously maintaining visibility of the job progress once handed off to a subcontractor. Modern tools can alleviate the need for complex subcontractor integrations by means of allowing the subcontractor using your processes on a device of their own choosing.

Link: TSCReport-F-2016 -FSOutsourcing-04.pdf

Dealing with increased HSE requirements

“Heating, ventilation and air conditioning company, HLA Services, has been prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and fined for safety failings after an employee suffered serious injuries in a fall whilst repairing an extraction unit in Newcastle.”

A headline like this is the dread for any company. Of course, you will tell your technicians how to adhere to all regulations at hiring, during onboarding and probably you will have periodical health & safety briefings throughout their tenures. Ultimately you want to create a safety culture in your organisation.

Life gets complicated when the regulations change, when procedures are different per customer location. Somehow you need to embed health and safety handles into daily operations. What if you could make those part of the work order and track compliance through a configurable set of check lists.

Link: http://www.heatingandventilating.net/hvac-company-fined-by-hse-for-safety-failings

Sustainability and dealing with HazMat

Beyond safety for technicians governed by measures of HSE and OSHA we see that HVAC organisations also have a responsibility to take proper care of hazardous material like refrigerants. The increasing attention for the sustainability theme is raising the bar to reduce the use of materials in general and reclaim reuse.

To achieve these goals, you need a service execution system that embeds a supply chain function. To be able to track the use of material and to instruct technicians what to do with defect, used and waste materials.

Links: https://www.refrigerationschool.com/blog/hvacr/osha-affect-hvac-industry/

CIO take – Field Service Engineer of the Future

What is your digital roadmap? What technology advancements is your organization utilizing? There’s a great chance these questions are crossing your path. In the Argyle CIO Webinar on the Field Service Engineer of the Future five executives shared their take on technology both as driver and enabler for generating business value. 

At center stage we position the Field Service Engineer. His/ her propensity to work with and embrace technology is a critical success factor in value creation. Though field service may have suffered from under investment or derision, new technology is turning everything on its head. Service is increasingly seen as critical business function.

PerfectStorm

In a way, we see a convergence of many insights molding into a perfect storm. In addressing each aspect, we see a pivotal role for Field Service. This leads us to a Vision for Digital Worker: “The Digital Worker suite of applications enables, empowers, and elevates industrial workers to drive the customer outcomes of productivity, reliability, safety, security, and profitability”.

AugmentedReality

The toolkit of the Digital worker comprises of:

  • Internet of Things
  • Augmented Reality
  • Big Data
  • Predictive Analytics
  • Drones and robots/cobots
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Wearable & mobile devices
  • Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing)

The good news is that these are not technologies of the future, they are available today and providing solutions to the most pressing business issues. Also, the cost of technology is coming at a point where the business case turns positive.

The CIO panel stressed the human component; the interaction between people and technology. Technology can be a very powerful instrument in attracting and retaining talent. At the same time addressing the aging workforce and productivity issue. Tech savy field service engineers tend to recognize the value of technology and thus adoption rates are high.

By2020

When it comes to investment priorities the panel was unanimous on connectivity of assets and how that data collaborates with operations and the field service engineer. Customers value the output and outcome of assets. The new play is about Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). Both cost of downtime and increased earnings capacity of the asset are the main drivers for the investment priority. 

With the value promise of field service and digital technology the final question to the panel was on getting from knowing to doing. Who do we need to convince and/or pull into the discussion in moving forward? The first answer was “everybody”. We’re in a paradigm shift. We have to see it. As CIO’s we have a leading role in driving the transition. As CIO’s we understand tech and digital, we understand the importance and reach. We have to reach out to the business and lead. Through innovation teams. Through a Chief Digital Officer. By being agile. Glad to know Field Service both loves technology and more and more is recognized as a critical business function.

A closing remark from a Field Service Engineer: “Do give me the right tools to be a hero on site. As a result I’ll deliver value”.