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Perfecting Productivity

A must read for Service Managers or those with operational control of the field workforce

Flawless Field Service

Cognito iQ have 25 years of working with the UK’s leading field service companies. Our technology supports over 40,000 field workers on a daily basis. Every ounce of our knowledge and experience has driven our product development which is why the most forward thinking service businesses rely on our mobile platform and our operational performance analytics to drive their success.

In this first in a series of 3 guides, we explore how the key to Perfecting Productivity lies in the concept of marginal gains and continual improvement driven by the very latest in field service analytics.

GU

IDE

YOUR GUIDE TO

Outside of the field service industry, the growth of big

data and analytics is old news. The most advanced

organisations have already gone beyond the hype and

have developed strategies that are delivering exciting

performance-enhancing results. For example, Leicester

City’s surprise Premier League win was based on the club’s

expert use of football data analytics. Stories such as this

are why Gartner say “Data and analytics are taking centre

stage as the single most powerful catalyst for change in

the enterprise”.

However, field service companies have been slower

to achieve similar levels of success from the use of

advanced analytics. Whilst in many organisations there

is plenty of data available, it can be hard to use effectively:

the data may not be sufficiently accurate or timely, and

service professionals may lack the skills and tools they

need. But this is changing. Field service organisations

are getting smarter with both the data they collect and

how they use it.

Over this series of three special guides, we will show how

simple analytics can make a significant difference to three

key components of field service excellence: customer

satisfaction, employee engagement and, the subject of

this guide, productivity.

Introduction

2Flawless Field Service | Perfecting Productivity

CHAPTER 1Productivity is paramount Page 3

CHAPTER 2 Killer KPI’s Page 4

CHAPTER 3Perfecting productivity Page 5

CHAPTER 4Simple insights, powerful results Page 6

CHAPTER 5Customers’ success Page 8

CHAPTER 6Making it happen Page 11

Customers are used to the speed of delivery and quality of

service that they get from consumer companies such as

Amazon; this has raised the bar for all service companies.

Customers want a service appointment quickly, they want

smaller appointment windows and they expect your field

worker to have the right information as well as the skills,

knowledge and parts to resolve their issue first time.

Against this backdrop is the growing need for the service

department to both reduce costs and contribute to

revenues. Uncertain economic conditions have led many

companies to strive to be more efficient and field service

departments are facing significant pressure to cut costs

and “do more with less.”

How do field service organisations provide a better service

to their customers, with fewer resources? Our customers

tell us they are focused on efficiency and productivity

gains, and this is borne out by the market:

Productivity is paramount

Expectations of field service have never been higher

CHAPTER 1


To answer that question, you have to know what

productivity means to your business. All businesses will

have a different definition and an individual approach.

For example, would you be happy to drive up the number

of visits per day your field workers attend if that meant

fewer first time fixes, or reduced customer satisfaction

scores? The old adage is that you can’t manage what you

can’t measure but, these days, companies know that it is

a bit more complicated than that – measurement for its

own sake or using the wrong metrics to set targets can

be counter-productive. It is vital to know how to measure

success: which metrics are useful and which aren’t, which

can be accurately determined and which can’t, how

metrics interact and how setting goals and targets will

affect how employees go about their jobs.

The market backs this up too:

In 2016, Field Service News reported that improving the Key

Performance Indicators (KPIs) used to measure performance

was the top strategic action for the year ahead for 64% of

field service organisations in the UK and Europe.

Field Technologies Online reported that 75% of field service

organisations do not effectively measure their KPIs and

27% of those do not use KPIs at all.

Our customers tell us that the biggest challenges in

improving productivity come not only from a need to

define and measure it, but also from knowing how to

influence workers to behave in the most productive way.

This is a challenge that plays out at an operational level and

an employee level. At the operational level, field service

leaders need accurate, timely data about field operations

and the analytic capabilities to look for bottlenecks and

opportunities to improve. At the employee level, leaders

need to know how each field worker is performing, how

to solve performance problems and how to motivate, train

and support each worker effectively.

Killer KPI’s

So how do you improve productivity?

CHAPTER 2


This is not a new idea. Continual improvement is a well-

established practice that seeks to increase customer value,

reduce waste and optimise resources via incremental

change, feedback and analysis. These techniques originated

in manufacturing; on a production line, it is relatively simple

to measure variables such as number of defects, as you can

easily see how the work is being done and you can observe

the impact when you make changes to the process. But as

continual improvement methodologies have developed,

they have been profitably applied in many other industries,

so why not field service operations?

There are challenges: field service workers aren’t widgets

that can be counted and checked. They work remotely,

often independently, and may only come back to base on

rare occasions. If you can’t actually see what they are doing,

you need detailed, timely, accurate data from which you

can build up a picture of how they behave. With the right

data, it is possible to adopt a proactive, systematic approach,

breaking down the processes within the operation.

Adopting a continual improvement approach means that

first you plan and do: Planning data has historically been

focused on task, time and location: telling workers what to

do, where to go and when. But if you want to improve the

plan for tomorrow, you will need to study how efficiently

the plan worked today and act to make changes. For

example, were job durations as you expected? If tasks took

longer than planned you may have unhappy customers

and a big overtime bill. If they took less time, are you

paying workers who have gone home early? Detailed data

on durations enables you to act, adjusting task durations to

feed back into the plan for tomorrow. It is the combination

of many small changes, and the continual feedback loop of

measurement, analysis and change that will gradually and

incrementally improve productivity.

Perfecting productivity

Simply, through continual improvement

CHAPTER 3


Cognito iQ Mobile is a cloud-based mobile workflow

solution, that connects workers in the field, such as

engineers and technicians, or drivers and couriers, with

the back office, in real time. Cognito iQ Mobile guides field

workers through each shift, increasing efficiency and first

time fix or ‘on time in full’ delivery rate, connects workers to

information and updates in real time and gives back office

managers unrivalled visibility of the mobile workforce.

Cognito iQ Mobile is our starting point to perfecting productivity, but we are seeing the most exciting results

from adopters of our flagship analytics technology,

Cognito iQ Operational Performance Management (OPM). Cognito iQ OPM takes real-time mobile workforce data

from Cognito iQ Mobile or other mobile workforce solutions,

and presents it in a series of clear, easy to understand

dashboards and reports. This enables you to drill down into

granular detail for a thorough understanding of operational

and employee performance. Using Cognito iQ OPM, you

have the data and analytics to define your productivity goals

and continually improve both your operational and your

employee performance towards those goals. What if we told

you that some customers have driven productivity up by

over 30% using this technology in less than 18 months?

Simple insights, powerful results

Our solutions give you the data and tools to measure, analyse and incrementally address both the operational and employee challenges that service leaders face.

CHAPTER 4


The Plan Perspective shows you how well actual performance

compares to your plan, in terms of number of tasks completed,

rate of completion and task duration, by the hour or over a

specified period. In real-time, your operational managers can

analyse any variance from the plan and either fix the issues that

are causing it ahead of time or improve the plan next time.

The Resource Perspective gives you visibility of the current

state of your entire workforce through a single infographic. You

have total visibility of what your teams are doing at all times and

therefore the abillity to identify and respond to workers who

are exhibiting undesirable behaviours, such as too much time

spent performing the same task. Compare performance and

productivity measures over time to assess improvement.

The Worker Scorecard assesses individual workers at the end of

every shift against six Key Performance Areas (KPAs). By giving

each KPA an overall score it becomes extremely easy to see

individual’s strengths and areas for improvements, particularly

when viewed over time. Taking things further, we generate a

balanced overall score at the end of every shift, giving managers

the ability to rate a worker simply and easily. The granular detail

required for further analysis is no more than 2 clicks away.

Simple insights, powerful results

Cognito iQ OPM Operational dashboard

Cognito iQ OPM Employee dashboard

Cognito iQ OPM Worker Scorecard dashboard

CHAPTER 4


Baxi is the UK’s leading brand in both the manufacture

and servicing of gas boilers. Their field service and

customer support operation consists of over 100 call based

staff and 220 field based engineers covering the whole

of the UK, each completing six to seven visits per day.

Baxi has been a customer for nearly ten years, and has

used Cognito iQ Mobile to automate its field service

operation, making many productivity gains. More recently,

the company has been one of the early adopters of Cognito

iQ OPM, which the leadership team use to examine a wide

variety of metrics across time periods, regions, teams and

individual workers. This means they can compare actual

job outcomes with what was planned – duration of jobs,

travel time, SLA compliance – to spot gaps in the process

and opportunities to improve. OPM has given them the

ability to drill down into detailed operational and employee

performance data, to reflect on what is working in the

business and where improvements are needed, and to

drive a programme of continual improvement.

Over a 12 month period, Baxi has improved productivity in two key ways:

• Improved FTF rate by 2% which is equivalent to 4,000 more jobs being fixed first time

• Completed 3% more jobs than were allocated

Customers’ success

Transformation is a widely over used term, however we think that’s exactly what our customers are doing... their results speak for themselves

CHAPTER 5


Konica Minolta UK produces business and industrial

imaging products, such as MFPs (multi-functional

peripherals), copiers, laser printers, and digital production

print systems, as well as optical devices for various other

markets, such as healthcare. The company’s service

organisation has over 280 field-based engineers providing

planned and reactive maintenance and support to

businesses throughout the UK.

Cognito iQ OPM gives the service management team

real-time visibility of what is happening in the field. The

service desk team always have the Cognito iQ OPM Plan

Perspective displayed, so they can see at a glance how

they are performing against the plan for that day, and can

address any problems before they arise. There is constant

communication between the field and the service desk and

the third-party planning tool is always working out the best

routes, so jobs are allocated one at a time to engineers.

Over a 12 month period, Konica Minolta has improved productivity in two key ways:

• Overall 30% increase in productivity. Over 4000 jobs more per month. Yes, 4000.

• Saving just 1 minute in travel time per visit, over a year equates to one engineer in headcount. Konica Minolta saved 3 minutes per visit.

• Analysing precise job times per machine and comparing actual with expected, Konica Minolta were able to make significant improvements across the board. Working with those who worked too fast as well as those who were too slow and understanding why. The overall results led to being able to service an 8% larger estate with a zero increase in headcount.


CHAPTER 5


Cognito iQ OPM has given me live data to make decisions on the trends today rather than tomorrow. I’m not making assumptions, I’m making qualified decisions and so are my managers.

Ged Cranny - Head of Service, Konica Minolta


CHAPTER 5


Tunstall Healthcare Group manufactures, installs and

maintains telehealthcare solutions: integrated monitoring,

communication and alarm systems for home, assisted living

and specialist care environments, backed up by response

centre software systems and monitoring services. In the

UK, Tunstall employs 165 field-based engineers, across six

regions, supported by a team of office staff, each performing

around five or six site visits per day. Although some

equipment requires planned maintenance visits, most of

the work is reactive service, with typical SLAs ranging from

same day to 48 hour response.

Tunstall has been a customer since 2001. The Cognito iQ

platform has given Tunstall real-time visibility of engineers in

the field and enabled the field operations team to plan on

the fly. The team has been able to align processes across all

engineers and regions and to make improvements such as

call screening to reduce the need for site visits, fine-tuning

vehicle stock and re-engineering parts logistics.

Over a 12 month period, Tunstall has improved productivity in two key ways:

• Keeping the jobs-per-day rate constant, despite an increase in work area size

• Growing the business without the need for additional engineers

Quite simply we develop the most advanced mobile

workforce solutions and operational performance

analytics in the world.

That’s the reason why the biggest names in Field

Service, Facilities Management, Courier and Retail

Logistics and Utilities rely on the Cognito iQ platform

to run their mobile workforce operations.

Let’s see if we can make it happen.

Get in [email protected]+44 (0)1635 508200

Making it happen

Working with us is your first step to perfecting productivity...

CHAPTER 6


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