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How do you define field service? We advocate thinking big and "swinging for the fences" as they say in baseball. Not only should you be responding to customer repairs and providing ongoing maintenance, there is more that you can offer to add value for your customer and increase your revenues. For example, companies such as General Electric that produce large equipment for power generation offer to conduct a site evaluation prior to delivering equipment to the installation to ensure a smooth and successful install. Field service can provide practical and valuable consulting assistance to customers on all aspects of the layout and site design, as well as the requirements for optimal operation of equipment. These valuable consulting services can command substantial consulting fees. Services such as these can also be serious differentiators when selling equipment. Your field service people know what's best, based on experience, and you can charge for this expertise. Cisco considers consulting part of its "PPDIOO" customer cycle and offers services that span the lifecycle for networking technologies. These services are provided by its own workforce and service partners. This consists of the following steps in the customer cycle: * Prepare: discovery process to define customer business needs * Plan: site and solution requirement definition * Design: development of implementation design * Implement: installation of equipment to meet business needs * Operate: transition to routine operation * Optimize: continuous system improvement and optimization Consulting fees can be charged for processes such as Cisco's PPDIOO and can make a huge difference to your bottom line. At each step in the process, you engage with your customer to gain a deeper understanding of their goals. This, in turn, will enable you to make helpful recommendations. If you decide to include consulting services in your field service organization, you will need to develop some standardized approaches and deliverables, just as you would expect from any professional consulting organization. This might include an audit document and checklist for use by field service consultants for site visits and consultations and a standardized deliverable report template to be given to your customer. Be sure to make these documents standardized. In fact, you will need higher-skilled engineers for the more strategic work. Remember, if the customer is paying for this work, they will expect professional deliverables that are insightful, well written, and polished. Fees for consulting work can vary depending on the expertise required for the project. The typical range is $1,200 - 2,000 per day. These prices are competitive with consultants across all disciplines in the USA. Fees in other countries may be higher or lower depending on the norms for that country. Fees for very technical or programming work may command even higher rates. Remember, consulting involves strategic as well as tactical work, commanding a higher level of compensation. Customers will willingly pay your fees if they find significant value in the results. Some of our clients use consulting work as a front-end loss leader if they think they can close a deal for equipment and ongoing maintenance as a result of this work. In these cases, there is no charge for the initial consulting work or a credit against the equipment invoice if the customer proceeds with the purchase. Many companies are moving from reactive "break/fix" to proactive "intelligent" services that utilize advances in diagnostics and Internet connectivity to forecast service needs or optimization potential at the equipment level. Joe Pinto, SVP at Cisco, believes "companies can't rest on their laurels." Joe uses proactive "smart services" to help drive reductions in the cost of operations (COO) and improve the value of the product for the customer's business. There is a home run out there in customer satisfaction and increased revenue if you think of field service as more than "break/fix." © 2013 Laura Lowell This excerpt by Rosemary Coates and Jim Reily is Rule 10 from "42 Rules for Superior Field Service". Rosemary is the President of Blue Silk Consulting, a global supply chain consultancy and the author of 42 Rules for Sourcing and Manufacturing in China. Prior to Blue Silk Consulting, she was a senior director at SAP, the supply chain consulting practice leader at KPMG Peat Marwick. Jim is a Principal at R&R LLC, a field service, service logistics, and operations consultancy. Prior to forming R&R, Jim was the Vice President, Worldwide Service Operations for Cymer Inc. You can learn more about his book and others at http://42rules.com.
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