Ep: 32 Stay Ahead of the Competition with Field Service Planning

How field service planning helps customers offer top-notch service

Therese:             Welcome to our DELMIA podcast, Global Operations on the Go. I'm your host, Therese Snow. Today's topic is on how field service planning can help companies offer top-notch customer service with happy employees. In this podcast, we deep dive into four major changes that are currently happening in the market, which in fact will impact the business now and in the near future. Let's take a deeper dive into the actions that businesses should be taking to get prepared. At the table, we have our two experts, Bart Williamson from Ordina and Twan Janssen from Dassault Systèmes. Gentlemen, can you briefly introduce yourself and your area of expertise?

Twan:                  Yeah, sure, Therese. Hi, this is Twan speaking. I've been a consultant with Dassault Systèmes for many years. I started here in 2004, and my particular area of interest and focus is planning and scheduling in workforce and other industries.

Bart:                    Hello, Therese. My name is Bart. I am a supply chain business specialist in the supply chain optimization division at Ordina. I've been working in the area of supply chain for almost 25 years, and my personal background is in industrial engineering. I'm very passionate about helping customers in improving their business results with better supply chain planning and optimization.

Therese:             Alright, excellent. Thank you both for joining us. So before we continue the conversation, I think it makes sense to get a common understanding on the definition of field service planning. Twan, how would you define field service planning?

What is field service planning?

Twan:                  Yeah, so I suppose you look first at field services or what is field services as many industries and organizations that have a mobile workforce where some of their staff are visiting clients or sites or locations where certain activities need to be done. In addition, when you then talk about the planning, that brings some additional complexities. Often it's not just about getting the right people that need to have certain skills. If you could do certain technical inspections that need to take place, then you need to have the right skills and certificates for those things. However, often also people need a vehicle to go there. So the vehicles need to be planned in combination with the people and then as well the equipment or tools that people need to bring. Whereas some are, let's say less in short supply, but often the kind of customers that we have, they have a high-end machinery or equipment of which they only have a few.

Twan:                  So scarce resources that also need to be planned. And this combination is for planning in particular a unique complexity that you have to get optimal use and not have these scarce resources planned under efficiently. In an environment where things often change, you can imagine that if equipment breaks down needs to be repaired, then you have often short-term changes to the plan because you have as a LA to meet of your customers. In other words, if they report a breakdown in equipment, you have to visit them within a certain amount of hours. And these constant changes in a context of having to plan multiple types of things together or multi resource planning as we sometimes call it. Those are, you could say the specific aspects of field service planning. And then you have aspects in the short term, which is more the disruptions and the changes, but also in the long term, how many people do you need in a certain month. Sometimes weather has an effect where in the winter you need more people than in the summer. So also looking at these seasonal changes are aspects that you often see with field service planning.

Therese:             Sure, thank you for that. And Bart, can you tell me how field service planning is related to Ordina?

Joining forces as the Ordina and DELMIA Quintiq team

Bart:                    Ordina has a 20 plus years partnership with DELMIA Quintiq, and as a team we have implemented the solution over a hundred times. It includes many workforce planning cases like for example at the Dutch customs, Belgium customs, Dutch police, many home care organizations and also security companies. Based on our broad experiences, Ordina has created the so-called F SS P M R solution, which stands for field service planner, multi resource, and especially for the planning and scheduling of the mobile workforce in the field.

Therese:             Sure, and I already mentioned that you see four major changes which will dramatically impact the business and the employee planning and scheduling. Could you please mention the four major changes you're talking about is you're an expert in the markets and what trends are super relevant to this day or this day and age actually that you may notice people are struggling with or will be facing on the short term

Bart:                    For major changes that we see in the market are first demographic changes, secondly sustainability and also the focus on social responsibility in that area. Thirdly, the growing need for resiliency. And fourth, the customers that are getting more and more demanding over time. And yeah, there's an increasing need to exceed the customer's expectations.

Addressing major industry changes

Therese:             And this podcast, let's focus on the first two changes you mentioned, Bart, could you please elaborate on the first mentioned major change, which is the demographic change?

Bart:                    Okay, first on the demographics change due to the aging of the population, the working populations, there will be a shift towards a new generation of people. The current working generation we call the so-called Generation X consists of mostly people born between the sixties and the mid-eighties. The future, the next generation will take over, we call them the so-called generation Y or the millennials, and they were mostly born between the eighties and the mid-nineties. Moreover, generally speaking, there are some big differences between those generations and that also includes the work attitudes. The next generation of millennials is more and more focused on their own work-life balance. Also the population of generation Y will be smaller than the current generation X, so this will also lead to shortages on the labor market. Both points make that that the employee planning will also become more complex and challenging.

Bart:                    The combination of those two will also influence the planning perspective. The second point is sustainability and also the social responsibility. Sustainability is a very hot topic on the company boards nowadays and Dassault Systèmes is also helping many companies in that area. Most people think with sustainability on the climate change, but the topic is much broader than that. And also social responsibility falls under that header. A way for companies to measure their sustainability, for example is the E S G score, which stands for environmental impact, social impact, and governments. The social responsibility includes for example, if all collective labor laws and other laws will be respected or are respected, but also if individual rosters are equally and honestly divided over the employees. And also if employees are also able to participate in the planning process to influence their own work-life balance.

Addressing the work/life balance and social impacts

Therese:             And we talked about the first two major changes, which focus on the social impact and the need to come to a better work-life balance. To elaborate on this, could you mention some key challenges planners are currently facing while they often use, for example, Excel or other traditional planning tools?

Twan:                  Yeah, I think what you're seeing as a consequence of what Bar has mentioned is that planners need to deal with more information than in the past and information that is changing more often. So where traditionally, let's say people had the plan in their minds and could almost create a plan without even using any IT system or in some other cases having what you see often our plans on Excel where people capture the plans and also distribute plans based on Excel that actually no longer works if more information needs to be managed, more people get involved in the process, both planners, but in fact also the employees that you plan because again, they demand more flexibility, more input. They want put in preferences for when they want to work or when they want to have an afternoon off for private reasons. So what you see is that those traditional tools essentially bring limitations and that has to do with the demand itself. So your customers are typically less eager to say, well make a new plan for me and I will wait a few days before I get a result. I expect immediate feedback from those plans.

Twan:                  Specific skills and competencies. To be honest, I think that's what you have all the time. You need to bring the right people for the right jobs. But again, if your orders and demand is changing more often, it becomes a lot more complicated to keep tracking that you have the right people on the job. So that's again an element of more complexity in the information. I think what you then also see is, and that's maybe a more recent trend, companies are suffering a bit from lack of people. There's lot of places where you have employment options open. So in a context where the work continues to be getting more complicated and people are not available to do all the work, you squeeze a bit the plans. So that makes it a bit more complex, which is also an aspect where you would look for some more sophisticated planning solutions.

Following the rules and requirements

Twan:                  I think in particular--in the context of quality for your customers, but also social aspects-- following the rules is becoming (increasingly) more important. These are rules in terms of labor rules, making sure you don't have people that work hours beyond the legal limits or agreed limits, but also rules that you agree with your customers. If you want to satisfy customers and make them happy, then you also want to meet the expectations in terms of response times to orders or requests or issues they raise. So those are some examples of why the aspects that BART just mentioned increase what is already a complex process planning and add more complexity for the planners.

Therese:             Thanks Twan. No, that certainly does make sense. Now onto you Bart, can you indicate what will be the missed opportunity if companies are unprepared, if dealing with the changes?

Bart:                    Okay, about the missed opportunities, I could say that if you cannot provide a good work life balance for employees, you will run the risk that people will leave the company and that your retention rates will drop dramatically. It's very expensive to replace experienced people according to Forbes. The turnover cost can range from 50% of an annual salary for the entry level employees up to 200% of the annual salary cost for an experienced employee. A second missed opportunity is when planners are not in control of the planner, it can become very costly to deliver the services. Companies need to have buffers for backup resources and that means that also you need to have X-ray employees available or people need to work overtime, which is also very costly.

Therese:             Oh, absolutely. So how will the proposed solution help the planner to maximize the employee wellbeing and satisfaction?

The advantages of an “off-the-shelf” solution

Bart:                    Ordina has created the F S P M R solution based on the best of breed workforce planning solution from DELMIA Quintiq. Based on the many past experiences, we as Ordina have created a standard off off-the-shelf solution, which is offered as a managed service to medium and big-sized companies in the targeted industries. And these targeted industries are field inspection companies, facility management companies, construction services, and also utilities and energy companies. The pricing of the solution that will scale with the number of employees that are planned and the template solution can be implemented very fast compared to the current traditional planning tools available on top of the very rich planning and scheduling capabilities. The solution also supports employees,, which is a unique library that combines nine different employee focused KPIs into one global KPI, which serves the optimal employee wellbeing. Also, the solution supports self-rostering, which is something that people are more and more requesting when they go to the market and that includes the employee satisfaction.

Therese:             Alright, thanks for that Bart. And now as a final question. Twan, this is for you. What is the main takeaway for listeners in your own words?

What is the main takeaway?

Twan:                  I think as I mentioned in the beginning--and that's also, in fact, what we see when we speak to customers--that planning is getting more complex than it used to be. And I think what specifically for some of the industries, that Bart also mentioned for the field services, it is not just a workforce planning. You have to plan considering the other aspects, the vehicles, the tools, et cetera, as well as just the level of complexity that if in order to get it right, you really need a good solution. And I think what Ordina has been able to accomplish with their field resource planning solution is to capture the important elements of what field service planning is all about. They are able to help customers with a solution that allows them to essentially get their plans on the control, but at the same time get a good view on the trade-off between various goals that they want to achieve. So looking at the employee satisfaction, the social aspects, the work-life balance, et cetera, but also at the same time making sure you look after your own internal resources and remain cost effective in delivering service to your customers. I think that is going to be very helpful to many organizations.

Therese:             Oh, certainly. Of course. So thank you Twan and Bart for taking the time to speak with me today. Thanks for listeners for tuning in. Be sure to stay tuned for part two, stay ahead of the competition with field service planning now and in the ever-challenging future. I'm your host, Therese Snow, and you've been listening to Global Operations on the Go.