Blog (4 of 4) Your journey to mobility
Mobile technology isn’t just applicable to large organisations, the logic and the benefits are the same if you have 50 staff or 50,000 staff. Let’s start with errors. Here is a quote from the CEO of a customer of mine, the world’s largest rental company in their field. “There are zero errors in my operation Jim.” I told him I wouldn’t even say that, and he said, “well I just did”.
The reason is that a good mobile solution just won’t allow bad data to be processed. Instead, errors are trapped, so that they can be fixed at source, once and for all. What about delays? If the system has been designed properly – there are no unnecessary delays, because operations and Rental Office staff see the same information in real-time. Any problem, or status change in one part of the operation is immediately visible to everyone who needs to know to fix it. Process changes are a lot easier to make, because many of them can be done in the mobile system, without the need to touch the ERP.
How Long To Get Up And Running?
If the customer project team listens to experienced advice, the timescale to deliver a solution is 8-12 weeks to get up and running with the first user group. Followed of course, by a roll-out plan. To get there you need mobile devices, barcodes (perhaps Radio Frequency Identification [RFID] tags), a Statement of Work, integration, good testing, training and a roll-out programme.
The staff empowered by mobility are depot and field technicians, rental office, depot managers and senior management. In terms of ERP systems, integration isn’t the problem it used to be. If you think mobile solutions can’t be integrated easily to even the very, very oldest ERP systems – well they can now. For example, my own company has integration to; SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Navision and RentalMan.
My experience as a Rental Software Vendor
I’ve told you about my experiences as a rental customer, now I would like to tell you a about my experience as a rental software vendor. My company specializes in mobile software, predominantly for rental and oil and gas and this is our 13th year in business. We also have customers in industrial services, healthcare and aerospace. Our first very large rental customer gave us a global contract when we were nine months old and had what they thought was a good idea.
They operated a ‘hub and spoke’ model where customer demand is captured in call center hubs, then passed to a network of service centers for fulfillment. They had just introduced a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and depot logistics operations were driven by paper from the ERP. A backlog of unprocessed paperwork was building up at service and call centers and the result was errors, delays and increased costs in processing orders and customer returns and their operations were in danger of slowing down. The traditional operations approach of multiple paper forms and human effort to track and manage equipment was clearly not working.
The customer wanted to remove all the error, delay and associated costs by implementing a solution that would get information to their operations staff in real-time with zero paper. Our competitor was their ERP vendor with 2,000 people – talk about the Spartans being outnumbered! Well, we were awarded the contract and we digitized their paper operations in 14 weeks, making very significant savings (I won’t mention exactly how much) year on year. Our customer didn’t make their choice for our company size or our financial history, they told us they chose us on the basis of TRUST. We won the contract because we had a much clearer understanding of the business problem than our ERP competitor and we demonstrated exactly how the problem should be solved. In short, they TRUSTED us to deliver.
Future of Mobile Operations
The future of mobile operations lies in using the data, algorithms and the operating predictions the provide. You may have read of GE’s recent acquisition of a competitor of ours for $940M. They purchased them to leverage the data. GE’s vision is to predict machine failures before they happen by simulating the operating environment of real machines, then make those assets more efficient to further extending equipment life. Their concept is to create a ‘digital twin’ for each real-life industrial asset.
The theory is that if the digital twin develops a fault, so will its real-life counterpart. I believe their objective is to move from a traditional sale and warranty model to a full life cycle annuity model with guaranteed recurring revenues – who knows, the annuity might include spare parts, so you have to buy from the vendor. My vision is to leverage digital operations Black Box data using data analytics and machine learning, to deliver increased equipment up-time, extended equipment lifetime and higher technician utilization.
How fast will this future happen? I don’t know. It’s not a date, it’s a journey, but the first part takes just 8-12 weeks. Longer than that and you haven’t been getting the right advice.
Finally
I ask you – where is the logic in supplying expensive human resources, such as field service technicians, then expecting them to use low technology tools such as paper for one of their most important tasks, which is accurately reporting so that you can help keep customer TRUST, improve financial performance and build shareholder value.
Paper is a 2,000 year old technology if you count from the Chinese and a 5,000 year old technology if you count from the Egyptians. Mobile is simply better, faster, safer, easier and cheaper if you do it right.
I hope this blog will help you maximise operational efficiency, earn the trust of your customers and ensure your business is armed for the future.
If you are interested in any further information or advice, please send me a message on LinkedIn with your contact details and I’ll get back to you.