Transform Remote Service Strategy Through These Three Stages
Service organizations are responsible for highly complex equipment—which is often dispersed across multiple locations. This can complicate the service process when equipment issues arise. Technicians don’t always have the right tools, parts, and information in the right place at the right time, which often results in costly travel and unplanned downtime.
Remote service helps manufacturers harness Internet of Things (IoT) data insights to resolve issues from anywhere, shortening time to respond, repair, and resolve while increasing customer uptime and avoiding dispatch costs.
Implementing a successful remote service strategy requires a cross-functional team and benefits from expert guidance.
But implementing a successful remote service strategy requires a crossfunctional
team and benefits from expert guidance. Where is the best place
to start? Who needs to be involved? And how can remote service help you
transform at scale? Create maximum value for you and your customers by
focusing on three main stages of remote service implementation: visibility,
process, and adoption.
Stage One: Visibility
Visibility is the first key stage of a successful remote service strategy. Once you’ve secured enterprise-wide support for a business-oriented remote service use case, machine connectivity provides visibility into critical data.
This is the stage where you’ll need to assess the skillsets of your workforce and build the cross-functional team that will make your remote service plans a reality. Engineering, R&D, Service, IT, and security teams will work together to:
- Ensure sensors provide the information needed for remote diagnosis
- Plan how to interact with equipment remotely
- Make sure the data flow is working properly and securely
- Gather contextual information around the data feed
Stage Two: Process
With valuable machine insights, your service team must now act on those insights. The next stage of your remote service strategy is to build a process within the service organization to manage data connectivity, escalate service calls, and create a workflow for remote diagnosis and service including:
- Who will use the system
- When to fix issues remotely and who will be involved
- When and how to notify the customer of remote fixes
Buyer’s Guide: Improving Service with Remote Monitoring, Tech-Clarity
This stage will be spearheaded by your head of service, since they know the best way to turn data visibility into actionable steps for efficient remote service. But the entire service team will contribute to the process, bringing their experiences as the end users of IoT technology to plan and execute.
Stage Three: Implementation and Adoption
At this stage, your organization has visibility into equipment data and a process built around actionable IoT insights. With the visibility they need and a specific workflow in place, your workforce must now make the necessary changes to accommodate a new way of delivering service.
In the third and final stage of your remote service strategy, you’ll focus on adopting and scaling your remote service implementation for long-term value. But even with the whole team on board, remote service implementations are prone to roadblocks without expert guidance.
Efficient and effective remote service at scale is made possible with a best-in-class IoT platform that provides user-friendly, out-of-the-box functionality with expert support.
Avoiding Common Adoption Mistakes
The biggest mistake you can make when putting a remote service strategy into action is passing up the opportunity to recruit IoT experts for guidance. For some service organizations, a do-it-yourself approach may seem like a quick fix at first. But going it alone can put your remote service strategy at risk in the long-term.
DIY remote service is difficult to initiate, maintain, adopt, and scale over time. In addition to making life more difficult for your IT team, a DIY approach can backfire through complicated and time-consuming workarounds. This is an especially risky approach knowing a remote service system that doesn’t work as designed or as advertised is the biggest danger to adoption. Efficient and effective remote service at scale is made possible with a best-in-class IoT platform that provides user-friendly, out-of-the-box functionality with expert support.
Expert Guidance for Remote Service Adoption
How do you know you’re choosing the right solution—and the right partner— for your remote service implementation? In its buyer’s guide, Tech-Clarity outlines requirements for adopting a remote condition monitoring solution.
When adopting a remote condition monitoring solution that gives your team the visibility and insights to provide remote service, Tech-Clarity recommends looking for an integrated platform with “predefined applications, dashboards, algorithms, adapters, and APIs.” From there, accessing recorded training content and partnering with IoT experts helps your service organization adjust to the new process.
When selecting a partner for your remote condition monitoring journey, Tech-Clarity recommends looking for a stable organization with a background in IoT technology, service, and manufacturing in your industry and geographical area, and a “broad and knowledgeable partner ecosystem”.
Remote Service Success Stories
With so many details to consider when kicking off a remote service strategy at your own organization, it can be valuable to see visibility, process, and adoption in action elsewhere. Here’s how two service organizations made their way through the three stages of remote service implementation with a trusted IoT partner for tangible results.
Start Transforming Your Service Strategy Today
Remote service that drives cost-savings, uptime, and efficiency takes enterprise-wide visibility, a clear process, and adoption for long-term success. Explore more resources about remote condition monitoring and the tools you’ll need to kick off your remote service strategy.