Locating devices in the world of mobile assets is just one of the problems faced by the owners of these devices.  As discussed by Don Clark on the Wall Street Business Journal Blog , tracking has significant value in order for nurses to find pumps in their hospitals. However, as devices become more intelligent and flexible, many other important issues arise such as:

• Are they setup the correct way?
• Are the all setup the same way?
• Are they up-to-date with software updates?
• Have they been calibrated?
• Are they operating efficiently?
• Have the required preventive maintenance procedures been run?
• Which devices are no longer in warranty or support plans?
• Are there parts that are about to fail?
• Are there consumables that are about to run out?

These are vital elements in determining if an asset is ready for use. To address these issues, our customers are delivering value-added remote services that provide additional capabilities for the owners and users of these devices.

To better understand the concept, let's focus on one of our customers, Respironics.  They make ventilators that help people breathe, which is a problem when these devices need regular service like software updates.  Previously, when the service person arrived at the hospital to update a fleet of ventilators, the patient would need to be removed from the ventilator and bagged while the service was performed - obviously not ideal for the patient.

Respironics has helped their customers (hospitals) solve this problem by implementing their remote service solution called Respi-Link.  With Respi-Link, hospitals dedicate a PC within their network that will be used to complete repairs, software updates and configuration changes.  The PC receives information from Respironics for the specific range of ventilators in use at the hospital.  When these ventilators are not in use, they are wheeled down to the Respi-Link "smart repair depot" where they are connected to the PC in order to receive the correct updates and configuration changes.  This eliminates the need to remove a patient from the ventilator in order to service it.

Remote service solutions like Respi-Link allow manufactures to accurately answer the questions listed above, which keeps their mission-critical assets operating at peak performance while significantly reducing inconvenient downtime.   

When evaluating remote service software solutions, it is critical to establish a cross functional team. Everyone doesn't need to be involved in every meeting, but having a wide range of perspectives will help in making the right choice.

Remote service solutions have the potential to touch many different parts of the company.  Support and field service may be the primary beneficiaries, but achieving success may also involve R&D, marketing, sales, manufacturing, product planning, and finance.  The purchase decision is also competing with other financial priorities of the business. The cross functional team provides a forum for proponents and detractors to have a voice in developing the proposed solution.

The output from the cross functional team will be a proposal to the management team tasked with making the spending decision.  The proposal describes the operational (business) need for the project, the recommended solution (with ranked list of alternatives or vendors), and financial calculations that clearly explain the costs and expected benefits of the program over time.

There are 3 elements that need to be considered in building the ideal cross functional team.

• Technical
• Operational
• Financial

Technical
The technical element covers the traditional aspects of a technology purchase.  For example, does the product meet the needs?  Can it be integrated into the existing product and support business systems?  Is it secure?  But wait, how does the technical team know what the needs are?  Without a clear set of needs and use cases, the technical team usually runs a series of experiments with the vendors trying to see which can jump over the most hurdles.  Look for technical team members who can take a big picture view of a problem and balance technology issues with business needs.

Operational
The operational element is made up of the people who will actually use and operate the remote service solution.  In many ways, they are the "customer" for the project. If the system provides value to them, they will use it.

It is critical to get a mix of product and support experts involved in defining the needs of the system.  This should include people who handle front line customer calls, service engineers who have to jump in their trucks and drive at a moment's notice, or the third and fourth level technical support team.  They know what kinds of faults and failures occur in the field and what information they need to make faster diagnosis and better decisions.

Financial
The financial element is focused on converting the technical and operational issues into an ROI metric.  Without this, it is difficult to make priority calls on whether a particular high cost feature is required or a "nice to have."  The financial members of the team don't need to be from finance or be accountants, but they do need to understand the decision making and budgeting process of the organization. 

4 Stages of Small Group Communication|
When you bring your team together, remember the 4 stages of small group communication identified by Bruce Tuckman in 1965:

• Forming - Understand the challenges then agree on goals and objectives
• Storming - Different ideas compete for consideration. Having a skilled leader or bringing in someone from the outside can help facilitate this process
• Norming - Members will begin to adjust their behavior to meet the expectations of the group.  The differences of opinion that were brought out during the storming phase are worked out.
• Performing - A team that reaches this stage operates with a sense of purpose and independence that enables progress and success.

In my experience from the vendor perspective, companies that do not use a cross functional team to develop their program often take a very narrow view on the goals and objectives of the project.  As a result, they have long evaluation cycles and then experience difficulty at the final decision stages where they need the support of upper management and other departments within the business.

Even where cross functional teams are involved, I have seen cases where the members are not equally involved or committed to the project.  As a result, the process is often skewed or falls prey to groupthink. This imbalance creates political issues within the decision process and can result in a project not being sufficiently funded (or not being funded at all).

Final thoughts...
Any strategic initiative should have an executive sponsor with a vested interest in the success of the evaluation.  The executive sponsor should use their influence to get the participation of the other departments in the cross functional team. The project leader should start by determining why each team member is there and if they are committed to the success of the team.  If not, try to replace them. You want a strong team that shares a hunger for success.  For team members, the reward of being on a successful team is recognition and new opportunity as others in the company look for winners to have on their own teams.

I attended the M2M United show last week outside Chicago. Unlike the Remote Device Monitoring and Management show which is focused on remote service, the M2M show is very broad both in terms of problems being solved and technology required. A good representation of that breadth is seen in the M2M Value Chain Awards given out on the last night of the show. The awards were broken down into two main categories; industry specific solutions, and application areas. Included in Industries were Energy and Utilities, Water and Wastewater, Retail, and Manufacturing. Included in Applications were Fleet Management, Location-Based Services, Automatic Vehicle Location, M2M in Action and Smart Services. Most of these solutions involved a wireless connection to a remote asset.

Axeda's customer Varian Medical Systems was recognized in the Smart Services category for their SmartConnect remote service program. Smart Service is another industry term for the remote service software market that we are a part of. Congratulations to the Varian team on receiving this award!

Most of the other categories had solutions that were provided by multiple vendors because of complexity of wireless connections. In the wireless world you need special hardware to make the wireless data connection, and a phone carrier network to connect the data to your network to get the data. We are working with partners to simplify wireless connections, and expect to see much more of these type solutions in the future.

As indicated in my article last week, there was a compelling topic that came out of last week's Remote Device Monitoring and Management Summit. There was consensus among many conference attendees that by providing service remotely and therefore decreasing the number of times a technician goes on-site to fix a problem, there is a perceived reduction in value delivered by the service team.

One presenter referred to this phenomenon as "proof of performance and service delivery".  Essentially, without having a human on-site to fix their product issues, there is a belief that they are not getting the same value they did before remote services.

Since companies are under increased pressure to reduce operating costs, service fees become an immediate target for discounting.  In order to mitigate these pressures, companies who deliver remote services need to equip their sales teams, channel partners, and customers, with data/reports that show the value delivered remotely.

Brian Hayward, VP of Global Services at Avaya, has taken a great approach in arming his sales team and channel partners with what he calls "While You Were Sleeping" reports.  These reports are comprehensive, easy to read, and can be personalized by his sales/channel teams while targeting the CXO level.  Contained in this report are things such as response and resolution metrics, proactive support value summaries, projected revenue loss avoided, etc.

This type of report showcases the value of remote services, while also positioning the benefit to the end customer. Also a great way to get sales and channel partners engaged - during the development of the reports and also by allowing them to drive greater customer intimacy.

It will be interesting to see the traction that this concept gains and how other companies will respond to the "Remote Services vs. Human Touch Value Paradigm."

I am just back from the 5^th Annual IQPC Remote Device Monitoring and Management Summit which took place in Nashville this week. What a great event it was!  I moderated the Best Practice Go-To-Market Strategies for Smart Services panel discussion and had a chance to speak with many of the attendees - all who were in different phases of their remote service initiatives.  

There were definitely some reoccurring themes, as well as some new topics, among the group. The reoccurring themes illustrated the challenges and opportunities of remote service - as well as the winning strategies of some of the early adopters. I have outlined some of the highlights here:

Challenges

• How to package and sell remote services
• How to train a product focused sales force to sell services
• Regulatory constraints across all industries and markets
• Nonexistent connectivity to some assets
• Customer adoption and acceptance continues to be difficult

Opportunities

• Integrating data collected via remote monitoring into the product design cycle for continual improvement.
• Integration of remote service into CRM backend for issue record generation, automated dispatching for field services, and customer entitlement checks.
• Leveraging remote services to a greater degree for perishable items - driving sales opportunities for consumable sales teams
• Increasing interest from their end users looking for assistance in asset auditing and management

Winning Strategies

• Stay away from developing your remote strategies in a silo, get executive buy in, as well as involvement from your internal Services, IT, and Product teams as early as possible.
• Get your end user's IT group involved as early as possible, as it will make customer acceptance easier.
• More companies illustrating their success utilizing Net Promoter Score (NPS) and how this is their key corporate measurement.  Critical success factor is listening more closely to the voice of the customer (VOC), and driving improvement based on their feedback.

Going Green!
Green initiatives were a hot topic as companies continue to focus on shrinking their carbon footprint. The most impactful quote came from Richard Walker of Siemens Building Technologies who stated "corporations need to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations".  Remote services support green initiatives in the form of:

• Remote preventative maintenance
• Additional predictive maintenance
• Energy management
• Avoidance of hyperinflation in the service economy due to surging fuel prices

It's clear in the Green evolution that the climate change argument is over (first step of knowing you have a problem is admitting you have a problem). It seems that companies that adopt a green "remote services" strategy will flourish, and the slow adopters will fall at the wayside.

There was another very compelling topic that came out of the conference, which I define as the Remote Services vs. the Human Touch Paradigm. I will Blog on that next week.  Until then!

 

Earlier this month, we released Axeda ServiceLink 5.2. This release was developed in close partnership with our customers to help solve their most pressing business challenges. 

This is my Top 5 list of the most important challenges we tackled with this latest version:

1. IPv6 Support - All US Government agencies must have IPv6 compatible networks this year. Axeda products now support the IPv6 network layer protocol, enabling manufactures to provide remote service to government customers. 

2. Screen Sharing Performance - To provide the highest level of service and meet customer SLAs, our customers demand that the screen sharing application be fast - not only for screen refresh rates, but also for an engineer to start a session.  This version shows as much as 5x improvement, which increases support productivity.

3. Dual Monitor Support - Access to devices with dual monitor displays on Microsoft Vista and Linux is critical.  Support for Vista has become even more important as we quickly approach the currently published end date of availability of Microsoft's XP operating system: June 30, 2008.  Axeda Desktop provides this support, which helps speed user adoption.  

4. Large File Transfers - Customers need an efficient and reliable way to upload 15-20GB files from a device for troubleshooting and analysis.  Today, our customers are getting these files a couple of ways, either by FTP and hoping there are no network hiccups during 20+ hour transfer which will require a restart from scratch, or ask their customer to burn the file to multiple DVDs and snail mail the DVDs.  With this latest release over 20 GB of core dumps can be securely transferred back to the enterprise server.  These file transfers can be paused and resumed, without losing data already sent - allowing for a significant reduction in time to issue resolution.

5. Useful Reporting.  Each customer wants to be able to create, organize and format a report or dashboard with their own parameters, filters and deliver it either as a PDF, CSV or HTML in an email to an individual or a group. With this release, it is even easier to quickly create impactful reports and dashboards to support SLAs and internal ROI.  It is also easy to create compliance reports for an entire device population to understand the status of the deployment of a software update.

As a product manager, one of the main criteria I use for measuring the success of a product or feature is rate of adoption by customers.  Axeda ServiceLink 5 was released last June and about half of our customers are either in production, or soon will be in production. This seems like validation that we are building the right solutions!

As promised in my last article, these are my own Top 10 reasons why organizations should adopt SaaS/On Demand solutions:

1. Focus: It goes without saying that companies do the best when they operate within their organization's core competency. By getting rid of distractions an organization is better able to focus on its unique value-add. An analogy - all companies use electricity but none make it.

2. Reduced Costs: SaaS solutions have a much more attractive investment profile. Almost all SaaS solutions start with moderate up front investment that enables your return to grow with your investment versus having to capture it back over 18 - 36 months.

3. Leverage Best Practices: Most SaaS solutions have evolved to encompass best practices through the volume of experience gained by interacting on a particular business process automation problem. An organization is infinitely better off leveraging this expertise and adapting its execution to embrace it. Extensive customizations are like a ball and chain - they are heavy and no fun to carry with you over time.

4. Time to Value: Return on investment is comprised of three items. Investment - cash out to reach some goal. Return - value back. Time - time it takes to start getting your return. Since SaaS solutions are packaged and ready to use, there is a much shorter window until the returns start. i.e. no infrastructure to build = quicker time to value.

5. Solution Consumability: Change is an attribute of life - do it or become extinct. Too big of a change, too fast or too little too late and you are toast. Highly packaged SaaS solutions are ideally suited to the evolutionary approach - take a step and then adapt to environmental conditions.

6. You Don't Know What you Don't Know: Heaven and Hell are in the details. No one is an expert in an area without living it. There is always complexity hiding under the covers as projects scale.

7. Accountability: Who would you feel more comfortable holding accountable - your internal IT organization - part of which just got outsourced - or a company that is in business to solve your problem?

8. No Shelfware: We have all heard the horror stories from the 90's - millions of dollars of value setting on the shelf - consuming a solution as a service eliminates this risk.

9. Pain Avoidance is Good: If everything went as planned there would be no need for management. Suffice it to say - it does not. So where do you want to spend your valuable organizational bandwidth? Avoiding a task avoids the pain associated with its growth and development. I don't really care how the car works - as long as it takes me where I want to go.

10. Simplicity! A packaged simple to use service is always better than purchasing the parts, putting it together, and maintaining it. KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid!

There were several excellent Top 10 lists on various topics associated with SaaS. These are the lists I found particularly useful:

1. Bessemer's Top 10 Laws for Being "SaaS-y"
2. Top 10 SaaS Traps: Watch Out For Hidden Snags
3. Crownpeak Challenges Top Ten SaaS Myths

 

KISS principle - "Keep it Simple, Stupid"
I don't know who came up with this pearl of wisdom, but it has certainly been a guidepost for me over my career.   The idea of removing complexity to improve execution works.  More parts means more parts to break, manage, and maintain.  Less parts - the converse.

But what do you do when the simplest incarnation of a solution is complex - i.e. the fulfillment of Einstein's maxim "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."     

In this situation a person/company is faced with a dilemma- embrace the financial and resource obligations of the complexity or punt!   If handling complexity is your organization's core competency - no problem.  Resources, organization, and experience can enable the management of even the most complex problems.   If not, you are in for a world of hurt and will be pushing the ball, a heavy one at that, up hill.

I call this the Tyranny of Complexity

Let's take an example from our business lives - ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE!   Over the past 20 years - these solutions have continued to grow in size and complexity in order to handle an ever expanding set of requirements.  With the proliferation of the web, several infrastructures have evolved to provide the transaction handling that these systems require.  These systems generally require load balancers to direct users, web servers to provide security, application servers to handle transactions, database servers to handle data storage, and a SAN to store information.  Now let's throw a dose of redundancy and site back-up for mission critical systems and you have one big, complex system that will take an army of IT people to keep operational.

Enter SaaS (Software as a Service)!

Wiki Definition:  A model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the Internet. By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer's burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support.

My Definition:  Getting the benefit of a solution without the hassle.  

Taking complexity, packaging it as a service, creates simplicity, enables execution, and liberates value creation.

Why Adoption Now
Certainly getting benefit without hassle is analogous to mom and apple pie - it's all good.   But why are these solutions only now gaining traction?

Jeff Kaplan, an analyst and consultant with THINKstrategies, was recently quoted in the article "Web 2.0 for business class" at siliconvalley.com:

"What's happening is a crossover.  People have discovered the ease of use of Web-based services in their personal life, and it's made them more comfortable with using these services in the corporate world."

I think that there is one additional point that is fueling the transformation of software solutions to services. Not only are people comfortable with ease of use - but they are also now comfortable with its security. FUD, "fear uncertainty, and doubt," is a powerful demotivator.  

Familiarity drives the elimination of FUD. By using SaaS solutions such as online banking and commerce safely in our personal lives, we collectively gain comfort and provide points of reference for rapid adoption.

Small Business vs. Fortune 500
One of the biggest misconceptions about SaaS is that it's only a small to medium business solution.   Pundits are confusing adoption patterns,   Individual -> Small Business -> Large Business with solution appropriateness.   Because the level of referenceability required at each level of adoption escalates, it takes traction at lower levels to enable the larger organizations to adopt. 

In fact, I would contend that today's large organizations are in even more need of a SaaS solution than their smaller counterparts.   Typical large companies have:

• Extremely large and complex solutions
• Global Bureaucracy
• Outsourced IT
• Limited resources to deploy outside of their core competency

Short of a government, there is no more complex institution than a large business.   Everything associated with the deployment of a business solution at this scale is complex, expensive, and hard - hiding that effort in the cloud and amortizing it over many parties is the path to success.  

The larger the organization and the more complex the solution, the more pressing the need for SaaS - without the simplification these services provide, your organization will be buried under a burden it is not equipped to handle.

While working on this article, I was unable to find a decent Top 10 list from a large organization perspective on why to adopt SaaS/On Demand solutions.  I'll be back soon with my own Top 10...

This week Axeda is participating in the Oracle 2009 Sales kickoff in Las Vegas - talking about  the latest announcement:  Axeda® ServiceLink Extends Oracle Service and Maintenance Management Capabilities.  We have been meeting with people throughout Oracle's field teams and partner ecosystem. With each conversation there is growing excitement about the opportunities created by a joint Oracle/Axeda solution.

Oracle is already positioned as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management. When you add the Axeda capabilities -  remote service, usage monitoring, and configuration management to Oracle's proven solutions it raises the customer value and competitive differentiation to new levels. As we've discovered first-hand, Oracle's sales people like that combination. Based on the high level of interest from the Oracle team, the system integrator community and manufacturers, we're kicking off a partnership that is sure to be beneficial to many constituents.

My recent blog article suggested 10 steps toward a successful remote service evaluation.  For this entry, I want to drill down on the first step in a little more detail.

Step 1: Have a vision of what success looks like. This will enable you to define goals and the outline of the business case. The best programs are focused on creating strategic value.

If strategic value is important, we should start with strategy.  You do have one, don't you?  An effective strategy combines a measurable goal (where you are going), with a suggested method of accomplishing the goal (how it will be done), and a target to which the method will be applied (who are we doing this for).

Seems pretty simple, but so many companies never articulate their strategy.  They wonder why the various programs, initiatives, and campaigns don't seem to fit together. It's like trying to sit on the three legged stool that is missing a leg or two!  You must have really good balance or accept falling over a lot.

What are some goals that a remote service program can address?

• Reduce the number of field dispatches by xx%
• Improve machine or device up time by yy%
• Eliminate one no problem found call per service engineer per month
• Increase consumable sales by zz% due to increased system uptime
• Avoid adding additional staff (or reduce load on existing staff)

The key ingredient is that each goal is measurable and can be compared to a historical run rate.  It is also important that each goal can be translated into a financial impact for the business.

The "How" is often a function of the goal and the levers that are available in which to impact the goal.  Some examples may include:

• Perform software updates remotely
• Monitor known error conditions for patterns that indicate potential failure
• Remove the burden of data collection from machine operators during the troubleshooting process
• Enable customers to request help directly from the device
• Track device usage to help forecast consumable purchases or preventative maintenance

These don't have to be complicated, but they do have to be capable of being implemented in a cost effective way.

The final element, "For Who", is often lost under the glamour of selecting or implementing technology.  Nothing says a strategy has to apply to every customer.  Many times it is far more effective to focus on the high value or high cost customers first.  Consider these examples:

• For customers with pay-as-you-go service contracts
• For customers in rural hospitals and clinics
• For customers that are more than 4 hours away from a field service office
• For customers under all-inclusive service contracts
• For customers with the X9000 Exterolizer machines

Be specific!  When you explain your strategy internally, it should be clear to everyone which customers you are targeting and why.  This will enable people involved in the project to independently make high quality decisions and prevent expensive detours or mixed sales and marketing messages.

Let's put it all together in a few examples:

• "Improve machine or device up time by yy%" by "monitoring known error conditions for patterns that indicate potential failure" for "customers under all-inclusive service contracts."
  
• "Reduce the number of field dispatches by xx%" by "performing software updates remotely" for "customers with the X9000 Exterolizer machines."
  
• "Eliminate one no problem found call per service engineer per month" by "removing the burden of data collection from machine operators during the troubleshooting process" for "customers that are more than 4 hours travel from a field service office."

Remember the three elements of strategy definition and you will be able to build an effective business case and communicate a powerful message to your management, project team members, and the marketplace.  This core message is very important as you move on to the next steps of the evaluation process.