Having worked together on an exclusive new Field Service News White Paper, Kris Oldland joined Martin Knook, CEO of Gomocha, to discuss the various layers of knowledge transfer and the art of information…
In this engaging long-form discussion, the two cover a vast range of topics relating to the importance of knowledge transfer, including why developing a culture of continuous learning is critical and what technologies need to be in place to make putting the correct information where and when it is needed the most.
In this section of the discussion, Kris and Martin focus on the core technologies essential to empower effective knowledge transfer, how to identify which are crucial, and whether the best-of-breed or platform approach is best suited to achieve these aims.
This interview is part of the FSN PRO library of premium content. It is available in FSN’s free subscription tier FSN FREE. Make sure you log in to view the complete whitepaper and videos.
Transcript
Kris Oldland: How do we choose what’s relevant for our business? Should we look at best-of-breed in each of these? Or should we look for platforms with a bit of everything? You know, Gomocha, you’ve got a really good approach to things like that shared with the audience.
Martin Knook: Yeah, I know. It can take us an hour to go through all the different elements. You know, you had one option that kind of got me like, wait a minute, no, no, don’t suggest that. Having a platform with a little bit of all those tools, I think you’re missing out on the potential of these kinds of concepts. And I’m pretty sure that is the case because these kinds of concepts all have a very specific component of knowledge to deliver those in a platform, and more complicated there is to deliver the value in your business. And if you just have a little subset of some of those functionalities, you will always miss out on the potential of the technology itself. So that, for me, maybe one exception. If you have a really simple, straightforward service model, you might be able to do with the basic functionalities of these technologies. You know, if you have almost consumer products out there, not too expensive. And you can have virtual training tools. And you have extended, so we have basic functionalities to explain using that asset. And suppose you extend your service offering with collaboration tools for someone stuck, and you only need a more advanced version of a telephone. In that case, then collaboration tools are really easy. So if you have low requirements because the simplicity of what’s happening in the field demands a simple solution, you might be off. Honestly, that’s not the type of business I’m focusing on so much. We’re way more on manufacturers, service operators, and utilities, that have a ton of different assets to support or really deep knowledge on one particular asset that they do the best.
The best thing for me is a field service management platform and mobile apps. It’s these days, almost a no-brainer. You need to have that in place. So, if you don’t have that, and I know they’re still around, larger organizations are running paper-based. I didn’t say that… but it’s still happening. Or have a simple extension on their CRM system with a few forms, and someone in the field must be happy. That are not solutions that will work. And you will need to have a field service management platform and mobile apps to do that. That that do reflect the complexity of what’s going on there. It’s not simple. It’s not straightforward. That’s the baseline, and it should be for all conservative organizations. The majority of those mobile apps or Field Service Management vary a lot. So that’s an element to look into. You need to have a palette of tools available on those platforms so that you don’t burden your field service engineers by filling out unnecessary content. At the same time, you can ask them for the relevant information like.
You must be flexible to distribute the right app connected to your field service management with the right data collection points. So that’s an area of, I call it, baseline. That will enable a knowledge management system as a knowledge management system needs foundational information about the assets you offer and the service procedures you have. That, the trainable stuff around those assets. At the same time, it needs to have that kind of feedback loop coming in with data from real life. That’s what’s really happening? And how and how do you create new knowledge from whatever is changing in the world or whatever it’s changing on the performance of the assets that are out there? That’s a nice kind of next extension with collaboration tools. They are very easy to implement, right? We have mobile devices that have it already. It’s the capabilities. It’s more like, how do you capture the data? How do you analyze it? You learn from that.
So these are the kind of technologies that are basic architectural components you need. Whichever you have, put them solidly in place. Stuff like virtual reality, augmented reality, or AI are more sophisticated tools to really optimize your business. They will not necessarily enable or give you the palette of hidden efficiencies. These are really positioned in my mind as tools to optimize your business. So if you have your foundation layer there, and you want to kind of have this kind of triage call that you talked about earlier, Kris, and you want to have that automated, you know. AI is there that to play. It is a learning curve. AI has a learning curve. So, don’t see it as a tool as a plug-in but as a journey to go on. We hear from, you know, with Gomocha, what we’re doing is we have found some hindrances on truly benefiting from artificial intelligence, where it’s not always possible for our customers to connect with all their assets.
So we plan to have an IoT extension on our Field Service Management Solution, where artificial intelligence will make those kinds of business decisions that we have found as a repetitive pattern. It’s very easy to say, and I don’t want to make this sound like a commercial pitch. We’re doing the design now. But we also found out that learning to get it right gives a 95-99 % certainty that the computer decision is the right decision. That’s where the investment is. So it’s less into technology. But it’s much more in educating your machine, doing the knowledge transfer to the machine, if you like, where it’s a journey, because, if you have that data, that you need to consume. Detecting the pattern is a mathematical challenge. It’s statistics and running and making it a computer, chop it down into multiple problems, and then come to a sensible conclusion. But what the ultimate position is could be challenging to confirm. So, AI is a technology that has a great perspective. And we already see the benefits of using it. We have used it in our scheduling algorithm for years. Yeah, so it’s not new. But making those kinds of business decisions for a field service operation is where we collectively have to learn. I’m happy that we are doing some of these experiments in that frontier because it’s pretty cool stuff.
End of Transcript
You can view the full white paper, Knowledge Transfer: The Art of Information.
This blog was originally posted on the Field Service News blog.