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July 7, 2021 | 25 Mins Read

How to Change to Win

July 7, 2021 | 25 Mins Read

How to Change to Win

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Sarah welcomes Rias Attar, accomplished business strategist, transformation expert, operational excellence leader, project and change management professional and author of the new book Change to Win, to discuss how strategy, delivery mechanism, and culture all play a part in embracing change to respond successfully to market pressures.

Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we are going to be talking about how to change to win. Many of you are on some path of change. You're transforming your businesses. You're transforming your departments. You're transforming the service that you provide to customers. We know that change is very important but can be challenging. So today, on the podcast, I'm excited to welcome Rias Attar. He is an accomplished business strategist, transformation expert, operational excellence leader, and project and change management professional who is also the author of the new book Change to Win. Rias, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Rias Attar: Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for having me here.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks for being here. So before we dig into the conversation about change and how to change to win, tell our listeners a bit about yourself.

Rias Attar: Well, I have been in the project management, transformation business optimization field for the past 25 years or so. I started in finance, and then I moved into project management and turnaround and transformation, being inspired by a couple of CEOs who I've seen doing magic at their organizations, turning around their businesses and moving them from deficient to profitable. I worked for different companies like General Electric, DHL Express, Caesars Entertainment. I also have done some work for companies like Dannon, the yogurt company, Maple Leaf Foods in Canada, some other smaller organizations as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Interesting. Yeah, I like that you referred to it as magic because it certainly does seem that way sometimes. I wrote an article not too long ago talking about how much of this is art and how much of it is science, right? It's really a little bit of both, but there might be some magic sprinkled in there too, for sure. Good.

Sarah Nicastro: As I said, I've been in this space for about 14-ish years and there's so much change that's happened. And while it is really exciting in a lot of ways, I realize that it is also incredibly taxing and challenging for the people that are required to spearhead that change. So one of the things that happens, I think, is that people and/or companies or both can get stuck in the, "Nope, we've always done it this way. We can keep doing it this way," mentality. As the pace of change, I think, in the overall environment speeds, those people with that mentality sort of fall further and further behind. What do you see in that regard? How many of those people or organizations do you think there are compared to those that are willing to embrace change? And what is it, do you think, that keeps people stuck in that mindset?

Rias Attar: Excellent question, Sarah. We are part of a constant change. The problem though is I think over the past maybe 20 years or so, that change has accelerated significantly. And I have to say probably over the past maybe year now with COVID, things have even accelerated at a much faster pace. The issue that I see most of the time is as human beings and even businesses, we start small, we start aggressive. We want to conquer the world. We want to learn things. We want to do something good. So we reach a point where we actually are successful and doing very well. And then we start building walls around us and build that comfort zone.

Rias Attar: So as we think that we are now great and we know everything and we are doing very well, we start to get very kind of complacent a little bit, may be the term, and maybe a little bit of resistant to change, because we now have this comfort zone. We feel happy and easy and safe and familiar. The newer companies that are now coming with cutting-edge technology and they're nimble, they're coming now with their own phase of, call it, conquering the new world. So that's where they start to get into the customer mindset a lot easier, and maybe adapt quicker while we are kind of somehow stuck in that comfort zone.

Rias Attar: So I feel that organizations that feel that change is a threat may suffer versus the ones who actually see the change as an opportunity generally succeed. They try to get out of that comfort zone to learn new tricks. They expose themselves a little bit into that danger zone and then to that learning zone. And then they start realizing their new growth zone. Once they get into that limit, they look back, and they will say, "Why did I not start earlier? I wish I started earlier. Oh my God, I don't believe I was locked in that comfort zone. Now I see a whole new horizon." This is kind of what you just mentioned, because this is what I refer to in my book, Change to Win. I ask the leaders, "Do you know what the business death sentence is?" It's actually a sentence that business leaders and owners often repeat, which is, "We have always done it this way." That sentence becomes their own death sentence, their business death sentence.

Sarah Nicastro: That's really good perspective. I think you could almost say that there's even a less obvious death sentence of today's businesses, which is, "It's working well." Right?

Rias Attar: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: To the point you just mentioned, if you look at this almost as a continuum, I mean, there's these people that are, "No, we're in our comfort zone. We've always done it this way. We're going to continue to do it this way," either out of fear or pride or ego or complacency, whatever those things are. And then there's people who don't perceive themselves as averse to change but have achieved that level of success you referred to where they say, "No, I mean, we did innovate and we're doing great, so we can stop it here and just bask in our success."

Sarah Nicastro: It reminds me of a conversation I had with a gentleman named Sae (Kwon) who at the time was with Cisco. We talked about weighing the decision of disruption, right? So when do you decide to disrupt things? But talking about the fact that in the world we live in today, as prevalent and fast as innovation occurs, if you wait until you recognize the need to change to change, you're at best keeping pace, right? So for you to really be ahead of the curve, you need to be doing it when you are successful. Does that make sense?

Rias Attar: Yeah. I mean, you see the thing is there are maybe two phases here. The first phase is realizing that you actually have to change and realize that fact because, again, you're faced with market conditions or you are faced with customer demands, with newer technologies, with competition, with a higher input cost, with new mergers and acquisitions in your industry that are posing stress, maybe with crisis and catastrophic events like COVID-19 and else. So you realize that there is a need for change. So this is the first hurdle, you realizing that, "Okay, well, I have to change." Right? That's the one thing. Because many people do not actually that shift. To your point, they will just get stuck with that, "This has worked in the past. Maybe we just need to continue." Well, maybe. Maybe you can still maybe are able to succeed at the limited success factor here, but how about maybe if we can multifold, maybe if we can increase that success? How about maybe you don't yet realized the opportunities you have? And maybe that success that you currently enjoy has a limitation maybe a couple of years, three, four years. If you do not do something about it today, you would be way behind in a couple of years or so.

Rias Attar: That's the first hurdle, realizing that you actually need to get out of that comfort zone and get into that change. The issue that we find most of the time is that companies and individuals, sometimes, when they realize that they need to change, okay, they say, "Okay, got it. We decided to change." They leave that comfort zone, they get exposed a little bit into that danger zone. They hit the break, and they go back to their comfort zone, all right, because they see so many issues. I mean, we can talk a lot about this. They may have legacy systems. They may have issues with their culture and internal culture, maybe there's industry, whatever it is. So they pull back without really continuing that momentum. And that's kind of another aspect of, okay, you started change, and somehow you either face some limitations and decide to pull back, or you're stuck in that endless gray phase, which is always not reaching your future state. You're always lingering in that interim state, which is what we sometimes we get stuck into, right? So there's really those two phases, I really feel, happening.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. If we look at the differing opinions or emotions around change, so you have people that view it as a threat, and then you have people that view it as an opportunity. Let's use the term people and businesses interchangeably in this context, right? So what do you think is the key to shifting the mindset to perceiving change more as an opportunity than a threat?

Rias Attar: I mean, these days, if we don't change, really, I don't know how long we will be able to survive. I mean, the thing is with everything that's happening to us, I mean... Again, I hate to always refer to COVID-19, but because this is where we are at this point of time. But when you're faced with something like this, the companies who are nimble or that are nimble and able to adapt quickly, those are the ones that are actually increasing their market reach. They are increasing their market segments. They're hitting record-breaking profits because those are the ones who actually were able to adapt quickly and leverage the new environment to their advantage. So if you do not really change, there's so many companies that just filed for bankruptcy because they couldn't adapt to that change. I'm just giving you an example.

Rias Attar: So it's really a necessity, but at the same time, I always go back to the vision of the senior leadership team or the owner of that organization. Are they there for the long term? Are they there for years and decades and generations or are there for months, or maybe just a couple of years? I guess it depends on their priorities. So that vision and mission really set the tone. If their mission and vision is long-term, then yes, they need to figure out how they can leverage those threats and turn them into opportunities. I always also refer to this as reversing the risk from negative risk to positive risk and capitalize on those and potentially either introduce a new product line, a new service, a new way of thinking, a new culture, a new innovation, or something like that.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Talk to me a little bit more about that concept of negative risk versus positive risk. And maybe just contextualize that a little bit more for the listeners and talk about why one is really good for the business and the other is not, right? Talk about that a little bit more.

Rias Attar: Yeah, I mean, definitely. Look, when you are in any market environment, there are just so many, again factors, new interest to the markets. Globalization is another one, right? Now we're borderless with the internet and with connectivity. I mean, companies in China and India and somewhere, they're competing for the same products and services that the companies that are in here in the United States because they can provide maybe similar services. Maybe not the product, like physical product, but maybe a service per se. So how can you compete when you're seeing all those companies who are providing the same or similar service or product at a fraction of a cost? How can you? You see this as a risk, and then you come back and it's like, "Okay, well, I'm going to lose my business if I don't do anything about it. So how can I leverage that as an opportunity?"

Rias Attar: Many times when we are the only company in the field, we don't really need to innovate. We don't really need to think outside of the box. We don't need to bring new products or services. We're just happy because we're the only ones. But the interesting element is when we are faced with threats. The companies that generally succeed will take those as an input. And they start to generate even more products or complementary services or something similar to that, that would make them superior in that marketplace and even a better profit margin and a better customer segment and so and so forth. When I refer to the negative risk, turning that into a positive risk, that is particularly something that those market leaders... And again, you don't need to be a market leader sometimes. Maybe you don't have the capital or the money to be a market leader. You can probably be a strong follower. Maybe you can see a leader in the market who is doing something, and then you learn from their mistakes, and then you go there and capitalize on that, and you become also successful in your industry.

Rias Attar: But the point here is we should never stop. We should always seek improvement. And that's how we call it continuous improvement. You should always seek opportunities to improve, whether in innovation, whether in technology, whether in reprocessing, maybe in different people, like training and bringing your people skillset to another level, whatever. It is people, process, technology, and data. We'll talk about data also in a second, yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. All right, so I like that point of negative risk versus positive risk. All right, so let's talk a little bit, Rias, about the insight you provide in the book. So we're talking about how businesses can succeed in transforming operations to meet evolving market demand, so how can they change to win? So you talk about some different elements that you know people need to address with some balance. So let's walk through these a bit. We have strategy, delivery mechanism, and culture, and change management. Talk a little bit about each of those. Obviously, you can't give the contents of the book away in a 30-minute podcast, but give us some food for thought.

Rias Attar: Yeah. So remember, we just talked about realizing the need for change and bringing that mindset that I need, or as a business, I need to do something safer, better, faster, maybe cheaper, right? So let's say you recognize that need... And again, there's a whole section in the book about resistance to change and what that means as so on and so forth. But let's say you realize that, "Yes, I need to change." Many companies they realize that need, they hire consultants. They put neat presentations. They assign fat budget for that transformation. They tell their employees that they need to change. And then few months later, nothing happens or it happens very, very slowly.

Rias Attar: What I noticed was there is the three, I call it, the three-legged stools in my book, which, as you just mentioned, the strategy, the delivery, and culture. I would actually like to explain this in an example. Where are you located at Sarah now?

Sarah Nicastro: I'm in Pennsylvania.

Rias Attar: Okay. So you're in Pennsylvania, and you decided to go to New York City. You have a powerful vehicle, a good engine, a powerful vehicle, and you hit the road but you don't have a Northern star. You don't have a navigation system. You don't have a map. You don't have a strategy. You don't have a vision of where you're going. You may end up in Miami, not in New York City. Because, again, you don't have that Northern star that guides you. You have a powerful engine. You're doing work. You're burning tires, you're burning fuel. You're wasting time, but you end up in a whole different place. And that may not be ideal. That place may be actually not optimal for you, or it could present some danger as well to your business.

Rias Attar: The first thing I talk about is let's have a set strategy. Let's make sure that our strategy is good and it's aligned, and we have a good one solid roadmap for the future. Now suppose that you have that roadmap, but you don't have a good vehicle, and that vehicle stalls every few miles or so. Run out of gas, there's something wrong with tires or whatever, or mechanics. You may never reach your destiny. Even if you know exactly where you're going, and you have perfect roadmap, you may never reach that destination, and you may actually reach that destination, but it would probably be too late. That boat may have sailed. So you may need to have that balance between, "Okay, I have the right strategy. Now I have that good delivery mechanism."

Rias Attar: In business, you cannot do things alone. You need to have people around you. You need to have people smarter than you and better than you to help you deliver your objectives. So you need to have, or you should have, the good culture and build so that people will not jump ship along that journey, and then you will be alone and probably never make it to the finish line. So that's why you always need to have that equilibrium, or maybe balance, between strategy efforts, delivery effort, and cultural efforts. Sometimes you put way too much money and effort on strategy, but we don't do a good job on, "How can we put a good project management methodology? How can we put a good operational excellence methodology? How can we make sure that we actually deliver those objectives?" And sometimes we do, but we don't really do change management very well so we don't really help our people adapt to change quickly or properly for us to reach that end state.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. So that makes perfect sense, but I want to challenge you a bit on the change management topic because this is a topic that comes up all the time in our conversations. It is probably the go-to answer when I ask, "Well, what went wrong?" That being said, while it is widely recognized as an area of importance, it continues to be under-prioritized, under-invested in, and under-executed. Do you have any tactical advice for this whole concept of creating a culture of change and managing change well?

Rias Attar: Yeah, I mean, there are many concepts for change management. The one I normally use is called ADKAR, which goes for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and then reinforcement. When we are introducing any change from current state to any future state, the first thing we do is we want to bring awareness to people, to have that awareness element. And we announce it. We announce this initiative that we want to change, right? You want to hear people saying, "Yes, now I know what you're doing."

Rias Attar: Next one is desire. You want to move from just awareness to the people desire to be in that journey. And you want to hear people saying, "I decided to help." Right?

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rias Attar: And then when you reach that point, the next phase is knowledge. You want to provide them with training, with coaching, with support to help them cope with that change. So then you will hear something from them like, "Now I know how to do it." Now, the most important element is that there's a huge difference between knowledge and ability, which is the next phase. Now, Sarah, you and I may be, let's say, the last people on earth. I may have some issues with my heart. And I will say, "Sarah, in order for you to save me, I'm going to give you 17 books on how to do an open heart surgery for me. Will you be able to operate on me after reading 17 books?" Probably not.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Rias Attar: You may need years of practice. I would actually be scared to have you operating on me-

Sarah Nicastro: You should be.

Rias Attar: ... because that ability, that difference between knowledge... You acquired the knowledge, you already read 17 books. But there's a huge difference between knowledge and ability. That's why we say change management is important because you have to go through all those phases. And then of course, data is reinforcement. Reinforce that message. Reinforce that change. Many organizations realize that change management need maybe at the 11th hour. And then they were like, "Oh, wait a second, we need to work with our people. And we need to bring that adaptability. We need them to gain that change adoption." But probably they're too late. So why investing in people is so important? Because there are the ones, most of the time, that are using the system. They are the ones who are facing customers every single day.

Rias Attar: Investing in people increases competitive advantage. It ensures happier customers. It actually solidify the business growth. It increases the efficiency in work and actually attracts more quality talents. I mean, good people attract good people. So that's why investing in people and investing in change management will pay its dividends because you will be able to reach your destination faster and better and more efficient.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay, all right. Another question I want to ask you related to change management, so you brought up COVID a couple of times, and one of the things that I've noticed is when COVID first began unfolding, I wrote a few articles about how situationally, it was actually increasing open-mindedness and making people more receptive to the idea that we need to change because it was this huge force that came through. For companies that needed to quickly adapt, it just was something that they changed. And then I think there was a number of people that were like, "We can do it."

Sarah Nicastro: As time went on, though, another conversation that started to surface is the idea of how weary people are at this point, right? So now that we're 15, 16 months into this whole thing different industries, obviously different regions, the journey has looked different for different folks, but just the idea that a lot of frontline employees are weary. COVID has taken its toll on them as it has on us all. So the question is, with that in mind, how do you continue the necessary journey of change while being conscious of maybe some of the emotional exhaustion or mental burnout of the people that you ultimately need to get on board?

Rias Attar: That's actually a good question as well. I mean, it's definitely something that businesses are seeing. People may have lost some loved ones as well, and that may have also added some pressure, and to your point, they are tired. Many people have went through furloughs, and now they feel the need to go back and think about job security and so on and so forth. I mean, it's always nice to keep close to your people and hear what they're saying and what's bothering them, what ideas they may have as well. Because remember, the brightest ideas come from the frontline. They're the ones who actually see customers every day. They're the ones who actually use the systems and tools every single day, so not the executives. We sit in our offices.

Rias Attar: Sometimes we have that visions, but if we do not listen to the feedback. And that's the power of data. I think collecting data, collecting feedback from people would help us understand where to navigate, whether it is some sort of like, "Should we train them on new tools, like the science aspect, or is it more about like comforting and more about maybe just maybe train them and coach them on the art, which is like how to deal with new different situations. Maybe it's just more about providing them with other ways to do their business and how they can do it efficiently. I think the message here is, again, remember, it's continuous improvement.

Rias Attar: Many organizations now post COVID, and again, remember, those are the many, many successful organizations who were able to bring new tools and techniques and made them so efficient, they're looking back, and it's like, "Why we didn't do this before COVID? I wonder why we haven't done this now." So now they're thinking about this now post COVID era, it's like, "You know what? We should probably continue doing this. Many organizations, for example, are now utilizing Zoom and other video conferencing tools and maybe not leasing expensive space anymore because they feel, I mean, it's unnecessary.

Rias Attar: So going back to your original question about the people and how weary they are after COVID, I think it's important to retrospect a little bit and look at the positive side and think about... And now we're towards the end of that, hopefully, that cycle, and now we're posing for a new growth hopefully, and what that looked like, what will be the next phase? Let's think about that. Let's think forward. But realize that if soliciting feedback and listening to your customers, your employees would hopefully help you significantly position your business for success.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It makes sense. It's just a point I wanted to bring up, because to your point, you can't overlook the people, part of this, right? So depending on the industry, the company, the region, the role, what have you, I think it's important to take that temperature check and just be cognizant of the fact that we as humans have gone through a lot. And so maybe there's an element of this next wave of change where you need to put some effort into re-energizing or giving people some reassurance or whatever that looks like for your team. Okay. Rias, I wanted to ask, I'm curious your thoughts on the role of technology when it comes to changing to win.

Rias Attar: Yes. It's no secret that technology, especially over the past 20-plus years, it's improved significantly. Everything from a technology perspective really starts with data. I always like to bring that topic because before maybe the internet era, data was so precious. We used to lock those data in our offices. And now, since we are plugged in, probably there's not so much data that we can hide or we don't have access to. But the problem now there has been an explosion of data. And so what do we do with all this data? So this is where you start, from a technology perspective, you probably need to collect the data, whether it's in regards to your current technology that you're using, your competitor's technology, or your customer's needs, what they want.

Rias Attar: It always starts with data. What exactly I need to do based on current benchmarking, where I am compared to my customers, where I am compared to... sorry, compared to competition, compared to trends, compared to customers' expectations, and so on and so forth. So after collecting this data, you start to transform this and work on changing from just simple data to information. What does this data tells me? So moving from data to information, and then that information tells me, "Okay, you may need to move from servers to cloud." So maybe you need to move from, I don't know, green screens to what we call green screens, which is like the old Microsoft AS400 system to the new maybe Windows or latest systems. That gives us a knowledge. Now, the information becomes a knowledge. Now we know what to do with it.

Rias Attar: Now, the art is using that knowledge and create a wisdom. So what exactly we want to do with it? So now we collected the data, we formed some information. We now acquire the knowledge. Now we have to do something about it. When we talk about technology, the newer organizations, Sarah, usually are quite nimble. They kind of have the latest and greatest tools and techniques. They don't have that technical debt. We call it technical debt, just the old codes and systems, and solutions. So they are able to move quickly and swiftly between different demands or market changes and so on and so forth versus the fairly older organizations who have huge systems in place. They're finding it very hard to change that technology that they have to adapt to the newer customer demands and customer needs.

Rias Attar: Sometimes they may have to reap and replace this whole technology, which that journey takes years of preparation. It's not that easy. Everything is connected, most of the time, in that kind of spaghetti-like diagrams. The one thing that I think COVID taught us was the roadmap that used to take us 10 years or five years, now we have to do it in months. There's a lot of urgency. There's a lot of now we're doing this at a much-accelerated pace. Because we probably do not have time. If we do not do this now, new competitors will potentially eat our market share and will drive us out of business. So technology becomes not only a need, it becomes a necessity. And now you don't have to always have the cutting-edge technology because you may not really be able to afford it. Or it may be very expensive for you. So you have to balance. Do you need to have the Toyota or you need to have the Ferrari? That's where, I guess, the business, it depends on the industry, but sometimes you just need a vehicle to move you from point A to point B. Sometimes you may actually need that higher cutting-edge technology. Technology becomes not only a need, it becomes a necessity and opportunity for success in the new era.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I like the point you made about a lot of the newer, more innovative by nature companies have less of a technological legacy to overcome, right? So they're starting fresher in that regard, which makes it easier to iterate and continue to modernize versus someone who's trying to do this wholesale upgrade to current times and then go from there. Okay. All right.

Sarah Nicastro: We're almost out of time. I just want to talk about one last point, which is we were talking at the beginning about the, "We've always done it this way," mentality and breaking out of that, right? We talked a lot about the recognition that it's time to change. But the reality for 2021 and beyond is that it is never not time to change, right? This isn't a situation where you break out of that mindset once, you chart the path, you walk the path, and then you are done with it, and that's that. This is really a more ongoing situation at this point. So talk about that and what you advise in terms of having that continuous improvement mindset and looking at this less as a project and more a state of mind, I guess.

Rias Attar: Yeah, an excellent point. I highly recommend that the strategy also becomes a little bit fluid. It depends on what's going on. Sometimes you may set a five-year strategy, which is good, but sometimes things happen, and you may need to adjust mid-course a little bit and adjust your roadmap based on things that happen. I mean, there's this agile kind of mindset, which is like, "Okay, let's go through an iterative delivery. Let's not keep stuck in this. Okay, we set that strategy for five years." Now, this is good. I'm not saying this is not good, but sometimes things happen. And when things happen, you may want to adjust mid-course a little bit in order to hit that bullseye. My recommendation is to always stay close to customers, understand your market needs, understand what the customers are saying, what they are demanding, who are the new players in the market. You may probably not know unless you start learning from customers. You may need to reevaluate your own processes and your own technologies and your own way your people are dealing with customers based on feedback that you're getting from customers.

Rias Attar: Now, again, sometimes you may get an overwhelming feedback. You just need to filter exactly what actually makes sense to your business. You may sometimes need to draw that some sort of customer journey for your customers, starting from the need, or want, or awareness all the way through like research and concentration purchase, maybe returns, maybe disposal, and then maybe advocate or promote of your service and product. The point here that I'm trying to say is try to stay close to your customers, listen to them very well. Try to stay close to your employees, and also listen to them very well. Have a good strategy that you set in mind. And the same time, make sure that you always, maybe every year or so, try to revisit that strategy and see if it actually makes sense.

Rias Attar: And then as you go along, make sure that you have that delivery mechanism. You want to make sure that you are advancing towards that strategy, whether that strategy is organic or inorganic, what exactly you're trying to achieve, and then how you're going to achieve that. And then, as I mentioned, that continuous improvement mindset is based on continuous feedback that you get throughout your journey from your customers, from your employees. Make sure that you are actually hitting that mark. If we continue to realize that we always need to think strategically and think about how we can get out of that comfort zone to that growth zone, and during that path, we realize the feedback, or we re-evaluate the feedback and we change mid-course, and then we actually capitalize on certain things, I think, generally speaking, you will be able... or those businesses will be able to be positioned for success and realize sustainable competitive advantage. It's not only periodic competitive advantage but sustainable competitive advantage.

Sarah Nicastro: It makes sense. Rias, let folks know where they can learn more about you and where they can find the book, Change to Win.

Rias Attar: Yeah, so they can always go to riasattar.com, R-I-A-S-A-T-T-A-R.com, or they can find the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, on Target, like anywhere. They can just Google Change to Win, Rias Attar, and they will find it anywhere there. They can also reach out to me on LinkedIn or through my website, www.sayaplus.com, S-A-Y-A-P-L-U-S.com as well. They are more than welcome to ask any questions.

Sarah Nicastro: Excellent. Well, I appreciate you being here very much. Thank you for sharing some tidbits. And everyone, be sure to say hello to Rias on LinkedIn, and also to check out the book. In the meantime, you can find more content by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn, as well as Twitter @thefutureoffs. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS by visiting ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening!

July 5, 2021 | 5 Mins Read

Exploring the Gap Between Customer Focus and Customer Impact

July 5, 2021 | 5 Mins Read

Exploring the Gap Between Customer Focus and Customer Impact

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I often tell the story of never planning to build a career in this space – when I began at Field Technologies, I intended it to be a transitional step in my journey. Life unfolded as it does, and for many reasons this world of field service and service industries became my career – and my passion. Part of that is because as I dug in circa 2008, we were at the beginning of a very intriguing evolution. This was when organizations began talking more about the focus on customer experience; the early days of seeing service as a potential source of differentiation and profits.

It’s been incredibly interesting to me to see this journey unfold, for various companies across industries and across the globe. The reality, some years later, is that while the focus on customer experience and customer satisfaction has become the forefront of focus for just about every service-based business, there exists a gap between the focus and the impact. The effort is there, but the outcome often isn’t.

IFS recently sponsored a global study of more than 1,700 executives and 12,500 consumers titled “Fixing the fundamentals: Understanding new business models and opportunities in the wake of Covid-19” to examine this topic and how, in many instances, the gap that exists has been exacerbated by the pandemic. IFS CEO Darren Roos states in the opening of the findings, “Long before the pandemic, the ‘Amazon effect’ had revolutionized customer expectations for speed and consistency. But now, companies in industries ranging from paint manufacturing to air travel are finding the pandemic has made both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) customers even more demanding.”

The study reveals that “although some 79 percent of organizations are investing the time and resources to identify where each inflection point is, nearly a third (29 percent) admitted that they report problems but don’t act. A further 18 percent said they are too busy to report an issue unless urgent, while 38 percent of respondents only act when it is urgently required. In fact, only 14 percent said that they are proactively planning for problem prevention across their customer inflection points.”

So, while organizations collectively realize the criticality of customer focus, and are likely actively investing in improving in this area, they are struggling to take action besides times in which it is urgent. And we know the cost of customer neglect. The study reports that 26 percent of respondents would be unlikely to engage with a brand after just one negative experience. Further, according to the study, “some 30 percent of businesses see product/service quality as the single largest determining factor for winning or losing customers, while 25 percent feel success hinges on product/service reliability. By tackling issues with internal processes, enterprises can directly improve both product/service quality and product/service reliability—yet many are still not joining the dots.”

As I read this research, I began to think to myself – why are we struggling so much with moving from reactive to proactive when it comes to the customer experience? It brought to mind three particular areas of conversation among my interviews that I think are playing a big role in the gap that exists within this study and beyond between customer focus and customer impact.

Organizational Siloes Kill Customer Satisfaction

The first is that many companies have yet to achieve the level of operational alignment and collaboration that is key to the streamlined, simple experience customers are looking for. Many efforts underway exist in a particular function and can be disconnected from the larger strategy of the organization. While this can result in some incremental improvement, the siloed approach can never achieve the ultimate desired customer outcome. In order to create success with customer focus, it needs to be a company-wide initiative, focus, and effort. There must be overarching goals for which each function is aware, in agreement, and measured upon. Regular, cross-functional examination of customer efforts and satisfaction needs to occur, and actions assigned with accountability for completion. I think a big part of why the issues identified aren’t addressed until they are urgent is because without a cohesive approach, ownership and accountability isn’t clear and therefor issues that aren’t urgent are easily overlooked or fall prey to “passing the buck.”

Modern Technology Fuels the Customer Experience

Another major problem, and stemming from the overall issue of siloes, is that the level of customer experience desired today simply cannot be delivered without the use of modern, cohesive technology. Legacy systems that are decentralized, highly configured, and just plain outdated present far too many failure points in the seamlessness that is critical in today’s landscape. Legacy systems also oftentimes fuel the siloes that we already discussed – without companywide visibility into customer insights, performance, and analytics, it is relatively impossible to achieve the alignment and collaboration necessary to succeed. Standardizing on a modern platform that creates a single source of truth from which the entire organization can operate is a must for closing the gap between customer focus and customer impact. And customers know this – they are well aware of the sophistication of technology that exists today based on its use in their personal lives, so their tolerance for outdated technology from service providers is increasingly nonexistent.

Customer Focus Isn’t Represented in Employee Compensation

Finally, while the mission to improve customer experience is clear for most companies, in many it hasn’t yet been reflected in how employees are motivated and compensated. In field service, for instance, technicians who have historically been urged to increase number of jobs per day have a driving force that is at odds (in many cases) with allowing them the time and empowerment to provide a positive customer experience. Examining how the performance of each function, again companywide, is measured and incentivized and ensuring that is aligned with the customer-centric objectives you have is another crucial aspect of ensuring you have overall consistency in your quest for customer success.

I’m quite sure these three issues are not the only challenges that exist within the gap between intent and impact, but they are three that come up quite often. While both research and conversations prove that intentions are good when it comes to the topic of customer centricity, we need to work toward a more proactive versus reactive approach – and I do believe these three categories are a very good place to start.

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July 2, 2021 | 3 Mins Read

The Benefits and Drawbacks of the Industry-Specific Cloud

July 2, 2021 | 3 Mins Read

The Benefits and Drawbacks of the Industry-Specific Cloud

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By Tom Paquin

Recently I came across this report on Forrester exploring the pros and cons for horizontal vs. vertical cloud solutions for different business areas. It’s worth a read if you haven’t done so, but naturally any time I come across one of these, I want to put it into the service context.

Of course, service is not a specific vertical, is it? It’s a loosely-connected cluster of verticals, focused on very different outcomes, very different types of service, and very different workflow structures. For that exact reason it is important to give some thought to, if not specifically how a solution is built with your industry in mind, how it conforms to the unique structure of your industry.

There are some obvious benefits to this approach, so let’s look into a few of them.

Speaks Your Jargon

This might seem reasonably simple, but in an industry that is rife with specific terminology, context, and nomenclature, an out-of-the-box solution may lack the necessary nuance to even catalog everything that needs to be cataloged.

Every industry has its jargon—with sometimes conflicting meanings, so ensuring that your solution properly understands the complexity of meter readings for utilities versus those for telecommunications without ten thousand customizations can be, in one hand, a way to ensure things are simply working properly. On the other, getting that right early offers a catalyst for growth of additional solutions, which can take advantage of standardized output that’s already internalized the necessary nuances of a specific industry.

Workflow Friendly

A pure service provider invariably differs dramatically from a manufacturer. Sure, bolt-on modules for sustainability and reverse logistics can square the circle, but only when they are overlaid into a sequence that actually understands the unique flow of service appointments specific to an industry.

A constant refrain of mine is that software is useless if your technicians aren’t willing to push the buttons to get it to actually work. By choosing software that actually understands your workflows, you are that much more likely to build software that meets the needs, expectations, and rhythms of your technicians.

Regulation-Ready

Finally—and this is a point that certainly plays within the context of workflows—is the necessity of implicit regulatory understanding. Within medical devices, for example, you need to be able to respect HIPAA within the context of your given workflows. This can’t be an add-on or a late-addition, this needs to be in the product from the jump. These regulatory requirements can be part of configurations, changed for regions, and sit along other requirements, such as SLA of course.

With all of these benefits to exploring a verticalized cloud, are there any drawbacks? Yes, absolutely—verticalization can limit your exposure and understanding of broader service trends. Further, niche companies often lack the breadth and depth of capabilities of their more generalized counterparts. For these reasons, many firms instead look to larger companies who have expressed deep domain expertise. There’s of course a natural trade off when one works with a jack of all trades, but that balance might end up being the key to service success.

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