The field service sector is one that has always bred innovation and ingenuity and in today’s business landscape, where boundaries are being continually pushed forward by radical new approaches to service delivery, empowered by a wave of exciting technologies, there has never been a greater opportunity for companies to drive their businesses forwards through service.

As a celebration of excellence in our sector, Field Service News is pleased to announce the 2018 edition of the #fsn20 – a list of service professionals who are leading lights within our sector…

Andy Harrison, Engineering Associate Fellow, Life Cycle Engineering, Rolls Royce

Rolls Royce has long been the poster boy for the servitization and advanced service movement we are now seeing begin to really gain momentum within the manufacturing sector and beyond.

As such, it makes sense that they are heavily involved within helping to establish a framework for advanced services as part of a multi-organisational committee dedicated to identifying the some of the fundamental steps towards such an approach.

Harrison is the man that is leading that committee and some of the work he and his colleagues within the group are undertaking will be pivotal to the future of field service.

Ashley Weller, UK Sales Director, Mars Drinks

Having joined Mars Drinks in 2011 Weller has held roles across a number of disciplines within the business including field service management, marketing and as Customer Service Director.

It is in this role that Weller established the creation and delivery of a highly successful customer service strategy and customer engagement across both direct & indirect business streams.

In 2015 Weller took the visionary decision to challenge his people to elevate their role, transforming themselves into Brand Ambassadors and adding even more value to great customer relationships. As a result of the team’s work over several years, the new processes are now a living, breathing animal and are running smoothly under the control of the regional managers. The new brand ambassadors are a true USP for the company and are loved by their customers. The engineers are proud that they’ve achieved all this – it’s what their customers wanted.

Having recently taken on the role of UK Sales Director, it is anticipated that Weller will be able to build on this success and to further drive revenue through their now well-established ‘Brand Ambassadors’.

Seva Gavrilov, Market Unit Director, Russia, Volvo Penta

Seva Gavrilov joined Volvo Penta 22 years ago and took over leadership of the Russian business in 2007.

He has always had a passion for nautical engineering, having graduated from the Marine Technology University in St Petersberg as a Naval engineer but also as a visionary with a head for business. Now, he is leading Volvo Penta through a programme of initiatives that are giving their dealerships a competitive edge, more momentum and increasing the company’s market share.

The group HQ in Gothenburg, Sweden has been watching Gavrilov’s programme carefully and has already implemented some similar ideas internationally. Since the company is in a transition period from being largely product and dealer focussed to Customer focused, Russia’s key message is to enforce the shift to end-user benefits.

Improvements in change processes, complaint handling and collaboration between groups such as sales and service can make huge improvements.

Ulrika Lindberg, Executive Vice President, Service, Marel

A member of the Harvard Business School alumni Lindberg holds an impressive CV having held many senior service and management roles in Europe, Africa and the Middle East Lindberg has a deep knowledge of customer satisfaction, aftermarket, spare parts and of course field service – in fact, she is something of a specialist when it comes to establishing and developing service portfolios.

Having built a new unit within Swedish-industrial giant Alfa Laval, with an overall objective to increase sales of services and a focus on developing and maintaining a portfolio of well defined service offerings for the organisation, Lindberg took on the role of Vice President for Global Service where she was responsible for Global Service operations with focus on Growth of Service, Competence Development within Service and Service Operations before recently moving to her current role as Executive VP with Marel.

Kevin Starr, Program Director, Advanced Digital Services, ABB Oil and Gas Division

Given Starr’s wide-ranging background which encompasses installing industrial automation, working with pneumatics, then electrics, DCS and now digital and across roles that include R&D managers, software developer, data scientist and cloud specialist – he is perhaps the very personification and embodiment of how the field service sector is in constant flux on a journey of continuous evolution.

When it comes to digitalisation of automation of service within the industrial sector, Starr is to be regarded a leading subject matter expert – a fact that is attested to the fact he is a highly sought-after speaker at industry conferences as well being the host of a successful YouTube series and author on the topic and he has played a sustained role in establishing ABB as a pioneer of data-led service delivery.

Jonas Granath, COO and Deputy CEO, Polygon

Deputy CEO and COO of Polygon a company with over 3,500 field service engineers, Granath has worked in service businesses across the globe, throughout his career.

One key attribute that really marks Granath out as leading figure within the industry has been how he has continuously demonstrated across his career an ability to find different ways to lead and get his message across no matter the background of the people he is interacting with and it is this ability to communicate that has made him such a successful change leader and senior service professional.

Across the last four years, he has helped Polygon evolve their approach to service delivery and is driving their present shift towards a more comprehensive post-folio of advanced services that have come from that evolution.

Tim Jones, Professional Services Director EMEAI, Waters

Having spent over thirty years with Waters, Jones has worked across their Sales, Product and Service divisions and has become an integral part of the organisation who deliver practical and sustainable scientific innovation to enable significant advancement in healthcare delivery, environmental management, food safety, and water quality.

In his role as Professional Services Director for EMEAI he has played a critical role for ensuring Waters continue to meet the high level of service standards that they have become known for and has shown in the way he has structured his teams that he has a firm grasp of the importance of the engineer/customer relationship and of empowering his service engineers to take ownership of their performance.

Dan Sewell, COO, Espresso Service

Sewell has been a driving force behind not only driving his organisation’s field service efficiencies but also in Espresso Service’s wide embrace of the Internet of Things.

It is this willingness to adopt leading-edge technologies that have seen the organisation increase profits through the intelligent use of data that has enabled their customers to get greater guarantees of uptime and improved visibility into how they can also build their revenue streams.

In addition to this, the company has been able to rapidly expand into new territories as well as establish key patents and partnerships that will firmly establish them as one of the leading service providers within their space and Sewell’s deep industry knowledge and expertise have been a fundamental element of that success.

Larry Wash, Executive Vice President, Kone Americas

Wash has a long and distinguished career that has included senior executive positions in service operations for a host of highly respected organisations including Xerox, Trane and Ingersoll Rand before joining Kone where he is at the vanguard of their drive to lead service innovation in a highly dynamic and rapidly evolving sector.

Alongside his role as Executive Vice President, Wash serves as a member of KONE’s Executive Board. and leads a $2 billion business that includes teams across the United States, Canada and Latin America.

Wash also serves as Board President for the National Elevator Industry, Inc., a pre-eminent trade association for the building transportation industry as is highly regarded as a thought leader within the executive service community.

James Mylett, Vice President, Schneider Electric

Mylett is another member of the #fsn20 that has established his credentials as a highly respected service leader across a number of executive level service centred roles with a host of organisations who each have a reputation for excellence in terms of service delivery with a CV that lists positions with Comfort Systems, Johnson Controls and now Schneider Electric, whom he has been working for since 2017.

Schneider has shown ambitious plans in terms of establishing a highly progressive and forward-looking approach to their service operations on a global scale and as Vice President Mylett will be instrumental in seeing them meet their goals.

Wilhelm Nehring, CEO, OSRAM

In his role as UK CEO of the elevator division of thyssenkrupp Nehring showed a balanced understanding for the importance of technology in driving a service business forwards alongside the fundamental role that his field service technicians played in ensuring his organisation continued to stay at the forefront of what is both a highly competitive and exceptionally innovative sector.

Speaking at an exclusive fieldservicenews.com Think Tank session last year he commented ‘for us all this digitalisation that we’re talking about is not something to replace engineers, or even to have less engineers – it is for us to enable our engineers to do the job better than they could before.’

Having recently taken on the CEO position of globally leading lighting manufacturer OSRAM it is clear that he intends to carry that belief with him into his new role stating ‘my aim for OSRAM is to become a key player in the digitalization of our buildings and cities. On that journey our employees are our most important assets; they make the impossible possible.”

Nehring is a perfect example of the new breed of business leaders who understand the huge impact service personnel will have on the future of enterprise and we predict OSRAM will flourish under his leadership.

Chris Dexter, Senior Director, Technical Services EMEAR, Cisco Systems

With over 25 years of industry experience, Dexter is currently Senior Director, Technical Services EMEAR.

Based in the UK, leading a team of 200+ diverse and talented engineers across the region, Dexter is responsible for providing support for Cisco’s most complex technologies and emergent service offerings, as well as acquisition integration within the services function.

Innovation lead for EMEAR – funding, incubating and developing disruptive new concepts relating to customer experience and support quality and has given a number of exceptionally well-received talks at leading industry conferences such as TSIA Europe and Field Service Europe highlighting his and Cisco’s experience is achieving service excellence.

Christian Nolte, Vice President, Global Service, WMF Group

Nolte has been a popular and well-respected speaker within the European Field Service community for many years now and in his previous role with cash management and retail financial firm Diebold Nixdorf was at the vanguard of introducing the concepts of IoT and connected assets into field service as well as offering a number of insightful and innovative strategies to help improve service efficiency to his peers at a number of key field service focused conferences within Europe.

Now in his new role with WMF he is set to translate those ideas himself into the coffee retail sector, where again his extensive experience and insight into utilising the Internet of Things to drive service improvements will prove invaluable.

David Douglas, Vice President, Scientific Games

Douglas possesses over 25 years of global technology leadership experience.

His focus has been in the Lottery and Gaming sectors and broad experience includes executive leadership of North American organizations responsible for Service Management, customer deployments of large-scale systems and infrastructure, professional services, technical service, field service, operational support and call centres.

His current scope at Scientific Games includes the oversight of Scientific Games’ Service Management functions is currently leading a team comprised of 900+ employees. Douglas has a long history of achieving enormous operating efficiencies through the consolidation and creation of technology centres, process and quality improvements through the implementation of ITIL as well as hands-on experience with mergers, acquisitions and company integration activities.

In addition to having a mindful eye towards creating a strong, effective team and delivery practices, he is widely respected in the field service sector for his focus on creating value for the customer through the implementation of new, innovative service-related technologies.

Neil Johnson, Vice President & General Manager, Fujifilm North America Technical Services

Johnson is a highly seasoned service leader and is regarded as s one of the top executives in the US Service Industry.

He has demonstrated exceptional management expertise as he took a lead role in the transformation of Fujifilm’s Service Group from a cost centre to profit centre whilst developing strategies within the organisation for staffing, systems and CSA’s as the company established a well-deserved reputation for delivering flawless installations during the peak of the digital prepress evolution and his latest role with the group he looks set to further build upon his past successes and a bright and profitable future for the company’s service operations.

Rajat Kakar, Vice President, Head of Product Related Services Business, Fujitsu

Kakar is a frequent speaker and well respected at industry events whilst within Fujitsu, he is known for driving growth and sustained profitability, successfully penetrating new markets and building highly functional teams.

In his industry, he is recognized as first to market with new products. As prior leader of Product divisions within Fujitsu, he was first to market with UMTS integrated lightest laptops, Green IT with Zero-Watt PCs and Zero-Watt Monitors.

His pragmatic and inclusive management practice for sales as well as operations, coupled with an as needed hands-on leadership style, has earned him a reputation of the desired leader and has enabled him to turn around dated or loss-generating organizations, both indirect and matrix structures.

Steve Smith, Founder and CTO, Astro Communications

Smith is a shining example of how excellent leadership, out of the box thinking and a genuine dedication to developing talent within the service side of the business can be implemented to establish a service organisation that is able to punch significantly above its weight in terms of establishing an excellent reputation for meeting the highest service standards.

Through innovative schemes such as taking his team sailing across the English Channel Smith has been able to engender an excellent sense of brand pride within his field engineers and is also a major proponent of apprenticeship schemes – through which he is developing a series of excellent, highly professional and well-rounded service engineers who can only enhance Astro’s reputation even further.

Ton van den Ham, Manager Engineering & Service, Yokogawa Europe Solutions

Yokogawa’s industrial automation business provides vital products, services, and solutions to a diverse range of process industries including oil, chemicals, natural gas, power, iron and steel, and pulp and paper additionally with the life innovation business the company aims to radically improve productivity across the pharmaceutical and food industry value chains.

In recent year’s their European operations have established a strong reputation for providing service levels that exceed customer expectations and Van den Ham has shown within the year he has been with the organisation that he is an impressive service leader with innovative ideas who could have a major impact on the service sector.

Ged Cranny, Head of Direct Services, Konica Minolta

Cranny has played a fundamental role in spearheading Konica Minolta’s efforts to bring transparency to their data which has empowered the print/copy specialists to massively improve efficiencies within their service operations whilst simultaneously being able to dramatically reduce their employee churn, boost customer engagement and increase service related profits.

Having adopted a very hands on approach when implementing key systems that have enabled these achievements, Cranny is also prepared to speak openly about the approaches he and Konica Minolta adopted with his peers and help guide others on a similar path by sharing the insight of his experience.

John Cullen, Vice President, Digital Marketing, Metso

Whilst Cullen would invariably suggest that this accolade should perhaps be handed to one of his highly capable colleagues focussing specifically on the service operations side of the business at Metso, as former Vice President of Service Portfolio Management & Marketing, Automation Services for the organisation he has been a key role in the mining and aggregates giant’s shift from product centric to customer-oriented solutions on a global sale before building upon that as Vice President of Minerals Services where he was responsible for the development of service value propositions for the €1.4Bn business.

Given his pivotal role in establishing a service-orientated approach within Metso, we anticipate that Cullen will continue to drive the benefits of advanced services that Metso have developed in his latest role also.

the #fsn20 panel

Many thanks to this year’s advisory panel:

Aly Pinder, IDC, Sara Mueller, WBR, Bill Pollock, Strategies for GrowthSM, Kris Oldland, Field Service News, Jan Van Veen, MoreMomentum, Prudence Kolong, Copperberg, Michael Blumberg, Blumberg Advisory Group and Nick Frank, Si2 Partners.