The #FSN20 is Field Service News’ annual celebration of excellence, innovation and leadership within the global field service sector. One of this year’s members is Patrick Jansen, Product Owner, Field Services, Clevr.

Prior to joining Clevr, Jansen had shown both great leadership and forward looking innovation as he rose from Service Manager to Chief Service Officer with Oil and Gas specialists VBR Turbines.

Some of the excellent work that Jansen had undertaken with VBR included a bold and pioneering approach to recruitment that saw VBR Turbines move away from working with recruitment consultants and connecting with the next generation of engineers directly through educational outreach programs with universities – a project that proved a huge success in solving one of the industries biggest challenges – that of replacing an ageing workforce.

Another key success that Jansen spearheaded was in aligning service engineers with data scientists in a project that saw the development of an in-house IoT based solution to data analysis that maps out a path to truly leveraging connected field service strategies for the future.

As part of our coverage of the #FSN20 Jansen joined Chris Hird on the Field Service News Digital Symposium. As always the long-form format of the conversation allowed space for us to drill into some of the key experiences and insights Jansen had to offer.

Some of the key talking points from that discussion include:

• Field service needs to be agile, so why do we invest in rigid software tools?
• Can one platform power service operations or do we need best-of-breed?
• How do we attract the field service stars of the future?
• How do we tackle diversity in the field workforce sector?
• Can we teach true leadership?
• Are we drowning in data lakes or standing on the shoulders of giants?