Service Council inService™ Podcast Series Service Council™

Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to rise in priority among service organizations. The 2024 Service Leader’s Agenda survey revealed that it would be the most invested-in technology this year, with 62% of service leaders indicating investment plans. This is also a massive 32% leap from last year, surpassing investment in Business Intelligence (BI) and Field Service Management (FSM) technology. However, while organizations seem initially eager to invest, service leaders still have a complex journey ahead of them to translate the promise of AI’s benefits into a “beyond the pilot” reality.

Join the inService™ Podcast as host John Carroll welcomes guest Sarah Rose, Vice President of Global Services for Daktronics. Having recently overseen Daktronics AI initiative, Sarah will reflect on her journey to date, with an emphasis on what has gone well, what adjustments were needed, and the lessons learned having the benefit of hindsight. She’ll discuss Daktronics’ evaluation process, working with their data structure, and the challenges of implementing AI for the first time in enterprise organizations.

As an experienced Global Services leader, Sarah has spent the better part of her career supporting customers whose systems are mission-critical to their operations. As Vice President of Global Services for Daktronics, Sarah’s team is accountable for the installation and support of over 5.6B installed products across the globe. She was the driving force behind the standardization and improvement of global service foundational approaches that (1) facilitated the development and execution of global service processes, (2) increased the service team's performance, execution, and productivity with development teams, tools/technology, and data and (3) led the era of customer self-service. Sarah holds an MBA from Western Governors University.

The talent shortage continues to beleaguer service leaders. According to the 2024 Service Leader’s Agenda survey, 64% say this is having the biggest impact on their business. Organizations are being forced to think outside the box when it comes to recruitment and retention strategies, while qualified workers are fielding multiple job offers. How do service leaders set themselves apart from competitors and build a talent strategy that will withstand the ever-widening talent gap?

Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, April 18 at 12PM ET as host John Carroll welcomes guest Tom Parker, CEO of RL People. Tom will share what he’s learned in his years as a recruiter in the aftermarket space, including what makes companies appealing to potential recruits, how he is seeing organizations stand out in a tight labor market. He’ll also talk about the strategies he recommends for future-proofing your talent strategy and building up the team of tomorrow.

Prior to setting up RL People in late 2016, Tom spent the previous 20 years working across global reverse logistics and service supply chains. Tom led sales teams in EMEA, APAC and the Americas, delivering turnkey solutions encompassing recovery, returns, repairs, refurbishment, recycling, spare parts management, logistics and fulfilment, to clients ranging from global OEMs to regional providers. With a genuine passion for the fast-growing, dynamic landscape of service supply chains, Tom launched RL People to provide talent & recruitment services to these markets globally.

Industry trends, research and insights play a critical role in a service leader’s ability to make impactful business decisions. However, as service continues to evolve at a rapid pace, translating those insights into practical innovation is becoming more of a challenge. How can service leaders bridge the divide between research and action to forge a more transformative path forward for their organization?

Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, April 4th at 12PM ET as host John Carroll welcomes a very special guest: Gerardo Pelayo, Ph.D., Service Council™’s new Vice President of Research and Advisory. The pair will talk about Gerardo’s background in academia, the value his addition brings to our community and some common themes he’s seeing in initial partner and member discussions. They will also discuss the preliminary findings of our recent research effort around service supply chain and parts management.

Gerardo Pelayo, Ph.D. is the VP of Research & Advisory for Service Council. With a hybrid background that integrates cross-industry hands-on experience with his depth as an analytical modeler (Ph.D. in Logistics & Supply Chain from the MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program) built on a process-driven foundation as an Industrial Engineer, Gerardo brings to the table a prescriptive communion between dynamic innovation and operational pragmatism.

The 2024 Service Leader’s Agenda revealed that 72% of service leaders are prioritizing new technology investments. Many of the technology priorities are signaling a renewed attention towards workforce productivity, first-time fix rates and throughput. However, as customer expectations reach all-time highs, more organizations lean on extended networks to achieve efficiency gains. It is critical that they do so in a way that balances efficiency with quality. To find this balance, many service leaders are turning to automation to do things well, while also doing them quickly.

Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, March 21st at 12PM ET as host John Carroll welcomes guest Thomas Thullier, General Manager North America for Deepomatic. Thomas will talk about how service leaders are automizing quality control through AI and computer vision to drive consistency and value across their entire network.

Thomas Thuillier is the General Manager North America and an officer of Deepomatic. As one of Deepomatic’s first employees, he has been working very closely with the founding team on their global strategy and on the focus on the field service industry. With responsibility over the US and Canadian markets, Thomas has contributed to positioning Deepomatic as a global leader of the First Time Right movement and a trusted supplier in the Telecom industry.

Thomas holds a MSc. in Corporate Finance and Political Science from the prestigious Sciences Po institute in Paris. Prior to joining Deepomatic, he worked in finance and logistics for a beverage distribution and manufacturing company in D.C. and New York.

The imperative around Generative AI is clear: embrace it or be left behind. Service Council research continues to show that AI investment continues to climb in terms of priority. However, while service leaders are readily getting the go ahead for AI pilots, many are hitting a wall when it comes to bringing AI to scale. One of the primary impediments is the lack of a foundational data strategy which serves the purpose of building a platform for AI to achieve scale.



On the next episode of the inService™ Podcast Live, host John Carroll taps into the AI expertise of our guest, Haroon Abbu, SVP of Digital, Data and Analytics at Bell and Howell. Haroon will address the “how-to” of implementing AI: how do service leaders build the right team, data strategy, change management initiatives and business case to successfully realize AI at scale?



Haroon Abbu is the Senior Vice President of Digital, Data, and Analytics at Bell and Howell. He has vast experience and expertise in leading digital transformation efforts, leveraging state-of-the-art technology to create customer-focused successes and strategically bring valuable analytics insights into vital elements of the business. A recipient of multiple awards including the data leader of the year finalist, recognition in the 2022 Global Top 100 Innovators in Data and Analytics report, and dataIQ 100 The Most Influential People in Data, Haroon has realized digital transformation to bring about organizational breakthroughs that have empowered employees and facilitated customers to obtain greater value from its services.

Year-over-year, field service management (FSM) software remains a top technology investment for service leaders. In 2024, nearly 40% of service executives say they will be investing in field service management (FSM) technology, according to the Service Leader’s Agenda survey. In fact, FSM remains one of the top investments year-over-year. Interestingly, many of these plans are for expanded, not new, investments. This signals that service leaders have yet to fully unlock the power of their tech stack.Prateek Chakravarty, CEO of Zinier, stops by the podcast studio to discuss how he is seeing organizations tailor their tech stack to fit the nuances of their business requirements, while delivering value to every stakeholder. He’ll also touch on his own rise from field service engineer, working in the oil fields of Siberia, to CEO of a company that is making big waves in field service.Prateek Chakravarty is the CEO at Zinier, a field service automation platform designed to help service organizations install and maintain their assets in the field. Prior to joining Zinier in 2020, Prateek was a part of the founding team at Bidgely, a Khosla Ventures-funded software company providing AI-driven customer and grid analytics to electric and gas utilities across the world. He started his career in infrastructure-related industries first as an operator and then as an investor. He was a field operations engineer with Schlumberger working in Indonesia, France and Russia. He was also a part of a corporate venture fund for Pacific Gas & Electric and invested in rooftop solar companies such as SolarCity and Sunrun.