Field Service is one of the modules included as a part of Microsoft’s intelligent business application platform, Dynamics 365. The Field Service module has been developed to streamline and improve any service-based organisation with how they conduct their work and provide services to their customers.
Field Service is an end-to-end platform that provides all the necessary capabilities to optimise your resources, improve productivity and engage with customers effectively. The versatile application can be utilised by any business who carries out onsite work such as maintenance, installation or responding to issues – regardless of the industry they work in.
Who can use Field Service?
The Field Service application isn’t just designed for technicians, it provides all the necessary tools to increase your entire team’s productivity including roles such as service manager, customer service, dispatcher and more. Better yet, Field Service seamlessly connects to the other modules included in Dynamics 365, allowing your entire organisation to enjoy the use of one platform to run your entire operations.
What features are included?
Optimise your resources & scheduling
Use Field Services schedule & dispatch optimisation tools to help you get more value out of your technicians and resources and they’re working at their best. Automatic scheduling will look into various factors including skills, locations, appointment duration, travel time, priorities and more to balance the workload effectively and get the right technician with the right skills and resources to your customers – ensuring a fix first-time, every time.
You can also utilise configurable drag-and-drop schedule board where dispatchers can assign resources and set up schedules for multiple work orders using a map or list view. Real-time visualisation and status indicators enable rapid and efficient reallocation in response to changes or emergency situations.
Connected Field Service
Connected Field Service allows you to move from a costly break/fix model to a proactive and predictive service model. This is achieved through a combination of IoT diagnostics, scheduling, asset maintenance and inventory on the same platform. Being able to detect, troubleshoot and resolve issues remotely saves time and resources, allowing you to only send a technician when necessary. This benefits both you and the customer as issues are resolved faster and often before the issue arises or gets any worse, eliminating the need for any concern.
(Learn more about the features of Connected Field Service here)
Building customer satisfaction
Provide a customer-centric experience by proactively engaging with your customers to increase visibility throughout every step of the service chain. Build customer profiles to understand their preferences and priorities and utilise a self-service portal to keep track of service activities, book new appointments and view their case history. Share quote, contract and scheduling information so your customers are always informed and view the location of technicians in real-time when they’re on the way to your appointment, so they know exactly when they will be there.
Extend the Application
Microsoft’s seamless integration between their products means there are many ways to extend the standard functionality of Field Service. Utilise the Power Platform to easily build and deploy web & mobile apps with PowerApps, create workflows and automate tedious tasks with Flow and look deep into your data to make informed decisions with Power BI. Use Field Service alongside any of the other Dynamics 365 applications to extend the platform and get the end-to-end functionality your whole organisation needs with shared data and digital intelligence. Furthermore, take advantage of the latest technology with Microsoft’s Mixed Reality, allowing technicians to share what they see, pull in information and much more while staying heads-up, hands-free.
Analytics & Reporting
Learn from your data to understand your performance in-depth and make data-backed decisions to improve your operations. Build dashboards & reports of many different aspects of your business from sales, supply chain, technician performance, inventory, scheduling and so much more, utilising all the data you create to get real-time visibility into your business. Get the overall picture or drill-down into the specifics thanks to interactive visualisations that are easy to create thanks to a user-friendly interface. Even use predictive analytics capabilities to learn from your data and get an accurate estimate of what’s going to happen in the future.
Mobile Accessibility
When working out in the field, an internet connection isn’t always guaranteed, but luckily when working with Field Service you can use native mobile applications to access both real-time and offline data, helping gain visibility into customer information, improve field processes and increase productivity.
Workers can access a dynamic calendar which contains all the work order details including customer and case history, product configurations, parts information, pricing and more. When travelling to and from appointments technicians get turn-by-turn directions to ensure they take the best route and when at appointments capture client signatures, generate invoices, collect payments and use customer surveys to get feedback allowing you to continually improve your operation.
Inventory Management
In-built inventory management allows you to take control of your inventory and stock history for any type of location from warehouses & depots down to truck level. Effectively forecast your resource & inventory requirements and take advantage of both bulk and just-in-time ordering. Real-time updates ensure that your inventory is always accurate helping you better track your service stock for fewer write-offs.
How is Field Service licensed & priced?
You can purchase licenses for Field Service either as a standalone application or in a Dynamics 365 plan. As a standalone application, Field Service licenses cost £71.60 per user/month. The first plan containing Field Service is the customer engagement plan which costs £86.70 per user/month. The customer engagement plan also contains the Sales, Customer Service, Project Service Automation and Marketing modules of Dynamics 365. The final option is the Dynamics 365 plan, costing £158.40 per user/month and containing every module of Dynamics 365.
We hope this blog post has given insight into what Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service does and how it can be used by your organisation to streamline and improve the way you provide services to your customers. If you would like to learn more about Field Service please visit our webpage or alternatively, give us a call on 01908508080 or email us at [email protected] for a no-obligation chat about your requirements.
