Deep Dive into D365: Field Service
Continuing our journey taking a close look at Microsoft Dynamics 365, this Deep Dive into D365 concentrates on Dynamics 365 Field Service, exploring some of its core features and business benefits.
With insight from Tisski’s Dynamics 365 Consultant, Daniel Zeng, we’ll discuss why Field Service is a strong contender for organisations looking to deliver on-site service at customer headquarters and help field-based team members improve their productivity.
Main features
Work order management
- At the heart of Dynamics 365 Field Service lies work order management; each work order details what needs to be done and is used as a basis to coordinate and schedule resources and activities.
- From installations and repairs to preventive maintenance, this can all be tracked and while creating a work order from scratch can be time-consuming, there are some shortcuts, like using ‘incident type’ as a template to automatically generate work orders and invoices with predefined details, frequency and date ranges.
Mobility
- While keeping track of workers on location poses a challenge for organisations, it can also be difficult for team members working afield to stay informed and maximise their productivity. That’s where Field Service Mobile comes in.
- A cross-platform mobile application, field technicians can use Field Service Mobile to check their daily schedule, get directions to their appointments and complete their work orders at customer sites.
- As they start and finish tasks, technicians can update the work order status, capture photos and take signatures; this information will be visible to those back in the office, and can help with closing work and billing.
Inventory management
- Field Service’s inventory functionality offers an effective way to manage products and parts related to activities that happen during site visits.
- Employees can track which parts are going out during a service call and ensure their replacement, as well as making updated for adjustments and transfers (for example, if a product used was returned or was shipped to a different warehouse).
- You can also create purchase orders to fulfil inventory requirements. Once a purchase order is created, you can track how the order is shipped, with the system also allowing you to specify any shipping methods your company uses.
360-degree customer view
- As part of the Dynamics 365 stack, Field Service benefits from seamless integration with the Customer Service, Sales and Marketing applications – this ensures ease of access to information and simplifies the management of follow-up work.
- It also enables your organisation to take advantage of upselling and cross-selling opportunities, with the potential to increase revenue.
Underrated feature
Asset hierarchy and location
- Both assets and locations can be complex and have hierarchical models, so it’s important that technicians find the asset quickly and easily when visiting customer sites.
- With this feature, you can model your customers’ asset location, pinpointing the location of an asset within a physical space so a technician can deliver faster and more efficient service.
Why Dynamics 365 Field Service?
With all the functionality listed above and more, it’s not hard to see why Field Service should be your go-to software for all things field service. According to Tisski Dynamics 365 Consultant, Daniel: “D365 Field Service is a complete field service management software, and flexible in supporting organisations with various needs. This allows the users to optimise resources and the desired workflows to improve efficiencies and increase growth and revenue.
“Features such as agreements and incident types can assist with the automation of some data entry work when creating work orders; this leads to better user experience and improved productivity. Additionally, Field Service fits natively with the other D365 applications, so investing in Microsoft tech enables you to manage customers throughout their entire journey.”
Expert’s choice
“Manually keeping track of resources working the field isn’t an easy thing to do, but with Field Service scheduling functionality provided by Universal Resource Scheduling (URS), schedulers or dispatchers can quickly identify the team member that best suits a job by assessing their skills and experience, as well as taking their location and proximity to the customer base into account. My favourite Field Services feature would have to be Scheduling Board, where you can view resource location on a map, what tasks (or ‘orders’) they’ve been assigned to and how long the work will take in one single place. It’s efficient, convenient and allows for customisation, too.” Daniel Zeng
Senior Dynamics 365 Developer
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