Dynamics 365 Field Service is a cloud software solution designed specifically to support organisations with field-based teams who work at customer locations. The solution enables organisations to manage customers, agreements, inventory, assets, resources and work order processing and completion. Dynamics 365 Field Service includes a mobile app to allow your field team to complete their work regardless of where they are, empowering your team to work remotely without the need for costly and cumbersome paper-based process.
3.7% of waste in the UK is made up of paper and cardboard wastes*, with Scottish businesses alone generating 417,714 tonnes of paper and cardboard waste in 2018**. With rising concerns about the environmental impact of businesses, and the UK government committed to achieving net zero by 2050 many organisations are focusing efforts to reduce their waste production. The implementation of a digital solution like Dynamics 365 Field Service can significantly reduce your organisation’s use of paper by empowering field teams to work remotely using mobile or tablet devices to see and capture relevant information related to jobs/visits.
Customer Experience:
Delivering a standout customer experience is a great way to differentiate your business from your competition and help you to better compete with industry rivals. Dynamics 365 Field Service can equip your team with the tools they need to exceed customer expectations; use D365 Field Service to provide visibility of upcoming work to ensure you can plan your resourcing accordingly to reduce missed SLAs, take advantage of Dynamics 365 Customer Voice capabilities to capture feedback from your customers so that you can continually improve and use IoT alerts to identify and resolve issues with customer equipment before it becomes a problem. Plus, with Field Service Portals you can provide your customers with the self-service capabilities they need to raise work orders, track visits and provide feedback, anytime, anywhere.
Central view of the customer:
In organisations with field-based teams there can be lots of interactions happening with customers; dispatchers notifying them of planned visit dates, field team members having on site discussions with them, finance chasing invoices and sales trying to secure new deals just as a few examples. Having a field service system which can provide you with a central view of your customer empowers you and your organisation with the information you need to increase customer retention and understand your customer base. Understanding your customer’s current situation before arriving on site gives your field team the best chance at success, being aware of recent breakdowns or customer satisfaction survey results means your team can approach your customer in the most appropriate way and be prepared to answer questions from the customer related to other open items they may have, even if this is just knowing to direct them to. Sharing this information with your front-line workers gives them the knowledge they need to support your customers and deliver a great experience. On top of this, by digitising your processes and the data that comes with them, you can use analytics to better understand your customer base, not only helping you to retain existing customers but also helping you to define personas to find new business.
Improve business agility, respond faster to high priority jobs:
D365 Field Service is packed with functionality to improve the efficiency of your field service organisation and to make sure you can always respond quickly to high priority work orders. Use D365 Resource Schedule Optimisation to define prioritisation rules and automate resource scheduling, assigning visits to field workers with focus on reducing travel time, ensuring workers have the necessary skills, dealing with high priority work first and maximising working hours. IoT capabilities notify you of equipment issues, so that you can dispatch workers quickly to perform repairs, rather than waiting for the customer to notify you of a problem. Finally, empower field workers to perform first time fixes when responding to jobs by using knowledge base articles to access information to support their work and help them to diagnose issues that they might encounter whilst on site, knowledge base articles could be user guides, how to videos or diagrams which help your team to complete the job.
Rich data capture:
Field teams recording visit information on paper forms are often restricted with what visit information they can capture, having small boxes on paper forms to record notes and having to send emails with attachments of pictures they have taken. Using Dynamics 365 Field Service, you can stop worrying about losing the post it notes that were stuck on to your job sheets! With the Field Service mobile app, field workers can not only capture additional notes but also rich data such as before and after images of work completed, attach digital documents provided by the customer and create voice notes detailing the work they’ve done or with information to pass on to their colleagues. Field Workers can even sketch diagrams in the app. All this rich data which has been captured can be easily accessed from the work order so any field team member can pick up the job with all the information they need.
Data protection & auditing:
Following the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becoming enforceable in May 2018 businesses are more responsible than ever for ensuring data protection of personally identifiable information. Systemising your data with Dynamics 365 Field Service helps you to keep track of customer data and more easily implement data retention policies. Having Dynamics 365 Field Service as a system of record, centrally storing your customer and work order information supports you in complying with data regulations and internal data policies by ensuring you always have access to the latest version of data.
Automation:
Automating your business processes with Dynamics 365 Field Service means your team can spend less time doing repetitive manual work and more time completing work orders. The opportunities to automate are endless but could include; automating resource scheduling with Resource Schedule Optimisation so that your workforce is allocated jobs efficiently, automating documents which need to be created and sent such as customer visit summary documents or consignment note documents, sending feedback surveys following a visit, and notifying account managers of negative feedback or issues raised.
Close the feedback loop:
Field service organisations striving for continuous improvement often place key focus on closing the feedback loop, as field workers spend time at customer site they are often given feedback by those customers which can be used to improve customer satisfaction and increase retention rates. The challenge with paper based processes is how you capture that feedback and make sure key personnel are notified of it. With D365 Field Service we can use the Microsoft Power Platform to close the feedback loop. Capturing feedback using Customer Voice surveys, either completed on the field worker’s device or sent to the customer via email or SMS after the visit. Using Power Automate to notify key personnel of feedback, ensuring it reaches the right people in a timely manner. Gain insights using Power BI to analyse KPIs and metrics to understand current performance and areas for improvements. Take advantage of the highly configurable D365 Field Service to tweak processes and implement improvements. Finally, use either out of the box Outlook integration or D365 Marketing functionality to communicate these improvements to your customers to let them know their feedback is valued and that you are improving the service they receive.
*https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/
**https://www.sepa.org.uk/environment