Any organization is usually divided into two entities- Headquarter, and Field. At headquarters, the business functions are mostly long term policy making. However, the Field entities are responsible for executing those laid-down policies. This execution utilizes a company’s resources from on-the-route to the property of clients. Most often, the tasks before Field service management include- locating vehicles, managing work order, managing company and customer assets, scheduling and dispatching, facilitating mobility of and enacting collaboration among the workers in the Field, integrating customer billing and analytics among many others.
Managing such a heterogeneous tasks related to Field Service Operations is, indeed, a great challenge before the higher level managers who are responsible for furnishing them efficiently. Here comes the role of a software solution, such as- FSM (Field Service management) solution, that can handle these tasks automatically and eliminate human errors.
Now, thanks to the advances in cloud computing technologies, most of the contemporary business enterprises have thin headquarters and extensive field work locations. This inspires the inevitability of a cloud based system that can help the users in furnishing these field service related tasks.
Yes! That’s what we have Microsoft Dynamics for Field Service, a cloud based complete business solution, which incorporates numerous Field Service capabilities to help you reaching the followings goals:
1. It optimizes your service scheduling by rendering efficient routing, resource skill matching, and reduced travel time.
2. It helps the users in increasing the first time fix rates and on-time delivery performance.
3. It boosts up the real-time communication and collaboration between the entities, such as- customer service, dispatch, field agents, and customers.
Capabilities:
In order to achieve these business goals, Dynamics 365 for Field service has been equipped with the following capabilities:
1. Work order management
The core task of the field service is the generating work orders quickly, which would encompass all the necessary information needed to dispatch field agents to service locations. This module contains all the tools which are required to schedule, assign, track, and complete a job.
2. Schedule board and dispatch
This solution provides for a flexible drag-and-drop schedule board which allows the dispatch users to assign essential resources and also to set up schedules for multiple work orders using a list or map view.
3. Resource management
This module helps you to configure resource information, and thus allows Field Service users to efficiently match the best field agent to a work order based on availability, proximity to service location, and required skills.
4. Service locations and customer assets
This enables the users to store and manage information about the customers’ service locations and serviceable customer assets.
5. Preventative maintenance
Some of the tasks are preventive in nature, such as keep maintaining the equipment to be used by customers, much before any issue occur. This module helps you here by automatically generating the work orders to furnish these on time.
6. Inventory management
You can extend the Dynamics 365 product catalog with an inventory management system. This helps the users in real-time tracking inventory levels at warehouses, stores, also at mobile trucks.
7. Customer billing
This module helps in converting the completed the work orders into customer invoices, which are to be sent for customer billing.
8. Mobile app
Yes! This solution Dynamics 365 for Field service is available as the mobile app. Thus, it helps the field workers in executing the work orders by enabling a quick and easy access to everything they need, such as- schedule information, customer contact information, turn by directions, and more.
View user accounts and security roles (Field Service)
Microsoft Dynamics 365 enables you to create various types of user accounts and corresponding security roles. Here, security roles define which entities a user can view as well as how they can interact with those entities. Further, Field security profiles define which fields a user can see. As an example, a user may have permission to see accounts but not to see specific fields for an account.
Here is the complete overview of the Field Service that is described in terms of four predefined security roles and field security profiles:
| S. No. | Security roles | Field Security profiles |
| 1. | Field Service Administrator | Generally assigned to key people within the organization who need access to the Administration tile. Global access to all Field Service entities. |
| 2. | Field Service Dispatcher | Generally people in the organization who are responsible for scheduling and need to manage resources and work orders. |
| 3. | Field Service Resource | Generally people within the organization who will access Field Service from a mobile device. |
| 4. | Field Service Inventory Purchase | Generally people within the organization who are responsible for inventory, purchase orders, RMAs, and RTVs. |
In a nutshell, Microsoft dynamics 365 comes to you with a great competitive advantage leading towards being at the performers by making the Field Service efficient and effective.
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