Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service
The work happens on site.
So should the record of it.
Dynamics 365 Field Service connects the request, the schedule, the engineer, the parts and the invoice, so a completed job stops being something the office reconstructs afterwards. It works when the mobile experience is short enough that engineers actually finish it.
Microsoft partner delivering Dynamics 365 Field Service implementation and optimisation in the UK.
Overview
What is Dynamics 365 Field Service?
The application for work that has to be done somewhere else: work orders, scheduling, mobile capture, parts, assets and maintenance agreements, on the same platform as sales and service.
Field Service
Work orders and scheduling
Jobs, engineers, parts, assets and completion evidence in one flow.
Work away from the office
Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Where the request starts
Cases, service levels and the history behind the visit.
Business Central
Parts, stock and billing
Where consumed parts and completed work become cost and invoice.
Get the schedule board honest before automating it.
Optimisation built on wrong job durations simply gets to the wrong answer faster.
Sound familiar?
The engineers are not the constraint.
The constraint is usually that the schedule, the parts and the paperwork are three separate systems, one of which is a person who has been there for twenty years.
The schedule lives on a whiteboard
Jobs are allocated by a person who holds the whole plan in their head, and nobody else can cover it.
Engineers arrive without the part
A second visit is booked because van stock and job requirements were never checked against each other.
Paperwork comes back days later
Job sheets are typed up afterwards, so invoicing waits and details get lost on the way.
Nobody can tell the customer when
The office promises a morning slot, then spends the morning ringing the engineer to find out.
Contract profitability is a guess
Labour, travel and parts are recorded separately, so nobody knows which contracts actually earn money.
Benefits
What changes when the job carries its own record
The practical differences service directors tell us they noticed once field work and the back office were part of the same flow.
Industries
Field work is organised differently in every sector.
Choose a sector to see the process the system has to support, what it is worth when it holds together, and what we bring to it.
Manufacturing example
- 1
Install
- 2
Agreement
- 3
Planned visit
- 4
Breakdown
- 5
Parts
- 6
Renewal
Service is treated as an aftersales cost centre, so the installed base is not managed and the recurring revenue is under-collected.
What it is worth
- A managed installed base rather than a list of past sales
- Planned maintenance revenue actually invoiced
- Fault patterns fed back to engineering
With InteliSense as partner
- Service and ERP designed as one flow, not two projects
- Serial and warranty data cleaned before it is relied on
- Straight advice when standard capability is enough
How it works
Follow the job from request to invoice.
Field Service connects the work around the same customer, asset, part and pricing information the rest of the business relies on.
- 1Request
- 2Work order
- 3Schedule
- 4On site
- 5Complete
- 6Invoice
The job carries what needs doing, on which asset, with which parts and skills, so the person who arrives knows what completion looks like.
Dispatchers see availability, location and skill together, with optimisation available where the volume justifies it rather than as a default.
Engineers capture what happened while they are still on site, including in poor signal, which is the difference between real data and reconstructed data.
Service history sits against the equipment, so recurring faults, warranty position and replacement conversations are evidenced rather than remembered.
Parts used on a job reduce van stock and trigger replenishment, which keeps first-time fix rates honest and stock write-offs down.
Maintenance agreements generate the visits and the invoices they should, so planned work is not something someone has to remember to raise.
Recorded time feeds both payroll inputs and job costing, which is what makes contract profitability a fact rather than an argument.
A small set of measures that field managers act on weekly, rather than a dashboard built to impress at go-live.
Customer experience
Customers describing what we are like to work with.
The strongest evidence of how we work comes from the organisations we work with.
80%
of our business comes from existing customers and referrals.
The best I’ve ever experienced in over 20 years of collaboration.
Programme Manager, Hill & Smith Plc
These are relationship and delivery stories, not scope or timescale claims. Nothing in them should be read as a promise about what your implementation would cost or how long it would take.
Before you call
The questions service directors ask us first.
A conversation, not a demo
Start with a day in the life of an engineer.
Tell us how jobs are raised, scheduled, completed and billed today. We will tell you what Field Service would change, where Business Central service capability may be enough, and what the first sensible step is.