Service X-Factor
Service X-Factor is the podcast where service operations (such as field service and customer service) stops being a cost center and starts being a competitive advantage. Hosted by Microsoft MVPs Scott LeFante and William McLendon, this show reveals the secret ingredients behind service operations success—transforming chaos into clarity and strategy into profits.
Service X-Factor
Beyond Dispatching: The Hidden Power of Modern Field Service
Welcome to the premiere episode of the Service X Factor podcast, where we dive deep into the transformative power of modern field service technology!
Microsoft Global Black Belts Michelle Albright and David Humphreys join hosts Scott LeFante and William McLendon to unpack the evolution and future of field service. With over 42 years in the industry, David shares how field service has progressed from an era without mobile devices to today's AI-powered solutions, while Michelle offers invaluable insights on implementation success strategies.
The conversation explores a fundamental misconception – that field service is "just dispatching." Our experts reveal how it encompasses comprehensive work intake management, preventive maintenance, inventory control, and frontline worker enablement applicable across every industry from healthcare to manufacturing. They highlight often-overlooked features that deliver exceptional value, including IoT alerts that detect equipment failures before they happen and incident types that standardize service operations for better planning.
Copilot emerges as the game-changing force in field service, revolutionizing how technicians work by automating documentation, providing critical information in context, and even enabling voice-controlled inspections. Looking toward 2025, our experts preview exciting developments including deeper integration between field service and project operations that will create seamless workflows for complex service scenarios.
The panel also addresses critical challenges in service transformation – from managing the retirement of experienced technicians and their institutional knowledge to overcoming resistance to change. Their advice for organizations at any stage of their field service journey? Start small, focus on business value rather than cost, and leverage the increasingly powerful capabilities that make today's field service platforms true revenue engines.
This episode establishes why field service has become the strategic differentiator for forward-thinking organizations. Subscribe now to discover your organization's service X-Factor!
Hey there and welcome to the Service X Factor podcast. I'm Scott LaFonte, seven-time Microsoft MVP and field service strategist at CongruentX, and your guide for today's episode On this show. My co-host, fellow Microsoft MVP and service innovation guru, will McClendon, and I will spotlight the people, platforms and ideas that transform service teams from cost centers into revenue powerhouses. Each episode will unpack real-world wins, hard-learned lessons and the emergent tech reshaping the front lines Think AI, co-pilots, predictive analytics and everything in between. So grab your coffee, settle in and let's discover your organization's X-Factor together. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon, good morning, good evening everyone. This is Scott LaFonte, co-host with Mr William McClendon on our Service X-Factor podcast and our inaugural event. Well and we have to kick that off. We have actually two special guests. I'll let you introduce them, since you're the MVP here.
Speaker 4:I thought we were all MVPs right. Well, we are.
Speaker 2:It depends on your definition of MVP.
Speaker 4:So I'm going to introduce these folks because they are all MVPs in our communities, at least in my book, right. First and foremost, I want to introduce you to Michelle Albright, and Michelle is just flat out amazing and knows field service in and out and amongst other things as well. So, michelle, I'll introduce you.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm Michelle Albright. I'm a GBB which is known as a global black belt at Microsoft. I'm a GBB which is known as a global black belt at Microsoft. Think of us as David is my co-worker. We're actually on the same team, report to the same manager, but so we are considered like subject matter experts, so especially in field service, but I also know project operations and customer service, so kind of like service all up, right, right, excellent, and I'm looking forward to introducing Dave Humphreys.
Speaker 4:Just so you guys know, dave knows more about this product, or has forgotten more about this product than all of us know combined. This man is a genius and I have nothing but the utmost respect for this man's wealth of knowledge. Dave, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell them who you are, buddy.
Speaker 5:Thanks, William. Yeah, I don't know if I'm a genius or if I just have been around a really long time, but yeah, I'm David Humphries and I'm also a Global Black Belt, along with Michelle at Microsoft. I've been with this product since 2014, and I've been in the field service software business since 1982. So it's at 42 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, that's awesome, so we're going to have some good fun with you. David, since you've probably seen, this industry and the products that support the various industries that use it changed so much over the last 40 years I mean even since 2014 with Field 1, right, I mean, that's when I got my sort of wings clipped here, but, yeah, things have dramatically changed.
Speaker 5:So they really have. I mean, back in the early days there wasn't a mobile device, there wasn't even a cell phone, so you couldn't even call for help. So it's quite different.
Speaker 2:Everyone listening is probably like wait, no cell phones. How did you guys talk? What did you do? You had those rotary phones. Yeah, we had some of those.
Speaker 3:I had a job where I traveled when I was young, like in my like mid-20s and um, and I was. I was literally like landing, and this is before cell phones, or I mean well, you had cell phones but not smartphones and I remember having to print out map quests. I print out like how to get from the airport to the hotel, from the hotel to the customer, customer back to the airport. And if you got lost at one o'clock in the morning, you just crossed your fingers and pray to god. That one to the hotel, from the hotel to the customer, customer back to the airport. And if you got lost at one o'clock in the morning, you just crossed your fingers and pray to God that one. There was a gas station open somewhere, and this is that like me at 25. So you know I'm. I cannot believe I haven't been murdered or some. I can't believe I'm still alive in here to tell the story. So anyways, Well, we're.
Speaker 2:We're glad you're still here, michelle. Well, we're glad you're still here, Michelle 100%. So what got? And I'll pose this to both of you I mean, what got you into the field service space? I mean, how did you get started? And then how did you know like, hey, this is a really cool area to be in, this is what I want to do. So I don't know. Michelle, if you want to go ahead and start out.
Speaker 3:I'll start because it's kind of because of David, but not really it's sort of connected. So I was working for a partner. So prior to Microsoft I've been with Microsoft. I'm going on nine years. Prior to Microsoft I was with Hitachi.
Speaker 3:I was with Avanade and then Hitachi, and at Hitachi they were very industry specific and so Martin was in charge of manufacturing and I was. This is when it was called not Dynamics but just CRM and we had service, customer service, service and then sales and the service piece was horrible. It was like basically marketing service. But so I was helping out, I was working with our developers and whatnot to build out, because we there was no concept of a work order in in, in crm, there was no assets, there was none of that. So I was literally working with the developers to create this.
Speaker 3:These were all this stuff, you know, these solutions for Hitachi to resell to these manufacturing companies. And then all of a sudden they're like stop, stop it, michelle, stop doing what you're doing, because Microsoft just bought FieldOne and it has all the stuff that you're doing right now already built. I was like, oh, so I attended the first. I remember because I attended the first Microsoft slash field one training ever. I was there, attended that and learned and you know. And then from that point on I just became the field service expert at Hitachi and then it kind of again rolled over to when I just loved it, I just thought it was such a great product and it's just improved since then. So then that rolled over into Microsoft world.
Speaker 5:So, yeah, awesome, yeah, I got into field service because I was going to be a famous musician and I gave that a really good shot. I got pretty close and you know.
Speaker 3:What was that show you were on, David? What show were you on again American.
Speaker 5:Bandstand, american Bandstand, yeah, with a guy named Paul Davis back in the 70s. But anyways, that career didn't pan out. So I went back to school and got my degree in computer science and while I was in school I started working for a company that did medical billing software, so for doctors and dentists, and we did, you know, the system at the front desk and we did the thing that turned their CPT codes into insurance filings and all that kind of stuff, and so that was kind of a software. But I was also the tech guy, so whenever there was a problem in the doctor's office I would go out and I would fix the problem. So I kind of, you know, learned field service in that respect as well as computers, and so those two careers kind of joined together then about 1982, and I got fully into the software business and the rest is history and um rest is history.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was gonna say well, you know what we'll have to have, maybe on uh an episode. Have you sing one of your songs, or? Or you know whether that was it an instrument? Were you singing, was it?
Speaker 5:I would I played guitar um if he would take off, if he would if he would allow his background to show.
Speaker 3:He has like 20 guitars hanging on his wall he has to make our intro music.
Speaker 4:That's what we got it. That's what he has to do.
Speaker 5:You have to make our intro song dave, like you have to yeah, I'm not a singer, so it'll be an instrumental.
Speaker 2:But that's fine. Instrumental's good. Love it.
Speaker 4:That is awesome so you guys both talked about your journeys into field service. You know, dave, you started back in 82. Michelle, you started when the acquired field one. So you guys seen it grow from this to this massive behemoth that it is now. Question what makes you excited about 2025 for field service?
Speaker 3:Should we say the word that we're probably going to repeat about 100 more times during this uh podcast?
Speaker 4:yeah, you see, there's no it's, it's no, there's no wrong answer. It's what makes you excited. So, like I mean, I go for it. We all know what it's going to do. Go be so, go for it copilot, copilot, copilot, copilot.
Speaker 3:There. I already got a guide done 10 times.
Speaker 2:We only have 90 more to go. It's like. It's like beetle juice, right yeah, you right.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know, it really is like Beetlejuice. It just it's exploding and it's in everything we do these days, and not just for Microsoft. But you know, it's taking over the market and the frontline worker is one of the areas that benefits the most from a lot of these capabilities.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's not just you bring up a good point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's cool because it's not just the co-pilot features that they're having that are just built into field service. One of the examples is the work order summary piece. When you're done with the work order, instead of the technician having to sit in his or her car and write everything up, they could just hit summary and it'll take all the tasks completed, all the products you use. You know, so that's great. So that's just part of the license, but in addition to that, they're doing all these. You know you guys have even mentioned a lot of these partners and you know product team. They're building these agents through Copilot Studio. So it's not so it's not like this stuff built into field service, but that it's like, well, we want to customize it, we want to pull from here and pull from there and do this and do that. Well, you can, because you can build these agents who will do that? You know these Copilot agents. There are fields that are specific, but you know, so that's, you know, that's cool too.
Speaker 5:I think what always used to make you know a service technician or you know really anybody who goes outside of their four walls to service a customer. You know it was so tedious because you had information everywhere and trying to find the information you needed to fix the problem, what part it needs to be used, what are the steps to do it. You know what do I have to report on from a regulatory perspective? All those things were spread everywhere and you know, in today's world the biggest thing that's changing is it doesn't matter where that is. You can, you know, access it all. You can summarize it right within the context of that technician's phone or device out in the field and summarize what he needs to do and summarize what he did based on his voice commands. There's just so much power in what's coming and it's really changing the way people work.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's definitely changing just the way that I work, because I can't even imagine, I mean right, a year maybe, you know, a couple years ago, right, when we were all talking, a co-pilot's coming, it's here, it's kind of it was in its infancy state and learning it and it was like, ah, this is really cool. I could see the potential here and now, you know, not just in field service, right, while we're building demos or building cool innovation, but just in general using AI for day-to-day tasks, right. I mean there's, you know, like, if I get a huge document from somebody, I'm putting that into Copilot. I'm saying, can you summarize this for me? I don't have time to go through you know 40 pages and then I can ask it. You know additional questions. I mean it's just like having a conversation with somebody.
Speaker 3:I can't imagine life without ai now, which is kind of scary well, even, yeah, I mean, like I said, even outside of field service, like, for example, we have to do microsoft, we do uh connects, which is our reviews. You know our yearly reviews and I, you know, I keep everything and I keep everything in a one note. But is our reviews? You know our yearly reviews and I, you know, I keep everything in. I keep everything in a one note. But then I literally said, you know, please, you know I took all my. You know I did a summary. So, okay, this is what I did for this customer. And then I said, take this and co-pilot, make it professional for my year end review and put it into these four buckets and it it makes me look so smart and I'm just not that smart, but it made me look really, really smart and I, I'm a horrible. I cannot write. I'm a horrible when it comes to like ink, like writing emails and writing papers. I, I was horrible at that.
Speaker 4:Now I look like, you know, I went to harvard, so it's awesome, you get your phd at harvard, love it one thing I really appreciate that microsoft hit the nail on the head with and again I'll give credit where credit is due is for us who work on the technical aspect of it. We know that there's a distinction between AI and automation, like it's clear as day for us. You know there's a line studio, kind of marrying the two but yet keeping it so separate, separative, but giving the customer this wonderful experience man, they hit the nail on the head and being able to incorporate it to any work stream. Right, so it can be field service, customer service. It can just be a regular power app. I mean, they hit the nail on the head. I think that's where they're really going to excel for 2025. I just nothing but good things that come out of it. Like Scott said, when we first saw PVA, we were like, okay, that's cute, nobody's going to adopt it. Now we look at Copilot Studio, we're like man, we're literally you know.
Speaker 5:Every time I go in it's changing.
Speaker 2:Every time I go in there's something new and exciting to do.
Speaker 5:But just to get clarity around, you know what PVA is and what Copilot is. We now have terms at Microsoft. We have Copilot, which is an assisted guide that walks you through, you can ask questions of, or it can present back analytical information, or it can compile information across multiple sources. And then we have agents, which are those more autonomous things that run for you in the background and do a lot of those tasks that have been so tedious for humans to do for so long. It's all that type of stuff. So we have co-pilots and we have agents. Now.
Speaker 2:And that's a great distinction, because I hear all the time from customers and prospects well, what's the difference between co? You know, I hear co-pilot and I hear agents. And so I think, david, your definition was spot on, because I think that's going to help a lot of people to say, oh, okay, that's the difference.
Speaker 5:Now I, now I get it yeah, and if you take a co-pilot in co-pilot studio and tell it what you want it to do, it'll create that agent for you using a co-pilot. So I mean it's like getting better and better and better and doing a lot of things to help really across the board in technology. Whatever your role is, you're getting touched by a, you know, co-pilot or AI agent in some form.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 4:So I'm going to go back to field service. I'm just being nosy. So when I first started field service and aggravating Ben and you know, you know, dave and then, and then we only bring his name up three times. I think it's co-pilot. Then to talk about Ben in this one? No, no, we only bring his name up three times.
Speaker 2:We're going to cut that part out.
Speaker 4:I think it's co-pilot. Then we talk about Ben and then we talk about some more of the product, right? No, but I remember going to the conferences and talking and asking you guys and learning about CRM was a little bit hard to grasp. But then for me, someone simplified and they said field service is just dispatching. I'm being nosy now. When was your moment when you realized, okay, this is so much more than just dispatching technicians. What is it that you're seeing in the market, instead of seeing the market, that makes it greater than just dispatching?
Speaker 5:Well, I think in my case you know that was never really true. You know, field service was always greater than just dispatching and field service originally was part of an ERP solution. So it was managing, you know, the work intake. It was managing, you know, the parts, inventories, it was managing your contract terms with your customers on, you know, maybe a rate card or SLA or you know those kinds of things. And then it was also preventive maintenance and then the dispatching came as part of you know, trying to get all of that scheduled. So dispatch is kind of in the middle, so maybe it's the core. But you know there was always that front end of things as well. That again, typically lived in ERP until about maybe 10 years ago. And then on the back end you've got that frontline worker guy who's outside of your building and needs to connect to get information, and you know that's kind of evolved as well. But that dispatching is in the center of all of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, michelle, to a specific industry. So we have people from federal, from healthcare, from retail, from manufacturing asking us to do demos, and it's to me it's anytime. And I remember a couple of times the retail was like oh, retail doesn't need retail especially, and also healthcare doesn't need field service. I'm like you schedule doctors and patients right, you're scheduling stuff. And then, with retail, you're building a new I don't know. You know fast food restaurant. You're having to install the grills and you're having to install the. You know the point of sale systems and you're having to.
Speaker 3:You know I'm like that's, you know that's a war corner Anytime. You know like delivery service. You know like a big, like a big Home Depot or Lowe's, you're delivering the refrigerator. I'm like that's all anything where you have it scheduled. So I know that is dispatching too, but anytime, think of scheduling as a whole.
Speaker 3:And then again, the big part I think which differentiates us from other people is, like David said, the field service, mobile app, the frontline workers to make their life easier, and we see a lot of that coming out on the roadmap and whatnot, on how the product team is really trying to make it easier for those technicians to get things done Instead of having to take an hour someplace, they might be able to get it done in 45 minutes Only because they're not having to type things or write things down or things of that nature. So it is. I mean, I've had some people come up with some funky use cases. I'm like, yeah, that would work, you know. So, you know, because again, it's scheduling. You know it's scheduling and it's like it's frontline workers and it's the preventive maintenance, it's, it's all that.
Speaker 4:So yeah.
Speaker 3:And I can't think of one industry that doesn't need some sort of field service. Not one. There's not one industry.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm with you, Michelle. Like when I, when I, when I got into the product, I was like this is so much more than just scheduling. And I was. And then I want to correct myself just to make sure I didn't sound like I thought I think it's only scheduling. That's not what I was thinking. It was initially. When I was like explaining to me, somebody just said, hey, it's scheduling, and I'm like okay, and then I got into it. I'm like there's so much more to it. To your point, Scott, you and Sean and, um, those folks you know, you guys, you know, helped me to understand when I first started. You can do asset maintenance, asset servicing, you can do work order management, all the things that Michelle brought up. I mean, there isn't an industry that really wouldn't benefit from the product itself. So once you just get your hands in it, you understand it's huge, it's huge.
Speaker 2:And there's so much power, right? So right now we're building a new demo environment at Congro and X for field service, and I'm doing it for a specific industry use case at the moment. But all of the different demo data that goes in, you don't even think about it, right? How robust the tool has become warranties, trades, not to exceed all these different features, insurance coverage and, okay, some of it. You sit there and say, well, it's basic, okay, but it's there to be configured, right and david.
Speaker 2:You and I have spoken about this time and time again when I've come up with ideas on on how to, you know, extend. You know things around. Cut, say, for example, customer assets. Well, it's the same sort of concept, right, if you're doing insurance coverage well, is that insurance on the actual account? Is it on the assets? It's the same sort of concept, right, if you're doing insurance coverage well, is that insurance on the actual account or is it on the assets? It's probably on. You know, there's so many different ways to look at it and how does that impact? You know the billable. There's a dog barking the billable aspect of, you know, of a work order you know of a work order.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yep, yeah, I mean, you know the makeup of a work order can be as basic or as detailed as you want it to be. So in the early days of field service, you know a lot of the functionality. There wasn't a lot of functionality, it was just a basic. Here's what needs to be done. Here's the description of the problem. Here's a problem, a cause and a repair code. And you know, go complete that work and then give me what problem cause and repair code you used.
Speaker 5:And you know the key for selling a lot of these solutions was oh, we have this vast list of problem codes for this industry or that industry and what the repair codes are and what the billing rate should be and those kinds of things. But then that got very restrictive because when you wanted to go outside of those particular codes or new problems have started to arise, you know you didn't have that in there any longer. So that's where more systems became. Let's provide functionality and let you create your own data to support things like problem cause and repair or, in our case, incident type products and services. You know those are things you can set up and you can import and you can configure the way you want them to be so that you get the result you want, and it the application, because it has all this various functionality, now fits for a lot of different industries if you put your own data in there, so for those things.
Speaker 2:So yeah, no, that's. That's exactly the messaging that I always tell everyone, because everyone needs to come up. If you remember, you know, back in the day there was, there were different industry verticals being built. I mean, right, there's some for sustainability and things of that nature, and so everyone's like, well, how come there's nothing there for field service? It's like you have to have that conversation to understand all the different nuances between one industry and the other. There are similarities, but there's a lot of different nuances, even within that same industry. It's really hard to then build a vertical for, say, healthcare, because healthcare will do it a little bit differently. You're talking about home healthcare.
Speaker 3:You're talking about pharmaceuticals patients right yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:So it becomes this big, huge behemoth. But if you sit there and say, well, hey, we've got this base product that's robust enough and flexible enough for you to go do it in you know, healthcare over here, manufacturing and distribution over here, retail over here then you know there's not a whole lot out there. You sit there and it's like, wow, this is really flexible and on top of everything else that the platform has to offer, so it really becomes, you know, a very powerful tool and one that I always say configure wisely.
Speaker 5:Yep, start slow. I mean, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And you know and what I'm getting at is you don't need you know a million problem codes. You know you're never going to be able to sort through that and make any sense out of it, and the technicians aren't going to go search a list to pick the right one. So now your data starts to become garbage. Keep it simple, keep it focused and, you know, capture the information that's meaningful to your business and has a value to your business, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I see Will. I see Will. He's thinking. I see the smoke coming out of the ears.
Speaker 4:No, no, he's right. I'm like if they only did what Dave just preached, like if I can just copy this in our podcast and just repeat this for next hour, that would have made probably my first 10 engagements the easiest. I think we're so quick to go ahead.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say it goes back to one of my college professors. Kiss right, Keep it simple, stupid.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's. There's so much thought that's actually went into the product from the Microsoft side. You don't necessarily need to break it apart and destroy it in order to get it to work. A lot of configurability within it. So I have to be nosy, because this kind of bleeds us into our next topic. So core technology and strategy. So adoption is huge for me, as it is for most, as it is for most, and so I'm just curious to get your take, because, michelle and David, people come to you with complex problems and you're the ones that have to kind of break it down into smaller chunks and make it simpler. What have you seen as far as modernizing legacy old field service apps and what kind? Is holding your customers back from adopting D365 field service? Is there resistance to change issues around licensing, integration hurdles? What is the common issue that you've seen and how do you overcome that?
Speaker 5:Well, you know, I try to look at things in terms of what value does it bring to the business, not how much does it cost, because you know if it brings you a huge amount of value in terms of revenue or customer satisfaction or meeting your KPIs, whatever it is, it's worth it at any price. You know, and you have to kind of weigh that. You know. Is it going to bring enough value to the business? So we try to point out the things that you know are going to be valuable.
Speaker 5:The biggest hurdle, I think right now is that people are a little bit afraid of AI and what does it mean in terms of you know how they change, the way they work and they're going to have to start to get on board because other people in their industry are doing it and it's going to start to leave them behind. And with a lot of those legacy systems, data was spread everywhere and data was hard to access. And the longer you wait to get into a more modern tool, the harder it's going to be to consolidate all that data into a particular place. Now I said at the top of the hour that we, you know, with these co-pilots and AI, you can really look at data anywhere, but the more places that is, the harder it is going to be to get your AI kind of tuned up properly. So make sure that you know you're looking at more modern tools that you know have the data you need or that's important to your business and you know can support that.
Speaker 5:What is that called?
Speaker 3:What's that phenomenon called? Right now, where you have a lot of these technicians, engineers et cetera, where they're looking to retire and a lot of it's not even a lot of it's in their head, not even in a database or on paper? What?
Speaker 5:is it Graveyarding Institutional knowledge?
Speaker 3:No but it's called, isn't it called graveyarding or something?
Speaker 5:I forget what it is yeah, I think something like that.
Speaker 3:Something like that. But yeah, I mean, I think.
Speaker 2:So many terms.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I'm dealing with a couple One is a bank and one is federal where I think it's going to be user adoption. And you see, though, these new CIOs, these new people coming in who really want to be innovated. But then you have the users who are like they're literally working on AS400s. They're 25, 6, 1, 2. And I'm like like what they're doing?
Speaker 3:But yet again you've got these CIOs coming in and these CTOs you know, who are like we need to get up with the times people. So I see again user adaption, so having having partners who come in and can really help with gap analysis and the difference between the two and just making it easy and making sure they test it out with not only the smart, the two, and just making it easy and making sure they test it out with not only the smart the people have been around for 20 years, but then the people who are only there for only been there for like a year, that's. I think that that's that's going to be one of the keys to getting people you know up to speed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see that a lot, that bridging that gap and sort of future-proofing their investment right and sort of like, hey, we got people like me that maybe only have 20 years, 15 years left in the workforce, but you have ones that are going to be right. All that knowledge needs to be somewhere and it can't be in my head and it can't be on some old antiquated system.
Speaker 5:And keep in mind too. For us in the software business, it's not just the knowledge. The technician has to do a job or a dispatcher has to get the right person assigned to the job, it's also the guy who customized the solution they've been using for the last 20 years is retiring out of the business. And now there's nobody out of the business. And now there's nobody to support the application. So they're getting it. Businesses are getting it from both sides, and now's the time to take action, or you know, you're going to be left behind.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah, I see that time and time again you know we go into a client and you sit there and say, well, let's take a look even at their field service implementation newer and their previous partner is gone. There's no documentation, there's a lot of customization, and you try to sit there and say, where do?
Speaker 3:we start.
Speaker 4:What is going on?
Speaker 2:Keep it PG-13. We'll keepg-13, but but you, you see it, even with newer systems. So to your point, right, you got these old, antiquated systems and and the folks that are supporting it are retiring what happens, right, what happens then? There's going to be no one around to support it. Yeah, and that's a big, big the.
Speaker 5:Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, david I was just going to say that's a big value of you know, some of these ai tools like co-pilot is here. We're making things easier and work more like the you. The worker works so that it's easy for them to follow and they don't need a whole lot of training for it.
Speaker 4:No, we appreciate that. But I've been thinking too, scott and dave and michelle, you know, before. As you guys know, I'm a proponent of measuring twice and cutting once before we actually take our first step. Part of that calculation for roi, and one of the factors we take into our calculation for roi, needs to be, you know, the technical debt and the risk of trying to support these old applications. Um, it's true, anyone can build a dotNET application and do all this fun stuff. But really, how do you determine the worth of bringing in a SaaS offering like the field service? What comes with it? All these things need to be taken into consideration before you say, okay, there's a cheaper option and you throw it out the window because it's not just cost to that point.
Speaker 4:So to your point, dave and Michelle. So I have a quick question. I'm going to be funny with it, all right. So, most overlooked field service capability. What is the most overlooked field service capability? So it can be something as simple as the asset hierarchy little widget. It can be the cool schedule board which I think is scheduling is outside of field service. We kind of throw them in there. So throwing out there with you guys, what is the most under or overlooked capability in field service interesting question or under that or under value.
Speaker 4:Yeah, under value, because you get a lot of bang with your buck buck with field service. Like there's a lot of bang with your buck with field service. There's a lot of little hidden nuggets there. Like I said, the asset hierarchy tool I mean that's a gnarly PCF control. I mean it is, and we've seen a lot of people in our community copy it and duplicate it. But let's give credit where credit was due. It was a beast of a tool before everyone else started copying it right. So you, it was a beast of a of a tool before everyone else started copying it right.
Speaker 3:Um, so you know which one do you think like was, like man, this is amazing. I think I still go back to iot alerts. I mean I it's just, it's amazing if, because it's so proactive yes you're not.
Speaker 3:You're not like, oh my god, the think of a grocery store, publix. We have Publix here in Florida. You know a Publix. You know, if one of their coolers goes down that has meat in it, they're losing probably millions of dollars of meat, you know, and somebody didn't catch it until they came in the next. They come in, you know 5 o'clock in the morning and there's, you know, and they smell the meat, the gross decayed meat.
Speaker 3:So the fact that you can have an IoT alert on that cooler that says, if it gets below 50, automatically send an alert, create a work order, and you can automate the whole process to where, before somebody knows that it's down, there's already a technician there at seven o'clock in the morning to fix it. You know, or oh, or even you know, it knows, oh, it should be 50 degrees, it's 51. Hmm, maybe we should do some preventive maintenance on that cooler. It's, you know it's, and it keeps on. It goes up a degree, like every day. So the fact that you know that that's still one of the coolest and I'm just shocked at them. I mean, I know there's some industries that IoT alerts don't make sense, but anything that has like a temperature control on it and you can lose millions of dollars. Get an IoT alert.
Speaker 4:Yeah, or even measuring humidity, Like come on, that was a real deal use case. That is 100%.
Speaker 5:Absolutely, and you know all kind of. In that same vein, I think mine is the use of the incident type properly. You know a lot of customers. Well, we don't want to have to think those up and everybody calls it something different. Well, you need to standardize so you can start to not only manage it but start to analyze it and determine. Okay, you know, this incident type we think takes, you know, 45 minutes, but it's really taking an hour. So now I've messed up my scheduling if I schedule 45 minutes and I'm losing the ability to make it on time to the next job.
Speaker 5:Knowing what tasks need to be done and what you know products should be in there helps you build better just-in-time inventory, and you know so by really utilizing that functionality around the incident type or a job template. And you know understanding. Oh well, we said it needs these three parts to do this maintenance procedure, but we're finding that it's really taking these five parts, so let's add those other two there. Now we will ensure we have them when we need them, and we know the technician will put them on his truck, and you know so. There's a tremendous amount of value in that, and if you think about what Michelle said so.
Speaker 5:Now we get an automatic work order created from an IoT alert. We know what is needed for that job, we know how long it's going to take, we know what skills are needed to get the job done. Now we can schedule it automatically and know that we're pretty accurate in getting the right person there with the right parts at the right time, and so it kind of closes that loop. And then you throw in analytics on top of that and say, okay, well, you know, we guessed wrong. That is not the correct configuration for that incident type or that type of job, so go in and fix it and let AI fix that for you and start to tune it up. So now you're getting better and better on your scheduling. You're getting better and better on your first-time fix rates. You're getting your customer satisfaction score up. You're starting to you know be able to add other services in and you know know when to upsell and when not to. So I mean it's a snowball. You know it really gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3:And I see those go ahead michelle, sorry to add david, because we all see, you know, there's a um, there's an instant type suggestion, which I mean people, I mean I, I'm so people just don't utilize that and they'll and they're like, how can we improve your productivity? And like because, and you know, and why would our, you know, why would we want our, our technicians to go through these tasks like, well, it's not just you know, not like, if you go through the tasks, that they add a new task or they say this task to them. Think of a software upgrade, something like, and a large piece of equipment and there was a, some kind of software that runs equipment and it used to only take them 15 minutes to do the upgrade. Now it's taking them like 30 because there's some extra thing. So that means that technician, on every job that has that incident type is running 15 minutes late because it's taking them 30 minutes to 15.
Speaker 3:And the incident type suggestion will come back and say hey, by the way, this past week you've had these five technicians take this one specific instant type, it's taking them an extra 15 minutes. Do you want to increase that? To be an extra fit, that one task to be an extra 15 minutes, and then so it will then schedule it appropriately from that point on so you can say, yeah, go ahead. And again, that's another ai feature, that that's been around for a while, that that, uh, it's a type suggestion that's been that's been around for a while, that that, uh, it's a type suggestion, that's been, that's been around for over a year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um and well, and think about. Think about this too. Right, we talked about the aging workforce and now you have this template that tells me the tasks, the steps that I need to do from a technician perspective. But I'm gonna flip it now and say the customer gets a bill, what did you do? Yeah, I want to see the list of everything that they did. That's what they're that. So those tasks come in, you know, twofold, and not just for the technician but also for the customer to say, oh wow, you know, I didn't realize it was that labor intensive with all these different things that you, you had to, you had to go and endure, to go ahead and get your refrigerator back up and running. So those are the types of things where it's value add on both sides.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and think of it in terms of maintenance. So I have a maintenance contract that says I'm going to do these things, but at the end of the year, when you're renegotiating your contract price, how do you prove you did all those things if you don't have them on the board? And there's one other thing I did want to bring up, because nobody is using this, and it used to be part of the core product and they took it out somewhere along the line and talked to engineering and they, oh yeah, you're right, let's we put it back in. It was very simple and it's the fact that when you close a booking or a visit to a customer, you close that it closes the work order. Well, that's configurable on your booking setup for completed and you can say just because I closed the booking, I don't have to close the work order. So if you think about that, now I can continue to calculate my first time fixed rates more accurately. I can keep from generating another work order for the same job because I had to go back a second time. I can start to do more analytics on it that are more accurate, provide you more value in how you're looking at your data and it's less confusing to the customer.
Speaker 5:The customer doesn't want two invoices for the same job. You had to go out there once and you built time and then you went out there again when you got the right part. They don't want two invoices, they want one invoice. So by having one work work order to my invoice, you've accomplished that. So there were a lot of inherent problems in not being able to close a visit or a booking, a schedule item, and leave the work order open. But nobody's using that feature and it's just a flag on your booking setup. So keep that in mind when you do implementations, because that super important. Um, I had a quite a few customers I think one of them or two of them were yours that came back and asked what, what this? Why is this? This is wrong because I I figured it was had to be williams no man, I'm not.
Speaker 4:I mean, look, I ain't gonna let pat me on the head. No, it probably was no, but those are those things. Honestly, I love how michelle and david are hitting on the nail on the head. Those are those things. Honestly, I love how Michelle and David are hitting on the nail on the head. Those are those, you know low effort, high impact items that you know can literally just change your entire entire process and you can see great rewards from that. I mean, that's just the beauty of the application that they built.
Speaker 4:And seriously, you mentioned it earlier talking about change management how, when you're about to go through the installation or implementation phase and you realize, oh my goodness, there's something awkward with our process, I think sometimes our customers they fail to understand that before we build these products, or before Microsoft has built D365 field service, there was a lot of market research that went involved, and so you know jobs to be done and things such as that were already accounted for when building it. So you know, if they're giving you a nice little lens to look through when you're looking at the product, it probably would be better if you just, you know, roll with it. So change management is a big deal right. Change management is a big deal right.
Speaker 5:So I'm going to. I think that's the biggest reason that you know any project, really any type of software implementation fails is because they don't set the right expectation for change and they don't support that change with their users. So you know, you've got to expect change and you've got to be able to educate your users enough that they're going to understand the value of it and it's going to make their job easier. And that's what we're trying to do as the software evolves is just make the user, whoever he is, make his job easier.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's all. That was great. We really appreciate it. So we're, we're, we're going to ask her go right into our next topic. We're going to go into roadmap. So question what do you think is going to? What's coming down the road that's not under NDA?
Speaker 2:put out there in the next few years, or what do you hope would be out there in the next couple of years.
Speaker 5:Yeah, what do you hope, do you see out of the product in the next couple years?
Speaker 3:co-pilot co-pilot, co-pilot. Wait, how many times have we said it now?
Speaker 3:I got mine in love it well, I think also another thing that's um, it's more kind of it's funny because it's not as exciting as Copilot and not as cool as Copilot. But the fact that now field service and project operations are going to be more closely connected because just this is field service hasn't moved, connected because just this is field service hasn't moved. It's still under the Dynamics umbrella but the product team is now under the F&O umbrella. So there are some really cool things and this makes this excites me because I do both project ops and I do field service. So there are so many things that project ops does that I'm like man that'd be really cool in field service and vice versa, like I can see, and I and I've talked to both products, both, both sides, and been like have you seen this, have you seen that? And that you know and people don't realize.
Speaker 3:But I always use the example of of a new fast food chain that you know they're building. There's a fast food chain where they're building I think something like 225 a year and and that is project ops and field service. It's both because you know, like you still have a project you still have I need to get the licensing, I need to get the permits. I need to make sure we have this, you know. So that's all project ops and I have these resources.
Speaker 3:But then when you get into, like I was saying, I need to install the grill now, I need to install the cooler, well, that's a task in project that needs to become a work order on the field service side. And not only that, but the asset, the actual, you know, because you take a product which is the grill, and that you're installing that, but then that turns into a customer asset on the customer side. So it's that whole connection between the two that I think is we're going to see it a lot smoother, we're going to see it more just. I think it's that piece alone. I mean, and it's funny because David and I and also Marcio, who unfortunately couldn't make this call, you know, we've discussed, we've talked about these two working together constantly and really, if you really really think about it, almost it's almost always a. There's a few things like maybe break fixes aren't necessarily need project operations, but almost anything where it's like an install is, yeah, kind of project office infill first.
Speaker 5:Anything where there's dependencies and you know multiple work breakdown, structure items. But you know what I remember. When we started this conversation I said field service used to live in ERP and you know, 10 years ago we moved it out to. Crm ago we moved it out to CRM. Well, now we're moving it back under, you know, not really under ERP, but more in line with ERP, so that we are starting to pick up the best of both worlds and make a stronger application.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's a great point that you make, david, because for so many years, right, think about I'm going to say the dirty word dual right. There's been so many Give dual right.
Speaker 4:some love Give dual right. Some love Give it some love.
Speaker 2:Out there in the ecosystem, it gets a bad rap. And then you hear customers say hey, does the right hand talk to the left hand? Well, now, the right hand is going to be talking to the left hand because they're going to be sitting virtually side by side and so it's only going to, to your point, make the product stronger, not just the integration, but just overall. Right, Because there is so much overlap and there is that back-end processing of field service. We have to invoice work orders. We have to update inventory, right.
Speaker 5:All these other components you have to invoice customers, yeah, and it's all starting to get tied together.
Speaker 5:Now, with the supply chain integration, with the dual write capability and the integrations that Microsoft came out with, we can actually create that asset in F&O and have it appear in field service.
Speaker 5:We can start to pull inventory from a location within another warehouse it's not the technician's truck or order parts, and then those can flow down to the technician's truck. We can invoice a customer and if you have terms with the customer where they get one invoice a month for all the service work you did, that can roll up to a project and you build that project any way the customer wants you to. So there's all kinds of correlations between these two products now that are starting to be super important and have always been important, but have been cumbersome in the past. The other aspect is you know we're doing this with F&O, but we you know that kind of gave us the framework to do it. We have an SAP integration and we're working on an Oracle integration and there's a lot of you know solutions out there that we can now communicate with, based on you know where they fit in the puzzle.
Speaker 3:I think one of the fun ones, though one of the fun because that's again, that's cool, that's for us geeky people, that's you know, you know, but to most people like that's not fun, you know, that's like oh, ok, you know, because that's kind of like all back office stuff. But one of the fun things and David, I'm going to come up, but one of the fun things and David, I'm going to come up, this is the one that, and it's on the roadmap is the fact that you can have a talk-to inspection, meaning you can have this inspection template and let's take, I don't know, let's. Again, this is not a customer, this is, you know, this is just, let's say, a very large, well-known, you know, rental car company, and so before taking out the rental car, you know there's an inspection that says you know what's the mileage, you know, and it's written you know what's the mileage, what's the gas at, what's the? You know are there any dents, are there this, are there that? And you know before, right, well, right now, you know you haven't.
Speaker 3:We absolutely do inspections. Where you can, you read it, you put it, you type in the mileage or now you can actually you can have it read to the inspector or to the technician, so that you can say, literally, the phone will be like what is the mileage on the car? And you can, you know, and the mileage is, you know, 2,500. And what is the gas tank level? And you're like, so it it's literally so. They don't even have to that that inspector or technicians, I even have to look at their phone, the the phone's talking to them and they're talking back to the phone. It's filling up the inspection automatically for them. Take a picture, take a picture. I mean so things like that, um, but that, just that, make that that technician or inspector's life so much easier.
Speaker 5:I mean wow, think of the effort involved in getting those inspections into the system. You know, there's one argument we always hear Well, now we have a co-pilot that will allow you to take a you know, pdf file or a Word document, or wherever your inspection is, and import it into the system, and then on the back end we can answer the questions verbally, we can take a picture of the odometer and the system will put the mileage right into the question for you, so you don't have to even speak it so lots of cool things coming in that regard.
Speaker 5:You guys are completely killing it. Copilot copilot copilot.
Speaker 3:So I have to ask I wanted to get your.
Speaker 4:I wanted to pick your brains and you know I think this will probably be where we wrap up the the the series Again. I've known you guys for quite some time. I know how much you've helped me out in the industry and how much I've, you know, just watched from a distance for newcomers, you know, cause we have a lot of people getting into the industry. Ai has made it very easy. It's not that much of a climb, as it once was For newcomers or people who have already adopted the product. I'm going to start with you, michelle. What kind of advice would you give them?
Speaker 3:Newcomers. You talk about newcomers like ourselves getting into field service or a technician.
Speaker 4:Sorry about that. I'm interrupting you. That's my apologies. It can be newcomers it. I'm interrupting you. That's my apologies. It can be newcomers. It can be people experience. What's your advice in regards to the product? If you had like two minutes to say what you wanted to say about it, to help people really just learn it or even just to get something good out of it, what would you say, like what would be your spiel or your sell in two minutes?
Speaker 3:Gosh, I'm trying to think for a newcomer. I would say oh, take it. Kind of like how they say how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:You know, learn. You know, because there's, as we've said, there's a lot in field service. You know, maybe first learn how to set up the resources themselves and make sure because there's, you know, when setting up the resources you need to, you know you need a territory, you need a skill, you need you know, and in order to see them on the schedule board and okay, get that down, packed. Okay, now go to the next thing. Okay, now, oh, preventive maintenance, okay Now. Oh, now we have assets, let's add assets. Let's okay, now let's add RSO, resource scheduling, optimization. So it's, it's taking it in phases, I believe, and not just trying to. You know, take it all in at the same time. You know there's a lot of training online. You know there's not only partners that provide training, but there's training on Microsoft. Learn that you can take too.
Speaker 5:And there's videos as well as printed documentation, Right and shameless plug.
Speaker 2:you can attend UG Summit in my academy course on field service. Right there you go, and even like now they've on field service. Right there you go, and and even like now they've made it easier.
Speaker 3:If you go to the home page when you first log into field service, you go to the home page. It literally says walk through these steps to set up a resource. Walk through these steps to set up, you know, an asset. Walk through these steps. So I mean it literally. I mean it, there's, it's, they've. Microsoft and team have made it much easier to get started and understand how it works.
Speaker 4:Yes, ma'am, Dave. What about you, buddy?
Speaker 5:I would say you know just what Michelle said. But I would also say we all live in this world. We've all had to have service done on something, whether it's our car or air conditioner or, you know, our dishwasher.
Speaker 5:So apply practical examples something you've experienced, so you know what you know our dishwasher. So apply practical examples. Something you've experienced so you know what you know happens along the way You've been, you've lived through it. So use a practical experience of whatever it is. It could be going to the doctor, you know, you got to schedule it, you got to go to the office, you got to, you know, get the diagnostics and so think about a real-world scenario to apply to the documentation and it makes it a lot easier to follow. Yeah 100%.
Speaker 3:And be nosy. Every time someone shows up at my house and they're doing some kind of maintenance to my house, I'm like what are you using over there? Can I see it? Can I see what you're using? And they look at me like I have 10 heads. I'm like, no, this is what I do for a living. Like ooh, it's software music. And they're like I don't know it's software. But I love being nosy and looking at you know, seeing what they're typing in.
Speaker 2:No, I think that's great. I think to your point, it's right Be inquisitive, you know. Explore the product, start I think, david, you said this earlier start small. You don't need to do the big bang, implement everything you know. Start out small, get that small footprint going, figure out what's working, what you need to expand upon. I think those are, all you know, really good, sound pieces of advice for folks getting engaged now. But I think it's good for us as well that have been around to just remember right, start small and remember to be inquisitive, because new features are coming and they're coming fast and you know we need to be on top of it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and you know, I don't think that anybody's going to wake up tomorrow and say, oh, you know what I'm going to learn field service today. I think they're all you know learning it for a purpose. You know whether that's they've got a new job that's in the service industry, or they work for a software company and they got a client who needs to have it implemented. But I think you got all the tools and things that we mentioned to get the job done.
Speaker 4:Well, I wanted to go ahead and give you guys a straight up shout out man, we appreciate your time, dave. It's always a pleasure. Michelle, you are always so gracious. We greatly appreciate you jumping on board with us. And, uh, next time we got to make sure we get marcio um to jump on in, because you know he's probably doing something else. He's probably in the beaches of rio drinking a caipirinha. We know, we know how marcio is.
Speaker 5:We know how he rolls he's been pinging me here that, oh, it's too late for me to join. I don't want to interrupt.
Speaker 2:Marcio, we'll get you on Absolutely, absolutely, so we thank you, guys.
Speaker 4:We appreciate what you do for our community and we'll catch up with you next time.
Speaker 3:All right, okay, thanks.
Speaker 4:Bye, bye, thank you.
