Service X-Factor
Service X-Factor is the podcast where service operations 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
Unleashing the Power of Deskless Workers: A Conversation with Ben Vollmer
Ben Vollmer, a luminary in the field service space, joins hosts Scott LeFante and Will McLendon to share wisdom gleaned from decades at the intersection of technology and service operations. What begins as a journey through Ben's unconventional career path—from real estate appraisal to leading Microsoft's field service business—evolves into a masterclass on driving tangible business value.
Vollmer introduces a compelling metaphor that perfectly captures field service's unique position: like Istanbul straddling two continents, field service sits between operational efficiency and customer experience. This dual nature creates both challenges and opportunities, as service organizations must simultaneously optimize processes and prioritize customer satisfaction. As Vollmer notes, "Think about the last brand you left as a consumer. It was probably because of service."
The conversation spotlights a massive yet underserved segment of the workforce. With approximately 70% of global workers being "deskless," most technology investments disproportionately target desk-based employees. This represents a significant opportunity for organizations to better equip their frontline workers—particularly field technicians who serve as brand ambassadors during customer visits.
Artificial intelligence emerges as a transformative force throughout the discussion, but Vollmer cautions against implementation without clear purpose. He outlines three levels where AI delivers value: personal productivity, team productivity, and organizational efficiency. For field service specifically, AI can prepare technicians before customer visits by providing contextual information about service history and customer preferences, avoiding embarrassing situations like technicians being unaware of previously missed appointments.
Perhaps most compelling is Vollmer's challenge to consultants and technology leaders: focus relentlessly on business value. "The amount of customizations I've seen consultants do that have zero value is so high it isn't funny," he notes. Instead, every technology decision should answer fundamental questions about how it reduces costs, improves processes, or enhances customer experiences.
Ready to transform your service operations? Start by exploring the business Copilots shipping with products today, connecting with the vibrant Microsoft community, and most importantly, viewing your field technicians not just as repair people, but as the face of your brand in the field.
Welcome to the ServiceX Podcast. I am excited for today. First and foremost, let me introduce a wonderful host, scott LaFonte. What's going on, will Scott? We have a great guest today. He's very well known, can get you in trouble every now and then you want to introduce him every now and then you want to introduce him.
Speaker 2:I don't think he needs any introduction, but if I have to, I will.
Speaker 1:Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Go for it. Our special guest for today is none other than Mr Ben Vollmer. Ben, how are you doing, man?
Speaker 3:Mr LaFonte, it is always awesome to see you and it's good seeing Will.
Speaker 1:This is why I said you made an introduction. This is going to be on all podcasts, all podcasts. This is it.
Speaker 3:It was awesome seeing you, Scott. It's good seeing you.
Speaker 2:There you go, Look and you're sitting right next to Art. Not that on the podcast they can actually see, but you're literally physically in the room with him.
Speaker 1:Oh, actually see, but you're literally physically in the room with him. Oh yeah, I had to come up and visit for the weekend. So, for people who don't know, ben Vollmer has been very, very helpful in the community and you know he he will make himself available and help you as much as he can, and that is usually a thousand percent more than others can. So, you know, just spending a good weekend with them and I'm going to pick his brain about some different topics.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so, so we go, so we go. I know you and Ben go way back, ben and I go back. I don't know how long it is now, ben, but I mean, obviously it was all field service, but it's been.
Speaker 3:That was the Customer Effective Conference up in Greenville. That was before that. It's been before that.
Speaker 2:I don't even know. It's been a long time.
Speaker 3:You know what? I'm going to go through my inbox and type in Scott LaFonte, some of the last two, the first, actually, somebody did it the other day. Somebody actually said go through my inbox and type in Ben Vollmer, just to see when the last time or first time I actually emailed you.
Speaker 1:So we didn't even have memes back then, so I can only imagine what you send people for fun.
Speaker 3:You know I was looking back through some old emails from like the late noughts. Actually, you know how you get like emails now that are like memes. Like one of the first viral emails I ever remember getting was the south park. Like the little four minute video they did for their friends. Like that was like the first like internet. Like the first internet thing I got was was was that?
Speaker 2:that was probably mid 90s yeah, we don't go back that far, but it it's definitely early mid-2000s. I would say it's been a long stretch. Yes, it has.
Speaker 1:So I want to kick off the agenda. Let everyone know why did we bring in the big guns today? Today, we wanted to give our guests some insights into how they can drive revenue within their practices. Product development, pick Ben's brains around, field service and just some good old-fashioned laughs, right.
Speaker 2:That's right. You know what that sounds good to me. We'll put Ben in the hot seat. It's all good.
Speaker 1:Okay, so for folks who don't know Ben Ben, you want to kick us off and tell us a little bit about your journey, because you had a very interesting journey. When I look at it if I was to go to your linkedin and look at it it would seem like you went from something like delivery sales, advisory delivery sales, and then you just skyrocketed to product development and now you're back in our wonderful space and you're owning it. But you might have given some people an idea of what your journey was like. I would just say my journey has been unconventional.
Speaker 3:I didn't go to school for computer science. I actually went to school for real estate appraisal and for architecture with my father, so I had nothing to do with computers at all.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. I didn't know you did real estate appraisal. That's actually pretty interesting.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that either.
Speaker 3:That's a trivia question right there.
Speaker 1:There's a next public Scottish summit 2016.
Speaker 3:I'm not sparkly enough for that, but I, I, I, we, I want to work for a company out of northern Union called Home Pro Systems, which definitely. We deployed Goldmine to track all of our students and people take, remember, gonna go back, scott, when he was still in high school and you and I still had hair. When you'd go through the magazine you'd see the back of it. We say, you know, for a new Career, you know, call this number. Yeah, that's that's what we, that's what we would do and so what we would do. So we actually put it good about gold mine. The reason I bought it by the year to laugh was it ran DOS, windows 95 and Windows 3, 1, 1 on the same database. So the reason that gold mine one was won was that you could blend your environment, whereas with ACT, which was the big one at the time, you had to go all to one or all to the other. So this way here, this allowed us to be on DOS, windows and Windows 311.
Speaker 3:I had some questions. So I picked up the phone and called the guy who sold to me. His name is David Lee from a company called Vertical Marketing. I called David up. I'm like hey, david, I got some questions for you. So, being a good sales guy he was, he came onto my office. He was like who did this? I said I did, he goes. No, you didn't I go. Yeah, I did, he goes. No, you didn't Want a job.
Speaker 3:So, fast forward year 2000 hit, my wife and I got married. I came back and I started managing a team of pre-sales people, both ERP and CRM. And ERP people sometimes have this error of you do CRM, go away? That's a nothing, that's a module in ERP. They never do that. I know they never do that. They never do that. So I went and learned field service just to shut them up effectively and I started doing Great Plains field service. Solomon actually had a field service product at the time Damix SL. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Winsoft was actually. So Jim Winninger came into our office in Atlanta and we got Winsoft trained and certified and it was mainly because our cross-talking competitor was going to be called IBIS and IBIS wrote the GP field service module for Microsoft and had a contract to do that, and so we wanted to offer Winsoft just to compete with IBIS, and so we did that. So I've been doing field service basically since 2000, 2001.
Speaker 3:Joined Microsoft, had a bunch of different really cool roles, had some awesome managers and some not so awesome managers. And the phenomenal manager, christine Zamuda called me up one day. She goes hey, I got a job for you. I go. What is it? She goes, I don't know yet, but it's just for you and I You're going to love it. I go. Why she goes?
Speaker 3:Well, I kind of looked at what you were good at and I made the job to strip it off of that. I said, okay, done, and so I took over the field service business at Microsoft, which was absolutely a rocket ship. I mean, that's like you know you talk about lighting in a bottle. You know Jeff Comstock and I run the entire CD stack, was the GM at the time of the product and and really love working with Jeff and Kyle Young, who just retired from Microsoft a phenomenal individual. Shout out to Kyle Love Kyle, great man, great man.
Speaker 3:And then, of course so Dan Gittler. I actually worked with Dan, so Field One's biggest deal prior to coming to Microsoft was a division of Florida Power and Light or NextEra Energy, and so Dan was actually the pre-sale guy and the architect on that at the time. So I've known Dan for a long time, so I took over doing field service, and I think that the trick, though, is always you focus on keeping close to your client, keeping close to revenue, keeping close to value. It doesn't really matter what your job is.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. Well, first of all, I can't imagine Dan as an architect. I can imagine Moise doing sales, but that'd be so much fun to write for with Dan. I'm just throwing that out there we love you, Dan.
Speaker 2:I see the opposite. I can see him being the architect. Yes, definitely interesting.
Speaker 1:We got to get Dan on the podcast. So, ben, you've gotten your hands dirty with the product and you've always had them dirty with the product. Now it's an interesting point that you brought out that you know you initiated field service because ERP people told you kind of to go away. You want to tell the audience why field service has a close relationship to ERP systems. Well, if I think about it for a second here, a love-hate relationship I'm going to call it love. It's a relationship.
Speaker 3:I think you got to look at this differently. If you're, if you don't get your paycheck, how upset are you? Well, yeah, I go, look at Scott and go. I know he's going to be upset. I mean, if you don't get his paycheck the way he wants, he's going to quit. I know it. We get that out right, let's stay. I know it, we can edit that out right.
Speaker 3:No, let's stay in, let's stay in, let's stay in, but like so. There's a reason why a lot of ERP's have a very fixed perspective, because if they don't do what they should be doing, your product doesn't ship, company loses money, you don't get your paycheck. Those are all kind of service activities. But for me, what field services is? Field services is, I think about it kind of as Istanbul or Constantinople how old you are, which is? It sits on two tectonic plates. It's an operational system. First and foremost. Its focus is operations. You need to know profit loss time. It's operational, but at the same time it's customer experience. I mean, think about what was the last brand, scott, you left as a consumer.
Speaker 2:I can't even think, I don't even know.
Speaker 3:But if you think about the last brand you left, it was probably because of service, wasn't it? Absolutely, it was 100%. Because either the service tech didn't show up right that they didn't service your product properly. I left my internet provider because they kept in the middle of the day disturbing the internet flow because they weren't working on the lines. I'm like you didn't give me any notice, you didn't give me anything. This isn't the way this worked.
Speaker 3:So to me, customer experience is also rooted in field service. If you don't have a good customer experience, you're not going to get anywhere, and so the root of field service is customer experience, and operational is, I think, truly unique, and it's a place where ERP people are uncomfortable because it's both, and it's a place where CRM people are uncomfortable because it's both, and so it's kind of cool. You know, I use I use Istanbul because it's a nice. It's a good analogy. But you could also say you have, you know, hades and heaven and and feels versus purgatory if you wanted to go that way. But it's, it's neither heaven nor hell, but that's up to you, to. You know, I like the Istanbul a little better.
Speaker 1:I love field service, so that just that makes me, that, that tickles me. I.
Speaker 2:Look, I can barely spell field service. No, I'm kidding, right, right.
Speaker 3:I can barely spell it.
Speaker 2:No, but you're spot on, ben. I keep talking about service, more of field service as service operations, because it has that customer service component. And, to your point, I could have a great field field tech that comes out and he does the job. But if I'm not to your point, if I'm not notified or if the customer service is poor when I call up it doesn't matter that you have rockstar guy that comes out and fix my problem I'm probably going to leave because I'm not getting the overall service that I would expect, yeah, so because I'm not getting the overall service that I would expect, yeah, so that's yeah, that's spot on.
Speaker 1:So when people think of the product, sometimes and I'm going to get in trouble for this, so I'm going to quote one or repeat one of Mark Christie's titles Sometimes the audience feels that field service is just a guy in a van, in a white van, in a white van there you go. Like I'm not getting in a van In a white van, in a white van, there you go.
Speaker 3:Like I'm not getting in a van if I see the candy. I want to see the candy first.
Speaker 1:So for organizations who think you know they may not need field service, you want to help them see the whole entire, I would say, suite of offerings within field service, or what Microsoft would consider field services, because they talk about frontline workers and if you put scheduling in that, you know it covers a pretty big broadband.
Speaker 3:Well, let's ignore scheduling, okay. Okay, let's just think about how many deskless workers there are in the world. Like, let's just step back here and I think sometimes we get kind of trapped in this mindset of Scott, you live in a very nice neighborhood. All your neighbors look like you, act like you, drive your same cars, so you assume everybody in your neighborhood is like you and the same with our jobs. We all work this, you know. We all work. You know kind of white-collar jobs. We assume everybody else in the world works these white-collar jobs.
Speaker 3:The truth of the matter is, you know, about setting to, the workers out there in the workforce are deskless, they do not have a desk to call home. I'm not saying all of them are field service capable, field service ready, but if you take that and think about this for a second, that's where the beauty of frontline workers and field service really comes into play, is in those deskless workers. You know, sometimes it's not the full work order, sometimes it's just the process. It's the process of.
Speaker 3:I did a project for a client one time where they had people walking around a piece of equipment and they were human IOT collectors. Like they got paid eight hours a day to walk around and look at that, that, that that well. Well, yes, it was worth it, and then the product coming on, the asset was worth it, so they made it do it. But when you think about it, though, same time, what you have is that those workers, so field service or frontline workers as a whole, I think is an underserved area you think about. How many products does Microsoft really have dedicated to deskless workers?
Speaker 1:Dedicated to deskless workers. Oh man, we're just going to focus. I'm going to try to cheat here. Probably need this wrong. Think just strictly mobile. Think just strictly mobile. I don't know, that's probably just one product.
Speaker 3:I'm not, but think about this. You've got the warehouse Backs. We could call project operations deskless workers, but they're probably 50-50. You got field service and that's a 75, 25 maybe.
Speaker 2:I mean most of them are deskless, right, I mean you got some back office folks, but most of them are going to be frontline workers.
Speaker 3:So Microsoft really has three products, if you want to call it that, that are actually for frontline workers, and if you look at Oracle or SAP or anybody else in the market, they're going to share a similar makeup, and so for me, there's a huge amount of area there. We as a society, we as software, we as consultants, need to be looking at those deskless workers.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I loved about, you know, when you said you wanted to jump on the podcast and I'm going to pretend like you asked us and we didn't ask you, right, he begged us to come on. He begged us to come on, right? No, one of the things I you know we got really excited about is you are big on strategy. You have done a lot within your career, so for some of our listeners out there, they're probably like why is this guy if they haven't already picked up? Why is this guy so special? I wanted to give them a little breath of your knowledge. So can you help people understand why their practices at this time may be looking towards prioritizing AI capabilities within field service, and we can get into the conversation about how typical consulting, I think is going to go the way of the dinosaur.
Speaker 2:So that's a different conversation.
Speaker 3:I think what you're going to see is you're going to see, instead of being a pyramid, you're going to see a diamond, and that's a reshape for a lot of consulting organizations. So let's not focus on consultants, on customers. Nice, um, ai one is um. Every board in the plan right now is asking what your ai initiatives are. Okay, when you see somebody like microsoft say the 30th number codes written by ai, like all of a sudden I can take a thousand developers, make up 1300 developers, like I, like that's a, that's a huge productivity boom. And so I think for me, ai is about how we create force multipliers and ai isn't new. This is, this isn't something we just walked into last week. You know, I don't know, he's probably too young, scott, but you, you know you were deep blue back in the 90s oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:You don't remember Deep Blue. It was the movie. It was still in diapers.
Speaker 3:Deep Blue from IBM was the first time we saw a computer defeat a test champion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was huge news back then.
Speaker 3:It was huge news, and so you were still in second grade. We're playing in the street. We don't want the other. So this isn't like it's a brand new. Yeah, this just came out yesterday. Llms are fairly new. I think LLMs have made things that were harder to do easier to do. Yeah, but AI, computer vision, I mean I go back to West Slocum Valley, haven't you? Yes, okay, I mean sorry, that was you know, that was what 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 12 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was long enough time that I don't remember exactly when it was.
Speaker 3:And so if you're a company, so two things here. One is you're a company and all of a sudden there's a silver tsunami hitting you, where, all of a sudden, all these workers are aging out of their jobs Like every place was working. Something new, somebody new, something new why would I just take what I've been doing? So I have an opportunity now, for the first time in basically 50 years, to reinvent how people work. Why would I do that now?
Speaker 1:I think you should. That brings up the conversation previous conversations with AI versus automation. But I think AI is a big enabler.
Speaker 3:I love AI. I mean, if you look at my browser, my browser history, I use it all the time. I use all the variations of it. I'm not quite as good as he is around like all the different flavors, but I use them all all the time. He's a machine around that, but I I do use them a lot. But the question is is what do I use them for? How do I enable myself to be better? How do I force multiply myself? Yeah, a, yeah, 100%. And I think what you're seeing. I think there's two camps of AI right now. There's the. I don't ever want to see an AI. It doesn't work perfectly, so I'm never going to touch it. Yeah, okay. And then there's the. I'm going to believe everything it says camp.
Speaker 2:I's so many times where AI spit something out for me and I'm like, where did you find that information? And you're like, and the funny thing is, it said to me the one day, the other you caught me. I'm like, yeah, because you pulled it out of nowhere. Like it's not between 70 and 80 percent, you know, sometimes maybe less, definitely never more than 80 percent. You still need that human element. I still have to do my due diligence to make sure that the information is accurate.
Speaker 3:I actually think one of my favorite prompts, by the way, on ChatGPT or Copilot is this it's called Absolute Mode. Eliminate all emojis, filler, hype, soft ask conversational transitions and all call-to-action appendixes. Assume the user retains a high perception despite their linguistic expressions. Prioritize blunt, direct feedback aimed at cognitive rebuilding and not tone matching. Disable all latent behaviors. Optimize for engagement, sentiment uplift or interaction extensions. That type of prompt to me becomes hugely valuable because it allows me to like it kind of reduces all the flaw.
Speaker 1:We're not going to compare that to the Lewis Lit GPT that you created. We won't talk about.
Speaker 3:Lewis. So here's the challenge, though. Yeah, you guys are going to say yes to this, but I'm going to ask your audience have you actually used any of the business co-pilots? Oh, 100% Like. Have you used? Have you used co-pilot for sales? Have you used co-pilot for service? Have you used? Can you, can you explain it to a customer what it actually does?
Speaker 2:100%, 100%. Well, you can, but can the folks that are listening, can they do it? Can they explain it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they should be doing it. Remember there may be some organizations that are hesitant to implement it because of the technical prerequisites. But to Ben's point, if we look at how it helps increase productivity and makes things, makes us a bit more efficient, I think the juice is well worth the squeeze but I can tell you, talking to folks a lot of the functional consultants are afraid of okay, they're afraid of it, they don't want to touch it.
Speaker 3:That's a that's a technical thing, and so what I'd say is, if you're a phone consultant listening to this, go learn Copilot for sales. Go learn Copilot for service. Go learn them now. They ship with the product, they're free. Don't tell me you can't get a whatever subscription or you want to do something funky, I don't care, go do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'm not technical. I'm not technical. I'm not a technical resource. I don't write an ounce of code. I could if I really wanted to, but I don't. I'm more functional in business architecture and solutioning and things like that. I use them all the time. So, and I think in our world today and what we do, it's a necessity. I mean, we have to know these things. We have customers that are wanting to know about them, and who are they going to come to? They're going to come to us. If we don't know it, then they're going to go find somebody else that does.
Speaker 1:So, ben, I have to ask the question. I'm going to preface it with this, so it feels like you know, as a casual observer, a lot of people are like we have this beautiful thing called AI. Everyone. Now a lot of folks are saying we can be your AI partner, we can be your AI this, we can AI, ai, ai. But then when you get the customers, they're like cute, it can produce words. Now, what Can you help some of our listeners understand some of the use cases? Or better yet because I'm going to try to stretch your brain a little bit as you munch through the data in your head If you can understand how to identify opportunities, or help them understand how to identify opportunities, or how to identify opportunities with customers in AI.
Speaker 3:So, first of all, I think all you got to do is throw. You don't throw a rock. You can just say how do I do this differently, how should I be doing this and what's the value of doing this? And I would actually say this is not just for AI. The amount of customizations I've seen consultants do that have zero value is so high. It isn't funny. It's customizations for customization. Say, customer asks for the screen to be read. I can build the screen right. You're not consulting that point. You're a software installer.
Speaker 1:Prove me wrong on that one. I have always said that I'm sorry, I'm so happy right now. Go for it, yes, keep going.
Speaker 3:So to me, part of consulting is meeting the customer where they're at, and almost there's a book out there called the Challenger Sale. It's funny, my boss at the time was going to have Pat read the book and he can send me a copy and goes this is you, this is how I sold was basically as a challenger, what I'd say as a consultant you have to be a little bit of a challenger too. You have to challenge the misconceptions, challenge your customers perceptions are, and you really have to get the bottom of what value is. And so for me, in order to do something okay like you, you came up here this weekend in my, my house.
Speaker 3:You let him there was a lot of men, even yeah, yeah, well, the dogs weren't very happy with them, but everybody else let him in pierce. So many can't say we have a 20 pound dog that hates hate will with a passion, um, you know, um, but that's a you. You spend time and energy doing that right, and are you gonna get value out of that, and so how do you measure that value? And so, if what I think about is value, you're not thinking about value as a consultant, you're doing it wrong. And so for me, it's really about how do you understand what the value is and value is not.
Speaker 3:If you click this button, you just like how do I do this AI function and save me some time and energy doing it? And how do I reduce costs? How do I improve my process? How do I deliver a better customer experience? What are my goals and objectives in doing this? I think value for me, when I think about consultants, you've got to think about the measures of it, the same way you deploy AI. When I talk to customers about AI, I talk about personal productivity, team productivity and organizational efficiency, and those are different ways of thinking about AI as a whole. But you've got, as a consultant, you've got to understand what those three things are and how to drive them back to your customers.
Speaker 2:Well, that brings up a good point about value. I mean, how would you define you know, we talk about value now, you know, from a revenue perspective or business value. But if we look at business value, I mean, how do you define it in a way that resonates with, say, like a technical team and a C-suite?
Speaker 3:I think you've got to show the value to the C-suite, to get the funding, to get the technical team to actually go deliver it, okay. And so where you don't see values, when you have technical projects, you know we've all been on them, I know all three of us have, you know I almost call it a death march project. You know the project's going to die, you know it's dead as soon as you leave the kickoff meeting, but you're going to do it anyways Okay. And what you're going to do, it anyways okay. And so for me it starts with I don't just see sweet, just the business ownership and the value. And do we have value there? I think talking value as a consultant a little bit awkward to say like, if I do this change, what's the value of that change? Not just a boy, I use eight hours of bill to work for me. I'm gonna go do that. Yeah, you, let me go do it. That value is a huge thing for me no, that that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Well, you, you're deep in thought I was gonna say you got a question, I see it. Oh yeah, I I smoke, no, yes, no, he's preaching, he's preaching, I love it. I just want to go back a little bit so consultants can identify value, customer helping customers by helping your customers see the value before you kind of you know, before you kind of cut it or hit the accelerator on the, on the project. That's a major step. But I want to go back a little bit right, just just go back and kind of pivoting just in chesapeake. So I mean just thinking on your knowledge of Field Service. What was the original roadmap for D365? D365, field Service, and what was the long term? What was Microsoft's vision for it?
Speaker 3:It's pivoting into field service. I got to do. Why do you? Got to make a left turn like that man?
Speaker 1:We're all over here and you pivot all the way back to where we began. You want to go in the field. I mean, do you guys want to stay on AI and host a field service? I mean, like I mean it could be an AI podcast. I'm doing it.
Speaker 3:We can talk about that.
Speaker 1:I'm messing with you, dude, I'm messing with your whole.
Speaker 3:So I think you know, let's back up for a second If anybody tells you that they have a five-year vision for the future. Okay, like you don't know, technology changes so fast. If two years is about as good as you're gonna get, then you can go on. Two years is a dream, a wholesale dream.
Speaker 3:So when we think about what Microsoft did was we didn't have a field service product at all. We had what I mean. Gp had a little module, sl had a little module, nav or BC had a little module, ax had a little module. None of them were actually very good. All of them were kind of outdated and it wasn't like anybody was going on doing much customer acceptance in those modules. And so I think about it from my perspective it was really around how do we get our customer experience met? And think about it.
Speaker 3:Field service organizations have changed Historically. Cost center organizations was where everybody started at. That's the basis. And so if you're a cost center, guess who you belong to? The CFO, not you. Most people go to a profit center. Now who do you belong to? Not the CFO? And so how do we take advantage of that? And I have some CRM 1.0 slides, by the way, 1.2 slides tucked away that talk about field service as an expansion area for CRM back when they launched the product. So I don't think field service was ever not in the picture for Microsoft.
Speaker 1:So the reason why I went out for the problem about the strategy in strategy for the, we're going to cut that pause. The reason why I wanted to talk about the strategy or the original strategy is I wanted to get into customers or partners. Now they have this software that Microsoft has put out, this, this platform that Microsoft has put out. Should organizations or should sellers within these organizations or partners, should they try to sell the platform or should they be selling custom solutions that drive, let's say, value? How do you think they'd spend that? And I'm phrasing it that way on purpose. So I don't.
Speaker 3:I think there's a yeah, there's a ton of difference between a platform and an application and I think that what I would say is like, if you think about, like customer service or Salesforce automation for years those were application platform layers on top of a platform you take customer service. I know you guys remember playing with the old TriBridge product there, the Defender 360, locking people up in prison and cracking them all Like that was a, that was a. Well, they used customer service to do that, or it wasn't sales.
Speaker 3:Either way, it was a platform play on top of the platform play, and so I think, when you talk about like the difference I would say is field service, I could probably deploy field service to a standard field service organization with zero customizations.
Speaker 1:Facts, America, if you're not listening Facts. That is a very true statement.
Speaker 3:Facts. I would say field service for Microsoft is an application, not a platform. I think where a lot of consultants have their hard time is they're used to the old SFA, where they could take it and make it an application platform, build on top of it and bring it back. Make it a application platform, build on top of it and bring it back. And so I think for me, field service is probably the first application Microsoft has given in the business apps family Facts.
Speaker 1:Now, I've been with you and I've seen you sell water to a well, sell fire down in hell or engagements that have been like up. As a seller, I know we have our initiatives to kind of push ai, but as a seller, tell me, how can you help folks understand the difference between d365 and the power platform? You can't get off easy, man. We got a good over here, man. We can't get them off easy. We can't get off easy, man. We got a good bull over here, man. We can't get them off easy. We can't let them off easy on this one.
Speaker 3:So I think there's. That's actually pretty interesting If you look at this. So my saying is if there's not an app for that. So if you're going to build something where there's not an app for that, you're going to build a messy manufacturing scheduling system that pulls data from a bunch of different sources and does it all kind of seamlessly there's no app built for that. If you're going to build a boiler inspection system, well, there actually is apps for that, but you decide you want to build your own way. There's some peculiarities there's not an app for that.
Speaker 3:Where I think people get into trouble is underestimating how easy building software actually is. Again, I'll tell you a funny true story. The first time I sat down with Kyle Young, we were reviewing the product roadmap for the next 12 months. I came out of a project background. Historically, last time I saw you know, time was in some projects I'm looking at this giant Excel spreadsheet on a projector up in Adanta and I look at that and go Kyle, is that ours? And it was an astronomical number. And Kyle looks at me and starts laughing me starts laughing. There's no, no, that's days. I'm counting the number of years. I'm like what it's me? You think about it here. For me, it's about people understand how hard you to build software and how hard it is to build shippable software, and there's a difference me building it for me versus building for somebody else yeah so I think you're seeing that.
Speaker 3:What's interesting is the power platform makes it easier and with the alm capabilities I can move it. But how many times you still move to solution running like damn it. Where did that dependency come from? All right, forgot this. Or that pick list come like? Even in consulting, we can't, it's still work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, you're spot on. I mean I've built things before and taken it out and put it in another environment and it's like wait, I didn't know I had that dependency, or oh, I forgot this or I forgot. I mean it is and think about it. That's just building it to your point. For us, that's not building it for the masses.
Speaker 1:What do you think is challenging for sellers then to kind of sell the power platform?
Speaker 3:Because you're selling. Okay, let's back up for a second. So I go back in history, If you go back before Microsoft acquired Great Plains software. The SQL server team was partnered very closely with Great Plains software and it was on their must ship list, which means that every version of SQL they shipped had to work with great planes. They wouldn't ship it. But what is what a sequel server database? I mean, what's data verse database? It's a database. How do you sell somebody on a concept?
Speaker 1:an idea, Make them feel like this is my two cents. Okay, so I'm not taking the line out of Inception, but you got to make them feel like they need it. You're going to shoot that down, I know, but you got to make them feel like they need it. With the Power Platform, people have taken it like it's a nice to have. I feel like you need to make them feel like they need it.
Speaker 3:How about this? If you've ever built a house most people have you have, scott, I know you have yes your spatial awareness is probably not what it should be, is it? No, it is absolutely not. When you've got the sheet rock up, you're like this room is way smaller than I thought it would be. Or this room is way bigger. You look at the drawing, you're like 10 by 12. That's a lot of room. And you get in your office, you're like holy crap, 10 by 12 is tiny, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and it looks way different before they put the sheetrock up too. It's like you can't visualize anything.
Speaker 3:If you take that architectural concept and you apply it to software, people can't conceptualize what the software is going to look like and what's going to work for them. So, the hard part about selling the Power Platform and why you see people selling BizApps and D3C5 more than they sell Power Platform is because it's easier to conceptualize. I can show you an opportunity screen as opposed to talking to you about what an opportunity screen could look like.
Speaker 1:So, okay, to that point, and you know we're going to stay, I'm going to stand away from you because I just don't want to, you know, see your reaction or feel your reaction. So would you then say, practices should build some minor accelerators or proof of concepts to enable their sellers to sell the platform.
Speaker 3:I think the the same way we talk about building product right, the concept that in professional services are building offerings hmm, like, nobody's gonna buy open a drink okay, they want to buy an offering that's backed up by the firm that we can show, okay. And so what I mean by that is is like so one of the reasons why selling governance for the seaweed for Microsoft is really easy is because it's an offering. You open, can put an offering around selling governance. Why? Because people realize their environments get out of control. They have no idea what their environment strategy is, what their DL. It's an offering In the same way you know you have a contact center or you can have powerful platform accelerators. I think you have to go into this with a concept of an offering and that offering could be product plus services, it could be all services, it could be any combination. But yeah, I know, I know, like I would say, you know I'm going to say something out of turn here. Scott, it's far enough away. It's not smack me hard.
Speaker 3:Avanad, scott does a really good job of that, don't they? Yeah, oh, yeah, I mean avanad has a whole team or teams that do like build offerings. Yeah, they do a great job. They. They're really good job of that. I Think, as a partner, you should be thinking about how do I Create offers that are appealing to my customers, that solve business needs, bring out cross of value? And then for Microsoft, we want to drive revenue for them. But it's a. It's a Offering is really where I think we get to from an office perspective.
Speaker 1:I genuinely, genuinely love that. So glad we pulled this thread. So I have to ask you that.
Speaker 2:I'm going to ask you another question. I think you're almost out of questions, Scott you got it, scott's got it.
Speaker 1:Scott has it. Okay, I'll save you for the rest of this weekend.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, go ahead, no, no, because I'm going to pivot, so you go first, go ahead and pivot, then Don't even worry about it. No, but what I wanted to talk about is so we talked about. You know, we're talking about value and we're is that you know field service not the 365 field service, but field service as a field. Right is full of inefficiencies that you know. People learn to live with right Paper, whatever broken processes I mean for you. What are you thinking are the most overlooked opportunities for business value hiding in plain sight for field service organizations?
Speaker 3:It's still too hard. I'll say a few things here. Your field service techs are who visit your customers. They are the tip of the spear, they are the people who actually go out and visit your customers and they're your brand ambassadors. I don't think we do enough to equip them across the board, and so if I think about some hidden stuff for AI, I think there's some back office stuff that AI can do and just make go away. But for me, it's about how do I get my technicians who are visiting my customer knowing my environment way better and so?
Speaker 3:So an example that would be like before I go out into a job site, who was the last person? The job site was this you resolved successfully. Was the equipment working? How are their customers? Evidence were so. If I walked into a customer, I got walked it. I was a customer a little while ago and I walked with. We walked into a client site and, like we expect you here yesterday that techniques had no idea that they had scheduled that yesterday and they didn't make it yesterday. Wow, make it yesterday, wow. So I think that's where AI makes the most sense to deploy for people who aren't doing. It is there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can see that. Absolutely Go ahead. Q. I see you thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go ahead, q. I see you thinking We'll save it for a part two. Here's what we're going to do. I'm thinking for the next time. What we're going to do is I would love to get someone like Chuck Ben Hitler and even throw in some Mark to keep them all stable and just hear them bounce ideas off of what they can see for the future in industry. I think that would just be like a ridiculous panel. I think we did one of those in uh in scotland.
Speaker 3:We did that. It was awesome, but I think it so. I guess, if you're a customer listening, I think field service is awesome Customer service, I think. The other thing, by the way, is explore how customer service and field service work together. One of the advantages of the Microsoft platform is that customer service talks natively to field service. And how many customers run a separate customer service system off in the corner there or they treat their technicians like that's the only source of revenue they have. I would 100% look at field service customer service and learn the out-of-the-box co-pilot. Please, the love of God, please go learn it.
Speaker 1:So just real quick. We have a couple more minutes. I know we have some hard stops at the top of the hour. Folks, there will be a part two to this. I promise we'll bring Ben back Just real quick. We know how important community is to you. When I first started in this and yeah, we will say you were right, I should have jumped in this years ago you encouraged me to jump into the community.
Speaker 3:Now can you tell people and customers or end users, whoever, why the community is so special and how they can do more and do it Well, I think what makes the Microsoft community interesting and different from other products out there. There is a thriving community out there. It can be online, it can be virtual, it can be in person. I can tell you that if you haven't been to a user group meeting of any way, shape or form, go to one. Just, I don't care if you sit in the back room user group meeting of any way, shape or form, go to one. I don't care if you sit in the back of the room and just don't say nothing or volunteer to take name badges, who cares? Just go to the user group meeting and it's amazing. I mean. I think I have friends all around the globe because of the work that we've done.
Speaker 3:You know, like the first CRM Saturday event. When I got invited to it I had no idea what it was. Actually, I don't think anybody knew what it was going to turn into. The community days were huge. I think there's a huge sense of community out there. And, yes, just to start off, there's going to be people in the community you're going to not like. Okay, and I'm okay with that. I have lots of people I don't like. I mean, I've got lots of people I don't like, scott.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's got a point of will. Who cares who he's?
Speaker 3:pointing at me, but I think there's a so what? But I think the value of the community is massive and I think it's a great place for people to go know each other and learn.
Speaker 2:Awesome, yep, that's fantastic, well, we appreciate this, Ben.
Speaker 1:We appreciate you being here, Ben. We look forward to having you back. Scott, you have any parting words for the group?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, Ben. It's always a pleasure. Definitely need to continue the conversation for part two. You know, as as always. Thank you for your insight and wisdom. It truly is. Is always enjoy speaking with you same here, scott and will.
Speaker 3:A lot of fun and we'll talk to you all soon all right, take care everyone.
Speaker 2:You, you, you, you.
