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
Field Service & Female Force: Reham Darwiche’s Creative Code
When technology meets creativity, innovation thrives. The Service X Factor podcast welcomes Reham Darwiche, Power Platform Lead at Intralox, who embodies this perfect harmony between technical expertise and creative problem-solving.
Reham takes us through her remarkable journey from discovering Microsoft Dynamics in college to becoming a respected leader in the field. What makes her story particularly compelling is how she describes technology as her canvas – "I'm an artist in my own IT department." This unique perspective shapes her approach to complex problems and has propelled her rapid career advancement from consultant to lead architect in just four years at Hitachi.
Drawing from her extensive field service implementation experience, Reham challenges conventional wisdom with a provocative statement: field service implementations should follow waterfall methodology, not agile approaches. She explains how the deeply interconnected nature of field service components requires holistic planning from the start. Similarly, her insights into Resource Scheduling Optimization reveal important limitations for companies with specialized travel requirements, like technicians who fly rather than drive to customer sites.
Perhaps most fascinating is Intralux's innovative use of AI to solve a seemingly impossible business challenge. Unable to place identification markers on conveyor belts due to food safety regulations, Reham's team developed an AI model that identifies belt specifications from photographs. This solution significantly reduces customer downtime while easing the burden on support teams – demonstrating how AI can solve tangible business problems beyond the hype.
The conversation takes an inspiring turn as Reham discusses representation in technology fields. As a mother raising two daughters, including one already interested in coding, she passionately advocates for women in tech. Her advice to "know your worth and speak up your value" resonates beyond gender boundaries, encouraging all professionals to recognize their unique contributions.
Ready to learn from one of the most insightful voices in the Microsoft ecosystem? Subscribe to our podcast for more conversations that blend technical expertise with human-centered wisdom. And don't miss Reham's upcoming presentation at the Regional Summit in Columbus on August 22nd, where she'll share valuable lessons from Intralox's eight-year implementation journey.
Welcome to another edition of the Service X Factor podcast. I am one of your hosts, scott LaFonte, here with my esteemed colleague and co-host Quad McClendon Quad. How's it going, man?
Speaker 2:Oh man, this name is going to stick. I'm doing great, I'm not calling you Will anymore. It's just going oh man, I am, as always, beyond excited, but this one is, you know, our next guest. She is dear to me, she is near and dear to my large fat heart. I am beyond excited about our next participant, so I am super stoked. I'm gonna let you introduce her, though all right, well, I'm gonna introduce her.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna introduce her and I told her this the way I. She told me her last name when we were working at atashi and she says my last name sounds like sandwich. She told you that and I remembered how to pronounce her last name, which wasn't go for it hard but anyway, our, our next guest is the none other than riam darwich. Riam, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm good. How are you sc? Quite, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, we're doing pretty good. You know we can't complain. Plus, you know you're our Favorite guests so far.
Speaker 3:Oh, I appreciate that. I am I the first guest on the show, just to make sure where I stand, but the queue You're like fifth guest she twists.
Speaker 2:She twists the knife. She knows this. She knows this.
Speaker 1:But you know, that's why you've got to be honest and transparent. Fifth guest, but no less important than the first guest Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:I am super excited to be here and I appreciate you guys inviting me to this podcast. This is one of. You guys are some of my favorite people in this industry, and you both know that very well, so this is very, very exciting for me.
Speaker 2:So full transparency. So full transparency. We all worked with each other in our past lives and it was nothing but a pleasure. I mean, we were in the trenches with each other and you know.
Speaker 1:I think, what I feel. I'm sorry, riam.
Speaker 2:No, riam has, I have, I have. I am not ashamed to say I learned so much from working with, or even just having a quick conversation with Riam Like she is by far one of my favorite people or coworkers to work with.
Speaker 2:And she cry when I look at it and talk about you know women in tech and her journey. Like she is one of the people I say you have to stop, observe and follow their career, so I'm not going to spoil it for others, that's a good segue into, I think, one of yeah, I think that's a good segue Will.
Speaker 2:You want to tell the audience a little bit about yourself and share about your journey into tech and for our listeners, this is just one of these moments where you can listen, learn and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to her on LinkedIn. But go ahead, Rian, tell us about yourself.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So I'll start with now and I'll start with where I got to now, I guess. But I am currently the Power Platform Lead at Intralux, which is a conveyor manufacturing company. I lead our Power Platform team. I am an advocate for new technologies and enablement of new things that come our way, responsible for the government of the whole platform, and I work with a ton of amazing people that are super, super smart in the industry.
Speaker 3:It wasn't an easy journey to get here. Even though it looks so fast, it looks like it was meant to be in a way, to be honest with you, but it feels like when you really drill down into every single step. It wasn't easy, especially as a woman in tech, as you mentioned before right, especially when it's such a small niche community, which is the dynamics community. I did, ironically, start dynamics in college, believe it or not. There was this professor that one time was giving like a special course in summer and he was like, oh, do you guys want to know more about dynamics? And just told us everything about nav 2007 at the time.
Speaker 3:And I'm I actually like this a lot, but why I don't know. So from there it was just a journey Trying to understand why do I like about it? And I figured out that, a I'm passionate about technology, but also, b it's such a beautiful system that allows you to be as creative as you want within technology, right? So in a way I feel like I'm an an artist, but in my own it department, I guess, if that makes sense, you know yeah, I love how you say.
Speaker 2:The artist formerly known as reem darwish there you go, hello everybody uh I love how you say it doesn't look like it was a lot like so you started in college and now you're a now you're a platform lead like this didn't happen overnight, so, like one thing I don't want to discount from your journey is you put in the work where I met you at. I met you at hitachi and, like you were one of the how do I phrase this without getting in trouble? Oh, my goodness, I'm, I'm gonna get so much trouble?
Speaker 2:first and foremost, oh, my gosh, shout out to to all my mentors I had taught you before. I say this is getting trouble, but you were on that list as well, but you were part of that group that were coming in and they had an initiative to kind of do more enhancement with field service. Now, at that level you were just consulting and you jumped up you know, really aggressively, not because you played the typical, so the people play the typical political game. No, you put in your time. I was impressed with you and we want to talk about kind of how you built some of the relationships up in the Microsoft ecosystem and kind of what you helped to bring with improving the academies at Hitachi.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I think that. Well, first of all, I appreciate you saying all the great things about me. It's always interesting to see yourself in people's eyes, so I really appreciate that Well, but from my perspective, I personally have this motto in life that you have to put the effort in in order to actually reap the benefits out.
Speaker 3:You cannot expect that you're going to be getting all these great things that you want in life if you actually don't put the effort in and at some point that effort becomes effortless in a way, because you're enjoying it and you're doing it for the greater good, so you're not giving as much energy because it is something that you enjoy doing, so it becomes a passion, more or less than a work, if that makes sense right. So when I was at Hitachi, one of the biggest things that was happening at the time is that field service was starting to like really gain momentum. I guess it was like four or five years after the field, one acquisition and all that fun stuff right and it was still in a way, in newish to the microsoft ecosystem, right?
Speaker 3:so at that point we are, we started to see all those like small, medium businesses that are trying to jump on that bandwagon, which was amazing. But then all those enterprise company didn't really have a play, because field service was kind of there but not really there, right? So that's where the idea of A we need to educate our new group of people who are field service or dynamics consultants on what field service is, because it is very hard to just pick it up and learn it from docs very hard to just pick it up and learn it from docs. And number two, you have to identify the gaps that exist in the system so you can have at least some sort of a strategy of how you fill the gaps. When you have a customer that's coming in and be like I don't know how field service would do that, and you're like, yeah, I don't know that either. Well, that's not a really good answer, right, you have to go in with. Well, mr Customer, we're aware of that, let me tell you what our pitch is and we can dynamically change that for you, right?
Speaker 3:So, with that said, when you have these kind of, I guess, in a way, needs at a company that you love and you love the people that you're working with and you want to see it grow and succeed, you have no other option but to grab the bull by the horn, in my opinion, as any good, dedicated architect would do. Yeah right, you just, you just don't sit back and watch right. And that's where you start connecting with mvps, you start reaching out to people, you I, I personally feel like we are in a community that is such like a small village but global in a way, so I never felt like I couldn't reach out like to Ben Vollmer and be like hey Ben, what do I do here? What do I?
Speaker 2:do there.
Speaker 3:Right, like any any person off of LinkedIn that posts something I've never felt like I couldn't reach out and be like tell me more about this, because I have this issue and can you help me solve it. And it is amazing how small the community is, in a sense, that everyone wants to help, which is amazing, and that's how you build these relationships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's spot on. I mean, I think that's the one thing I love about this community, and even the MVP community, right. I mean you know we're, all you know, experiencing the same trials and tribulations and same challenges, and so sharing that and helping out each other, as big as we are and I mean it's global I mean we know people all around the world it just feels like it's such such such a tight-knit community, like like everyone just lives in my neighborhood exactly yeah, she's, she's part of that.
Speaker 2:You always you were part of that group that I feel like there's a you know you didn't get the, some people didn't get the accolades and, like you know, the big sticker or the badge, but like the contributions are definitely there. There were so many within that organization and even outside, where you kind of brought them along and helped them out, and so it's interesting and for our audience. I promise you we'll get into all things field service and power platform, but this is a mentoring moment because you're talking to somebody awesome sticker.
Speaker 3:I want sticker.
Speaker 2:Thank you, we're gonna get in so much trouble for this. You brought others along your journey. Can you help some of our members of our audience who are like you know, they see the post and they're like, hey, I think I'm listening to her. How did you make that jump from your everyday consultant to essentially we had tiers at Hitachi folks for architects if you don't know it, but like I'm gonna say, lead architect, which is, if I look at other organizations, it's essentially directors. So how did you make that jump Like skill-wise, and what did you do to help others to see your value?
Speaker 3:Absolutely no. Thank you for that question. So in my opinion and just to put things in context, I was at Hitachi for four years, started as a consultant, left as a lead architect. So within those four years I jumped three or four tiers right, and I say that again just for context. But then from my perspective, when I first joined as a consultant, I had this great knowledge in field service, but I wasn't always limiting myself to that knowledge right. I think that it is very important that you grow yourself in all aspects of not just the technology. Like yeah, it's great that I can write a flow, that's amazing. But then, as a lead architect, I'm not going to write the flow myself. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:I'm putting the strategy and the architecture of best practices to write that power automate and how to kick it, and should it be a power automate in the first place, or should I do a post-operation plug-in or whatnot, right? So I think that one of the best things that you can do for yourself is to surround yourself with your primary focus and then your secondary, I guess, topics and things and tools that enable you to have these intellectual, strategic conversations without being just very technical.
Speaker 1:So I don't necessarily know how to write a JavaScript.
Speaker 3:I don't know how to write a plugin, but I understand when I need to write a plugin. I understand if I need to post up or pre up a plugin. So you surround yourself with all of these knowledge that you can use later on, but not necessarily be the one for. Another example would be I don't know how to write a power bi dashboard, for example, if I report, but I know that the capabilities and the limitations of what I have in dynamics that might lead me to go there. So that is really the whole goal is to know enough but not be biased and still be comfortable to venture outside of your comfort zone right and just come up with the best solution that you can come up with for your customer. It's not because I am pushing a microsoft agenda, it's not because I'm pushing copilot. It's because this is what's best for you, mr customer, in the grand scheme of things, and I think that's where you elevate up customer
Speaker 2:in the grand scheme of things, and I think that's where you elevate up.
Speaker 1:I think that's spot on. I mean, because we're all in that same sort of boat and yeah, I love to tinker and just understand how the product works. But to your point, you don't want me writing a JavaScript, you don't want me writing a plugin.
Speaker 2:I'll be here for a year and a half.
Speaker 1:You just don't want that Five coders stand. You don't want me writing a plugin, I'll be here for a year and a half.
Speaker 2:You just don't want that. Five codes, five coders Stand up.
Speaker 1:But that's not my role. And so, knowing my limitations and knowing that, hey, I don't need to, I need to make sure I architect a sound system, a sound platform, a sound solution for the customer is the goal.
Speaker 2:One thing that makes me laugh. Like you guys can, can't see us, but I shook my head through some of the things that rio said, because so so, we felt it over here. So so here's, there's one thing she doesn't she, she says, she's not technical, don't let it fool you, for one second. All right, I got caught up by that, okay, so you know she.
Speaker 3:She said what do you mean?
Speaker 2:and I'm like, well, she said she's not technical, what do you think of me? And she broke me down in 20 seconds, right? So, like you know, you know, don't, don't, don't drink the kool-aid on that. Now, just just, I have to ask so you don't just do architecting like so. You took architecting, wasn't your normal here? Let me give you a kind of a hypothesis of what I think the solution should be, and and here's kind of the general area you did more than just drive the technological direction and strategy behind it. You also did some things with project management to keep things on budget and look for opportunities. You want to talk about that and how you upskilled in that area as well.
Speaker 3:No for sure. I think that a lot of times, you know, when we think about a role on a project, a lot of people stay in their lane. But from my perspective, I never thought that you're going to get the best out of me if I stay in my own lane. I am a very opinionated person and I'm going to give you my opinion, take it or not. I'm still going to say that Right, I'm going to give you that and I'm going to let you decide whether my opinion is valid or not.
Speaker 3:So when we are in a project and then, for one reason or the other, the other roles are either lacking because of experience, because just a different perspective, because they're not seeing things the way you're seeing, because they're not dealing with the other people as a good architect should do, you step up and maybe not even architect, maybe a team player you step up and say, hey, just a thought.
Speaker 3:Have you thought about, instead of doing this sprint this way and this sprint that way, have you thought about shifting things up?
Speaker 3:Because of the following reasons, and I feel like this is where you again coming back to erasing matrix you're not necessarily responsible, but somehow you are accountable, really, and you just need to upskill in situations and in scenarios that you don't necessarily know about for the greater good, right, and then you learn from these people, because, even though project management is not necessarily a role that I play, but the skills that you use to project manage are the same skills that you use when you are managing your backlog and knowing what tasks I want to work on first versus not. If I have a story that is 20 points, I somehow need to manage that story to know when to deliver, when should I start designing, when should I do this, when I should do that. So, in a way, we all play these roles and have these skills in our own little lanes, and sometimes you just stick to that template and apply it in other places, right, and that's how you, in my opinion upskill to those roles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I'm gonna go ahead and say it Like. So it was because of people like you Brandy Megan and Tanya Love. Y'all Hope y'all are listening we are gonna have y'all on the show as well. I know I'm gonna catch hell for that, by the way, but it was folks like you that interesting. When I actually tried to go to the top when I went to Hitachi, I remember Sean saying you know, yeah, you can be an architect but you know you can, you architect the way we want to.
Speaker 1:And I was like what?
Speaker 2:do you mean by that? And like T-Rex Tabor, yeah, shout out to the T-Rex love you, man. It was. It was. It was crazy. Because I was like what are you talking about, dude? Like I, I know my stuff. Are you crazy? You don't know who I am. And then it was. I got on a call with with you. I got on a call with brandy, I got on a call with with I've seen tanya, I've seen megan and man it. There's architects in the world and then there are real architects and you guys had, you know, raised the bar so much within the industry and I learned how to be a real architect and I appreciate it. I said so it's, it's not just about the technology, it's also about building customer relationships, looking for other opportunities, project management, it's, there's so many levels to it. You guys just excelled in those areas. So I'm gonna get into, kind of like the product piece, if you don't mind, if that's okay.
Speaker 3:Let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 2:Cause you have gotten your hands so dirty with field service, I have to ask, from your experience, what are probably the, what are some of the misconceptions or the most misunderstood aspects about a field service implementation Like what do customers see and like they think is going to be? You know what their expectations are, and then there's reality, so go for it.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to say something that I think is a little bit controversial and I think I'm going to get a little bit of any court, but that's okay. But in my opinion, my perspective is that when you are standing up a brand new field service implementation, everyone screams. When you are standing up a brand new field service implementation, everyone screams Scrum, agile, iterations. When it comes to your first field service implementation, you cannot be Scrum, you cannot be Agile, you cannot be iterative. You have to be waterfall.
Speaker 3:The software and the product is meant to work collectively, all in all, from types to service tasks, to the invoices, to AI. Nowadays, it is meant to work all together. So most of the failed implementations that I see and I won't say failed, but maybe the gaps that I see in the implementations, including the ones that are in my company today that I'm working on is when we are iterating the implementation and then we design the incident types, for example, but then we don't talk about when it comes over to a service task and how I'm going to build for these services and whatnot like. But there's not that collaboration because you already put yourself in a corner that now you have to build on top of it instead of collectively architecting a bigger strategy all in all for your system. So in my that is the biggest misconception when it comes to field service implementations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree with that because honestly it's been the biggest struggle getting organizations to realize that it just doesn't work. It just can't Like, how do I go ahead and just do incident types or service tasks? Just can't like, how do I go ahead and just do incident types or service tasks? There's you have to do so much coordination of effort in in your user stories that it just would become a project management nightmare absolutely 100.
Speaker 3:And then I believe that people forget the data flow and they start talking about the data as if the data is only incident types and the data is only invoices and the data is only service tasks and services and products. But it's not. It is the same data that's flowing from one place to the other. It's a life cycle. So then it is so hard to consider oh, I'm gonna do this here, but oh, shoot, I forgot completely that this doesn't work there. But now I'm in sprint 16 and I'm like already way in the weeds. You know what I mean. So that is, in my opinion, where a lot of the gaps come in and people forget about that.
Speaker 1:Well, real quick, and then I'm going to turn it over to you Will. So you know, one of the sessions that I'm doing at UG Summit is about field service common pitfalls in field service, and this is one of them. Oh, I like that, I love that In your opinion, I mean besides the whole. You know, agile versus hey, don't go in agile.
Speaker 1:It doesn't really work for field service. I mean, what would you say you know might be another, you know common pitfall that you see within field services like that you've seen from your years of experience saying, man, I see this all the time.
Speaker 3:I think the biggest thing that I see is that people stick their implementations to what they know for field service is work orders and bookings, requirements, work orders, bookings and requirements Like everywhere you go work orders, bookings and requirements. They stick to that, but then they forget that there's a whole module behind it that supports it and needs to enrich it so you can actually get a good work order, booking requirements, scheduling experience, for example. I'll give you an example. Other people forget about work hours and work. Our templates like calendars and holidays and all of that.
Speaker 3:They forget about that. So then you set up work orders and bookings and requirements and scheduling and you go and you're like my scheduling assistance is not finding anybody. Well, yeah, it's like you miss a huge, huge prerequisite that you completely dropped, and I don't fault people so much for that, because I feel like sometimes the documentations that we have are not as good in terms of explaining why you need to do that.
Speaker 3:They're not enriched. So I just feel like people just stick to what they see, surface level and the videos that we have. All talk about these four components but really miss a lot of enrichment to how to get that thing to work, because work hour templates, resource requirement, groups, you know, incident type estimates and durations and analytics and all of that fun stuff. It's just foster the cracks, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:You know, shout out to David Clark man back in the day. He used to do so much for field service man. We appreciate you. We miss you. Fella, hope you're doing well.
Speaker 3:We miss you, David.
Speaker 2:Riam, so you can't see us. I wish they could, man, because the energy is just crazy. So here's the fun part. I've stolen this and I know I took it from you. Customers come in and they, just like you said, they just wanna install it and you have to tell them this field service is data driven. As one of the very few people other than myself but talking to another person, you are one of the very few people that have actually implemented RSO.
Speaker 3:Now, I'm sorry if this makes you guys Stop having a heart attack, stop having a heart attack.
Speaker 1:I have a little indigestion. Anyone have any? Come hey, all you need is real, you're good.
Speaker 2:You're good like seriously, like she makes. She makes it that much simpler. She's also done scheduling as well, so, just like I, I this is there's a reason why I said let's bring her. Well, I, we wanted to bring you on here because, again, you know, it'll probably be a three-part episode if we went through you. You know just a forte a little bit about what you're great at, but let's just get into it. Anyway, point is let's go into RSO, rso what are some of the challenges you see customers facing and how do they fix those challenges? For RSO and it's broad on purpose- RSO specifically Putting it on the spot, no less.
Speaker 3:I know, I know, I know, I think and I think that everyone's going to have the same answer. To be honest with you, it is the only logical answer is that I am bound to those five things that I need to optimize on, right, yeah, why can I not write my own custom logic, especially now with AI coming into play? Is there not a way that I can like explain what my optimization strategy is and let AI create a scheduling pattern for me that can take that into account? For example, like why is it that I only have these five options? I'll give you an example here at Intralux. None of these five things matter to us, not one of them. We can't take any of that into account, to be honest with you, especially that we travel, like, we hop on planes and we travel to our customer sites. So distance to me and travel time and traffic and all that fun stuff it just is absolutely useless to me. I don't need it, I don't care for it.
Speaker 3:Flight schedules exactly proximity to the airport, for example. You know, things like that matters to me, but I can't use it, so RSO is great, but only for a certain category of companies that has these five in their own list of what they optimize on.
Speaker 2:in my opinion, we were working on an engagement. I never forgot it. It was one of the many ones up. I think it was an opportunity we were working on how about that? And somebody wanted their own, their, their their own scheduling portal, and which they always do, and they also wanted rso. And I'm looking at this and my eyes are crossed. I'm like why?
Speaker 3:do you want?
Speaker 2:customers. Why do you want customers making bookings and then you're going to optimize like you're gonna have to tell them. I'm just like I'm I'm confused, figuring out how I'm gonna tell these people that this isn't, this isn't real and I remember Sean was like it's cool man, real is gonna help with with with it. She's got it and I'm like what do you mean?
Speaker 1:Like oh my god.
Speaker 2:She's gonna help. Like this is this is a, you can't fix this and you get on there and you break it down. You want to help people understand the kind of like the how scheduling really works and why you know optimization and then optimization and scheduling. Why they? Although they kind of go hand in hand, there is a clear delineation between the two.
Speaker 3:No, absolutely when you're scheduling adoption? Yeah, when, when you are scheduling and outside of our so hello friend, when you are sorry in case you can see this, but this is the cutest little pup.
Speaker 2:And you haven't seen her dog. If you see her dog, you're going to love it.
Speaker 3:That's funny. When it comes to scheduling itself, right, I feel like with the three types that we have, between manual, assisted and then RSO, obviously, between manual and assisted, there's always going to be that. It's like a co-pilot experience of a sort, right, someone's in the driver's seat already, someone is making those decisions, there's a human interaction doing it, blah, blah, blah. That's great. I at least feel comfortable that the schedule is going to be pretty nailed down to the best of my people.
Speaker 3:But when it comes to RSO, in my opinion there's still that doubt in people's minds that, yes, it can do it. I still want to see, I still want to look at it, I still want to confirm it. I still I don't trust it. And there's a reason why people don't trust that because there's a flaw to the logic, right, and it operates on, in my opinion, a binary standards. It's a black or white, that's it. There's no gray areas. So, and other times, when it comes to scheduling, we need those gray areas. We need those where, oh, I already scheduled a crew to go out but this person got sick and now I have to replace the whole thing. But that I can because I used resource requirements and now I have to reschedule everybody. There's not that flexibility, unfortunately, when it comes to things like that, and that's why people still steer away from rso and default to, I'll just do it myself.
Speaker 1:What if I have an appointment at this customer site tomorrow, but then there's another one three days later? Why can't I combine them?
Speaker 3:exactly, exactly. It just puts those limitations on you and that is. There's a lot of things in field service unfortunately that does that. It doesn't let you color outside of the lines, even though dynamics, in my opinion, is the XRM toolbox right. It is an XRM, it's not a CRM. The flexibility is the value that it brings. So to be confided in those boundaries in field service sometimes it's like I really can't do that for real, but I'm not used to that. So it creates that feel for people to not trust it, so that people drift away from it, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:So hopefully, with Copilot now and AI hopefully that's coming where there'll be more flexibility. That's all we can do, right. We can hope.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. Speaking of flexibility, real quick, just a little pitch in here. Today we were talking about autonomous agents and how we can use them and whatnot, and one of the biggest things that we have today is that some of our people, especially for smaller offices, I guess, the ones that we have in EMEA, the ones that we have in APEC and whatnot the dispatcher is the person who is going out, like I'm scheduling myself as a technician. I am saying I'm going here, I'm going here, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. So I don't need all those processes and checks and balances in place. I need to create the work order, I need to put the incident type, I need to schedule myself, I need to close my booking. I need to do all of that for me and I just have to tell it I finished this visit or I did this and I did this. Schedule me here, schedule me there. And then it writes back and well, you're like laughing here, you're like dying, but yes, there is now.
Speaker 2:Speak it back right now. I'm loving it.
Speaker 3:Keep going yeah like with AI, I feel like we are tapping into a world where we can still leverage the core field service features that we love so much, but then enrich it with you know prompts and enrich it with experiences.
Speaker 2:That is not necessarily just what you see in field service today yeah, so like there's, there's a difference, like I think so, if you guys haven't figured out out, like Ram knows her stuff and she's literally worked with almost all the products preview or public within that field service suite. But I think customers have found so much value in just having that conversation, like understanding the difference between routing or, you know, figuring out traffic patterns right, you know what is it. Are you trying to get to a destination or are you trying to see? You know what are your scopes, what is your goal for optimization, defining what those are Like. I think once customers have those conversations with someone like yourself, or with myself or Scott, you know, and then you can build this with agents, they are out there now to kind of build and bring this information to the fore for our technicians or for our end users to use.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm gonna be 100%, just a real comment. We'll pick here. Well, my opinion is that customers need education. In my opinion, right, yes, they're bringing us on as consultants to kind of take over and flush things out and whatnot. But I feel like if you don't partner with your customer, you are on a losing immediately from the get-go. My linkedin just say all your customers are partners in your journey. They really are. They really are if you don't partner with your customer, regardless what kind of a customer it is and how hard they are to work with and whatnot. But that educational piece, in my opinion, is key. It sets the tone for the customer feeling that they are part owner and the decision making process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I gotta be. Um, I got one more product question and then we're going to go into kind of like what your thoughts are as far as what you would like to see, or where do you, what are you most excited about? Use cases, all that fun stuff and then we'll go into another topic that I'm incredibly passionate about. I think you are too.
Speaker 2:I just got to say this I do when it comes to food and family. We gotta get you out there to like UG summit or something. You gotta do some speaking sessions. Like I don't understand, like who we have to bribe, but if you guys aren't putting her on DynamicsCon or or or any of the UG groups, we're going to have some issues here. Anyway, all right, so one of the very few people who have actually implemented track, a technician for a field service portal Don't yell at me, I'm so sorry, Okay, tell me tell me I'm so, so, so, so, so, so sorry.
Speaker 3:Over. Like experience? Tell me.
Speaker 2:What was your experience with taking a feature that may have not necessarily been ready and enhancing it to go into production?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, that was probably one of the scariest times of my life, to be honest with you, because you're like I'm betting all your money on a preview feature, right, and we all know how great preview features are. No, no, this is anybody just saying they're pretty feature for a reason, right. So it is absolutely scary because there's multi dimensions to that. A. You have to be very careful around setting the client expectations right. Like that's number one, literally number one. If you don't do that and you continuously keep doing it, you're doomed from the get-go Customer expectations. This is a preview feature. It is going to fail, there are going to be bug and I'm not going to be able to fix it. Like these three things have to be communicated throughout the whole process.
Speaker 1:In my opinion and it could change at any point in time.
Speaker 3:A hundred percent. I cannot guarantee this. Second of all, build really good relationship with the Microsoft product owners for that preview feature. Really try to get insights in right. They are your partners in this right. I mean, you can easily find them on LinkedIn. You can easily reach out to someone from Microsoft Docs and be like we're trying to do this. What do you think if you have fast track architects or if you partner with fast track? Use them. Use them to the max, right, because they can get you all the help that you need. So I remember when we were and it wasn't called track your technician I don't remember what it was called at the time I can't find my technician I think it was fine my tech.
Speaker 3:I think you're right, it was fine my tech or something like that yeah yeah, and I remember at the we had to be very realistic with the customer about it. As a preview feature, we built an amazing relationship with the FastTrack architect who got us into the product owner on the Microsoft side so that we can understand what's coming and not coming. And then from there you cross your fingers and you pray to be honest with you, right, Like you try your best, but then you really have to, in that case, document all the things that are not working or you can't do. And then from there you're still in preview.
Speaker 2:Still in preview? No way.
Speaker 3:Five years later.
Speaker 2:Stop it.
Speaker 3:No, I honestly thought it was deprecated at some point because I stopped hearing about it. To be honest with you, I think it's close.
Speaker 1:We're going to get canceled.
Speaker 2:The field service is a great product but you guys got to understand Microsoft has made such a huge investment into improving it. There are great stories and customers have found amazing ROI with the product, but you know, it's just very few people do it into infield service implementation. So you're talking. The reason why Reem is here is because, well, multiple reasons. One of the big reasons is she's literally touched all the components you can think of within that suite and she's literally played all the roles in implementing them. So that's why we're picking her.
Speaker 1:I wish more customers that I had would do IoT.
Speaker 2:I love IoT. Oh man, good, good fun time. So I have a question. We have to throw this out there because we love it so much and you work for a larger microsoft. Um, I don't want to necessarily throw out the name if we're okay too or not, but you, you, you're, you, you work for a larger microsoft, uh, customer, and are we allowed to say your name? Dumb question Are we Interlochen? Right? We can say your name, right, scott, yeah, no issues, right, yes, okay, cool, all right. Interlochen, interlochen oh, she did. Oh God, we have to cut that out. Okay, so cut that out. I'm sorry, mississippi to miss cool, all right, so you work for interlocks, big Microsoft customer. You went to the customer side. You lead biz apps. Tell me what makes you most excited about the Microsoft suite? What's coming out? Is there some opportunities that you guys are looking to grow and enhance adoption? What are you? What are you seeing there?
Speaker 3:100%%, and I am going to say everybody's favorite two letters A-I. I know it is a buzzword, I understand I get it, but trust me, when you hear my use cases, you understand why this is very exciting for us on the interlock side. So as of right now, we have every single module implemented. We have sales and marketing and customer service and field service and we have some XRM stuff that we did for inspections ourselves because the inspection out of the box did not really cut it that much for what we wanted, so we did our own little thing. It's just being just being just being straight up honest.
Speaker 3:You guys and I'll comment on that here in a little bit. I'll talk about that in a little bit. But I say all of that and I say that we've extended it, but I also say that we extended it within the boundaries of field service. What I mean by that is you extend, you build on top of it, but I still store my inspection responses where I'm supposed to store them, just like the out-of-the-box inspection would have done that, because I would take advantage of all the analytics that comes with it out-of-the-box, right. So that's what I mean you tap on instead of you completely demolish and get rid of it. You tap on, and I have so many of these um examples that I think a good architect would say I can't do it, I'm going to build you something different. It's more of there's a gap. Let me fill that gap, but still use all the other components that I can use for that gap right, or for that feature. Sorry, didn't mean to derail Going back to that.
Speaker 3:We've implemented everything at the moment. So we've always thought of our implementation as a crawl, walk, run, right, and we are now walking. We literally are toddlers, we're walking, we're good to go and it's time for us to start running and for us to start running. It is really two things and it enrich the customer experience and make our people's experience and life easier. These are the two things that we're working towards right now, because we got the data, we got the basics, we got the frameworks in place, we got the SOPs, we got everything that we need. Now it's just a matter of how do we then make it better. It's like I built my house and now it's time to decorate it right, just to make it easier on the eyes.
Speaker 3:So, with that said, when ai comes into play, one of the one of the my favorite use cases of how we've been leveraging ai is belt identification. So can I say, can I talk about what intro locks does go for it? Do you this? Is you okay? Okay, so we sell modular belts, which means that they're plastic belts. I have here somewhere I'll show you guys later, but we build plastic belts that are like Lego pieces. You put them together and you make this beautiful big belt that's hygienic and whatever, right, but then have you ever seen a belt that has like a QR code on it? It just doesn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I actually haven't.
Speaker 3:No, have you it? Just no, it doesn't. Yeah, no, I actually haven't. No, have you ever seen a belt that has a placard on it? No, you can't do stuff like that. It contaminates food, for example. You can't have foreign material sitting on a belt when it's a tyson chicken and chicken is going over that metal. You can't do that right. So a lot of times, these are these are the problems that you see in real life like oh, what do I do now? There's no way for me to identify my asset. If my customer picks up the phone and say hey, my belt broke, can you send me another one? And this is a customer that been with you for 10 years and they have four buildings where my belts are running. I don't know what belt to send you. I have no idea what you want. Oh, let me grab a picture and send it to you. Grab a picture, send it to me. It looks like a gray belt and it looks like it's an acetal, I guess, or a plastic, but it could have easily been a green belt that faded into gray, right. So there's so many aspects to that.
Speaker 3:Where we built an AI tool Last year, the team and I did a hackathon it's our thing of how to end the year, so we did a hackathon. It's our thing of how to end the year, so we did a hackathon. We built a belt identification tool where we fed the model different pictures of belts, stacked them with the properties that we care about product theory, style, material, color. Those are the four things that we identify a belt with, and then now all I've got to do is pick up my tool, scan it or send an email with a picture, and then the model is going to return for you.
Speaker 3:Probabilities. That's to say, based on previous purchase history which is in Oracle, by the way, not in Dynamics and based on what I'm seeing of specs of this belt and based on what I have in my database, I am 85% sure this is a Series 7000, green acetyl, whatever. Da, da, da, da, right. And that is just one way of how ai is going to do both. It's going to impact our customers and it's going to impact our end users. Our customers are getting these belts. If a belt is down in a free relay or in a tyson chicken or in amazon, operations are down like we're completely down. So it reduces downtime to our customer because they're getting those replacements asap. Right, and it reduces the time on our customer service folks that are not having to go in and search and google and look for two days what that belt is unreal, wow, unreal, unreal.
Speaker 2:Like straight up, if you guys haven't disliked, that is unreal. I love how you say we did like an end of the year hackathon, like it was some little thing. Like that's unreal.
Speaker 3:The roi with that like that, that's the amazing amazing, yeah, but this is this is what we're excited about. These are the things where I say we start walking. Right, we're walking, we're starting to run. This is the kind of stuff that now we want to dangle and enrich our system with. So we we continue change management, we continue adoption, we continue our digital existence with our customers and just make our people's life easier, because Dynamics and Field Service is not the easiest to use. So how do we make it easier for our people to continue loving it? It's things like that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. How do you continue loving it? Yeah, because adoption is huge, right? You don't really get rid of the things you love, unless you're my parents. They got rid of me. That was a good investment, Too soon too soon Shout out to Kyle mom and dad's favorite.
Speaker 2:That's right, kyle, love you buddy, love you so little child man. What can I say? So, ria, like again, like I kind of we kind of shifted topics earlier and I was going to get into it but I decided we probably just hold off quite a bit. You are a, you have been a architect, you've been a consultant, you've done PME-ish. Well, you've done a lot. That was a Drake reference. I think that's a Drake reference. I don't know what my kids listen to, but you have done a lot and are going to continue to do. Can you speak to me about something I know you're passionate about? I'm passionate about it too representation, particularly women in tech.
Speaker 3:What are?
Speaker 2:why is it so? Why is it? Why is it so important to have a strong female representation in tech, especially in field service or the microsoft space?
Speaker 3:in my opinion, it's not necessarily about I have to prove myself. It is where we belong, naturally, in my opinion Like I just don't feel like and unfortunately there has been a lot of stigmas around certain careers that this is male dominated and IT has become one of them for some reason, right, but then, in my opinion, I am raising two girls who one of them is extremely curious when it comes to coding and development and whatnot, so naturally I have to empower that by being a role model for her. You know what I mean and show her that, yeah, we do belong there, even though our society in our community is telling us you're not really the best when it comes to those IT jobs, because, you know, technology is for man, right? I just believe personally that women belong in that field as much as anyone else, and I'm going to double down on that and say women of color belong in that field more than anyone else, right? And you don't see that representation, unfortunately, much.
Speaker 3:Now we're seeing a lot more folks are in there, right, you have Kylie, you have Heidi, you have Dion, you have all these people that are, you know, out there and representing us and women in that field there and representing us and women in that field and in my opinion, I just feel like we bring a lot of artistic visions into the system. In my opinion, when it comes to consulting and architecture and being in that space, we bring a lot of emotional intelligence. Not to say that men don't, but this is natively. Statistically, women do that better. I knowott is shaking his head no comment.
Speaker 3:You know, I'll give it to you, I'll give it to you. So, so I just feel like we bring a lot of those soft skills that we are usually um, what's the word punished for sometimes that we actually need in the consulting space, right? I know that when I am talking to a customer and I am sympathizing with the gaps that they're having and their processes and saying I know that this did not work the way you want it to. Let's see if we can figure this out. I know that I am building a customer for life, end of story because I'm sympathizing with you, right? Whereas if lack of that produces just a lack of partnership in general, right, yeah, so so we belong there, bottom line, yeah, we belong there. We naturally fit there, in my opinion, right?
Speaker 3:and I I personally don't don't feel like it's a fight to get there anymore. It's just a natural transition that we just in there so there there are.
Speaker 2:Real quick, I'm sorry about the scott, let me touch it. So, like you name some like azure trisha, sinclair mizell, like these are all women you know, we got kylie, we got heidi, we have brandy shout out. Megan, tanya, dion yeah, for reals, these are all you know, big, big players in the industry. I don't know any. The first thing about being a woman so I just have a daughter.
Speaker 3:It's hard man, it's hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's tough. I see some of the things. I just I have to ask this question. This is going to make everyone feel uncomfortable. I was oblivious to this because that's just sometimes how I am, and I don't mean anything by it, but a trend. You would get in a room, say it's a bunch of guys, and they look at a young lady and they say, hey, you take notes.
Speaker 3:That has been my life for three years.
Speaker 2:So by the time I came along and was with you, I ain't never seen anybody tell you that. So what are you? What can you say to the young lady right now who's being told to kind of sit down and just take notes?
Speaker 3:Two things Know your worth and speak up your value. Two things, don't be afraid. Right, it starts with knowing your value and know what you're worth, because sometimes we, as women, tend to take others perspective about us and believe that it's true, which is unfortunate these days. Right, do some self-reflection. Know what you're good at and be okay with the things that you're not good at, and that's when you know your worth and you know what you can and you cannot do. Second thing is speak up your. Someone once told me that and I still use it till today. You're not gonna robustly combust if someone tells you you know or you you stand up for yourself. It's not gonna. What's the worst? That?
Speaker 1:can happen.
Speaker 3:Right, speak up for yourself. I think a lot of people, a lot of women, are afraid to speak up and say you know, no, I don't want to take notes, because they're worried that I'm not going to be seen as a team player. I'm gonna seem as use my word here bossy or bitchy or whatever the labels that they put on us when we speak up our mind.
Speaker 3:I know I'm sorry, we'll cut that out hey, no, you're good now, because I want the kids to hear we're good yeah, so so we don't speak up because in the, in the, in the spirit of being a good team player and being a good employee, I'm the greater good. I'm just gonna go ahead and accept that my role isn't note taker. Not because we're seeing it as hey. They're leaving me as a note taker because I'm a younger woman in the room. I'm going to be there for the team. You know what?
Speaker 2:I mean and I'm not saying you should not be a team- player whatsoever.
Speaker 3:I'm just saying that know your worth and know what I mean.
Speaker 3:And I'm not saying you should not be a team player whatsoever. I'm just saying that know your worth and know what you're good at right, that you are better off leading a discussion, because that's where most of my power is leading a discussion and analyzing. Do you really want me to sit down and take notes? Is that really what you want out of me? You want the best of my, what I'm good at right. Right, and trust me, my notes are going to be horrible. Horrible because I don't say good notes at all so that's why we have exactly that's why it's it's a losing situation.
Speaker 2:I've gotten your customer notes before just heads up, right what the heck is this?
Speaker 3:but you're reading that most loving way, it's all good.
Speaker 1:It's all good you raise a good point because my, my wife, you was Loving Way it's all good, it's all good. You raise a good point because my wife is in similar situations where I'm like you know what, be confident, don't let people you know she's like the same thing. She doesn't let anyone bring her down right, she knows she's confident in her capabilities and that has to show. It's not just for women, but for everyone. Be confident Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I mean, we all know the stats right about, like, when a woman applies for a job versus a man applies for a job, right. When a man applies for the job, oh, I check five out of the 15 boxes, I'm going to apply anyway. When a woman applies for the job, oh, I'm missing three at the very bottom that are optional. So I'm going to get rejected. Right, and that is honestly how, unfortunately, we're wired as women, because we are sometimes perfectionists, right, and we want to make sure that we're not getting just rejected in a way.
Speaker 3:So we try to cover our bases, right, because we're worried about what people are going to think of us, because that's how the society shaped us to be. So it's just a full circle. When you know your worth, like Scott said, you know your worth, you're confident in what you can and you cannot do, and you're very candid about it, You're not doing it just to retaliate. You're doing it because you actually know what you're talking about, versus saying I actually don't know much about this, I'll get back to you later. When you showcase that confidence and you lead with that, and you lead with that is not my best and highest use, right. That's when I think that you can overcome these situations and say how about you take the notes and let me lead the discussion, because that's what I prepared for and that's what I'm good?
Speaker 2:at. It's funny, like, because if I, you know, we tease, there are some components that I don't know anything about and I'll flatly say, hey guys, I'm not the one for that. I mean, if you want to give me extra time to pick it up, sure I got that, I own this, but I'm probably it's probably a better person. Nobody will think twice, right, when you hear other that's why I don't hear places, yeah I hear other, I hear other.
Speaker 2:Let me say why. I hear women say that. Or if a woman says that, they look at them like oh, how could you not know this? And you kind of hear this, and you see that in a negative.
Speaker 3:It's like yeah no absolutely yeah, because we we are always challenged because, again, full circle, we are told we do not fit in that space, we're told we're not adequate, we're not capable to fit in that space.
Speaker 1:You're supposed to know it all.
Speaker 3:And then we try hard. We try harder than anybody so that we know it all, so that when we are faced with a question, we don't sound incompetent, even though it is not a measurement of whether you're good or not, it's just I don't know it, I just don't know it Right. So I think that's where really things fall. Through. The cracks for women is that they try to have this. They're superheroes, they have the superhero syndrome and then you have the imposter syndrome. They conflict with each other.
Speaker 3:I want to try to be the most perfect person of all times, but at the same time I'm so inadequate, I'm not good enough, and sometimes you just have to put all of that aside. Yes, sometimes it seeps in and sometimes you're like I am a failure, I am not really doing a good job. But then you always have to remember that. Give yourself some grace. You know what you're doing. You are good at what you're doing. There's a reason why you're here, there's a reason why you made it. You know four positions in four years, just like that. So trust yourself. Don't let that seep into you yeah, that wasn't.
Speaker 2:That wasn't easy, but you did, by the way, and that's great advice. So I'm gonna get in trouble for this, and you're probably going to punch me in the throat when you see me.
Speaker 1:So you'll be in a circle today that punches him in the throat, by the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, she hits hard, by the way. She hits hard so I'm just going to have to try to duck. So you know, I honestly I would love I mean I love everything that you bring as far as like just the energy, the support in the community, and you have a message that clearly I think others need to see it here. So can you speak about some of the things that you plan on doing in the community, maybe this year? Or are there some opportunities you want to kind of, I'm just going to be a bad person, use this platform to be like, hey, you know, y'all need to have me here, don't be afraid to say it, either go for it.
Speaker 3:So you're asking me about what I want out of the community, I guess, or what I want the community to do, because, like there's both this is your time, either or let me. Let me lead by one thing in terms of what I'm really hoping this community does moving forward. We are at an era here where there is I don't want to say distractions, because ai is not a distraction, but there's the new kid on the block that everyone just flipped it towards right and that's where everyone's focused every summit that you're going to it's the cool kid on the block.
Speaker 3:Every summit you go to, every conference you hop on every podcast that you do, the main theme is ai, ai, ai. And this is why this conversation is so refreshing, because we touched on rso, we touched on track technician, we touched on scheduling, right. Um, let's not forget that field service still has gaps and still has so much things to learn about and so much to educate on. So, yes, agents, agents are amazing, but there's still a lot of companies that are now starting to implement field service and they still have to go back to basics. So let's not forget the basics. Let's continue educating people on all the good things that field service does, all the features that are coming. I just found out there's a few options that came to booking statuses. That allows you to like update the time automatically versus not, and I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. When did this come in it?
Speaker 2:is nowhere.
Speaker 3:It is nowhere right. So let's just not forget about the things that people have either implemented and need to continue building on top and it might fix a bug here and there or a gap here and there and the people that are about to implement field service that need that are years away from AI and co-pilots and agents.
Speaker 1:So that's my message to the community specifically. That's a great message and I guess I mean kind of piggybacking on that. I mean, how would you say you know people can get involved in the community? I mean, what's your advice for people like where do I start? What I do?
Speaker 3:in my opinion, I will reflect that based on someone who I just dragged into the community somehow, right? So there's this person on my team that has been doing fieldster at microsoft for about 10 years. Right, shout out to christian, if you're listening he's never been to single summit, he's never been to a single meeting, he's never been to a single you know podcast. He's never done any of these things. So, in my opinion, I just feel like people, if they really are interested in this, dig deep, go to LinkedIn, go to Microsoft Events, go to your local user groups. There's almost a user group in a lot of the cities around us, even if it's a couple of drives away, there's a user group somewhere. Drive to Cleveland, drive to Cincinnati, go to these places and connect with others.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's exactly what I did with Christian. I said, christian, there is a community summit, come with me. And he did, and he fell in love with that summit. Right, and mostly it's really about connecting with people like you guys and getting to know people like you guys, and it just becomes a dominant effect the minute you know Scott, the minute I follow. Well, everything else is going to come in place. So just take initiative, find your nearest user group, in my opinion, around your city, a regional, a local one and try to attend consistently right and then grow your circle from there and just the the events just aligned in my opinion.
Speaker 2:So, after we conclude this, you're going to give me Christian's little information, cause I'm I'm going to put my phone out. I'm going to call him on that.
Speaker 2:I'm going to call him on that. That's what. That's what that's what Tricia, dion and Mark Christie and Ian did for me. So I love doing the others. So here's the deal we got to get more of you. So the deal we gotta get more of you. So you know just, I can't wait for any of the sessions that you decide to present on in the coming months, but this has just been flat out, just awesome, and I really would love a part two. But thank you so much for what you asked and keep us posted too.
Speaker 1:if there's any events or or talking sessions that you're going to, we'd love to uh, promote those and, and you know, get you a good listening audience. Maybe Will and I can come and heckle you in the back.
Speaker 3:No big deal Come in August 22nd, columbus, ohio Embassy Suites, I'm giving a session in the regional summit about the Interlox journey, the eight-year implementation that we have been through, all the lessons learned, all the things that we failed at. I'm really focusing on the failures mostly so that people can learn from that and then just a lookout for the future of where we're going from here, just like the build identification agent and things like that excellent, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Everyone you need to attend that session get there, you better, you better, you better.
Speaker 1:You don't know what y'all missing.
Speaker 2:That's probably a great idea. You should you better. You don't know what y'all missing. That's probably a great idea. You should probably have a. I know I think ey did that. But we should probably just have like a couple sessions where he's hired and get bring people on. They just get to tell us about their you know, some of their messed up things that they did yeah, yeah, a couple of those got a couple of those series.
Speaker 3:Night then field service nightmares field service nightmares for sure 26 years of implementing systems. I have a few this year, just a few, like three pages or four Size 8 font.
Speaker 1:Ouch.
Speaker 2:Ouch, I deleted a component every now and then out of an environment.
Speaker 3:Disabled a plugin that I shouldn't have disabled.
Speaker 2:It happened, right, it just happened, no happened no biggie.
Speaker 1:Well, reham, it's been really great having you on. I know we're we're uh, out of time here for our our listeners, but you know it's been fantastic having you on sharing your story. You know, to will's point love to have you back on for a part two and you know we'll work on making that happen. And and good luck on your august 22nd. That's awesome thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, guys, it was been a pleasure having this conversation.
Speaker 2:Keep up the conversations, you guys are doing great and next year dynamics gone, that's right your dynamics gone I'll be there.
Speaker 3:I'll wear my cape. I'll wear my cape, thank you everyone that's listening.
Speaker 1:We appreciate you all. Have a great day.
