Explore a Dynamics 365 Field Service-related apps business scenario
Contoso Coffee is a global coffee distributor. They produce their own line of gourmet coffee and residential and commercial coffee machines. Their gourmet line of coffee and their coffee machines are sold through multiple retail channels. These channels include the Contoso Coffee retail stores, which are often located in premium locations, premium food resellers, and through the Contoso Coffee website. Contoso Coffee has a customer contact center to help resolve any issues with their products.
Contoso Coffee recently released their A1-100 smart coffee machine. The A1-100 is used by both commercial and residential customers. This Internet of Things (IoT) enabled device includes integrated sensors for monitoring things such as waterflow, temperature, and can even suggest when it is time to order more coffee.
Most maintenance and service on coffee and espresso machines can be done remotely. There are, however, times when technicians are dispatched to service equipment in the field or provide preventative maintenance. While Contoso Coffee does have a large staff of internal workers, they don’t always have enough technicians in less populated areas. Even in areas where they do have good coverage, there are often high-volume times when they don’t have enough internal resources to meet demand. In both scenarios, Contoso frequently uses external partners to perform the work.
Consider Contoso Coffee’s regional dispatcher. They're responsible for maintaining and managing the schedules of several hundred of Contoso Coffee’s internal and external resources. Many of Contoso Coffee’s work orders are automatically created and scheduled using a resource optimization scheduling engine. The regional dispatcher's responsibilities consist of plugging holes in schedules and handling cancelations. Historically this process was a challenge for them because they didn't have a central area where they could manage their resources. As calls came in, they needed to operate with different scheduling systems. The need to use multiple systems often led to items being overlooked.
With Dynamics 365 Field Service, the regional dispatcher has a single scheduling interface that they can use to manage both their internal and external resources at the same time. With different schedule board tabs for different regions, they can ensure that they aren't scheduling resources for jobs that aren't in their region. When they need to schedule something at the last minute, they use the assisted scheduling capabilities of Dynamics 365 Field Service. Those capabilities make it easy for them to identify qualified technicians who are both physically proximate and available during the times the customer is requesting. Dynamics 365 Field Service helps Contoso Coffee to improve first-time fix rates by sending the right technicians for jobs. As scheduling conflicts or cancelations occur, the regional dispatcher can quickly find and book an alternative resource to keep resources busy and customers happy.
These represent only a small portion of the capabilities that are available to dispatchers. Let’s see the scheduling capabilities in action.
Dynamics 365 Field Service business scenario
Now that we saw the scheduling capabilities of Dynamics 365 Field Service in action, let’s examine asset management.