As a field service dispatcher managing engineer’s schedules, it is vital to have access to real time information at your fingertips, as well as having the tools available to streamline your own and your engineers’ productivity. If your company already has a field management solution in place, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service, or your management team are looking to make a business case for a field management solution, then there are certain features the resource and scheduling team will benefit from on a day-today basis. Let’s take a look at how, as a scheduler, you can manage your team’s day-to-day activities efficiently, with the right solution in place.
Streamlining your day-to-day activities as a Field Service Dispatcher
Firstly, you can optimise your time management by reducing the number of errors per unit and minimise call-outs using a preventative maintenance tool. A field service management solution can provide the ability to combine monitoring with the Internet of Things allowing your company to replace the costly break-fix service, with a proactive service which follows self-healing steps. This means you can more easily plan your own and your engineers’ time as predictability increases and reactivity decreases.
Providing a better customer experience – the right skills at the right time
You can also easily monitor a customer’s equipment in real time, allowing you to ensure that everything is running smoothly, and be alerted to any problems as they occur allowing you to respond in a timely manner. If you are aware there is a problem, you can begin to troubleshoot the problem remotely according to the SLAs in place. This in turn builds a case history in order to report on recurring problems and alert management where necessary.
If the problem cannot be resolved remotely you will need to send a field technician to fix it. You must consider several factors, and how you rate the importance of these factors; which technicians are trained on the equipment that has failed? Are there any preferred technicians by the customer? Which service technicians have the availability to complete the job within the customer’s timescales and SLA? What is the best route for the engineer to get to site? What is the technician’s ETA? Etc.
Several of these processes can be managed by automating work order creation in your field management solution, saving you valuable time and ensuring compliance. With the right technician booked you know they will receive an alert for the job on their mobile, PDA or tablet, you can see that they have acknowledged and accepted the job and when they are on their way to the customer’s site in order to keep the customer informed.
Integrating stock control to speed up case resolution in the field
In a 2015 survey conducted by The Service Council that looked at the priorities of service professionals who are looking to improve their field service execution, respondents highlighted that parts and inventory management present the greatest challenge. You or the service engineer can check parts and stock availability remotely to ensure they have the correct hardware for the job and plan in remedial work quicker. The technician can send you a report remotely once the job is complete and you can close the case and send the customer the case report if necessary. The ability to categorise jobs by location allows you to only see the jobs associated with the area you manage avoiding cross over from other dispatchers.
In the same survey, it was found that the biggest customer complaint with field service was poor first time fix rates followed closely by cost. As discussed in a previous blog, with machine learning capabilities you can also distinguish fault patterns, forecast when a maintenance issue is likely to occur, and detect a solution. Saving your customer time and money whilst optimising your performance.
At the end of the day you can see which cases have been closed and which remain open to be actioned, as well as KPIs such as cases open outside of SLAs and priority cases.
Finding the right solution for a Field Service Dispatcher
With Connected Field Service for Microsoft Dynamics 365 your company can benefit from time-saving features that boost productivity. You can register customer assets with the Azure IoT hub, right from the Field Service app or from the mobile app. You can also manage devices by categorising them—for example by device type, supported commands, or breakdown frequency.
You can also view the live heartbeat of registered devices using Power BI. There is also an IoT dashboard that shows alerts by customer, device, asset, and what action was taken in response to an alert.
To speak to our specialists about how a field service management solution can help your field dispatch operatives complete their day-to-day tasks, contact Prodware today.
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT MICROSOFT DYNAMICS 365 FOR FIELD SERVICE
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