Microsoft is named a Leader for Field Service Management

Whether you are a product designer, a manufacturer or a service provider, the technology world has seen many market changes over the past 10 years- and the rate of change is accelerating.

In the past, product manufacturers maintained strong business growth by developing ever more innovative products, with new features and benefits, that customers were keen to consume. Basic warranty and maintenance services would often add a useful additional revenue stream to the company’s financial success, and at the same time allow them to further improve their products based upon the acquired performance data from the installed base.

As products in the global economy have become more commoditized, third party maintainers and “pure play” services organizations have seized the opportunity to deliver value-added services to customer end-users. In response, a shift began within field service to less hands-on, more remote, and more dynamic and proactive service operations.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service, you can leverage cutting-edge technology that can turn your field service operations from an expensive cost center to a digitally transformed profit center. Organizations benefit from:

• Improved first-time fix rates and customer satisfaction
• Reduced service costs such as travel time, mileage, and vehicle wear and tear
• Increased productivity of field technicians with mobile apps, Remote Assist and Hololens
• Timely and accurate customer and equipment history to field technicians
• Identifying and taking advantage of up-sell and cross-sell opportunities
• Providing proactive and preventative maintenance with IoT and machine learning

In this study, IDC MarketScape objectively noted the strengths, challenges, and considerations of each vendor. For Microsoft, the IDC MarketScape noted one of the strengths as “The ability to deliver specific capabilities to support the market is critical to rapid adoption and ROI. Customer references also noted that Microsoft’s integration with other enterprise applications and technical capabilities of the application helped speed deployment and achieve value quickly.”

IDC MarketScape also noted “Microsoft’s primary challenge with regard to field service management is with regard to industry-specific innovations. Microsoft has established a culture of innovation around many of its products and highlights service-specific offerings, which demonstrate the future of field service collaboration and execution. However, manufacturers and some service organizations lag behind those in other industries, and companies like Microsoft will need to provide both transformative offerings and incremental innovations that closely align with the risk aversion of the specific sub vertical industry.” Fortunately, Microsoft caters to everyone from the intrepid to the risk-averse with both transformative offerings and incremental innovations that closely align with the customer’s palatable level of risk.

The study advised “Manufacturers and service organizations should consider Microsoft when they are looking for an integrated field service product offering that can seamlessly integrate IoT data, remote collaboration, AI, and AR/mixed reality capabilities to enable more predictive and proactive service outcomes. The ability to collaborate in real time and have on-demand insights is transforming the way field service and support can be conducted. Microsoft is helping manufacturers that are on this journey around servitization and the convergence of AI, IoT, and AR in the field.”