Ready for Connected Field Service? Microsoft evolves Dynamics 365 app as market expectations rise

Microsoft has reportedly made significant gains with Dynamics 365 for Field Service since acquiring the original solution in 2015. A growing customer base and maturing solution set have pushed the company and its partners to add capacity just to keep up with demand.

"Field service is moving from a cost center to a profit center," says Ben Vollmer, a Microsoft veteran who leads sales and readiness globally around Field Service and Connected Field Service. Increasingly, he says, organizations are investing in field service, project service and related operations as a strategic opportunity and profit center rather than a cost center.

Vendors like Microsoft have made their investments in more sophisticated and holistic service solutions to meet evolving market needs. Service teams and the executives that oversee them are no longer willing to accept an IT environment where users - and customers - must jump between systems for service calls, work orders, and deploying field reps. "What about a human being who can take a call, do a meeting, or a be a resource?" Vollmer asks. He notes that research has indicated that over 65% of all contact center interactions result in a human being dispatched to fix the issue.

The need for change in the day-to-day lives of many service teams is still very real. There are laggards to be found across the business landscape when it comes to modernizing field services. Vollmer notes a recent discussion with a heavy equipment manufacturer whose service team still manages work orders on paper forms. "How do you transform your business when people are ...