June 25, 2025 • 54 mins
What happens when you put the "Field Service Guru" in the hot seat? Magic, insight, and a fascinating journey through two decades of service evolution.
Pierre Hulsebus takes us back to 2002, when field service technicians relied on complex offline synchronization and paper-based processes. With the warmth and wisdom that comes from over 20 years in the trenches, he reveals how the mobile revolution transformed not just how technicians work, but fundamentally altered customer expectations. Remember Palm Pilots? Pierre does—and he walks us through the journey to today's powerful pocket computers that handle everything from photos to customer signatures.
The conversation sparkles when we dive into AI applications. Pierre shares a story about using smart paste functionality that saved countless development hours—what he calls the "million-dollar button." His excitement is palpable when discussing how generative AI could create personalized work order summaries that technicians could listen to like podcasts on their way to jobs. It's these practical, tangible use cases that cut through the hype and show how AI is already transforming service operations.
Perhaps most valuable is Pierre's hard-earned wisdom about implementation. Having seen countless deployments from both the Microsoft and partner side, he debunks the myth that field service is too complex to implement successfully. The secret? Start with out-of-the-box functionality and focus on the organizational challenges rather than technical ones. As Pierre puts it, consultants often need to be "marriage counselors" helping companies overcome departmental barriers.
Whether you're managing complex assets like industrial valves the size of semi-trucks or tiny medical devices with firmware serial numbers, this episode delivers practical insights about inventory management, change adoption, and the future of automated scheduling. Join us for this masterclass in field service excellence and discover why following Pierre on LinkedIn is a "moral imperative."
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey there and welcome to the Service X Factor podcast
.
I'm Scott LaFonte, seven-timeMicrosoft MVP and Field Service
Strategist at CongruentX, andyour guide for today's episode
On this show.
My co-host, fellow MicrosoftMVP and service innovation guru,
will McClendon, and I willspotlight the people, platforms
and ideas that transform serviceteams from cost centers into
(00:23):
revenue powerhouses, and ideasthat transform service teams
from cost centers into revenuepowerhouses.
Each episode will unpackreal-world wins, hard-learned
lessons and the emerging techreshaping the front lines Think
AI, co-pilots, predictiveanalytics and everything in
between.
So grab your coffee, settle inand let's discover your
organization's X-Factor together.
Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Welcome everyone to the next episode of Service X
Factor Podcast.
I'm one of your hosts, scottLaFonte, and I'm here with my
esteemed colleague and co-host,quad McClendon.
I'm butchering your namealready, it's all good, it's
forgettable.
It's all good in the hood.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
How's it going, man?
Another lovely, lovely weekLoving the hood.
How's it going, man?
Another lovely, lovely weekLoving the Florida summers.
How about you, man?
Really excited about our nextguest, though Really super
excited oh yeah, yeah,absolutely he is.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
let's get right into it.
He is what I call the originalgangster for field service.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
He's totally on the godfather level.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
He's totally up there , right?
Yeah, he's totally there yeah,and his, his I'm gonna go old
school.
His twitter handle, which isnow I can't call it fs, right,
the fs guru, mr pierre hulsebusfantastic, fantastic, you one of
(01:44):
the things.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
You'll find it, regardless of what's happening.
Yeah, I'm always good, it'salways great, it's always
fantastic, it's fantastic,always like an art, an arm could
be falling off.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah, it's just a scratch, but a spread, just a
flesh wound love it.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Love it now you've been, you've been in field
service, for I mean, I don'teven know how long.
How long is a bit?
Speaker 3 (02:16):
it's.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
It's at least, at least 15 years right here yeah,
I started in the dynamics rightat the beginning when it was.
Yeah, I started in the dynamicsright at the beginning when it
was, you know, in 2002.
I came from a CRN gold mine whowas at a gold mine partner
boutique, boutique shop.
Just me and one other dude kindof like you guys, just the two
(02:39):
of you doing I'm just you guysand another right, one day we'll
grow to be like you guys.
It was just me and anotherfellow and Don, who taught me a
lot, don Asteris, who taught meso much about, you know, being a
professional consultant.
You know that was a big lesson,a lot of lessons in that one.
And so, yeah, and then I joinedup.
(03:02):
We had several field serviceprojects that were part when I
was doing that first initial atEHTC, which is now part of, I
think, part of Velasio's network.
It was a small, you know, wewere a small partner and so,
yeah, that was the.
We did a couple of fieldservice projects back then 2005.
Back then, 2005, we sold thefirst, believe it or not, which
(03:25):
is now a huge Microsoft Parkcustomer.
The Veterans Administration inMichigan was one of my first
field service customers.
It was all for facilitiesmanagement, all the add-ons and
changes help desk all that kindof stuff Back in CRM.
Four days.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
That's awesome.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Yeah, I left that and went to work for one side.
Okay, was all dedicated fieldservice solution, and then then
on to them, to Microsoft and onto the mothership.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Oh yeah, that's awesome.
So I mean so and that's why youare the the OG.
There you go.
I mean cause you.
I mean you're going back.
You know 20, 20 plus years ofof field service experience.
So in that time, I mean so muchhas changed and evolved.
I mean what you know, goingback, thinking back from when
(04:20):
you first started this journeyto now.
I mean talk to me about youknow what you've seen as the
biggest in your mind, thebiggest sort of transitional
element.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Sure, one of them is just the evolution of the mobile
solution.
That would probably be one ofthe biggest ones the change, you
know, to an action system thatsynchronized and worked offline
and just was able to be reliant.
That was a big issue.
That was one of the mainreasons Goldmine was so popular
was that it had a.
You still had it on.
You couldn't run it on yourmobile phone, of course, but you
could run it on a laptop, whicheverybody did, and then you
(05:02):
could synchronize it to themothership.
And that whole infrastructure ofoffline synchronization today
is.
We just add, it works offline,but the level of complexity
that's behind that is so it'soutrageous.
Most people have no clue howcomplicated that is no clue, how
(05:26):
complicated that is and it usedto be.
It was like back in the 90swhen you were installing a pc
and you had to build the tcp ipstack, you know, and go in and
configure all your ip addressesand your subnet masks and all of
the batch files you had to loadup before the windows started
and all of this like that's,that's, you know.
(05:46):
It was super complicated backthen.
Most you know.
And same thing in a fieldservice.
The mobility was one of thebiggest, one of the biggest
reasons and companies that gotthat right and were on the right
software and had goodsynchronization, you know, loved
it.
If you didn't, it sucks, itsucks I.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I thought you were gonna say, of course, you know,
back in like 2000, I wasthinking to my palm pilot days
for this update.
I was like you know the palm.
I'll stop my little palm pilot.
That's right, get things done.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Yeah, uh, yeah, the evolution of ability is a big
one.
Mean, that's a huge disabilitynow for a technician on their
you know phone or tablet, anAndroid you know $500 tablet, to
be able to pretty much do theirentire day's worth of work on
this computer in your pocket.
(06:38):
You know.
Taking pictures, editing doingyour email in one device.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That was pretty wild, and that's what it's
interesting.
You say that because when Ihave technicians come to the
house, whether it's lawn care,pest control or you know
something that needs to be fixedin the house and apply into
whatever, all right, I don'twant paper, I don't want carbon
copies, and most of them don'tdo that anymore.
Right, I want it electronic, sothat I can file it, because you
(07:08):
know, my wife is a firm believerin oh, I like to have the paper
copy and let's put it in thefiling cabinet.
The filing cabinet that I havenow stores other things besides
paper.
Yeah yeah, it has other thingsin there LAN cords and all these
other power cords of thingsthat I don't know what they
(07:29):
belong to.
But I mean that's just to yourpoint, I mean it's to make
everyone's lives easier.
I mean it even helps us out asthe end user, right?
Because now I get an electroniccopy that I can file.
If I file it correctly, I caneasily pull it back up versus oh
, where did I keep that paper?
Where did I file it?
(07:49):
I put it in the wrong folder,forget it.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
I don't have time, forget about it.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
That's right Forget about it.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I'm going to pick your brain.
I'm going to pick your brain alittle bit here, pick the brain.
No, because you've been doingthis for you know God, you know
so long.
So how have customers'expectations then right, with so
much technology and they'reavailable to them how have their
expectations changed?
And really, because you've beenat so many different levels,
how should field serviceorganizations adopt to meet
(08:17):
those changes?
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Yeah, I mean that's.
It's really interesting theearly on that transition for a
lot of companies to go frompaper to mobile, like that's
just a chasm of changeorganizationally.
I do remember being told thestory of one of the first Field
One customers that was happeningand back then what they did.
(08:41):
Of course it was mobile butwhat ended up happening was Jim
Hare who was the boss.
He was the boss, the salesmanager and kind of the chief
revenue officer for FieldOnewhen Microsoft bought him.
He said he told me the story ofthe company they went to hey,
isn't it great, you know, we cando all of this, new technical
(09:01):
capabilities for your customers,and you know now, you know your
ROI is going to be really highand all that.
And the owner of the companyjust turned to him and said I
just wanted my guys to show upwith computers instead of paper,
like that.
Was it just the impression thatthey could capabilities-wise
(09:22):
handle just being on a PC?
And I think that's the biggesttransition right now.
It's the same chasm leap,whether that's AIologists in
this space, you know we get tosee a lot of things that are
coming and success and a lot ofthe impact that's going to
happen as a result of AI, butsomething as simple as
scheduling the discussion withsome companies is so resistant.
(09:45):
They're like this is how we didit forever and there's no way
that a system can be as smart asmy 10 dispatchers.
And it's just like interesting,interesting.
And the industry has alwaystalked about the aging out of
the technical workforce and how.
You know what are we going todo and we have to recruit more
(10:07):
and invest more in technologyschools, which is all happening
and great.
But that new group of peoplecoming in are, you know, chat
GTP users.
They learn stuff on.
You know, I've got a son who's30, and he's an engineer.
And you know, whenever he's gotan issue, youtube was always
where he would look.
I, I don't know how to do this,let me just learn this on
(10:30):
youtube.
And I don't know, it's thatgeneration growing up with the
matrix and seeing.
You know, all right, I need tolearn about helicopter, you know
.
You know how to do this, and soit's just a technical
experience for technicians todaycoming in.
Then you know, the seasonedpros that you know can figure
(10:50):
out what's going wrong withsomething just by feeling the
vibration of the engine going.
Yeah, this is off a little bit.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
The mystery, uh, I can't define it, but I know this
is the problem I almost wantedto throw a I know kung fu
reference out there, but youknow we'll just I'll pause, I'll
date myself on that one whichone right now matrix one.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
So like, yes, exactly , the movie matrix, the movie in
the matrix so it's.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
It's crazy, right, we , we, we had to throw this plug
in here almost every session,but the reality is is that it's
here and it's not going anywhereum you know when, when folks
discover the beauty of chat gpt.
You know some of us looked at itas basically an overrated solid
shooter, but in the last twoyears I would say it's done a
great job with plugging inlegitimate use cases for AI and
(11:46):
automation.
So, if I can narrow it down,can you have some practical
examples on how Copilot or evenAzure AI Foundry are
transforming our everyday fieldservice operations?
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Sure, I can give you one write-off, because I just
worked on it yesterday for acustomer.
One write-off because I justworked on it yesterday for a
customer.
So they have a verysophisticated evaluation that
they have to fill out.
There, in this very uniqueindustry, they build machines
and then they install them andthen service them.
Of course it feels supercomplicated.
And so the account reps and theslash engineers go out and do
(12:23):
an annual evaluation of howtheir operations do.
Are they safe?
You know what is their programfor emergency shutdowns?
You know it's just an audit.
Basically is what they call itan audit?
So that's really complicated.
It's taken them years and yearsto build a really good
spreadsheet system, that inExcel that you put in the
different systems you could havein there, that it gives you all
(12:45):
the right questions and itscores it and all of this.
And we looked at that and goyou know, oh, this would be
great, for you know theinspections entity, this is what
you need, this is whatinspections was built for.
And then, as I looked at it,it's more like, you know,
because of all those differentoptions, it's like 30
inspections in one spreadsheet.
So it's like I'm gonna have towrite 30 inspections and then
(13:07):
they're going to have tomaintain this and the
inspections entity doesn't scoreanything, so it just captures
the detail.
So now I've got to build ascoring engine and an output for
a report.
You know, I have to deconstructthis whole thing.
So it's like, oh, cotton pick,this is not gonna be good.
It's like, can we do it?
Yes, but you know, tell thecustomer, like, maybe we should
(13:30):
think of this from a differentperspective.
So what I did was built a simpleentity with the scores in there
, the results of that score.
They're printing this out to apdf when they're done and gart
paste.
I went in to use that smartpaste function where you can
upload a doc to an entity, andliterally it mapped all the
scoring fields.
(13:50):
I just named the scoring fields, exactly the same as they were
in the spreadsheet upload, pushthe little magic button, bam, it
just went zip and like, readthrough that document.
And so that little smart pastefunction is amazing, amazing and
that not only eliminated allthe work that I talked about,
but just the other.
(14:11):
The other stuff like we canstill do this with azure has a
whole document.
You know, cognitive servicethat will effectively ocr, turn
it into a json and then map, youknow, into the field.
So we, we could still do that,but it's like well, this thing,
why do we even need?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
to you know, Buzz it for you.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Yeah, buzz it for us.
It's a wow.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
I've used it once or twice and I've got to tell you.
I agree with you.
I was just floored Because youknow, first time you use it
you're skeptical.
You're like, yeah, how well isthis?
Yeah, but it does a really goodjob.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, I'm super impressed so so it's interesting
.
I might just go in and we'renow through testing it, but
anyways, that's a, that's a.
I see that in some ways as ause of copilot, because that
really is a chat, gtp kind ofLLM is what's happening in the
background.
It's it's taking that JSON andreading and reading it and then
you know kind of finding matchesand stuff like that.
So it's very interesting to seehow this is evolving.
(15:11):
I love little features likethat.
I call it the million-dollarbutton.
You know it's like when youhave these little features in
the app and you push the buttonlike you know, like the
scheduling assistance or theconvert case to work order, like
that's worth a lot because alot of systems don't have that
you know, and so I see, honestly, I know we're not all sold on
(15:35):
this consumption model, pay asyou go and all of that kind of
business.
I love it when the app has justgot this feature in it.
It works, it's super reliableand I just it's just part of the
application and I think inseveral years when Microsoft
figures out how we're going topay for all of that stuff, those
(15:56):
kind of features, really usingthat in the background we can
tweak it a little bit is afantastic feature.
It's just right in there.
So that's one that was notsuper obvious but pretty cool.
And of course, the schedulingone's the other area.
That, scott, we were at thatconference in March and you
(16:17):
talked a lot about AI and one ofthe things I walked away from
that entire conference was onekind of almost universal truth
is that AI democratizesdecision-making and so you know,
at one level it's verycounterintuitive to the world
that we're selling into or we'repart of and enabling, which is
(16:40):
expertise.
You know most tech, theseservice companies have an aura
of expertise.
So you know, an individual isthe best in the world at this
one thing.
You know fixing the tires on ayou know giant earth mover or
something like that.
Like that's one of the thingsthat's really cool about our
business.
But when it comes to AIcomponents, that is exactly the
(17:02):
opposite of this.
So the idea that the enginecould schedule things and I
could put in the hands ofsalespeople the ability to take
an email that says, please comeand show up tomorrow,
something's broken, and bypassthe entire vetting part of that
organization that's built to vetout, vet out is this really
(17:27):
good?
Who's the right resource?
Should I send you know all ofthe kind of politics internally
that have to happen to get fromsales to you know two days later
, we can, okay, we'll sendsomebody out.
Or it's a firefighting missionwhere somebody email, create a
case or create a work order,schedule the work order,
communicate to customer Done,we're just done.
(17:49):
And that works.
Actually, it's kind of wild.
It's kind of wild.
So sometimes you know we'realways ahead.
You know it's like the trio.
You know it's the.
It's ahead of its time, it'sahead of its the Palm Pilot and
the Trio.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
So based on that, I mean we're talking a lot of.
Ai.
I mean what if you had to pickone?
You know what use case you knowreally excites you the most for
the use of Gen AI within thefield of service?
And I know that's hard becausethere's so many different areas.
But if you had to pick just one.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Golly the areas.
I don't have all the insiderinfo at Microsoft in terms of
where they're going, but I wouldyou know, as I look at
generative AI cases and I have awhole boatload of them listed
out and going okay, team, if wecan do this, find opportunities
for this so we can buildsomething really cool.
(18:48):
A lot of it has to do withsummary and preparing.
So if I think of a lot of thework like shift handover work,
for example, why we have a whole, you know, a supervisor on a
job site has to rifle throughevery work order that was
completed today, all the emailappointments that came today,
and write up a structured hereto the next guy that comes or
(19:14):
gal that comes on site.
Here's the summary of the workfor the day that we did the
shift handover process.
Generative AI is perfect forsomething like that.
We don't need to have everybodyread through all of this.
It can do a great job atsummarizing the work that was
done on a job site today.
The same thing with preparing atechnician for the day.
(19:35):
We've, you know, a lot of thetechnicians before they leave
the shop have safety things.
They have to check theirinventory, make sure they have
all the right parts.
They know where the manuals arefor the complicated stuff that
they haven't worked on before.
They even even a couple ideasthat you know.
Hey, when you're out there,check this out.
What are some of the open itemsthat might need to, that were
(19:58):
left over from last time, allthat kind of stuff.
Same thing, just likegenerative AI.
Would be very good at thisprocess to look at all my
pending work orders that areassigned to me today and put
that all in a little podcast forme so I can listen to it in the
van on the way to my first job.
Like that's the thing that Iwould love to see, our
(20:22):
generative AI stuff.
And so those are the littleprojects, little sub projects
that we're working on until weget a good customer that's going
to go.
Yes, that's awesome, let'sawesome.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Let's make that happen yeah, no, that's great
because I think, you know, oneof the things that I always
think about is you know, howgreat would it be if, if a
technician comes in for the day,right, whether they're the, you
know, the office slashwarehouse, or they just take
their van from home, from fromhome.
But hey, here's a summary ofyour, your work orders for today
(20:52):
.
Here's all the parts you need,oh, and, by the way, you're
short a part, so you're going tohave to go get it Instead of
going out.
Oh, mr Customer, I don't havethe part, or maybe they can't
get the part today.
So, instead of inconveniencingthe customer, let me call them
(21:14):
up and say I know I need thispart, I don't have it, I can't
get it until two or three daysfrom now, so let me have the
office.
Let's reschedule you, and thenAI could reschedule.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, generative, Very cool.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
You were going to say something.
Quad.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
I am.
I was like going into that, wecan go into it because I love
solutioning that out.
I mean, there are so manypossibilities.
It helps with the delineationbetween AI versus automation.
Ai will present the informationto you, but automation will
trigger and consume certainareas and, you know, give it to
an LLM to present to this endusers.
(21:56):
There's so many tools that wecan use that customers, I think,
would find incredible valuewith that, especially with
inventory management and assetmanagement my favorite subject,
yeah.
I'm going to throw it out to youbecause we all know field
service and inventory management.
Yeah so, pierre, dun, dun, dundun, I'm going to throw it out
to you, because we all knowfield service and inventory
management.
Yeah so, pierre, let me ask youa question about inventory
(22:17):
management.
So how do companies bettermanage serialized inventory and
asset life cycles, especiallyfor rentals or complex equipment
?
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Yeah, complex equipment is one that I think is
a good use case for our brandof application.
You know, when I was atMicrosoft you get to look at the
customers and you kind of getto see where the industry is and
what are using that aresuccessful, and that seems to be
a pretty common part of theprocess that not a lot of the
(22:49):
customers in the Microsoftecosystem are.
You know, the dishwasher repairguys that's not the most of
them are working on reallycomplicated equipment.
It's complex, very, verycomplicated, so that serial
number tracking ends up beinggot to have in many ways.
So when we talk to customersabout that, that obviously
(23:11):
there's an entity in the systemcalled asset and there's, you
know so, each one of thosepieces of equipment as they go
through their life cycle.
We'll talk, we can talk alittle bit about the life cycle
management.
But as they go through the lifecycle and get installed and
then taken off, that piece ofequipment referred, sent back to
the you know warehouse and thensent off.
That piece of equipmentreferred, sent back to the you
(23:32):
know warehouse and then sentback to another customer, that
entire life cycle of that assetor that subasset, the serialized
component, has a life has arecord in the system.
I was talking to a customer thisweek and they're a new company
and so they only have a handfulof these assets out like
(23:53):
literally a spreadsheet exercisea couple hundred in the field
because they're a startupcompany and they're in the
medical business, but within afew years there'll be 100,000 of
these assets in the field.
That's how quickly theirbusiness will grow.
Business will grow, and so youknow, just in.
You know when you show themhere's the asset asset history,
(24:18):
how this all works.
Here's all the work orders youdid it, here's when you moved it
from one machine to another,and et cetera, et cetera.
It kind of blows them away.
That you know in this systemcould be a hundred thousand.
I'm like no, you're going toend up with a hundred thousand
plus of these you know recordsin the system.
Now I'm not worried that theDynamics platform can handle
that.
That's not a problem.
That's like that's nothing.
(24:38):
That's nothing for thatplatform to handle.
But so that's just theout-of-the-box functions of
tracking serial numbers as we goalong the way.
Now there's additional thingsthat can be configured within
the system.
We can add a simple field intoother parts of that or do
lookups on line items.
You know the sales order lineitems and the work order line
(25:02):
items, so we can relay the lineitems back to the service also.
So, yeah, it's not ascomplicated as most folks think.
The complexity comes from thewarehouse integration and when I
put something in the field andthat becomes the complication,
that I'm picking this oneparticular one out of a bin and,
(25:26):
okay, hitting it with the gun,with the barcode gun, and
putting it on the line item andthat becomes an asset inside of
the customer and then it begins,or continues its journey, if
you will.
So it's a lot of discovery work, so to speak.
You have basic framework but interms of it being born in a
(25:49):
factory somewhere or beingreceived into your inventory and
then tracking it at a warehouselevel, like where is it at?
And having that integration is.
You know, it's unfortunatelynot a cookie cutter approach,
even with finance and operations, and our team does a lot with
finance and operationsintegrations, and so that is one
(26:13):
of the areas or, you know, it'sjust lacking in the platform.
It doesn't have that, so so sowe're working on, we're working
on one of those for medicaldevice company right now no,
that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
I mean they're, they're trying, I mean they make
the integration with VC, whichI like to think inventory
management was one of thereasons why that came about.
You know we had F&O, but thatwas more or less for data, not
necessarily around product, andso it's like you said, if you're
a pretty project, you have tobake in those hours heavy on the
(26:49):
front end for discovery,because it's a monster, man,
it's a monster.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Yeah, you have to keep track of it.
You know, it's like any of thisstuff, especially if you're
talking to a mature customerthat's adding this.
It's like they.
It's like asking a salesdirector and a marketing manager
and the best salesperson tellme about your sales process.
It's like the five blind peopledescribing an elephant.
(27:19):
You know, like they do.
There's an elephant, but oneguy thinks it's a tree and the
other guy thinks, well, this isa spiky, it's like a snake.
You know it's kind of likenobody agrees to what their
process is.
The warehousing is kind of thesame thing.
It's just pretty funny to seethe whole thing unravel in front
of them as they do their talkabout no, then we do this.
(27:40):
Oh well, you forgot this onetoo.
We also inspect the thing uponreturn.
You know, it's just it's goodto have a good framework, I
guess, to say this is kind ofhow it works.
And then you guys tell us sothey're figuring it out the
first time.
You know they have never reallysystematized it or, you know,
never had something that forceda certain discipline on them.
(28:01):
Everybody does.
You know a little bit of thework and that's the system, and
the five departments that areinvolved don't really know what
the other departments do.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
It's funny that you mentioned something like, yeah,
we inspect the part when itcomes back.
And I always sat there and it'slike you know, when we look at
a work order and we'reinstalling a part, and I always
sit there and say, well, are weremoving a part and what are we
(28:38):
doing with that part?
Is it going back to warehouse?
Are we scrapping it?
Is it being returned to?
Yeah, like there's so manydifferent things and I get it.
The the platform is is flexibleenough to for partners like our,
like ourselves, and yeah andothers to go ahead and figure it
out, but it's just like man,like it would be great if it was
just there, yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Yeah, I'm with you.
I'm with you.
It would be great if it wasjust out of the box and there
was a standard packet for that.
There's just not a standardpacket for that, there's just
not a common solution.
I mean, even you know, somepeople think it's even in the
unified.
Okay, so if I had everything inone system, then that would fix
(29:17):
it, and it's like, nah, eventhat is a problem.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
So your point.
Go ahead, Claude.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
No, you're putting on your advisor hat for that.
Anytime it goes to serializedinventory, you're becoming an
automatic advisor as a partnerfor that customer.
There's just no getting aroundit, man.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
And everyone handles it.
It's funny I've had so manydifferent for the years manage
serialized inventory completelydifferent, because everyone's
like oh, it's just you do thisand this and this.
And it's like oh, it's just,you know, you do this and this
and this, and it's simple.
It's not quite right.
There's these little nuancesthat organizations every
(30:00):
organization does things alittle bit differently and
handles handles their inventoryprocess or return process
differently, or their inspectionprocess differently, and so
it's just.
You know.
There's no to your point,there's no single way of doing
it, it's just more of like right, can we, can we?
Speaker 4 (30:18):
get to a starting point yeah, it's interesting,
it's just very interesting.
Every company has a littledifferent, like you said, that
kind of subtle nuance, say youknow, everywhere from.
Hey, we have the smallestdevice, it's a circuit board and
you know, here's the serialnumber in firmware.
That's what they're keepingtrack of and that's really
critical because it's a medicaldevice and you know it's part of
(30:39):
so.
There's FDA regulations and allof this has to be traceable all
the way from the you knowmanufacturer and commissioning
through its entire life cycle,all the way to the other end of
that extreme.
I remember working with one ofthe big companies out of Chicago
that build valves.
And these aren't just littleteeny valves, they're valves
(31:01):
that are like on a dam or in apower plant or something like
that.
They're as big as a semi-truckcab.
You know, they're just giant.
And when they refurb them andreturn them and put a new one in
, you know that entire processtakes months on time and their
inspection, their returninspection and their testing.
(31:21):
But instead of, you know,sending it back when they're
done with it, they bring thecustomer off to their site
because the thing is so massiveand then, you know, test it
there in front of the customerto their UAT happens in their
factory instead of at thecustomer site.
It's really interesting.
So you have this.
Like I said, customers thatwe're dealing with that are all
(31:44):
the way from the tiniestcomponents all the way up to the
biggest piece of you knowprecision engineered equipment
know pretty wild yeah, yeah, no,absolutely.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
And I've seen some of those pieces of equipment and
you wonder, like what kind oftruck is taking that from point
a to point b?
Like how big does that truckneed to be?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
that's cool stuff.
You know, one of the one of thedeals I did when I was at
microsoft, one of the project Iwas in was komatsu.
It was a big.
You know, we had a, we had a.
It was a oh yeah, a little casestudy that went around komatsu.
And so the coolest part for allof us and most of people don't
realize, but as a consultant,really the thing that we love to
do the most is go to thefactory and see these things in
(32:26):
action is like they have a bigsandbox and they, you know, move
dirt around and test them outthere.
Right, and these machines arejust marvels of engineering.
Just, I love that stuff, I lovethe.
That's one of the thing thatthat it really attracts me to
this business is, you know, mydad was a truck driver, my mom
was a bank teller.
I'm super blue collar guy.
Just I love to see, you know,like that Midwest engineering.
(32:51):
You know, big equipment, bigiron, that stuff, just, you know
, inspires me.
That's the stuff that you knowwe're on the opposite end of the
spectrum.
We sit behind a computer and doour thing and we craft our
stuff and try to find masterythere.
But you know, I just have ahigh degree of appreciation for
the men and women that go outthere and do that stuff every
(33:12):
single day.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah, I agree totally and I think part of what I
enjoy about working withorganizations in the field
service operation space is, toyour point doing, whether it's a
ride-along or going to thefactory in the warehouse and
seeing you know everyone fromtheir jobs and talking to
(33:37):
different individuals about theprocess and what they go in, you
know what goes into their dayand you know how they handle
exceptions and and in getting tojust listen to them and I think
things you know, I think theyenjoy it because it's like okay
hey.
I'm.
You know I don't want to justtake, you know, what you have
over here and shift it into, youknow, a new solution.
(33:58):
I, yeah, I want to.
I want to understand you knowwhat, you know what is
frustrating you, what makes youwant to throw that tablet or
something else out the window.
Right, because those are the,those are the areas that you
want to to really look at andadjust and and optimize.
You know we don't want to justdo a lift and shift and say, hey
(34:19):
, we're on, you know lack ofmeasure.
You know we're using, you knowyou know, field service
lightning and we're going tomove to, you know, dynamic
service.
And hey, we're just going to doa lift and shift sure but
that's great.
You're moving for a reason.
You're going from whatever youhave today maybe it's nothing to
field service.
Well, something's not workingright.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Something's not working.
That's right, I'm going tochange gears a little bit.
Change gears.
Here's the fun part.
You're such a strategic thinkerLike.
I follow you on LinkedIn and Ioftentimes love when folks yeah,
yeah, I cyber-stalked.
Pierre Pierre gives some greathotlines.
If you're not following him,man, you're nuts.
(35:04):
So like if somebody putssomething that's way out there
on left field on LinkedIn.
I love how Pierre kind of likejust casually brings them down
to earth.
Or it's like a game of duckhunt sometimes, I guess,
depending on you know how youfeel, but you oftentimes help
bring people down to reality,man.
So here's the cool part.
There's a lot of hesitancy withimplementing field service for
(35:25):
some of our partners becausethey hear oh my God, field
services, it's so complex toinstall.
Install it's just you're goingto have a terrible, terrible
time.
You know it's the end of theworld.
Can you help break folks down?
What's your advice for rollingout new systems like field
service successfully?
Speaker 4 (35:41):
well one.
I think it's important toground that that particular uh
component there and uh have theright mindset going into any one
of these projects.
And you know, one of the things, things that I had the
privilege of at Microsoft when Iwas there, was to see all the
case studies and listen tocustomer complaints and
feedbacks and like be parts ofthose different inputs and
(36:03):
things on that.
And I always go back to one ofthe first case studies.
Microsoft wrote about their owninternal use of field service
for facilities management and Iremember working with that group
to help build presentations sothey could, let's say, market
that internally and also use itas marketing.
There's several blog articlesout there that got written at
(36:26):
the time.
But when I looked at thesolution that they built to
manage 6,000 buildings you knowaround the world, and the
facilities for Azure, all thedata centers like when literally
a light bulb goes out, somebodyhas to there's a work order,
somebody has to, they have tofind a contractor to come in and
screw the light bulb in Likethat entire process that was
(36:48):
just vanilla out of the box.
There was literally nocustomizations to that system.
They literally just deployedField Service out of the box,
integrated it with.
At the time great planes wasRIP, what's the ERP application
on the back for all of theinventory, like where the light
(37:10):
bulb inventory was, and all ofthat, and like they saved a
million dollars within the firstlike six months.
You know, just because thetechnicians that got the work
orders knew if there was lightbulbs in the inventory in in the
warehouse in seattle, likeright there in seattle.
So instead of driving acrosstown going knocking on the door
hey do you have?
(37:31):
I need 14 of these light bulbsI gotta go.
Oh, we're out of them right now.
So that's the.
That's the kind of so that justgiving insight to inventory
save like millions of dollarsliterally, and just driving
around Seattle trying to findlight bulbs and um, it's so
going into some of theseprojects everybody thinks about.
(37:52):
You know what it's going to belike five years from now.
Not like if we just deployed thevery straightforward out of the
box solution and didn't, youknow, do a ton of configuration
or customization.
You know, maybe change thenames and got rid of things that
we're not using in the site map.
So you know it looks right thatit's.
(38:12):
It's not as complicated.
You know you can get a lot ofgood results just out of the out
of the box function withoutwithout doing that, so that
grounding, the grounding, thesolution and kind of some
reality with the opposite sideor the flip side of that coin is
it isn't just like going andstarting up a demo account
(38:34):
either and just there you go,just deploy the out-of-the-box
solution in the sense thatthere's always going to be an
ERP system and you have to lookat it in that context.
There's an invoice that has tobe written, there's a transfer
of some sort of inventory itemsthat have to occur, we have to
(38:54):
send a bill to somebody, therehas to be taxes that get
calculated, you know, on theinvoice and at this point,
because the solution is mature,you can go a lot there's a lot
of different paths down to makeall of that happen and that it's
more akin to an ERP deploymentthan it is a CRM deployment.
You know, or that there'scomplexity, is in the
(39:16):
environment that you're in.
It's not the application, it'sthe complexity of the
environment.
In many ways that's whatattracts us too, as consultants,
to that world, because any timewe talk about business process
integration across departments,you know, now all of a sudden
we're more like guidancecounselors or marriage
(39:38):
counselors to try to resolve,help the company resolve these
inherent barriers that have keptthem from being productive that
this department does it thisway and this other department
does basically the same thingbut a little differently and to
try to help them find commonground and deal with all the
organizational barriers theybuilt over the years to
(39:58):
basically cope with one anotherin these different departments.
Whenever we have businessprocesses that are going to be
orchestrated across anapplication that impacts an
organization, that impactspeople in their jobs and that's
the fascinating part, that'swhere the complexity actually is
it's not in the application,the application.
(40:19):
You know we've got smart peopleall over the world that can
figure out how to do pretty muchanything in the app we want.
So it's not really thetechnical issues as much as it
is the organizational challengesof you know, trying to get
those, just like in CRM, thefive of you know, trying to get
those, just like in crm, thefive.
You know different peoplethat'll tell you what their
sales process is.
You know everybody's got adifferent perspective and it's
(40:41):
like perspectives.
As a company, we need to have aperspective on how we do it and
and so that's, that becomes thechallenge.
That becomes the challenge yeah, that's, that's.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I think that's fantastic insight and I'm in a
thousand percent agreement withall that.
There's definitely challenges.
Everyone's got their ownopinions and it becomes
interesting, of course,especially when I think a lot of
times when we're dealing withconflicting priorities as well,
or there's multiple divisionsand groups within an
(41:17):
organization and they havedifferent goals and objectives,
and so how do we come up with asolution that works for all and
come up with efficient processesthat are going to benefit each
other and not sort of step oneach other's toes, and that, of
course, takes a lot ofcoordination, skill and effort?
(41:37):
I think on you know variousparts, I think one you know sort
of navigate that those waters,but also you know, facilitate
and come with an open mind.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely A lot of these
companies are here looking atthese systems because they think
the systems are gonna, you know, as long as if we just have
everybody follow that exactsystem, then you know it's going
to be all good and that's goingto align.
You know, our company and we'vegrown through acquisition or
something like that, which wesee this all the time in service
(42:11):
companies.
They grow through acquisition.
So let's say they're a fire andsafety company and they just
buy another fire, they mergewith another fire and safety
company across on the other,let's say, big city or something
like that.
So now we've got three fire andsafety companies all trying to
use the same system and you knowthere's a little bit of a fight
(42:32):
internally over.
Yeah, exactly how are we gonna,you know, do returns or
something like that?
And everybody thinks they're,you know, special snowflake.
They have to.
You know we've got to doeverything the same very
differently for each one ofthose groups in there and try to
vet that all out.
But at the core of it is, youknow, sometimes just get the
(42:53):
basic blocking and tackling done.
You know, first everybodyshould be able to fill out a
work order.
It all should be able to pullsomething from an inventory,
keep track of the time you know,communicate to a customer.
All those fundamentalprinciples, regardless of the
nuanced components of thedifferent departments, or
something like that, that corefunctionality.
Like there's no debate in infinance and operations over how
(43:17):
to send an invoice out, but getyou know five field service
directors in the room they will.
This is literally an argumentthat's happening at the company,
like what should we send theinvoice?
We will perform an invoice.
Or when do we calculate the?
You know.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
So yeah, oh yeah, so yeah, yeah, we just lack.
We just lack general accountingprinciples, the gap stuff, yeah
, you know, in serviceoperations where do you feel
change management like?
Speaker 3 (43:46):
I mean change management is huge.
How do you feel like changemanagement or you could use
field service out of the box tohelp guide you through that
change management journey?
What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 4 (43:57):
yeah, I think you should have that change
management discussion.
As a customer, I'm surprised athow many companies think they
can just do it themselves, orthey, they, they make lip
service to it but don't actuallydo any of it facts, you know.
So fact right there yeah, thatit's really funny.
I, we, literally I was in ameeting a week ago because we're
(44:18):
put together a proposal and wealways go through this part of
the process, one of the.
You know, go through thetechnical aspect of it but also
go, look, you have threedifferent offices.
They all do things threedifferent ways.
You know, do you recognize thatthat actually is a biggest,
bigger problem than thetechnical kind of components?
And so, as we put this in, youknow you need to align your
(44:39):
training.
There needs to be an executive.
You're going to communicatethis to your field.
You know you have to look atall the I call it leakage where
I used to be able to do it thisway and now I have to do it this
way, but I can still do it theold way, so I don't have to
adopt your new system and howthat can get into the.
(44:59):
You know technicians andengineers they're very habitual.
They do the same thing the sameway often and they refine that
process down so they can besuper efficient and they know
where they're at in theirprocesses right and they know
where they're at in theirprocesses right.
That kind of guidance they haveinternally gives them, you know
guardrails and helps themunderstand by feeling the motor
(45:22):
you know if this thing is off ornot.
So we get super habitual aboutthat kind of work and so when
you talk to the management teamthey're like, ah, you know,
people will just pick it up, youknow.
And it's like yeah, you've gotto have a plan for managing
change, whether that's aframework, a pro-sci or
something like that, ad car,there's all these different
(45:44):
methods and methodologies.
But when a management teamlooks at that and kind of goes,
I don't think we need that, Ithink we'll handle the training
ourselves.
And it's like you kind ofmissed the point of the whole
conversation.
That wasn't about training.
Like, yeah, training is onething, but having a plan for
change is another thing.
And I think a lot of themid-market companies they just
(46:06):
don't have that discipline.
Some of them do, but it'spretty rare, pretty rare that
I've seen it but it's prettyrare, pretty rare that I've seen
it.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
That makes so much sense, say I.
We got a few more moments, so Igotta pick your brain about a
topic that's near and dear to myheart dispatching.
So I gotta ask what do youthink is the real future
automated scheduling or is itjust like a promise and you know
?
But just gotta pick your brainon that.
What are your thoughts on thatman?
Speaker 4 (46:35):
yeah, I, I think it's a little bit of a spectrum,
some, obviously, some, somedispatching and automation be
expected in the near future fora lot of companies where the
customer goes and self schedules.
And you know we haven't seenfrom microsoft, for example, the
kind of the current developmentcycle of where this is going.
They haven't shown anything.
(46:56):
So the customer portal, whichhas been in preview for four
years now, is one of those areaswhere that sounds like five,
yeah, something like that.
It's been out a little bit.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Bad jab, bad jab.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
I complain to Microsoft, it's okay.
It's okay, there's reasons,there's reasons, there's reasons
and I also often have anoptimistic view of that.
Um, that, just seeing the waysausage making happens, a lot of
times one product group let'ssay the field service has a
great vision and they try toexecute on that.
And then there's a platformthing like ce is a platform that
(47:33):
has a whole.
There's a whole notherengineering team that think
about it from a differentperspective, like the whole,
like this is how we're going toactualize some of this in the
platform.
We saw that with the FieldService Mobile application,
where the Field Service Mobilewas way ahead of what the Power
Platform could do.
Even you know they were pushing.
They had the most sophisticatedfeatures in there for offline
(47:54):
and all the like we were talkingabout early on, you know.
So it's kind of the same way, Ithink, with dispatch.
We're starting to see thegenerative AI and some of the
AI-assisted schedulingcomponents that aren't the big
RSO, that are just thatdemocratized decision-making
where I can just, you know,click the button and we get four
or five different choices.
(48:15):
We push the magic button and wegot a dispatched you know kind
of person.
So that's, you know one areawhere I think we're going to see
more an end-to-end and maybe alittle better front-end
experience for customers, maybethrough a bot or some other kind
of type of framework, asopposed to just a landing page
(48:36):
on a website.
But with that said, who knowswhat Microsoft will end up doing
?
I know partners have come upwith lots to address the initial
dispatch, but then you have thenext layer, which is that kind
of scheduling automation, whichis to look at all the work
orders and all the resources inthere and try to rejigger the
whole.
You know, like move the workorders around.
(48:58):
What RSO does, and you know I'msure you guys have a very
similar experience to mine,which is you talk to a company
and you show them that andthey're like well, that's out in
the future, we'll maybe do thatlater on, or you can.
Just the resistance is immediate.
There's nobody literally can dowhat that dispatching team can
(49:19):
do.
We've got.
You know, there's no way.
There's no way that that AIsystem can beat my dispatchers.
So I think that is coming to anend.
That world, honestly, is goingto come to an end at some point
here in the next three or fouryears, I think.
You know we've all seen it.
You're mentioning just chat,gtp, large language models, and
(49:43):
just now they put math in thosesystems.
That ability for some of the AIsystems that we've had and what
we work with, like RSO, is anamazing piece of tech, and
there's other partners in theecosystem, like FS Health or FLS
out of the UK that has a prettysophisticated routing engine
(50:05):
and we can do some reallyamazing on-the-fly
recalculations of work ordersand whatnot, and so I think
we're going to see more fromthem.
In the fall, I think they'regoing through some upgrades in
their system and I'm reallyexcited to see what they're
going to produce too.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
Yeah, I can't say enough good about the guys at
FLS.
Man, shout out to the guys atFLS.
They have an amazing piece oftech and it's good to refer some
of our customers to it.
But I think there's that bigdifference between real-time
scheduling and then batchscheduling where we have to kind
of like, you know, set reset,as I don't know if they'll ever
(50:43):
have a real-time schedulingengine, and from the microsoft
piece I mean.
But they have capabilities nowwith linear programming and
azure, ai, foundry, basicallyrunning these python components.
If you have the math, againthis goes back to your data.
If you have the math maybe youcan build something on your own.
I don't know, it's just.
I mean I think now thecapabilities are there, but
(51:04):
again, I don't want to.
That's a whole nother.
Speaker 4 (51:06):
Two-hour podcast yeah , so maybe we'll save that for
another time.
Right, real-time scheduling issomething cool.
Now I was it that?
Who did I just see that it hasisn't salesforce.
Just came out with that inthere.
There's an option they have.
I believe I I wanted, was itsalesforce?
Speaker 3 (51:23):
you're trying to get me in trouble, man.
No comment oh no comment okay Ithink it is, though, pierre.
No, I'm just being funny, Ithink.
I think salesforce did justbring that out, man yeah, so
maybe they'll be.
Speaker 4 (51:35):
Yeah, so, gittler, and then the team over there I'm
sure are getting, because Iknow, you know, usually this is
the leapfrog with the bigvendors, where someone comes out
with something cool andeverybody else kind of responds
to that and goes, oh, I think wecan do one up better than that.
So, like you said, this is not,it's not rocket science like
the, it's science.
It definitely like routingoptimization.
(51:56):
I had that book, you know,traveling salesman problem.
That's basically solved atscale.
So it's just math.
Like you said, it's a mathproblem and there's a bunch of
large math engines that can dodo this kind of work and
rejigger the, the scheduleterritory and there's definitely
compute power behind it atmicrosoft.
So so it's just do they have thewill?
(52:18):
Do they have the will to thefor the fight?
You know, I want to play righthockey theme or something.
If they have the will for thefight.
No, I'm sure they have the willfor the fight.
Let's see they have the budget.
That's what I did after workingat microsoft.
There's no, there's no lack ofawesome ideas or excellent
people to execute on thoseawesome ideas.
(52:39):
It's do you have the budget todo them down too often.
So it's amazing.
It's an amazing company whenyou see software developed at
scale like that, with hundredsand hundreds of people working
together and trying to buildsomething.
That's pretty wild to see thatit's always.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, I know we're about out of time and and I
don't want to cut off quad again.
I've been doing that allepisode.
He's gonna really beat me whenI see him in person.
Stop, don't hurt me anymore.
Quad don't hurt.
No, stop, feel safe in yourhome, scott?
I don't know.
I need a safe word, pierre.
I need a safe word.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Pineapple.
No, pierre, it's always apleasure.
Scott man, you are the best.
But Pierre, man, it's always apleasure and we can't wait to
have you back, man.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
Yes, we're going to keep watching you If you're not
following Pierre on.
Yeah, it's a fun party.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
It's a fun party.
Follow Pierre, it's a moralimperative, yeah.
Speaker 4 (53:36):
That's what an 80s movie is.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
Wow Come on, come on.
What movie is that from?
Speaker 4 (53:41):
It's a moral imperative.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
I don't know.
I don't know where that one'sfrom.
It's a Val.
You know what I'm going to endon this?
It's a Val Kilmer movie wayback in the day.
Is it the one with the lion,the ghost in the darkness?
No, I don't know.
I'm just going to throw it outthere.
I'll tell you later.
Speaker 4 (53:59):
Alright.
Well, I have to.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Take care everyone.
Hey there and welcome to the Service X Factor podcast
.
I'm Scott LaFonte, seven-timeMicrosoft MVP and Field Service
Strategist at CongruentX, andyour guide for today's episode
On this show.
My co-host, fellow MicrosoftMVP and service innovation guru,
will McClendon, and I willspotlight the people, platforms
and ideas that transform serviceteams from cost centers into
(00:23):
revenue powerhouses, and ideasthat transform service teams
from cost centers into revenuepowerhouses.
Each episode will unpackreal-world wins, hard-learned
lessons and the emerging techreshaping the front lines Think
AI, co-pilots, predictiveanalytics and everything in
between.
So grab your coffee, settle inand let's discover your
organization's X-Factor together.
Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Welcome everyone to the next episode of Service X
Factor Podcast.
I'm one of your hosts, scottLaFonte, and I'm here with my
esteemed colleague and co-host,quad McClendon.
I'm butchering your namealready, it's all good, it's
forgettable.
It's all good in the hood.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
How's it going, man?
Another lovely, lovely weekLoving the hood.
How's it going, man?
Another lovely, lovely weekLoving the Florida summers.
How about you, man?
Really excited about our nextguest, though Really super
excited oh yeah, yeah,absolutely he is.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
let's get right into it.
He is what I call the originalgangster for field service.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
He's totally on the godfather level.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
He's totally up there , right?
Yeah, he's totally there yeah,and his, his I'm gonna go old
school.
His twitter handle, which isnow I can't call it fs, right,
the fs guru, mr pierre hulsebusfantastic, fantastic, you one of
(01:44):
the things.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
You'll find it, regardless of what's happening.
Yeah, I'm always good, it'salways great, it's always
fantastic, it's fantastic,always like an art, an arm could
be falling off.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah, it's just a scratch, but a spread, just a
flesh wound love it.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Love it now you've been, you've been in field
service, for I mean, I don'teven know how long.
How long is a bit?
Speaker 3 (02:16):
it's.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
It's at least, at least 15 years right here yeah,
I started in the dynamics rightat the beginning when it was.
Yeah, I started in the dynamicsright at the beginning when it
was, you know, in 2002.
I came from a CRN gold mine whowas at a gold mine partner
boutique, boutique shop.
Just me and one other dude kindof like you guys, just the two
(02:39):
of you doing I'm just you guysand another right, one day we'll
grow to be like you guys.
It was just me and anotherfellow and Don, who taught me a
lot, don Asteris, who taught meso much about, you know, being a
professional consultant.
You know that was a big lesson,a lot of lessons in that one.
And so, yeah, and then I joinedup.
(03:02):
We had several field serviceprojects that were part when I
was doing that first initial atEHTC, which is now part of, I
think, part of Velasio's network.
It was a small, you know, wewere a small partner and so,
yeah, that was the.
We did a couple of fieldservice projects back then 2005.
Back then, 2005, we sold thefirst, believe it or not, which
(03:25):
is now a huge Microsoft Parkcustomer.
The Veterans Administration inMichigan was one of my first
field service customers.
It was all for facilitiesmanagement, all the add-ons and
changes help desk all that kindof stuff Back in CRM.
Four days.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
That's awesome.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Yeah, I left that and went to work for one side.
Okay, was all dedicated fieldservice solution, and then then
on to them, to Microsoft and onto the mothership.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Oh yeah, that's awesome.
So I mean so and that's why youare the the OG.
There you go.
I mean cause you.
I mean you're going back.
You know 20, 20 plus years ofof field service experience.
So in that time, I mean so muchhas changed and evolved.
I mean what you know, goingback, thinking back from when
(04:20):
you first started this journeyto now.
I mean talk to me about youknow what you've seen as the
biggest in your mind, thebiggest sort of transitional
element.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Sure, one of them is just the evolution of the mobile
solution.
That would probably be one ofthe biggest ones the change, you
know, to an action system thatsynchronized and worked offline
and just was able to be reliant.
That was a big issue.
That was one of the mainreasons Goldmine was so popular
was that it had a.
You still had it on.
You couldn't run it on yourmobile phone, of course, but you
could run it on a laptop, whicheverybody did, and then you
(05:02):
could synchronize it to themothership.
And that whole infrastructure ofoffline synchronization today
is.
We just add, it works offline,but the level of complexity
that's behind that is so it'soutrageous.
Most people have no clue howcomplicated that is no clue, how
(05:26):
complicated that is and it usedto be.
It was like back in the 90swhen you were installing a pc
and you had to build the tcp ipstack, you know, and go in and
configure all your ip addressesand your subnet masks and all of
the batch files you had to loadup before the windows started
and all of this like that's,that's, you know.
(05:46):
It was super complicated backthen.
Most you know.
And same thing in a fieldservice.
The mobility was one of thebiggest, one of the biggest
reasons and companies that gotthat right and were on the right
software and had goodsynchronization, you know, loved
it.
If you didn't, it sucks, itsucks I.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I thought you were gonna say, of course, you know,
back in like 2000, I wasthinking to my palm pilot days
for this update.
I was like you know the palm.
I'll stop my little palm pilot.
That's right, get things done.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Yeah, uh, yeah, the evolution of ability is a big
one.
Mean, that's a huge disabilitynow for a technician on their
you know phone or tablet, anAndroid you know $500 tablet, to
be able to pretty much do theirentire day's worth of work on
this computer in your pocket.
(06:38):
You know.
Taking pictures, editing doingyour email in one device.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That was pretty wild, and that's what it's
interesting.
You say that because when Ihave technicians come to the
house, whether it's lawn care,pest control or you know
something that needs to be fixedin the house and apply into
whatever, all right, I don'twant paper, I don't want carbon
copies, and most of them don'tdo that anymore.
Right, I want it electronic, sothat I can file it, because you
(07:08):
know, my wife is a firm believerin oh, I like to have the paper
copy and let's put it in thefiling cabinet.
The filing cabinet that I havenow stores other things besides
paper.
Yeah yeah, it has other thingsin there LAN cords and all these
other power cords of thingsthat I don't know what they
(07:29):
belong to.
But I mean that's just to yourpoint, I mean it's to make
everyone's lives easier.
I mean it even helps us out asthe end user, right?
Because now I get an electroniccopy that I can file.
If I file it correctly, I caneasily pull it back up versus oh
, where did I keep that paper?
Where did I file it?
(07:49):
I put it in the wrong folder,forget it.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
I don't have time, forget about it.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
That's right Forget about it.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I'm going to pick your brain.
I'm going to pick your brain alittle bit here, pick the brain.
No, because you've been doingthis for you know God, you know
so long.
So how have customers'expectations then right, with so
much technology and they'reavailable to them how have their
expectations changed?
And really, because you've beenat so many different levels,
how should field serviceorganizations adopt to meet
(08:17):
those changes?
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Yeah, I mean that's.
It's really interesting theearly on that transition for a
lot of companies to go frompaper to mobile, like that's
just a chasm of changeorganizationally.
I do remember being told thestory of one of the first Field
One customers that was happeningand back then what they did.
(08:41):
Of course it was mobile butwhat ended up happening was Jim
Hare who was the boss.
He was the boss, the salesmanager and kind of the chief
revenue officer for FieldOnewhen Microsoft bought him.
He said he told me the story ofthe company they went to hey,
isn't it great, you know, we cando all of this, new technical
(09:01):
capabilities for your customers,and you know now, you know your
ROI is going to be really highand all that.
And the owner of the companyjust turned to him and said I
just wanted my guys to show upwith computers instead of paper,
like that.
Was it just the impression thatthey could capabilities-wise
(09:22):
handle just being on a PC?
And I think that's the biggesttransition right now.
It's the same chasm leap,whether that's AIologists in
this space, you know we get tosee a lot of things that are
coming and success and a lot ofthe impact that's going to
happen as a result of AI, butsomething as simple as
scheduling the discussion withsome companies is so resistant.
(09:45):
They're like this is how we didit forever and there's no way
that a system can be as smart asmy 10 dispatchers.
And it's just like interesting,interesting.
And the industry has alwaystalked about the aging out of
the technical workforce and how.
You know what are we going todo and we have to recruit more
(10:07):
and invest more in technologyschools, which is all happening
and great.
But that new group of peoplecoming in are, you know, chat
GTP users.
They learn stuff on.
You know, I've got a son who's30, and he's an engineer.
And you know, whenever he's gotan issue, youtube was always
where he would look.
I, I don't know how to do this,let me just learn this on
(10:30):
youtube.
And I don't know, it's thatgeneration growing up with the
matrix and seeing.
You know, all right, I need tolearn about helicopter, you know
.
You know how to do this, and soit's just a technical
experience for technicians todaycoming in.
Then you know, the seasonedpros that you know can figure
(10:50):
out what's going wrong withsomething just by feeling the
vibration of the engine going.
Yeah, this is off a little bit.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
The mystery, uh, I can't define it, but I know this
is the problem I almost wantedto throw a I know kung fu
reference out there, but youknow we'll just I'll pause, I'll
date myself on that one whichone right now matrix one.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
So like, yes, exactly , the movie matrix, the movie in
the matrix so it's.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
It's crazy, right, we , we, we had to throw this plug
in here almost every session,but the reality is is that it's
here and it's not going anywhereum you know when, when folks
discover the beauty of chat gpt.
You know some of us looked at itas basically an overrated solid
shooter, but in the last twoyears I would say it's done a
great job with plugging inlegitimate use cases for AI and
(11:46):
automation.
So, if I can narrow it down,can you have some practical
examples on how Copilot or evenAzure AI Foundry are
transforming our everyday fieldservice operations?
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Sure, I can give you one write-off, because I just
worked on it yesterday for acustomer.
One write-off because I justworked on it yesterday for a
customer.
So they have a verysophisticated evaluation that
they have to fill out.
There, in this very uniqueindustry, they build machines
and then they install them andthen service them.
Of course it feels supercomplicated.
And so the account reps and theslash engineers go out and do
(12:23):
an annual evaluation of howtheir operations do.
Are they safe?
You know what is their programfor emergency shutdowns?
You know it's just an audit.
Basically is what they call itan audit?
So that's really complicated.
It's taken them years and yearsto build a really good
spreadsheet system, that inExcel that you put in the
different systems you could havein there, that it gives you all
(12:45):
the right questions and itscores it and all of this.
And we looked at that and goyou know, oh, this would be
great, for you know theinspections entity, this is what
you need, this is whatinspections was built for.
And then, as I looked at it,it's more like, you know,
because of all those differentoptions, it's like 30
inspections in one spreadsheet.
So it's like I'm gonna have towrite 30 inspections and then
(13:07):
they're going to have tomaintain this and the
inspections entity doesn't scoreanything, so it just captures
the detail.
So now I've got to build ascoring engine and an output for
a report.
You know, I have to deconstructthis whole thing.
So it's like, oh, cotton pick,this is not gonna be good.
It's like, can we do it?
Yes, but you know, tell thecustomer, like, maybe we should
(13:30):
think of this from a differentperspective.
So what I did was built a simpleentity with the scores in there
, the results of that score.
They're printing this out to apdf when they're done and gart
paste.
I went in to use that smartpaste function where you can
upload a doc to an entity, andliterally it mapped all the
scoring fields.
(13:50):
I just named the scoring fields, exactly the same as they were
in the spreadsheet upload, pushthe little magic button, bam, it
just went zip and like, readthrough that document.
And so that little smart pastefunction is amazing, amazing and
that not only eliminated allthe work that I talked about,
but just the other.
(14:11):
The other stuff like we canstill do this with azure has a
whole document.
You know, cognitive servicethat will effectively ocr, turn
it into a json and then map, youknow, into the field.
So we, we could still do that,but it's like well, this thing,
why do we even need?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
to you know, Buzz it for you.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Yeah, buzz it for us.
It's a wow.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
I've used it once or twice and I've got to tell you.
I agree with you.
I was just floored Because youknow, first time you use it
you're skeptical.
You're like, yeah, how well isthis?
Yeah, but it does a really goodjob.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, I'm super impressed so so it's interesting
.
I might just go in and we'renow through testing it, but
anyways, that's a, that's a.
I see that in some ways as ause of copilot, because that
really is a chat, gtp kind ofLLM is what's happening in the
background.
It's it's taking that JSON andreading and reading it and then
you know kind of finding matchesand stuff like that.
So it's very interesting to seehow this is evolving.
(15:11):
I love little features likethat.
I call it the million-dollarbutton.
You know it's like when youhave these little features in
the app and you push the buttonlike you know, like the
scheduling assistance or theconvert case to work order, like
that's worth a lot because alot of systems don't have that
you know, and so I see, honestly, I know we're not all sold on
(15:35):
this consumption model, pay asyou go and all of that kind of
business.
I love it when the app has justgot this feature in it.
It works, it's super reliableand I just it's just part of the
application and I think inseveral years when Microsoft
figures out how we're going topay for all of that stuff, those
(15:56):
kind of features, really usingthat in the background we can
tweak it a little bit is afantastic feature.
It's just right in there.
So that's one that was notsuper obvious but pretty cool.
And of course, the schedulingone's the other area.
That, scott, we were at thatconference in March and you
(16:17):
talked a lot about AI and one ofthe things I walked away from
that entire conference was onekind of almost universal truth
is that AI democratizesdecision-making and so you know,
at one level it's verycounterintuitive to the world
that we're selling into or we'repart of and enabling, which is
(16:40):
expertise.
You know most tech, theseservice companies have an aura
of expertise.
So you know, an individual isthe best in the world at this
one thing.
You know fixing the tires on ayou know giant earth mover or
something like that.
Like that's one of the thingsthat's really cool about our
business.
But when it comes to AIcomponents, that is exactly the
(17:02):
opposite of this.
So the idea that the enginecould schedule things and I
could put in the hands ofsalespeople the ability to take
an email that says, please comeand show up tomorrow,
something's broken, and bypassthe entire vetting part of that
organization that's built to vetout, vet out is this really
(17:27):
good?
Who's the right resource?
Should I send you know all ofthe kind of politics internally
that have to happen to get fromsales to you know two days later
, we can, okay, we'll sendsomebody out.
Or it's a firefighting missionwhere somebody email, create a
case or create a work order,schedule the work order,
communicate to customer Done,we're just done.
(17:49):
And that works.
Actually, it's kind of wild.
It's kind of wild.
So sometimes you know we'realways ahead.
You know it's like the trio.
You know it's the.
It's ahead of its time, it'sahead of its the Palm Pilot and
the Trio.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
So based on that, I mean we're talking a lot of.
Ai.
I mean what if you had to pickone?
You know what use case you knowreally excites you the most for
the use of Gen AI within thefield of service?
And I know that's hard becausethere's so many different areas.
But if you had to pick just one.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Golly the areas.
I don't have all the insiderinfo at Microsoft in terms of
where they're going, but I wouldyou know, as I look at
generative AI cases and I have awhole boatload of them listed
out and going okay, team, if wecan do this, find opportunities
for this so we can buildsomething really cool.
(18:48):
A lot of it has to do withsummary and preparing.
So if I think of a lot of thework like shift handover work,
for example, why we have a whole, you know, a supervisor on a
job site has to rifle throughevery work order that was
completed today, all the emailappointments that came today,
and write up a structured hereto the next guy that comes or
(19:14):
gal that comes on site.
Here's the summary of the workfor the day that we did the
shift handover process.
Generative AI is perfect forsomething like that.
We don't need to have everybodyread through all of this.
It can do a great job atsummarizing the work that was
done on a job site today.
The same thing with preparing atechnician for the day.
(19:35):
We've, you know, a lot of thetechnicians before they leave
the shop have safety things.
They have to check theirinventory, make sure they have
all the right parts.
They know where the manuals arefor the complicated stuff that
they haven't worked on before.
They even even a couple ideasthat you know.
Hey, when you're out there,check this out.
What are some of the open itemsthat might need to, that were
(19:58):
left over from last time, allthat kind of stuff.
Same thing, just likegenerative AI.
Would be very good at thisprocess to look at all my
pending work orders that areassigned to me today and put
that all in a little podcast forme so I can listen to it in the
van on the way to my first job.
Like that's the thing that Iwould love to see, our
(20:22):
generative AI stuff.
And so those are the littleprojects, little sub projects
that we're working on until weget a good customer that's going
to go.
Yes, that's awesome, let'sawesome.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Let's make that happen yeah, no, that's great
because I think, you know, oneof the things that I always
think about is you know, howgreat would it be if, if a
technician comes in for the day,right, whether they're the, you
know, the office slashwarehouse, or they just take
their van from home, from fromhome.
But hey, here's a summary ofyour, your work orders for today
(20:52):
.
Here's all the parts you need,oh, and, by the way, you're
short a part, so you're going tohave to go get it Instead of
going out.
Oh, mr Customer, I don't havethe part, or maybe they can't
get the part today.
So, instead of inconveniencingthe customer, let me call them
(21:14):
up and say I know I need thispart, I don't have it, I can't
get it until two or three daysfrom now, so let me have the
office.
Let's reschedule you, and thenAI could reschedule.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, generative, Very cool.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
You were going to say something.
Quad.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
I am.
I was like going into that, wecan go into it because I love
solutioning that out.
I mean, there are so manypossibilities.
It helps with the delineationbetween AI versus automation.
Ai will present the informationto you, but automation will
trigger and consume certainareas and, you know, give it to
an LLM to present to this endusers.
(21:56):
There's so many tools that wecan use that customers, I think,
would find incredible valuewith that, especially with
inventory management and assetmanagement my favorite subject,
yeah.
I'm going to throw it out to youbecause we all know field
service and inventory management.
Yeah so, pierre, dun, dun, dundun, I'm going to throw it out
to you, because we all knowfield service and inventory
management.
Yeah so, pierre, let me ask youa question about inventory
(22:17):
management.
So how do companies bettermanage serialized inventory and
asset life cycles, especiallyfor rentals or complex equipment
?
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Yeah, complex equipment is one that I think is
a good use case for our brandof application.
You know, when I was atMicrosoft you get to look at the
customers and you kind of getto see where the industry is and
what are using that aresuccessful, and that seems to be
a pretty common part of theprocess that not a lot of the
(22:49):
customers in the Microsoftecosystem are.
You know, the dishwasher repairguys that's not the most of
them are working on reallycomplicated equipment.
It's complex, very, verycomplicated, so that serial
number tracking ends up beinggot to have in many ways.
So when we talk to customersabout that, that obviously
(23:11):
there's an entity in the systemcalled asset and there's, you
know so, each one of thosepieces of equipment as they go
through their life cycle.
We'll talk, we can talk alittle bit about the life cycle
management.
But as they go through the lifecycle and get installed and
then taken off, that piece ofequipment referred, sent back to
the you know warehouse and thensent off.
That piece of equipmentreferred, sent back to the you
(23:32):
know warehouse and then sentback to another customer, that
entire life cycle of that assetor that subasset, the serialized
component, has a life has arecord in the system.
I was talking to a customer thisweek and they're a new company
and so they only have a handfulof these assets out like
(23:53):
literally a spreadsheet exercisea couple hundred in the field
because they're a startupcompany and they're in the
medical business, but within afew years there'll be 100,000 of
these assets in the field.
That's how quickly theirbusiness will grow.
Business will grow, and so youknow, just in.
You know when you show themhere's the asset asset history,
(24:18):
how this all works.
Here's all the work orders youdid it, here's when you moved it
from one machine to another,and et cetera, et cetera.
It kind of blows them away.
That you know in this systemcould be a hundred thousand.
I'm like no, you're going toend up with a hundred thousand
plus of these you know recordsin the system.
Now I'm not worried that theDynamics platform can handle
that.
That's not a problem.
That's like that's nothing.
(24:38):
That's nothing for thatplatform to handle.
But so that's just theout-of-the-box functions of
tracking serial numbers as we goalong the way.
Now there's additional thingsthat can be configured within
the system.
We can add a simple field intoother parts of that or do
lookups on line items.
You know the sales order lineitems and the work order line
(25:02):
items, so we can relay the lineitems back to the service also.
So, yeah, it's not ascomplicated as most folks think.
The complexity comes from thewarehouse integration and when I
put something in the field andthat becomes the complication,
that I'm picking this oneparticular one out of a bin and,
(25:26):
okay, hitting it with the gun,with the barcode gun, and
putting it on the line item andthat becomes an asset inside of
the customer and then it begins,or continues its journey, if
you will.
So it's a lot of discovery work, so to speak.
You have basic framework but interms of it being born in a
(25:49):
factory somewhere or beingreceived into your inventory and
then tracking it at a warehouselevel, like where is it at?
And having that integration is.
You know, it's unfortunatelynot a cookie cutter approach,
even with finance and operations, and our team does a lot with
finance and operationsintegrations, and so that is one
(26:13):
of the areas or, you know, it'sjust lacking in the platform.
It doesn't have that, so so sowe're working on, we're working
on one of those for medicaldevice company right now no,
that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
I mean they're, they're trying, I mean they make
the integration with VC, whichI like to think inventory
management was one of thereasons why that came about.
You know we had F&O, but thatwas more or less for data, not
necessarily around product, andso it's like you said, if you're
a pretty project, you have tobake in those hours heavy on the
(26:49):
front end for discovery,because it's a monster, man,
it's a monster.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Yeah, you have to keep track of it.
You know, it's like any of thisstuff, especially if you're
talking to a mature customerthat's adding this.
It's like they.
It's like asking a salesdirector and a marketing manager
and the best salesperson tellme about your sales process.
It's like the five blind peopledescribing an elephant.
(27:19):
You know, like they do.
There's an elephant, but oneguy thinks it's a tree and the
other guy thinks, well, this isa spiky, it's like a snake.
You know it's kind of likenobody agrees to what their
process is.
The warehousing is kind of thesame thing.
It's just pretty funny to seethe whole thing unravel in front
of them as they do their talkabout no, then we do this.
(27:40):
Oh well, you forgot this onetoo.
We also inspect the thing uponreturn.
You know, it's just it's goodto have a good framework, I
guess, to say this is kind ofhow it works.
And then you guys tell us sothey're figuring it out the
first time.
You know they have never reallysystematized it or, you know,
never had something that forceda certain discipline on them.
(28:01):
Everybody does.
You know a little bit of thework and that's the system, and
the five departments that areinvolved don't really know what
the other departments do.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
It's funny that you mentioned something like, yeah,
we inspect the part when itcomes back.
And I always sat there and it'slike you know, when we look at
a work order and we'reinstalling a part, and I always
sit there and say, well, are weremoving a part and what are we
(28:38):
doing with that part?
Is it going back to warehouse?
Are we scrapping it?
Is it being returned to?
Yeah, like there's so manydifferent things and I get it.
The the platform is is flexibleenough to for partners like our,
like ourselves, and yeah andothers to go ahead and figure it
out, but it's just like man,like it would be great if it was
just there, yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Yeah, I'm with you.
I'm with you.
It would be great if it wasjust out of the box and there
was a standard packet for that.
There's just not a standardpacket for that, there's just
not a common solution.
I mean, even you know, somepeople think it's even in the
unified.
Okay, so if I had everything inone system, then that would fix
(29:17):
it, and it's like, nah, eventhat is a problem.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
So your point.
Go ahead, Claude.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
No, you're putting on your advisor hat for that.
Anytime it goes to serializedinventory, you're becoming an
automatic advisor as a partnerfor that customer.
There's just no getting aroundit, man.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
And everyone handles it.
It's funny I've had so manydifferent for the years manage
serialized inventory completelydifferent, because everyone's
like oh, it's just you do thisand this and this.
And it's like oh, it's just,you know, you do this and this
and this, and it's simple.
It's not quite right.
There's these little nuancesthat organizations every
(30:00):
organization does things alittle bit differently and
handles handles their inventoryprocess or return process
differently, or their inspectionprocess differently, and so
it's just.
You know.
There's no to your point,there's no single way of doing
it, it's just more of like right, can we, can we?
Speaker 4 (30:18):
get to a starting point yeah, it's interesting,
it's just very interesting.
Every company has a littledifferent, like you said, that
kind of subtle nuance, say youknow, everywhere from.
Hey, we have the smallestdevice, it's a circuit board and
you know, here's the serialnumber in firmware.
That's what they're keepingtrack of and that's really
critical because it's a medicaldevice and you know it's part of
(30:39):
so.
There's FDA regulations and allof this has to be traceable all
the way from the you knowmanufacturer and commissioning
through its entire life cycle,all the way to the other end of
that extreme.
I remember working with one ofthe big companies out of Chicago
that build valves.
And these aren't just littleteeny valves, they're valves
(31:01):
that are like on a dam or in apower plant or something like
that.
They're as big as a semi-truckcab.
You know, they're just giant.
And when they refurb them andreturn them and put a new one in
, you know that entire processtakes months on time and their
inspection, their returninspection and their testing.
(31:21):
But instead of, you know,sending it back when they're
done with it, they bring thecustomer off to their site
because the thing is so massiveand then, you know, test it
there in front of the customerto their UAT happens in their
factory instead of at thecustomer site.
It's really interesting.
So you have this.
Like I said, customers thatwe're dealing with that are all
(31:44):
the way from the tiniestcomponents all the way up to the
biggest piece of you knowprecision engineered equipment
know pretty wild yeah, yeah, no,absolutely.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
And I've seen some of those pieces of equipment and
you wonder, like what kind oftruck is taking that from point
a to point b?
Like how big does that truckneed to be?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
that's cool stuff.
You know, one of the one of thedeals I did when I was at
microsoft, one of the project Iwas in was komatsu.
It was a big.
You know, we had a, we had a.
It was a oh yeah, a little casestudy that went around komatsu.
And so the coolest part for allof us and most of people don't
realize, but as a consultant,really the thing that we love to
do the most is go to thefactory and see these things in
(32:26):
action is like they have a bigsandbox and they, you know, move
dirt around and test them outthere.
Right, and these machines arejust marvels of engineering.
Just, I love that stuff, I lovethe.
That's one of the thing thatthat it really attracts me to
this business is, you know, mydad was a truck driver, my mom
was a bank teller.
I'm super blue collar guy.
Just I love to see, you know,like that Midwest engineering.
(32:51):
You know, big equipment, bigiron, that stuff, just, you know
, inspires me.
That's the stuff that you knowwe're on the opposite end of the
spectrum.
We sit behind a computer and doour thing and we craft our
stuff and try to find masterythere.
But you know, I just have ahigh degree of appreciation for
the men and women that go outthere and do that stuff every
(33:12):
single day.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah, I agree totally and I think part of what I
enjoy about working withorganizations in the field
service operation space is, toyour point doing, whether it's a
ride-along or going to thefactory in the warehouse and
seeing you know everyone fromtheir jobs and talking to
(33:37):
different individuals about theprocess and what they go in, you
know what goes into their dayand you know how they handle
exceptions and and in getting tojust listen to them and I think
things you know, I think theyenjoy it because it's like okay
hey.
I'm.
You know I don't want to justtake, you know, what you have
over here and shift it into, youknow, a new solution.
(33:58):
I, yeah, I want to.
I want to understand you knowwhat, you know what is
frustrating you, what makes youwant to throw that tablet or
something else out the window.
Right, because those are the,those are the areas that you
want to to really look at andadjust and and optimize.
You know we don't want to justdo a lift and shift and say, hey
(34:19):
, we're on, you know lack ofmeasure.
You know we're using, you knowyou know, field service
lightning and we're going tomove to, you know, dynamic
service.
And hey, we're just going to doa lift and shift sure but
that's great.
You're moving for a reason.
You're going from whatever youhave today maybe it's nothing to
field service.
Well, something's not workingright.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Something's not working.
That's right, I'm going tochange gears a little bit.
Change gears.
Here's the fun part.
You're such a strategic thinkerLike.
I follow you on LinkedIn and Ioftentimes love when folks yeah,
yeah, I cyber-stalked.
Pierre Pierre gives some greathotlines.
If you're not following him,man, you're nuts.
(35:04):
So like if somebody putssomething that's way out there
on left field on LinkedIn.
I love how Pierre kind of likejust casually brings them down
to earth.
Or it's like a game of duckhunt sometimes, I guess,
depending on you know how youfeel, but you oftentimes help
bring people down to reality,man.
So here's the cool part.
There's a lot of hesitancy withimplementing field service for
(35:25):
some of our partners becausethey hear oh my God, field
services, it's so complex toinstall.
Install it's just you're goingto have a terrible, terrible
time.
You know it's the end of theworld.
Can you help break folks down?
What's your advice for rollingout new systems like field
service successfully?
Speaker 4 (35:41):
well one.
I think it's important toground that that particular uh
component there and uh have theright mindset going into any one
of these projects.
And you know, one of the things, things that I had the
privilege of at Microsoft when Iwas there, was to see all the
case studies and listen tocustomer complaints and
feedbacks and like be parts ofthose different inputs and
(36:03):
things on that.
And I always go back to one ofthe first case studies.
Microsoft wrote about their owninternal use of field service
for facilities management and Iremember working with that group
to help build presentations sothey could, let's say, market
that internally and also use itas marketing.
There's several blog articlesout there that got written at
(36:26):
the time.
But when I looked at thesolution that they built to
manage 6,000 buildings you knowaround the world, and the
facilities for Azure, all thedata centers like when literally
a light bulb goes out, somebodyhas to there's a work order,
somebody has to, they have tofind a contractor to come in and
screw the light bulb in Likethat entire process that was
(36:48):
just vanilla out of the box.
There was literally nocustomizations to that system.
They literally just deployedField Service out of the box,
integrated it with.
At the time great planes wasRIP, what's the ERP application
on the back for all of theinventory, like where the light
(37:10):
bulb inventory was, and all ofthat, and like they saved a
million dollars within the firstlike six months.
You know, just because thetechnicians that got the work
orders knew if there was lightbulbs in the inventory in in the
warehouse in seattle, likeright there in seattle.
So instead of driving acrosstown going knocking on the door
hey do you have?
(37:31):
I need 14 of these light bulbsI gotta go.
Oh, we're out of them right now.
So that's the.
That's the kind of so that justgiving insight to inventory
save like millions of dollarsliterally, and just driving
around Seattle trying to findlight bulbs and um, it's so
going into some of theseprojects everybody thinks about.
(37:52):
You know what it's going to belike five years from now.
Not like if we just deployed thevery straightforward out of the
box solution and didn't, youknow, do a ton of configuration
or customization.
You know, maybe change thenames and got rid of things that
we're not using in the site map.
So you know it looks right thatit's.
(38:12):
It's not as complicated.
You know you can get a lot ofgood results just out of the out
of the box function withoutwithout doing that, so that
grounding, the grounding, thesolution and kind of some
reality with the opposite sideor the flip side of that coin is
it isn't just like going andstarting up a demo account
(38:34):
either and just there you go,just deploy the out-of-the-box
solution in the sense thatthere's always going to be an
ERP system and you have to lookat it in that context.
There's an invoice that has tobe written, there's a transfer
of some sort of inventory itemsthat have to occur, we have to
(38:54):
send a bill to somebody, therehas to be taxes that get
calculated, you know, on theinvoice and at this point,
because the solution is mature,you can go a lot there's a lot
of different paths down to makeall of that happen and that it's
more akin to an ERP deploymentthan it is a CRM deployment.
You know, or that there'scomplexity, is in the
(39:16):
environment that you're in.
It's not the application, it'sthe complexity of the
environment.
In many ways that's whatattracts us too, as consultants,
to that world, because any timewe talk about business process
integration across departments,you know, now all of a sudden
we're more like guidancecounselors or marriage
(39:38):
counselors to try to resolve,help the company resolve these
inherent barriers that have keptthem from being productive that
this department does it thisway and this other department
does basically the same thingbut a little differently and to
try to help them find commonground and deal with all the
organizational barriers theybuilt over the years to
(39:58):
basically cope with one anotherin these different departments.
Whenever we have businessprocesses that are going to be
orchestrated across anapplication that impacts an
organization, that impactspeople in their jobs and that's
the fascinating part, that'swhere the complexity actually is
it's not in the application,the application.
(40:19):
You know we've got smart peopleall over the world that can
figure out how to do pretty muchanything in the app we want.
So it's not really thetechnical issues as much as it
is the organizational challengesof you know, trying to get
those, just like in CRM, thefive of you know, trying to get
those, just like in crm, thefive.
You know different peoplethat'll tell you what their
sales process is.
You know everybody's got adifferent perspective and it's
(40:41):
like perspectives.
As a company, we need to have aperspective on how we do it and
and so that's, that becomes thechallenge.
That becomes the challenge yeah, that's, that's.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I think that's fantastic insight and I'm in a
thousand percent agreement withall that.
There's definitely challenges.
Everyone's got their ownopinions and it becomes
interesting, of course,especially when I think a lot of
times when we're dealing withconflicting priorities as well,
or there's multiple divisionsand groups within an
(41:17):
organization and they havedifferent goals and objectives,
and so how do we come up with asolution that works for all and
come up with efficient processesthat are going to benefit each
other and not sort of step oneach other's toes, and that, of
course, takes a lot ofcoordination, skill and effort?
(41:37):
I think on you know variousparts, I think one you know sort
of navigate that those waters,but also you know, facilitate
and come with an open mind.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely A lot of these
companies are here looking atthese systems because they think
the systems are gonna, you know, as long as if we just have
everybody follow that exactsystem, then you know it's going
to be all good and that's goingto align.
You know, our company and we'vegrown through acquisition or
something like that, which wesee this all the time in service
(42:11):
companies.
They grow through acquisition.
So let's say they're a fire andsafety company and they just
buy another fire, they mergewith another fire and safety
company across on the other,let's say, big city or something
like that.
So now we've got three fire andsafety companies all trying to
use the same system and you knowthere's a little bit of a fight
(42:32):
internally over.
Yeah, exactly how are we gonna,you know, do returns or
something like that?
And everybody thinks they're,you know, special snowflake.
They have to.
You know we've got to doeverything the same very
differently for each one ofthose groups in there and try to
vet that all out.
But at the core of it is, youknow, sometimes just get the
(42:53):
basic blocking and tackling done.
You know, first everybodyshould be able to fill out a
work order.
It all should be able to pullsomething from an inventory,
keep track of the time you know,communicate to a customer.
All those fundamentalprinciples, regardless of the
nuanced components of thedifferent departments, or
something like that, that corefunctionality.
Like there's no debate in infinance and operations over how
(43:17):
to send an invoice out, but getyou know five field service
directors in the room they will.
This is literally an argumentthat's happening at the company,
like what should we send theinvoice?
We will perform an invoice.
Or when do we calculate the?
You know.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
So yeah, oh yeah, so yeah, yeah, we just lack.
We just lack general accountingprinciples, the gap stuff, yeah
, you know, in serviceoperations where do you feel
change management like?
Speaker 3 (43:46):
I mean change management is huge.
How do you feel like changemanagement or you could use
field service out of the box tohelp guide you through that
change management journey?
What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 4 (43:57):
yeah, I think you should have that change
management discussion.
As a customer, I'm surprised athow many companies think they
can just do it themselves, orthey, they, they make lip
service to it but don't actuallydo any of it facts, you know.
So fact right there yeah, thatit's really funny.
I, we, literally I was in ameeting a week ago because we're
(44:18):
put together a proposal and wealways go through this part of
the process, one of the.
You know, go through thetechnical aspect of it but also
go, look, you have threedifferent offices.
They all do things threedifferent ways.
You know, do you recognize thatthat actually is a biggest,
bigger problem than thetechnical kind of components?
And so, as we put this in, youknow you need to align your
(44:39):
training.
There needs to be an executive.
You're going to communicatethis to your field.
You know you have to look atall the I call it leakage where
I used to be able to do it thisway and now I have to do it this
way, but I can still do it theold way, so I don't have to
adopt your new system and howthat can get into the.
(44:59):
You know technicians andengineers they're very habitual.
They do the same thing the sameway often and they refine that
process down so they can besuper efficient and they know
where they're at in theirprocesses right and they know
where they're at in theirprocesses right.
That kind of guidance they haveinternally gives them, you know
guardrails and helps themunderstand by feeling the motor
(45:22):
you know if this thing is off ornot.
So we get super habitual aboutthat kind of work and so when
you talk to the management teamthey're like, ah, you know,
people will just pick it up, youknow.
And it's like yeah, you've gotto have a plan for managing
change, whether that's aframework, a pro-sci or
something like that, ad car,there's all these different
(45:44):
methods and methodologies.
But when a management teamlooks at that and kind of goes,
I don't think we need that, Ithink we'll handle the training
ourselves.
And it's like you kind ofmissed the point of the whole
conversation.
That wasn't about training.
Like, yeah, training is onething, but having a plan for
change is another thing.
And I think a lot of themid-market companies they just
(46:06):
don't have that discipline.
Some of them do, but it'spretty rare, pretty rare that
I've seen it but it's prettyrare, pretty rare that I've seen
it.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
That makes so much sense, say I.
We got a few more moments, so Igotta pick your brain about a
topic that's near and dear to myheart dispatching.
So I gotta ask what do youthink is the real future
automated scheduling or is itjust like a promise and you know
?
But just gotta pick your brainon that.
What are your thoughts on thatman?
Speaker 4 (46:35):
yeah, I, I think it's a little bit of a spectrum,
some, obviously, some, somedispatching and automation be
expected in the near future fora lot of companies where the
customer goes and self schedules.
And you know we haven't seenfrom microsoft, for example, the
kind of the current developmentcycle of where this is going.
They haven't shown anything.
(46:56):
So the customer portal, whichhas been in preview for four
years now, is one of those areaswhere that sounds like five,
yeah, something like that.
It's been out a little bit.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Bad jab, bad jab.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
I complain to Microsoft, it's okay.
It's okay, there's reasons,there's reasons, there's reasons
and I also often have anoptimistic view of that.
Um, that, just seeing the waysausage making happens, a lot of
times one product group let'ssay the field service has a
great vision and they try toexecute on that.
And then there's a platformthing like ce is a platform that
(47:33):
has a whole.
There's a whole notherengineering team that think
about it from a differentperspective, like the whole,
like this is how we're going toactualize some of this in the
platform.
We saw that with the FieldService Mobile application,
where the Field Service Mobilewas way ahead of what the Power
Platform could do.
Even you know they were pushing.
They had the most sophisticatedfeatures in there for offline
(47:54):
and all the like we were talkingabout early on, you know.
So it's kind of the same way, Ithink, with dispatch.
We're starting to see thegenerative AI and some of the
AI-assisted schedulingcomponents that aren't the big
RSO, that are just thatdemocratized decision-making
where I can just, you know,click the button and we get four
or five different choices.
(48:15):
We push the magic button and wegot a dispatched you know kind
of person.
So that's, you know one areawhere I think we're going to see
more an end-to-end and maybe alittle better front-end
experience for customers, maybethrough a bot or some other kind
of type of framework, asopposed to just a landing page
(48:36):
on a website.
But with that said, who knowswhat Microsoft will end up doing
?
I know partners have come upwith lots to address the initial
dispatch, but then you have thenext layer, which is that kind
of scheduling automation, whichis to look at all the work
orders and all the resources inthere and try to rejigger the
whole.
You know, like move the workorders around.
(48:58):
What RSO does, and you know I'msure you guys have a very
similar experience to mine,which is you talk to a company
and you show them that andthey're like well, that's out in
the future, we'll maybe do thatlater on, or you can.
Just the resistance is immediate.
There's nobody literally can dowhat that dispatching team can
(49:19):
do.
We've got.
You know, there's no way.
There's no way that that AIsystem can beat my dispatchers.
So I think that is coming to anend.
That world, honestly, is goingto come to an end at some point
here in the next three or fouryears, I think.
You know we've all seen it.
You're mentioning just chat,gtp, large language models, and
(49:43):
just now they put math in thosesystems.
That ability for some of the AIsystems that we've had and what
we work with, like RSO, is anamazing piece of tech, and
there's other partners in theecosystem, like FS Health or FLS
out of the UK that has a prettysophisticated routing engine
(50:05):
and we can do some reallyamazing on-the-fly
recalculations of work ordersand whatnot, and so I think
we're going to see more fromthem.
In the fall, I think they'regoing through some upgrades in
their system and I'm reallyexcited to see what they're
going to produce too.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
Yeah, I can't say enough good about the guys at
FLS.
Man, shout out to the guys atFLS.
They have an amazing piece oftech and it's good to refer some
of our customers to it.
But I think there's that bigdifference between real-time
scheduling and then batchscheduling where we have to kind
of like, you know, set reset,as I don't know if they'll ever
(50:43):
have a real-time schedulingengine, and from the microsoft
piece I mean.
But they have capabilities nowwith linear programming and
azure, ai, foundry, basicallyrunning these python components.
If you have the math, againthis goes back to your data.
If you have the math maybe youcan build something on your own.
I don't know, it's just.
I mean I think now thecapabilities are there, but
(51:04):
again, I don't want to.
That's a whole nother.
Speaker 4 (51:06):
Two-hour podcast yeah , so maybe we'll save that for
another time.
Right, real-time scheduling issomething cool.
Now I was it that?
Who did I just see that it hasisn't salesforce.
Just came out with that inthere.
There's an option they have.
I believe I I wanted, was itsalesforce?
Speaker 3 (51:23):
you're trying to get me in trouble, man.
No comment oh no comment okay Ithink it is, though, pierre.
No, I'm just being funny, Ithink.
I think salesforce did justbring that out, man yeah, so
maybe they'll be.
Speaker 4 (51:35):
Yeah, so, gittler, and then the team over there I'm
sure are getting, because Iknow, you know, usually this is
the leapfrog with the bigvendors, where someone comes out
with something cool andeverybody else kind of responds
to that and goes, oh, I think wecan do one up better than that.
So, like you said, this is not,it's not rocket science like
the, it's science.
It definitely like routingoptimization.
(51:56):
I had that book, you know,traveling salesman problem.
That's basically solved atscale.
So it's just math.
Like you said, it's a mathproblem and there's a bunch of
large math engines that can dodo this kind of work and
rejigger the, the scheduleterritory and there's definitely
compute power behind it atmicrosoft.
So so it's just do they have thewill?
(52:18):
Do they have the will to thefor the fight?
You know, I want to play righthockey theme or something.
If they have the will for thefight.
No, I'm sure they have the willfor the fight.
Let's see they have the budget.
That's what I did after workingat microsoft.
There's no, there's no lack ofawesome ideas or excellent
people to execute on thoseawesome ideas.
(52:39):
It's do you have the budget todo them down too often.
So it's amazing.
It's an amazing company whenyou see software developed at
scale like that, with hundredsand hundreds of people working
together and trying to buildsomething.
That's pretty wild to see thatit's always.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, I know we're about out of time and and I
don't want to cut off quad again.
I've been doing that allepisode.
He's gonna really beat me whenI see him in person.
Stop, don't hurt me anymore.
Quad don't hurt.
No, stop, feel safe in yourhome, scott?
I don't know.
I need a safe word, pierre.
I need a safe word.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Pineapple.
No, pierre, it's always apleasure.
Scott man, you are the best.
But Pierre, man, it's always apleasure and we can't wait to
have you back, man.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
Yes, we're going to keep watching you If you're not
following Pierre on.
Yeah, it's a fun party.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
It's a fun party.
Follow Pierre, it's a moralimperative, yeah.
Speaker 4 (53:36):
That's what an 80s movie is.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
Wow Come on, come on.
What movie is that from?
Speaker 4 (53:41):
It's a moral imperative.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
I don't know.
I don't know where that one'sfrom.
It's a Val.
You know what I'm going to endon this?
It's a Val Kilmer movie wayback in the day.
Is it the one with the lion,the ghost in the darkness?
No, I don't know.
I'm just going to throw it outthere.
I'll tell you later.
Speaker 4 (53:59):
Alright.
Well, I have to.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Take care everyone.
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