Dynamics 365 Field Service is Getting Major updates with Hector Garcia Tellado

[mark]: 1:18
today's guest is from washington in the united states and we're going to talk about field service what's the state of play where things are at now and what is coming here's a principal program a manager of dynamic three six five field service at microsoft you can find links to his bio linked in and anything else he's done in the digital domain in the show notes for this episode anything discuss resources wise will also be in the show notes with that hector welcome to the show

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 1:48
hey mark thank you for having me i'm super excited to be here

[mark]: 1:51
good to have you on the show of chatted a bit in the last month or so especially since n v p summit and uh but before we before we drill into field service just tell us a bit a food family and fun for you what do you do when you're not doing microsoft

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 2:09
what i do and i'm not doing microsoft and mostly spend time with my three and a half year old my wife trying to survive the washington state weather these days because it's way rainier and i would like it to be

[mark]: 2:20
okay wow

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 2:20
hopeful at some point we'll have some summer here who knows and then i just like to go cycling and running and skinning in the winter mostly that's what i do and read non fiction

[mark]: 2:32
nice when it comes to cycling running and skiing you're in the probably one of the perfect places on the planet

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 2:40
yes when i start

[mark]: 2:40
choice

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 2:41
raining yes

[mark]: 2:42
yeah when it's already totally totally how have you found it moving post covid kind of moving back into the office and getting back into you how are your balancing the work from home work from office type you know environment that we're all going through at the moment

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 2:59
yeah that's a great question i mean in general and micosofwehave a very high approach where everybody have to have the opportunity to choose what fit for them what works for me is like i typically i'm in the office fift person of the time so for example i usually go monday tuesday thursdays is my in office and i take the opportunity to do most of my when i want with my direct with my leaders and peers and things like that so justin fostered has been more like the people connection then

[mark]: 3:27
nice

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 3:28
my focus days tend to be days like friday wednesday which i take the opprtunyto do like research focus time or do like interviews like these customers there remote excel

[mark]: 3:39
hm i like it i like it tell us about field service when when somebody you know you meet them socially let's say and so in other words outside of micrassoft land and somebody says so so you know so they don't know what we do type in what when they say you know what's this dynamic re sucks three six five field service thing how do you explain that in layman's terms

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 4:06
yeah i'd say have you ever seen a technician in your home or somewhere doing something the answer is usually yes and the like well how do you think that person got there how do you think their work are defined how do you think they're fixing the problem and how they think they can he came back to you and they was like well i may remain unheard about that is like that's what feels thus you know like putting the right field engineering in the right place at the right time fixing the right thing and communicating with you as fast as possible

[mark]: 4:42
nice nice how long how long as field service now been in the business you know i was there when the announcement was as i was in seattle at the time when the announcement of the acquisition of a range of tool sets you know came and i can't even remember the company now that was acquired what was the name of that company

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 5:00
field one

[mark]: 5:00
one field one year were you part of field one

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 5:03
no no no no i actually

[mark]: 5:05
you can't

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 5:05
joined i am like microsoft born in race in that i've been in microsoft for eight years and i was leading remotisis first field service been in market thing i think this is the six or seven year don't quote me but it's been a number of years and then i've been mostly involved as a director of p m for field roles in the last two years

[mark]: 5:28
got ya got ya so it's a mature established product now you know in the portfolio the what's the state of play if you were to give me you know for somebody been in the channel a while an up date of where field service sits now what it's you know from a market dominant position where's the wide space where the opportunity where's um you know because always the way i would talk about it is that you know why microsoft got in this space is that there was no real dominant player everybody was home growing to the most part when they needed an application for service company that you know maintained the lifts in a building or the escalators in a building you would build an ap you know that at some point because it wasn't kind of like a solution off the shelf and of course one of the biggest challenges anybody had with any solution was the mobility piece right we need a worker that can go on site they're gonna need certain tools they're going to need certain invantory products to do the fix they're going to do the maintenance for cycle et cetera and i say that's why microsoft entered the space because there was no clear dominant player now we're being in the space for a while what's the landscape like in the market from your perspective what do you look at where we kind of position how do we stand globally at the moment

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 6:47
yeah i think that's a great question i think the there's a couple of things to unpack let me talk about the market first and then we'll talk about the competitive landscape i think from a market stand point i think we're seen in for explosion of use cases what it relates to what i broadly defined not only field service but like service and maintenance operation and i think this is this is this is due to a media of actors but i would say a few a few things on the diitalization of the front and workers more and more companies when i actually bring you know like detail tools for the front and work like in the past the typical flow will be like open paper or i will do something and then i go back to my home or to my desk and i'll just fill all these things that i did now people you know like more and more as

[mark]: 7:32
yeah

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 7:32
moll become mobilphones become more powerful and cheaper like that consumerization that we saw in the information worker in sales and marketing see like ten years ago we're seeing it now in front of workers which i think is huge the second the second ranizins like the deitalization of the ass like we're going from this like system of record traditional first of all we're going from sometimes asset records being in isolation so maybe your p has some acid data and then your your service and maintain has some ass data mason on data but we're seeing this explosion of like all the ace getting together and really turning into something that they can connect or they can get signal from and they can you know you can really turn it into a diitaltwin i really like that word because it's so over used but like i think the audience the others will get my point and i think the third trend is like the deitalization of the spaces itself like that like i think like i was in the iota team for a while for a long time before being mixreality in for a while we thought everything was going to be connected and now we're seeing that there's a lot of already connected devices like cameras and pomes et cetera are actually giving you a lot of insights that you can get advantage from so i think the explosion of these three things are making it so that the market is not feel service anymore because we're seeing film service nani and health getting on infrastructure on banking on finance on whatever so that would make it like super super attractive in my opinion is like we're trying to create the next suite of capabilities for the front and worker just as like say office or dynamics headed for the information work in sales marama customer service et cetera might making sense

[mark]: 9:15
yeah yeah that totally

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 9:16
so

[mark]: 9:16
makes sense

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 9:17
so that's one and then i think from a competitor's ten point it's a it's a fascinating environment because i think on the one hand we have what i call for the lack of a term the usual suspect which is you know microsopht cells force oracle et cetera right we're all trying to go at the space from from a different angle for us or of like connected asset people in places and from back office to front office et cetera but i will also have a lot of like really interesting is besant players who are necessarily associated with like say traditional field service but they're coming into like fleet management connecting equipment etcetera for example say some star right it's a super interesting is that is being up in mean more from the it space but they're getting much more into the processes so that makes it like super interesting and then of course you have my small small companies which still one sending is up it's another one that we keep seeing et cetera so super super super fun place to be right now

[mark]: 10:21
so what's happened in the last couple of years within the team within the product you know as i had some feedback probably six months ago from the market that there didn't seem to be many new announced it's coming out around field service it was like last year seem pretty quiet as a whole when we look at the release cycle you know coming out of microsopt i know there've been some changes what what's your what's your lens on this

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 10:45
yeah so one of the things that so when i took over filstrives like in late one twenty twenty one of the things i saw was capability is you know great so many capabilities we've spent so much time in the first four or five years shipping all the features right like got into the magic quadra and we got into like all those things but then i thought okay part growth was incredible in terms of exponential growth number of new customers you know pumping in so what we really did last year was just like set the foundation to make sure that we continued to accelerate that growth a lot of the things that we've done last year i'm not like necessarily shiny things but with paradise you know with paradise on like the scale the girl in though you know we've shipped all the customer engagement portal features you know we ship you know we ship a lot of the things in the new mobile at we ship improvement in the work order for him but i would say we've actually been much more for so making much better when we have then actually expanding a lot i'll give you an example on the kind of girl that i'm talking about three years ago i would say have a few tenants you know some good amount but you know not crazy people who use it n production connectin field service in production right and we have a few million assets connected right right now we're on path to make to one million assets in field service

[mark]: 12:15
one billion

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 12:17
yes and

[mark]: 12:18
wow

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 12:19
we're all and we have several dozens of million connected devices in felsurts so like and this only happened in the last two to three years so you can imagine the type of like you know like the you have to really make sure that customers are happy with what they have and can scale to this kind of things he was just we've been spending a lot of time on this like listening to customer feed like et cetera and it's also been forming of like our new wholistic vision which i was referring to a little bit which is i think we were going to be all about in the future is like more in linking the people places and things right like so how do we make sure that you have we feel service how the way make sure you have an an environment when you can leverage you know computer vision to be able to like you know like create a work order and also put yourself a hall and so you can do a spatial anchor and be able to diagnose acid but also have the best scheduling capabilities if you're in the back office right so like today as you know right it still takes a lot of work to put all these pieces together or some work we actually want to make it much more adaptable and much more faster pays for our customers partners that's what we're all about

[mark]: 13:34
nice i want to look at two kind of cure areas of the system one being the scheduling system that you just mentioned and also then mobility have we reached um m are we at a type of status now from a mobility that all the kind of use cases you have seen come in from the market that were addressed or do you see that still you've got still got to road map of work to do in the mobility space how do you feel about the mobile experience now and is it meeting all the markets needs predominantly

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 14:10
so i think in terms of use cases we're seeing more and more use cases every day you know i was just taking to a customer to a company the other day that we're using field service mobile for their doctors and nurses husthaywere don you know like trips through the field in the middle of nowhere and they wanted to report you know like here in um you know here in studies and things like that so like i never thought about that and i never thought they would need offline you know because in that that type of persona so i think mobility in the front of workers pace never cease ceases to surprise in in that sense i think specifically with feel service mobile um we our customers are taking our ap now in production specially the new av the power was a et cetera they're taking our application to the extreme in a good way they're pushing envelope and you know we're putting a of emphasis right now on like offline scenarios spion offline like complete offline or complete online but those cases what happens when you go from one bar to three bars bars two bars you know all those like things that make it super tricky we hear the feedback land and clear were putting a lot of emphasis into that but i truly believe mark that in terms of life run and workers scenarios i think we have our job caught out for the next ten years because it's going to continue to like push the ambelorignow for example another key are of focus for now is like okay how do we bring together all these mar capabilities that have been very innovation focused for a little bit obviously there's some big prouder use and all that but sometimes he would land in the innovation teams or maybe i do win in a factory or within one particular g or if you're one particular set of technician that has demolyned to pay for an expensive headset one of the things we're thinking about is like how do you actually democratize all of that so that every field service customer can instantly the arcipabilitis so that's what we're putting a lot of time to

[mark]: 16:08
so so if you're thinking about that scenario i take it you're not thinking about it from a headset perspective but more whatever the mobile device that i have i can bring up the camera and go okay let's let's get the digital overlay of my physical world that's that's phenomenal

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 16:25
i mean most people to day use forms right and even in the like i think there's a market for head set the way i think about this is like fifteen years ago all we had was like to any the top pieces right and then we came to some mobile pieces or mobile lap tops and they they were very book and then the portfolio started like then we got the tablets and then we got like thinner you know finer computers and all those things and then if you if you have an organization of like a thousand people you're going to have a media of people some people will need a super super powerful machines and portunities adopted whatever for me had amount device is just another form factor that is it's goin to be optimal for some workers it's gonna be optima for other workers won't be optima right so a lot of our filtegnicians will have class devices today like so you tell me tell them about going from a glass i is to put themselves like a real war hollow ends or whatever and it's a big leap right is a big change so we just need to make sure we obtizemicrosoff has always been about their mercandise and technology to people if you really think about it we hard trade marks always mean take something that looks streamly complex and inexpensive like for example dala bases like and then launch sequel and disrupt window server you know len was like this then come window server boom disrupt the power as come to local development a visual stood like it's all train mark over and over and this is what we want to do the same thing in field service for the front and worker tegutions

[mark]: 18:03
i like it looking at that other area the whole scheduling system and you know it's amazing too and it's a complex thing to get right what are you thinking about without any india stuff road map future around your scheduling what are you hearing perhaps even from the market or request that people would like to see happen

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 18:27
i think you know the vision is to have i think what we've seen right now is like our experiences in general the way the market as been thought about this has been very like okay you either do manual scheduling or you do assistant scheduling or you do automatic scheduling right in those like different experiences that are somehow connected but they don't feel simple they don't feel like a slider that you can use like they can choose depending on your context right and then i also think that sometimes ah optimizer you know like our optimisation tools and i think in general autimazition tools i don't think they've been super usual friendly in general but i think they've been very much like okay you really need to know what you're doing and also sometimes the algorithm is now giving you back when you want why are you even on to myself and like this for then it creates this like mistrust on the on the business persona who like okay i don't know why the de what you're doing it's almost like for example think about being maps now you trust being maps and the traffic because there's been repited times where they prove you that they can do it better than you so we need to create the same type of trust but in the use of the optimi cheduly know in that is sometimes the traditional user who doesn't want to use automation because they think the dragon dropping is better so i say two things that are type of mind for me in that area number one making sure we make the experiences between manual automated and fully optimized assisted and fully optimized similes into one single using experience depending on your case and then use much more so estions right we notice that you're doing this do you want to do that another example that will give to your audience is like think about it if you ever use it and like beaver gives you suggestions about your scheduling and we use of our blocking time so we want to do something like that in scheduling right we want to give the despatchers some suggestions so that's that's one i think the other one is like we just need to make optimization and gus was simpler complicated in the back in the in the in the in the mix in regards of it but very simple to the use of experience it's like most people when for example you do a most people don't know if you sing or not so we shouldn't just put technology in your face which is just make it easy for you so that you can consume it so like that those are my two priorities like similars manual assisted fully optimated and also a much more easier use experience on the on the aptimazation side of things

[mark]: 20:59
i like it i like it you've talked about some unique use cases that you're starting to see more and more you talked about health care there what are some of the other use cases that you're seeing grow and dominant so not just as not so much interested in the edge cases you know the one off but what are you seeing more prevalent you know use cases for using dynamic three six five

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 21:25
i think for some of our more classic film service audience this is going to be like of course hector but i'm just going to say it because those are the two canonical scenarios that we're saying they continue to to work really well number one is like everything as a service rentals products service et cetera like contract based maintain and things like that you know like outcome based super super important were seeing it across the board but especially the screen manufacturers everybody wants to get to that you know i always say that sometimes if you think about if you think about a listen model that i phone has in the states it like other move to a service like you you have a phone and you have an issue you take you repair and every year you change it and you are you're just paying fifty bucks or whatever the it is i think people want to get to that golden standard for like not consumer devices sometimes consumer i also like you know equipment machinery engines unit number one the other segment that we're seeing is drawing incredibly is smart buildings in who this management like i think we're seeing a lot of attraction across the board on you know property managers um companies rentals the whole spectrum of what you define facility s real estate which is across industry obviously everybody wants to have a better service in maintenance story for example a company like us micasiwe've actually used the is prubablic information we use dynamics to do our own facilities management right better customer experience for our employes and better you know optimized resources for them and then we work well obviously with a traditional providers like severe and others to make sure that they maintain the business except crack a lot of companies like us are trying to do the same thing and then there's like the traditional providers tried and we furnishing with very give us a couple o months ago on how we're helping transform m platform for facilities management so not every company that can afford once know this they can use semiary to make it happen and we're doing this across the board with a lot of companies whether your rental property s what have you super ingedinuscases

[mark]: 23:47
yeah the what's next what's you know you've talked about some of the things that you're passionate on what what what else are you thinking about in the coming twelve twenty four months

[mark]: 24:00
um you know to land and market

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 24:02
yeah yeah a lot of exciting news that i can't really talk about just yet but what i will say is we're excited and this has been has never been a better time for microsoft to be in field service and what i would call like the we call these internal the physical operations right like because at the end of the sale right down you're going to see a lot of a lot of noise coming from what does it mean to do physical operations in the real world in the industrial metovors you know like im every every part that has been played what does it mean for companies to transform the form the workers what does it mean to connect people places and things into a simple cause experience because you know for a while we've heard of all these things but it's mostly been a past story we give you the legolaw because you build it and if you're as v et cetera how do we actually democratize this in a business application and if you think about it for me you know this is my own metaphor which is the c m business was disrupted twenty years ago in the club before that it was all kind of like legacy tools and there's no and then the goal standard came and everybody started doing c m right i think that moment in feel service and physical operations is about to come we we're

[mark]: 25:20
nice

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 25:20
going to start see a new panadime or how people use tools sat tools and you know i think in ten years what is c m for sales and customer service that it was just like of course we're doing this i think the same thing in a few years is going to be for service operations and physical operations and ascetmate ecce

[mark]: 25:41
i love it resources where can people go to find more resources around field service what's your where do you direct people

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 25:50
so i usually point him to like we have a you tube channel for field service we also have like an incredible amount of like you know resources on micasonacoms i also will point them to the idea sport if they want to get feed back you know we track that ives portal very carefully and we attract on that as well and then the learning paths you know there's learning paths in the microsoft site i think type you know we we can give you the links so you can put in the notes as well if you

[mark]: 26:18
totally

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 26:18
talk with learning pass for filstrumers you'll be able to get started on the various technologies

[mark]: 26:22
i love it hector thanks so much for coming on the power three six five show

[hector_garcia_tellado]: 26:26
mark has been my pleasure thank you so much for having me thanks everybody for listening