Case study · Building services
The right technician, with the right parts, first time
HVAC maintenance companies juggle planned servicing, emergency call-outs and contract terms across hundreds of sites. This is how we ran it on Dynamics 365 Field Service, from contract to schedule to the technician's phone and back to the invoice.
Project overview
Field service management on Dynamics 365.
- Industry
- Building services
- Client
- Confidential
- Solution
- Field service management
- Platform
- Dynamics 365 Field Service
- Timeline
- 14–22 weeks
- Team
- 5 people
- Work
- Planned and reactive
- Mobile
- Field Service mobile app
- Finance link
- ERP invoicing
Expected business outcomes
What the client set out to achieve
Scheduling and first-time fix are where the time and money go.
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10–20%
More jobs per technician per day
Schedule optimisation reduces travel and gaps between jobs.
Target range; depends on territory density
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10–25%
Higher first-time fix rate
Technicians see asset history and carry the parts the job is likely to need.
Target range after parts usage history builds up
-
Same day
Invoice after job completion
Completed work orders flow to invoicing with time and parts recorded.
Where contract billing rules are configured
Business challenges
How field service ran before
Planners hold the business together with a whiteboard and a phone.
Contracts
Maintenance contracts and visit frequencies tracked in a spreadsheet.
Scheduling
Planners allocate jobs by phone and a wall planner.
Technicians
Job sheets on paper, returned at the end of the week.
Parts
Vans stocked by habit, so a second visit is often needed.
Billing
Invoices raised days or weeks later from job sheets that are hard to read.
Proposed solution
What the Field Service build covers
Standard Field Service configured for planned and reactive HVAC work.
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Agreements
Service contracts that generate planned maintenance visits automatically.
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Scheduling board
Drag-and-drop and optimised scheduling by skill, location and availability.
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Technician app
Work orders, checklists, photos, signatures and time on the phone, offline when needed.
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Assets and history
Every unit on every site with its service history and readings.
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Van stock
Parts held on each van, with replenishment and usage recorded against jobs.
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Invoicing
Completed work orders sent to the ERP for billing per contract terms.
Project requirements
What the client asked us for
The request was to get rid of paper job sheets. The biggest gains come from the asset history and scheduling that paper made impossible.
Technicians' experience decides success, so the mobile app is designed with them: few taps, offline working and checklists that match real inspections.
What the project had to deliver
- 01Planned visits generated from contracts
- 02Optimised daily schedules
- 03Paperless jobs with photos and signatures
- 04Invoices the same day
Key challenges & considerations
What made it harder, and what we did
-
Sites without mobile signal (plant rooms, basements)
What we did
The mobile app worked fully offline in plant rooms and basements and synced when signal returned.
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Contracts with unusual visit rules
What we did
Contract visit rules were configured per agreement, including the unusual ones.
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Subcontracted engineers
What we did
Subcontracted engineers were given limited access to their own jobs only.
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Legacy asset data with gaps
What we did
Asset data was cleaned before go-live, and technicians filled the remaining gaps on their first visits.
What we watched for
- Design the mobile app with technicians
- Plan for offline plant rooms
- Clean asset data early
- Pilot scheduling in one region
Development process
From contract to invoice
The flow is built end to end with a pilot group before rolling out.
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Process design
Contract types, work order types, checklists and billing rules agreed.
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Assets and agreements
Sites, assets and contracts migrated and cleaned.
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Mobile app
Checklists and offline working tested by a group of technicians.
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Scheduling pilot
One region scheduled in Field Service, then compared with the old way.
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Rollout and invoicing
All regions live, ERP invoicing connected and planners trained on optimisation.
Technology stack
Dynamics 365 Field Service in the van
Microsoft's field service stack with the ERP handling finance.
Field service
- Dynamics 365 Field Service
- Resource scheduling
- Schedule optimisation
Mobile
- Field Service mobile
- Offline profiles
- Photo and signature capture
Integration
- ERP connector
- Dataverse
- Power Automate
Reporting
- Power BI
- First-time fix dashboards
Quality assurance & deployment
Tested by the people who use it every day
A CRM succeeds when people choose to use it. Every process was tested with real users on real scenarios, and data migration was rehearsed until the record counts agreed.
- Scenario testing with users from each role
- Migration rehearsals, with record counts reconciled
- Integration tests for every connected system
- Security roles checked against real job roles
- Solutions moved between environments as managed releases
Deployment
- 01Scheduling pilotOne region scheduled in Field Service, then compared with the old way.
- 02Rollout and invoicingAll regions live, ERP invoicing connected and planners trained on optimisation.
- 03Phased go-liveOne team or region first, then the rest, each wave with training by role.
- 04Hypercare and warrantyDaily support through the first weeks, and six months of free bug fixing.
Final deliverables
A field operation that runs on data
Planned visits appear on the schedule automatically, emergency jobs go to the nearest qualified technician and job sheets arrive complete, with photos, the moment the job ends.
Managers see first-time fix and utilisation by team, and finance invoices the same day.
- Contract-driven planned maintenance
- Optimised schedules
- Complete digital job records
- Same-day invoicing
Handed over to the client
- 01Configured Dynamics 365Production and test environments
- 02Solutions and integrationsAs managed, documented releases
- 03Migrated dataWith record counts reconciled
- 04Training by roleWith short guides
- 05Six-month warrantyFree bug fixing after delivery
Success metrics
How success is measured
| Measure | Outcome | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| More jobs per technician per day | 10–20% | Target range; depends on territory density |
| Higher first-time fix rate | 10–25% | Target range after parts usage history builds up |
| Invoice after job completion | Same day | Where contract billing rules are configured |
Verified reviews
What clients say about our Dynamics work
Verified reviews from our clients on the same kind of work, published on Clutch.
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