Effetive service management is vital to help ensure customer satisfaction for service-oriented companies and to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. As a company grows, more demands are placed on its service operations and customers have increasingly higher expectations, however, providing excellent service can be costly. In order to compete effectively and meet these demands, a company’s business management software should include service management functionality, which can help a company place tighter control on costs and revenue.
The Dynamics Ax Project module successfully provides for basic service management functionality. It allows for multiple tiered customer sites and invoicing levels by leveraging the Dynamics Ax project hierarchy and project types. The “fixed price”, “time and material” and “internal” project types further restricts unwanted procedural behaviour and combined with optional project activities and resource allocation it enforces cost and revenue tracking to the desired customer levels.
As can be expected, Dynamics Ax Project integrates with Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) and is an ideal Solution for organizations that need strong coordination and standardization between projects, centralized resource management, or higher-level reporting about projects and resources.
Dynamics Ax Project Management is all about balancing the scope, time, resources, and results and, in these CRM times, the customer satisfaction and Service management fits perfectly into its domain. New service management functionality will be a key component of Microsoft Dynamics Ax 4.0. The current design for the Microsoft Dynamics Ax Service Management module is planned to be tightly integrated to the Microsoft Dynamics Ax Project module, which is a prerequisite for running Microsoft Dynamics Ax Service Management
Using the service management module with Microsoft Dynamics Ax Project integration, customers will be able to create service contracts in which the following can be specified: The service that will be delivered Whom the service will be delivered by When the service will be delivered
Further Enhancements targeted at supporting professional service-based companies or manufacturing service organizations include the following:
Improved Dynamics Ax Project accounting enhancements, such as project estimation and forecasting, improved budget oversight and credit notes Support for key service management processes New service management functionality, focused on supporting organizations with long or complex sales cycles New service management functionality, focused on supporting employee roles such as service manager, dispatcher and service technician or service consultant
One of the central ideas behind Microsoft Dynamics Ax Service Management is that customers should be able to view the services they provide as a business with income and costs. Customers should be able to view profit or loss across different contracts, customers, time periods and objects serviced. Microsoft Dynamics Ax Service Management will focus on the needs of companies with relatively non-standardized service offerings. The module will allow dispatchers and technicians to specify precisely what service tasks need to be carried out, while retaining full control over cost and income that can be invoiced. Companies can record income either from resource consumption or from periodically invoiced instalments.
The work performed by, for example, a service technician at a customer site is referred to as a service order. The service order tracks the hours worked by the service technician as well as any consumables used or other costs that can be invoiced. Repair requirement feedback can also help the company track and analyze repair operations on any given item.