Manage service resources overview
Applies to: Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Guides, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist
The Manage service resources area is part of the Service to cash end-to-end business process. This article tells you what this area is about, why you should use Dynamics 365 to support it, and what subprocesses it includes.
In the Service to cash end-to-end business process, resources are things that you can schedule for service delivery. The most common resources are people. But resources can also be other things like equipment, facilities, or anything else that has limited capacity and needs to be scheduled for service delivery.
The Manage service resources business process area covers the tasks you need to do to set up and maintain your resources. You need resources for service delivery, so you must set them up in the app before you deploy it. Plan to identify and define your resources when you discover and plan your implementation. This way, you can document your requirements for managing service resources.
You usually need to update your service resources often, so remember that you must maintain them in the app as part of your regular administration and management tasks. Plan to assign these tasks as part of your initial implementation.
Stakeholders
Many people in your organization should help with the decision-making and design of the Manage service resources area. Here are some examples of such people:
- Operations stakeholders such as the COO
- Field service stakeholders such as service managers, service supervisors, and dispatchers
- Billing and account management stakeholders such as the Director of Finance
Manage service resources process flow
The following diagram shows the Manage service resources business process area. Each solid gray rectangle on the diagram represents an end-to-end business process. The solid blue rectangle represents the business process area. The diagram shows the subprocesses for the business process area. The arrows on the diagram show the flow of the business process in an organization. If a subprocess can lead to more than one other subprocess, the parallel subprocesses are shown as branches.
The flow diagram for the manage service resources business process area has these steps:
- Start
- Hire to retire
- Onboard and manage the employee lifecycle
- Hire employees (in a parallel branch from the Onboard and manage employee lifecycle)
- Hire contractors (in a parallel branch from Start)
- Onboard and manage the employee lifecycle
- Service to cash
- Manage service resources
- Set up and maintain service resources
- Manage resource capacity
- Track resource costs
- End
Manage service resources benefits
Use the following key benefits to check and measure how well you implement technology to support the Manage service resources business process.
Optimized resource use
By managing your service resources well, you can make sure that you have the right resources at the right time. This can help you use your resources well and cut costs.
Improved service delivery
By having the right resources at the right time, you can improve your service delivery and meet your customer needs quickly and efficiently.
Increased visibility
By having a central view of your service resources, you can see how well you use your resources and find areas to improve.
Enhanced collaboration
By having a central view of your service resources, you can work better with different teams and departments. This can help you improve your service delivery and reduce response times.
Next steps
If you want to implement Dynamics 365 solutions to assist with your Manage service resources business processes, you can use the following resources and steps to learn more. (Links are added, when the articles are ready.)
- Manage service assets
- Manage service resources (the article that you're currently reading)
- Create and process service work
- Invoice customers overview
- Record customer payments
- Monitor customer credit and collections