Effective resource scheduling has remained a business problem for a long time. Several tools and strategies came and keep evolving with the time to minimise the complexities around it and maximise the profitability with optimum utilisation. Microsoft Dynamics is also rolling out next-generation schedule board experience which will be publicly available from April 2020. This is very exciting as the value my customers are already reaping in the current offering is helping them unblock the revenue and driving their customer engagement to the next level.
We leveraged the Universal schedule board at two very different customers. One of them is in the hospitality industry where they provide venues and facilities for events and is considered as an established brand in wedding and corporate events at premium locations. The second customer is the construction and real estate industry that develops high-end malls and commercial structures nation-wide.
The prerequisites for using the Universal resource scheduling from licensing perspective is quite clearly documented but few blogs when mentioning it as “Schedule Anything” makes it confusing and the intuition leads towards as if this is something like Account and Contact entity in the Common Data Service. The users who want to use URS features need to have either of the following:
- Customer Service Enterprise
- Field Service
- Project Service Automation
- If you have Project for the web license, it will be present in default environment too (which makes it a little less appealing for enterprise-level solutions)
Yes, this is possible to on-board key stakeholders initially who will be carrying out the scheduling activity as there is no minimum purchase requirement as subsequent qualifying app.
The schedule board works like a charm to give visibility on the utilisation. In the hospitality industry where the occupancy rate drives the profitability, this insight can help design marketing campaigns and attract the audience.
The pain point is different if one has to take on the requests from 50+ construction sites for the different skill set of the team. Timely resource allocation not only unblocks the revenue at the project sites but also make sure the skilled staff is utilised appropriately as per the roles.
With so many features almost ready to come out of the oven, this is one of the exciting features that definitely will make the adoption of Microsoft business applications faster and add value for the businesses. My plan is to cover this area more in detail in the upcoming weeks, so please leave your comments and feedback if there is something that resonates with you and demands effective scheduling.
Faraz Qureshi ~ fq365.cloud 