Predictive Field Service Has Never Been Easier

Empowering Field Service Using Databricks Model Serving

The value of predictive maintenance has been proven time and again. Every day, organizations are turning their service operations into profit centers by utilizing AI, machine learning, and data in cohesive, actionable analytical reports to create new products, automate service orders, improve sales, deploy new products, document work orders, track inventory, and much more – with every element aimed at improving customer experience and margins.

But if you’re reading this, chances are you already know that. Perhaps the bigger challenge than your antiquated break/fix service is the barrier to getting started down this path of modern field service management.

With the latest advancements in modern data platforms, predictive maintenance is more attainable than ever before with an incredible speed to value. It’s a major reason why the predictive field service market is expected to rise $15.9 billion by 2026, according to a Markets and Markets report. Long and short: your competition is probably already making the move.

Hitachi Solutions’ latest field service offering utilizes our Empower Data Platform to ingest data from all its various sources, with over 200 types supported, and uses machine learning and AI to get to a usable predictive model in weeks. It’s a shrink-wrapped data platform that rapidly ingests data and transforms it into the analytical and predictive insights your teams can leverage to radically improve the way you do business.

Let’s take a closer look at what this new offering is, and how it can drive results for your service org.

What is Predictive Field Service?

Hitachi Solutions Predictive Field Service enhancement for Dynamics 365 Field Service is a brand-new Hitachi Solutions application that applies artificial intelligence to recommend problem code assignments and replacement part types for Microsoft’s D365 Field Service, allowing customer service and technical support agents to create work orders quickly and accurately. This solution leverages AI and machine learning using Databricks Model Serving to diagnose a customer’s issue and suggest corrective actions. 

How It Works

Empower and Hitachi Solutions Field Service Predictive Resolution are both deployed inside the customer tenant: data does not go outside of the custody of our customers – ensuring data privacy. Our module integrates directly inside Microsoft Dynamics 365, meaning that your company’s Field Service workflow will operate just as it did before with additional AI assistance.

Hitachi Solutions Predictive Field Service Resolution module is built on the Empower Data Platform and leverages both Microsoft’s D365 Field Service and Databricks Machine Learning. The solution offers real-time insights and support for field service using Databricks Model Serving, now generally available. Below, we will discuss some of the key value drivers of the tool, and how businesses can use their existing data to make decisions that directly impact their bottom line. Click here to learn more about how we’re improving field tech efficiency through modern field service management in our on-demand event.

How it Benefits Your Service Organization

The goal of Hitachi Solutions Predictive Field Service Resolution is to make it easier for customer service agents to identify the right problem to assign to a work order and know the correct parts to send onsite to fix it. An AI-powered Field Service solution can transform the way companies deliver services by enabling them to automate and optimize their processes, reduce costs, and enhance the overall customer experience—sometimes in ways that are not always intuitive.

Let’s look at a scenario where AI offers your customer service agents some assistance:

1. A customer calls and an agent creates a case with the issue description.
2. The predictive resolution engine suggests an incident type, which the agent then assigns to the case.
3. The predictive resolution engine then suggests relevant replacement parts to add in real time, which the agent can add to the work order.

There are a host of benefits happening in this scenario, and many others, through PFSR:

• It decreases the average handle time for customer service centers, meaning that agents can handle more inbound calls.
• It reduces the number of technician return trips because of the increase in incident-type accuracy.
• It reduces waste costs from sending the wrong replacement parts onsite to perform maintenance.
• It calculates the appropriate equilibrium of sending extra parts to avoid an expensive repeat visit while considering reverse logistics costs.
• It personalizes a powerful AI model for your company data, resulting in more relevant actionable insights.

Indirectly, this solution provides additional benefits, such as allowing a company to tap into the wealth of institutional knowledge that already exists within their data and increase onboarding speeds, as well as agent performance. It can also reduce overtime costs since overall technician repeat visits will be reduced. Finally, customer satisfaction will be higher, due to the increased ability of the company to fix the problem correctly the first time.

Databricks Model Serving

Our Predictive Field Services Resolution solution leverages Databricks Model Serving. Once the Empower Platform trains an AI model on your existing Field Service data, it will automatically deploy the model as a serverless endpoint. This means:

• You don’t pay for a cluster to remain online in case you want to utilize the model; because of this, the costs are much lower than server-hosted alternatives.
• The model will have high availability and scalability. Databricks Model Serving can support enterprise-grade QPS with minimal latency and scale up and down seamlessly to adjust based on the volume of requests.
• With Databricks Model Serving, data teams can now train, deploy, monitor, and retrain machine learning models, all on the same platform. 
• Bringing model serving together with the feature store ensures that our deployed models are always up-to-date and delivering the most accurate results.  This streamlined approach allows our teams to derive more value faster. 

By leveraging Databricks Model Serving, customer service representatives using Empower PFSR can make predictions in real-time even while they are on the call with a customer, enabling them to make informed decisions and improve customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

At Hitachi Solutions, we build innovative products to generate value for our customers. The new Predictive Field Service Resolution module, built on top of Empower and leveraging Databricks Model Serving, drives hard business value for our clients by unlocking the power of their own data.

Databricks Model Serving feature set was just released into general availability, and we are excited to leverage this new suite of tools in our AI products to allow fast and cost-effective inferencing.

The Empower Data platform, built on top of Azure and leveraging the power of machine learning on the Databricks Lakehouse Platform, enables our customers to revolutionize their businesses. Contact us to learn more about Hitachi Solutions, and how our experts can accelerate your field service and modern data estate initiatives today.