During the Field Service News Live event in Birmingham, (5th October 2022), Global Business Transformation leader and award-winning Microsoft Dynamics partner, HSO, announced its successful new partnership to provide a game-changing field service platform for SMS plc (Smart Metering Systems Plc).

SMS plc is a fully integrated energy infrastructure company which owns, installs, and manages carbon reduction (CaRe) assets, including smart meters, battery energy storage systems (BESS), and EV chargepoints. In support of the UK smart meter roll-out, SMS have a contracted smart meter order pipeline of 2.4m smart meter installations. However, its legacy field service scheduling system was costly to manage, difficult to scale, and wasn’t flexible or robust enough to handle the roll-out’s complex requirements. A fully integrated platform was required to manage the end-to-end scheduling and field service processes, whilst simplifying and automating manual tasks for SMS’ 400 field service engineers.

After an extensive 14-month procurement process, SMS selected HSO’s bespoke solution, which will provide greater flexibility, planning ability, and enormous cost savings. The solution comprises Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, Dynamics 365 Field Service, and a scheduling application from Fast Lean Smart (FLS) — an HSO partner providing intelligent optimisation of schedules and resources in real-time. The Microsoft Power Platform will also be employed to automate and surface critical business data.

The selection of HSO’s solution was based on:
• The strength of the Microsoft Dynamics platform.
• The outstanding capabilities of FLS’ scheduling.
• A proven and strong relationship between SMS and HSO.
• Exceptional support from HSO, its partners, Microsoft and FLS.
• The solution’s flexibility and futureproofing.

For the last four months, HSO and SMS have undertaken a successful diagnostics phase and are due to start delivery imminently. The HSO team will also support the change management process to ensure a seamless system adoption.

Mark Evans, Chief Information Officer, SMS commented, “With 2.4 million smart meters to be delivered, we needed a fully integrated and streamlined platform that could handle our end-to-end scheduling and field service processes — and HSO delivered”.

“HSO’s solution will save us headaches, time and money, but, more importantly, the team has provided us with a platform we can roll out across workstreams and utilise across the entire organisation. HSO is not only able to partner to provide the best IT solutions for our challenges — such as FLS’ revolutionary scheduling capabilities — they also offer the flexibility to fit our needs now and in the future.”

“We really value our strong working relationship with HSO. The team immediately embedded themselves as part of our team — and wanted to understand every aspect of our company to ensure the solution was tailored to both our business needs and our culture”.

“We’re excited to start implementation and provide an optimal experience for our Field Service engineers — and, in turn, satisfied and happy customers”.

Daniel Snowdon, Solution Director, HSO said, “I am so proud that the team has successfully won this contract. Creating the perfect solution to meet SMS’ challenges was no mean feat, considering their complex requirements. Our success was not just due to our dedication in finding the right solution, but also our technical expertise around Microsoft Dynamics 365 and FLS, and our understanding of SMS’ business and needs”.

“We’re looking forward to moving forward with SMS and continuing this very exciting journey — not only with the Field Service process, but with supporting change across the entire business”.

Kevin Brown, Sales Director, HSO said “We’re passionate about connecting businesses with fit-to-purpose technology. Winning this contract with SMS is another example of our commitment to empower our customers to achieve growth by leveraging tailored solutions that are built on a world-class suite of products.”