How to Get More Value from Your Discovery and Design Phase

Author: Derek Koyama

When you invest in a solution like Salesforce Field Service or other complex solutions, you expect more than just a working system. You’re looking for real, measurable value. Every successful implementation begins with one critical step: gathering requirements. It’s how you define the vision, align stakeholders, and set the stage for outcomes that truly matter.

But too often, that value gets delayed or diminished, because the discovery and design phase doesn’t go deep enough.

The Real Problem: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Many teams walk into this phase with only a surface-level idea of what they need, often shaped by their current processes, pain points, or assumptions about what’s possible. That’s understandable. You’re busy running a business, not scouting every innovation or best practice in the ecosystem.

But that list often leaves out the features and strategies that could truly transform how you operate. The cost of this gap can be significant: you end up designing for today, not for what’s possible tomorrow.

And when you’re spending time, money, and effort on a major project, that’s a missed opportunity. You’re not just trying to check boxes. You’re trying to move the needle on performance, outcomes, and value. That requires a broader, more imaginative view of what your system can and should do.

Strong Requirements Are the Foundation of a Successful Implementation

One of the biggest delivery risks isn’t technical: it’s clarity.

Writing comprehensive requirements that are:

• Detailed enough for developers
• Understandable to stakeholders
• Actionable and tied to real outcomes

…is harder than it seems.

Poorly defined requirements lead to:

• Misalignment between business and technical teams
• Scope creep and rework
• Slower delivery and higher costs

But strong, structured requirements? They improve quality, reduce risk, and keep your goals front and center.

Discovery Is About Possibilities, Not Just Requests

Here’s what great discovery and design should feel like: eye-opening.

Your implementation partner shouldn’t just take notes. They should challenge your thinking, offer smarter options, explore new features or process changes, and surface ideas you didn’t know were possible.

For example:

You say you need to support long service drives. That one requirement could unlock:

• Predictive scheduling with AI
• Territory mapping based on drive time and fuel cost
• Vehicle routing tied to technician fatigue, weather, or geography
• Inventory planning to reduce back-and-forth trips

The goal is to help you discover features you didn’t know to ask for—features that drive real value.

The AI Advantage: Smarter Requirements, Faster Delivery

How Diabsolut’s Requirements Dictionary Changes the Game

At Diabsolut, we’ve embedded AI into every layer of our Field Service practice—not just in the solutions we build, but in how we build them. One of the most impactful tools we’ve developed is our Requirements Dictionary, designed to help clients take full advantage of the discovery phase. And AI is what makes it so powerful.

What It Is

A curated, AI-powered repository of:

• Real-world, field-tested requirements
• Categorized by user personas, business processes, and outcomes
• Complete with:
  • User stories
  • Acceptance criteria
  • Test cases
  • Solution mappings and configuration patterns

We’ve built it based on years of field-tested wisdom across industries like utilities, telecom, healthcare, and energy.

What It Does

1. Surfaces suggested requirements and patterns based on your industry and goals
2. Uses AI agents to recommend implementation approaches and generate documentation
3. Speeds up the entire process: less time reinventing, more time delivering

Why It Matters to You

Rather than starting from scratch, your team begins with a rich library of ready-to-use building blocks.

With the Requirements Dictionary, your project benefits from:

• Faster stakeholder alignment
• Pre-validated, structured requirements that reduce ambiguity
• Automated test cases that shorten QA cycles and cut costs
• Consistent delivery quality based on successful past implementations
• Early risk mitigation through AI-generated pattern recognition and gap analysis

And because it’s powered by AI, our internal agents can instantly surface relevant patterns, recommend approaches, and even generate solution documentation, so your project gets off to a more focused start. It means fewer surprises, fewer delays, and more time focused on outcomes.

The Takeaway: A Smarter Start Leads to Better Results

Discovery isn’t just a step in the process. It’s your moment to define success.

By bringing AI-driven tools, real-world experience, and a proactive approach to your discovery and design phase, we help you:

• Clarify what matters most
• Explore what’s possible
• Deliver with confidence

Ready to make the most of your Field Service delivery?

Let’s talk about how Diabsolut uses AI and structured innovation to help organizations move faster, with less risk and more value. Your discovery and design phase isn’t just a formality: it’s the key to your competitive edge.

Start the conversation, and let us show you what’s possible when discovery is done right.