Mobilise Your Field Teams With Field Workforce Management Software

Achieving high efficiency and productivity in field services often becomes challenging for the workforce management for they lack proper mobility solutions. In-premise offices or even well-networked remote offices have a proper structure, where processes, operations, and workforce can be positioned, regulated, and managed in a more streamlined way. But when it comes to field operations, there is some kind of gaps in the ways the processes or field operations are structured, for instance:

• The supervisor or the manager don’t have real-time visibility into field activities
• The field workforce don’t have access to the right kind of information at the time of need
• Gaps in communication and reporting
• Data collaboration is not real-time
• No proper structure to track and measure the performance and productivity of the field workforce

Because of all these challenges, the productivity and efficiency of the field workforce get compromised, and as a result, there is often a delay in service delivery, over and beyond the estimated time frame. This certainly offends the clients but also affects the profit prospects of the business. Because of operational inefficiency, if a project (service) is stretched beyond the esteemed time frame, then it means the resources i.e the tools, the workforce, equipment, everything remains blocked with that one particular project. This stops a business from taking up service requests from new clients and also causes a delay in the rest of the services scheduled in the queue. Thus, when it comes to managing fieldwork services or the field workforce, it is necessary to have mobility solutions. By mobilizing your field teams only, you can easily overcome the operational challenges in field services.

How to mobilize your field team with field service workforce management and how it helps?

Field workforce management software is a tool designed for this purpose. The software mobilizes field workforce management by automating the field operations and by bringing all the field processes to the online platform. It bridges the time and communication gap between field operations and back-office operations and tries to make the cause-and-effect dynamics more real-time. For instance, timely managerial intervention is important so that the field workforce can be rightly informed or directed on how they can do a job in a better way. But if there is a gap in when field activities are performed and when they are reported to the supervisors, then the supervisor may miss the chance to make timely interventions.

Real-time reporting is one of the mobility solutions that is facilitated by field workforce management software.

Likewise, the software is powered with different kinds of features and automation modules that facilitate the mobilization of field members, thereby enabling them to be more efficient in their job roles, and also empower the managers or supervisors to better manage the field workforce from remote locations. Here is how the field workforce management software mobilizes the field team members:

1. Automation in processes: The software takes away the need for manual efforts for processes like job scheduling, route planning, field data recording, or managing accounts of on-field monetary transactions, or maintaining the logs of the work schedules of the technicians, team communication, etc. By automating these operations, the software makes them more streamlined, measurable, trackable and ensures that what needs to be done gets done on time. For instance, as a field workforce scheduling software, the tool can track the current locations of the technicians, mine their work schedule data, thus before assigning them any new job, it assesses their availability, proximity to the job site, and skills to ensure that a job always gets assigned to the nearest available rightly-skilled technician.

2. On-the-move access to processes: When the mobile workforce is out on the field, their access to enterprise data, or enterprise tools and self-services gets limited. The field workforce management app addresses this challenge, by providing the field workforce on-the-move real-time access to all kinds of assistance that they need to execute their jobs efficiently. for instance,

• Over the workforce management app, they receive notifications and reminders of their schedule updates. So they don’t need to keep their own schedule calendar, or don’t even need to make confirmation calls with the back office.
• Using the app they can directly access the information they need, and thus don’t have to depend on someone in the back office for retrieving information. Be it client’s details, service history, warranty records, service quotes, or inventory records, every information, they can access directly provided they have valid access permission. They can even collaborate upon data on a real-time basis.
• They can use the app for purposes like route planning so that they can reach the job site avoiding traffic congestion and detours.

3. The Field Workforce Software or app provides them on-the-move access to self-services like applying for travel expense reimbursement, or leaves, or submitting their daily or hourly reports, etc. thus, they don’t require doing to-and-fro trips to the office.

4. Besides the software has features like automated invoice generation, automated field data recording, real-time communication tools, etc that considerably make the process easy for the field technicians.

Conclusion

Field services have always depended on mobility solutions, the better the solutions more organized the field operations get. Without being handy with the right kind of mobility-enabling tools and technology, the field technicians or workers face operational challenges that restrict them from delivering the results despite the best efforts put forward.

But till a few years back, the available mobility solutions were not of desired market standards. But advances in automation and data mining technologies have improved the capacities of Field Workforce Management Software, and these software suites are only to become more sophisticated with hi-tech technologies like artificial intelligence and the Internet of things. So, field service businesses must transform their business operations at the earliest with the aid of field service management software, and stay competitive in the market.