Nearly 3 out of 4 workers will be mobile-enabled by 2020. Whether you think of them as field service employees or not, that’s what they are by default.
How are you going to intelligently manage their schedules, routing, communications and tasks?
The Challenges of Mobile Workforce Management
The world is mobile now, and the workforce even more so. A third of mobile workers are using 3 or more devices to work from multiple locations, according to Forrester. Having a robust and scalable mobile workforce management platform in place has become as essential to modern business as email.
Do you have a mobile workforce platform already? How does your platform maximize the efficiency of scheduling and routing your mobile workers? How do you choose the best person for each job?
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Many companies feel they are spending too much time planning, adjusting and updating schedules. They lack visibility into what workers are actually doing in the field, which impacts the customer experience and billing accuracy. Workers experience inefficient travel routing, scheduling conflicts, and difficulty communicating with the office. Customers are upset when they can’t reach the mobile worker before the appointment or have to schedule another visit because the worker wasn’t fully prepared.
How can you address these issues and yet still be sure you are minimizing costs and lost productivity? That’s what a mobile workforce management platform should be doing for you.
The only question is how to choose the right one among so many options on the market. Our ebook, 5 Secrets to Evaluating the Best Mobile Workforce Management Solution, will help you uncover the most important elements of an effective workforce management system.
The 5 Secrets of Better Mobile Workforce Management
1. Define Bottlenecks in Your Current Workforce Management System
Setting your mobile workers up for success means taking an honest look at your current system. Look at the entire end-to-end process for your workers and note any inefficiencies or areas for improvement that you see. Using your data and your company goals, get a candid assessment of current processes—and be prepared for some resistance to change.
2. Plan Out the Customer Experience from Start to Finish
Streamlining the process holistically, and cutting away the unnecessary, solves problems that you may not have identified yet. For example, when you capture forms and customer signatures in on online application, then send the data automatically to the back office, you speed up the process and eliminate errors in reentering or scanning data.
3. Get Input from Mobile Employees Throughout the Process
It is critical to the success of change management to bring workers into the solution earlier in the process. A positive user experience for mobile workers simplifies new tech adoption, playing a vital role in a successful rollout. Assign a project champion on your leadership team to take the pulse of the workforce before selecting a solution, and then answer questions throughout implementation.
4. Use Advanced Data to Evaluate the Mobile Workforce
Four out of five field service managers say they are frustrated that they can’t get the data they need to do their jobs. Almost a third say their organizations are already collecting the right data, but remain ineffective at analyzing it.
The best platforms will have a good track record of dealing with data complexity and delivering customized solutions. Seek out informed customer testimonials to better understand what you need from your mobile workforce tools.
5: Agree on Key Metrics to Guide Your Business
“You should already have an answer before you ask a question.” This old military adage has found a new life as a project management directive. You can’t ask the right questions until you know what you want to achieve.
Before you talk to vendors, establish upfront your highest priority metrics, such as: “The mobile workforce management solution should increase mobile workforce utilization by X percent or lower the cost of job execution by $Y.”
Move Your Mobile Workforce Forward
Skedulo offers you full visibility into the daily process of workers who used to be out in the world all alone. You can support them more effectively with a communication platform that facilitates instant document transfers, sends real-time schedule updates directly to their mobile devices, and puts the right person on the right job every time.
When you reduce time and complexity in the back office, you can turbo-boost productivity everywhere. Skedulo improves the mobile experience for your mobile workers, office administrators and executive leadership. Most of all, it improves the customer experience, which is really the best measure of an effective mobile workforce management solution.
To learn more about best practices for mobile workforce management tools, download our ebook 5 Secrets to Evaluating the Best Mobile Workforce Management Solution.
