Mobile Workforce Management Solutions: Get the Right Person to Job Site on Time

One of the challenges local governments and service providers in the utilities sector face is they have to manage an offsite labour force who works on a high volume of projects that take a short time to complete. For example, the typical power company has to manage 500 field employees scheduled by dispatchers or a call centre. Furthermore, the labour cost associated with a large mobile work force can range from 50 to 90 per cent of the gross revenue of the company or government agency. Studies have shown that mobile work force solutions can reduce this cost by 10 to 16 per cent on a year over year basis.

Workforce management solutions serve the vital function of getting employees with the right skill sets to the job site on time. Additionally, mobile workforce management solutions feed real-time data back to the dispatcher or call centre enabling them to schedule the workers to the next job fitting their skill set closest to them. This capability improves efficiency and productivity of mobile workers while decreasing downtime and transportation costs, while improving customer satisfaction, since people have a better idea when to expect a service call and how long the job will take to complete. Additionally, the dispatcher has the information to send the most skilled and experienced technician to complete the job, decreasing the likelihood of repeated service calls because the task was not completed correctly the first time. Businesses report they find a 56 per cent improvement in their ability to schedule workers who have the best skill sets to complete specific tasks, as well as a significant decrease in employee downtime between jobs.

Since supervisors and managers have the ability to track employees in real-time, they have the information needed to decrease overtime costs. They also have the ability to know when an employee is not working, which enables them to address issues with absenteeism that can cost the business both time and money. Moreover, workforce management solutions give the supervisors and management team information about employee information requests so they can identify the need to bring in additional staff with specific expertise so operations can continue seamlessly.

Before government agencies and utility service providers started implementing mobile workforce solutions, one of the organisation's most importance resources, their highly skilled supervisors, had to mentor and manage their teams from afar. When businesses deploy mobile workforce management programs, supervisors and management have access to real-time information from any site. This enables them to go to job sites to troubleshoot problems on the job site, mentor employees, and assess employee performance in the field. Since this reduces the frustration level of frontline staff that experience challenging situations on job sites, employee morale improves, resulting in lower absentee rates and improved employee morale.

Mobile workforce management solutions provide a means to maximise the return on investment of the most valuable resource of a large-scale service provider, their skilled workforce.

More Information: www.fieldtec.com

Via: WhaTech