Within the field service industry, organizing the business’s schedule can be one of the hardest challenges to tackle. As they juggle several different jobs, employee metrics, and equipment usage, it can be easy to let something important fall through the cracks.
With the technology at disposal, now is the time to start working smarter instead of harder. A field service management software with mobile compatibility can help. Here are some of the scheduling and dispatch benefits they can enjoy when you make the switch.
Finding The Right Employees for the Job
How do they divvy up hours when creating a work schedule?
For some, this becomes a sinkhole of calculations, including questions like:
- Who is available to assign to this job?
- Which employees have the skills and experience needed for this job?
- Who fills the role required for this project?
- Of eligible employees, who is the closest to this job site?
Field service scheduling and dispatch software apps have a solution: digital sorting
Finding an employee who meets all of the criteria can be a time-consuming process. Field service scheduling and dispatch software apps have a solution: digital sorting.
When using field service management software - like FieldEquip - they can sort through lists of employees using real-time information like availability, role, primary and current location, and skillset. This takes the time-consuming guesswork out of finding the right employees for the jobs.
Making the Most of The Resources
Managing employee and equipment availability can be a non-stop juggling act. However, mistakes in this process - such as under-scheduling or over-scheduling - can create costly havoc for the business.
- Under-Scheduling Costs: When the business under-schedules resources, it faces serious opportunity costs as it bypasses the chance to take on a full workload. Under-scheduling is often a safety net necessary for businesses that lack a clear view of employee and equipment availability, preventing them from ever making the most of the resources.
- Over-Scheduling Costs: When they stretch the employees too thin with over-scheduling, they may find them unable to do satisfactory work within the available time frame. Overlapping work orders might simultaneously put multiple jobs at risk. Similarly, over-scheduling the equipment distribution can leave employees on the job site without the tools they need.
These scheduling troubles are notorious for causing project delays, poor customer satisfaction, low employee retention, and the loss of future opportunities. So what can they do to avoid these troubles and make the most of the resources? The solution is simple: resource utilization monitoring.
Resource utilization monitoring software
Equipment usage can be marked during scheduling, helping them avoid bottlenecks
Resource utilization monitoring software features keep track of personnel and equipment availability, helping them make accurate and data-driven business decisions. Equipment usage can be marked during scheduling, helping them avoid bottlenecks.
Likewise, employee availability is automatically updated to reflect new job assignments, ensuring real-time data accuracy. For other availability changes - such as vacation time - the employees can maintain visibility by proactively entering this information into their schedules from the ease of their smartphones once it has been approved.
The field service software will give they an overview of the resource availability each time they make a work schedule. Before partnering with a field service scheduling software and app, check for resource utilization monitoring capabilities to get the right tools on the side.
- Dispatching: Transparency and Delivery of Employee Schedules
Transparency is key when it comes to employee dispatching. Long gone are the days of calling or messaging the personnel individually with scheduling information. With new technology innovations, even mass-dispatch emails are becoming a thing of the past. Instead, a software system can automate the dispatch process.
Once the schedule is in place, they can instantly notify employees with ease via a mobile app. Employees will not only receive a notification of their schedule, but they will also receive detailed information on the assigned job.
Key benefit of mobile app compatibility
Field service management software solutions can improve every aspect of scheduling
One key benefit of mobile app compatibility is that these notifications will be delivered straight to the employees’ smartphones, ensuring important insights are never missed. Instantaneous delivery will eliminate communication disconnects and delays in the dispatch process.
Collectively, field service management software solutions can improve every aspect of scheduling and dispatch for the employee, the leadership member in charge of this process, and, most importantly, the customer.
Keeping Track of Important Updates
Software features introduce a new level of convenience, tracking, and data visibility. Here are some of the software features you may be missing out on:
- Barcode Scanning: When scheduling a delivery, barcode features available on the mobile app allow them to scan equipment or parts. This ensures accurate tracking of activity on customer assets and movement of spare parts inventory.
- Dashboards: Keeping track of job metrics and business performance is easier than ever with software dashboards. These portals organize all of the information - whether it be from IoT monitoring, AI learning, or mobile form data - into easy-to-read and actionable visualizations.
- Image Capture: Whether they are facing equipment damage, job site challenges, or reporting uncertainties, they can use the mobile app to capture an image and send it to the proper source for documentation and reporting. Before and after images are also valuable to customers as proof of work performed during a work order.
These are just a few of the features that will help take the information tracking and internal processes to new heights.
FieldEquip: Field Service Software
FieldEquip is a comprehensive field service software solution. They streamline scheduling/dispatching, though this is just one component of the comprehensive software. While the solutions are popular within the field service industries, the software can be adapted to support almost any business.
Best of all, the convenient mobile app can help make business management easy from anywhere. They can schedule a free demo with the professionals or contact them to learn more about how they can help the business.