Workforce Management Software

Frequently Asked Mobile Workforce Management FAQs

• What is mobile workforce management?

  Workforce management at its most basic level is essentially a combination of processes and technology businesses use to manage their workforce and its related productivity.

  It is generally comprised of the following elements across a multitude of businesses, including attendance management and timekeeping, scheduling and shift management, and labor planning and forecasting.

  However, in industries that must conduct field-based services for business or commercial customers, workforce management, particularly mobile workforce management, takes on added importance and complexity.

• What is included in mobile workforce management?

  In the field service industry workforce management certainly includes attendance management and timekeeping, scheduling and shift management as well as labor planning and forecasting. However, field service operations also must consider managing demand, scheduling, mobile technician or worker enablement, work order management, operations, and analytics, according to Gartner’s report, “The Six Categories of Field Service Management Application Functionality and Why You Need Them”, Jim Robinson, March 2018.

• What does a mobile workforce management project include?

  Mobile workforce management projects include these formal steps: Kick-off, functional requirements, technical requirements, design, integration, configuration/data loads, regression testing, UAT, training, and launch support.

• Why is mobile workforce management so important to organizations with field resources?

  On mobile workforce management projects, ServicePower recommends working with the customer project management team to execute the project milestones and deliverables, including generally the following team members.

   

  Roles and Responsibilities

  Role	Responsibility
  Executive Sponsor	Responsible for executive level support and oversight for the project.
  Territory Account Executive / Account Manager	Primary ServicePower contact for the customer. The Territory Account Executive or Account Manager is the customer advocate.
  Project Manager	Fully responsible for the Project. Creates a detailed Project Scope document and a detailed Project Plan and is the primary contact during all stages of the engagement process.
  Business Consultant	Provides all analysis work, solution requirements gathering, and documentation during the solution delivery process. Responsible for installation and configuration best practices in support of customer’s deployment requirements. Manages and delivers solution releases internally and to the customer.
  Technical Consultant	Works with appropriate team members to define and design the required solution (hardware, software, services, etc.). Outlines hardware, software and OS configurations. Oversees the technical analysis and integration aspects of the Project.
  Solution Developer	Solution development, engaging the customer as appropriate.
  Quality Assurance Engineer	Solution testing, engaging the customer as appropriate.
  Customer Service Manager	Provides ongoing support following the solution delivery process; the primary customer contact.
  Support Manager	Provides ongoing support (help desk) following the software solution delivery process.
  Customer Instructor	Delivers agreed upon learning material and sessions to prepare the customer participants for Go Live and continued use of the system.

   

  Customer roles are defined as:

  PM	Project Manager
  SME	Subject Matter Expert – a trusted, experienced business representative with deep understanding of the business requirements and limitations for Scheduling (FTE), 3rd party Dispatching, claims, mobile, assets, parts, sales, etc.
  IT Dev	The IT developer is a software developer skilled in the integration technologies (C libraries or Web Services) and with a solid understanding of the business application being interfaced.
  Sys Admin	The SA is an IT representative with good knowledge of the IT policies and technology platforms supported (usually a Server expert).
  Infrastructure Analyst	The IA is a representative which manages the servers and networks on which the software will be loaded, tested and deployed.
  Business Systems Expert	The BA has comprehensive knowledge of the business data stored in current Service IT systems. Can identify businesses data elements required by ServicePower and where they reside in current systems.
  Field Ops Manager	The FOM represents field management. Will be responsible for establishing field based success metrics for the project (Productivity and Customer Service).
  Dispatch Ops	The DO represents the dispatch operations function. Will be responsible for establishing new dispatch working practices.
  Call Center Ops	Call Center ops represents the front end customer call taking function, especially in regard to the appointment offer and book processes function. Will be responsible for screen design sign off and for training call takers.

• What industries does mobile workforce management touch?

  Mobile workforce management touches any industry delivering field-based services utilizing employed, contracted or freelance remote workers. Mobile teams can provide any service ranging from delivery and installation, to service, repair, maintenance, inspections, or any other activity.

• What does AI mean in field service or mobile workforce management?

  Intelligent Schedule Optimization

  Schedule optimization used by organizations with large transactional volumes, complex work, or expensive personnel, requires artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. AI algorithms in field service include computer-based mathematical logic that can use hard and soft constraints, as well as other cost-based parameters, technician information, job information, and existing schedule data to deliver an appointment offer that meets the customer's requirements while staying in line with the configured organizational parameters.

  AI-based schedule optimization products do 2 things well. One, they can use the AI engine to simultaneously churn through information related to the tech and his or her skills, geographical coverage, and current scheduled jobs, as well as job-related information, such as the skills required for a job, the time allotted to finish the job and other preferences and priorities. Two, they can use hard and soft constraints like SLA start and end, access hours, overtime, and efficiency in the algorithm, as well as late appointments, canceled jobs, etc. AI is the only technology that can handle this level of data and logic, and reliably produce a schedule that has the lowest costs for your organization and the highest response for your customers.

  Additionally, batch optimization is different than intraday optimization. In the former example, scheduling a day’s worth of jobs within a CRM and then ‘optimizing’ the route is useful. However, it can only reorder jobs using travel or distance. True intraday optimization provides optimized appointment offers, meaning that the AI is evaluating the existing schedule and the incoming job request and offering an appointment that is optimized- providing the best possible slot on the schedule based on those parameters mentioned above, in addition to pure travel time. Another important recent improvement to consider is integrated mapping and location services. Using AI to schedule the best tech for a job in the least costly slot on a schedule, while accommodating the customer’s request is one thing. Using real-time location and traffic data is an entirely higher level of scheduling. Using real-time data, techs can be routed around traffic jams and closed roads, while automatically reporting their location to customers, improving the overall customer experience.

  Schedule optimization is not just for organizations with largely employed workforces either. Any organization with field employees, even much smaller staffs, can realize the same benefits, using cloud-based optimization products that don’t require the overhead of on-premise deployments, but offer the same technology from the cloud.

  Workforce management is critical to field service operations. Using integrated mobile workforce technologies, and fine-tuning and perfecting the processes around people, products and technology enables field technicians to deliver great customer experiences, driving future revenues, while also providing demonstrable, repeatable productivity gains and cost reductions to the operation.

   

  SLA scheduling and Dependent or complex job scheduling

  Scheduling must also account for contractual commitments and SLAs. Incoming schedule requests typically are for appointments, meaning that the customer requests the first available slot on a tech’s schedule. The optimization engine will return the best appointment given the hard and software constraints, and configurable parameters. Additionally, appointments will be automatically moved around within the hours promised to the consumer, to improve the efficiency of the schedule and continue to reduce the schedule costs. For SLA and dependent jobs, additional hard constraints must be met by the software. SLAs can typically be run within a specific period, for instance, 3 days. Scheduling products using AI will move that job around between the endpoints of the SLA, and the start and stop date while attempting to improve the efficiency of the schedule and continue to reduce the schedule costs. It will not break these constraints though. The benefit of AI scheduling software is that it automatically handles these sorts of scheduling scenarios, maintaining your contractual obligations without having to manually manage the changes or check for compliance. Dependent and complex jobs are handled much the same way, since dependencies and complexities like multiple trips or multiple day work constitute constraints that the AI engine can automatically deal with, without breaking.

• What is the difference between manual or rules based scheduling and AI based schedule optimization?

  Scheduling work can take many different paths, which ultimately provide varying levels of automation, productivity, and customer satisfaction improvements to the organization.

  Often, smaller, less complex organizations rely on basic or manual scheduling or rules-based scheduling.

   

  Basic Scheduling

  Basic scheduling typically entails building and managing a schedule manually. This is labor-intensive, doesn’t consider travel, nor is there computer logic applied to scheduling decisions. There is no automated handling of schedule changes or exceptions. Most interfaces are very similar to Microsoft Outlook with perhaps some drag-and-drop functionality.

  This approach isn’t scalable, so as the enterprises evolve and become more complex, basic scheduling can’t evolve with it and so it becomes necessary to climb the technology ladder.

   

  Automated, Rules-Based Scheduling

  With more volume and complexity of field service operations, manual schedules are very quickly ferreted out as inefficient, costly, and inaccurate.

  The next rung up the ladder, simple computerized logic, often mistakenly called ‘optimization’, is used to automatically build the schedule, based on technician skills, availability, and service level agreements. This approach decreases the overhead of manual scheduling. However, it can’t manage jobs that cannot be assigned without violating a rule.

  This approach only fills white spaces or ‘availability’ within a schedule, without any automated re-scheduling or ‘re-optimization’.

   

  Intelligent Schedule Optimization

  Schedule optimization is recognized generally by the field service industry as necessary when operations 1) employ large workforces and 2) have complex scheduling requirements. In both cases, basic nor rules-based solutions can handle the volume of work, the complexity of scheduling requirements, nor, perhaps most importantly, intraday changes. Schedule optimization produces demonstrable improvements in productivity given all of the above.

  Schedule optimization requires artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, and can also use historical data such as asset ownership and service history combined with machine learning to produce automated, efficient, and highly productive schedules. If an AI backbone is missing, what you’re dealing with is more likely a rule-based solution. Rules-based schedule tools can produce productivity. However, once complexity is introduced to your scheduling process, rules break and the customer is at risk.

• How can you manage contractors providing field based services?

  ServicePower’s contractor management solution offers a true multi-tenant SaaS solution used to manage 3rd party contracted networks, including dynamic job dispatching with robust rules and ranking logic, real-time status collection, and mobile dispatching.

  The solution enables contractors to manage profiles, dispatched jobs, claims, and payments, and view collaborative analytics, while clients govern whom, what, and where work is performed on their behalf.

  Contractor Management offers clients:

  • Web service integration for appointment requests, booking, and status, cancellation, and updates
  • Manage authorized third-party networks
  • Configurable AI-based dynamic dispatching logic including rules, ranking, and robust eligibility
  • Real-time booking of service appointments based on available time-slots
  • Real-time job status to track the progress
  • part orders from distributors and aggregators
  • Key in-memory business intelligence and analytics for contracted labor

  Service contractors

  • Configure profiles, accept work, and file claims through integrations with mass market service or business management solutions
  • Directly in ServicePower:
    • Set up profiles
    • Accept and provide status on work orders
    • File and manage claims, view claims payments
    • View literature, warranty, and product information provided by job sources
    • Manage their own work orders, assets, and parts inventory through our integrated business management solution