The field service industry relies on mobile workers to sustain itself. Be it pharma reps or agri-input salesmen, most field service employees work remotely and visit various sites to carry out sales, maintenance or inspection tasks.
This necessitates the use of mobile workforce management software. After all, how else can you effectively manage your field executives? The days of calling or texting field agents are long gone.
With advancing technology, you can manage your field employees’ tasks, attendance, orders and more remotely. Wondering how? Worry not! Keep reading to learn how field workforce management software improves field service workflow.
5 Ways Mobile Workforce Management Software Enhances Field Service Operations
Here are 5 ways in which mobile workforce management software like TrackoField can enhance field service operations of your business
1. Optimised Task Scheduling
Managing mobile employees’ tasks is the primary job of a field manager. Whether it is client visits, equipment installation or sales, managers have to assign and track tasks efficiently. However, issues like task overlap or double allocation are common in field businesses.
To counter these issues, workforce management software uses real-time location and activity tracking to optimise tasks. The software allows managers to:
- Assign tasks based on employees’ availability and proximity to clients.
- Upload tasks in bulk and use calendar scheduling to plan them in advance.
- Adjust the priority of the tasks – low, medium, high or critical.
- Assign ad-hoc tasks and edit existing tasks.
- Let employees self-allocate and reschedule tasks.
Any change in the task is immediately notified to the concerned parties, be it manager or employee.
2. Real-Time Workforce Visibility
The visibility of your workforce is essential to monitor their activities, assign them tasks and better coordinate with them. Field workforce management software uses GPS to provide real-time location of mobile employees. This helps managers make informed decisions and keep track of their workforce. Here is you can do with software like TrackoField:
- Check employees’ activity status – on duty, off duty, unreachable
- View the total value of orders and expenses on the app dashboard.
- Check task status – pending, completed, rescheduled.
- View the battery and network status of employees’ devices.
- Playback the routes employees travelled during their day.
Moreover, the software also allows you to track your employees when they are offline. It can send you an alert in case an employee disables his GPS or uses a fake one.
3. Order & Customer Management
Many field service businesses are sales based and require significant customer visits. This necessitates order creation and customer onboarding. These processes need to be quick and easy to do.
Otherwise, it can cause delays in order processing and hamper customer service. Plus, employees have to place several orders a day and visit dozens of clients, which isn’t possible to track manually.
Mobile workforce management software like TrackoField can really streamline the order and customer management operations. It allows managers to:
- Track order status in real time
- Check the total number of active and inactive orders along with their value.
- Add new products or customers quickly.
- Approve customer creation requests of sales agents.
- Sort orders as per different categories.
On the other hand, here is what employees can do:
- Create new orders and onboard new customers quickly.
- Adjust prices and offer personalised discounts to customers.
- Access the customer list and product list from inbuilt inventory.
- Use custom forms to take feedback or create invoices.
- Take digital signatures and barcode scans.
4. Geoverified Attendance Marking
Accurate attendance reporting is a major benefit of field workforce management software. Do you want your staff to travel back and forth between the office and task sites to mark their attendance?
Instead, you can use FSM software to link attendance with tasks so employees can clock-in remotely from the task site. Plus, you can demand biometric proof of attendance from employees.
Software like TrackoField have the feature to capture geotagged and timestamped selfies during attendance marking. Here is what else managers can do with geoverified attendance marking:
- Assign custom shift timings to employees or entire teams.
- Establish geofences to ensure locational verification while attendance logging.
- Check for the location and timestamps at the punch-in site.
- Check whether attendance was marked when the employee was offline or online.
All these measures help eliminate time theft and attendance disputes. When field executives no longer have to worry about their attendance, they can better focus on their core work, which improves their efficiency.
5. Field Operations Data Analysis
Mobile workforce management software can be used to analyse employee data in various ways. The software stores large amounts of data on the cloud which can be retrieved any time the manager wants.
This data can be processed to identify hidden trends, spot patterns and look for discrepancies. Analysing your field operations helps to weed out any skill gaps and create strategies to achieve goals. Here are some reports offered by TrackoField:
- Distance reports to authenticate fuel expenses
- Task reports
- Target vs. achievement reports
- Unreachable reports
- Stoppage reports to review employes’ total halts
6. Streamlining Field Expenses
Field executives have to maintain a log of all the expenses they incur during work. These expenses are verified by the managers and then reimbursed. But what can stop employees from faking invoices or overreporting expenses? Well, a foolproof expense tracking module can!
Most field workforce management software have an inbuilt distance calculator synced with the odometer. This ensures that the total conveyance expenses of employees are calculated automatically based on the total distance they covered during the day.
Additionally, managers can create custom categories for expenses. This makes it convenient for executives to log expenses. They can also attach pictures of bills while raising expense requests.
Conclusion
Remote work is already hard to monitor and can be next to impossible to track with manual methods. That’s why you need mobile workforce management software like TrackoField. It is essential for an undisturbed workflow.
Field staff tracking software also ensures every employee is working to the best of his ability. It optimises tasks, reduces scheduling conflicts, prevents time theft and ensures fast order creations. The result? Higher employee efficiency and more streamlined field service operations.
Schedule a demo of TrackoField to learn more about the many benefits of field workforce management software.