The term “mobile workforce” refers to a group of employees providing service in the field, often on-site with a customer.
“Mobile workforce management” refers to the suite of tools—including processes, software, applications, networks, and related services—used to schedule, monitor, track, and analyze the performance of mobile teams as they deliver services and support your customers.
Mobile workforce management (MWM) solutions are designed to help company leaders more effectively manage employees in the field while they interface with customers. While functionality can vary by industry, most MWM solutions include tools to:
- Create schedules for mobile employees
- Dispatch mobile employees to new jobs
- Communicate with mobile employees in real-time
- Perform capacity planning for high-volume or low-volume periods
- Track employees en route to different jobs
- Connect with a CRM or other system of record
Features of a Mobile Workforce Management Solution
- Customisable workflows
A good workforce management system will allow you to define a process for every job to follow to create digitized job sheets that are built to your requirements. Workflows are sets of screens that allow your mobile workers to record information and can expect certain information. Any information captured is available to view in the office at any time.
For example, you might want to enforce mobile workers to take photographs at a certain point in the job to document completed work or record the quality of work or services. You might also require a signature by using the touch screen functionality of the device to provide lawful proof that a job has been completed and customer satisfaction.
2. GPS tracking
Office staff should be able to see the exact location of workers for health and safety reasons as well as being able to allocate jobs based on location, increasing the speed of service and boosting efficiency.
Having access to historical GPS tracking data is also important so that you and your team can easily resolve disputes by seeing the exact geographical location of workers and what times they were on site
3. Reports
A good system records all the information from jobs and creates a range of reports such as job, mileage, invoice and items reports saving valuable time creating them manually.
4. CRM
A CRM feature allows you to store all your customer information, from contract length and assets to current jobs and sites, this can then be auto-populated when creating jobs, saving office administration time.
5. Customer portal
Businesses should have transparency and aim to maximise customer satisfaction. Providing customers with access to their own portal allows them to see all their job information without needing to get in touch with the office. A good customer portal provides you with the ability to choose exactly what your customer sees with an extensive permission list.
Conclusion
So, has mobility taken over the work culture? It has most certainly captured the interest of employees, but it’s the responsibility of employers to promote a truly mobile workplace.
Innovation has always been a part of software development, but the difference now is that we are in a phase where field service companies can invest in mobility infrastructure without fear of it being made obsolete in 18 months by new standards or an incompatible technology.
