Scheduling automation and what it means to your bottom line

Finding it difficult to improve your bottom-line profit? You are not alone out there!

The speed of transformation accelerated by Covid-19 global events has been unprecedented. Some organisations embraced it and fared well, but most organisations are struggling to keep up. Labour and skills shortages, supply chain issues, energy costs, all offset against customer expectations, and you have a perfect storm brewing.

Service operations is finding it difficult to keep their businesses afloat. KPI’s are hard to meet and SLA with customers are not always met, resulting in claims.

So, what is the magical solution to counter the doom and gloom? With the help of a few new tools, organisations are able to stay ahead.

Read on to learn how implementing an advanced Scheduling tool to manage your mobile workforce you can facilitate higher productivity, improve efficiencies, and meet SLA customer commitments.

Perhaps look at it this way. ‘Time is money.’ This old adage has been adorning embroidery samplers and workplace signage since Adam was in knee highs, but it is as true today as it ever was. If not truer. Time is a precious commodity and wasted time in a business setting translates to lost productivity, which in turn leads to lost revenue.

Applying ‘Time is money’ to the largest cost contributing factor such as managing your mobile workforce effectively can reap huge benefits. Setting schedules and automating related processes will increase productivity by allowing more service calls a day whilst saving costs such as fuel through optimised routing.

How does automated scheduling save money?

Ideally, an industry leading field service application technology will incorporate asset management, forms, timesheets, purchase orders, work completed and more – all processes that will free up service technicians and office-based staff by automating all of the peripheral tasks that take time away from the actual field work that needs to be done.

Scheduling software saves money in several ways:

Job allocation

Allocating field service technicians via optimised employee scheduling software removes several headaches. Automated scheduling can determine who is available with the right skills and who is closest to the job in real time. Your office staff are relieved of the onerous responsibility of selecting the appropriate technicians, telling them where they need to be and tallying up their hours in spreadsheets. When the technician has been dispatched to a job, they have the information they need at hand delivered to their mobile device, saving them time too.

This leaves office staff free to spend their time on other business critical activities, including handling customer feedback and retention, warranty and contract management, managing inventory and logistics – all revenue generating activities.

Removal of unnecessary overtime

Field service technician scheduling software provides a full and comprehensive overview of all field staff’s assignments, making it simple to see at a glance which of them should be given any overtime tasks, and which of them have already clocked up too much overtime. Less overtime directly leads to less business expenditure. And that is not even considering the potential for accidentally falling foul of overtime scheduling regulations, which could lead to state or federal fines.

Improved workplace relationships

A perhaps unexpected benefit of employee scheduling software is the impact this can have on the relationship between management and field service technicians. A US study found that there can be financial benefit for businesses that are able to provide their staff with information about their shifts in good time, with employees stating that they were willing to take a 20 percent pay cut if they had a guarantee of one week’s advance notice of their schedule. Being able to view their schedules ahead of time, request time off or bid for unallocated shifts via their mobile devices have been shown to improve employee satisfaction.

Optimised resources

Apart from freeing up time, improving productivity and, hence, cutting costs, scheduling software also assists businesses to make better use of the resources they have. With a clear digital overview of technician allocation, dispatchers can see where schedules are overcrowded or have spaces in them. This means they are able to reassign work orders if necessary and streamline the allocation so that assigned tasks are well balanced across the entire technician team. A team that is not weighed down in one area, with some technicians doing all the heavy lifting and others left twiddling their thumbs has a direct impact on productivity – avoiding both burnout and boredom. And, as already noted, increased productivity leads to increased revenue.

Scheduling automation

An industry leading field service application technology should have a mobile component that will run natively on all major systems, including iOS, Android and Windows operating systems, while also offering a totally offline capability, with no data loss. And it should also transfer or communicate all and any recorded data instantaneously when connectivity is established.

Retriever Field Service is a field service application that includes Retriever Schedule to give office-based staff a real-time view and control over everything that is taking place in the field. Retriever Mobile together with Formbuilder simplifies the automation of any previously paper-based processes such as filling in Job Safety Forms (JSA), Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) and many other forms related to work order processing.

Every step of the process will result in saved time, increased productivity and, most importantly, cost reduction – and is the most effective treatment possible for any business suffering from unnecessary expenditure and decreased productivity.