A field service office is a busy office. With dispatchers trying to keep track of jobs, calls and work schedule of each employee, there can be a quite chaotic environment. The old paper and blackboard method scheduling no longer can provide efficient scheduling for a busy office.
For managing a large work force or for saving time in scheduling jobs, you need an efficient job scheduling software like Field Force Tracker. Field Force Tracker with its powerful scheduling capabilities can make it easy to schedule jobs, change schedule and assign and reassign jobs with simple clicks. Mobile Users get notified right away.
Challenges of Job Scheduling
Working in field service you face some pretty unique challenges. Companies with a field service operation often cover a range of different areas of work. They may cover everything from design work to installation, repair, renovation and service work; meaning each day is different to the last and no two jobs are the same in a day. The work may be highly complex and require specific skills, parts or tools for the individual tasks. Workflows may have a number of dependencies, which need to be stuck to, to complete the job so crews have to work well together.
For many of these companies there is also a mix of planned and emergency work throughout the day. The emergency calls that come in obviously need to be managed and worked into the day’s schedule. It means changes to the planned work and it is often difficult to make instant decisions on what needs to be changed around or moved down the priority.
Changes may be needed as jobs overrun due to their complexity, customers not being available or traffic and weather conditions impacting on a technician’s schedule.
Given that many companies still rely on paper-based processes, to some extent, in managing their field service work these challenges becomes all the greater to manage.
This brings additional difficulty to making changes to schedules and dispatch, allocating work to technicians as those in the office may not be working with all the information they need. So, the use of paper-based processes can mean a huge amount of time and resource is taken up by making the schedules for the start of the day and then managing them as changes occur throughout the day.
For any field service company, total visibility of field technicians and their work is key for complete optimization of resources and effective service delivery.
Benefits of Field Service Software Dispatching
Here are ten ways that the right scheduling solution makes a difference. The right schedule and dispatch software –like Field Force Tracker:
- Gives you fast, accurate scheduling and dispatch straight from the work order all in one easy application
- Enables you to make changes to accommodate incoming work – all at the touch of a button
- Provides great visibility of your teams, with maps to show where all your field workers are at any time
- Allows you to find the nearest worker to a job and enables better route optimization to get them to the job in the quickest time
- Takes into account service regions, worker skills and location
- Allows for planned, emergency and in-day tasks to be dispatched to the right, skilled technicians and engineers
- Allows you to schedule crews to specific jobs, while recording each individual’s time worked and different rates per crew member on the same job
- Ensures field workers have accurate information and the correct parts and equipment
- Gives you visibility of assets to assign them to jobs
- Provides your field technicians with job information on their mobile device and delivers the back office with job status updates in real-time
Field Force Tracker allows you to schedule your resources easily and quickly and dispatch the job to the field instantly. Our leading field service solution can transform how you run your field operation and ensure that you can get the most out of all the resources you have.
To learn more about Field Force Tracker scheduling take a look at our scheduling and dispatch video.
To find out more about Field Force Tracker’s complete solution why not view our overview video or join our 30-minute webinar.
About Field Force Tracker
Field Force Tracker (http://www.fieldforcetracker.com) is a leading global provider of its award winning mobile workforce solutions for service-based businesses of all sizes delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS). Our solutions enable businesses of all sizes (from 1 user to 10,000 users) to meet the challenges associated with managing and running complex service operations. It helps in improving the productivity of their mobile workforce.
With Field Force Tracker, customers can create service schedule and route quickly, dispatch sooner, collect correct information at once in the field and invoice faster. The field service software makes it easy for users to eliminate waste, get more done in less time and be more profitable.
Field Force Tracker is a wholly owned unit of Rapidsoft Systems Inc. (http://www.rapidsoftsystems.com). Rapidsoft Systems, Inc. has its main office in Princeton, NJ, USA, a US R&D Center in Mercerville NJ, and sales, support and development offices in Palo Alto, CA, USA, Singapore, Dubai (UAE), Bombay, and Noida (India).
