All businesses need to run lean these day — and those with skills-based mobile and field workforces are no exception, writes Lisa Norris.
There was a time when mobile workers were seen as the ‘mavericks’ of the workplace. Semi-autonomous in their outlook by today’s standards, they were seen as a comparatively inefficient business instrument.
They were told what they needed to do and they were generally left to get on with it. Once on the road, interaction was limited, and thoughts of optimising their schedule of activities were few and far between.
Today, they are treated as a fundamental business resource — agile technicians who are an essential part of any customer-facing organisation and whose constant feedback from the field is fundamental to the ongoing delivery of efficient and quality customer service.
Effective scheduling of their time and skills is seen as crucial to optimising the utilisation of what is an expensive resource and maximising the return on investment. A principal catalyst for change has been the continuing advancement in hand-held technology and its acceptance at grass-roots level.
Specialised ‘ruggedised’ devices have given way to a flood of comparatively inexpensive, everyday smart devices capable of running complex applications, delivering internet connectivity and providing text-based communications (email and SMS), in addition to voice.
Early scheduling systems were no more than transport mechanisms for outputting work to hand-held devices. But major efficiency gains were realised when the need for mobile operatives to return to base for the next job allocation was eliminated.
When processes are inefficient
Some processes can solve productivity issues, but as circumstances evolve and change, they can become inefficient. Crucial to getting the most out of these automated systems is in understanding precisely where the inefficiencies lie.
Mobile workforce efficiency depends on a variety of factors: operatives need to know where they are going and what they have to do, being equipped with the necessary skills to undertake the work they have been assigned. They need to be visiting jobs in the most efficient order and they need to be expected by customers so that they have access to the site. They need to be able to capture data from the job quickly and easily and effectively feed progress back to base.
While these items will not, on their own, contribute hugely to the mobile workforce as a whole, a system capable of delivering them together will generate considerable performance advantage.
Inefficiencies can occur in all areas of the mobile workforce scheduling and management process, in terms of job booking, booking configuration, pre-day planning, on-the-day scheduling, resource management and follow-up activity issues.
The initial job-booking process is open to inefficiency in several areas, such as the appointment process, service level agreement priorities and job progression/completion reporting. The key questions to consider here include establishing what booking systems exist, whether appointments are optimised, whether there is a clear forward view of appointments or if they booked ‘blind’, what the load balancing is between new and committed work and the level of the customer service priority.
Consideration should also be given to service level agreement (SLA) priorities and how the mix of routine work, the diversity in lead times and the requirement for highly reactive activity fits with it. Finally, the question of whether the job requirement can be fulfilled in-house or whether it needs to be passed to a third-party for progression also has to be considered. Allied to this are issues of the booking configuration itself.
Inefficiency may exist in relation to the allocation of appropriate time slots, lead-time visibility, the match to SLAs and job-detail recording. The latter can be quite crucial, as mismatches often occur between the customer’s description of the job and the call centre’s understanding of it — location details might be incorrect and special situations not properly taken into account.
On-the-day issues
Pre-day issues might relate to the lack of availability of suitably skilled operatives due to other work commitments, illness or holidays allowance, or no customer confirmation of the appointment. Also, parts may not have been ordered or collected, or information and work may not have been correctly issued.
On-the-day field operatives may re-arrange appointments and not follow plans, jobs might over-run causing selective appointments to be abandoned in an effort to catch up and a lack of feedback to schedulers may result in opportunities to reallocate work or the requirement for additional visits being missed. Traffic delays, the weather, inappropriate skills allocation and incorrect parts ordering can also have an impact on the scheduling plan as can site access problems and safety issues.
Resource management issues can also result in efficiency, for example, in relation to the degree of visibility of field operatives, resources not being current or becoming unavailable and resource patterns not matching booking slots.
Inaccurately estimated job lengths and travel times, spare capacity becoming available and the extent of real-time progress monitoring and cross-resourcing to handle work streams can also have an effect.
Follow-up activity can be inefficient, such as when customers are left unaware of the need and date for a return visit, customer surveys neglected and audit checks are insufficient.
Marginal gains
Although, by its nature, a mobile workforce invites inefficiency, in every area, there is a possible gain to be made, however small. These gains add up to suprisingly large numbers when aggregated over the course of a year; the argument for adoption of advanced mobile workforce scheduling quickly becomes financially compelling.
Add to this the operational efficiencies of having, for example, all the information in one place and the argument becomes even more tempting.
From this point of view, it’s clear that an understanding of how to identify inefficiency and instigate change management policies to improve productivity is fundamental to the success of any organisation operating with a mobile workforce.
