Field Engineer Scheduling Software
Schedule, dispatch and track field engineer jobs while automating business processes
What is Field Engineer Scheduling Software?
Scheduling is the process of arranging, controlling and optimising work and workloads in a production process. In relation to mobile working, scheduling involves managing your mobile workforce and their workloads, planning their daily rota and activities whilst dealing with other operational requirements of the job such as annual leave and sickness. It is essential to any business as without it, planners are manually inputting information and re-arranging schedules which can be a time-consuming process, whilst dealing with the day to day complexities including changes to schedules and appointment delays.
Field Engineer Scheduling Software allows organisations to schedule and dispatch the right field worker to the right job, ensuring they are fully equipped to carry out an appointment or service. The software efficiently automates and optimises scheduling processes, allowing organisations to meet KPI’s, first time fixes, whilst reducing costs and increasing the capacity of their field workforce. The solution works with the scheduler to make intelligent decisions based on the business objectives and requirements of the day. It allows easy access to live job information and changes in real time as and when is required.
What value does Field Engineer Scheduling Software provide for your organisation?
Implementing a scheduling solution can help drive efficiencies enabling your workforce to complete more jobs in a day. Field Engineer Scheduling Software enables organisations to create a paperless environment, whilst improving the capacity of field engineers as well as meeting those all-important customer SLA’s. It also creates visibility as to what’s going on throughout the day and that visibility could be vital to your organisation. Additionally, Field Engineer Scheduling Software ensures planning managers can allocate and reallocate work as the day unfolds, enabling effective capacity planning, field workforce scheduling and an improved service delivery.
FIELD ENGINEER SCHEDULING SOFTWARE PROVIDES ORGANISATIONS WITH THE ABILITY TO:
- Track and monitor work orders to completion
- Reduce paper-based processes and schedules, while also reducing the need to travel back and forth to the office
- Provides field-based staff visibility to their schedule along with routed travel plans in advance of their day, ensuring an efficient service and allowing field engineers to get straight to work
- Identify teams and areas that perform well
- Save on costs as routes to jobs are optimised, which reduces travel time for field-based staff and increases their capacity and productivity to complete more jobs
- Meet those all-important SLA targets while meeting the demand of your customers
- Improve communications between office and field-based staff and between field-based staff and customers
This approach leads to positive outcomes for the organisation, field-based staff and the customer themselves
Organisations have a greater understanding of the situation of work, with access to real time information, issues can be responded to as the day unfolds. Additionally, scheduling provides complete visibility of organisations’ field-based workforce detailing their whereabouts, how many jobs have been completed and whether work needs reallocated.
Field Engineer Scheduling Software empowers engineers with everything they need to deliver a great service. By equipping field staff with the right tools via their mobile device to complete jobs and access appointment information in advance, field service engineers can ensure they complete more jobs on time, first time round.
With an improved communication process between field engineers and the customer, service users can be confident they’ll receive an efficient and consistent customer experience.
What helps deliver great Field Engineer Scheduling Software?
Field Engineer Scheduling Software helps deliver significant efficiencies for organisations and their field service workforce.
Visibility of engineer schedules
Field Engineer Scheduling Software can handle small teams or large workforces and even multiple teams at once. It provides a complete view of the current status of staff diaries with live colour-coded feedback from user devices, including when work has started, is completed, is overrunning or scheduled to start late. This visibility allows planning managers to respond and react immediately ensuring services are delivered efficiently.
Effectively schedule work
Field Engineer Scheduling Software provides organisations with confidence that the right member of staff is undertaking the right item of work at the right time. This not only ensures that organisations meet their objectives such as SLAs and KPIs but also meet the requirements and expectations of the customer. Organisations can ensure they are continually optimising and improving their schedule throughout the day.
Data driven insights
Improved data capture and management not only enables organisations to better understand the current situation, but it can also help uncover trends and potential issues, as well as providing the ability to evidence work that has been undertaken, when it was completed and by who. Data such as who is performing well, how many appointments were completed or weren’t completed provides organisations with the ability to make informed business decisions to increase business efficiencies. Additionally, organisations can use the insights generated from their field workforce to deal with challenges that occur throughout the day and react to problems efficiently.
Manage upcoming work
Trying to pair field staff to a specific visit can be a time-consuming process when managing a mobile workforce with individual skills. However, Field Engineer Scheduling Software simplifies this procedure for you, ensuring an easy and efficient scheduling process and enabling completion of work orders from start to finish. Businesses can ensure they are able carry out field service management processes while meeting the requirements and goals of the organisation.
Field Engineer Scheduling Software FAQs
What is field engineer scheduling software?
Field engineer scheduling software is a digital tool designed to organise and manage the work schedules of engineers in the field. It assists in assigning tasks, optimising routes, and ensuring that the right engineer with the appropriate skills is dispatched for each job. Advanced versions of this software can operate as an “intelligent assistant”, suggesting a recommended schedule to the planner, who then has the option of making amendments prior to publishing the schedule to staff. This improves the efficiency and effectiveness of field service operations.
How does field engineer scheduling software improve efficiency?
Field engineer scheduling software improves efficiency by automating the scheduling process, reducing time spent on manual organisation, and minimising errors. It provides real-time visibility into engineers’ schedules and assignments, aids in promptly addressing service requests, and optimises routes for quicker, more efficient service delivery.
How does field engineer scheduling software increase scheduling accuracy and precision?
By automating the assignment process, field engineer scheduling software enhances scheduling accuracy and precision. It considers factors like the complexity of tasks, engineer skill sets, and geographic locations. This minimises scheduling conflicts, reduces the likelihood of missed or delayed appointments, and ensures that the right engineer is assigned to the right job.
Can field engineer scheduling software optimise routes based on traffic, weather, or road works?
Certain field engineer scheduling software can integrate GPS and traffic data systems to optimise routes based on real-time traffic congestion, weather issues, or road works. This helps ensure that engineers can reach their destinations as quickly and safely as possible, increasing productivity and customer satisfaction.
What is engineer scheduling?
Engineer scheduling refers to planning and assigning tasks to engineers in the field. This involves deciding which engineer best suits each task based on skills, availability, and location. Field engineer scheduling software automates this process, making it more efficient and effective. It also provides planners with a number of dashboards that enable them to monitor the progression of the planned schedule and track the status of work and individual staff members.
How does field engineer scheduling software help with paperless operations?
Field engineer scheduling software helps create a paperless environment by digitising work orders and schedules. This eliminates the need for engineers to travel back and forth to the office for paperwork, increasing their capacity and productivity. It also provides real-time status of work via a simple colour code, allowing planners and management to quickly identify jobs that are at risk and take preventative action as appropriate.
How does field engineer scheduling software improve customer service level agreement (SLA) compliance?
By providing real-time visibility of work orders and enabling efficient scheduling and dispatch of engineers, field engineer scheduling software helps organisations meet their customer SLA targets. It also allows for the reallocation of work as the day unfolds, ensuring effective capacity planning and improved service delivery. For example, some solutions offer a dynamic dispatch feature, which means that an item of work is only scheduled to an operative once they have completed their current job. This provides the organisation with extreme flexibility.