How To Manage A Field Workforce More Efficiently

In today’s tough economic climate it has never been more important for service companies to find a competitive edge that will keep them ahead of others in their sector. This applies to any service that employs field staff - from cleaners to building maintenance services, service engineers and even IT specialists.

Whether you are a small cleaning company employing a dozen workers or a large contractor with several branches and fieldworkers nationwide, you need the right tools to stay on top.  A key priority is finding a workforce management software that is cost effective and simple to use.

Workforce Management Challenges

Managers need an effective workforce management system that enables real-time communication and gives them more control over all aspects of their field service teams: logging jobs, employee scheduling, dispatching jobs to their fieldworkers and statistical data.

Business owners who employ fieldworkers often find themselves struggling with day to day coordination and employee scheduling as their company grows or if they get a big new contract. Fortunately, a variety of specially-designed software packages are available these days to enable managers to cope with the challenges of workforce management. They could turn out to be far more cost effective than using manual employee scheduling systems as they require fewer staff to oversee the workforce.

Software solutions

Investing in workforce management software can help companies that employ field staff improve profitability by managing their workforce more efficiently and reduce the amount of paperwork. 

Such applications can often be tailored to best suit the needs of any field service company, providing employee scheduling managers with the features they need when they need them. This makes them suitable for almost any service company, whatever the budget or workforce size as the cost varies according to the number of users.

Employee scheduling software gives managers responsible for staff scheduling total control of their workforce by connecting key people in real-time through SMS, email notifications, iPhone and Android apps or secure access to a specific section of the company website.

Some cloud-based systems like Get Scheduled have the facility to create custom reports that increase productivity by providing up-to-date and detailed information on the field working team. Ideally, the workforce management software should also provide seamless integration with the company’s accounting software packages.

To succeed in a highly-competitive market, companies need to provide their customers with the best possible service and workforce management software most definitely helps them achieve this.