More and more in today’s work environment, employees do not need to stay at their desk to be effective at their job. The ability for individuals to work from anywhere and anytime is becoming increasingly important, no matter which sector your company competes.
But it’s no longer just about allowing employees to “bring your own device” (BYOD) and hoping they can do some of their work from a smartphone or a tablet. Companies need to implement mobile workforce management solutions to empower their employees, giving them the same user experience whether in the office or in the field and ensuring that information can integrate for seamless operations.
To be sure you get the most out of your mobile workforce management solution, your company’s leaders must be unified with regard to the stated objectives for its use, define key metrics by which to measure success, and set companywide expectations prior to deployment. In many cases, the best – and the quickest – results come when a company deploys a mobile workforce management system with a focus on solving just one or two business problems at first. With this concentrated effort, they can give special attention to a specific improvement area and realize early measurable success. Then, after the initial launch and making employees comfortable with mobile app use, the system can be deployed to garner additional improvements within other parts of the business to solve additional challenges and further increase the return on their investment.
The many benefits businesses can achieve by deploying mobile workforce management solutions include:
1. Improve Productivity Through Better Insight
With clearer visibility into daily habits and driving consistent practices, savings in mileage and employee time add up. By saving time, employees may be able to complete more jobs with higher customer satisfaction in a week, which can add significant revenue to the bottom line, and streamline their routes, saving gas and wear and tear on company vehicles. Of course the competitive advantage this provides should not be overlooked.
2. Save Time and Minimize Errors on Manual Timesheets
Mobile apps can put the power of timesheets in the palm of employees’ hands, no matter where they’re working. By doing this, companies will more accurately capture the amount of time spent working or on breaks each day. Many times this data can fulfill many regulatory requirements. Because this data is submitted electronically, errors can be minimized and time spent manually processing paper time cards reduced. Additionally, mobile timesheets could lessen the amount of time paid out to employees at overtime rates.
3. Improve Back-Office Efficiency
Businesses have been able to improve back-office efficiency and improve productivity of field employees by switching from paper to mobile forms. Consider the average number of hours a back office team spends processing manual form data and their hourly salaries. With the time savings by mobile employees completing electronic forms versus completing paperwork and getting them to the office, they may have been able to complete additional jobs. This adds to the company’s bottom line, improving productivity and enhancing customer response time.
4. Dispatch Jobs in Real-Time
Many companies that don’t leverage mobile workforce management solutions require employees to come to the office to get the day’s assignments before visiting customers’ sites. By using the employees’ mobile devices to dispatch and update job assignments in real-time, companies can reduce mileage, save employee time, improve customer satisfaction and increase overall productivity.
5. Boost Customer Satisfaction with Proof of Services
Field employees equipped with mobile apps can electronically capture proof of services, which helps reduce the number of disputes and questions regarding invoices and the average amount of time it takes to get paid for a job. With a mobile solution, companies can send a proof of service summaries out to customers right after the job is completed. With this immediate proof of service, payments will be quicker as well.
6. Track Fees and Accurate Billing
Mobile apps can help companies quickly and easily track the time employees spend on each assignment. This data then can be used as a basis for estimating the cost of new jobs and for billing customers. With the improved ability to estimate the number of hours required per job, companies have the potential to take on more jobs, accurately estimate costs and properly bill for those tasks
As competition increases in many sectors and pressure is put on profitability, companies require new solutions to help them gain a competitive advantage. Mobile workforce management solutions are ideally suited to help businesses address a number of challenging processes while leveraging today’s cutting-edge smartphones to streamline operations, improve productivity and customer service, and improve time to revenue.
Originally Posted by Howard Latham