What to Look for in a Workforce Management App
Workforce management apps are becoming increasingly popular among forward-thinking field service organizations as they help improve efficiency by allowing employees to focus on their job.
However, there is an overwhelming number of various workforce management apps available, and not all of them provide the capabilities that a field service organization requires.
Therefore, in addition to standard reporting and financial features, here are a few of the most important things that a field service organization should look for in a mobile workforce management app to ensure that it will serve them efficiently.
Timesheet Management
The first capability your new workforce management app should offer is timesheet management. This allows you to track your resources’ shift patterns and exceptions to regular working hours. In addition, you’ll be able to block off times for PTO, training, and other interruptions to the work schedule.
Timesheet management also makes it easier to schedule accurately, properly allocate field resources, and improve customer satisfaction.
At Fieldaware, our Smart Scheduler even allows you to schedule technician breaks, pre-approved overtime, and more.
Set and Establish Work/Field Resource Rules
The benefit of a workforce management app is that it enables you to automate and organize schedules more efficiently.
A major component of that is establishing work and field resource rules. For example, it should allow you to establish service areas and set and administer each field resource’s separate start and finish locations.
In addition, a quality workforce management app allows you to build a library of workforce management and scheduling policies easily. Therefore, you can create unique business requirements for events like emergencies, disaster management, and heavy holiday periods.
It should also feature field resource rules that allocate the right field technicians to the right jobs by matching skills, permits, unit costs, and locations.
Workload Balancing and Automation
Above all, your workforce management app should be easy to use and automate time-consuming processes. For example, our Smart Scheduler allows you to allocate field resources with a simple drag and drop interface that allows you to balance the workload across your field resources intelligently.
You should also be able to monitor the location of your field resources in real-time on a map view. Therefore, if you get a call from a client that a truck isn’t where it’s supposed to be, it’s easy to identify the location of all resources visually.
Finally, a quality workforce management app will allow you to see working hours, unavailable times, and more visually.
Reporting Capabilities
Reporting is a time-consuming process, though it can negatively impact your brand and bottom line when done incorrectly or inefficiently.
Therefore, your workforce management app should be able to automate reporting for you. For example, field technicians should be able to clock in and out through a timestamp recording that is then automatically added to the client's invoice.
In addition, your internal team can export timesheet data to the payroll system for efficient authorization and processing.
This data will also give you a better idea of resource performance that will enable you to make data-driven investments.
Final Thoughts
These are just a few of the components a quality workforce management app will offer. As you can see, a quality workforce management app will make life easier for your employees and impact your bottom line as you'll be able to improve field efficiency, reduce errors, and elevate the customer experience.
If you have any questions about our workforce management app, don't hesitate to reach out to our experts.