Mobile Workforce Management in a nutshell

It is fairly common for businesses to have staff working across many different locations across the country or even the world.  Engaged in various activities like  door-to-door sales, delivery and installations, service maintenance, conducting inspections & investigations or even data collection.

Managing and co-ordinating tasks, scheduling activities, planning and monitoring activities and communicating can often be challenging.

Mobile Workforce Management is the automation of the entire end-to-end workflow management and operations of any field service workers. 

Mobile Workforce Management Synonyms

Mobile Workforce Management is also known as

  • Field Service Management
  • Job Scheduling Software
  • Job Management Software

Advantages of Mobile Workforce Management

It is increasingly clear that there needs to be a certain sense of discipline and streamlining of field operations and important to automate certain tasks within field sales and operations, primarily because it helps you to track your assets remotely and ensuring contact with your workforce when required. Enabling your team to get in touch when required.

Most importantly, engineers, sales representatives and customer care executives can easily send information, scan receipts, Invoice customers and retrieve other crucial information in a standardized and streamlined manner. Assisting in regulating your business and also bringing some order to what is usually a very chaotic mode of working.

Why choose Mobile Workforce Management

Work Force Management tools help you to stay in control. They assist in automating what can and should be automated leaving only the crucial human-human interactivity. Helping you to keep a record of all interactions and important data within a database, without you having to manually go through sales receipts, complaint slips and other such details.

A Field Force Management tool is a time-saver and efficiency tool for companies. Moreover, these tools help to automate several aspects of your day to day operations, leading to an increase in productivity and motivation.

Streamlining operations, will also ensure that important stakeholders are well informed and management visibility is enhanced. Helping your business to make smarter decisions and help serve your customers better.

Field Force Management is similar to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution but is vastly different. It is specifically targeted at staff that work on the field and is intended to make their and your work more streamlined, transparent and easy to track.

Cloud based solutions help you automate

 Field Force Management is usually cloud based which means all data is stored and accessible on secure cloud servers. There is no question of losing important data or not being able to retrieve something important. If something goes missing, there will usually be a backup available. Field force management tools include the software, the hardware and also the kind of training that is required for users to use it efficiently.

The software usually helps in saving and processing information while the hardware helps employees to enter important data into devices while they are on the job. Sometimes, field force solutions can also be a mobile app which negates the need for a specific or special device.

This is very important when it comes to field jobs as carrying different devices can prove to be a cumbersome job. At the end of the day, field force solutions are meant to reduce the burden on staff and not actually inadvertently increase it.

Denizon?s FieldElite Mobile Workforce management application provides significant improvements in efficiency and service with a switch to digital working and the elimination of paperwork.

All the information that is stored on the cloud can be run through analytics software so that you get the kind of reports that you are looking for to improve your business.

Field Force Management Process

A field force management tool helps you to remain in contact with your staff while they are at work on the field. This helps you to track your personnel in real time. Field personnel or your staff can log in and enter their attendance using a smartphone. You can assign that particular day?s task remotely using a web console or your own smartphone.

Next, they can carry out whatever duties they need to while you get all the alerts that you set to receive. This helps to increase transparency. You can choose to receive alerts on your phone or on your desktop.

Finally, staff can tag completed tasks with audio and images, instead of they having to type reports. This helps to focus more on the job than on job reporting. Last but not the least, location tags help you to ensure that the job is done at the right place. Your staff will not be able to take your generosity for granted.

All in all, a field force management tool helps you to track and control your staff without you having to be physically present with them and this is the beauty of this tool.

Summary

Field Force Management helps companies to reduce administration expense and improve productivity. This helps to automate data integration which is usually done with the help of cloud servers. Moreover, you can set invoice parameters that help you to also keep track of stocks, inventories and engage in P.O. and task management.

A number of field force management users also use it as a tool to engage in credit management. Banks and insurance companies particularly find this tool helpful as payments can be received on the job, instead of asking customers to pay online or offline. This also helps in building valuable customer relationships and enhance loyalty.

Thirdly, a field force management tool helps to increase planning efficiency. This means, you will be able to allocate tasks and optimize routing. All this helps to increase your ROI at the end of the day and get back the money you invest on field force management.

Finally, you will have more control over productivity and sales thanks to automation of data collection. You will also have more control over the execution of tasks and that will invariably make your company leaner and smarter.

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FUJIFILM Cracks the Energy Code

FUJIFILM was in trouble at its Dayton, Tennessee plant in 2008 where it produced a variety of speciality chemicals for industrial use. Compressed-air breakdowns were having knock-on effects. The company decided it was time to measure what was happening and solve the problem. It hoped to improve reliability, cut down maintenance, and eliminate relying on nitrogen for back-up (unless the materials were flammable).

The company tentatively identified three root causes. These were (a) insufficient system knowledge within maintenance, (b) weak spare part supply chain, and (c) generic imbalances including overstated demand and underutilised supply. The maintenance manager asked the U.S. Department of Energy to assist with a comprehensive audit of the compressed air system.

The team began on the demand side by attaching flow meters to each of several compressors for five days. They noticed that – while the equipment was set to deliver 120 psi actual delivery was 75% of this or less. They found that demand was cyclical depending on the production phase. Most importantly, they determined that only one compressor would be necessary once they eliminated the leaks in the system and upgraded short-term storage capacity.

The project team formulated a three-stage plan. Their first step would be to increase storage capacity to accommodate peak demand; the second would be to fix the leaks, and the third to source a larger compressor and associated gear from a sister plant the parent company was phasing out. Viewed overall, this provided four specific goals.

  • Improve reliability with greater redundancy
  • Bring down system maintenance costs
  • Cut down plant energy consumption
  • Eliminate nitrogen as a fall-back resource

They reconfigured the equipment in terms of lowest practical maintenance cost, and moved the redundant compressors to stations where they could easily couple as back-ups. Then they implemented an online leak detection and repair program. Finally, they set the replacement compressor to 98 psi, after they determined this delivered the optimum balance between productivity and operating cost.

Since 2008, FUJIFILM has saved 1.2 million kilowatt hours of energy while virtually eliminating compressor system breakdowns. The single compressor is operating at relatively low pressure with attendant benefits to other equipment. It is worth noting that the key to the door was measuring compressed air flow at various points in the system.

ecoVaro specialises in analysing data like this on any energy type.?

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Is Change Management a Myth or a Possibility

The theory that it is possible to manage organisational change (Change Management) in a particular direction has done the rounds for quite some time, but is it true about Change Management. Was Barrack Obama correct when he said, ?Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.?
Or, was business coach Kelly A Morgan more on the button when she commented, ?Changes are inevitable and not always controllable. What can be controlled is how you manage, react to, and work through the change process.? Let us consult the evidence and see what statisticians say.

What the Melcrum Report Tells Us

Melcrum are ?internal communication specialists who work alongside leaders and teams around the globe to build skills and best practice in internal communication.? They published a report after researching over 1,000 companies that attempted change management and advised:

? More than 50% report improved customer satisfaction

? 33% report higher productivity

? 28% report improvements in employee advocacy

? 27% improved status as a great place to work

? 27% report increased profitability

? 25% report improved absenteeism

Sounds great until we flip the mirror around and consider what the majority apparently said:

? 50% had no improvement in customer service

? 67% did not report increased productivity

? 72% did not note improvements in employee advocacy

? 73% had no improved status among job seekers

? 73% did not report increased profitability

? 75% did not report any reduction of employee absenteeism

This shows it is still a great idea to hear what all parties have to say before reaching a conclusion. You may be interested to know the Melcrum report gave rise to the legend that 70% of organisation change initiatives fail. This finding has repeated numerous times. Let’s hear what the psychologists have to say next.

There is a certain amount of truth in the old adage that says, ?You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.? Which of us has not said, ?Another flavour of the week ? better keep heads down until it passes? during a spell in the corporate world. You cannot change an organisation, but you can change an individual.

At the height of the Nazi occupation of 1942, French philosopher-writer Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry said, ?A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral?. Psychology Today suggests five false assumptions change management rests upon, THAT ARE SIMPLY NOT TRUE.

1. The external world is orderly, stable, predictable and can be managed

2. Change managers are objective, and do not import their personal bias

3. The world is static and orderly and can be changed in linear steps

4. There is a neutral starting point where we can gather all participants

5. Change is worthy in itself, because all change is an improvement

Leo Tolstoy wrote, ?Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.? A prophet can work no miracles unless the people believe. From the foregoing, it is evident that change management of an organisation is a 70% impossibility, but encouraging an individual to grow is another matter.

A McKinsey Report titled Change Leader, Change Thyself fingers unbelieving managers as the most effective stumbling stones to change management. To change as individuals ? and perhaps collectively change as organisations ? we need to ?come to our own full richness?, and as shepherds lead our flock to their ?promised land?, whatever that may be. Conversely, herding our flock with a pack of sheepdogs extinguishes that most precious thing of all, human inspiration.

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eCommerce

 

We bet you’ve often read how getting rich through the Internet can be fast and easy. Time for your 5-second reality check: It’s going to entail lots of hard work, dedication, a great deal of information and the ability to use that information to your advantage. Sounds familiar?

Well, it should be. After all, it’s still business. However, while the basic ingredients to achieving success in business are still the basic prerequisites in eCommerce, there are also a lot of technical aspects that have to be factored in. This is where you’ll need us.

Well, actually, we’re going to help you out on those basic ingredients too. That’s because our dedicated specialists will perform most of the hard work until you gain enough know-how to run things on your own.

If you’re starting from scratch, we’ll help you build on your idea and transform it into an actual web-based business.

Then once you’ve got your site online, we’ll redirect traffic to it, attract the right visitors, convert those visitors into buyers and keep them satisfied so that they’ll come back and even spread the word.

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