How a field service scheduling software automates the work scheduling process?

Managing field service-based business is difficult, especially when the business requires managing a workforce, wherein technicians make multiple visits to different locations in a single day job. Time management with each job so that the next service in the pipeline can be rendered on time; route planning; in between managing of ad-hoc scenarios, self-service administrative tasks, etc. these are not easy to manage. Although businesses do pull off their operations in some way or another, there is a difference between poor and good execution, and this difference can make or break a business.

For instance, consider job-scheduling, which is a very critical process for any field service-based business. Presuming that your business, needs to schedule 6 jobs among 6 technicians, then there are 720 possible schedules for this. With such a high rate of probabilities, scheduling conflicts are certain if the everyday schedules of each technician are to be managed manually. Scheduling conflicts such as overlapped schedules, duplicate schedules, or missed schedules, etc disturb the efficiency of the workforce as well as services. But, by implementing automation in work-scheduling, the process can be streamlined, made prompt, and more accurate.

Field service scheduling software can facilitate automation in work-scheduling and simplify job-scheduling and dispatching of the technicians. However, field scheduling software is not just for managing schedules but its functionalities are much elaborative, and it empowers the supervisor or the manager to do a lot more with field workforce management:

• Using the service scheduling software, the manager can assign jobs among the technicians using different filters such as the skill sets of the technicians, their availability on a particular day or time, their location proximity to the job site considering the travel time, etc. This way, the job always gets assigned to the nearest available and rightly skilled technicians, who can reach the job site at the minimum possible time and render the services at the earliest.

• The software allows the manager to manage the schedule calendars from a single dashboard. With just a few clicks and simple drag and drop methods, the manager can make schedules for his entire time. Also, as soon as the schedules are made, automated notifications followed by timely reminders are sent to the technician to ensure that no one misses their schedules.

• Single window accesses to the schedules of the entire team of technicians, allows the manager to keep a holistic tab on the overall work staus such as which technician is tagged for which job, which job is in progress or which job is pending, or which job got canceled, etc.

Conclusion
The field scheduling software can also do route planning and GPS tracking of the field technicians. This way, the manager can always stay informed about the live locations of the field agents and using the web mapping technologies, he can estimate the technicians' travel time to the job sites and accordingly make realistic service commitments to the clients.