Siya Carla - Solutions Consultant

There is a long list of tech-enabled changes that field-job based organizations can adopt to improve their operational efficiency and to evolve as a better fit for the present day competitive market. But one of the priority requirements for such businesses is the automation of workflow or automation of job scheduling among the team members. Effective job scheduling is critical for the timely delivery of services, especially if the business operates at a larger scale, and manages a larger team or client base.

The complexity in job scheduling is multi-dimensional, wherein the scheduling manager needs to ensure that the schedules are made considering various aspects such as:

1. The time gap between the subsequent schedules: The time needs to be managed in such a way that the field technician gets proper time to finish the job in one site, travel to the next job-site, and execute the service on-time, as it has been committed to the client. Failure in time management will restrict the technician to be on-time, and this can offend some clients badly. Now, for the manager, it is not just about managing one or two schedules of one or two technicians. He may require managing a schedule calendar of 5-6 schedules per day for per technician; and the number of technicians can go up to even thousand, depending upon the nature of the business.

2. Territory management: While making the schedules, the scheduling manager also needs to do the territory management to reduce the travel time for the technicians. More time on -roads means low productivity as well as increased fuel expense. So, if the manager receives a service request from x location, then he needs to find out who is the nearest and the earliest available technician. This requires strong coordination and real-time on-field visibility.

3. The skills and availability of the technicians: Not all the technicians are available round the clock for a job; some may be on their weekly leave or some may be pre-occupied with a job in hand. Also, not all the technicians are equally skilled. So, when there is a service request, the manager needs to check on the skill sets and availability of particular technicians before assigning them a job. Again this is a mammoth task.
Scheduling conflicts: Next challenge for the scheduling manager is to ensure that he creates a scheduling calendar avoiding probable scheduling conflicts like overlapped schedules, missed schedules, duplicate schedules, etc.

4. Emergencies: The real challenge for the scheduling manager is to adjust the schedules during emergencies. Pre-planned schedules can still be manageable, but it is to live by illusion to believe that everything will go as per the plan. Ad-hoc service requests, service cancellations, unplanned leaves, all these are sure to make variations in the schedules.

Service scheduling software - The solution lies in automation

While manually doing all the aforementioned aspects is challenging to the level of being impossible, but field service scheduling software powered with automation can impressively simplify the task of job scheduling while improving the accuracy. The software provides the manager complete field visibility, he can track the on-field locations of the technicians on a real-time basis, keep a tab on their weekly or monthly roaster to check their off days.

With a simple drag and drop technique, the manager can make the schedules for 'n' number of technicians, ensuring that their availability and skillsets match the job requirement. Also, he can use the web mapping services of the software to do the route planning for the technicians. Thus can pre-estimate their travel time, and keep a tab of their productive hours. 

At the time of emergency, the service scheduling software can automatically locate the nearest available technician and assign the job to him. When schedules are made, or any alternation happens to the schedules, the software sends automatic notifications or reminders to the technicians.