How to better track field operators' working day

Bringing a digital geo-management tool into technicians' daily work means empowering them to manage their time and schedule better, making driving easier, avoiding the wear of poor organization and streamlining the logistics so they can do their field work better.  

Field service management (FSM) software is here to stay. As field operations grow in scale before a more digitized population with a stronger tendency toward mobility, field staff need information, coordination and connection through intelligent software design like the kind we create at GoDoWorks. 

How does this make a field technician's working day easier?

Through a phone, a tablet or any connected device, the field technician follows work orders in real time and receives valuable information about clients, previous visit history, inventory, changes to their routine or route, roads and traffic jams, and any number of other things tied to the specific job at hand. The technician stays connected, and their supervisors also do their management work better, easing the technician's job through a loop of positive feedback. 

What are some of the good practices in designing this software?

The tools we design at GoDoWorks take every need into account and are constantly improved. FSM software aims to improve what is called business intelligence — that is, it improves key elements of logistical organization and the insight management has into the terrain technicians work in. That secures a flawless service, with no loss of data or information of any kind; the software processes an immense quantity of data without interruption and achieves productivity at a much greater scale. 

Companies' own experience of the challenges and needs of their field services lets the software designer build a tailored tool. In that sense, a simple interface, matched to the tasks of staff across every department, improves how the tool is used and how it performs, as does building in the right metrics — the ones genuinely valuable for understanding and assessing each business.

The productivity geo-management software brings lets each company set its own improvement goals and, through them, advance on the specific performance indicators we have chosen. Insight about the design or the challenges also comes from the technicians themselves or their supervisors, who often understand which aspects can be improved to get ahead of the competition and what needs fixing in their current tools.

Other good practices include standardizing data entry and centralizing it — that is, achieving a single data flow, with no repetition, no duplication, well ordered, where nobody has to re-enter data. A good field service management tool takes all of that into account and is better regarded by the people who have to use it. 

For supervisors, this kind of software often means direct contact with a particular client's feedback and the ability to resolve discrepancies in service quality without intermediaries. 

A further step in these tools' intelligence lets them anticipate a specific rise in demand from seasonality or other factors that create service peaks, and plan accordingly. 

In conclusion

For field staff, a productive, well-ordered working day has to start with useful tools that improve their performance, automate simple administrative work, and minimize the difficulties involved in handling vehicles, money or schedules. 

That comes largely from the intelligent design of digital geo-management tools, which take those needs and many more into account and keep field staff connected, informed and in touch. 

Streamlining our operation lets us lower its cost, raise its productivity, improve the terms of our service level agreement (SLA) — the quality agreed with the client — and increase both their satisfaction and that of our own people.