Availability, and ease of access to business apps impact employees' everyday work
Impact employees' daily work lives, drive performance and create a new balance in management and and create a new management culture in organizations.
As employees become more empowered, they become more productive: Business applications and productivity solutions (hereafter referred to as “business apps”) are driving a fundamental transformation in the individual employee’s workday. This includes faster decision making, increased productivity, better collaboration and higher job satisfaction.
There are a number of solutions for mobile workforce management on the market.
From systems to best practices, experts offer opinions on the most effective ways to
to keep arrangements flexible and employees productive.
Current management of utility field workers is swamped with manual, disjointed processes that are less than optimal. With artificial intelligence (AI) and mobile work management solutions, utilities can support their field workers and improve their operations.
Field workforce management is integral to the success and continuity of the utility industry's business. The overall objective of Field Workforce Management is to make sure employees are in the right place at the right time with the right information. Current workforce practices in the industry are manual, disjointed, and do not meet customer expectations. Utilities will need to change the way their field staff is managed and operated.
Currently, utilities' back offices manually plan and schedule the work of field staff. When unexpected events occur, such as customer requests or outages, back offices rely on manual operations to change work assignments and schedules to accommodate these jobs. These manual interventions are based on human judgment and often result in errors that negatively impact field worker productivity and compromise their safety. This happens because field planners manage workforces that range from hundreds to thousands of employees with different skill sets at different locations and job sites. For example, if there are 3 jobs and 3 field technicians, there are 6 possible schedules with factorial growth. If we increase the number of jobs and field technicians to 10, there are over 3.5 million possible plans. Planners and schedulers in the back office need tools that intelligently optimize resources in the field before and after unexpected changes. Because utility work is one of the most dangerous occupations, an overview of field locations and working conditions is needed to keep employees safe.
Utility field workers are responsible for maintenance, construction, power outage repair and customer service. Factors such as parts availability, customer information, equipment maintenance histories, and instructions are critical to responding to inquiries and completing work properly. Field workers also need to know when an order has been changed or canceled before they arrive at the job site to avoid inconvenient trips.
Traditionally, all of this information has been available through physical paperwork or manual routing of information from the back office to field workers. Manual processes are prone to human error, reduce productivity, and frustrate customers when agents lack complete information. In addition, manual information processes lead to bottlenecks. Modern mobility solutions fit in the hand of the user, so keeping track of paper trails and calling headquarters are old practices that are bound to end.
Utility companies are coming from operational environments with reduced automation and manual intensive activities that limit their capabilities to improve performance. Common limitations they currently have are:
• High volumes of paper-based activities
• No workflow automation for the field work
• Limited on-site documentation (manuals, schematics or paper drawings)
• Inaccurate asset information to achieve better
resource allocation and shorter outage resolution
• Reactive asset maintenance due to lack of real-time
data status
• Limited collaboration between field workers and
coordination teams
The solution to these challenges is digital field workforce management. Such solutions rely on digital technology such as artificial intelligence to optimize the scheduling, dispatching and tracking of field workers, as well as mobile rugged touch computers to support utility workers in the field.
Artificial intelligence is capable of processing large amounts of data and deriving insights from it in real time. By ingesting live and historical traffic, geographic and weather data, AI can be used to identify the best routes and create smarter schedules. This reduces travel time, allows field workers to complete more jobs, and minimizes the company's travel costs.
One potential of AI for managing field workers is in adapting routes and schedules to changing business needs.
For example, a customer may cancel or reschedule their appointment while the designated field representative is on the road. Instead of leaving a gap in the technician's schedule, the system finds replacement jobs nearby for the technician.
AI enables field technicians to be more productive and satisfy more customers. A leading electric utility uses AI to automatically schedule and track locations in real time for its field technicians. Since the implementation, the company has increased field worker productivity by increasing on-time job completion by 30 percent and tracking field worker progress in real time. The utility began its AI journey with one group within the company - field workers - to test the solution. After its initial success, the company scaled the solution to other business units to extend the benefits.
Field workers need the right mix of information in the right context, without the bottleneck of sifting through paperwork or calling the office. Delays occur when field technicians meet a customer without complete information, which is frustrating for both parties. With a mobile workforce management solution, utilities can provide technicians with easy access to all the information they need. This can be done by integrating customer information systems: Asset service histories, parts inventory, billing and more in one device - a smartphone or tablet. Such a solution can help companies minimize the time spent tracking down the right information.
Typically a solution contains the following features:
Forecasting: Allows organizations to more accurately and transparently predict future demand for both long-term budget-cycle planning and short-term operational planning.
Workforce Optimization: Automatically assigns work orders to technicians and continuously optimizes work assignment as conditions change, making adjustments and reassigning work to maintain the best possible schedule.
Dispatch: Provides dispatchers with list, Gantt, and map views to monitor work and technician assignments within their area of responsibility, including real-time work updates from technicians in the field.
Workforce Availability: Allows administrators, dispatchers, & supervisors to define technician qualifications & rosters.
Instead, sales representatives can focus on completing orders and keeping customers happy. This solution should start at the scale of one integration for one group and expand as needed. Smart mobile solutions for field service provide a complete digital experience for the customer through features such as:
Integrated smartphone
Handheld printer
Credit card reader
GPS
Signature capture
Aside from being customer-focused, mobile work management solutions increase field worker productivity and safety by enabling automatic time and attendance entries, sending SoS alerts when danger is present, and warning of hard-to-reach customers.
WorkHeld is a software platform that increases the efficiency and transparency of industrial processes with innovative technologies and user friendly apps.
The software system creates a platform for efficient planning, execution and documentation and digitizes the entire process from order creation to customer signature.
WorkHeld gives technicians all relevant information, documents, checklists and asset data and allows efficient documentation including digital reports.
Efficient project and resource planning
With WorkHeld, it is easy and fast to respond to machine downtime, prepare planned maintenance or create large projects and schedule technicians simply by dragging and dropping.
The right information at the right time
With WorkHeld, one can keep an overview of one's equipment as well as material, tools and checklists and link relevant information with project and resource planning.
For more information contact Volkmar Kunerth at kunerth@accentectechnologies.com or call 650.814.3266.
Sources:
Workforce management in the utility sector, Retrieved, 3/18/2021 from https://www.intel.ca/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/workforce-management-utility-sector-guide.pdf
Improving Operations Through Digital Field Workforce Management. retrieved, 3/18/2021 from https://www.infosys.com/iki/insights/digital-field-workforce-management.html