Field Service Isn't Just for Telecom Anymore

Field Service and telecom are concepts that used to go hand in hand. Everyone knew that the “cable guy” was short-hand for wasted time and inefficiency. People who ordered cable service were expected to just sit at home and wait blindly in four-hour chunks, only to find out that the cable guy brought the wrong tools, if he showed up at all.

The good news is that telecoms got their issues straightened out, for the most part. They learned the hard way how to maximize efficiency in logistics and routing planning while keeping customers in the loop. They did it using intelligent field service scheduling solutions.

Now, there are mobile workers and distributed teams in nearly every industry. In the years ahead, you can expect to see a massive tidal wave of field service work, even in industries that have traditionally been office-based. Fortunately, these newly-mobile businesses can learn from telecom’s steep learning curve in deploying smarter scheduling software.

Take a look at some of the industries that will be going in search of greater productivity using field service scheduling software in 2017.

The Next Wave of On-Demand Everything

Home Healthcare

More and more health care professionals are in the field now, taking caregiving to homes, workplaces, and other remote locations. Due to rising costs, more treatments are handled as outpatient services. Healthcare providers have to ensure that the right practitioners with the right skills and information are headed to the right address. Less time wasted in inefficient scheduling equals better healthcare.

On-Site Training

People learn better in familiar surroundings. Companies are seeing massive savings by bringing in a trainer instead of sending employees out for seminars. Training has opened up new revenue streams for professional coaches and non-profits, but they need professional grade scheduling software to streamline the complexity of mobile training.

Solar panel installation

Contractors have to keep prices low so more homeowners can justify investments in home improvement. Solar is taking off and the increased demand puts more strain on these new companies to help the greatest number of customers in the least time. Excellence in scheduling has a direct relation to profitability.

Independent Trades

Perhaps the industry most in need of a technological update is the most traditional one of all. For the home cleaning companies margins are tight, mistakes are devastating, and livelihoods are on the line. Mobile workforce scheduling software can massively simplify the lives of people like professional home cleaners, plumbers, electricians and all the contractors who keep homes running smoothly.

The On-Demand Economy

This is the miscellaneous category. There are all kinds of new business models from grocery store delivery companies to personal assistants to pet care at home to 1099 workers of every stripe who bring the business to the consumer. Anywhere there is a mobile device, a business service can, and eventually will, find clients. Intelligent scheduling is the secret ingredient that can make all the difference for businesses like these.

The Lesson of Telecom

In short, managing field service workers more productively is not just for telecoms anymore. Every company that has mobile workers, and that’s just about every company with a sales and service team, has the chance to secure substantial advantages from more efficient scheduling and more intelligent communications with those workers.

That’s just one of the secrets revealed in “The Five Secrets of Mobile Workforce Scheduling.” Download our e-book to access the other four secrets and keep the set together.