What a “deskless productivity platform” really means

When I first learned of Skedulo almost 6 years ago, the company was still very much in its infancy. I had recently come out of working for several successful start ups which were bought out by the likes of Microsoft and Ocacle – and I found myself on the hunt for the next unicorn.

Ultimately, I wanted to join a fun company with a cool vision I could get behind.

I knew that company was Skedulo as soon as I heard about their mission to use purpose-built technology to empower the rapidly expanding number of workers who do not sit at a desk all day, and their employers.

At the time, Skedulo only had a presence in Australia and Vietnam. The office in San Francisco had just been set up, with 4 staff working tirelessly to introduce Skedulo to the US market.

6 years on, as Regional Sales Director for the US West and Canada, and it’s been a wild ride. What hasn’t changed though is our mission and approach, which I believe have been instrumental to our success.

Beyond field service management to deskless productivity

As a platform, Skedulo’s approach to directly target the specific challenges and complexities that our customers face every day has allowed us to outperform competing platforms in every possible way.

Skedulo fits into traditional technology categories known as “field service management” and “workforce management”. However, Skedulo’s founders have never let these established paradigms shape the development of the product.

Rather, it was a commitment to continually iterate Skedulo based on customer feedback that has contributed to the Skedulo we now deploy in organizations across the globe today.

Where competing field service management products are usually an after-thought – tacked on to another platform – Skedulo is built purely to serve deskless workers and solve our customers’ key issues.

While rising competition in the space certainly validated what we have been working towards along the way, the lack of configuration in other products simply doesn’t suit organizations with deskless workers who have very diverse use cases.

Skedulo is the first enterprise platform that covers the full lifecycle of frontline work, in addition to tackling all the various complexities that organizations across all verticals are looking to solve.

Despite our name, we help businesses with a lot more than just scheduling. In the past 7 years, we have built a dedicated platform that speaks to the common fundamentals of a deskless workforce, such as:

• Scheduling and Optimization
• Rules and Constraints
• Mobile Ready
• Workforce Management
• Communication and Collaboration

Being younger and more agile, we’re also able to respond rapidly to evolving needs (as we showed in 2020 with our launch of high capacity scheduling to support COVID-19 testing and now vaccination scheduling).

Another reason for our success is an unwavering commitment to interoperability. In wanting to help businesses develop best in breed technology stacks, Skedulo can integrate seamlessly with other cloud platforms. This means a business is able to leverage the best technologies to support their operations, while still attaining a single system of record.

These factors – along with our Customer driven values – have motivated leading global healthcare companies, solar companies, utilities companies, and more to put Skedulo to work in their businesses to solve their deskless workforce challenges.

The future of scheduling is here, now

80% of the global workforce is deskless, and this number continues to grow. The events of 2020 certainly cemented the importance of supporting a mobile workforce, while confirming the huge gaps between the functionality of major platforms (that have been developed primarily with desk-based workers in mind) and the true needs of business owners.

We’ve been working hard to close these gaps and, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. We can’t hire fast enough and with our recent successful Series C funding round, we are perfectly positioned to solve new deskless workforce challenges as they arise within industries.

For example, we are now working with established energy companies to help them overhaul legacy tools so they can meet changing consumer demands and respond faster to threats brought on by climate change.

Every business in every industry has an opportunity to deliver a better experience for their staff and customers by leveraging the best technology for the job. And when it comes to managing field workers, mobile workers or any deskless workers…that technology is Skedulo.