The Role of Automation in Field Force Management: Making Data-Driven Decisions
Do you remember the days of manual field employee tracking?
When you had to call or text every field sales agent or technician to get updates on their location, tasks, and attendance. The introduction of field force management software has been a game-changer towards the efficient management of off-site workers.
You no longer have to fret over your field employees’ activity. With just a click, you can know their exact whereabouts and what they’re doing. Plus, you can streamline all your field operations like task scheduling, attendance and leave management, sales order processing, expense reporting, and more.
Employee productivity is a major asset for any business. Although it is easy to manage the productivity of limited employees, it becomes challenging when the workforce continues to increase. The manager encounters difficulties in monitoring their activities and ensuring that operations are going smoothly. An organization that works with field employees can manage and monitor their field workforce with field force tracking software.
However, ensure that you know about a few trends expected in the Field Force Management System in 2024. Continue to read this blog post to explore the details!
However, like all technology, there is still scope for improvement in field force management software. Automation is trending nowadays, and it can also be employed to better manage your mobile workforce. Let’s take a look at how automation can revolutionise field force management.What Are the Features of an Advanced Field Force Management System?
Key features of a field force management software are as follows:
- Task Management Software
A task management system allows businesses to optimize their entire task management process. The software not only allows the management to assign bulk tasks but also provides edit access to field executives.
With this great tool, the management can also get insights into real-time task status of field employees. What’s more? The software helps the manager to make strategic and well-informed business decisions by providing data-driven target vs. achievement reports.
- Order Management Software
A field force monitoring system is designed on the belief that every customer and their orders are important. It provides an order management tool through which you can create, manage, and process orders from anywhere at any time. You can create custom forms and attachments to record customer details digitally.
Furthermore, the scanner support feature of the software makes it easier for field employees to scan the barcode of the orders at the client’s site without any hassle.
- Payroll Management Software
Quick payroll is indeed the motivation for employees. They hard work the entire month with the hope of timely payroll. A payroll management software of field force monitoring system enables businesses to optimize the complete payroll process.
The software automatically collects employee timings, claims, and reimbursement details from the other business systems to calculate their salary. It helps both HR and payroll teams save time and reduce manual errors.
- Attendance and Leave Management Software
Whether it is managing employee leaves or their attendance, a leave and attendance management system simplifies the entire process. It allows companies to create custom leave categories as per their company’s leave policy.
How Automation in Field Force Management Helps in Making Data-Driven Decisions
Below are 7 ways automation can aid you in better managing your field workforce, especially in making data-driven decisions.
- Real-time insights
Automated field force management software collects minute-by-minute data of your employees. It can even access their data when offline and show indicators like battery level and network strength. Automation lets you:
- Record and monitor all actions on the field in real time.
- Make quick decisions to adjust workflow as per weather or traffic conditions.
- Minimise disruptions
- Re-route idle employees to assist in other tasks.
- Job planning and resource allocation
If you have to assign an impromptu task to a field executive, would you manually curate a list of employees and identify who is free? That sounds doable if you have a team of a dozen employees, but not if you manage a sizable field workforce.
However, with automation, the field force management software will be able to:
- Automatically allocate tasks to employees based on their proximity to the task site, availability, and past performances.
- Ensure optimal resource allocation so there is no over- or under-utilization of assets.
- Reschedule, modify, or cancel tasks easily if required.
- Prevent errors like two employees being assigned the same job.
- Route optimisation
With automated FSM software, you can significantly save fuel costs and time. Using the GPS tracking system and other data factors, the software automatically identifies the best route for employees. This way, you can reduce employees’ fuel expenses, save them time, and ensure faster customer service. These could be salespeople, technicians, maintenance workers, or delivery drivers.
The main goal is to make sure these employees are working properly. They are supposed to complete their work and meet deadlines. Additionally, they are expected to give high-quality service to your customers.
We all acknowledge the fact that in the past, businesses did this through manual methods. But this approach is no longer possible due to the nature of work.
To be specific, field service management software is now essential for automating tasks. You can also track performance, and make sure employees have the right tools to do their jobs.
- Expense reporting
Tracking your mobile staff’s expenses can be challenging. They have to travel, maintain their vehicles and equipment, meet with clients, buy stationery, and more. You need an easy way to track so many expenses and authenticate them without errors or delays. Here’s how automation in field force management software improves expense reporting:
- Eliminate manual expense entries
- Sort all expenses into categories for convenience and create custom categories.
- Ensure accuracy and quick expense approvals.
- Use features like a scanner to convert bill images into text automatically for managers to verify.
- Add geotags and timestamps to invoices.
- Attendance and leave management
One underrated feature of automation is linking tasks to attendance. You can set up a geofence around the task site so that attendance is automatically recorded once the employee is present at the task site.
This method can prevent time theft and proxy attendance. Plus, it’s convenient for employees too. They can manually mark themselves present or let the software record their location, geotags, and time of attendance.
Also, you can allow employees to unlock the next task only upon completing the previous one and updating its status in the geofence.
- Performance optimisation
Every employee has his strengths and weaknesses. Some may be successful in sales but maybe novices dealing with technology or vice versa. Similarly, if an employee shows growth in repairing, selling, or marketing a certain product, he should be preferred to lead all operations related to that product. We all acknowledge the fact that in the past, businesses did this through manual methods. But this approach is no longer possible due to the nature of work.
Other products’ sales could be overseen by employees with the best knowledge of them. Automation helps achieve this parity by tracking employees’ performance. The software can then generate automatic reports identifying employees’ highlights and areas of improvement.
- Automatic Reports and Predictive Analytics
Field force management software stores tons of data on its secure cloud server. With machine learning algorithms, you can automate predictive analysis of the data. This can yield great results for your business. You can:
- Identify pain points
- Identify long-term trends and how to capitalise on them.
- Optimise routes, jobs, expenses, etc.
- Anticipate customer demands to allow companies to prepare in advance.
- Identify skill gaps or inefficiencies among employees.
- Spot discrepancies in data like attendance or expense.
Conclusion
Automation is a groundbreaking technology, and any business not reaping its benefits is missing out on potentially accelerated growth and higher revenue. Field force management is one such sector where automation can play a huge role in boosting profits.
It can make data-driven decisions to reduce errors and streamline field operations. Expenses, attendance, and tasks can all be managed easily with automation.
Managers can sit back and let the software optimise job planning and resource allocation. You get to save money while also improving your workforce’s productivity and customer service.