Fleet managers are busy people. Their days are filled with the task of juggling between managing customer requests on one side and managing the ‘feet on the street’ on the other. Between
Fleet managers are busy people. Their days are filled with the task of juggling between managing customer requests on one side and managing the ‘feet on the street’ on the other. Between customer requests, updates, field staff rosters and availability information, route management, and scheduling, there is reams of operational data that they have to sift through daily to do their jobs. A range of verticals like telecom, utilities, healthcare and logistics use field services. While their functions are different, their challenges are similar. Irrespective of their field of endeavor, mobility provides great many benefits in managing any field services operations.
The fleet operation tasks can be categorized into 2 groups – customer management and workforce administration. Mobilization can help improve both. The features that smart devices provide like in built GPS, high resolution screens and rendering, decent compute, memory and storage, and most importantly, their constant availability on the user’s person, make them the perfect platform for managing a distributed workforce. Below are some important use cases for mobility in fleet management.
1. Data capture and processing – Mobile devices can produce lots and lots of data. There is so much information that the managers can use to make the process more effective and efficient. GPS location, workload allocation, updates, time stamps for delivery, transit time, nearby jobs, routing etc. are but some data points that can be collected through mobile devices. Undesirable behaviors such as personal use of vehicles, speeding, as well as inefficiencies such as dispatch taking too long to answer driver calls or routing them through busy intersections, can be corrected to eliminate waste, save fuel and minimize overtime. All this data can be used both for real time decision making, and historical pattern analysis and process improvement.
2. Efficient routing – Fleet management is all about getting products and resources from one place to another. Doing so faster, better, and cheaper is the key to success. GPS tracking, 3D mapping, geo location and telematics allow field service managers and dispatchers to fine-tune routing to save fuel, improve delivery times and control vehicle wear and tear. Tracking your resources and knowing here they are at all times gives your business a huge efficiency boost. Also, sitting in your office, you may be aware of issues that your drivers on the road are not, for e.g., a socio-political situation that’s holding up traffic, or a storm, or an accident en route. This information, along with the knowledge of your drivers exact location and help you guide them to a safe and efficient passage.
3. Personnel Management – For success in any type of field services, deployment of resources throughout the field, and managing them well is very important. The managers need to have real time visibility into the location, workload, and current work queues. Mobility lets the managers allocate work efficiently, and control and monitor its execution closely. From a central console, a manager can identify which resources are geographically nearest to the requirement through geo location services, and allocate the call to them. Alternately, the personnel can see the open requests on their mobile devices, and can choose one they can accomplish within the set time limits. Once the work is allocated, the assignee on the ground gets a notification with all the relevant details like location, nature of the work, the priority and SLA. They can then accept the work order and proceed to the location. Once done, they can update the work order with the outcome, and the manager sees the same immediately.
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