Mobile workforce refers to employees, contract workers, or agents providing services to customers from anywhere. These professional workers are not limited to your office location. They can work from cubicles to co-working spaces, cafes, home offices, and even on the field and comprise gig workers, insurance salespeople, consultants, and more. Globally, the construction, healthcare, manufacturing, and supply chain industries employ the mobile/field workforce (International Data Corporation, IDC). But they work in all sorts of fields and industries.
Their work demands anywhere and anytime kind of workplace. Therefore, the field workforce needs devices that offer flexibility, accessibility, and convenience. On the other hand, managers also need to have better visibility of field operations. Hence, the need for mobile workforce management.
Already, over 81% of CEOs consider mobile technology as a driver of productivity and profits. Estimates also place the global mobile workforce at 1.87 billion workers by 2022.
In this article, we will deal with the basics of mobile workforce management and how does it benefit businesses. You will also learn about the challenges to look out for and features to consider when choosing a workforce management software for your company.
What Is Mobile Workforce Management (MVM)?
Mobile workforce management is a suite of networks, applications, software, processes, and other services to schedule, track, monitor, and analyze the performance of mobile teams as they offer services to your customers. These solutions help brands efficiently manage their employees and their interactions with customers.
Generally, most mobile workforce solutions come as SaaS (Software as a Service) tools. It means that most companies use them as cloud-based, on-demand tools. Plus, different tools can be used in different capacities. For instance, HR Payroll management, task managers, CRM solutions, productivity enhancement tools, to name some. Top workforce management software includes Hubstaff, LeadSquared Mobile CRM, Gusto, BambooHR, TimeDoctor, NICE IEX, SAP SuccessFactors, and Bitrix24.
Although your industry determines its functions, most MWM solutions offer the following functionalities:
- Dispatch new tasks or jobs or assignments to staff
- Enable real-time communication with remote workers
- Tracking employees enroute to diverse jobs
- Tracking duration of service engagement
- Onboard vendors or merchants
- Automate schedules for mobile staff
- Route planning and guidance
- Geofencing field agent’s location to prevent false entries
- Tracking employee performance against promised outcome
- Logging job start, completion, and travel time
- Improving efficiency and time management for effective results
- Real-time updates on project scope and schedules
- May also include predictive capabilities to forecast labor demands and prevent service delays.
- Integrating with other systems and apps.
Benefits of Mobile Workforce Management
Today’s customers demand a high-quality, smooth, and well-connected experience from brands and their representatives. That is why companies strive to deliver the ultimate mobile experience. It can not only make the tasks of the mobile workforce easy but also prevent long waiting hours for customer query resolutions. The fact is, over 61% of workers are working outside the office, or at least for some hours. The trend of remote work is on the rise and hence the need for solutions that directly impacts employee productivity and customer experiences.
Thus, investing in mobile workforce management is essential. It can prepare your business to gain an edge in the new mobile-centric business atmosphere. The following are the remarkable benefits of mobile workforce management software.
1. Greater Visibility
Mobile workforce solutions can help businesses achieve vast visibility. This visibility can extend to performance areas that might have been inaccessible before. Let us look at a typical scenario:
Traditionally, it is impossible to gain a complete view of the operations of the mobile workforce. Once they leave the office to carry out their duties, you may no longer ‘see’ them. The only way in the past to have just a glimpse of their activities was constant calls. It was also ineffective and costly.
So, managers often had no idea about their location, or what they were doing, and their performance. Often, real feedback came through customer complaints.
Enter mobile workforce management solutions. These solutions provide a clear real-time view of your mobile employees. Features like real-time status updates and location-tracking provide clarity and transparency into the field processes. It can also help you identify and deal with problems before they become damaging.
2. Higher Productivity
Mobile workforce solutions can offer you innovative tools to carry out tasks seamlessly. These tools will be available whenever and wherever your teams need them, accessible via a mobile app. So, your employees no longer have to conform to rigid nine-to-five working hours. They can especially enjoy features that streamline scheduling, communication, and dispatching.
Therefore, they can focus on delivering better services and focus on your customers. Mobile workforce systems empower employees to achieve winnings for your company.
3. Better Performance
Your mobile workforce management platform can equally help you analyze performance. It offers real-time and accurate data to identify the best working practices. That way, you can model your working environment to generate the best outcomes.
You can also use this data to analyze individual performance. It will help you organize your teams according to their capabilities. All these means less downtime, fewer inefficiencies, and ultimately better performance.
4. Time and Financial Savings
Traditionally, companies used paper-based processes alongside calls and emails in a disjointed manner to track job orders, timesheets, and delivery notes. Such a manual system led to multiple mistakes. It also required tedious manual updates of tasks, schedules, and lots more. Workforce management software automates the entire process. It can reduce task scheduling and processing times by over 60%. By reducing routine work, your team can focus on what’s most important –improving prospect and customer experience, and ultimately results. It can also help you optimize your workforce. Therefore, you no longer have to spend time trying to make sense of confusing reports.
5. Access to the Best Talents
Mobile workforce solutions help you attract the best talents for your projects. You no longer have to restrict your workforce to the same geographic barriers. You can also offer your employees the benefits of working from wherever they want. They no longer have to uproot their lives to come to your location. In the end, your organization can access high-quality talent with a short turnaround.
6. Improved Customer Service
You must strive to provide the best experiences to the customers because they are the heart and soul of your business. So, you must avoid delays, missed appointments, and inefficient communication. Such events make it impossible to deliver excellent customer service. The right mobile workforce management solution can drive outstanding customer service. It can provide your mobile employees with critical client information in real-time. It will also offer real-time communication tools to simplify their work. Finally, you can also address issues quickly and reduce the incidents of customer dissatisfaction.
Choosing the Right Mobile Workforce Management System
Tons of mobile workforce solutions offering different technologies, features, and pricing structures are available in the market.
So, you must carefully filter through to choose the right solution for your business. Of course, your work environment and industry-specific functions will drive your choice. However, there are few other conditions your ideal mobile workforce solution should fulfill:
1. Easy to Use
The best workforce management solution should be mobile-first and seamless across devices. It should be easy to use and ensure a shorter onboarding process. It should be easily customizable, so each user can focus on what they truly need. Overall, your workforce solution should make their lives easier without confusion or difficulties.
2. Easy Implementation
It should also integrate with your current infrastructure. It will reduce the chances of disrupting your existing workflow. Consider how well your potential solution would fit into your set-up. That way, you can make the right investments with minimal hitches.
3. Data Security
Choosing the wrong mobile workforce solutions also increases the threat of data security. Sensitive company data can become vulnerable to actual theft or cyberattacks from anywhere. Therefore, your ideal workforce solution should also have features to enforce data security. Besides, you may also need to educate employees about data security, breaches, and cyberattacks.
4. Cost-Efficient
Affordability isn’t the goal here. You must select your new system by how it affects your bottom line. So, you should consider how it can help you save money in the short and long-term.
5. Scalable
The best mobile workforce management solution should be scalable. You should be able to customize it to fit your workforce demands in real-time. That way, you can easily add or modify new workstations and users as your brand expands.
6. Compliance Requirements
Your mobile workforce management should make it easy to meet your compliance needs. For instance, the mobile workforce in healthcare requires HIPAA compliance. That way, you can avoid steep penalties for failing to put in place the best workplace practices.
Concluding Thoughts
Mobile workforce management offers several opportunities to streamline your field sales processes and transform your business. Think about the higher level of efficiency, productivity, and employee engagement. These translate to better customer service and revenue for your brand.
Mobile workforce management is no longer optional. In reality, it has become an essential component to meet demands. Mobile workforce management is now vital to drive your bottom line and achieve sustainable success.
If you’re looking for a solution to make your field reps more productive and accelerate your business growth, try out the LeadSquared Mobile CRM app once.
