The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed how consumers shop and anticipate post-purchase support. As a result, there is an exponential rise in demand for on-field personnel. That is seen in the 59 per cent rise in demand for Field Force Management Software after the outbreak.
You would require workforce management software if your specialisation required on-the-ground sales, services, or promotion. Let’s examine why 78 per cent of 2000 firms track their workers in real-time with the use of software in this article.
Our world will soon be defined by automation, anyway.
What is Field Employee Monitoring Software?
The major purpose of the product is made abundantly evident by the name of the instrument: field employee tracking software. It follows field-based executives who aren’t in direct contact with their superiors or coworkers.
Undoubtedly, leading a team is a difficult undertaking in general, given a large number of external and uncontrollable criteria. Field employee management, however, is totally another field.
Why?
Because when managers and teammates cannot communicate, communication becomes extremely difficult. In addition to being challenging, managing duties, performance, and even handling attendance can be a nuisance.
Through real-time tracking, attendance, leave, task, and document management, field personnel tracking software aims to address these issues. Therefore, supervisors can log on to the software and find out where each employee is at any given time if they need to.
To maintain successful operations and their sanity, any field operations manager will need field force management software. This is a result of the specialised and field-centric functions it provides.
Why Is Automation Needed in the Field?
The majority of field service positions, including field sales executives, are thought to be high-procrastination careers. So much so that 64% of workers admit to using work time to browse the internet, wander around, or carry out necessary non-revenue generating chores.
The majority of their free time is spent doing this.
- Disorganization: Executives spend around 55 minutes each day seeking for stuff they already own when their paperwork are disorganised. This equals to 13 days every year!-
- Faulty Attendance: When timesheets are managed manually, around 80% of employees must rectify their working hours due to erroneous log-in and log-out procedures.
Organizations lose too much time and money when field executives can only devote 35,2 per cent of their time to tasks that generate income. The benefits of some leisure time theft outweigh the costs, hence the solution is not to enforce stringent controls. The best thing that can be done to cut down on needless human administrative time is to automate procedures.
Advantages of Automating Management Systems
- Productivity Growth: Executing administrative tasks is the main problem with revenue-generating productivity in the field, aside from procrastination. When field force management software takes over and automates the majority of these duties, field productivity is certain to increase.
- Eliminates Errors that humans tend to make, while well-made software is almost error-proof. Errors can either result in operational mistakes or take a long time to fix. Both of these issues are rapidly resolved by workforce management software.
- Saves Time: By making travel time efficient and reducing time spent on administrative chores, field staff management software can easily save at least 15% of employee time.
- Reduces Confusion: Since the programme performs the majority of planning automatically through data analysis, confusion is not a concern. When compared to manual field force management, the software can be more precise, informative, and clear. People will be informed of the suggested path, and the task is complete!
- Future-proofing: Automation will be the norm in the future, with artificial intelligence performing more tasks than would previously have been handled by people. So that your company is prepared for future developments, it only makes sense to implement automation today, right?
The easiest method to set up your company for future operations while saving money and other resources is through automation. Any opportunity to save time, energy, and resources is helpful when travelling, planning, and managing administrative tasks take up the majority of a worker’s working day on the field.
Workforce Management Software’s Main Features
Undoubtedly, automation is necessary in the industry. However, you should be aware of what the latter offers before deciding if you merely want employee tracking software or whole field staff management software.
- Real-time tracking: Buffer-free, live search enables managers to constantly be aware of the exact whereabouts of their leaders. Additionally, this aids in scheduling meetings, controlling productivity, and much more.
- Attendance Management: To prevent erroneous attendance marking, foolproof attendance management systems request visual and geocoded verification. Field force management solutions can also monitor the network and battery health of employees’ devices.
- Task management: Managers can swiftly manage each executive’s responsibilities thanks to offline task assigning, bulk assigning, transparency, and easy editable tasks. Executives may see their task list this way, and managers can control productivity.
- Documentation management: Online documentation relieves field workers’ physical labour and frees up a lot of storage space in administrative buildings. Additionally, customised forms and features make it simple for executives and clients to provide feedback and submit information.
- Expense management: When executives make any out-of-pocket purchases, they can submit the invoices into the platform. Organizations may streamline the task allowance process with a cool expenditure management dashboard.
- Smooth operations: By avoiding cross-platform communication, operations can run considerably more smoothly and without confusion. Whenever a problem arises, it can be solved where the tasks are designated.
- Worker profiles: As long as it is pertinent, be familiar with each executive’s personal and professional information. To determine which executive is best suited for a given position and how they have been functioning, managers can view their task histories.
- Smart Reports: Productivity reports and other field metric reports give managers a 360-degree perspective of field operations. They can suitably plan, strategize, and change functions.
Where Can You Use Software for Field Force Management?
You are already aware of the issues you can encounter in the field if you don’t use the right software tools. Are you certain of the initial application for workforce management software, though?
It is, in fact, sold to companies that send their staff out into the field. What, though, are these companies that require field personnel? In this part, let’s learn!
areas where field employee tracking software is required
You must first comprehend the market divisions that require workforce management software. These are sites of operation where efficient operation necessitates employee tracking and on-field management.
- Sales and marketing: Managing on-the-ground sales and marketing becomes challenging as a result of executives’ constant need to scour the city for their newest target market. Managers have a difficult time keeping track of productivity, expenses, timetables, assignments, and attendance.
- Field Operations: Accurate location, task, and documentation management are necessary for field operations such as sample collection, line management, and other tasks that support organisations’ on-site operations. Maintaining efficient operations is essential to the efficient operation of the whole business.
- Post-sale services: Positive client relationships with a firm are defined by effective post-sale services. Managing it, though, requires careful tasks, appointments, scheduling, and document management. Additionally, managers should be aware of each executive’s skill set and provide comments on work management and client interaction.
- Field Research: To gain a deeper understanding of market needs and growth opportunities, field research is necessary for most sectors. Communication breakdowns, handling of the documentation, and accurate data collecting are among the difficulties encountered here. Due to frequent commutes, field research also includes transportation management.
Innovative Sectors That Require Field Force Management
Each industry that uses field force management software has unique needs. The majority of them can be quickly resolved by combining all the features that field force management software has to offer.
The following sectors all need field staff management software since they rely so largely on their on-the-ground activities. To maximise its operations, each industry has specific needs and obligations that must be met.
Pharmaceutical
The pharmaceutical sector is required to market and sell its products as well as gather samples.
The sector works with medical consultants who serve as a link between pharmaceutical firms and healthcare professionals. In the healthcare sector, field staff may also be in charge of going door to door to offer first assistance or collect samples.
The following are some essential processes required to enable field services in the healthcare sector:
- Real-time tracking to know the whereabouts of door-to-door practitioners and sample collectors
Representatives can stay in touch with the business and its manufacturing capabilities thanks to accessible communication.
Construction
Most field staff in the construction sector are on different levels. Everyone, from labourers and site managers to operations managers, project coordinators, and contractors, is constantly present on the construction site.
Most workers in the construction sector may not have to move around much. They must typically remain in one place or only travel between a small number of clearly defined sites at a time. Here are some requirements the sector might have for field employee tracking software because there are so many workers in the field at any given time:
- Live location tracking is used to determine whether each executive is actually on the field and their precise location.
- Foolproof attendance to manage the movements of many field workers and ensure the least amount of time theft is feasible.
- Task management to assess each employee’s productivity and define the operational needs for a while.
- Expense management for the food and travel reimbursements that workers ought to receive.
Customers rely on organisations to be utterly accurate with their functions because security services are typically provided in the field.
Installation of technical security devices as well as manual guard services are field necessities in the security services sector. Additionally, they can conduct on-the-ground analysis of potential client security-related issues.
Monitoring productivity to determine whether the sales team can generate any leads
accurate information collected from data gathering and analysis to gauge each security guard’s efficiency.
Retail
Employees in the retail industry may not have to go between locations, but supervisors must handle many store employees’ tasks at once. Additionally, there should be constant communication between staff members of numerous establishments located in various places.
For actual firms, field employee management software can accomplish the following:
- Offer foolproof attendance so that you can be certain that staff are working the full amount of time that has been given to them at the store.
- Tracking productivity with flawless task management.
- Digital document handling for sales and store feedback prevents personnel from physically delivering them.
- Amazing single-platform communication channel to make coordinating simple.
Publication
In the publishing sector, field operations include field research, operations, and sales & marketing.
Depending on the type of publication house your customer runs, they may need field research to find printing services or for content. The most important field task for a publishing company, nevertheless, is field sales and marketing. Sales representatives set up kiosks to sell their own copies of each book or journal they publish or visit bookshops to gather wholesale customers.
For the following functionalities, publishing companies may need field personnel tracking software:
- Live tracking to monitor for procrastination and to know where each employee is on the field.
- Using documentation management, sales leaders may clearly see how many clients or touchpoints they have managed to reach.
- Executives can spend on their travel without worrying about having to come up with the money out of their own pockets thanks to expense management.
- Employee profiling to determine which field executives are fantastic for B2C engagements and which are best for B2B.
Does Your Business Need Software to Track Field Staff?
The automation that field staff software offers has the enormous potential to completely alter how your field executives work. And because they will have more time for their core revenue-generating position, all of these changes will be beneficial.
There cannot be a universally applicable answer. The best field employee tracking software should surely be used if your company is largely dependent on field executives.
What are you still holding out for? Because of the capabilities and ease of use of TrackoField, you won’t ever want to switch to any other workforce management software.
