In the utilities sector, a major challenge of local governments and service providers is that they have to manage an offsite workforce who works on a high volume of projects that take a short time to complete.

For instance, according to Fieldtec.com, the typical power company has to manage 500 field employees scheduled by dispatchers or a call center. The labor cost associated with a large mobile workforce can range from 50 to 90 per cent of the gross revenue of the company. Studies have shown that mobile workforce solutions can reduce this cost by 10 to 16 per cent on a year over year basis.

Workforce management solutions serve the function of getting employees with the right skills to the job site on time. Additionally, mobile workforce management solutions feed real-time data back to the dispatcher or call center enabling them to schedule the workers to the next job fitting their skill set closest to them. This improves productivity of mobile workers while decreasing downtime and transportation costs, while improving customer satisfaction.

Moreover, the dispatcher has the information to send the most skilled technician to complete the job, decreasing the likelihood of repeated service calls because the task was not completed correctly the first time. Businesses report they find a 56 per cent improvement in their ability to schedule workers who have the best skill sets to complete specific tasks, as well as a decrease in employee downtime between jobs.

Since managers have the ability to track employees in real-time, they have the information needed to decrease overtime costs. They also have the ability to know when an employee is not working, which enables them to address issues with absenteeism that can cost the business both time and money. So, workforce management solutions give the management team information about employee so they can bring in additional staff with specific expertise for operations to continue working efficiently.

Before government agencies and utility service providers started using mobile workforce solutions, their skilled supervisors had to mentor and manage their teams from afar. When businesses deploy mobile workforce management programs, management have access to real-time information from any site enabling them to go to job sites to troubleshoot problems on the job site, mentor employees, and assess employee performance.

Mobile workforce management solutions provide a means to maximize the return on investment of the most valuable resource of a large-scale service provider, their skilled workforce.

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