January 19, 2023 Peggy Xenos 3 minute read

Mobile workforce forecasting: How to facilitate capacity and deployment planning  

The shortage of skilled workers poses growing problems for companies in all industries. Apart from the search for new personnel, deployment planning of existing staff is one of the big challenges companies face. Where highly qualified employees are in short supply, planning resources precisely to match demand is crucial to maintaining operations. Workforce intelligence planning ensures that a company has the right people with the right skills in the right places at the right time. By combining critical workforce analytics with data-driven insights, companies can plan personnel capacities – perfectly in line with existing demand.

 

Mobile workforce optimization 

In an ideal world, companies continuously manage to keep staff requirements and headcount in balance. However, especially in today’s highly complex and dynamic working world, it can be difficult to predict personnel requirements – leading to incorrect or inadequate staffing of teams.  Ultimately impacting both service levels and customer satisfaction. This is particularly true in areas where very specialized expertise is required, as is the case with service technicians in the field.

Demand-driven workforce planning has therefore become a must-have for every company with field service in place – especially in sectors facing labor shortages or increasing price of labor, such as healthcare, construction, energy and manufacturing. Demand changes not tracked in real-time lead to unplanned overtime and higher costs of labor. Furthermore, as a consequence of a lack in visibility into future training and hiring needs, the hiring process becomes inefficient, as it is based on 'rough estimates' and gut feelings rather than on the key skills of future employees.
 

Deriving workforce planning trends

Over the last few years, the field service industry has been hit with significant and dynamic changes, all of which have impacted workforce planning within all sectors. Labor shortages, automation, and hybrid work options for field service workers are all trends that will continue to follow and impact your workforce in the years to come.  

The solution lies in connecting technicians and their partner network through smart Field Service Management (FSM) software. FSM software facilitates workforce planning through various features seamlessly. Features which align the right people with the right skills in the right places at the right time.  

With its mobile technology and cloud-based software, resources are optimized and supported regardless of (multiple) locations. Amongst other features, tickets can be routed where necessary, and their processing status viewed at any time. Jobs can be assigned to the technician closest to the customer or site. The intelligent FSM software also allows the ticket to be routed to the most appropriate technician based on specific (technical) requirements. This not only increases the productivity of field service staff and their workload but also improves customer satisfaction by optimizing the deployment of technicians.

The workforce forecasting feature bases its analysis on collected data combined with machine learning (ML) to derive workforce planning trends for better planning the capacity and deployment of field service teams. In order to meet customer requirements, BI-powered workforce forecasting also incorporates criteria such as skills, work zones, activity areas, and service-level agreements. This guarantees the best possible "fit" between the task and the service technician.

By including additional relevant data, workforce forecasting can also be extended to longer-term staffing requirements. The intelligent forecasting technology then also considers information such as seasonal changes, ticket volume, and availability of employees (e.g., who is available at what time?) in a longer-term project.  

Companies relying on mobile workforce management software for field service management combed with BI forecasting and intelligent field service software are in a position to more efficiently plan their staffing requirements – in the short as well as in the long term. In today’s working world, in which human resources are becoming increasingly scarce, this helps companies future-proof their capacity and workforce planning, giving them the decisive edge over their competition.

Fieldcode has supported seamless FSM integration with workforce management and forecasting solutions for businesses around the world. To start implementing, create a free account here.

Or schedule a personalized demo session, customized to meet your organization’s specific needs and see how implementing Fieldcode can advance your mobile workforce, help optimize your organization’s field operations and deliver superior service.

Subscribe to our Fieldcode newsletter    
subscribe