3 ways to improve mobile workforce management

A manager is only as effective as the team they’ve built, and ensuring they have the right tools to get the job done is part of being successful. That’s even more critical when those teams are out in the field and responsible for day-to-day tasks without a manager being physically present. If your team members are working solo, outdoors, or in geographically diverse environments, managing them effectively becomes exponentially more challenging.

Human error, unpredictable circumstances, and a lack of visibility are a few of the biggest obstacles to effective mobile workforce management. All three can cause downtime, rework, quality issues, unhappy clients, employee injuries, and worse.

That’s why organizations around the world are adopting mobile technology that helps them digitize their processes and transform the way their field teams work. It enables them to not only mitigate those challenges, but it also improves the lives of their employees and gives them a distinct advantage over competitors who still rely on manual workflows.

Here’s how a mobile data collection and workflow automation platform like Fulcrum makes managing field teams easier.

1. It puts every member of your workforce on the same page — both figuratively and literally. Deploying apps that digitize checklists that your workers can access on their personal mobile device helps standardize your processes, ensuring everyone from your most seasoned employee to your newest technicians have all the information they need in-hand. Apps that include checklists, multimedia fields, and conditional-visibility rules, that can be endlessly modified and redeployed in real time, give both rookies and veterans access to the latest procedures and standards without overburdening them with unnecessary information.
2. It creates more visibility into team performance. As field workers complete tasks, each record is automatically geotagged and updated on the Fulcrum dashboard. If they’re working without WiFi or cellular service, records are stored on their device and synced as soon as they hit connectivity, ensuring a seamless transfer of data. This gives you real time or near-real time awareness of the status of your jobs, the location of your teams, and the quality of their work. Viewing all the data on one map enables you to reallocate resources efficiently to ensure no team (or worse, customer) is left behind.
3. It speeds up communication and automates workflows to streamline operations. With Fulcrum, you can build workflow automation into your mobile apps that eliminate administrative hassles and delays. For example, if an inspection reveals that a piece of equipment needs repair, the Fulcrum platform can automatically send an alert, via text or email, to the maintenance team to schedule that repair. This type of automation becomes particularly helpful when your mobile teams are working solo and need help quickly to avoid a potentially dangerous situation. The Fulcrum app even makes it possible for a signature to be required on the work, meaning less back and forth about getting the job done.

If you’re curious about how to implement mobile technology that improves the quality, safety, and efficiency of your field teams, download the ebook Modernizing Your Mobile Field Organization today.

This post originally appeared on the Fulcrum blog.