Did you know the concept of managing the mobile workforce goes back to the 1970s when Jack Niles successfully worked on a NASA project remotely? Due to the global pandemic, mobile workforce management has replaced workplace restrictions and allowed employees the flexibility to work from anywhere.
Enterprises have become more open to adopting mobile workforce management solutions to empower employees across the globe.
This detailed guide will shed light on mobile workforce management, its benefits, and its challenges. It will enable entrepreneurs to build and manage an efficient remote workforce from scratch.
What is Mobile Workforce Management?
Mobile workforce management is the process of managing employees who are working remotely and are not present within the office premises. Mobile workforce management can include sourcing, deploying, and managing mobile devices and software solutions.
Mobile workforce management combines all those tools and processes that liberate mobile workers and motivate them to perform their job responsibilities successfully. The type of mobile workforce may change based on different organizations and their functions.
However, the end goal of mobile workforce management is to build an efficient and productive workforce without compromising the mobile workers’ satisfaction level.
Efficient mobile workforce management helps entrepreneurs to streamline the workflow. Mobile workforce management is all about scheduling, tracking, and analyzing the performance of mobile teams to support employees and deliver the best possible service to customers.
What is Mobile Workforce Management Software?
A mobile workforce management software is a unified solution that addresses different challenges of mobile workforce management. It can automate some of the most time-consuming activities like tracking employee activities, managing schedules, storing crucial details, etc.
The software empowers employers and employees to do their jobs seamlessly by making mobile workforce management more efficient. Some of the essential features of the mobile workforce management solutions include:
- Automating workflow and schedules
- Communicating with field workers in the real-time
- Assigning and tracking tasks
- Monitoring employees’ performance against the relevant goals and objectives
- Hiring and onboarding employees seamlessly
What Are the Biggest Challenges of Mobile Workforce Management
Collecting data
Making informed data-backed decisions can be tricky. Managers need a lot of information like customers’ purchase history, preferences, past interactions, and other valuable insights to make a critical decision. However, when an organization maintains a mobile workforce, collecting and analyzing these datasets can become a challenge. Especially when you are managing a remote workforce and employees are residing in different locations and timezones, and they speak different languages.
However, mobile workforce management software can provide access to all employees, irrespective of their locations. It can retrieve data from sources like job records, photos, forms, signatures, and other data points. All these datasets are automatically captured and updated within the office systems.
Collaborating
Working with globally distributed teams can bring up obstacles because of differences in time zones, culture, shifts, languages, etc. This can result in delays and internal conflicts.
The need for internal alignment becomes imperative.
Keeping up with increasing customer expectations
A study by Deloitte shows that customers who experience excellent customer service are 140% more likely to purchase from an organization than those who don’t. This finding can quickly establish how fulfilling customer expectations is becoming the top priority for businesses.
However, in the case of mobile workforce management, keeping up with customers’ expectations can be highly challenging.
Some of the challenges that managers may face include:
- Meeting customers’ expectations in delivering the projects
- Scheduling and tracking tasks for the mobile workforce
- Ensuring that field employees deliver the best service to the customers without interacting with them directly
Handling isolation
A critical part of mobile workforce management is to motivate the employees. Many employees may struggle with isolation, and that can significantly leave an impact on their professional life. Hence, leaders should always be responsible for the employees’ mental health and build a collaborative culture where each employee feels comfortable.
What are the Benefits of Efficient Mobile Workforce Management
An efficient mobile workplace setup simplifies employees’ jobs and allows them to stay productive throughout. Investing in mobile workforce management will help you gain an edge in this competitive business landscape.
Improved visibility into internal operations
Mobile workforce management solutions help businesses achieve enhanced visibility. Let us consider a scenario where mobile workforce management solutions are not present. In such a situation, employers can only gain visibility into employees’ performance if they start micromanaging, which is not much of a healthy practice.
Back-to-back calls and meetings can only complicate the situation and exhaust the employees. It can lead to a lack of clarity into employees’ performance, which will get to the employers in the form of customers’ complaints. In extreme cases, it can hamper even the productivity level of the employees.
Hence, it is always better to shift the manager’s focus on the employees’ tasks, deadlines, progress, accountability, etc., instead of monitoring their timesheets.
A mobile workplace management software can make a lot of difference in this context. It provides real-time visibility to the employers and ensures complete transparency. As a result, employers and managers can stay updated about what’s happening on the internal front and make informed decisions.
Enhanced productivity and performance
A mobile workforce management solution includes tools that can improve employee efficiency through better scheduling, tracking, and communication.
Scheduling
Scheduling is an inherent part of workforce management. Scheduling aims to predict workloads and assign them to appropriate resources with a pre-set deadline. For large enterprises, the workforce changes frequently. Automated scheduling software can streamline these changes productively.
Tracking
Employers can easily track employees’ performance with mobile workforce management software. Any mobile workforce management software can track a workforce’s individual and team performance. As a result, organizations can experience lesser dependencies, faster delivery, and better team performance.
Communication
A mobile workforce management software streamlines all tasks in one place and provides 360-degree visibility to all internal users about their upcoming tasks. As a result, it becomes easier to maintain a strong communication network across the organization.
Make informed decisions
Making an informed and data-backed decision is always challenging for organizations when managing mobile workforces. Once a decision is made, altering it can be time-consuming as well as expensive. A mobile workforce management software collects and sorts datasets quickly. As a result, management can make the right decision at the right time.
Save time and cost
Even a few years ago, manual processes and activities dominated workplaces across the globe. All these manual activities would be time-consuming and costly with a high scope of errors.
Soon after, businesses started adopting mobile workforce management solutions. Such a tool can automate most repetitive activities and free-up employees’ time. As a result, employees can now invest majorities of their time in more meaningful activities that add real value to the organization.
A mobile workforce management solution uses centralized tools to handle scheduling, dispatching, and collaboration. This means fewer errors and improved performance.
Employ the best talent from anywhere
A mobile workforce management software helps coordinate and manage multiple tasks from anywhere and everywhere. This helps the recruiting managers to conduct a smooth hiring process without worrying about geographical barriers. Mobile workforce management software enables effective communication between hiring teams and jobseekers and ensures they attract the best talents.
Must-have Features of a Mobile Workforce Management Software
Scheduling
Scheduling is one of the top features of any mobile workforce management software. With proper scheduling, employees can understand the workflow and plan their tasks accordingly.
The scheduling feature helps organizations with the following benefits:
- Achieving 360-degree visibility into the tasks and activities of the organization
- End-to-end transparency to ensure that all employees can access relevant information efficiently
- A scheduling software speeds up delivery time and improves customer communication
Scheduling management comprises two major categories, namely:
Document management – Document management aims to help the field workers access all resources and digital assets efficiently without searching through the entire database. Effective document management ensures that all employees are informed and compliant with organizational guidelines.
Task management – Task management is about keeping track of all tasks part of a project and striking off the tasks digitally as soon as they are complete. Scheduling apps that perform task management are generally cloud-based, automated solutions that organize all business tasks simultaneously.
Productivity tracking
Tracking individual tasks and performance helps a company get a clear picture of the project pipeline and capabilities of the team. Managers and employers can gain visibility into:
- All the assignments performed by an employee
- Employee travel history and relevant cost invested
- Project notes and other task details
- The process of categorizing documents and capturing forms
All these actionable insights can help businesses identify discrepancies within their administration activities.
Unified platform for notifications
Bringing all work-related notifications to one platform helps create an ecosystem of transparent communication and expectations. Organizations need a digitalized, documented way of validating work alerts. It can help businesses improve visibility into business activities and make informed decisions.
Technical support
Ensuring round-the-clock technical support gives employees the flexibility to get their conflicts resolved at their convenience. The mobile workforce management software you select must have the round-the-clock technical support feature. The 24/7 support feature makes it easier to connect with remote employees working in different time zones.
Manage a Dynamic Workforce with Multiplier
Mobile workers are not limited to full-time employees. Enterprises and small businesses worldwide manage contractors, part-timers, and freelancers as a part of their mobile workforce.
It is often a challenge for small business owners to manage such different contracting needs and address all compliance requirements.
That’s precisely where a B2B SaaS software like Multiplier comes into the picture!
Multiplier helps businesses to create and manage full-time, part-time, and freelance contracts. To know more, book a demo now!
