White Paper - Fleet News

White Paper
Identifying Efficiency Bleeds in Mobile
Workforce Scheduling and Management
Processes
By Lisa Norris, Managing Director
Executive Summary
All organisations need to run lean these days. The economic climate pretty much demands it.
Organisations with skills-based mobile and field workforces are certainly no exception. In
order to ensure positive, ongoing business outcomes, the search for efficiency improvements
needs to be continuous. But the process is never easy. Rarely, if ever, is there scope for
making big efficiency gains in any one area of a business. However, considerable advantage
can be accumulated by garnering smaller efficiencies across a business as a whole. In fact,
the dynamics of such businesses – a generally higher cost base and the traditional lack of
employee ‘visibility’ – can make the problem more acute. Wheatley Associates is a leader in
driving inefficiencies out of businesses. With its unique mix of product, implementation,
consultancy and market expertise, the company offers its customers with skills-based mobile
workforces valuable insights into how they can improve their scheduling processes, pinpoint
areas of inefficiency and establish change management policies to address them. Its
capabilities have been formalised within the context of its ‘Efficiency Bleed’ consultancy
services and its recommendations can be implemented using its GRASP mobile workforce
automated scheduling and management software.
© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited
White Paper: Identifying Mobile Workforce Efficiency Bleeds
1.
Background
Time was when mobile workers were viewed as the ‘mavericks’ of the workplace. Semiautonomous in their outlook by today’s standards, they were a comparatively inefficient
business instrument. They were told what they needed to do and they were generally left to
get on with it. Once on the road, interaction was extremely limited. Thoughts of optimising
their schedule of activities were few and far between.
Fortunately, this has all changed. Now, they are treated as a fundamental business resource
- agile technicians who are an essential part of any customer-facing organisation and whose
constant feedback from the field is fundamental to the ongoing delivery of efficient and quality
customer service. Effective scheduling of their time and skills is seen as crucial to optimising
the utilisation of what is an expensive resource and maximising the return on investment.
The change in attitude has been driven, in the main, by the desire to benefit from more
efficient mobile workforce scheduling and management. According to industry analysts, the
Aberdeen Group1, there are three key motivating factors. In a survey of 200 companies that
had implemented automated workforce scheduling systems, 72% identified economic
reasons, such as reducing costs, as a prime motivator. With customers increasingly
demanding good, efficient service, 51% also said that improving customer satisfaction was
crucial. Meeting regulatory requirements was also important for 25% of the companies. Their
expectation was that these benefits should be delivered within the context of improved
scheduling accuracy, better quality of service and a decrease in unplanned overtime.
A principal catalyst for change has been the continuing advance in hand-held technology and
its acceptance at a grass roots level. Long-gone are the days when field technology was
viewed with suspicion and resentment. The ubiquity of mobile phones has ensured that
PDAs for field use are now seen in the exactly same light as more traditional tools – essential
for the job. Costly and specialised ruggedised devices have given way to a flood of
comparatively inexpensive, everyday smart devices capable of running complex applications,
delivering internet connectivity and providing text-based communications (email and SMS) in
addition to voice.
The acceptance of this technology has been crucial to the evolution of mobile workforce
scheduling and management systems. Even though early scheduling systems were no more
than a transport mechanism for outputting work to hand-held devices, major efficiency gains
could be made by eliminating the need for mobile operatives to return to base for the next job
allocation. Subsequent diary management systems took scheduling a stage further. Today,
advanced, automated scheduling systems provide real-time job allocation, respond
dynamically to changes happening in the field and are capable of supporting effective
process change to deliver continuing efficiency gains.
‘Efficiency Bleeds’ are the corollary to process, and mobile workforce scheduling and
management is no exception. While good processes may solve productivity issues at a given
point in time, they also create a basis around which bleeds can occur as circumstances
evolve and change. Crucial to getting the most out of these automated systems, however, is
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© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited
White Paper: Identifying Mobile Workforce Efficiency Bleeds
understanding precisely where the bleeds lie and determine where inefficiencies have crept
in. Once identified, an action plan needs to be devised for their resolution.
2.
Key Areas of Mobile Scheduling ‘Efficiency Bleed’
Operating a business with a mobile workforce has always been costly, high maintenance and
fraught with difficulty. This has been due, in large part, to the very nature of the work – the
need for vehicles, lack of job and workforce visibility, job audit difficulties etc. The dichotomy
for businesses is in maintaining an appropriate balance between customer satisfaction and
efficiency.
Mobile workforce efficiency depends on a variety of factors. Operatives need to know exactly
where they are going, what they have to do and
be equipped with the necessary skills to
undertake the work they have been assigned.
They need to be visiting jobs in the most
efficient order and they need to be expected by
customers so that they have access to the site.
They need to be able to capture data from the
job quickly and easily, and effectively feed
progress back to base. While these items will
not, on their own, contribute massively to the
mobile workforce as a whole, a system capable
of delivering them all together will generate
considerable performance advantage.
‘Efficiency Bleeds’ can occur in all areas of the
mobile workforce scheduling and management
process. Potential areas of bleed typically relate
to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Job booking issues.
Booking configuration issues.
Pre-day planning issues.
On-the-day scheduling issues.
Resource management issues.
Follow-up activity issues.
The initial job booking process is potentially open to any number of bleeds. Key areas to
consider relate to the appointment process, service level agreement priorities, and job
progression/completion reporting. In terms of the appointment process, questions to consider
include what booking systems exist, can appointments be optimised, is there a clear forward
view of appointments or are they booked ‘blind’, what is the load balancing between new and
committed work and what is the customer service priority? Consideration should also be
given to service level agreement (SLA) priorities and how the mix of routine work, the
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© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited
White Paper: Identifying Mobile Workforce Efficiency Bleeds
diversity in lead times and the requirement for highly reactive activity fits with it. Lastly, the
question of whether the job requirement can be fulfilled in-house or whether it needs to be
passed to a third-party for progression also has to be considered. Allied to this are issues of
the booking configuration itself. Bleeds may exist in relation to the allocation of appropriate
time slots, lead-time visibility, the match to service level agreements and job detail recording.
The latter can be quite crucial as mismatches can occur between the customer description of
the job and the call centre’s understanding of it, location details might be incorrect and
special situations not properly taken into account.
Bleeds may occur in relation to both pre-day planning and on-the-day scheduling
requirements. Pre-day issues might relate to the lack of availability of suitably skilled
operatives due to other work commitments, illness or holidays, no customer confirmation of
the appointment, parts may not have been ordered or collected, information and work may
not have been correctly issued. On-the-day field operatives may re-arrange appointments
and not follow plan, jobs might over-run causing selective appointments to be abandoned in
an effort to catch up and a lack of feedback to schedulers may result in opportunities to
reallocate work or the requirement for additional visits being missed. Traffic delays, the
weather, inappropriate skills allocation and incorrect parts ordering can also have an impact
on the scheduling plan as can site access problems and safety issues.
Resource management issues can also result in bleeds, for example, in relation to the
degree of visibility of field operatives, resources not being current or becoming unavailable,
and resource patterns not matching booking slots. Inaccurately estimated job lengths and
travel times, spare capacity becoming available and the extent of real-time progress
monitoring and cross-resourcing to handle work streams can also have an effect. Follow-up
activity can also result in bleeds such as when customers are left unaware of the need and
date for a return visit, customer surveys are left too long, and audit checks are insufficient.
The potential for ‘Efficiency Bleeds’, therefore, can be significant. But, it is important to
understand that for every bleed, there is a possible gain to be made.
3.
The Power of 1% - Accumulating Marginal Gains
In any mobile workforce scheduling and management process, the chances of making a
large productivity gain of say 10% as a result of identifying a single, significant ‘Efficiency
Bleed’, is actually quite slim. Such performance improvements are simply not that easy to
find. However, smaller bleeds of, say, 1% will be much easier to find. By comparison, the
chances of achieving a 10% productivity gain by finding multiple bleeds of 1% ten times over
are actually pretty high. And so, the power of 1% - the accumulation of multiple marginal
gains – reveals itself. It’s a bit like the old maxim: “look after the pennies and the pounds will
take care of themselves”.
In many ways this may seem like a self-evident concept. But, like all inventions, it really only
becomes obvious once it has been invented or, in this case, conceptualised. The idea is that
small bleeds cannot significantly impact performance when taken on their own. However,
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© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited
White Paper: Identifying Mobile Workforce Efficiency Bleeds
when a number of them are taken together and aggregated, their overall, combined impact
can truly make a difference.
Mobile workforce efficiency depends on a variety of factors. Operatives need to know exactly
where they are going, what they have to do and have the necessary skills to undertake the
job. Customers need to be expecting them and they need to have access to the site they are
visiting. They need to be able to capture data from the job quickly and easily, and effectively
feed progress back to base. While these items will not, on their own, contribute massively to
the mobile workforce as a whole, a system capable of delivering them all together will
generate considerable performance advantage.
4.
Finding the Efficiency Bleeds
Let’s examine where the Efficiency Bleeds might lie in more detail using a hypothetical
scenario of an organisation with a 100-strong mobile workforce.
Technology
Operations & Planning
Customer Contact
People
Mobile Workforce
Department
Finance
Plant
Stores
Accurate positional information means that field operatives do not have to hunt down the
location of the job. Modern geo-location systems have simplified this enormously. Many
people own some sort of satellite navigation system, many even have this capability on their
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© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited
White Paper: Identifying Mobile Workforce Efficiency Bleeds
phones. But how long does it take to enter the postcode of the destination: 5 seconds, 10
seconds? Multiply this up for 10 jobs a day and 100 operatives and you have a figure of
5,000 to 10,000 seconds a day – that’s somewhere between one and three hours of lost
productivity, just entering a postcode into a SatNav! What if the system that the operatives
use could do that for them? That’s 2 hours a day, 10 hours a week, 500 hours a year saved
for the 100-strong workforce.
An operative arrives on site, but is not quite sure of what needs to be done. Is there a specific
problem to be fixed or is it just a routine maintenance call? He asks the customer; they don’t
know and weren’t actually expecting him. That’s if he is lucky enough to find them in! But we
will come back to the ‘no access’ factor later. He phones the office who confirm that he needs
to perform some maintenance and that a letter was sent to the customer two weeks
previously. Better still, the customer had confirmed that they were going to be there. So how
long did this little exchange take: 5 minutes, 10 minutes? Again, multiplying up, even
assuming that this only happens once a day for each of the 100 operatives that’s between 8
and 17 hours of lost productivity, the equivalent of one or two man days. If the need for such
conversations could be eliminated, then the company workload could be increased without
the need to take on additional personnel or the overhead could potentially be reduced by one
to two field operatives.
Having established what he needs to do, the operative unfortunately has to tell the customer
that he is not the right person for the job. He is trained to undertake installations, not
maintenance. He has to phone back to the office and make another appointment for a
different field operative to come and visit. He has wasted a lot of his own time (he could have
been on his next job by now – maybe 30 minutes ahead of where he is) and now another
operative needs to visit the same site and gain access. Additionally, the customer has had a
bad experience and may be thinking that perhaps they are not the best company to use. The
customer may start looking elsewhere? But what does this mean for the organisation’s
efficiency levels? Even if it only happens once a week for each operative, there is an
accumulated loss of time of 600 minutes a day - between one or two man days. And this is
only the wasted time of the first operative, let alone the other operative who needs to perform
the follow up visit. Again, this equates to one or two employees.
So, what other bleeds exist where further marginal gains can be exploited? The most obvious
is routing. If operatives visit sites in an efficient order not only is time saved but also fuel
costs and wear and tear on the vehicle. More efficient routing might make it possible to add
an extra job a day to a mobile operative’s workload. That’s 100 extra jobs a day for the whole
workforce, 500 jobs a week or 25,000 jobs a year. The number becomes more impressive
the longer you look at it!
But it isn’t quite as simple as the ‘travelling salesman problem’- the shortest route between a
fixed number of known places with no other constraints. Demanding customers want to make
decisions about when it is convenient for them, rather than being told when they can have
the job done. They want to know to the narrowest possible window when the operative will
arrive. Some may be at work and want to be notified by text 30 minutes before the operative
is going to show up. They want to be compensated if nobody shows. They want to know how
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© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited
White Paper: Identifying Mobile Workforce Efficiency Bleeds
long the job will take. They want to ensure that the job is complete when the operative
leaves. All these elements can be described as the ‘customer experience’ – a somewhat
over-used phrase maybe but that is fundamental to the scheduling mix. Increasingly
organisations such as supermarkets are leading the way. Online booking of appointments,
choice of delivery slots, SMS notification of delivery window, emailed confirmations –
companies with remote workforces would do well to sit up and take note, which is where the
added value of having an advanced mobile workforce management system can come in.
This leads neatly on to the ‘no access’ factor mentioned earlier. ‘No access’ visits are
probably the largest efficiency drains for a mobile workforce. One ‘no access’ has much the
same effect as an operative with the wrong skill being sent to undertake a job, but with the
added inconvenience that the customer is not present to rearrange the visit. Calling cards
need to be left and other processes established to
deal with this (another one or two employees). On
a personal level, if you know that someone is
prone to being out when you visit them, then don’t
you call in advance to check that they will in?
Likewise, on a business level, forward calling and
advance notification helps to reduce the instance
of ‘no access' visits. Also, by collating statistics
regarding ‘no access’ visits, additional data can be
made available for use of the more advanced
mobile workforce management tools to improve
scheduling behaviour.
Finally, when all the cards are stacked in the
operative’s favour – access has been achieved
and the job completed – there may be data pass
back service level agreements that need to be
adhered to, creating the need to quickly and
accurately capture data pertaining to the job that
has been performed. The information could be
written down, but this means that someone needs
to understand and translate the handwriting,
introducing considerable potential for error.
Information could be captured through a web page
or similar, but what if there is no internet
coverage? Ideally, a built-for-purpose application with easy to fill forms will capture all of the
information required and validate it before the operative leaves the site (to ensure that there
is no need to revisit) and pass the data directly back to the office for immediate use.
With the points of ‘Efficiency Bleed’ identified, the overall benefit of accumulated marginal
productivity gains can be properly assessed. This, in turn, determines the level of cost
savings that can be made or, on the flipside, the increased capacity that can be created. As
can be seen from this hypothetical scenario, the argument for the adoption of advanced
mobile workforce scheduling and management systems tailored towards an accumulation of
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© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited
White Paper: Identifying Mobile Workforce Efficiency Bleeds
marginal gains, becomes quite compelling and easily justified on the savings from the
potential gains alone. Add to this the operational efficiencies of having all of the information in
one place and the argument becomes even more tempting.
5.
Addressing the ‘Efficiency Bleeds’
In the Aberdeen Group1 report mentioned earlier, the 200 companies surveyed were placed
into three ranks according to the benefits they derived from implementing an automated
scheduling system. The best companies, those that made it into the Top 40, were able to
demonstrate that they achieved most of their goals with their systems delivering 90%
scheduling accuracy without any manual intervention, an 11% year-on-year increase in
customer satisfaction, unplanned overtime at below 4% and workforce capacity that was
running at 84% or above. Also, no matter how well the systems performed, workforce
engagement (positivity) had to be greater than 61%.
In many respects these are quite phenomenal statistics and clearly tough goals to aim for.
But, if achieved, they will undoubtedly have a fundamental impact on overall business
performance. With its unique mix of automated workforce scheduling product,
implementation, consultancy and market expertise, Wheatley Associates is an expert in
driving inefficiencies out of businesses. The combination of its ‘Efficiency Bleed’ consultancy
services and GRASP mobile workforce scheduling and management solution are
demonstrably able to help companies meet this level of capability in those industry sectors
(utilities, social housing, vending suppliers, facilities management companies and
engineering services) where a skills-based
mobile workforce needs to be run at
maximum efficiency.
Wheatley Associates’ ‘Efficiency Bleed’
consultancy service provides organisations
dependent on field and mobile workforces
with an independent and objective audit
capability that focuses on reviewing all
aspects of an organisation’s mobile
operations as well as connected departments
such as call centres, finance, purchasing etc.
Efficiency analysis begins with ‘Touch
Points’. Most organisations believe their
process maps perfectly define where their
departmental Touch Points are and that
interactions are neatly arranged. However,
the reality is often far from this with the touch
points somewhat tangled. While this doesn’t
necessarily stop organisations functioning correctly, what is unseen is the bleed that occurs
between the touch points. The customer perspective is also placed under review. The service
provides valuable insights into how organisations can improve their key processes, pinpoint
areas of inefficiency and determine how to address them. Areas of existing high efficiency
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© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited
White Paper: Identifying Mobile Workforce Efficiency Bleeds
are also identified and examined to provide points of comparison and possible illustrative
models. Where bleeds are identified, recommendations are presented on how to address the
issues and improve the business outcome.
Usually improvements can be made by re-aligning processes, talking to customers, creating
and applying new systems, addressing resource training, improving internal and external
communications or investment in new equipment and plant. Any change management
recommendations can be implemented using Wheatley Associates’ GRASP software, a
browser-based appointment booking, work scheduling, tracking and mobile communications
solution for managing any size field workforce. Once a job is booked, GRASP allocates work
to maximise the efficiency and productivity of the workforce using its detailed knowledge of
all the available operatives while also ensuring customer commitments are met. With work
schedules despatched directly to, and feedback on progress received from, operatives’
PDAs, GRASP can dynamically re-schedule and re-output work to an operative as the day
progresses.
Clearly, an understanding of how to pinpoint bleeds and instigate change management
policies to improve productivity is fundamental to the ongoing success of any organisation
operating with a mobile workforce.
###
1
Aberdeen Group, Workforce Scheduling: Automation Drives Accuracy, Efficiency and Business Outcomes.
About the Author
Lisa Norris is Managing Director of Wheatley Associates who provide IT solutions focused on
asset management and mobile workforce scheduling. Lisa has many years experience in
supporting businesses that have implemented mobile workforce scheduling. This experience
has enabled her to become instrumental in the evolution of Wheatley Associates’ workforce
scheduling product set. Using experience garnered from real customer issues has enabled
her to focus the products on solving the real challenges that affect organisations when
implementing these business-changing solutions. Her experience and practical approach to
meeting customers’ needs has enabled her to acquire a deep understanding of where
inefficiencies can hide within an organisation and how to identify and resolve them. Lisa is a
member of the Institute of Directors (MIoD) and holds the Chartered Institute of Marketing
qualification.
About Wheatley Associates
Wheatley Associates are experts in mobile workforce scheduling and efficiency. Drawing on
its extensive software development heritage and its understanding of multi-dimensional
scheduling requirements, the company provides a range of software solutions to manage
complex, real-time mobile workforce scheduling demands. Applicable to a broad range of
industries, markets and applications, the company’s mobile workforce scheduling solutions
dynamically balance work allocations and take account of changing events to maximise
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© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited
White Paper: Identifying Mobile Workforce Efficiency Bleeds
productivity and ensure the optimal use of costly resources. The company’s scheduling
solutions are backed by a comprehensive range of in-depth consultancy services designed to
help clients understand and address the mobile workforce ‘Efficiency Bleed’. Additionally,
with its leadership position in the provision of asset and data management solutions to the
utilities industry, the company continues to be well-placed to take advantage of the emerging
Smart Meter and Smart Grid initiatives. Wheatley Associates is a privately-held company
based in Bacton, Suffolk in the United Kingdom. For further information, please visit:
http://www.wheatley-associates.co.uk.
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© 2012 Wheatley Associates Limited