April/May 2008

There's been a convergence between scheduling jobs for mobile workers and journeys for vehicles, says Sharon Clancy. What you need to look for now is how dynamic the system is - and how good at feeding back the information you actually need

Job scheduling systems are dramatically more sophisticated than five years ago. Moreover, where there was once a clear difference between scheduling applications for logistics or delivery operations and those for field service workers, there are now enough similarities for application providers to pitch their products at customers in both sectors.

If there is a significant difference between types of product now, it seems to lie between static or planned scheduling on one hand, and dynamic scheduling on the other.

Historically, it's fair to say that these two approaches do hark back to the traditional divide between logistics and field service implementations. Logistics managers for their part have tended to use planned scheduling to bring together the various assets required for deliveries, including vehicles, drivers and loads. Field service and courier operations, by contrast, have tended to be more reliant on dynamic despatch of jobs in response to customer requests coming in throughout the day.

However, more logistics companies are now using systems such as Paragon's Fleet Controller or Microlises's TMC to bring a dynamic element into their schedules by measuring actual progress against planned deliveries. This allows them to take action to deal with delays to schedules during the day. For instance, they can reallocate a second route to a different vehicle if the original vehicle is delayed returning to base.

Being able to adjust schedules in this way can have a big effect on costs and service performance levels, whether you are in logistics or field service. Cognito director Dave Perry points out the attractions. 'Even if you think you are a static scheduling business such as logistics,' he says, 'you can benefit from a dynamic element. For instance, you can tap in an event such as 'driver stuck in traffic', and then see what delivery times or parcels are affected. That allows you to try and arrange an alternative solution.'

He adds: 'Scheduling software will nearly always deliver better results than human planners in the form of enhanced customer support and lower costs for a given set of resources.'

Perry says that while human despatchers may be able to handle about ten engineers' schedules at once, their ability to incorporate other details such as skills sets and parts availability is limited. 'There are simply too many permutations.' With automated scheduling, internal resources are freed up, points out Perry, as fewer despatchers are required to manage the field workers' calendars and to monitor live progress.

'For courier and despatch operations, integration with back-office despatch and scheduling systems means that a fleet tracking product can be used as proactive tool within a fleet control environment,' says Dave Upton, managing director of DA Systems. 'Controllers can use it to cross-utilise vehicles from other parts of the fleet, and this means that they can see at a glance who is busy or running empty and available for pick-up or delivery.

'Better, more efficient decisions can be made, and information about 'who should be where' - which has traditionally been kept in a controller's head - is now available to everyone.'

However, the ability of job scheduling applications to incorporate these additional data demands can have a significant influence on the efficiencies they bring. So says Alison Henderson, managing director of Sybase. 'Even with dynamic scheduling, you still have to deliver the data to the mobile device,' she says. 'It's essential that the data can be 'pushed' at each end. Relying on synchronisation to update job progress can result in poor compliance with service level agreements.'

CRMs don't have time to check an engineer has arrived, she points out, yet customers now expect a high level of predictability from service organisations. 'When devices are running multiple applications, intelligent management of synchronisation is also essential to prevent data costs going through the roof.'

Henderson says companies also need to think about the needs of their mobile workforce before implementing a solution. She points out that some operations - drugs deliveries, for example - are more sensitive in terms of security than others.

'Security does add complexity to a mobile operation, simply because there is a delay in sending and receiving data while it is encrypted.' Sybase's new middleware, however, is said to be much faster.

There's no doubt that efficient scheduling can enhance profitability in various ways. Reduction in journey times allows more calls per engineer or deliveries per driver each day. But the benefits of scheduling are only as good as the accuracy of the information input into the system, of course. The advice here is to pay as much attention to the business rules as to resources and SLAs.

Terran Churcher, managing director of Codegate, says usability of the application is also a key to acceptance. 'If the software looks too cluttered and the process is hard to complete, it will affect productivity.' He says good application design is all about saving a click or a key depression per transaction. 'Mobile workers are not IT experts.'

However, so long as modern technology is kept transparent and works subtly, there's a lot it can do in the background. DA's Dave Upton says there's a growing trend for suppliers to increase to the amount of data captured at the handheld or driver end, and automate previously manual and labour-intensive tasks.

'Companies which in the past used mobile data applications purely to record basic proof-of-delivery information are now realising they can do much more with it,' he says. 'For instance, they are capturing onsite/offsite status, they're tracking and tracing barcode or RFID data, they're managing vehicle inspection information, and they're also adding functions such as van sales, taking orders 'on the fly', and even doing photo capture.'

Larry Klimczyk, managing director of Blackbay, reckons job scheduling is about getting the right piece of information to the right person at the right time. 'The key is making use of what information can be available, and getting it to the mobile worker,' he says.

'Engineers aren't in their jobs to have fun with mobile data. They're in it because they like fixing things. Mobile data's role is to help them do it better, whether it be providing satnav so they can reach their destination without getting lost, or making it easier to get the data they want via touch screens rather than a keyboard. And it all has to be done in real time.'

The first-time fix ratio is the key to controlling costs, he suggests, with the aim, naturally, being 100 per cent. 'Stand-alone scheduling systems can't do this because interaction is required with various company databases. You might, for example, need to interface with an SAP ERP system, a Siebel CRM system and a proprietary job-scheduling application.'

Off the shelf

It is now recognised that stand-alone scheduling systems don't always maximise assets, use so may not deliver the greatest cost benefit. As a result, more and more scheduling applications can now interface with back-office systems. You don't have to opt for an expensive customised solution to get the benefits.

CMS's JobTrak, for example, is an off-the-shelf solution that combines push mobile data with a Web-based booking and control system which works on any device with Windows Mobile operation system, and can be adapted for rugged devices. It is flexible enough to be configured to any industry sector, says managing director Jason Airey, and includes comprehensive reporting and integration options.

Mobile workers can be tracked via the vehicle and via PDAs, with updates every 60 seconds to the SupaTrak Web mapping and reporting system, which is also used to push jobs out to the workforce.

Masternaut Three X is another supplier offering out-of-the-box as well as bespoke solutions for service and logistics operations. Indeed, it has three products for each type of operation. X Schedule is a basic job management system for engineers, while X Service adds health and safety checks, digital signature capture, parts management and image capture.

'Eliminating data inaccuracies significantly reduces administration costs, and allows businesses to focus on developing their services,' says chief executive Andrew Tillman. 'Integrating scheduling with vehicle tracking combines the utility of fleet management with the power of mobile computing solutions.'

Masternaut Three X products are Microsoft .NET applications. Tillman says the benefits include lower application development costs compared with other programming languages, the ability to deploy applications via a browser, and low risk of conflict with other applications, allowing for easier integration.

Hosted software as a service

Another route is to adopt a hosted software as a service (SaaS) solution. 'This is an extremely efficient way of getting mobile computing services,' maintains Chris Wright, managing director of Skillweb. 'It takes away the pain of managing the database, its environment, and all reliability issues.'

He adds: 'In our view it is the solution to future-proofing applications and making them independent of platform and capable of running in a multiple application environment.'

Wright says companies should do the same with the mobile service platform and airtime contracts. 'Bundle the device and the data transmission into a contract with free upgrades every two or three years. Insist on a Windows platform. Ensure your application provider is capable of porting the application forward. Finally, ensure that you can run your application as one of a multiple set on a single device.'

Airversent's ServiceNet mobile workforce management software is scaleable from ten to thousands of engineers. Unless you ensure that you are gathering accurate, usable data from the field, the company argues - presented in a format that can be interpreted, used and acted upon - you won't achieve anything through better despatch of work in terms of improved control of people and data.

ServiceNet is available as a stand-alone system called On-Premise or on a pay-as-you-go-subscription called ServiceNet On Demand. It uses an Oracle database running on Windows or Unix hardware. One customer pushes three million jobs through the system every month, so its robustness is clearly not in doubt. The managed service uses the same architecture, with each customer having his or her own private ServiceNet on the same server.

Trends

A problem inherent in many field service operations is that at any given time, extensive stocks of parts and components will be sitting in engineers' vans - potentially out of sight of conventional warehouse-focused stock management systems.

However, more and more scheduling and mobile resource management applications are now taking account of this inventory and managing it in real time. This enables user-companies to reduce inventory they hold over the fleet as a whole. It also means despatchers can check before allocating a job to a particular engineer not just that he has the correct skill, but also that he has the part needed to do the job.

Real-time stock tracking also enables engineers to order parts and reschedule jobs for completion whilst actually with the customer. This may not be as good as a first-time fix, admits Codegate's Churcher, but service is still enhanced because the customer is actually dealing with the engineer, not with an anonymous call centre.

Churcher also reports that RFID is increasingly used for various field service tasks. 'RFID can identify the part being used and the asset being serviced, and match the two if necessary.'

More scheduling applications are now incorporating duty of care modules that allow companies to demonstrate they have the processes in place to manage risk faced by their mobile workforces, and thus meet their obligations under health and safety legislation. The Corporate Manslaughter Act places greater emphasis on proactive management of risk.

Features can include not just 'panic buttons' on mobile devices, but also systems that require employees to confirm they have carried out vehicle checks when asked to do so. There can also be more proactive management of employees who drive too fast and so on.

Environmental issues are also moving up the agenda for companies with mobile workforces. 'With rising diesel costs, every mile saved for every engineer or delivery driver translates not just into a lower carbon footprint, but also into a tangible benefit for the company,' Sybase's Alison Henderson says.

BOX: Airversent scheduling tips

1. Applications must be simple and intuitive - with absolute minimum training requirement. Where necessary, applications can be structured to step the user through a process, with mandatory actions at some stages (eg force a condition inspection of a component)

2. Engineers and field operatives should not be required to connect over the air in order to use mobile devices, otherwise they may well have to climb out of a culvert, or do something equally inconvenient, in order to re-establish comms - when all that is needed may be to check something on a job form.

3. Typing text is less productive (and much less accurate) than using drop-down lists wherever possible.

4. Data retrieval and sending must be a single button-press action, with all necessary error handling controlled by the application.

5 Application updates must be automatic and seamless in the field.

6. Comms must be integrated within the device.

7. Without 'push' technology, the application is not a 'despatch' system. GPRS does not replace genuine 'push' technology.

8. Device management is vitally important. In the event of failure in the field, a method of replacement, re-registration and reloading of user data in the minimum time must be available.