Jan/Feb 2006

Real-time job scheduling software is getting more clever, using artificial intelligence to learn by experience, and the benefits are cascading down, meaning quite sophisticated systems are now affordable for smaller businesses. Sharon Clancy reports

The latest generation of job scheduling software is designed to address the two very different requirements of user-companies. Forlarge corporations with hundreds or thousands of mobile workers, the new generation of integrated scheduling software is so intuitive and fast that sellers are calling it artificial intelligence.

At the other end of the market, application sellers have developed scheduling software to suit small and medium-sized enterprises - systems that don't need an in-house IT manager to implement or manage them.

"Artificial intelligence" is the term given to the more responsive algorithms used in the integrated job scheduling application. The suppliers who are using it says that while their new scheduling systems still use fixed algorithms and customer-defined parameters to optimise schedules, those rules are designed to be "softer" and more flexible than in the past. The idea, they say, is to give the software more freedom to select the best result using the information currently available.

 

Typically, such systems can accommodate far more data and calculate the effect of a host of variables very quickly - often in seconds, which is what customer-centric real-time scheduling demands. At the very least, less human tweaking of the schedule is necessary to achieve the optimum result.

One impressive feature of these new systems is that, like humans, they can learn from past experience. "If worker A takes thirty minutes to complete a particular task, but worker B only takes twenty minutes, the job scheduler can take that into account when optimising the day's work or deciding where to allocate the next job." That's how it's summed up by Chris Meade, product marketing manager for @Road, the new name for Vidus, the field service application specialist.

"It's not all Big Brother; the system can also take into account, for example, the fact that worker A needs to finish early on a Friday to do the school run, or to schedule the last job as close to home as possible."

@Road's Taskforce 7 synchronises operations, customer service and support using artificial-intelligence algorithms to coordinate people, skills, resources and inventory, and to optimise field service delivery in real time.

"Taskforce gives service managers a real-time view across the service network, so that managers can meet fixed and unplanned service commitments," Meade says. "Like many of the new generation of service applications, it can be synchronised with call centre and other field service applications including asset management. It offers a live view across the field service resource network, to deliver intelligent job scheduling and routing."

ClickSoftware's Field Service Optimization is an integrated modular application that allows various departments to share data. It includes workload forecasting, workforce planning, shift planning, servicing scheduling, intelligent problem resolution, wireless workforce management and analysis. The analytical package incorporates forecasting that automatically merges management, history, marketing, and sales input, dynamic capacity planning and live scheduling updates.

The company's ClickSchedule application simultaneously considers factors such as real-road travel time, resource load, service level agreements, work priority, customer contracts and preferences, technician skill levels and efficiency, overtime costs, and other user-defined objectives.

Field service application specialist Sidewinder Europe has added a real-time performance measurement tool to its RealTIME Scheduler software. ServiceVIEW graphically and numerically summarises performance against measurement criteria such as SLA levels or number of appointments per day. It also predicts performance and KPIs based on real-time events managed by RealTIME Scheduler, providing alerts and monitoring the execution of the service plan.

Early warnings are clearly displayed where performance is falling or is projected to fall below agreed levels - which means organisations can prevent these predictable occurrences from happening in the future. Customer service and management teams can drill down on specific criteria and analyse data in greater detail, such as performance of individual field engineer - making it possible to deal with issues before they affect customers.

Comparisons can also be made on-screen without the need to analyse historical data. "ServiceVIEW provides an aggregated KPI view of scheduling operations including historical, real-time and future performance measurements. It provides total visibility of the performance of an organisation's resources," says Derek Brown, sales and marketing director at Sidewinder Europe.

The scheduling engine in Solarvista's 6.5 Optimizing Scheduler allocates work according to current business priorities. It knows the exact travel distances and expected road travel times for each part of the day, and skill levels for personnel. The company says that over 250,000 iterations are considered in a matter of a few minutes.

When implemented with Solarvista's Mobile Worker wireless job despatch application, the Optimizing Scheduler can drip-feed jobs to the mobile workforce on an ongoing basis, ensuring that the most efficient resource is used at any one time. Service slots can be offered to customers either on an appointment basis, using the least-cost option, or in real time to ensure SLAs are met. Solarvista says field service headcounts can typically be reduced by 8per cent, and despatcher head count by 80 per cent.

If your enterprise hasn't yet grown to the size where it requires such an advanced solution, the good news is that the scheduling application sellers have identified small and medium-sized enterprises as the next sector to target. Scheduling software for SMEs may not come with the artificial intelligence label, but it will often offer a host of user-defined parameters that allow the scheduler application to prioritise jobs in a way that suits his or her own business.

There has been a growing realisation that manual systems are not the most efficient way of managing mobile workforces, even in companies where it is possible to run a field service operation by manual allocation of service calls. Customers want better service and there's pressures to reduce costs, and that combination means many SMEs are now preparing to dip their toe into the uncharted waters of wireless job despatch and mobile data collection.

"The technology has reached the level of maturity where companies who invest in it can gain a competitive advantage," says Laurent Othacéhé, managing director of 360 Technologies. He explains: "Job allocation has historically been based mainly on territory. Say, for example, a certain area was Bob's territory. Every day Bob would get allocated seven jobs. The service manager would know he could do five of those comfortably and often six. The seventh would get done the same day, if things went well. If not, it would be reallocated to him for the following day."

This somewhat cavalier approach to customer service is no longer acceptable, Othacéhé believes. "Users had the budget to spend on bespoke solutions, and in-house IT departments to manage the project - people who talked the same language as the application sellers. Now that market is saturated, and sellers have realised that what suits large companies doesn't necessarily suit mid-market companies with between a hundred and a thousand engineers. The latest generation of scheduling software reflects that."

Web-delivery of systems, either directly to companies or via managed mobile data services, helps eliminate the need for in-house IT experts. 360 Technologies' own scheduling software is Web-enabled for ease of integration, and the company has also teamed up with Telepartner to deliver its dynamic scheduling application via Telepartner's Servicenet pay-as-you-go Web-based service.

Jobs are input into the system as they arrive, with the Dynamic Scheduling Engine automatically allocating the job to the most appropriate engineer. Configurable parameters can include location, availability and equipment and skills level, and even remaining available working time.

The DSE is a multi-platform, multi-session Web service which delivers features such as demand forecasting, workforce capacity planning, long-term scheduling, online appointment taking, real-time call response optimisation, mixed reactive, planned and ad-hoc calls, as well as extensive workforce profiling tools.

The system monitors and records all operational transactions so it can generate metrics and statistics in real time to reflect the performance of call response, adherence to SLAs, penalty management, cost of visits, travel time, productive and idle time.

Three metrics can be used in a "dashboard" fashion for live monitoring, or can be built into a management information system to integrate automatically with service delivery performance reporting.

Managed mobile data service provider Cognito now includes job scheduling as part of its Activus one-stop application. Meanwhile, other application specialists are teaming up with a mobile data experts to offer similar integrated packages. One of the latest is a joint venture between Idesta Solutions and French-based Delia Systems. Delia Systems' Opti-Time software provides real-time job booking and scheduling capabilities and Idesta Solutions provides mobile solutions for the field service market.

Idesta is integrating the Delia appointment and scheduling software into its own mobility application, and says it will then be in a position to provide a full package of integrated scheduling and mobility applications to clients.

Scheduling expert LetsComIT has recently merged with an IT consultancy and software specialist, the Information Dynamics Group. LetsComIT's scheduling system incorporates drag-and-drop technology that allows managers to switch appointments between staff on screen while ensuring that pre-set criteria are not broken (requirements such as working hours, or necessary skills). If a member of staff does not meet the required constraints, the system will not allow the job to be allocated to them.

At regular intervals jobs to be allocated are entered into the scheduler and the data is sent to the optimisation software. This selects the preferred worker for the job and the optimum sequence of jobs for the day. The scheduler can be updated instantly as soon as a job status changes, giving a global overview of the workforce. The data is then sent to the mobile worker's PDA or other device via the LetsComIT server, which manages all the scheduling activity and maintains the necessary databases, so is easy to integrate into existing corporate systems.

Nowadays businesses should expect more than simply an electronic "whiteboard" from scheduling software. "Intelligent job planning systems combined with adaptable and customisable PDA applications give that dynamism." So says director Sonia Richard.

Whether you have a large or small mobile workforce, the job scheduling experts have an application that will suit your needs and pocket.

Courier IT

Time is critical for courier companies, especially on same-day deliveries, so it is hardly surprising they have been enthusiastic adopters of real-time job scheduling applications from companies such as Talecom and Courier Exchange.

Talecom's Wireless Delivered uses an intelligent middleware layer to open a continuous line of communication between the company and the courier's PDA over a GRPS network (Talecom's partner is 02).

There are two variants: Express for same-day deliveries, and Runsheet for next-day deliveries. Chief executive Jan O'Hara explains: "Same-day operators require instant knowledge of where all the fleet is in order for the user to be able to direct the nearest driver to the collection, whereas overnight deliveries use different parameters. These might include collections or deliveries specified for the afternoon, delivery failure codes, and the most efficient routing for each vehicle."

The courier company can determine the parameters for job allocation. An extra sophistication with courier systems such as the NX application from DA Systems is that couriers can choose to accept or reject the job, reflecting the fact that many couriers are self-employed, and may be signed up to one or more of the national networks.

With the NX application, drivers or couriers can also update the system by entering data such as package-on-board, obtaining authorisation for waiting time and updating estimated arrival times (if they get stuck in a traffic accident for example.) NX connects to DA Systems' ACI transport software, which can also integrated with other mobile data systems.

The latest job allocation for couriers comes from eCourier, which takes 85 per cent of its bookings online. It has developed a technology it calls AIBA (Advanced Information Based Allocation System). AIBA tracks all the "eCouriers", keeping a record of what they are carrying, where the are heading and how fast they are moving. It also factors in the latest traffic and weather information and compares the journey with previous patterns.

This allows it to calculate the impact of a traffic jam, a thunderstorm, or simply the delay a typically busy Friday afternoon will have on a journey. When the journey is complete, AIBA compares its prediction with what actually happened, and then uses this data to improve the accuracy of its next predictions. "In essence it is learning from its past experience to improve the customer's next experience," says chief executive Tom Allason.

This allows to it predict more accurately a travel time for a collection and delivery and allocate the delivery to the nearest courier. Once the delivery is made, the client receives an email with the electronic POD.

eCourier is currently London-based and has 80 couriers on its books, although the application can handle up to 10,000 couriers.