Virgin Media has rolled out a workforce management system to its 1,000 field engineers, and says it has enabled the company's despatchers to compile schedules in minutes before the start of the working day, rather than taking hours, as before. They can also respond quickly to routine changes to their activities during the working day.

The system was developed by TOA Technologies, and runs on a hosted software-as-a-service basis. It uses a predictive statistical engine to analyse learned historical performance patterns; then it overlays skill sets, job history and customer proximity to predict the amount of time each engineer will take to complete an appointment, and personalises his or her schedule accordingly.

The TOA solution combines this predictive approach with what the company claims is the fastest scheduling engine on the market.

TOA Technologies specialises in hosted solutions providing customer-focused mobile workforce management for large enterprises. The full system includes tools providing planning, routing, despatching and business intelligence.