Taking a Strategic Approach
Early scheduling solutions delivered start-of-day batch processing taking all the jobs and churning out schedules based on available engineer resources, using a set of basic business rules and route optimization to reduce travel time and mileage between jobs.
Start-of-day scheduling delivers tangible benefits but it is an essentially unplanned process that does not take into account any of the day-to-day dynamics of the business. In modern service environments it is no longer enough to look at basic performance parameters such as the number of calls engineers can make in a day. While customers are demanding more by imposing stricter SLAs with cumulative penalties, successful service organizations are closely scrutinizing their productivity and operational costs. Using advanced business analytics and historical data patterns they can employ a more strategic approach to their activities and ensure that they can meet service demand efficiently, assigning revenue and profitability targets to drive the process.
Taking a strategic approach requires a better understanding of every aspect of the day-to-day business in order to make the required changes and plan for current and future business requirements. Moving forward aimlessly is not an option. Questions that commonly arise include:
- Can we forecast planned and unplanned demand?
- What are our known constraints?
- Do we have enough engineers/technicians?
- Are they in the right locations?
- Do they have the right skills?
- Do they have access to the requisite parts?
- Can they be scheduled effectively?
- Can we do this profitably?