New thinking for a new landscape

23 June 2011

The faltering global economy and subsequent Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in the UK has completely changed the environment in which public sector organisations operate. Often bloated services can no longer dip into seemingly never ending funds to survive, says Simon Morris of automated workforce management and optimization solutions company, ClickSoftware.

The public, under pressure themselves, expect efficient frontline services in return for hard earned taxes. And of course the challenges do not stop there; there is also a long-term requirement for all organisations to operate more sustainably and with greater thought toward the environment. How do you begin to address these issues?

Simon Morris, VP, Global Marketing, ClickSoftware.

A good starting point would be to look at your frontline services where I believe there is a huge opportunity to review services and make significant cost savings.

Given the dynamic and varied nature of the public sector, trying to manage your people and resources in the field with manual systems is profoundly inefficient. The commercial sector has long had an answer through specialist optimized workforce management and mobility technologies. At the highest level these solutions enable an organisation to deliver a world class service experience at the lowest possible cost. Or to put it in context, they could deliver the required public services, within the budget allowed by the CSR.

Let me be clear, this technology is proven over many years in the commercial sector. Konica Minolta has improved field workforce productivity by an incredible 22 per cent whilst actually reducing the number of staff it needs to manage the process by nearly 50 per cent. Vivint, a leading player in the home automation market, has improved the utilisation of its 600 field workers by 33 per cent and increased fuel efficiency by 32 per cent. Anglian Water has decreased reliance on overtime by 11 per cent whilst achieving a 33 per cent improvement in customer service levels.
These are not isolated cases. The Aberdeen Group reports that companies that adopted such strategies have achieved substantially higher productivity at considerably lower costs compared to companies that haven’t. Although it is early days, we are now delivering equivalent benefits in the UK to emergency services providers, the NHS and local authorities and seeing a huge uptake in interest.

Burgeoning technology has allowed optimized scheduling and mobility to become part of a greater whole, extending processes further and eradicating duplication of effort. Replacing multiple systems and uniting the back-office, service providers and outsourced service providers in the field with the customer.

In the spirit of entrepreneurism, why not look to social media and smart-phones as a fast route to digital engagement with the public? Facebook, websites or SMS can be used to communicate with customers on their terms, allowing them to choose their most convenient appointment time slots. Once they have done so the workforce management system automatically (and optimally) appoints the appropriate personnel to the job in hand, sending them customer details such as location, equipment and service agreements via their mobile devices. The employee can then turn to their smartphone, tablet, or rugged device to find the most efficient route, access customer information, book a follow-up appointment, obtain sign-off for a job well done and then remotely update related details. This approach not only provides a visibility and a means to audit services with virtually no administration, it also reduces the amount of travel undertaken and therefore the associated carbon footprint.

This technology works to a set of rules that can be optimized over time, so this could be a combination of budgetary considerations, available resources or SLAs. It can, however, also easily be tweaked to take into account government efficiency initiatives.  Shared services have long been a realm occupied by the back-office, however the technology exists to provide flexible, controlled and visible shared services in the frontline. Why stick to inefficient administrative boundaries when local authorities could, as an example, share social working resources? All of this can be accounted for and optimized under a single system to reduce costs.
For continuous improvement, a workforce strategy also needs measurement and feedback. Build business intelligence into this and new levels of transparency allow what-if scenarios to be easily plotted against budgets.  You could for instance quickly look at how to reduce overtime and its impact on service levels, or perhaps find the right balance between in-house and sub-contracted resource.

There is an opportunity to tap into field force technology that has matured significantly to reduce costs, eliminate paper, improve customer services, increase SLA compliance and ultimately regain control. The infrastructures are already there, now is a time to break down walls that are blocking cost savings not just for the new economy, but also for the long term future challenges that lie ahead.

What is your experience of mobile workforce technology? Please write a comment.