Do you have regular customers and signed contracts? Do you deliver services to your customers according to their business cycle? People that manage logistic and supply chains know that planning optimal routes for fieldwork technicians can be difficult and time-consuming.
It’s even more demanding when the planning process involves many employees and multiple stops. Additionally, other factors influence planning, such as the limited accessibility of destination points. A poorly planned route results in completing fewer appointments and a financial loss for the company.
Fieldwork in the above scenario is a daily routine for the following industries:
- Logistics – delivering supplies to stores, service points, or restaurants during designated hours
- Finance – maintaining ATMs located in closed areas
- Healthcare – collecting medical waste
- Technical assistance – mandatory inspections of elevators, office equipment, or installations
These tasks are characterized by regular or on-demand visits at customer’s premises. Often, these visits need to be performed during designated hours. Sometimes, it’s the customer who limits the time (e.g. by scheduling the hour for accepting the delivery) or it results from other regulations (e.g. opening hours of the office center or shopping center).
What if the route was planned for us by an algorithm in an application?
GeoTask allows the dispatcher to optimally manage the tasks. This means convenient scheduling of appointments with customers respecting time constraints.
Convenient and systematic
Planning tasks is even easier if you know the operating hours of the place where you regularly perform the task or complete the delivery. You can save them in the application and never have to remember them again – GeoTask has a feature called “Places” which allows users to add business hours.
During automatic planning, the application considers the availability of each place. If you plan the tasks manually, GeoTask will remind you about potential unavailability on a particular day or time. You can also set the precise range of availability – singular, daily, or weekly. If your appointments with the customer are scheduled in a particular cycle, GeoTask automatically generates the next task. It also considers completion deadlines.
What will you get?
- Automated planning of periodical tasks
- Optimal routes for fieldwork technicians – no more wandering around
- Assured completion of tasks during designated hours
- Assured validity of a customer’s address
- More time for collecting and loading the supplies and preparing the fleet
What will you avoid?
- Speeding tickets – the delivery workers and other fieldwork technicians don’t have to hurry thanks to optimal routin
- Planning the route in spreadsheets or on paper
- Repeating appointments
Give it a try
Sign up for a live showcase of GeoTask – we’ll show you how the Field Service Management system can support your business.