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How do you keep track of business performance when your people aren’t under one roof? Gathering the right data to help you make future business decisions isn’t easy, especially if you still rely on paper trails, email and radio comms.
If your customer data, job status tracking and contracts aren’t linked, finding out how to improve processes and grow business can feel impossible.
Workforce management software automates your reporting and tracks the metrics that you need. Here’s how that works and why it matters.
Understand how your business runs with advanced analytics
When you’re feeling around for weak spots that need your attention, you want clear performance data that doesn’t take an age to pull together. Because workforce management software keeps all your files and tracking in one platform, it automatically populates your business reporting. You can analyse your performance by customer, job type, worker and more.
Let’s take performance by worker as an example. If you’ve been relying on paper-based timesheets, you have two potential pitfalls to contend with. Firstly, how reliable is the data provided by your worker? Secondly, how do you compile that data into a meaningful report -- and how long does that take?
Workforce management software allows your workers to update job status from their mobile devices in real-time. Not when they’ve finished for the day and are relying on memory and guesswork. This allows your staff to:
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Reduce the time you spend compiling reports
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Set up custom reports to run automatically
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Improve accuracy by removing human error
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Identify revenue leakage and missed opportunities
The result? Not only do you improve productivity, but you save money. Workforce management software users gain a 20% uplift in efficiency by using their reports to optimise their workflows.
Why your business needs advanced analytics
Business intelligence traditionally focuses on what has happened and where so that managers can make smarter business decisions. For example, you might see that you completed more jobs last month than usual.
Advanced analytics goes further. With advanced analytics, you look to answer why a trend has set in and how you should address it. For example, you might decide to expand your workforce, fleet and other assets or look for other ways to maintain your uptick in productivity. To make the best decisions, you need to understand if a trend is set to continue and why. Otherwise, you might find yourself investing time and money into the wrong part of your business, simply because you don’t have visibility into the cause of a trend.
Without the right metrics, you’ll lose out
Whether it’s because your competitors up their game ahead of you or because you’re simply tracking the wrong metrics, you will lose out. For example, it’s great to track your performance by customer, but if you’re not cross-referencing that with the profitability of those relationships, you’ll end up focusing valuable time and resources on the wrong parts of your business. You might see an increase in jobs completed, but if they are high-cost contracts, you could be harming your profit margin rather than boosting it.
That’s why you need the full picture. Workforce management software captures all the moving parts of your business. It doesn’t matter how spread out your people are anymore. You have real information being crunched in real time.
Becoming a data-driven organisation enables you to deliver efficiencies, lower operating costs, optimise process and increase profitability. It’ll also help you respond faster to customer demand and keep you ahead of your competitors. The right software can take your business to new heights and pay for itself in no time.
