Field Force Management involves managing people on their field jobs to increase efficiency, maximize customer satisfaction, and minimize operational costs. Field force managers collect all the information they can get as their employees work out in the field and are focused on increasing productivity by improving and optimizing the processes by utilizing this information. However, achieving consistency while traversing through multiple levels of coordination regularly while keeping the costs low can be a challenging task for companies.
Let us have a look at some of the problems in Field Force Management faced by companies:
Existing Problems in Field Force Management
- Loss of Productivity – Many field force management systems fails to ensure efficiency and optimize utilization. Some of the common obstacles that hinder the productivity of Field Forces include – excessive manual activity, poor performance management, inaccurate forecasting, and lack of transparency.
- Complicated Workflows – Be it a sales order, a service job, or meeting with a prospect –Field Force personnel need to collaborate with multiple teams spread across the company to get the job done. Clumsy workflows and approval mechanisms delay the process and negatively the customer satisfaction.
- Lack of Real-Time Connectivity – Businesses have an urgent need to improve monitoring of their staff. They need to know who their staff is serving, the time spent on clients, orders done per day, and other related information which directly impacts the overall efficiency. Lack of real-time connectivity makes it a daunting task for businesses to monitor all their field force staff on a daily basis.
- Overhead Costs – Excessive manual activity increases the burden of overhead costs on the businesses. Businesses need to focus on optimizing their costs by automated all the activities which are repetitive and eliminate all the activities that do not add value to the process.
- Intricate Integration Process – Businesses need applications that provide them a seamless cross-platform experience. Filed Force Management involves a collaboration of multiple teams and data which needs to be extracted or shared from multiple sources within the company. However, businesses are not fully able to utilize their data because of the limited integration capabilities of existing Field Force Management applications.
- Lack of Advanced Technology – Field Salesforce generates a lot of useful business data. If this data put to use with help of advanced technologies like data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence can help businesses to gain useful insights that can be used to improve customer service. There very limited applications that have such capabilities.
All these challenges bolster the argument for a better solution which not only brings in the much-needed discipline but also helps in streamlining the field operations processes. A simple and effective solution built on advanced technology that can automate the key tasks within field sales and operations, and help companies to track and contact the workforce remotely when required. All this at an affordable cost. FieldMI might just be the solution we are looking for!
FieldMI is a field force management platform that is aiming to make technology affordable and accessible to ordinary field staff with all necessary capabilities including Workflow algorithms, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Offline capabilities, Language Support, and many more advanced features. Below is the list of features that differentiate FieldMI from other Field Force Management solutions available in the market.
Features of FieldMI
- Process Innovation – Unlike other applications or platforms Process Innovation is the heart of FieldMI. This platform focuses on Delivery Process Enhancement by allowing users to create customized automated workflows that suit their business processes.
- Affordable Technology – FieldMI acts as a one-stop solution for all the aspects of operations management. There are multiple packages in the offering priced affordably which businesses can choose based on their requirement.
- Scalability – FieldMI platform allows businesses to customize and build mobile applications according to their business needs which makes it extremely scalable. These applications can be accessed from a mobile phone. There is no need for additional investment in the form of servers and systems. Also, all the related training material is pre-built into the application which can be readily accessed by the users.
- Enhanced integration – FieldMI can be integrated with many of the existing ERP, CRM, and data visualization applications available in the market. These include the likes of SAP, ORACLE, Tableau, and more.
- Latest Technology – FieldMI provides advanced analytics to the users and enables integration with visualization applications like Tableau that allow users to drill down to the unit level data. It also has built-in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities to help users to auto-generate and predict sales orders. Additionally, advanced Location Based Servicing capabilities help businesses to generate optimized maps for sales representatives and track their live movement.
Productivity Improvement – FieldMI promises a minimum 30 percent improvement in employee productivity. This is achieved by the increased visibility of the employee movement, accuracy in expense calculation, and maintenance of employee attendance augmented by real-time tracking.
How to start and not stop at the end of this article piece?
I would recommend starting simply by just taking this approach, which has negligible risk, simple and yet an amazingly effective positive step towards our goal of a proactive strategy
A) Take pen -paper or manual method (start now)
Start identifying key issues and eliminate them by implementing the recommended strategy using your existing technology resources for a known and low-risk segment of customers within your business to find out what works and what doesn’t. Indeed, this causes efforts, but this will pave the way for better clarity around unknown risks.
B) Take help from technology
Work towards making it unattended, assisted by using Super-fast digital solution such that it works autonomously without losing its efficacy by engaging a solid, affordable Business and Technology solution partner.
If you are a CEO/COO/CIO/Managing Director/General Manager who is spending more time in reactive/preventive mode than future-facing, please reach out for an exploratory conversation.
Our Contact details
Pradeep Mishra (Director and Co-founder)
pradeep.mishra@aurionsystems.com.au
Ashok Mulchandani (Partner – Business Success and Strategic Transformation)
ashok.mulchandani@aurionsystems.com.au
Amit Bhagat (Director – Business Strategy)
amit.bhagat@aurionsystems.com.au
Please feel free to leave your suggestions and thoughts in the comment box below!
