Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
There are many proven benefits from automating and optimizing the scheduling of your workforce. Success stories with IFS 360 Scheduling include 15% reductions in travel and overtime costs, 40% improvement in technician productivity, and 20%+ improvements in service level compliance and ontime service delivery. The increasing focus on service by companies is matched by escalating consumer expectations; not only product performance, but also the speed and efficiency of recovery. The logic is simple. If the product is not working, the consumer is not getting any value; the very reason they purchased in the
BEFORE
INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT <100 TECHNICIANS IT SERVICES ~300 TECHNICIANS TELECOMS >10,000 TECHNICIANS
Dispatchers Technicians Job/Day SLA hit rate Travel time Same day response Avg. time of last call Calls in SLA Tech utilitization
Today, optimal service delivery performance must be part of any organizations key objectives if they want to retain customer loyalty, repeat purchasing and a positive word-of-mouth reputation. The adoption of new technology to improve service delivery has been patchy to say the least. Partly, this has been due to the lack of supporting infrastructure and connectivity, but the increasing ubiquity of wireless networks means real-time interaction with the field is now a cost-effective realitydispensing with the need for an endless stream of paperwork. This puts pressure on the back office to automate more processes that deliver instant responses to real-time events that are communicated immediately from the field. Early scheduling software was only able to deliver a start-of-day, or static, schedule. This batch process takes all of the outstanding work and churns out schedules based on available technician resources using a basic set of business rules and route opti-
mization to reduce travel time and mileage between jobs. But, this approach cannot take into account the day-to-day dynamics of the business. Todays service environment demands more than to simply take care of basic performance parameters, such as the number of calls a technician can complete in a day. Now, the focus must be much more on delivering a great consumer experience. A more strategic approach is required. This means a better understanding of the demands on the service team and every aspect of their work, in order to make the required changes and plan effectively for both current and future business requirements. Moving forward aimlessly is not an option. For an increasing number of organizations, a realtime scheduling toolset is the only way to sustain service performance, to meet burgeoning consumer demands, and to grow the business. Being able to satisfy planned demand is only half the battle; being able to respond to, and satisfy, unplanned demand is key.
Can you forecast planned/unplanned demand? what are your known constraints? Do you have enough technicians/engineers? Are they in the right locations? Do they have the right skills?
Do they have access to the required parts? Can they be scheduled effectively? Can they be rescheduled in a timely way? Can you do all of this profitably?
Our best in class, real-time scheduling and workforce planning technology, plus components for easy integration into existing fleet management, work order management, mobile data and CRM/ERP systems, means rapid return on investment for you; making you a consistently reliable partner for your customersa promise made can be a promise kept, every time.
SERVICE MARGIN
The question as to whether service should be a costor a profit-center has been around for twenty years or more, and the argument rages on. Our take on this is very straightforward. We believe that the best measure of success in field-based service is the margin delivered by the operation. That is, simply the difference between the value delivered to enduser customers and the cost to deliver that service. Now, customer value can be measured in many ways. For example, it might be revenue; it might be customer satisfaction ratings, or lifetime customer value. However you measure it, we use that value as an important baseline factor when calculating schedules and in determining priorities between different activities. We match that with the cost of technicians travel, plus their on-site costs, to determine the highest margin we might achieve for each individual job. We aggregate that for all of the jobs in the plan and evaluate many thousands of alternatives to determine the best possible schedule.
by making JIT decisions. And the chances of actually delivering whats on the plan increase equally dramatically. A good decision can only be the right decision if it is made at the right time. Maximum technician utilization and maximum customer satisfactiondeliver both at minimum cost.
ALWAYS OPTIMIZING
We are never satisfied that we have got the best, or optimal plan. Our Dynamic Scheduling Engine is constantly evaluating the problem, seeking alternatives that might deliver a higher service margina
better plan. This constant cycle of calculation and evaluation means that we always have an up-to-date plan available, one that has taken every input into accountevery piece of feedback from the field, every new and amended job detail, every GPS fix from a vehicle, and including the impact of passing time on factors such as SLA compliance. And we are always looking at the bigger picture, by evaluating the whole problem all of the time. We also believe the same of our software and are constantly striving to enhance our tools and improve their performanceso that you can improve yours.
A GOOD DECISION CAN ONLY BE THE RIGHT DECISION IF IT IS MADE AT THE RIGHT TIME
DELIVERING WORLD-CLASS
Your customers want you to deliver excellent service both planned and reactiveusing your specialist knowledge and expertise to keep their equipment running at peak performance; after all, that is what they are paying for. All the while, benchmarking you against other service experiences and your word-ofinternet reputation.
get you world-class performance. The technology needs to be complemented with a complete range of specialist services to support you through the initial business change and software implementationand into the future; making sure that you continually get value from your investment for years to come. Success requires the commitment and involvement of your staff and resources, and of ours too. Our team of experienced consultants will bring you a wealth of expertise about schedulingincluding tips and techniques for optimizing technician performance and work alongside you through the transition; transferring skills and knowledge through formal training and everyday interaction. We are as committed to your success as you are. We will help you assess the impact of introducing
We are sure you feel the same towards IFS 360 Schedulingwe need to deliver too. To meet your expectations of a partner, jointly focused on enhancing your business, we have to perform reliably and consistently over time to earn your trust. Developing the best software tools is not enough; just having the applications installed will not
automated scheduling and advanced toolson processes, on job roles and on your customers. We will help you communicate with all stakeholders about the changes, the planned improvements and the benefits for everyone. We will help you address and overcome the natural concerns that your staff will have, as winning hearts and minds is a critical success factor for this kind of strategic initiative. Focusing on the people does not mean neglecting the technical aspects. We use industry-standard approaches and open technologies to ensure minimum impact on your current infrastructure. The IFS 360 scheduling engine and other components use your existing systems as the source of data, so integration is also a critical success factor. We have used the knowledge gained through many pre-
vious projects to make sure that IFS 360 Scheduling software is easy to integrate into your existing IT infrastructure, whether it is installed on premise or running in the cloud. The wealth of experience, and the breadth of our consultants expertise, has been distilled into a proven project methodologyone that we are confident will deliver your objectives. You will have approaches that you know work in your business. We will work with you to synthesize the best of both and build a winning combination. We have simplified and standardized as much as we can, guaranteeing faster delivery and less risk. In todays ultra-competitive and challenging business environment, you can rely on us to deliver world-class.
JUST HAVING THE APPLICATIONS INSTALLED WILL NOT GET YOU WORLD-CLASS PERFORMANCE
10
IN BENCHMARK TESTS AGAINST OTHER SCHEDULING ENGINES, THE DSE CAME TOP IN SPEED OF PROCESSING, ROUTE EFFICIENCY AND CONSTRAINT MATCHING (MEETING BUSINESS RULES) ON DATASETS RANGING FROM 50 TO 50,000 RESOURCES.
11
The multi-workspace Scheduling workbench. Performance visibility, and real-time tools for exception tracking and resolution.
Scheduling Workbench (iSWB) encapsulates enduser interaction through a series of workspaces that delineate functions and responsibilities. Its rich, easy-to-use functionality enables the user to view, understand and interact with the schedule; focusing on proactively managing exceptions to minimize loss of efficiency in the service delivered, and keeping promises for customers.
Map displays of the optimized travel routes, including individual turn-by-turn directions, are available in the Scheduling Workbench and are continually updated to ensure that the latest information is always visible.
APPOINTMENT BOOKING
The Appointment Booking Engine complements the DSEs real-time, always-optimizing, approach to dynamic scheduling with functions that allow appointments to be seamlessly mixed in with other work types (e.g. break/fix and PPM) whilst retaining maximum flexibility and efficiency in the use of resources. Potential appointment times are calculated with regard to existing workload and your business policies to ensure cost-effective and efficient scheduling. Appointments can be offered and confirmed by your staff, or self-served via an online portal, confident in the knowledge that the promise can be kept.
RESOURCE PLANNING
The 360 Advanced Resource Planner (ARP) module provides visual and automated tools to drive the
12
planning and rostering of human resources over time. This can be based on predicted workloads or specific projects, or might simply be used for shift planning. Resource management policies and legislative constraints (e.g. Working Time Directive) plus shift patterns, skills, and breaks are enforced when building the plan. The results can be sent to the DSE to enable dynamic scheduling of the reactive work alongside the planned commitments.
insight, whilst others need to look at data and trends over longer periods of time. For example, the Exceptions Board is provided for the scheduler/dispatcher and reports potential service problems or jeopardy situations in real time. This focus on exceptions enables proactive management to eliminate issues before they escalate and impact customer satisfaction. Other analyses provide managers with insights into actual performance by monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Real-time access to, for example, SLA hit rates, time on-site and distance travelled can be critical to making intra-day adjustments that fine tune service delivery and ensure that KPIs are met; rather than a post-mortem to try and understand what has already gone wrong. The 360 Data Mart populates a business intelligence database with snapshots of the planned and actual performance. This enables analytical reporting via many 3rd-party toolsyou may already have these in placeas well as standard IFS 360 Scheduling reports and dashboards.
13
THE TECHNOLOGY
Automated scheduling systems do notindeed cannotoperate in isolation. They form part of an ecosystem of applications that cover the end-to-end service processes, making ease of integration an important consideration. Not only must any scheduling system comply with your technical environment today, you want the reassurance that it will continue to do so. This is best achieved by conformance to standards and a commitment to future compatibility.
Software as a Service (SaaS)-proven, giving you the choice to host the software on-premise or in the cloud. The applications can be dynamically scaled, enabling computing power to be added or removed as required, without stopping and restartingto meet changing demand levels for scheduling computation. The performance scales linearly, in line with the available computing power. This means that the DSE is capable of scaling seamlessly from scheduling tens of technicians to scheduling tens of thousands. Multiple scheduling problems can be handled simultaneously across many organizations, using the same configuration and underlying architecture. The comprehensive, extensible data model allows for user-defined, customizable business rules to meet the most complex needs of a service organizations scheduling requirements. The system is entirely data-driven, continuously improving the scheduling in response to real-time updates. Once initialized, only data changes need to be sent to the system and only changes in allocation are returned.
The IFS 360 Scheduling product set is web-based and built on the Microsoft .NET framework to ensure maximum performance and flexibility. The DSE integrates quickly and easily with complementary applications (e.g. mobile data, vehicle tracking, service management) through an XML-driven, SOAP implementation of web services that utilizes WCF. There is a standard integration to IFS Applications, using the OAGiS-compliant IFS Connect broker module. IFS 360 Schedulings applications are already
TECHNI CI
A /PD AN
BROADCAS T
NAGER MA
K OFFIC BAC EA
LICATION PP
Travel Manager
Call Centre
14
AMERICAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +1 888 437 4968 ARgEnTInA, BRAzIL, CAnADA, MEXICO, UnITED STATES ASIA PACIFIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +65 63 33 33 00 AUSTRALIA, InDOnESIA, JAPAn, MALAySIA, nEw zEALAnD, PhILIPPInES, PR ChInA, SIngAPORE, ThAILAnD EUROPE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .+48 22 577 45 00 BALKAnS, CzECh REPUBLIC, gEORgIA, hUngARy, ISRAEL, KAzAKhSTAn, POLAnD, RUSSIA AnD CIS, SLOvAKIA, TURKEy, UKRAInE EUROPE CENTRAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +49 9131 77 340 AUSTRIA, BELgIUM, gERMAny, ITALy, nEThERLAnDS, SwITzERLAnD EUROPE WEST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +44 1494 428 900 FRAnCE, IRELAnD, PORTUgAL, SPAIn, UnITED KIngDOM MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
.................................................
InDIA, SOUTh AFRICA, SRI LAnKA, UnITED ARAB EMIRATES NORDIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +46 13 460 4000 DEnMARK, nORwAy, SwEDEn FINLAND AND THE BALTIC AREA
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +358
102 17 9300
www.IFSWORLD.com
ThIS DOCUMEnT MAy COnTAIn STATEMEnTS OF POSSIBLE FUTURE FUnCTIOnALITy FOR IFS SOFTwARE PRODUCTS AnD TEChnOLOgy. SUCh STATEMEnTS OF FUTURE FUnCTIOnALITy ARE FOR InFORMATIOn PURPOSES OnLy AnD ShOULD nOT BE InTERPRETED AS Any COMMITMEnT OR REPRESEnTATIOn. IFS AnD ALL IFS PRODUCT nAMES ARE TRADEMARKS OF IFS. ThE nAMES OF ACTUAL COMPAnIES AnD PRODUCTS MEnTIOnED hEREIn MAy BE ThE TRADEMARKS OF ThEIR RESPECTIvE OwnERS.
IFS AB 2012
En1674-1 Production: IFS Corporate Marketing, January 2012. Printing: DanagrdLiTHO AB, deshg, Sweden.