Why you should invest in location-powered workforce optimization
For many businesses, the workforce is the face that customers interact with and a key driver of the customer’s experience with the brand. Especially for businesses that have remote or dispersed workers, such as gig employers, traveling service providers, and last-mile delivery companies, the worker’s location — whether they are on time for an appointment or off-track for a delivery — directly influences loyalty and revenue.
Low efficiency across a dispersed workforce can result in decreased customer and partner satisfaction and reduced profitability, making location a must-have for business leaders and their teams.
How product teams can help optimize dispersed workforces
For product teams tasked with building mobile app solutions that increase visibility into employee productivity and field performance, location tracking can provide the data necessary to identify and resolve workforce inefficiencies. While some product teams develop location infrastructure in-house, these solutions can be costly to build and maintain, especially as businesses grow.
With these challenges in mind – or after a team has experienced limitations with their homegrown solution – product leaders may enlist the support of a location partner that can provide benefits such as:
- Scalability
- Rapid deployment and time to value
- Ongoing maintenance
- Alignment with evolving regulatory requirements
How location infrastructure enables workforce efficiency
Location infrastructure can provide real-time data that teams can use to optimize the workforce from fleet management to gig workers. Here are four ways that location can help businesses better manage their workforce.
1. Power live ETAs and arrival alerts to customers to reduce missed deliveries and appointments
For businesses managing sensitive package deliveries or in-home appointments, generating real-time ETAs and arrival alerts can reduce the number of missed appointments or deliveries.
By ensuring arrivals are completed within the initially scheduled time slot, businesses can reduce rescheduling efforts and eliminate the cost of returning for a secondary visit or delivery, saving team members valuable time.
2. Enable rapid, proximity-based dispatch for new jobs or backup employees
Businesses that rely on dispersed employees must have a process for dispatching employees to new jobs. For instance, delivery drivers must be notified when a new order has been placed and is ready for delivery. Brands like Uber make use of location services to connect riders with drivers nearest to their location, reducing wait times for riders and drive times for the dispatched drivers.
By partnering with a location provider, teams can build and customize location-based dispatch systems based on specific needs – tailoring features as the business evolves. This ensures flexibility within the dispatch feature, allowing for rapid adjustments based on workforce availability, coverage zones, and customer needs.
3. Generate customizable reports for data analysis
Location infrastructure gives teams the ability to create filters and export data to analyze specific areas of focus for the business. These reports offer a window into average trip lengths and outliers, the number of deliveries or visits being completed, customer wait times, and more. By accessing and organizing this data, logistics teams can identify areas of improvement across the workforce.
4. Gather actionable fleet vehicle location and trip data
Through trip tracking, fleet managers and other operations personnel can gain valuable insights into where all fleet vehicles – and dispersed employees – are in real-time. Data around trip length, trip times, arrivals, and departure allow leaders to reduce waiting times at loading docks, enforce working hours, and verify completed deliveries.
How to get started
Businesses managing a dispersed workforce can experience improvements in efficiency by implementing location infrastructure. From increasing customer retention to reducing costs, enabling a location-powered workforce is necessary for businesses.
Using Radar’s location infrastructure platform, businesses can quickly scale location across multiple use cases. Radar provides-industry leading accuracy, so product teams can effectively power all location use cases across their business. By enlisting the help of a location provider, product teams can spend less time deploying and managing location infrastructure and reduce costs by using a single vendor for features like fleet tracking or workforce management. Want to learn more?