How map-based timelines can help manage productivity

The fewer obstacles you encounter and the fewer inconveniences you experience, the more productive your work will be. This is especially true for field service businesses that work with many customers who need effective and fast solutions on remote work sites. As a service provider, you have to make sure that your customers are satisfied and that your team is using their time to get the job done. 

If you’re trying to manage and improve productivity within your company, you might want to consider utilizing map-based timelines. These are essentially geographical maps that show the routes your employees take to job sites if they needed to travel to other locations during the day, how long they spent in traffic, how long they spent at a specific location, and more. The best way to monitor and record this data is to use a time tracking app that also offers GPS tracking. Atto, for example, offers easy and automated tracking of both working hours and locations of all employees. With only a few taps, employees can clock in and out and have all work-related data stored and ready to be generated into reports.

After you’ve integrated your location-tracking tool, the next step you want to take is analyzing your data to figure out the best ways to manage and boost your teams’ productivity.

Increase Visibility

For field service businesses like those in painting, roofing, plumbing, electrical and more, having map-based timelines available contributes to better decision-making and planning. With these timelines, you’re able to make better estimates for projects and jobs, as well as make predictions on possible problems that can arise. This is especially important when creating forecasts and project proposals. When you know how long your employees spend on a particular job and how long it takes them to travel to and back from the job site, then your estimates will be more accurate. You’ll know what to tell your clients and how to carry out projects successfully. 

In short, you will always know where your team is, and what they’re working on without any back and forth phone calls. 

Route monitoring 

Another way that map-based timelines can help you better manage team productivity is through route monitoring. That’s why a major part of successful on-site projects is showing up on time. If your field technicians spend too much time on the road, the less time they have to work on the job. As a business, completing jobs within a reasonable timeframe and before the end of deadlines is crucial to maintaining productivity. When you’re tracking the routes your employees take, you can analyze if they take a long time to get to job sites and figure out why that is. Is there a lot of traffic on a particular road in the evening? Then scheduling all jobs at that time need to consider a different route than they would normally take. It’s better to spend time completing jobs successfully than spend time sitting in traffic.

Reduce costs 

Productivity is closely related to profitability, in that the more productive your employees are the higher the chances the business has at growing and maintaining a steady cash flow. But if your costs are too high, it won’t matter how productive your team is. Reducing costs and expenses will help manage productivity and make sure that your business is bringing in a profit. With map-based timelines, you can analyze how much of the costs are allocated towards fuel and other travel-related expenses. After you have an overview of how much travel and the location of sites affect the costs, then you can better manage company resources. This data will also help you come up with new ways to make sure that your team is still completing jobs and supporting steady growth.

Better workforce management

If you have software like Atto as part of your company’s everyday work, then your workforce is always connected and optimized. And since Atto also offers the possibility to track location, you will always know where your employees are, what their current job status is, what their schedule is, and if there is something that requires your immediate attention. You have to option to generate a map of each crew and their daily movements, which helps to improve productivity through continuous evaluation. If there are any issues, employees can immediately make changes right away. Especially if there is an accident on the road, a closed bridge, or roads are under construction, being able to notify the whole team and company helps others to avoid these routes. Map-based timelines in these cases help teams steer away from traffic obstacles so that productivity is not compromised. 

More customer satisfaction

Managing productivity is crucial to ensuring that your customers are satisfied and happy. And with location tracking, businesses are able to optimize time and money so that they can get to job sites faster and more efficiently. For businesses that offer services like plumbing and are sometimes requested to complete jobs urgently, speed is a major contributor to customer satisfaction. As a result, they may want to hire your business again, they will have positive reviews and can even turn into your most loyal ambassadors. 

Software like Atto is a must-have for any business that wants to stay ahead of challenges and make sure they have the best possible tools to manage and boost productivity. Location tracking is a key component to better decision-making, planning, and project management. The more data you have, the better your analyses are and you’ll be able to proactively resolve potential problems. Give Atto a try today!