In today's service organization, knowing exactly where your field engineers are during the day is moving from being a luxury to being a necessity. Emergency/short SLA calls come in, customers call about missed appointments, you want your field force to be safe when they service customers out in the middle of nowhere, and you want to ensure your policies around vehicle use are adhered to.
Such innovations as global positioning systems (GPS), cell tower identification and cellular triangulation, which have long been seen as "cool technology," are now mainstream. But in many organizations, service managers are still unsure as to how to get beyond "cool" to bottom line impact.
Location based services (LBS) open up a world of opportunities for the savvy service organization, especially when integrated with service optimization technology. Optimized service organizations are able to move beyond the basics of location technology, to employ the information in new, more actionable ways. When used with optimized scheduling, for example, LBS can help dispatchers anticipate and prevent late arrivals-improving customer service and minimizing unnecessary travel-and be compliant with strict dispatching lead-time regulations required of some industries.
ClickSoftware's ClickLocate solution was designed to work with our ClickSchedule solution to bring maximized effectiveness to field service organizations.