If scheduling your operations and managing your asset list involves manual processes, spreadsheets, WhatsApp, or multiple apps, then there’s a better way of working.

Here’s how one easy-to-use package can overhaul your workflow and transform your business – by providing full visibility and a suite of intuitive management tools. 

Areas for improvement in manual scheduling

Field management software like Re-flow comes with a smart scheduler that takes away all the inefficiencies created by manual scheduling processes. Issues like:

• The risk of double bookings or of scheduling workers beyond their fatigue limits
• Any unnecessary time wastage that could be better used elsewhere
• The lack of visibility of current and future jobs and events
• Delays and other impacts due to human error
• Difficulties reacting to opportunities and rescheduling on the fly – the lack of instant clarity about the real-time location of your teams, and the time-consuming process of manually adapting and communicating changes to site[EC1] 

Re-flow replaces this and more with an intuitive ‘smart resource scheduler’, which provides multiple boosts to reporting, visibility, and many other areas of your workflow.[EC2] 

An overview: what is a smart resource scheduler?

A smart resource scheduler connects company asset lists with an intuitive, visually simple drag-and-drop timeline.

Jobs and other events, like MOTs and services, can be dragged and placed into this timeline in the most intuitive way possible. Automations and smart features then carve out and remove previously time-consuming processes.

Benefits

• Issues like fatigue tracking becomes automatic.
• Holidays and other absences prevent operatives and engineers from being scheduled, eliminating errors.
• Jobs can be easily planned ahead of time and specified to include any variety of equipment, qualifications, or training. This ‘roughing in[EC3] [OR4] ’ of events allows for forward-thinking and flexible planning of vehicles, people, and plant.
• Channeling every event and asset in your company into one scheduler allows you and other managers or admin to filter and search for any information you need – whether it’s related to a specific job or person.
• The accumulation of these benefits helps avoid delays, like the need to repeat site inductions.
• The extra visibility makes it instantly clear when business opportunities require subcontractors, and the software’s reporting features then make generating reports for those subcontractors instant.
• Operatives and engineers receive notifications and a log of their jobs on the phone app, providing the kind of clarity that allows them to get on with the job they’re paid to do. This automation saves countless hours for admin to get on with other tasks.

But is powerful field management software going to be too complicated?

From the on-site app to the in-office dashboard, Re-flow has been designed with power and ease of use in mind.

This means that the drag and drop scheduler makes setting up jobs and reacting to changes and opportunities as intuitive as possible:

• Move, swap, and edit multiple events at once.
• Quickly re-assign users and resources.
• Colour code events and jobs however you need – by contract, by type, and so on, allowing for an instant understanding of your workflow.
• View your entire company timeline with every job and event recorded and logged as you need it to be – past, present, and future.
• Take advantage of different views, like the useful map view, or use lists to sort by job, user, plant, equipment, and vehicles.
• Narrow information down further by filtering specific contracts, work types, users, and more. 

A flexible scheduler that fits different needs

In a recent review of the Re-flow software, TM firm Traffic Management Installations (TMI) and utilities business Coast Renewable Services both chose the scheduler as one of their highlights.

 

TMI

TMI have adapted the scheduler differently in two different parts of the business. Contracts managers and business development managers use it to focus on jobs and planning out the necessary assets and resources. Elsewhere, their operations team uses the scheduler to focus on allocating the individual users to the jobs that have been set up. They can allocate operatives and supervisors to jobs as they need.  

 

Coast Renewable Services

For Coast Renewable Services, the scheduler gives them full oversight of their operations, and visibility of the locations of their assets. They always know where their workers are and when they’re needed. Laura Kean, senior account manager, said, ‘I use the scheduler every single day. It’s not only important for me to see where they boys are, but it’s important to see when and where they are needed on certain jobs and certain locations.’ Coast Renewable Services use Re-flow to track certificates and qualifications, pre-empt any training, and ensure that all company information is available when they need it. Mark Robson, owner and MD said, ‘It’s just a really, really good tool.’    

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