About the Event

For many companies, service revenue is a key driver for growth, but teams are often constrained by a lack of skilled field technicians and the complexity of planning for resources, parts and inventory. Whilst automated workforce planning and scheduling solutions can offer valuable orchestration and efficiency improvements, not all solutions are created equal.

• Planners must account for a wide range of factors including skills, certifications, shifts, tools,

• vehicles, parts, regulations, prerequisites, SLAs and urgent work. As more variables are added, the number of possible solutions grows factorially.

• Planning and scheduling optimization from IFS features an AI engine and over 40 algorithms to analyse thousands of resources, factors and constraints to compute the right resource, for the right job, with the right part at the right time.

The ten questions in this guide were asked in a recent webinar and reflect common considerations when evaluating planning and scheduling solutions: handling multi-resource, multi-day work; integrating appointment booking; scheduling based on spare part availability; scaling value across different volumes; reacting in real-time to change; enabling manual overrides with explainable AI; managing hard and soft constraints; supporting contractors; and building a business case, including a Proof of Value that can demonstrate measurable KPI improvements.

Agenda

1. Question 1 - What factors and constraints does the scheduling and planning system consider when calculating the optimum schedule?
2. Question 2 - Can the system handle jobs that need multiple resources with differing skills and have a longer duration than a single day?
3. Question 3 - Is it possible to have a customer booking system that suggests the best times for appointments? Does the resource planning model also integrate appointment booking (where customers book a specific slot that is available)?
4. Question 4 - Can you schedule jobs or offer appointments based on spare part availability?
5. Question 5 - On average, how many visits/tasks per day per worker should you have for the IFS solution to create significant value?
6. Question 6 - How does the optimizer work if a technician gets a lengthy delay at a job? Or traffic that means they won’t be able to attend subsequent jobs? Or they call in sick? What happens when customers cancel appointments?
7. Question 7 - As a resource planner can you manually override the system?
8. Question 8 - Can the solution handle hard and soft constraints?
9. Question 9 - We use a lot of contractors. How do we manage activities assigned to them and track their time spent on the job?
10. Question 10 – How can I build a business case that proves the value of investing in a planning & scheduling solution?