The global pandemic brought companies’ focus back on cost efficiency and resource optimisation. But in the process of chasing these objectives, organisations have to keep the customer experience undisrupted. To do that, they must be aware of the risks on the road to achieving cost efficiency.
Achieving the balance
The benefits of cost-efficiency would always outnumber the risks of disrupting the customer experience. Following a balanced strategy will minimise the disruptions in the customer experience and customer may not even notice them if there are any. This rings especially true for process-driven work like inspection management and other field operations. Resource optimisation can be implemented with zero disruptions for the customer but also it can boost the task orchestration.
Before explaining how exactly this happens, let’s dive into the essence of resource optimisation and task management.
What is resource optimisation in inspections?
Process-driven jobs like inspection management and field operations are often being subjected to resource optimisation projects. Resource optimisation aims to align the work process (inspection) with deadlines and available resources. Organizing resource optimisation properly can boost efficiency by allowing staff to be productive and prioritise their tasks according to standardised risk levels. Resource optimisation is often recommended to process-driven industries as a mean to achieving cost optimisation and improving the customer experience.
What is task management in inspections?
Every job in a process-driven work routine contains several sub-tasks that need to be completed to finish the job. The orchestration of these tasks – their prioritisation based on their level of importance and interdependency is called task management.
Where’s the connection between resource optimisation and inspection task management?
Looking at the descriptions of both – task management and resource optimisation, we’ll see that prioritisation is mentioned in both descriptions. So let’s first dive into the symbiotic relationship between resource optimisation, task management and prioritisation of jobs.
1. Prioritisation of tasks on field inspections
The planning of field inspection requires the efforts of inspectors, back-office administrators and other actors. But if there are not enough inspector with the most needed qualification, then the backlog of cases will start growing exponentially. This is where prioritisation of inspection cases is needed. The prioritisation may be based on available resources, complexity score of each case, geo location of the site, etc.
2. Timely completion of jobs
If we have a deadline for inspection completion, but our inspector is working overtime because he travels too much between inspections, then we’ll have an overallocation issue which may lead to low productivity. Resource optimisation software can allocate an inspector to cases that will follow an optimised route between each one of them. This work optimisation will ultimately decrease the total travel time.
Fun fact: Our portfolio includes a success story with our client – a UK regulator that achieved 40% reduction of time spent on travel. Download our case study and find out how we dit it.
3. Eliminate errors
Thanks to cloud technology everyone involved in a work process can get updates in real-time. When everyone is in the loop with what’s happening, the possibility of errors is minimised and collaboration between teams is being improved. This is one of the aspects of efficient task management.
4. Keep employees productive
If David spends more time travelling for inspection jobs than Maria, and at the same time David has to finish an equal number of inspections as her, soon he will burn out. Resource optimisation software promotes the mental well-being of staff. An aspect that is directly related to the long term quality of the completed jobs. Resource optimisation can resolve the issue with the equal distribution of the caseload. This on the other can leads to improving the task management because inspectors are staying productive and don’t suffer from overallocation.
If you’re already giving a thought to implement resource optimisation techniques to improve task management, keep reading.
Jobtimizer is a resource optimisation feature part of the inspection management platform Canalix. Now it is offered independently as a stand-alone product. Read more about Jobtimizer and schedule a meeting here.
