Field Force Management System in The Construction Industry

A business dealing with a remote workforce is bound to face challenges. These difficulties grow ten folds when working in a sector involving high risk for employees. This is why using a field force management system can be rewarding for construction businesses in many ways.

But before we get into the details of how employee tracking software reaps benefits for this industry, it is important we understand all the challenges faced by construction managers. Let us find out through this blog.

What Are the Difficulties Faced By The Construction Workforce

Construction businesses deal with circumstances where any error can lead to fatal accidents. There are several reasons that might obstruct the way of a field force functions efficiently.  Some of these difficulties are:

• Lack of Visibility: Most construction businesses have projects running in different locations. Having managers stationed at all these sites is not feasible. When managers work from the office, there is no surveillance of employees which might lead to bad task execution.

• Inefficient Communication: When managers and employees are not working from the same office, communication tasks and their status is difficult. This can then translate into low work quality. This can heavily affect the business clientele as well.

• Reduced Profitability: When managers have to dedicate a major part of their working hours solely to employee surveillance, their other tasks suffer. Employees can too take advantage of this lacking visibility and carry out time theft. Both these scenarios ultimately affect business productivity, ultimately converting to monetary losses.

• Time Mismanagement: More often than not, tasks on a construction site are interdependent. Delay in completing one task can ultimately also delay other operations. This can slow down the entire workforce. Travelling is also a major time gobbler and can affect the overall labour force’s productivity.

• Obstructed Cash Flow: Construction sites always deal with pricey equipment and raw materials. With manual payment methods, there is a long list of people that need to approve transactions. This long process can leave employees unsatisfied and can also affect their productivity.

What is a Field Force Management System?

A field force management system is meant to help managers effectively manage their workforce that is operating from outside of the office. 

Keeping track of each employee and their task status traditionally can be taxing for managers. It can also be difficult for executives to report their tasks to several people separately. This can bring down the spirits of the entire team

With automation, we have reached a point where all parts of the labour force are able to reduce their workload. Through a field force management system, managers can assign individual tasks to their employees. This can help them ensure that only executives suitable for speciality tasks are working on them. Thus, it eliminates the chances of error caused due to amateur mistakes.

This system also strengthens the relationship between managers and their employees. Thus, the operation of the workforce becomes seamless. Let us look at individual aspects of a field force management system that can help optimise the field labour force.

How Can Field Force Management Software Help?

A field force management system has several tools that have been created for the seamless operation of businesses. These tools are used not just to monitor labour forces, but also individually optimise the operations of the field force. For the construction industry these functions can work in the following ways:

Multi-dimensional Solutions

As discussed above, a field labour force can have several challenges that might obstruct smooth functioning. This is why the system has solutions that help managers understand and operate their field force better. These solutions include:

• Employee Tracking: the GPS tracking system allows managers to have access to their employees’ location in real-time. This means that they can ensure their employees are on the correct construction site and at their task locations.

• Task Management: This solution helps managers assign well-defined tasks to their employees. In a construction site that has labour-intensive tasks, managers need to appoint experts for good task completion. That is where a task management solution comes in handy.

• Attendance Management: With such a huge workforce, it is nearly impossible to deduce who is on site and who isn’t. Thus, this solution uses geospatial data to ensure that their employees are on their allotted construction sites. Thus, reducing time theft of any sort.

• Expense Management: As we mentioned earlier, delayed reimbursements can be a reason for productivity reduction in the construction industry. It might even block the supply of raw materials needed for task completion. This is why the expense management solution automates the payment approval procedures.

Communication Tools

Communication is very important for any working environment, especially when the workforce is out of the manager's line of sight. This is why the field force management system simplifies this process to just a couple of clicks, a huge step ahead of the complicated communication done during traditional management. Some of the communicative features include:

• In-built Chatboxes: The software provides a chat box that allows employees to communicate with their team and managers through the application. Thus, eliminating the need for any third-party application. It allows executives to send textual messages, voice notes and visual media to each other.

• Custom Fields and Forms: For better communication amongst employees and managers. The forms created once can be saved in the system. The application does not restrict the managers and employees to use a pre-made template.

Report Generation

Almost all the features of the employee management system produce reports for managers. In order to optimise workforces, it is very important that managers study the ongoing operations of their business. This is where reports come in. They systematically organise all the data collected by the software for managers to understand.

Reports also highlight the productivity of employees, ensuring that managers know which of them need training. They also highlight the strong pursuit of their executives. 

For example, a report shows that employee A is not able to do heavy lifting tasks well but can drive a crane well. So the driver will be made aware of this and can decide whether to train this employee or ensure that their maximum tasks involve crane driving.

Reports can also help managers keep track of their employees' leaves. As a part of attendance management, the system keeps track of employees' remaining leaves from the ones designated to them. Thus, if a construction employee wants to take an off on a certain day, his tasks can be successfully given to some other executive of similar capabilities.

Benefits of using Field Force Management System in the Construction Industry

A business can get many benefits by using good field force management software. A few of the benefits we always look into are the increased profits, more efficiency and so on. Some of these include:

• Better Relations: Quality communication methods improve the relationship between managers and employees, building trust and loyalty. It also ensures that managers are able to play the role of communicator between the business owner and their employees.

• Enhanced Profitability: With effective task execution and time efficiency, employees are able to devote time to several tasks at the same time as before. This means that the overall profitability of the business increases.

• Simplified Data: The reports of the system organise all the collected data into useful and simplified pieces of information. They highlight all aspects of the construction workforce that are lacking. This includes leaves of employees, the amount of time it took for employees to complete tasks, and so on.

• Employee Visibility: The system is not just beneficial to businesses and managers, but to the employees too. When workers put in a good effort to complete tasks on site, their reports will reflect impressive numbers. This helps them gain the trust of their managers and puts them in the line for incentives.

• Faster Payment Gateways: As we previously discussed, slow reimbursements can harm the productivity of construction sites. This is why field force management software helps shorten this process. With this,  employees get paid quickly and stay motivated on the field. Managers are also able to regulate the outward flow of money.

• Increased Productivity: With a well-organised workforce comes the benefit of having a higher task completion rate within the same time as before. This means a satisfied clientele and a higher chance of gaining more customers. Customers are a business's best ambassadors after all.

Wrapping Up

A construction site can be very difficult to manage. Managers have to distribute their attention to several sites at the same time which might lead to several errors. Manual management is also slow and can affect the profits made by a workforce. This is why businesses require automation for their operations to ensure high-quality task execution.

TrackoField is one of the leading field force management software in the market. It allows construction businesses to digitalise their data storage and also helps them keep track of each employee. Thus, helping the workforce grow positively and the construction sites to stay safe for employees as well.