Optimize Resource Planning with Digital Deployment Planning in L-mobile service

Optimize deployment planning and resource management in field service to offer your customers efficient, prompt, and error-free customer service. L-mobile service field service management software gives you integrated deployment planning software in the form of a web-based digital planning board, which you can use to improve the workloads of your service technicians and to reduce work times and costs in scheduling over the long term.

The seamless connection and continual data exchange between order management, deployment planning, and your technical field service staff provides a foundation for smooth operations in service processes. Your dispatchers have use of an innovative tool with numerous functions for optimizing personnel deployment planning—from skill management and team planning through actual deployment planning using drag and drop, to map views for optimized route planning.

Digitalize route and deployment planning: the next step to a successful service process

While preparation in master data and order management is the heart of field service management, deployment planning is the central nervous system of customer service. Deployment planning is where the available resources in field service are planned to complete all open service calls at the right time with the right service technicians who have the required skills in the right area of application.

Although smooth deployment planning in field service is crucial to ensuring the smooth operation of service processes, it is difficult for many companies to achieve this goal. This is especially true when scheduling does not work with a centralized digital system. Media discontinuities between the ERP system, appointment calendars, Excel spreadsheets, or physical planning boards often lead to a lack of transparency and missing information for scheduled field service orders. Order data has to be printed out, manually entered into the system, and then reprinted to distribute to the technical field service staff. However, if the data is incomplete, it can quickly transpire in deployment planning that service technicians with the wrong area of expertise are sent to handle a service call, requiring the scheduling of an additional customer visit. Besides the high susceptibility to errors, this way of working also uses up a lot of the service team’s valuable time, and it is well-known that time is money.

L-mobile service supports your service team with a digital planning board so that these problems are no longer an issue for your field service management. The deployment planning software communicates in real time with the service solution and provides dispatchers with all service data in a digital format, offering the efficient and optimized route and deployment planning that service technicians need to do their jobs. This eliminates time-consuming data collection into third-party systems for your service staff and instead lets them handle deployment planning in a clear and user-friendly planning tool with just a few clicks.

L-mobile service, Field Service Management Software, Auftragsmanagement, Serviceauftrag, Auftragsbearbeitung im Innendienst

Functions for optimized deployment planning with L-mobile service

The integrated digital planning board in L-mobile service field service management software gives your dispatchers the ideal tool to run optimized resource planning. Especially important here is the transparent overview of all upcoming field service orders in the planning calendar, skills management, as well as the actual planning board, which includes valuable map view functions to offer you the best means to coordinate service calls for your technical field service staff. Digital team planning and the option to createad hoc field service orders also streamlines and simplifies processes to save valuable time.

Digital planning board Detailed map overview Skills management Transparent planning board Digital team planning Ad hoc field service orders

Route and deployment planning with the digital planning board

The central tool for successful planning

The L-mobile digital planning board: Gantt chart for deployment planning, planning board with upcoming service calls, and map views at a glance.
Scheduled service calls can be processed with the digital planning board after completion.

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L-mobile service offers its own planning tool, the digital planning board, for successful deployment planning. The digital planning board is fully integrated with the field service management software and offers numerous functions for fast and simple resource planning. What was once handled manually on actual planning boards is now done digitally with just a few clicks. Drag and drop functions are used to assign individual field service orders to the right service technicians. Planned order times for deployments can be individually adjusted and scheduled appointments can be easily postponed as needed. L-mobile service ensures the requisite flexibility and can quickly handle spontaneous emergencies, changes, and unforeseeable events while still delivering top-quality customer service

A decisive advantage of digital planning boards compared to conventional planning boards: deployment planning can be performed by multiple dispatchers simultaneously. While with other software solutions, only one person can use them at a time, the L-mobile service deployment planning software has been designed for use by any number of dispatchers. Field service orders can be easily adjusted in the digital planning board so that service calls already scheduled by other colleagues are not accidentally postponed when two people are working in the system simultaneously. The system blocks the order for all dispatchers until the deployment planning is completed and the service call has been released for the assigned service technician.

Optimized deployment planning, thanks to a clear overview of locations in the map view

Visual overview facilitates even simpler work processes

The integrated map view simplifies route planning, thanks to a graphic display of locations.
The map shows various resources, such as service technicians or device history records, and also lets the user open a clearer overview in a separate window.

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Besides conventional resource planning in the digital planning board, the L-mobile service field service management software also offers your dispatchers a detailed map view to facilitate efficient deployment planning. This makes it even easier to plan time-saving and efficient routes for your service technicians. Locations of all resources within field service can be transparently and precisely displayed on the map. This includes field service orders, individual device history records, as well as the locations of all service technicians.

The dispatcher only needs to click a field service order in the planning board to see the location of the service call on the map in real time. The distance between a technician and the location of a service call can be evaluated much more accurately, and service call scheduling can be based on efficient routes. This not only saves valuable time, it also reduces expensive fuel costs and CO² emissions for your technical field service staff. Combining the planning calendar from the digital planning board into your work processes gives your service team the optimal basis for reliable and flexible deployment planning.

Skills management: the right technician for each field service order

Maintain an overview of your service technicians’ skills

In L-mobile service user management, you can assign the corresponding skills to your technicians and manage them easily.
As soon as a service call is selected for planning, L-mobile service indicates the right technician with the required skills.

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Schedule the right service technician with the required skills for the right service call. L-mobile service works with integrated skills management so that your dispatchers can easily help you achieve a high first-time fix rate and satisfied customers. This is based on the employee profiles of your service technicians in the field service management software. Here the service staff in the office can centrally manage qualifications, which will make subsequent deployment planning simpler. In order for skills management to run smoothly, it is also important to maintain transparent data on the skills needed for a service call in every field service order.

In scheduling itself, the digital planning board then supports the planning process in that the system automatically recognizes which service technician is best suited to which service call. This means that a field service order can only be planned for a technician whose profile matches the assignment, which thus speeds up deployment planning.

A clear planning board with all field service orders for fast deployment planning

Transparent data transfer from order management in real time

A centralized and structured order overview in a single system is half the battle for optimized deployment planning. This saves long communication paths and accelerates resource planning. To that end, all field service orders in the L-mobile service field service management software are permanently synchronized in real time with the planning board in the digital planning board. As soon as a new service call for deployment planning is released in order management, this automatically appears in the scheduling overview.

You get an overview of all upcoming service calls in the planning board.
A mouseover on a service call also displays the most important information at a glance.

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To make dispatcher work with the planning board even simpler and more user-friendly, all staff have the option to customize the display of the overview. Field service orders can be grouped according to any criteria, such as by priority, zip code, status, customer, or location of the service call. An intuitive drop-down menu lets users group together orders, making the deployment planning software simpler to use.

Besides the open field service orders and the already planned ones, the system also lets the user coordinate various absences. Travel times, training, vacation days, illnesses, and time for tool planning are also assigned from the planning board to the appropriate service technician using drag and drop. This means the workload of individual technicians can be optimally adjusted.

Digital team planning for efficient resource management

Plan and manage vehicles, tools, and service technicians for optimal deployment planning

Additional technicians, vehicles, or various tools can be assigned to a service call with just a few clicks.
If a team service call has been scheduled, this is clearly indicated in the digital planning board. A small crown next to the first-scheduled service technician indicates them as team leader.

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Service call and route planning in field service management is extremely complex. Service technicians with different skills and a whole range of tools can be required to complete an order, as well as of course a pool of service vehicles, which also needs to be managed. Having to separately manage and plan all these resources is very time-consuming for your dispatchers every day. Digital team planning makes it easy to save time and make better use of it.

If digital team planning is activated on the planning board, it take just a few clicks to allocate different resources to field service orders. A drag and drop function is used to assign an order from the planning board to the right technician. Your dispatcher can then process the assignment, allocate an available vehicle and the required tools, and also assign additional service technicians. Next the service call is automatically scheduled in the planning board for the selected resources and displayed as a team assignment. This allows you to precisely manage all resources that have been stored in the master data and significantly increase the efficiency of your resource usage.

Spontaneous and flexible: create ad hoc orders during deployment planning

Simple, fast, and direct creation of field service orders in the digital planning board

Your service staff in the office can also use the digital planning board to enter all order data for the ad hoc order in L-mobile service.

Sometimes you simply have to be spontaneous, even in scheduling, especially in emergencies where some flexibility from your dispatchers can be extremely useful. Instead of waiting for your office staff to create the new field service order and transfer it to scheduling, your dispatcher can simply create it themselves in the digital planning board.

The digital planning board lets your dispatchers create an ad hoc field service order at any time. Your dispatcher enters all relevant order data, such as customer, order type, and any error message in L-mobile service in the same way as your service staff in the office. Next, however, the order is not transferred to scheduling’s planning board but rather directly assigned to the right service technician and scheduled.

Goals to achieve with digital deployment planning

Optimal capacity utilization in a team

Increased planning reliability

Resource optimization in field service

Greater on-time delivery in customer service

Improve first-time fix rates

Compliance with Service Level Agreements (SLA)

The advantages of digital route and deployment planning in field service management

Increased transparency regarding your technicians’ workload

The planning overview gives dispatchers a complete view of the capacities of every single service technician. This increases transparency and also efficiency in deployment planning. It avoids overtime and ensures optimal capacity utilization for the technical field service staff.

Saving costs and time in scheduling

Digital processes as well as the transparent and central availability of all service data results in less work for scheduling, allowing service staff to really concentrate on the most important thing: optimal deployment planning.

Reduction of travel time for your service technicians

Digital route planning allows your service technicians to work much more efficiently and eliminates unnecessary travel time. Service calls are scheduled based on efficient routes, which can save time and also reduce fuel consumption and CO² emissions.

Increased customer satisfaction through greater efficiency

Error-free and well thought-out deployment planning ensures top-quality customer service. Appointments are on time, malfunctions and errors can be rectified during the first visit, and the actual service call can be quickly completed, all of which will impresse your customers.

User-friendly and simple application

The clear and individually adjustable display facilitates flexible and efficient deployment planning. Since all dispatchers work simultaneously with the digital planning board, service processes are accelerated even further.

Improved communication in field service

L-mobile service enables seamless networking between the service staff in the office and the technical field service staff. Transparent data exchange in real time simplifies communication within the service team, which in turn can increase the productivity of each employee.

Optimized deployment planning in action: here’s how to work with L-mobile service

Discover the functions and highlights of our field service management software in the free on-demand webcast—when you want, where you want!

Handle route and deployment planning efficiently and digitally
In the webcast, we show you how you can use L-mobile service to schedule field service orders with the best use of your resources in just a few steps, enabling you to optimize service calls and ensure customer satisfaction.
Live demo of the field service management software’s main functions
Discover the highlights of L-mobile service in the office and in the field—from order management to automatically generated field service reports.
Field service management software in actual use
Learn how one of our customers made their entire service process paperless and field service staff can now work offline and without a network connection.

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Real-life use cases: how your scheduling can make planning simpler and more flexible, thanks to deployment planning software

Schedule complex field service orders for an entire service technician team

Sometimes solving a customer problem requires more expertise and skills than what an individual service technician can offer. For these types of complex service calls, it is useful to send a whole team of service technicians to a customer in order to quickly complete a field service order without errors. The digital planning board in L-mobile service lets you organize service technicians into different groups and teams, which can then be directly assigned to a complex service call. In just a few clicks, you can schedule all technicians for the same assignment. This saves your dispatchers from having to separately schedule each individual service technician.

After completion of one of these team assignments, to avoid the time-consuming task of entering the work times of all service technicians, L-mobile service offers the option of assigning a corresponding user role to an individual technician of the team so that they can then record the total time of all team service staff and complete the field service order. This procedure saves time and ensures uniform documentation of a service call.

Flexible scheduling for unforeseeable emergencies

No matter how well your dispatchers might conduct deployment planning to optimize resources, if a customer has an urgent emergency, you have to act quickly. Some malfunctions or machine and system outages cannot be delayed and require the immediate attention of technical field service staff. The real time data synchronization of L-mobile service offers a number of valuable advantages here. First, the dispatchers receive the necessary information right away for the urgent field service order as soon as it has been entered into the field service management software.

In addition, the workload of the individual service technicians can be recorded at a glance in scheduling. The user can immediately see without a long search or guessing who has time or whose assignments can be most easily modified to be available for the unplanned emergency. As soon as the new deployment planning has been finalized and approved with the digital planning board, the assigned service technicians are automatically informed about the new order in real time. In this way, L-mobile service facilitates flexible field service management that can react quickly and precisely to unforeseeable incidents.

Absolute transparency for resource-optimized deployment planning—L-mobile service and the digital planning board in a real-life use case

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Additional functions of L-mobile service for a digital and successful service process in the office and in the field

Discover more highlights of our field service management software for the optimization and digitalization of your customer service

L-mobile service is a comprehensive solution to support your service processes. It gives you and your service team access to the digital planning board for deployment and route planning as well as a number of additional functions so that they can provide top-quality field service management. Discover the software highlights of our field service management software—from central master data management through the offline mobile service app to the creation of digital field service reports.