Today's work force is becoming increasingly more mobile. In line with this trend, a growing number of organizations are seeking to implement mobile work-force management solutions that enable them to better mange operations, control costs and keep employees as productive as possible.

In looking at this market and evaluating where to jump in, "it's important" for VARs "to realize that mobility can occur inside the walls of an operation, or outside the walls," says Steven Tafaro, vice president of sales, CyberShift. Inside mobility can involve, but is not limited to, applications associated with warehousing, distribution centers, logistics and manufacturing. Inside mobility can center on such functions as maintenance, repair, inspections, construction, equipment tracking, business services and retail services.

While the roster of mobile work-force solutions was once limited to systems designed for managing employee time, the breadth of specific applications has widened dramatically in recent years. Main application options, as Tafaro points out, include configurations intended to:

-- Capture billable and non-billable time worked, as well as breaks and time off and work expenses. CyberShift Currently offers Necho Expense^TM BlackBerry Edition and Workforce Management 3G^TM BlackBerry edition solutions, configured for use with BlackBerry handheld devices from Research In Motion (RIM). The Necho Expense BlackBerry Edition permits expense reports to be created from the road, using the BlackBerry interface.

Users can work online with the hardware or in a disconnected mode (for example, while on an airplane), reviewing details of corporate charge card transactions and including them on expense reports. Out-of-pocket transactions, such as entertainment mileage and itemized transactions, may be added to expense reports, and completed reports may be uploaded to companies' Necho Expense system for policy review and submission. 

"Today's mobile work force comes at a premium, largely because it is flexible and requires valuable resources," observes Peter DiMaria, founder and president of Accu-Time Systems, Inc., which has teamed up with CyberShift to develop expense management applications. "On one level, you have executives and middle managers traveling extensively, either because they work at home, far away from the corporate office, or because they need to visit customers and attend meetings. Companies usually have a lot invested in these employees in terms of salary, travel expenses and computer configurations.

"On another level, you have workers who travel locally (truck drivers, for example) but need to punch in remotely and manage routes for optimal use of fuel, tracking expenses and efficient deliveries. Both levels might require records of time worked, so that a customer can be invoiced for the expense," he says.

-- Allocating labor utilization to current jobs or work orders. Many of these applications allow work orders to be dispatched from headquarters to the field. In tandem with Passport Inc., Kronos Inc. has developed Passport inService, a suite of complementary mobile solutions for automating work order management, dispatch, inspections, asset tracking and more. The applications allow users to work productively online or offline; support all types of wireless and wired networks; and run on a wide range of mobile devices, including phones, PDAs, rugged handhelds and laptops.

-- Monitoring labor resources to conserve costs, and/or gaining visibility into job status, production tasks and the like. Among vendors working in this space is Calabrio, Inc., whose Calabrio One product is targeted toward virtual customer interaction networks. Among other functions, Calabrio One allows supervisors to monitor and review call center agents' performance in real time. "The purpose here is not necessarily to police call center agents, but to ensure adequate coverage," states Tim Kraskey, the company's vice president, marketing and business development. "For example, with the system, a supervisor can tell that a home-based agent is on calls rather than taking an assigned break, and can address that situation proactively so that there's no gap in coverage when that person does pull away for a few minutes."

RedPrairie ranks among other players here. Distributor Ingram Micro is implementing the vendor's Workforce Management application to improve productivity and gain visibility into performance at its distribution centers across the United States. "We ran a pilot of this system, and it became clear to us that better monitoring of operations in the distribution centers would lead to enhanced efficiency along with cost savings," notes Terry Tysseland, Ingram Micro's senior vice-president, operations.

Tysseland adds that the solution also creates 3-D diagrams of every location within Ingram Micro's distribution centers and measures the distance between each location. As each order comes out, the degree of difficulty and time limit of that order are automatically measured. The program knows the distance between given pick locations in the warehouses, and credits associates for walking or driving at a certain speed from one location to the next. "Essentially, it yields us discreet labor calculations and accurate measurement of what associates are doing on the shipping floor," Tysseland explains.

The executive says the program can even calculate that one employee is working at 140 percent of standard, and another, at 90 percent of standard. "The idea is to reward our best associates by paying them more, and then make the associates that are making less figure out that if they too worked a bit harder, they could also earn more," he elaborates. "The upshot is, you get everybody working harder, and pretty soon you have a more efficient operation."

Yet another player, USA.NET, is touting a service built around Microsoft Windows SharePoint. Called USA.NET SharePoint Hosting Services, the offering integrates with the vendor's Exchange Hosting services to create an end-to-end email and collaboration solution. As a work-force management platform, it allows managers "at-a-glance" visibility into all activities across the enterprise, whether performed at headquarters or from remote locations, says Steve O'Brien, USA.NET's vice president of messaging services.

Other applications that can be used to optimize the time management of "road warriors," who have abandoned the traditional "desk-jockey" lifestyle, include:

-- Tracking non-labor components of job costing. Examples encompass equipment, materials and parts.

-- Collecting detailed job information to compress invoicing and payment cycles.

-- Recording results of jobs performed, such as inspections and maintenance.

 

 

-- Communicating work activities from remote workers, so that resources can be ready in the next step of the supply chain.

Not surprisingly, experts say VARs can best capitalize on work-force management opportunities by becoming proficient at developing and/or bundling solutions for specific vertical markets. "Being able to address the business challenges increases customer 'stickiness,' so that when an extension to the solution or new capabilities are needed, you're the VAR they call," purports Mary Rasmussen, services and channel marketing manager, USA.NET.

Tafaro of CyberShift says that mobile work-force management VARs typically fall into two categories:  toolset providers and application providers. "Toolset providers offer tools to build applications, and application providers can demonstrate previously built applications for specific markets," he asserts. "Obviously, application providers would be more valuable partners as VARs, whereas toolset providers can use their specific knowledge as a point of entry into the VAR market and convert to applications providers down the road."

Such specialized development necessitates assisting customers in formulating and implementing segment-specific best practices for work-force management usage.

"As the opportunities and requirements for mobile work-force management grows, service providers need to form meaningful partnerships with resellers who can add value above the pure network transport," says Scott Barker, product marketing manager, Kronos. "Industries such as health care are seeing exponential growth in the need for mobile work-force management applications, as well as massive growth in spending. If resellers can show value, it won't be hard to convince companies to make an investment in their applications."