Field workforce consists of a variety of human resources including field engineers. At the operational level, work scheduling and coordination require specialized workforce management software capable of handling operational requirement. Mobile operational environment may be complex and often requires customized software to handle the operations. Off the shelf workforce management software to handle real time, online information and data are available. In most of the cases the individual modules have to be modified and changed to meet individual requirements. It has been seen from experience customized software are more useful in field situations. With the advent of handheld computers, field
engineers are able to send data directly to the central computer. The workforce management software should be able to pull this data and utilize it for scheduling activities.In addition to handling operations, workforce management software may be required to manage attendance, time stamps and salary calculations, printing of salary statements etc. A comprehensive solution to
manage field environment as well as perform routine activities are usually integrated into single
software.
Truly robust workforce management software should be able to coordinate various other software. For example, customer relationship management, supply chain management, inventory management, human resources management should be integrated. Here client server and N Tier implementations have been effected to manage complex software environment. Modular development and object oriented programming techniques help in security of databases against accidental corruption. In such distributed software environment each department handles its particular database, which is seamlessly integrated with others. Workforce management software may range from simple field application software to highly complex, distributed networks which span the
entire organization.
Steve Rastall
