If you’ve ever managed a field service team, you know the headaches of inefficient routes and what significant improvement it is to use route planning apps.
Clients are unhappy when field workers arrive late at the site, waste fuel, or are redeployed to another job at the last minute.
Smart routing technology can cut costs, improve service times, and keep field workers sane. Accuracy is everything and can only be done with the help of route planning apps.
Here are a few of the most accurate route planner apps for field workers.
Why Accuracy is Important For Field Services
Imagine you are an air conditioning company during a heatwave. You have been flooded with customers who have bought air conditioners and are now requesting your service to help with the installation.
Your schedule is tight, and the requests for your service are flooding in. You need to plan your multiple routes as quickly as possible, finding the quickest route while squeezing in multiple stops to reach all the customers.
If your route planner is inaccurate, you won’t be as efficient as needed to get to all the bookings. Accurate route planning is vital to finding the best route every time, considering traffic patterns, and informing customers with accurate ETAs.
Top Route Planning Apps for Field Service Workers
Locate2u – Best for Improving Efficiency and Accuracy
Locate2u’s field service management software allows you to track workers, optimize routes, share live locations, and manage your bookings.
Managing a team that provides installation services to multiple customers across the city can become chaotic without a route planner.
Locate2u’s software promises to streamline customer orders, simplify team dispatching, and optimize route planning.
This is what sets Locate2u apart:
- It helps you know where your team is in real-time
- You can even go back in time and watch a route replay to check where your drivers have been
- It monitors your team in the driver app
- You can adjust any route on-to-go
Route4Me – Helpful With Dynamic Scheduling
Whether in pest control, landscaping, cannabis delivery, or snow removal service, route planning helps you plan your trips better. It also enables you to get to your destinations faster, especially when several requests occur during peak times.
One of the essential aspects of route optimization is the scheduling of multiple stops.
Route4Me’s route planner helps field service workers avoid delays and stay on schedule even on busy days.
OptimoRoute – Proactive With Predictive Analytics
OptimoRoute combines route planning, scheduling, and live ETAs. Like most route planner apps, it learns patterns over time, making future scheduling easier.
This app stands out because of these features:
- It matches technicians’ skill sets to job requirements, improving the time needed to fix or complete the job.
- This route planner sends routes directly to drivers’ mobile devices.
- It also calculates the permitted working hours of workers to reduce overtime costs.
What Separates the Best from the Rest?
The best route planner apps try to make it easy for field service workers to get as many jobs done in a day without overloading them to make mistakes.
It’s a fine balancing act, one in which these apps are designed to ensure the company also saves on fuel costs while drivers make progress.
While many apps promise accuracy, the best ones share three key traits:
- Real-time adjustments: There will be sudden changes during the trips. The best tools adapt to changing conditions and follow new directions.
- Seamless integrations: A great app should sync with existing systems like scheduling software and GPS tracking tools to provide a complete picture of operations.
- User-friendly design: If you are already running late for the next service job, the last thing you want is a problematic app that creates more frustration.
How to Pick the Right Route Planning App
The most accurate route planning app depends on your specific needs. You want to make it easier for field service workers to do their job and get to the following site.
User-friendly interfaces can significantly impact employees’ daily work. Ensure you give teams training and support to use the apps to their full potential.
About the author
Mia is a multi-award-winning journalist. She has more than 14 years of experience in mainstream media. She's covered many historic moments that happened in Africa and internationally. She has a strong focus on human interest stories, to bring her readers and viewers closer to the topics at hand.
