Effectively managing a workforce that spans multiple sites and continents is a serious challenge for many large organisations. What is more, those companies managing a dispersed workforce are not necessarily doing so in an efficient or effective manner.
Sufficient will no longer suffice. Outdated, outmoded, and outpaced historical methods of workforce management are being cast aside in favour of dynamic digital frameworks that engage every employee.
What does the global mobile workforce management market look like?
The only viable response is a workforce management (WFM) solution that enhances employee satisfaction, promotes safety, entrenches your competitive advantage, and ultimately reduces costs.
It is a remedy on the rise with multinational conglomerates, and it is as mobile as the frontline industries it so ably supports.
With COVID-19 pummelling current remote-work practices, workforce management methods with partiality towards mobile systems that augment employee efficiency and pave the way for sustainable productivity.
Here is the proof.
The workforce management software market is growing
The software’s growth rate year-on-year indicates evident exponential growth.
According to Intrado Globe Newswire, in 2019, the global workforce management market was valued at USD6 164.36 million. It is estimated to reach USD18 828.9 million by 2026. This is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.75%.
The three primary drivers are:
- Increased automation in workplaces
Previously, companies carried out the management of their staff resources manually through prodigious use of spreadsheets. Not only was this incredibly time-consuming, but vulnerable to ever-present human error.
Mobile workforce management software enhances technical capabilities and introduces a streamlined, swift and accurate means of coordinating and communicating with an entire workforce.
- Adoption of workforce analytics
Future forecasting is only a series of best guesses without a profound appreciation for historical trends related to employee engagement and employee productivity.
With this legacy data, a company’s workforce analytics can create predictive models for future behaviour, improvements and can manage risk before creating inevitable harm.
With the help of workforce analytics, a company can automate routine tasks and boost employee productivity.
- Growing demand for cloud-based solutions
As companies expand and become global concerns, their teams cover multiple countries. Enterprise-wide communication cannot be confined to one central facility. It is both impractical and ineffective.
It is safe to say that cohesive, collaborative communication is now more important than ever. A dispersed workforce will require a mobile workforce management solution. Cloud-based employee engagement solutions can sustain information through all channels, confirming continuity through workforce management software that pioneers an agile mindset.
These are all motivated by a single need
Namely, to gain greater insight into existing employee-related trends that allow organisations to evaluate potential workplace improvements and find ways to optimise productivity through employee connectivity.
Improving employee productivity is of particular importance in the context of frontline employees. They are a large, frontline, and mobile component of numerous organisations globally.
In addition to the above drivers, the safety, productivity and engagement of an organisation’s non-desk employees are contingent on a workforce management solution that reaches everyone, regardless of location or device of choice.
For this reason, it is almost certain that mobile workforce management solutions will continue to see large-scale adoption by organisations worldwide.
Furthermore, frontline workers are, by the nature of their work, removed from the central hub of work and executive decision-making. COVID-19 intensified and exacerbated this detachment.
From an efficiency perspective, sound workforce management solutions have provided efficient mechanisms to:
- record dispersed employees’ working hours
- track flexi balances
- time in lieu (TIL), and
- manage both scheduled and unanticipated absences.
In addition, mobile WFM solutions have shown a positive contribution to clearer comparisons between an organisation’s different departments.
With richer, more precise datasets, there is now an opportunity to facilitate a deeper understanding of those challenges (related to processes, operations and communication) with a direct impact on a team’s productivity and ability to achieve shared goals.
Aligning to an analytical framework means a company makes smarter, faster, more informed data-driven decisions. This culminates in best practices for a fully optimised workforce, amplifying employee satisfaction, improving the total employee experience, and increasing retention.
What is the ROI of a mobile workforce management solution?
Mobile workforce management solutions are rooted in analytics. This inevitably causes companies to increase their bottom line and ROI by projecting future trends and extrapolating possible outcomes based on potential scenarios.
The collaboration between partners, like vendors, suppliers, and customers, gets easier by uncovering new insights. This, in turn, makes it easier to measure how effective that partnership is.
To evaluate the true ROI of a successful mobile workforce management solution, you will need to answer yes to the following questions:
- Have you reduced the time to schedule workers (increasing customer reach with the same number of employees)?
- Have you improved the use of your resources (completing more tasks for customers)?
- Have you streamlined operations and business processes (reducing overhead costs)?
- Are your employees engaged and empowered (is your workforce uniformly happier and more satisfied with their work and work environment)?
Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time will require equipping your internal communications and human resources teams with a comprehensive digital solution.
What should your tailored mobile WFM solution achieve?
It should:
- deliver app analytics and reporting through a centralised dashboard to track and measure overall employee:
- platform
- activity and performance, and
- usage.
- create customised reports according to your requirements.
- capture and present survey results and campaign-driven user information in real-time.
- timestamps, make available detailed statistics for all messages, including:
- message delivery, and
- status.
- provide form reporting that aggregates responses into visually engaging graphs, transforming the raw data into valuable insights for your team.
Key Takeaways
So, what does the growth rate in mobile workforce management solutions tell us as organisations looking to purchase them? That demand is intense.
Right now, if you are considering implementing a mobile WFM solution, your question is not whether you should, but which option is the best fit for you, your business and (most crucially) your employees.
Are you ready to tailor a workforce management solution to your business? Click ? here to speak to one of our experts today.