Remember when a smartphone was a nice to have? It’s almost becoming a must have, with the multitude of productivity apps that can be applied toward business use. And for those who are data-junkies, it’s a trove of information into the workday that we only dreamed of ten years ago.
At a high level, mobile tracking gives visibility into time management. How much time was spent on the road? How much time was actually spent with customers?
We know this is a key performance indicator – studies show that more time with customers results in increased sales. Streamlining drive time keeps the focus on customer satisfaction by making sure customers are receiving the services and products they are expecting. This is an obvious one – but what else? How do you reduce costs across your sales, service and delivery team utilizing metrics gleaned from mobile tech usage?
Take a look at the KPI of time spent with customers (or ‘time to serve’). In our MobileCast application, we can see this through a route metrics report by looking at the following:
- How many stops did the driver make?
- How many cancels did we have?
- What was the percentage of on-time deliveries?
If a sales rep is supposed to spend 20 minutes, but is only spending five minutes, that customer is not being cared for properly. This becomes reportable data. Taking into account sales figures over time vs. time to serve can form the basis of an actionable goal for reps out in the field.
KPIs Related to Routing
An important question that was asked around mobile tech and delivery was, “Do I need routing?” The answer is – it depends on your goals. Do you want to simply see where your workers ARE, or, do you want to see where they are relative to where they SHOULD be? Routing tells you where they are supposed to be. You only find a problem when you find someone has gone off the route. This is where the key performance metric, Actual vs. Projected comes into play. Take these two KPIs into consideration:
Actual vs. Planned by Route
Start at the route level, and compare what actually happened to your plan. Why? You want to see if there are route level variances. If your driver was supposed to drive 100 miles, and in actuality drove 160 miles, you want to drill down and see where and why that 60-mile variance occurred.
For those workers who are not necessarily on a route – merchandisers, sales, reps – you can still distill intelligence from mobile tracking. Consider:
Actual vs. Planned by Stop
Look at the data by stop. This allows you to create reports around your mobile workers – how many stops did they make during the day? How much time did they spend driving? You can rank and rate individuals on a one day snapshot, or over time.
Other KPIs related to mobile workforce management around delivery that can be captured through mobile tech include:
- Utilization of the vehicles – how full are they when they head out for the day?
- Shelf space of your product or, the percentage of shelf space of the competitor
- Mileage.
Gathering this type of information allows for informed decisions on staffing levels, trucks, & scheduling because you’re capturing consistent data over time. It helps when planning future delivery routes or schedules when you can analyze data historically. Additionally, mobile tracking also reduces mileage – it forces drivers to take the most efficient route because they know that their mileage is being tracked.
