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W hen is a tour actually considered optimally planned? And what are the advantages of using professional tour planning software to manage my field staff or technicians? These are questions that every dispatcher has probably already asked themselves. In this post, we highlight why companies with as few as 30 field resources should choose a dynamic, real-time software solution.

Finding the best tours for your employees can be an exhausting and time-consuming task. Even with 10 orders, there are more than 3.6 million (in numbers: 3,600,000) possibilities with just one vehicle. By way of comparison, the probability of getting 5 correct numbers plus the bonus ball in the lottery is 1 in 542,008. Determining the optimal order of the jobs to be completed is therefore tantamount to a game of chance.

But that's not all. Very few field service companies (only) have the requirement to determine and complete the best possible combination of orders. Limitations such as vehicle type restrictions like size and weight, different employees with different skills and needs, or which roads and routes can be used for the tour, do not make this task any easier.

'INTUITION' – A SOURCE OF ERROR

Even in initial discussions, concrete starting points often emerge that can be addressed by professional tour planning software. When asked about the status quo of planning, 'We rely on the intuition of our dispatchers' or 'Our planning results usually look good on the map, but we have very high costs and are often pressed for time' are among the standard answers. This is often due to the necessity to manually intervene in planning. With the above conditions, manual scheduling can quickly increase additional costs and create revenue traps.

The goal for the software solution should be to take the planning task off your hands completely and, thanks to a high-performance algorithm, create an efficient schedule within seconds, taking all restrictions into account and also reacting immediately to spontaneous, unforeseeble situations - whilst considering the entire tour plan. Nightly batch runs within scheduling are no longer an option. This is clearly illustrated by the example of scheduling appointments via a call centre.

If appointments are scheduled manually, white spaces in the appointment calendar are filled - but there is no optimisation. If a nightly batch run takes place after the appointments have been allocated, re-scheduling is often necessary. This means additional organisational effort for the call centre. By adopting a specifc tour planning software, a call centre agent can offer live, pre-cost-optimised appointment suggestions within seconds.