WHITE PAPER

SELECTING FIELD
SERVICE MANAGEMENT
SOFTWARE

CONTENT
WHAT IS A DYNAMIC SCHEDULING ENGINE (DSE) AND IFS MOBILE
WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT?....................................................................................... 1
A CASE IN POINT.......................................................................................................... 3
IMPORTANCE OF THE CLOUD........................................................................................ 5
INTEGRATION WITH COMPLEMENTARY APPLICATIONS................................................... 5
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................... 6
ABOUT IFS .................................................................................................................. 8

SELECTING FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

SELECTING FIELD SERVICE

MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
B Y P A UL B O UC H I E R
CIO
I FS M O B I L E W O RK F O RC E M A N A G E M E N T

Today, most companies with teams of mobile field technicians are running some
type of field service management software. They may have even extended that software to handheld devices used by their technicians in the field.
In some cases, that service management software will automate part of the dispatchers role by using data on technicians and projects to generate a schedule for
the day.
In this whitepaper, we will discuss the reasons that in addition to their standard
field service software solution, your business ought to consider running a Dynamic
Scheduling Engine, or DSE. We will define what a DSE is and how it can:
Increase the agility of your field service operation
Allow you to succeed in meeting demanding service level agreements (SLAs)
Schedule field resources dynamically, in real time
Use the power of the cloud to drive efficiencies in your business.
Reduce drive time and customer site visits while improving customer service
Provide visualization of your field service operation enabling easier and more
efficient management
In depth analysis of service operation by virtually any criteria, geography, service
call type, SLA, business unit

WHAT IS A DYNAMIC SCHEDULING ENGINE (DSE) AND

IFS MOBILE WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT?
A DSE is really a black box that you send your data to be scheduled to. It optimizes
that scheduling data and sends it back to you so that you can accomplish more with
fewer techs and dispatchers and achieve other goals you tell the DSE are important
to you. What is inside of that black box is a set of algorithms that takes your business
rules, applies them to those algorithms and creates a very powerful and flexible

SELECTING FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

computing engine for scheduling. While the algorithms contained in a DSE originate
from the highest echelons of academic mathematics, what makes them applicable
and practical from a business standpoint is a data framework which describes
resources, skill sets of technicians, activities and the relationships between these
things, along with the business rules which the end user company simply defines.
It is this ability to apply very advanced mathematics to the way a field service organization will operate that allows IFS Mobile Workforce Managements DSE to
deliver efficiencies to business. But it goes further than that. The IFS Mobile
Workforce Management system then represents the results both visually to dispatchers and electronically to other company systems in an easily understood way.
Historical data, the actual performance achieved against expected plan are retained
and can be analyzed to determine areas of the business which are underperforming
and the reasons for itdriving decisions and corrective actions.
A DSE is dramatically different from other approaches, where scheduling is
considered purely as a mathematical problem that has to be resolved. A DSE takes
into consideration not just easily defined quantitative parameters, but certain serious
constraints as to what is practical, what the customer has been promised, demand
patterns and other factors. And the DSE allows you to change these parameters in
real time, updating the scheduling process accordingly.
A robust business data framework and the ability to successfully apply business
rules are absolutely essential. Think of it this way. There are whole university
departments devoted to scheduling and optimization. You can review the history of
operational research since the 1950s, including the ongoing academic study of manufacturing scheduling and how to get the maximum throughput from machines on
production lines. And what you will find is that very little of this research or study
has been applied in the business context of providing service to customers over varied
geographies. This is because as hard as the mathematics of scheduling can be, it is
much harder to factor in business constraints, rules and other practical matters. And
that is exactly what a DSE deliversa solution to a very complex problem for the
real world.
Applying these algorithms to business problems becomes more challenging when
you realize that your business rules are going to change, and relatively frequently.
One of the key principles behind IFS Mobile Workforce Management technology is
that you can change the way the system is operating on the fly. You ought to be able
to just throw the DSE some new parametersnew emergent projects that demand
resources, anticipated demand patterns, an increased prioritization placed on fuel
consumption, new SLAsand the schedule instantly reflects these new parameters.
This is exactly the type of flexibility demanding field service situations require, and
yet this is what market leading field service software cannot deliver without dynamic
scheduling.

SELECTING FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SCHEDULING

RESOURCE AND SHIFT PLANNING

Planning resources for set shifts over a long timeframe.

STATIC SCHEDULING

Planning resources for a fixed number of resources and a fixed number of projects to be completed. Most service management systems in the market provide
static scheduling.

EPISODIC SCHEDULING

This type of scheduling solution will use available information to generate a

schedule on a periodic basis, making at least some attempt to adjust the schedule
for changing circumstances, delays, new jobs in the queue, etc. but on a fixed
cycle.

APPOINTMENT BOOKING

As the name suggests, setting appointments to meet customer requirements.

This requires the identification of available capacity given the current workload
for each technician. Once the appointment is set, it can then go into a scheduling
algorithm to deliver the detailed plan.

DYNAMIC SCHEDULING WITH

CONTINUOUS OPTIMIZATION

This is what IFS Mobile Workforce Managements DSE delivers that is unique from
other offerings. The DSE optimizes the scheduling continuously as opposed to
periodically. This approach takes the scheduling task beyond pairing up resources
and work, looking at scheduling as a multi-dimensional problem with variables
that are constantly changing. That is why, as any of the variables or business
priorities of the organization change, the DSE can make the adjustment on the
fly and ensure that the schedule reflects these new priorities.

SCHEDULE INTELLIGENCE

This is business intelligence (BI) for scheduling, allowing long-term measurement

and analysis of things like deviation from the planned scheduling-related key
performance indicators (KPIs).

Note:- IFS Mobile Workforce Management includes all these types of scheduling in one solution.

A CASE IN POINT
As an example of how the degree of flexibility offered by a DSE delivers value, consider the case of a vending machine operator. They have vending machines installed
in many public leisure facilities . They are doing repairs and collecting money in a
high volume environment. Obviously, when machines are not operational they are
losing revenue, which makes machine uptime a key concern of theirs. What they
found is that their schedule in the morning would be dramatically different from
their schedule in the afternoon. The reason, it turned out, is that at lunchtime, more
machines broke down. Their base workload would be distributed fairly evenly
because they are doing preventative maintenance and collecting money. But they
were able to configure the DSE so that they had a different set of parameters at
noon to keep the resources near the likely failures on the machines. The ability to
make that kind of on-the-fly adjustment in a system without actually changing the
software, as a simple end-user configuration that is the value that truly dynamic
scheduling delivers.
An end user can determine a new set of priorities or criteria, enter it into the DSE
and change the behavior of the scheduling engine.

SELECTING FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

This degree of flexibility is possible because the IFS Mobile Workforce Management
DSE calculates the schedules in real time. This always on approach to scheduling
allows the schedule to reflect the best knowledge of the environment you are working
in so you can meet your business objectives. Real time scheduling does have an
intrinsic benefit. We have proven a 2 or 3 percent increase in efficiency just by optimizing all of the time as opposed to doing it every 15 minutes like a traditional
schedule engine. On top of this, you need to factor in the efficiencies derived from
the ability to prioritize different things, including SLAs, drive time, fuel consumption,
skill sets of technicians and other variables in line with changing operational priorities.
These priorities change for your business in real time, so your schedule must change
in real time too. Only a DSE like IFS Mobile Workforce Management can deliver
that degree of flexibility.
HOW MATHEMATICALLY COMPLEX IS THE SCHEDULING PROBLEM?
Lets consider the number of possible solutions that need to be considered for a given scenario. Even at the low end
of the spectrum with a small number of technicians and jobs, it is clear that a human dispatcher cannot quickly
identify all of the possible solutions and pick the best one.
2 technicians, 4 calls:

120 possible solutions

2 technicians, 5 calls:

720 possible solutions

4 technicians, 10 calls:

1,037,836,800 possible solutions

5 technicians, 30 calls:

12,301,367,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible solutions

Obviously, the task at hand is enormous in its complexity, and thats before we begin adding variables like the need
to optimize the schedule for factors important to the business including:
Fuel consumption
Drive Time
SLAs
Skill sets of individual technicians
Throughput
This is one reason that many service management organizations can benefit from an advanced DSE integrated with
their existing service management software.

With only two technicians and three service calls, there are already 24 different options for getting the work done. Given
the complexities of a larger number of technicians, a larger number of calls, multiple variables including drive time, fuel
consumption, tech skill sets, SLAs, this is an impossible task without powerful scheduling automation tools. As any of
these variables change, as SLAs are deprioritized in favor of fuel consumption, for instance, a DSE is the only way to
adjust the schedule rapidly enough to achieve true enterprise agility.

SELECTING FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

IMPORTANCE OF THE CLOUD

The term cloud or cloud computing is being turned into a marketing buzzword
for a number of different things. For our purposes, we are referring to cloud computing as a way to deliver unlimited, easily accessible compute and storage resources
on an on-demand basis. Cloud computing can refer to any number of practices
including running a private cloud or housing data or applications in the public
cloud, like the Windows Azure cloud, allowing you to access a virtually infinite IT
infrastructure managed by someone else.
Obviously, running a DSE for a large service organization requires a powerful
server environment, and that is one reason that a DSE is often best deployed in a
cloud environment. The degree of computing power required to run a DSE can be
highly variable, hard to predict and, during peak load times, significant.
One other benefit of the elastic nature of the cloud is the easy availability of
additional server resources and, consequently, the ability to divide scheduling tasks
across a number of DSE instances running simultaneously. You can give small
scheduling problems to a DSE on small servers and the big scheduling problems to
the large server. We see variable performance in shared cloud-based environments
and have opted to perform independent measurement of how much performance we
are actually getting out of each server and then allocating the processing power
based on the size of the scheduling problem.
In this cloud-based, grid computing environment, the actual data can be spread
out in different ways, making it extremely flexible. This is one thing that makes
integrating your service management system with a cloud-based DSE so appealing
the sheer flexibility and scalability.

INTEGRATION WITH COMPLEMENTARY APPLICATIONS

Integrating a service management software packagebe it from Maximo, IFS,
Wennsoftwith a cloud-based DSE like IFS Mobile Workforce Management is
straightforward. The customer simply needs to buy licenses for however many
technicians they have and connect their software environment to a service available
to you on the internet.
A company running their IFS Mobile Workforce Management on-premise can
integrate with a DSE running in the cloud just as easily, and may want to do so for a
number of reasons. Within that cloud environment, we have failover provisions built
in with clustered database, and can even, for instance, switch between different
regionseast coast , west coast for exampledue to capacity issues or for disaster
recovery. So even for our customers running their systems on premise, we can make
disaster recovery in that cluster environment available as a service, creating a hybrid
on premise/cloud configuration.

SELECTING FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

This hybrid on premise/cloud scheduling system can also offer extra computing
power by bolting another DSE dynamically into the infrastructure. So for instance,
if you have a DSE that can process 10,000 activities in a given timeframe but the
company is suddenly faced with a peak workload of 25,000 activities, you can hot
swap new DSEs into the system, distributing the workload between the DSEs. So,
again, you suddenly have a very flexible architecture where you can scale up and
down on demand.
There is naturally some reticence, in some businesses, to put their scheduling
environment into the cloud. They consider it a core business function, and they
want to keep within their own IT system. But we are finding that even these
companies, as we demonstrate how the cloud offers resilience and extra disaster
recovery options, are beginning to see the a benefit. In particular the ability to
quickly have full development and user acceptance testing systems in the cloud on
an as-required basis, the implementation costs reduce, removes delays and
improves the quality of the eventual production system whether that is on-premise,
in the cloud or hybrid.

This graph shows the time taken to produce the first schedule for a small scheduling problem of 250 activities and large
scheduling problem of 32,000 activities with varying numbers of processors available.

CONCLUSION
Field service scheduling is an amazingly complex task. The sheer number of possible
solutions to any scheduling problem alone demands a high degree of scheduling
automation. But traditional static or episodic scheduling restricts the ability of that
scheduling process to respond to changing business needs. Fuel prices are up? Tell
the DSE to prioritize fuel consumption in the route. Increased demand is anticipated
within a given geographic region and timeframe? Tell the DSE to prioritize those

SELECTING FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

areas during that timeframe. Deliver on SLAs is becoming a priority towards the
end of the financial period? Tell the DSE. The schedule will be adjusted accordingly.
Does predicted bad weather affect the anticipated travel times? Tell the DSE and
travel times are adjusted accordingly.
A DSE is built on extremely powerful algorithms built specifically to consider
not just some of but all of the variables inherent in the scheduling environment. The
flexible architecture of the IFS Mobile Workforce Management system together with
the intensive computing needs make the application an ideal candidate for deployment
in the cloud. Only a DSE like IFS Mobile Workforce Management can make these
types of real time adjustments to help you:
Increase the agility of your field service operation
Allow you to succeed in meeting demanding service level agreements (SLAs)
Schedule field resources dynamically, in real time
Manage by exception
Use the power of the cloud to drive efficiencies in your business.
Reduce drive time and customer site visits while improving customer service
Provide insights into how the your service management business operates
Drive business change and increase margins

Paul Bouchier is Chief Information Officer for IFS Mobile Workforce Management. Bouchier has
been responsible for mobile software design and architecture for more than 30 years. Prior to
involvement with IFS Mobile Workforce Management, he was Technical Director at ControlForce
Ltd, where he was responsible for the development of a complete mobile data product suite for
the field service industry. Previously, Bouchier was involved in a wide variety of system design
and engineering projects with Oracle, Siemens and Manweb Plc. He graduated in Systems
Analysis at Bristol UWE, England.

PLANNING IS A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN TRAIT

One, if not the distinctive feature of humans is their ability to imagine different futures and the consequences of actions
and events. It is the defining characteristic of the species over other animals and the basis upon which all civilizations
have been built. Scheduling and modeling of the environment in which organizations operate is therefore an extension
of an innate human quality and goes to the core of the decision making process with in all organizations; whether it is
the operational management on a day to day basis or strategic planning over a longer time frame, plus everything in
between!

ABOUT IFS
IFS is a public company (OMX STO: IFS) founded in 1983 that develops,
supplies, and implements IFS Applications, a component-based
extended ERP suite built on SOA technology. IFS focuses on agile
businesses where any of four core processes are strategic: service
& asset management, manufacturing, supply chain and projects.
The company has more than 2,000 customers and is present in
50+ countries with 2,800 employees in total.
More details can be found at www.IFSWORLD.com.
For further information, e-mail to info@ifsworld.com

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