How to Choose the Right Field Employee Task Management Software?

If you’re into managing field businesses, what do you need the most? Constant employee visibility, automated attendance, insightful reports? Sure! These things are necessary, but your main priority is optimising the workflow.

Field employees travel from one client to another throughout the day. This makes it tough to manage them and can cause communication gaps. Plus, you need to define your field staff’s jobs and assign tasks remotely. 

This is only possible if you use the right field employee task management software. It can automatically schedule and assign tasks, thus ensuring equal distribution of work between all employees. However, you have to choose the right software too.

There are many employee GPS tracking or field force automation software that don’t prioritise task management. You need to make sure your selected solution has a field staff scheduling and dispatching module. Plus, it should perform data analysis, be scalable and be easy to use.

Let’s study in detail how to choose the best field staff task management software for your business.

Choosing the right field employee task management software – 6 features to look for

We have listed 6 must-have features you should look for in field employee task monitoring software. These can help you better manage workflow and boost employee productivity. Here are the features!

1. Real-time Employee Visibility

All industries with a field workforce—be it sales, retail, publishing, pharma, or MRO— require real-time tracking capabilities. Managers can’t be in the dark about their employees’ whereabouts and activity status. As such, real-time visibility is a primary feature of the field employee task management software. It can be leveraged to:

• Check employee availability, along with their accurate locations.
• View the network and battery status of employees’ devices.
• Monitor your staff’s attendance, activity status, or travel routes.
• Track offline or unreachable employees.
• Display the total value of all orders and expenses.
  

2. Task Allocation & Employee Dispatching

Now let’s come to the core function of task management software. Every company prioritises fast, convenient, and the best possible customer service. This is only possible when your employees reach customer sites without delay and perform to their full potential. And the best way to achieve this is by optimising task allocation and employee dispatching. Here’s how you can do this using field employee task management software:

• Assign tasks based on employees’ proximity to the customer site.
• Check employee availability and task status in real time.
• Adjust the priority of tasks.
• Create ad-hoc tasks and upload them in bulk.
• Let employees self-assign tasks.
• Schedule tasks in advance.
  

3. Order Management

Many businesses employ field executives to carry out sales tasks. They visit customers to pitch products and take orders. As such, they need access to an updated and exhaustive order inventory. And since it’s a time-sensitive job, salesmen need to create orders fast. Field employee task management software can help you manage your sales orders. It lets you:

• Create multiple order categories.
• Maintain an updated product inventory.
• Assign custom prices or discounts to orders.
• Add custom fields in the inventory and sort orders accordingly.
• Create orders on the go and get them approved quickly.
  

4. Expense and Payroll

Work-related expenses like stationery, lodging and fuel are part of field businesses. These have to be reimbursed by the company. However, proper verification of expenses is necessary. 

Plus, the payment channels have to be secure and efficient. That’s why most field employee task management software, like TrackoField, can double as expense and payroll management software too. 

It can automatically calculate accurate salaries after factoring in employees’ attendance, missed deadlines, completed tasks, expenses, sales made, etc. The software can also be used to:

• Create expense categories as per your business requirements.
• Sort expenses in different categories or according to priority.
• Let executives easily upload invoices with attached visual proof.
• View the location and time of expenses.
• Limit the expenses to a particular threshold to reduce overspending.
  

5. Leave and Attendance management

Recording the attendance of remote workers can be difficult. You have to enforce strict attendance and leave policies to deter time theft. Plus, you also have to manage employees’ shifts and overtime requests. These are common in any remote business. 

However, the right field employee task management software force management solutions can easily tackle all your leave and employee attendance duties. Using it, you can:

• Establish geofences to ensure location verification while attendance logging.
• Assign shift timing to employees or teams.
• Make visual proof mandatory for attendance recording.
• Design a yearly leave calendar.
• Allow employees to request leave in advance.
• Cap the number of leaves per employee.
• Create custom leave categories—full day, half day, sick leave, maternity, etc.
  

6. External Integration and Scalability

Growth is the primary objective of any business. So, whatever field employee task management software you choose should be able to cope with a growing workforce and its demands. The software should be scalable and support third-party integration.

It’s more convenient that you manage all field operations on a single platform. This is possible with CRM and ERP software integration. TrackoField, for example, supports integration with over 200 apps. These features are essential to futureproof your business, capitalise on trends faster and improve accessibility for your field staff.

Conclusion

The right field employee task management software can do wonders for your field business. Imagine automating task scheduling, allocation, and staff dispatching all in a single platform. Plus, you get to maintain complete accuracy of the task management process. The software allows you to track employees in real-time, monitor their task status, communicate seamlessly, and manually modify tasks if needed.

However, it’s important to choose the right employee task-monitoring software. Since most field operations are interlinked, your software should be able to record attendance, manage sales orders, and track expenses. Additionally, it should be scalable to accommodate a growing workforce. Easy integration with third-party software like CRM or ERP is another essential feature of task management software.

TrackoField is a leading employee GPS tracking software solution with dedicated task management modules. It can efficiently manage workflow and ensure optimised scheduling and dispatching. Get in touch with TrackoField staff to know more.