Software Development
Field Service Management: Scheduling, Dispatch and Mobile Crews
Updated August 15, 2017By the CalliArc team
Key takeaway
First-time fix rate is the metric that drives everything else: each return visit costs a full job's travel and labour. Improving it means scheduling on skills and parts availability, not just on geography — and giving the engineer the job history before they arrive.
Field service organisations run on a stream of small decisions: who goes where, in what order, with what on the van. Software helps by making those decisions with better information than a dispatcher can hold in their head.
Scheduling is a constraint problem
- Skills and certifications — sending an engineer who isn't qualified for the equipment guarantees a second visit.
- Parts: the job can only be completed if the required part is on the van or can be collected en route.
- Travel time between jobs, appointment windows promised to customers, and shift patterns including breaks.
- Priority and service level agreements, with a clear rule for what gets displaced when an emergency arrives.
- Re-planning mid-day, because jobs overrun and engineers call in sick. A schedule that can't be revised by 10am isn't useful.
The engineer's app decides adoption
- Full job context before arrival: asset history, previous visits, site access notes, and known hazards.
- Offline capability — plant rooms, basements, and rural sites have no signal, and the job still has to be recorded.
- Fast completion: checklists, photographs, parts used, and signature capture in minutes, not a form that takes as long as the repair.
- Parts lookup and ordering from the van, with stock visibility across other engineers and depots.
What the customer sees
- An appointment window that's honoured, with a notification if it slips.
- Engineer tracking on the day, which sharply reduces inbound calls.
- A clear record of what was done, sent immediately afterwards.
- Simple rebooking when a return visit is needed, without a phone queue.
Measure the right things
- First-time fix rate, broken down by job type and by cause of failure — parts, skills, or diagnosis.
- Jobs per engineer per day, alongside travel time as a share of the working day.
- Time from call to attendance against the service level agreement.
- Repeat visits to the same asset, which often reveals an equipment problem rather than a service problem.