8 Utility Challenges to Solve With Smart Scheduling
The utilities sector faces unique challenges, and also unique opportunities, that can be addressed with smart scheduling tools.
The utilities that come to mind are often water, gas, oil, and electricity—but that is only the start. The utility industry also includes solar power, wind energy, fiber optics, environmental cleanup, natural disaster recovery, traffic safety, telecom infrastructure, pipeline services, inspections, and large equipment installation.
The growth of renewable energy and the need to update aging infrastructure means new growth opportunities for the utility industry. It is expected to see significant growth in the coming years—but skilled utility workers are retiring at a faster rate than they can be replaced. This represents a challenge for the industry as a whole, at a time when utility work is greatly needed and customers’ expectations are high.
Utility companies are making serious efforts to improve customer experience, employee retention, and the use of technology in their operations—and scheduling plays a major role. Here is a breakdown of the top eight challenges in utilities and how scheduling can help:
#1 – Manual processes and legacy technology
The utility industry has work to do to achieve digital transformation. Paper forms, spreadsheet-based systems, and phone calls are still commonly used to manage utility work in the field.
At a time when other industries are forging ahead with digitalization, a reliance on traditional methods can negatively affect the utility industry. Processes based on legacy tools are less connected, more error-prone, and more time-consuming than the technology-enabled version.
For example, consider manual scheduling: it is time-consuming to match each worker to the right job and communicate changes to affected workers. Changes are handled individually, which makes errors more likely and makes tracking key metrics nearly impossible.
By replacing manual scheduling with scheduling software, utility companies can make core processes quicker, more reliable, and more data-informed.
- Create schedules based on key business priorities in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually
- Automatically find and dispatch the right worker/team for the job
- Use role-based permissions to make schedules ready accessible to those who need to know
- Communicate schedule changes in real-time
- Provide scheduling data to managers to improve field operations
#2 – Managing travel time
Traveling to different job sites is a natural part of utility work, but it’s also a major expense.
There are the hard costs of travel time, like fuel and vehicle wear-and-tear, that add up quickly for large specialty vehicles in the utility fleet. But travel time also has a significant opportunity cost; when workers are traveling, they are not on the job site performing revenue-driving work.
Utility scheduling software helps address the four main drivers of excessive travel time:
- Sequence jobs in a logical order based on expected appointment length and jobsite locations
- Deliver the best route between jobs to minimize time spent in traffic, on detours, or lost
- Handle intraday changes (e.g. new jobs, cancellations) more easily
- Use proximity to the job site as one of multiple factors when creating schedules
#3 – Accounting for unexpected, urgent jobs
Utilities require you to expect the unexpected—and prepare the best you can. The nature of the work requires the adaptability to handle urgent jobs at a moment’s notice: water main breaks, natural disasters, power outages, and infrastructure failures, to name a few. When these emergencies occur, it puts a spotlight on the utility and its ability to handle unscheduled work.
One of the goals of any utility provider is a high workforce utilization rate: maximize the time that skilled workers spend on revenue-driving work and minimize the time spent on data entry, traveling, and admin tasks. The most effective utilities are the ones that can strike a balance between flexibility for urgent jobs and a high workforce utilization rate. This is incredibly hard to do when schedules are created and updated manually—but much easier with smart scheduling software.
Utility leaders can use scheduling software to:
- Leave a certain percentage of time available for urgent work
- Analyze historical data to estimate frequency of emergency jobs
- Create “on-call” schedules to ensure coverage for urgent jobs while booking up other technicians with scheduled work
Skedulo for Utilities
Skedulo offers the tools utility businesses need to face the biggest industry challenges. After one year of using Skedulo, utilities companies report a 68% increase in customer satisfaction and a 9x return ratio.
The Skedulo Pulse platform delivers scheduling built for work in the field: create schedules fast, optimize based on KPIs, match technicians to jobs, and plan out multi-stage projects.
With the Skedulo app, field teams can access customer info, job details, communication tools, and the optimal route between jobs. This means technicians arrive more prepared and stay better connected to the main office.
See how Connexin used Skedulo to improve the customer experience, replace outdated processes, and unlock incredible growth for the telecom company.
