Article by Mohammad Yasar
Dealers spend a lot of time, effort and money in hiring qualified technicians, but hiring good technicians is just one part, efficiently scheduling them is another. Annata 365 makes Technician scheduling as easy as dragging and dropping.
Below are the five interesting features of Annata’s Smart Technician Job Scheduler
- Quick and Easy Drag-Drop Scheduling:
In Automotive/Equipment dealerships, there are dozens of tasks and bookings happening every day. And it’s also more likely that these tasks may cancel, reschedule, or update regularly. Drag and drop scheduling helps in such a dynamic environment to make changes quickly and instantly. Once a task/service order is created, the Service manager can drag it and reallocate it to any other resource, within any timeframe as needed.
- Color-Coding Based On Job Status :
On the Resource Scheduler, it is possible to pre-define multiple color codes for Service quotations, Service orders, Tasks, and Appointments. The colour changes are very visual and happen quickly in real-time based on the status of each work item.
It is also possible to maintain background colours for the working hours based on the working calendar of technicians. (The non-working hours are greyed-out).
A multi-dimensional view of the technician’s schedule with multiple viewing options – Day, Week, Month, Timeline and Resource view.
Timeline View
Monthly View
Weekly View
Resource View
3. Click and Drag to Create Service Orders
In many dealerships, new work requests are popping up now and then. Annata provides a flexible and quick way to create service orders/appointments with a simple click and drag on the resource scheduler. This feature provides the dealer with a holistic view of incoming demand and resource capacity.
Annata keeps it simple, it’s as easy as click and drag to create a service order directly from the resource scheduler:
The start date, resource name, workshop location, supervisor information, etc. shown above are automatically populated from the scheduler. This eliminates the data redundancy of capturing the same information on multiple screens.
4. Smart Resource Calendars
Proper calendaring is an important aspect of technician management. It’s important to realize that every worker can have a unique calendar that may deviate from the standard working hours the dealership, and if not taken into consideration, can skew the delivery time significantly.
The smart technician calendar keeps track of both variable shift timings and variation in labor cost based on technician clock-in entries.
Annata’s smart calendars feature can make life a lot easier by allowing dealerships to smartly schedule and also manage labor costs based on the working shift of the technician. Every technician is associated with a unique calendar that includes his working hours, working days and labor costs based on Standard time, Overtime & Premium time. E.g. if a technician is scheduled with a task on their day off or outside their standard working hours they will be paid with the Overtime or Premium time rates.
5. Real-Time Notifications and Live Reporting
With Annata’s resource scheduler, any changes or re-allocations to the work orders will be instantly notified to the Technician.
The Technician’s Dashboard spontaneously updates technicians with all key metrics and shows exactly what’s happening with all their tasks in real-time.
Annata’s interactive business intelligence report empowers dealers with a complete multi-dimensional view of over-allocated and under-allocated technicians. The Service managers can now slice, dice, drill down, analyze and interact with all vital technician performance metrics.
Find out more! If you would like to find out more about Annata 365, contact us at annata@annata.is
