How to Manage Field Force: How to Optimize 70% Efficiency?
Many brands and retailers now use field force to capture business situations and collect customer information.
So what is field force? How to manage field force well to achieve optimal work efficiency? Let's find out with FieldCheck in the article today.
How to effectively manage market staff?
What is Field Force?
Market staff collect market information and corporate customers through survey activities.
This force is considered the point of contact between customers and businesses. Market staff can go directly to customers to offer and advise on products and collect data about customers, consumers and actual consumption situations from the market.
Field force is the bridge between customers and businesses
Difficulties Always Encountered When Managing Field Force
Difficult to track the route of field force
Managing multiple marketers at different locations can be challenging to get to the management level. The reason is that there is still too much information and sources of information that need to be aggregated, compiled, and analyzed.
Not to mention, the information reported is not guaranteed to be highly authentic. Management may find it difficult and take a lot of time and effort to check whether the information submitted is correct with the actual situation.
In addition, the peculiarity of the market staff park is to move back and forth to many different locations. There are many cases where the market staff reported the wrong position and did not take the assigned tasks seriously.
This problem easily makes it difficult for management levels to control the correctness of the work and, at the same time, evaluate the employee's work productivity.
Managers often have difficulty keeping track of the market employee route
It is difficult to grasp the working situation of market employees in real-time.
One of the common problems when managing market employees understands the working situation. In many businesses, many employees only make reports at the end of the working day.
This can lead to several problems, such as delays in reporting to superiors and management not knowing how the business or the market is doing during the day.
When there is any problem, it is difficult for the management to make appropriate decisions to solve it quickly and promptly.
It is difficult for management to grasp the working situation of employees in real time
Ineffective communication
It is a common practice today in businesses, employees or market staff, including PGs, visual merchandisers, etc., all use messaging applications to report work progress such as Messenger, Zalo, etc.
For example, the manager wants to send promotional information to all field workers; one is to send a message to each person very time-consuming, and the other is that the message in the group will have people read and people not read.
Communication difficulties in businesses
How to Manage Market Employees Easily With Technology
With the great progress of science and technology, many service providers have now launched software and applications to help manage employees in organizations and businesses, including market employees, efficiently and effectively.
In particular, FieldCheck is a pioneering software-as-a-service in supporting market forces in job performance and helping management control the volume, quality of work and progress easily.
See more: Why Electrolux Selected FieldCheck For Their Regional Field Force Management
Manage employee routes accurately and easily
When assigning employees, management can arrange the order of stores that employees need to visit. Employees only need to check their mobile devices and follow the instructions of the business.
Thanks to the integration of GPS positioning technology, FieldCheck software helps managers to update employees' working locations easily on the system.
Not only that, the GPS location simulator or fake GPS detection feature is also integrated into the solution, helping to ensure the accuracy of the location report.
Anti fake GPS feature
The tech-backed solution delivers real-time reports for management to grasp the situation and make quick decisions.
With the integration of real-time mechanisms, employees can report to stakeholders quickly and easily. Management can remotely access and check the reported information to grasp the actual situation.
As a result, transparency is also improved in the operation apparatus of organizations and businesses. In addition, when there is any problem, the management level can handle it quickly and promptly.
Real-time tracking
Exchange information quickly and efficiently
Managers can exchange necessary information with field force through the system's news and information exchange features. With just a click of a button, the essential information is immediately sent to all employees.
Survey panel feature
You can also create surveys for store audits or quality checks by using the digital checklist feature. Instead of traditional checking methods, management can use digital checklists to hand over to employees.
Employees can use mobile devices to perform assigned work and submit reports quickly in real-time when traveling to designated work sites.
Multiple question types
No more need for cumbersome, error-prone papers
One of the outstanding advantages of FieldCheck software is its ability to minimize the use of cumbersome paperwork. As you probably know, jobs using the traditional pen and paper method are prone to human errors, such as entering the wrong number, typing in the wrong place, etc.
Thanks to the digitization of the list of audit questions, businesses can limit problems caused by human error.
5 Things To Help Manage Market Employees Better
#1. Provide high visibility in task assignment
One of the problems causing headaches for managers today is that employees do not understand the nature of the work and the work they need to complete or report to their superiors. Therefore, the results achieved have not met the expectations of the management level.
In addition, in the enterprise, there is a situation of overlapping responsibilities among employees in groups and departments. This can easily lead to conflicts of accountability among employees.
Therefore, to manage the market workforce well, management needs to develop measures that can make the responsibilities of each job transparent for employees in the staff and the team.
One of the ways that you can use it is to create tasks on the system and then assign tasks directly on the approach to employees on their devices.
High visibility in task assignment
#2. Inspire motivation to employees
You may not know it, but motivation can enable employees of an organization or business to strive and dedicate themselves to the collective goal. The question is how to be motivated.
There are many ways to help managers stimulate the working spirit of their employees. It can be words of encouragement, rewards, and a specific promotion route for employees.
To do this, businesses can build a reasonable KPI or OKR program. Accordingly, employees will get details about the work they need to do and the goals they need to achieve to have the desired career path.
#3. Know how to listen and solve problems with employees
Active listening can lead to better relationships between people, as can management and employees. However, according to a study of 14,000 LinkedIn employees, today, only 8% of managers are good listeners and communicators.
This is also one of the reasons leading to the fact that 60% of problems arising in the business environment occur from poor communication.
Listening is important in businesses
#4. Always reward and acknowledge promptly
Employees' dedication to the company, organization and business is something to be appreciated. There is a saying, "When favours are exchanged, both sides are happy." When employees have worked hard for a common goal, management must also show appreciation for their efforts.
There are many ways that management can use to reward and recognize their employees' efforts, such as giving gifts, giving vacation trips, etc. With practical actions, employees can feel the care of the top management.
Accordingly, they can feel that their efforts are properly recognized. As a result, employees will be motivated to do their part well, optimizing the results achieved in the tasks.
The management can use to reward and recognize their employees' efforts
#5. Replace paper-based work with technology
As you know, traditional employee management often requires a lot of pen and paper. The reason is that there has been no development of science and technology as well as the popularity of mobile devices.
Another factor is that labor costs in developing countries are still low. Therefore, many businesses use people to save costs instead of using advanced technologies and software.
However, this action does not bring sustainable results for businesses. For example, manual management cannot help optimally connect work between one party and another in a multi-party task.
As a result, there will be a mismatch in work results, not to mention the overlap and disputes about individual responsibilities.
One of the more reasons businesses need to switch from using paper or spreadsheets for management to software applications is the cost of document storage and the risk of document damage due to mold and mildew insects.
Therefore, to avoid such problems, businesses need digital transformation to use software or applications to manage their work and employees.
Today's applications and software are gradually integrating cloud-based technologies to help leaders work remotely and update work progress anytime and anywhere.
Optimize the efficiency with technology
KAO Vietnam is one of the specific businesses that has successfully applied technology to PG management, helping to optimize 70% of the time to process updated data from employees.
Wrapping Up
The application is currently performing its role and efficiency well by integrating useful features such as real-time reporting and location tracking with the ultimate fake GPS technology, digital checklists, etc.
FieldCheck is proud to be one of the pioneer service providers in helping field forces do their jobs efficiently and quickly. In addition, the management level also has a better solution on how to manage field force.
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