Workforce management (WFM)– Encompasses all the activities needed to maintain a productive workforce. Under the umbrella of human resource management, WFM is sometimes referred to as HRMS systems or even part of ERP systems. Recently, the concept of workforce management has begun to evolve into workforce optimization.
Specifically, workforce management includes:
- Payroll and benefits
- HR administration
- Employee self-services
- Time and attendance
- Career and succession planning/talent acquisition
- Talent management and/or applicant tracking
- Learning management and/or training management
- Performance management
- Forecasting and scheduling
- Workforce tracking and emergency assist
- Absence management
Workforce management: can also encompass field service management. This provides software to optimally plan and dispatch field service technicians and their properly stocked vehicles to a customer’s location in a timely manner in order to deliver against their service commitments. Field service management will itself include elements of:
- Demand management – to help forecast work orders to plan the number and expertise of the staff that will be needed
- Workforce scheduler – using predefined rules to automatically optimize the schedule and use of resources (people, parts, vehicles).
- Workforce dispatcher – automatically assigning work orders within predefined zones to particular technicians.
- Mobile solutions – allowing dispatchers and technicians to communicate in real-time.
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