Mobile and dispersed field teams require expert management skills if you want to keep things running smoothly. Businesses like locksmiths, home repair services, delivery services, and construction companies typically have dispersed teams spread out across a city, or even multiple cities at the same time. To operate at peak performance, these types of companies require a well-rounded combination of productivity apps and digital tools. Each group has its own set of clients and projects to deal with, so if your organizational processes are anything but airtight, your customers will start to notice fairly quickly. On top of that, coordinating paperwork with your back office can be a total pain if you’re dealing with hard-copy documents. Creating central hubs for core processes, like internal communications and document processing, is the key to conducting seamless business day after day. So, if your company has field teams that are constantly on the move, read on to learn about the most indispensable apps for simplifying your operations and give your customers the white-glove service they deserve! Â
One of the biggest challenges for companies that employ mobile teams is keeping track of everyone's time, deliverables, and whereabouts. Hubstaff is just that: a hub for all things staff management, including time tracking, GPS location tracking, digital timesheets, a team scheduling module, and payroll capabilities. Employees on the move can use Hubstaff's mobile app to clock in, clock out, enter their hours, and more, while workers back at the office have the option to access the platform via desktop as well. Â Â
The only thing more chaotic than keeping tabs on field teams is handling the piles upon piles of physical paperwork they bring back to the office each day (not to mention all of the papers that get lost inside workers’ cars, never making it to the back office in the first place!). Make those stacks disappear in a flash with Signeasy, a mobile document processing solution that’s built for mobile teams. With the Signeasy app, you can sign documents on-the-spot, which is especially useful for on-the-go employees who have tablets at their disposal. This software keeps workers light on their feet, eliminating the need to carry around stacks of paperwork, and cutting down on time spent running back and forth between office and worksite to scan and archive files.
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Slack is the premier platform for team communications for a reason. Available on desktop and as a mobile app, Slack is so much more than just a messaging service: you can share files, place calls (both phone and video), organize chats by groups and individuals, loop clients and vendors into the mix, and take advantage of tons of integrated tools like Google Drive and Dropbox. If your company already uses apps that are part of the Microsoft ecosystem, Teams is another high-performance option. Office 365 is baked into the software, so you'll enjoy quick access to staples like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can also place calls via Teams, and it features its own suite of integrated apps. Again, like Slack, Teams is available on both desktop and mobile.Â
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Imagine your field employees traveling to a different city for business, and they still have to worry about keeping track of their receipts and submitting their expense reports on time. With a modern expense report software like Fyle, they can tackle their expense reporting, tracking, and management challenges.Â
Field workers can manage paper receipts using the tool's receipt scanning feature. They can also create expense reports right from their Gmail and Outlook inbox. Fyle uses OCR technology to automatically scan, extract and fill the expense report without the worker having to do any manual data entry. Next, they can simply review and submit their expense reports, and it gets automatically routed to the manager for approval. Additionally, the tool has a robust check engine that audits the expense reports in real-time before the expense report is even submitted.
It can also make the reconciliation of credit card transactions, expenses, and receipts super easy for Finance teams with just one click. Plus, with a feature like next-day ACH payment, finance teams can reimburse workers on time and in bulk. This helps to close to reimbursement cycle on time and help stay compliant.
