This newsletter will look at the Calendar Planner: a feature requested by a Shepherd customer involved in construction for which longer-term planning is the name of the game. The Calendar Planner functionality will be part of Shepherd’s November release and available for activation by existing Shepherd customers from then onwards.
Tangible benefits
This new feature will give project managers and coordinators a high-level, month-out overview of everything expected to happen, such as volume of jobs, which are confirmed or still provisional, before committing anything to an actual technician’s schedule. This Calendar view functions more like a project-planning/overview tool than a workforce-scheduling tool, useful for long-lead-time work involved in this customer’s construction services, where the planning phase happens well before execution.
Some industries really do need the kind of foresight the Calendar Planner offers. One such is the construction industry. Long before a project breaks ground, there will have been files, documents, and plans drawn up outlining every beam, pipe, and vent. And even at that point in the process, there will be very clear goals about when everything should happen so that the entire development is ready to recoup its investments as sales and rental profits as soon as possible.
In other words, stuff needs to happen on time: laying the foundations needs to finish when required so that the next stage can commence. A delay at one point causes delays at all others that follow since no construction stage will have additional time margins to play with.
The long view
This Calendar Planner functionality was requested by a recently onboarded Shepherd customer whose service is construction deliveries. It’s their job to make sure that the right materials reach the right sites at the right time. They service multiple projects at any given time, and cannot afford to have workers or trucks lying idle.
Their planning has to stretch months ahead. As soon as architects have done their thing, the Takeoff Specialist will start compiling a list of what is needed and when. That is when this customer starts allocating drivers and suitable vehicles to make sure they reach the dig on time.
Service orders only, please
The Calendar Planner operates with day-, week- and month-views. Which you choose depends on whether a detailed view or a higher perspective will help you most. This newly commissioned version allows the creation and presentation of both actual and provisional service orders. The difference from the view more commonly seen is the lack of technician files.
This new planner is not so much about scheduling the service orders as forming a rough plan where the jobs, which will eventually be assigned, can sit in their likely slot. This permits the managers to see right away times when bottlenecks could occur, or when one delay could snowball. And with that they can develop secondary contingency plans to avoid these risks becoming realities.
Unlike normal calendar planners, dragging a service order from the list to the scheduler creates an estimated start and end date. The service order is not actually scheduled. This differs from the usual result of a drag-and-drop operation that would give you an actual, scheduled job in the planner board.
Consider it like adding a sticky note to your year planner on the wall, as opposed to writing it in with a permanent marker. In this new Calendar View, the “sticky note” versions and the “set” versions can occupy the same space, with “the real and the hypothetical” coexisting simultaneously.
Drafting beyond the assignment stage
In other aspects of Shepherd’s planner boards, there exists the option to pencil in events at the technician level. “When” and “where” might have been as-yet unconfirmed but the “what,” the service order, already existed.
Now, even the service order can be drafted because a company in that industry knows that those materials will be needed around that time and so they know the distances, the vehicle type, and the time they will need to allocate, even if doing so at this stage would be without added benefit. What can be reasonably put in motion for later is done now, making it one less task for a manager’s future-self to worry about. The result is not resource management through a planner board, but project management.
Need-to-know basis
Visibility, be it for confidentiality or simply to reduce data-overload, can be limited by roles. It may be that C-suite members want to see pan-project statuses, while project managers and fleet managers may only need or want to see the service orders relating to their districts and customers.
The web app also gives users this view but as read-only. Provisional service orders can still be created, but the start and end dates the system generates cannot be edited through that interface.
Although developed for a particular customer, it will eventually be rolled out to all existing customers in November’s scheduled release. When that happens, those who want it will be able to activate and use it.
If your operations could benefit from this type of longer-term oversight, asking your Shepherd contact for more information, or requesting a demo, will give you a good idea of its potential.
Featured Blog:
The PM in Rental blog looks at the fine line rental companies need to tread in order to ensure their equipment gets the maintenance it needs, while at the same time limiting inconvenience to customers and downtime back in the shop. Shepherd’s EAM solution makes planning easier and more effective, giving companies an advantage in their forward planning so that asset use and upkeep can coexist with the least inconvenience and fewest interruptions.
Where does your company get mentioned?
Specifically, outside your own website and channels. Would your company name come up in more independent sites and outlets?
If yes, then you may already see the value in being found in more than one place. If not, why not do something about it? Become a Shepherd case study candidate. You experience a thorough interview that is as much about your company, its goals, strengths and services, as it is about how and why you use Shepherd to help support your operations.
It’s dead easy: you agree on a call time, put some 45 minutes aside and go through the interview. That gets drafted into a piece that you can then review and approve. We won’t say anything that you don’t feel is accurate, so you maintain control over what goes out with your name on it.
And with that, you have a piece about you that others can read, and that you can use as soundbite material for your own channels and socials.
If you’d like your company to be featured in an upcoming Shepherd case study, email newsletter@shepherdcmms.com with the subject line “Case Study Enquiry” and we’ll be in touch.
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