Salesforce Route Planning for Sales & Service Field agents

So, here’s the rule:
A field rep, sales rep, and a service technician shouldn’t spend more time dealing with administrative tasks and traveling than being with the customer.
Route planning for field reps is simply the best when it’s made mobile and always up-to-date. The market is full of route planning and route optimizing solutions. However, wouldn’t it be easier to simply plan your daily activities and routes within the same app you use to manage all customer data, sales & service processes?
Resco Mobile solution for sales and field services gives you unlimited access to all your Salesforce data. When it comes to planning, organizing, and optimizing your activities – it makes for what we call, an ultimate road warior.

Resco Mobile Route Planning for Salesforce helps field reps:

Save time & fuel expenses
Organize data with clarity in a few minutes
Spend more time with customers
Manage all appointments planned for the day
Be more efficient
Save sales & service agents hours of manual planning

Add scheduled activities on the map and get an estimated arrival time for each appointment
Route planning feature of the Resco Mobile App calculates the distance and driving time between each visit, so you can see if there’s a smarter way to arrange visits and eliminate waiting periods.

15 Actions Resco’s Route Planner allows you to do with your Salesforce in your Phone/Tablet

Create an activity by tapping on the map – the app displays Accounts, Leads and other activities on a map, just tap on each record to create an activity.
Select start & end locations –by selecting one of the pre-defined locations (e.g. home, office) or tapping on the map to manually mark the start and end point.
Manage activities –schedule and reschedule activities by moving them up and down on the list to create an optimal route (the app even recalculates the distance traveled and total driving time with each change).
Show route between activities on the map – each change is dynamically reflected, so the user gets an accurate visualization.
Show estimated arrival time and “fix” activities accordingly – the app shows the travel time between activities and calculates the estimated arrival time for each appointment, so you can change its start time to minimize waits.
Start navigation – Resco Mobile App will open up an external application that provides navigation to selected records.
Close activity on the map – activities can be marked as completed with a single tap on the map.
Set appointment organizer by default — the application will automatically select the current user of the mobile application as the organizer of an appointment.
Route planning rules — you can set up fields upon adding or completing an event.
Plan route for multiple users – people can now plan routes for other users, for instance, dispatch can plan the route from the office via the desktop application for its service technicians out in the field.
Use km or miles based on user location – the app will display distance in units of length that the users are used to, e.g. miles for USA, kilometers for the rest of the world.
Set values for new appointments – Resco’s Route Planner can show editable fields that allow you to create new activities filled in with pre-defined values
Add any entity on a route plan — you can define any type of default or custom entity as the outcome of route planning
Configure start hour, duration, and work location— admins can set up default Start Hour, Duration (time spent at each stop), and Work Location for route plans, so the users don’t need to do it manually in the app
Include a completion button if you wish— system admins can choose whether to include a completion button in Route Planning for users to confirm that they have completed their route.

A day with Resco Mobile Route Planning – What are you able to do?

Start your day off with a simple „sync“ of your Salesforce data in your mobile device. Resco helps you to manage all sales & service activities on the go. It‘s basically the only tool you need to get work done.

Step 1 – Define ‘My Route‘

my-route
Once you sync the app, go straight to ‘My route‘. Your current Accounts = the green pins appear on the map that have zoomed in to your current location (in our case – Work). Now, you are ready to start defining your route.
On the very top, you can see ‘The Date‘ for which you are about to design a route. To set the date, use the arrows or simply select a prefered day in the calendar. Perhaps, you wish to assign the route to a particular user, clicking on ‘Assigned to‘ enables you to define the route to that specific someone.
route-planner4
Now, set the START Time & Location – choose the current location – work, or pick a different place, such as, your home or any other location.
location-time

Step 2 – Plan your visits

Select Customers/Accounts/Contacts you’d like to visit today. Add them to your route by clicking on the pin with ‘+ button‘ on the map. The app will immediately show you how long the drive to the customer will take. And let’s say you have two more visits scheduled for today, then just add them to the plan the same way.
customer's-visit-1

customer's-visit-3
Use the option to modify the order of the visits at any time. Moreover, you are able to make your planning for different dates, allowing you to create a route for next week or next month.
If you know, you will be staying longer at one of the customer locations, simply click on the ‘END time‘ and set it for the specific hour. Remember, the route planner offers a way to find out what the distance and travel time required is to get from the first location to the next one. On the top of the screen, the app displays ‘Total distance and Driving Time‘ of ‘My Route‘.
end-time

Step 3 – Save your route & check how the app generated your appointments

Once you have set up your route, click on the ‘Save‘ button. The app will create appointments automatically for you in the Calendar and after synchronization (totally seamless using the backgound sync option) also in Salesforce web interface used by your back-office colleagues. So there is no need to create manual appointments at all.

When going to ‘Calendar‘, you can spot your newly generated appointments. When you return back to your route, the appointments (may it be an inspection on the customer’s site or a simple sales presentation) will show up.

Best of all – select the status of your appointment. For example, once you are back from the customer’s visit, click on the ‘Check‘ item on the map and set the status to ‘Completed‘. Other than that, you are also able to cancel or edit the appointment.

What if one of the appointments change?
Let’s imagine, your colleague has modified one of your appointments from the Salesforce web interface. The route planner on your mobile device will be synchronized (this can happen seamlessly with background sync option) . Moreover, the warning will be generated (red text as seen bellow), so you know you won‘t be able to make it in time.

Now, you are all set to start your tablet or smartphone’s navigation system.
Note that!
All this is customizable in App Configurator – Resco’s smart configuration tool. That means, if you want, you can choose which objects will be shown on the map, be it Accounts, Contacts, or Customers – by a few simple clicks in the App Configurator solution. In App Configurator, you can also define your Work location, Default meeting duration and more.
Learn more about Resco’s configuration tool here.
There is no better way to plan your route. Truly, those who tried Resco Mobile Route Planning for Salesforce never look back.

Save 25% or more on kilometres driven using Route Planning and Automatic Itinerary Planning to customer sites for Field Service and Sales visits. Reduce fleet costs, fuel consumption, and time on the road.

Curious to see how Route Planning works in action? Contact us for a real-time demonstration at [email protected].