A Comprehensive Guide to Scheduling in Fourth Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolutions & Evolution of Modern Workforce, a Brief History Lesson

The evolution of our modern world and the societal economy is a result of three industrial revolutions that spanned across two centuries. Let us look closely at these industrial revolutions from the perspective of technology and employment behaviours, to help you better understand the future of work, post-pandemic.

• The first industrial revolution was powered by steam and machine tools. Mechanization was the technology that helped set up industries such as manufacturing and transportation. Employees who had to work for hours at stretch on agricultural lands now had to clock in rigid hours and shifts at work locations. The first industrial revolution changed the way we worked and lived – dawn of Industrialization.
• Electricity, gas, and oil powered the second revolution that helped mechanization to improve industry output. Industries prospered with improved technology, workplace, and resources optimization. Communication and transportation grew leaps and bounds, giving birth to Urbanization, that lead to workforce migration to industrial hubs for employment.
• Advancements in electronics and communication technologies, computers, and the birth of the internet kickstarted the third industrial revolution. Information Technology boomed, new industries and sectors took their first breath and flourished during the third industrial revolution. Rigid office spaces and work hours became the main stay. The third industrial revolution solidified the trends set by its predecessors and helped the world advance.

The Paradigm Shift – Fourth Industrial Revolution & the Pandemic

Right now, we are in the fourth industrial revolution that is being powered by cloud computing, AI, virtual reality, creative applications of technology and remote working. Unlike the other revolutions which took their time to unravel and transform the world, the advancements in fourth industrial are exponential and have been further accelerated by the pandemic.

With rapid adoption of remote working and work-from-anywhere models facilitated by technology advancements, the fourth industrial revolution is about to turn the long-enduring model of living and working on its head.

• Given employees can work from anywhere and free from rigid workspaces, they no longer must migrate or live near city hubs or tier-1 cities – a complete reversal of the trend that existed for over decades.
• With the new remote workforce models, businesses today have access to an ultra-wide pool of talent across the globe.
• In a knowledge economy where a resource is the most valuable and expensive asset, this model helps small and medium businesses close the talent gap and gain a competitive edge. Today businesses can accomplish this while being cost-effective at the same time.

Unlike other industrial revolutions where life had to be built around the work, the fourth industrial revolution and the remote work models enables the workforce to build their work around life.

Improved productivity and efficiency of the workforce is a direct result of this welcoming change. However remote working or work-from-anywhere models come with their challenges.

Challenges for Businesses in Work-from-Anywhere World

For the first time, businesses must figure out ways to maximise productivity of the workforce that is operating remotely, without direct supervision.

With remote working teams operating across multiple time zones, challenges around effective communication, resource allocation, scheduling and management have become the Achilles heel for most resource managers. But amongst them all, scheduling happens to be the most immediate and critical challenges in project management for many businesses.

Importance of Scheduling in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Resource scheduling is a systematic process of allocating and assigning the right resources to the right tasks based on their capability and availability. An efficient resource scheduling must also keep the workload of employees and project timelines in mind to ensure both productivity and timely delivery.

An efficient scheduling solution can extract the best out of remote resources and drive operational efficiency. On the other hand, employees working in an unoptimized schedule underperform and burn out in the longer run.

An efficient resource management solution with the right scheduling system helps resources managers:

• Automate scheduling for right resources based on the skill and availability.
• Analyse resource utilization and implement process improvements.
• Account for unexpected delays and problems and easily reshuffle schedules on the fly.
• Redistribute work to fill in gaps and prevent work overload for employees.
• Fine-tune the process and improve decision making through custom reports and analytics.
• Monitor the project effectively from start to finish through 360-degree view of the process.

Every business that is in the process of adopting remote working or work-from-anywhere model must equip their resource managers with an automated scheduling solution that ticks all the boxes above. If you are already looking for one, Resource Optimizer can help.

Resource Optimizer – Workforce Management Solutions for Work-from-Anywhere World

The success of any business in this fourth industrial revolution primarily depends on the quality of human capital and the ability of a business to extract productivity out of resources.

With work-from-anywhere models helping businesses to access a wider talent pool, having a powerful workforce management solution with automated scheduling capability is key for improved productivity. And Resource Optimizer, a Salesforce native application was born to address this need.

• Generate work from any source or system and allocate it to the right resources with the right capability at right time.
• Auto-create availabilities, offer resource suggestions and update through proactive notifications.
• Analyse your resource utilization and allocation efficiency.
• Generate reports and custom analytics to fine-tune your allocation and decision-making capabilities.

Built with the sole purpose of improving the productivity of the remote workforce using a simple and intelligent workforce management solution, Resource Optimizer perfectly integrates with your existing systems and is always at your fingertips.

At Resource Optimizer we are consistently finding new ways to help businesses simplify their resource management capabilities through automated scheduling and workforce management solutions.

Resource Optimizer is our most accomplished product effortlessly helps businesses schedule and optimize resources for driving organization efficiency.

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