−7–16%
Shift requirement
Fewer shifts needed to cover the same work, because the work is spread against the shifts instead of the other way round.
Workshifts
The same work, with fewer shifts needed
Routes and shifts are one problem, so Allocator solves them as one. The visits get covered by the people you already have — without the idle hours, the extra driving and the overtime that two separate plans quietly create.
How it works
The five steps of an Allocator optimisation
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Set the rules of a workable plan
Before anything is planned, Allocator is told what a legal, workable plan looks like here — how long the planning period is, which collective agreement applies, how many people each shift type needs, and how your units and calendars are organised.
- Planning period
- Collective agreement rules
- Staffing per shift type
- Units and calendars
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Bring in the work
The visits, jobs and hours to be covered arrive whichever way suits you. Nothing has to be re-keyed, and nothing waits on an integration project before the first plan can be run.
- Manual entry
- CSV import
- Logged hours
- Task Planner agent
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Route and roster in one calculation
Sharp plans the routes; the Workshift Scheduler builds the shifts that cover them. They run against the same constraints at the same time, which is the whole point — a route nobody is rostered to drive is not a plan.
- Sharp — routes
- Workshift Scheduler — shifts
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Read the shift requirement
Allocator reports how many shifts the work actually needs, shift type by shift type, against what you staff today. That gap is where recruitment, leave and overtime decisions get made — usually on an estimate.
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Validate before you publish
Every proposed plan is checked back against the rules it was built from before anyone sees it, so what reaches your supervisors is a roster they can publish rather than a draft they have to repair.
Measurable results
What changes when routes and shifts are planned together
+6–8%
Shift utilisation
More of every paid hour spent on the job rather than waiting for it or driving to it.
−6–19%
Distance driven
Shorter routes between the same visits, since the person nearest the work is also the person rostered for it.
−5–15%
Payroll cost
Less overtime and fewer stand-by hours, from a roster that matches the demand it was built for.
Anonymised pilot data, real customer organisations
Proven in practice
Tested on real operations, not on a model of one
These results come from optimisation runs against real customer data — the actual visits, the actual shifts and the actual people of organisations already running mobile work at scale. Nothing here is a simulation of an average company.
How much you gain depends on how much slack the current plan carries, which is why the figures above are ranges rather than single numbers. The pattern holds across industries; the number does not, and we would rather say so than quote you an average.
- Real visits, not generated ones
- Real shifts and real collective agreements
- Real employees, with real availability
- Re-tuned per industry, not assumed
Under the hood
How the AI reads your operation
Stage 01
Source data
Allocator starts from what you already record: where the work is, who can do it, and what the last few planning periods actually looked like.
The files come out of your ERP, your time-tracking system or a spreadsheet. Any one of the three is enough to run the first plan.
visits.csv Locations, durations and time windows
employees.csv Skills, contracts and availability
worked-hours.csv What the last periods actually cost
Stage 02
Current state
Before proposing anything, Allocator reconstructs the plan you are running now — how many shifts it takes, how much of each shift reaches a customer, how far people drive between visits.
That baseline is what every later figure is measured against. It is your own operation’s number, not an industry average applied to you.
Stage 03
Optimisation
Sharp and the Workshift Scheduler run together against one set of constraints: skills, contracts, collective agreement limits, travel time and the demand of the period.
What comes out is a route and the roster that covers it — not a route plan that a separate roster then has to accommodate.
Stage 04
Shift requirement
The optimised plan is expressed as a shift requirement per shift type and per period: how many early, late and weekend shifts the work genuinely needs.
Read against your current staffing, that is the input for recruitment, leave planning and overtime decisions — the one number those are usually made without.
DRAFT COPY
Stage 05
Validation
Each proposed plan is checked back against its own constraints before it is published: collective agreement limits, rest periods, skills coverage and the staffing minimum for every shift.
A plan that fails a check is not offered. What reaches the supervisor is a roster that can be published as it stands, not a draft to be repaired by hand.
Time is freed up where it is needed
Less driving means more service and more billable work — from the same people, in the same week.
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