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Task Force Management (TFM) encompasses all the activities needed to maintain a productive workforce. Sometimes referred to as HRMS systems, or even part of ERP systems. Recently, the concept of workforce management has begun to evolve into Task force Optimization.

Specifically, workforce management includes:

• Payroll & benefits
• HR administration
• Time & attendance
• Career & succession planning
• Talent management and/or applicant tracking
• Learning management and/or training management
• Performance management
• Forecasting and scheduling
• Workforce tracking and emergency assist

Task Force Management can also encompass Field service management. This provides software to optimally plan and dispatch field service technicians and their properly stocked vehicles to a customer's location in a timely manner in order to deliver against their service commitments. Field service management will itself include elements of:

• Demand management - to help forecast work orders in order to plan the number and expertise of staff that will be needed
• Workforce scheduler - using predefined rules to automatically optimize the schedule and use of resources (people, parts, vehicles)
• Workforce dispatcher - automatically assigning work orders within predefined zones to particular technicians
• Mobile solutions - allowing dispatchers and technicians to communicate in real time

In many markets and industries, Task force management is all about assigning the right employees with the right skills to the right job at the right time. The term is differentiated from traditional staff scheduling because staff scheduling is rooted to time management and simply manages the administration of past and future working times.

This traditional approach has since evolved into the more integrated, demand-oriented workforce management, which includes changes in personnel requirements and objectives when optimising the scheduling of staff. Besides the two core aspects of demand-orientation and optimisation, task force management may also incorporate:

• forecasting of workload and required staff
• integration of employees into the scheduling process
• management of working times and accounts
• analysis and monitoring of the entire process.

The market for Task force management (WFM) is still quite young. In the eighties and nineties, entrepreneurs mainly focused on topics such as SCM (Supply Chain Management) or PPS (Production Planning Systems) and, in recent years, on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). As cost pressures have increased, managers have increasingly turned their attention towards HR issues. In all personnel-intensive industries, workforce management has become an important strategic element in corporate management.