The word dispatch is shared with logistics and the sharing causes real confusion at the point of purchase. A delivery dispatcher is solving an ordering problem: a known set of stops, a known vehicle, find the shortest sequence. A field dispatcher is solving a promise problem: each stop has a window somebody agreed to, a skill it requires, and a customer who will notice. The software follows from that difference.
The stop is a promise, not a coordinate
Every job on a field board carries a window that somebody told a customer, and that window is the constraint the whole day bends around. A router that optimises purely for distance will happily move a job outside the time it was promised, which is a shorter drive and a lost customer. Field dispatch software has to treat the promise as fixed and the driving as the variable.
Not everybody can take every job
Skill, certification and sometimes simply who has been to that address before all narrow the choice of who to send. Where certification is a legal condition, such as the Environmental Protection Agency Section 608 requirement for handling refrigerant, sending the wrong person is not an inefficiency, it is a job that cannot legally be done. Routers do not model this and boards have to.
The day changes after it starts
Delivery routes are planned the night before and largely survive. Field days do not: the first call runs long, an emergency arrives, a customer is not home. The measure of field dispatch software is how quickly one job can be moved from one person to another with everybody informed, not how good the initial plan was.
The driving still costs, and it is paid
On the worked example this site publishes, 22% of the working day goes on travel, which is 144 jobs a month worth $41,081 of capacity. Reducing it by clustering work geographically is worth real money. It is also paid time under the Department of Labor position on travel that is all in the day work, whether or not it is billed to anybody.
Questions people ask about field dispatch software
Can we use a route optimiser instead?
If your stops have no promised windows and anybody can do any job, yes, and it will be better at the driving. Most service businesses fail both conditions.
Does the software choose who goes?
It shows who can and what each has on. The choice stays with the dispatcher, because the real decision is usually which customer to disappoint.
How fast should a reassignment reach the van?
Seconds, not a phone call. If the technician has to be rung, the board is a record of the past rather than a picture of the day.