Written by Ashish Nijhawan, Vice President, LeadSquared

If you’ve spent enough time in financial services, you know this already: field teams make or break your growth strategy.

You can have the sharpest boardroom deck, the most comprehensive credit policy, a seamless digital journey – and still lose the customer at the last mile because someone didn’t show up on time, missed a follow-up, or captured the wrong information.

I’ve been on all sides of that problem for over 20 years – running sales, sitting through monthly MIS, and now, in my current role at LeadSquared, working with leaders of some of the most respected Indian BFSI brands who are trying to scale without losing control of what’s happening on the ground.

Over time, I’ve noticed something consistent: high-performing field teams aren’t working “harder.” They’re working with more clarity. Clarity on where to go, whom to meet, what to say, what to capture, and what happens next.

With this blog, I hope to share my views on how that clarity gets created. Have a good read!

From “Are Visits Happening?” to “Are We Doing the Right Work?”

For years, most field conversations have sounded the same:

• “How many visits did you do this week?”
• “How many files did you log in?”
• “Why is this bucket not moving?”

Those questions aren’t wrong. They’re just incomplete.

What I see in high-performing organizations now is a quiet but important shift. Leaders are no longer satisfied with volume; they want quality and intent:

• Are we meeting the right customers today, not just the nearest ones?
• Are follow-ups happening when they matter, not when someone finds time?
• Are we clear on what blocked a case – documentation, intent, underwriting, something else?

That shift is impossible to make if your only inputs are end-of-day WhatsApp updates, phone calls, and Excel trackers. You simply don’t see enough, early enough.

Which is why technology and data maturity now sit at the heart of field performance.

Real-Time Field Intelligence: Seeing the Day Before It’s Over

Let’s be very clear: this is not about “tracking people.” The best leaders I know aren’t interested in micromanaging adults.

What they want is a clean, live picture of work:

• Which leads are yet to be contacted?
• Who is due for a follow-up today?
• What’s stuck because of incomplete documentation?
• Which visits are truly high value, and which are noise?

For a leading home loans provider we work with, their field officers log into a mobile app every morning and see a prioritized list of leads.

They can clearly see:

• pending follow-ups,
• new leads assigned,
• time-sensitive cases that cannot slip

Automated reminders and tasks make sure those follow-ups don’t depend on memory or personal discipline alone. The system nudges them at the right time.

The impact is very tangible:

• Fewer low-quality or “just for the record” visits
• Better prepared conversations
• Higher customer trust and stronger retention

Nothing magical. Just better visibility into “what really needs to happen today” for the company and for each individual on the ground.
 

Clean Execution Starts With Clean Data

Another pattern: in high-performing teams, what happens in the field doesn’t live in notebooks or someone’s head. It lives in the system, in real time.

We see this with a leading digital lender and a large housing finance company using our mobile-based field solution. Their agents:

• Log visit outcomes instantly – no waiting to “update later”
• Capture notes, documents, photos, and geo-tags on the spot
• Update lead status and next steps before leaving the customer location
• Complete digital KYC and documentation within the same flow
• Trigger workflows immediately after the meeting – whether that’s moving the case to credit, requesting more documents, or scheduling the next interaction

When you do this consistently, a few good things happen:

• Data is clean, because it’s captured at the source, not recreated later
• Reporting is accurate, because there’s no gap between “what happened” and “what was logged”
• Turnaround times drop, because downstream teams don’t have to chase or guess
• Customers feel the difference – decisions happen faster, and they don’t have to repeat information

Again, none of this is theory. It’s just the discipline of making the mobile app the system of work, not an afterthought.

The Operating Rhythms That Quietly Separate Strong Teams

Tools don’t run teams. People do.

The organizations that consistently get the best out of their field forces pay a lot of attention to rhythm like how the day, week, and month actually flow.

A few practical patterns I see again and again:

1. Beat plans that reflect reality, not a static PDF: Instead of frozen “beats” that don’t change for months, leaders use data to refresh priorities:

• Is there a cluster of approvals pending only because of document gaps?
• Are certain areas throwing up more high-intent leads this week?
• Are renewals, cross-sell, or collections at risk in a particular pocket?

The plan adjusts. Not in a chaotic way, but in a measured, data-backed way.

2. Reviews that are about patterns, not just numbers: Daily or weekly reviews don’t sound like interrogations. They sound like problem-solving conversations:

• “We’re seeing a drop in visit-to-conversion in this segment. What are you hearing from customers?”
• “Follow-up adherence is strong here but weak here. What’s different in how the teams are planning their days?”
• “We’re doing enough first visits, but second visits are slipping. What’s blocking them?”

When you have real-time data, you can ask better questions. Better questions build better teams.

3. Managing performance through inputs, not just outcomes
Most reviews jump straight to outcomes – loans booked, policies issued, disbursals done. Those are important, but by the time they show up, the month is more or less decided. High-performing leaders also track the input metrics that create those results, like:

• new leads sourced or activated,
• connector or partner meetings completed,
• applications logged in the system,
• follow-ups completed on time.

When these inputs start slipping in week one, it’s an early signal that the target is at risk, while there’s still time to act. The conversation shifts from “why didn’t we hit the number?” to “which inputs need support?”, making it easier to coach teams and help lagging pockets recover.

Where AI Enters the Picture (Quietly, Usefully)

AI is everywhere in our industry’s vocabulary right now. My view is straightforward: if AI doesn’t make a field manager’s day simpler, it’s just a slide, not a solution.

Where it actually helps in field operations is in three very specific ways:

1. Prioritization when you have hundreds or thousands of leads and tasks, AI models can help rank them:

• Which customer is more likely to convert if we visit today?
• Which follow-up, if missed, increases the risk of losing the case?
• Which geography or segment is heating up and deserves more attention this week?

Instead of every manager manually scanning lists, they start from an intelligent shortlist.

2. Early warning signals AI can surface patterns like:

• A certain type of lead repeatedly requiring three or more visits
• A particular stage where cases stall for longer than usual
• A geography where visits are happening, but outcomes are consistently weak

You still need human judgment to understand why this is happening. But you don’t waste time figuring out where to look.

3. Assistance, not automation, for field conversations over time, combining field notes, outcomes, and customer profiles allows systems to suggest:

• talk tracks that work better in certain segments,
• typical objections and how they were successfully handled earlier,
• recommended next actions after a certain type of interaction.

Done right, this doesn’t turn field staff into robots. It gives them a starting point based on what has actually worked in similar situations.

So, What Does All This Mean for Leaders in FIs?

If I had to distill it into a few simple truths from what I’ve seen over the years, it would be this:

• You can’t improve what you can’t see. Real-time field intelligence is no longer a “good to have” at scale.
• Clean data is not an MIS project; it’s a field habit. The closer data capture is to the moment of interaction, the more powerful it becomes.
• Tools are only as good as the rhythms around them. Beat planning, reviews, and coaching need to evolve with the data you now have.
• AI should reduce noise, not add to it. If your managers are spending more time figuring out the tool than acting on its recommendations, something’s off.

In my current role, I’m fortunate to see this journey play out across banks, lenders, insurers, and other financial institutions. The common thread among the ones who are pulling ahead is not that they’ve “fixed” their field teams. It’s that they’ve redesigned the system around those teams:

• Mobile-first execution
• Real-time capture of outcomes and documents
• Intelligent prioritization and reminders
• Clear, decision-ready views for managers and leaders

That’s the gap platforms like LeadSquared are helping close – not by replacing the human element in field work, but by giving it structure, context, and support.

At the end of the day, most field officers I’ve met want to do a good job. They want to close more cases, earn more, and build real relationships with their customers.

Our responsibility, as leaders, is to remove friction from their day and give them clarity on what matters most.

When we do that well, performance stops being a mystery. It becomes a habit.