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Other Markets

Retail

In today’s environment where retailers are faced with a decrease in the number of customers combined with rising customer service expectations, they have to respond to ever- increasing pressures to improve profitability. Workforce management solutions allow these companies to allocate services more efficiently. This objective is realized by resolving periods of understaffing, resulting in improved customer service. Cost reduction can be achieved through the elimination of periods of overstaffing. The use of time management services such as ExtendTime^TM frees store managers from building schedules and authorizing attendance, allowing them to use their valuable skills on the sales floor instead of behind desks.

Hospitality

Faced with a maturing travel and leisure market, along with more challenging business and economic environments, the hospitality industry must adopt new technology perspectives and strategies for the distribution and marketing of its services as well as in other areas such as customer service, resource management and procurement. Customer Service is the most distinguishing factor among establishments in this competitive market. One of the ways to achieve optimum customer service is to schedule the right staff at the right time. There is an acknowledged labor and skills shortage in this market and high levels of staff turnover is endemic to the industry. Growth in the hospitality industry is achieved through improvements in productivity which is not easily attainable in an environment of regulatory compliance.

The use of a time and attendance solution like ExtendTime^TM allows such companies to:

1. Save up to 5 percent of costs through reallocation of work hours.
2. Reduce labor turnover by planning schedules around the staff’s individual working time preferences and re-drawing flexible contracts to better fit in with the business operating model of the establishment.
3. Reduce errors in over-payment as well as reduce unauthorized absences through better visibility of attendance hours.
4. Comply with local Labor and Health and Safety regulations through rule-based scheduling.
5. Reduce valuable time spent by store managers in scheduling creation and attendance management tasks.
6. Provide headquarters with immediate feedback on individual establishment operations.

“The customers are the big winners,” says Berthold Steur of Metro Cash & Carry. “Our stores actually improved service with 50 percent reductions in queue length and at the same time realized labor savings of 3 to 7 percent. The key to this was the ability to build schedules based not simply on sales, but also on item, invoice, register, customer service, task management and historical data among others.” Meanwhile, store management benefited by spending 20 fewer hours per week building forecasts and schedules.

Transportation

The transportation industry is pulled in seemingly opposite directions by its customers demanding higher levels of service, by governments demanding increased regulatory compliance, and by its own infrastructure demanding ever greater levels of funding. To meet all these objectives, travel and transportation organizations are deploying or upgrading their resource planning tools. Such organizations are making sure that the shift plans of their employees match the anticipated demand. They have realized that by working together with the unions, they are able to engineer much more flexible working practices based around the anticipated demand. Having built those flexible rosters, transportation organizations need to record, who did what and when, in order to be able to apply the correct payment rules and to learn from discrepancies. In such a competitive and fast-moving industry, the players must constantly keep track of their performance, capabilities, and strategies.

A time and attendance solution like ExtendTime^TM allows transportation companies to:

1. Reduce administrative costs, paperwork, and manpower.
2. Improve labor utilization.
3. Control of legislative and agreed practices, such as health &safety, and working time directives.
4. Reduce absences and over—time.
5. Prevent fraud through employee accountability.
6. Improve service level to customers.
7. Insure accurate service management.

Utilities

The utility sector has been experiencing major changes over the last few years. In this very competitive market, both the general public and business users have come to demand the lowest prices along with improved services, requiring a decrease in overall costs. At the same time, shareholders are demanding higher performance and profitable operations. The combined effect of these forces drives individual and collective efficiencies in staffing, across organizational and geographical boundaries. The requirements of price control, service delivery, and profitability, necessitate essential work to be done in the most efficient way by means of maximizing staff utilization whilst meeting essential time scales. The complexity of managing a geographically spread workforce is constantly increasing with additional legislation and flexible working practices such as Multi-Skilling, Mobile Computing, Home Working, and Outsourcing. Many current IT systems and processes are not equipped to allow the business to Plan, Schedule, and Track the workforce efficiently. Many of these systems are not suited to support the introduction of mobile computing with all its potential benefits. Ineffective scheduling of resources to emergency and planned work, causes excess travel and results in re-works. Supervisors are tied down by paper-based processes for job allocation leading to deterioration in customer service levels and the inability of managers to control the productivity of field operations.

A time and attendance solution like ExtendTime^TM allows utility companies to:

1. Improve throughput by at least 5 percent.
2. Reduce travel costs by 5 percent through improved allocation of jobs.
3. Reduce absenteeism, overtime and lateness through accurate tracking of working hours, by 1 to 3 percent of total labor cost.
4. Reduce administrative expenses by up to 75 percent, allowing a more efficient use of ___ this valuable and expensive resource.
5. Improve customer service level.
6. Improve visibility of field force operations.