Scheduling and Managing a Distributed Workforce
in the Cloud
Perhaps more than for any other type of organization, implementing a Cloud-based workforce scheduling, invoicing and accounting solution can be a game-changing move for business service firms. The inherent simplicity and cost-effectiveness of the Cloud allows firms to:
• Provide the workforce access to their schedules 24x7 via the web or any mobile device
• Bill quickly and accurately for time worked
• Gain more insight and control over day-to-day operations.
By using the Cloud, all of this can be done without the cost of building or owning information technology infrastructures that add no value to the business’ core activity and mission. Companies are under tremendous pressure to provide better service faster to
impatient clients, while still controlling quality and managing labor margins. Whether your business is home healthcare, hospitality, security services, event management, logistics or general staffing, your workers are likely coming into an office less often, or maybe never.
Clear, real-time scheduling and communication is a requirement to keep service quality high for clients and still maintain operational control of your business. Cloud scheduling can show quick results, and just as importantly help you sleep better at night.
But what is the “Cloud” and how can Cloud scheduling really improve a business service company? This white paper will help you understand the Cloud and its impact and benefits to your organization. To do this, we will answer the following questions:
• What is the Cloud and more specifically Cloud scheduling?
• Why is the Cloud so important to managing a distributed workforce in today’s competitive business environment?
• What benefits and savings can your business realize with Cloud scheduling?
• How can the value of Cloud scheduling be maximized by integrating it with a Cloud-based billing, accounting and reporting system?
What is the Cloud?
The term “Cloud” was first applied to telecommunication networks in the 1990s but as the Internet has become more and more pervasive in our business and personal lives, the term has spilled over into general computing jargon to where it has become interchangeable with the term “Internet” for many people. However, Cloud actually means something more specific than Internet as it describes a cost and operating model not just a technology.
Fundamentally, the cost and operating model behind the Cloud is simple: just as you wouldn’t build a power station to have heat and light in your building, why should you have to build a data center to be able to run applications? The Cloud takes computing to the utility level and
makes computing power, communications bandwidth and applications available through a metered model much like water, gas, electricity or the phone. In this model, there are minimal up-front costs and the service provider recoups their cost by charging you based on how much of their service you consume.
Figure 1: Shows that the total market for Cloud-based solutions and services is growing at a rate of over 30% per year.
This IDC chart shows that the total market for Cloud-based solutions and services is growing at a rate of over 30% per year. From a base of $16.2 billion in 2008, the market for Cloud-based solutions and services will grow to over $40 billion by 2012. Since overall IT expenditure is forecast to grow at a modest 4 or 5% per year, most of the Cloud’s growth will be at the expense of on-premise systems. While such systems will never totally go away, the clear trend is for most new applications to be deployed in the Cloud.
Today, Cloud-based applications such as Google support hundreds of millions of email, search and browser users while vendors such as Amazon, Microsoft, NetSuite and Salesforce. com support mission-critical applications for hundreds of thousands of organizations
worldwide. Shiftboard, a market leading Cloud-based scheduling application, supports hundreds of thousands of employees and processes tens of thousands of shift transactions such as “assign”, and “self-select”, plus automated confirmations and reminder messages daily.
What Can Cloud Scheduling Do For Your Service Business?
“Inevitably, the spreadsheet was outdated and only rarely
did officers have the updated version. It was a very
inefficient system which lacked accountability.”
Michael Recupito, Chief of Operations
Security Dynamics Corp.
Cloud scheduling is a real-time communication system that keeps the entire organization on the same page and reports on every aspect of workforce schedules, while segmenting information so that employees, managers and executives can only access information that pertains to them. Cloud scheduling allows any employee or contractor 24x7 access to check details of their shifts, get a link to a Google map, print their calendar, and (if you want to save operations management time) pick up additional shifts. From the management perspective, branch or district managers can always get an up-to-date view of schedules and operational commitments. Finally, the corporate office can see an umbrella view of all regional activity, and, if integrated with a Cloud-based financial solution such as NetSuite, can see all billing, customer performance against forecast, payments, etc. to really gauge the health of the business.
Figure 2: Shows the availability of workers using Shiftboard.
“There is so much less confusion with Shiftboard. We
now know who is scheduled and who isn’t. Shiftboard
allowed us to put it all online. That was a huge benefit.”
Mike Moraski, VP of Operations
Delivery Express, Inc.
• Cloud Scheduling Improves the Quality of the services you provide your clients. As you know, if an employee shows up at the wrong time or location for a shift (likely because they wrote it down wrong or checked an out-of-date spreadsheet), it has just as negative an impact on a client as not showing up for the shift. • Cloud Scheduling Saves Your Business Money - Fast. Wondering about a simple ROI? A good benchmark in virtually any service firm is a ratio of 1 scheduler to 50 workers when using a spreadsheet with email and phone. There is no other way to check all the availabilities, return all the calls, and perform all the shift changes. When workers are updating their availabilities online in real-time, or even better, self-selecting some of their own shifts, the efficiency of a scheduler is at least tripled to manage 150-200 workers. In one example Shift-board enabled a single banquet manager to handle scheduling for 750 people at one of the nation’s largest convention centers by allowing qualified workers to self-select shifts. That management efficiency gain means much less overhead costs in the business, and a much higher ratio of billable resources to administrative support. • Cloud Scheduling Focuses Your Managers on Value-Added Activities. It actually gives your managers time to work with clients again since they are spending less time trying to fill-in last minute shifts and hitting the phone tree to communicate changes. They can immediately see the status of their staffing situation on a given day or week, and can therefore “manage by exception” or through their schedulers -- not do all the work themselves. • Cloud Scheduling Provides Real-Time Operational Reporting. If you ask your district manager to tell you how many shifts they have scheduled next week or what their variable labor forecast is for that period, how long will it take to get an answer?” Your district manager, or other P&L or cost center owner probably has anywhere from 5-15 schedulers. That manager would need all schedulers to manually count shifts on their own customized spreadsheets each day, then tally up totals and send the final number to corporate. By that time, the count would be out of date. Manual effort like this ensures that it won’t happen consistently to forecast or predict future business activity.
A DSG-Shiftboard White Paper for Business Service Companies
• Cloud Scheduling is a Competitive Advantage for Recruitment and Retention. There is now an entire generation of 18-40 year old workers that expects to be able to do everything online, at any time of the day or night. They can buy tickets, pay for movies, clothes and more and they want to be able to check and control their work schedules online as well. In fact, they want some control of self-selecting when they work. Your best workers are the most motivated and organized so if you begin Cloud scheduling and allowing them to pick up some of their own shifts, your best team members get more of your work and spend more time with your clients. Figure 3: Shiftboard shows how well shifts have been covered and where additional workers need to be added.
A DSG-Shiftboard White Paper for Business Service Companies
“Today, our agents can confirm, release, change or add
shifts with just a few simple clicks. It’s exactly what we
need to provide the high levels of service that our clients
expect in a virtual environment.”
Paul Hedgecock, Vice President of Agent Operations
Expert Planet LLC.
General Benefits of Moving to the Cloud
At the financial level, the Cloud enables users to avoid capital expenditures on hardware, software, and services and to pay Cloud-based infrastructure and application providers only for the resources or time that they use. In the case of an event management company, the ability to redeploy these savings on better communication systems with employees and contractors and on reporting and analysis systems can have a considerable – and positive – impact on their bottom-line profitability.
The common financial benefits of a Cloud-based approach are as follows:
• Total Cost of Ownership – there is a plethora of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculators available on the Internet, almost all provided by Cloud vendors and almost all pointing to Cloud solutions costing significantly less than comparable on-premise solutions over a four or five year term. DSG is Shiftboard’s
implementation partner and is a leading provider of Cloud-based business solutions. DSG has developed a TCO calculator and regularly develops TCO analyses for prospective and existing customers. This analysis consistently shows that, for many organizations, a Cloud-based approach will save them 40-50% by reducing their need for IT skilled resources to manage their IT and applications infrastructure, for example.
• Update Costs – these are virtually eliminated by the Cloud because the vendor is responsible for installing and updating software and converting data between existing and new software versions -- not you. This ensures that you always have the latest available version with minimal cost, disruption and risk to your company.
In addition to these financial benefits, DSG and Shiftboard customers report a significant number of operational benefits, including:
• Access Anywhere, Anytime – because Cloud applications are accessed through a web-browser, they are available whenever and wherever you have access to the web. This provides greater operational flexibility and enables work-from-home and collaborative or virtual teaming to become a reality.
• Agility and Scalability – the ability to add new applications, users, processing power, and storage to cope with, for example, seasonal peaks in transaction load or processing needs. • Reliability – all Cloud users benefit from the reliability that has been built into the Cloud in order to support the demanding business continuity needs of large commercial users. What’s more, this reliability is contractually guaranteed through Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) that can be set up to meet the needs of your company. • Security – Cloud-based security will be as good, or better, than most company’s existing on-premise systems because Cloud vendors typically invest extensive resources on security issues that most companies could not justify. There is a third category of Cloud benefits that is important to understand as these help prevent a “value-gap” between the capability of your software and the evolving needs of your organization. The Cloud model makes the vendor responsible for keeping users on the latest version of the software. This makes business sense because the vendor, as the developer of the application and as an IT-focused company with the funding to own and operate world-class data centers, is clearly better positioned to fulfill this role than an end-user organization. Additionally, the vendor is responsible for ensuring that any customizations made to the software are supported in future versions. These factors combine to prevent a “value-gap” developing and provide a compelling reason why tightly managed service businesses should consider the Cloud as a way to ensure that their users are always running on the current, supported version of the software and always able to access the latest product features.
A DSG-Shiftboard White Paper for Business Service Companies
Integrating Cloud Scheduling with Other Software or
Cloud-based Systems
Figure 4: Shiftboard and NetSuite give your employees permission-based access to information about work schedules, customers, and billing; meet your accounting needs and provide critical business intelligence insights and reporting.
Virtually all service businesses considering Cloud scheduling will have one or more existing system that needs to integrate directly to Shiftboard. Depending on the company, its
transaction volumes and its business processes, this integration may be required
immediately or in a second phase of the project. Or, if the existing system environment -- beyond scheduling -- is also in need of enhancement, additional Cloud-based solutions may be beneficial. In either case, it is important to know that, like most large-scale Cloud software systems, Shiftboard has a robust Application Programming Interface (API) that allows the Cloud scheduling system to be seamlessly integrated with other systems.
Working together, DSG and Shiftboard have identified three common scenarios for integration that we will describe in this section of the white paper. There are two main ways to integrate Shiftboard with existing systems or other new Cloud solutions. The first of these makes most sense where low volumes of transactions are involved or where you need an interim solution while you build a longer-term solution. In these cases, a spreadsheet can be used to move
information between Shiftboard and other systems. While this option does work, it is a semi-manual process that puts a lot of responsibility on the people who are running it and, despite best efforts, will probably be error-prone.
The second and more accurate option which is also more robust and scalable is to use an integration tool or develop small programs called scripts that automatically take information from the Shiftboard API and integrate it with a target system. These interfaces can be either one or two-way depending on the business process you want to automate. As we said earlier, Shiftboard and DSG have identified three common integration scenarios:
• Work Order Entry from a CRM System – Many service contracts are work orders that include complex data, from the number of workers who are needed for vari-ous periods of time, to their specific shifts, locations, and skill-based require-ments. Typically this information is entered into a CRM system with the details going directly into the scheduling and
communication system.
• Shift Schedules into Timekeeping and Financial Systems – All service busi-nesses have an existing timekeeping process. It may be manually filling out time sheets, but more commonly there is an existing swipe-in or call-in system. Cloud scheduling will not impact an existing timekeeping system, but through a downloaded file or automated interface, the schedule can be populated into the timekeeping system for
adherence reporting (how closely the actual clocked-in time “adheres” to the schedule) or other payroll, invoicing and accounting systems.
• Scheduling data into Business Intelligence and Reporting Systems – Every busi-ness wants to make use of management reports and busibusi-ness analytics. Those reports are most commonly generated from the
financial system, or in larger businesses from their ERP or data warehouse/business intelligence (BI) system.
Just as there are significant benefits to be gained from using automated integration scripts or a more advanced tool than a spreadsheet, there are also benefits to be gained from using integrated Cloud financials rather than an on-premise package. This is particularly true if you want to get the maximum benefit from the savings and operational benefits of a Cloud-based IT environment. A Cloud-based financial solution, such as NetSuite, is an attractive
proposition that provides strong billing and accounting functionality combined with customer relationship management features that enable you to view and report on your complete business operations. Shiftboard’s scheduling information can be integrated into NetSuite providing you with a complete view of a customer’s past, present and scheduled business with you, for example.
In any situation where you plan to integrate information between systems, you should seek advice from experts who have the experience to understand the implications of such decisions and the breadth of knowledge to advise you on options and recommend the most efficient and
beneficial solution. To assist our customers in making such decisions, Shiftboard has partnered with DSG a leading Cloud-based integrator that is also one of NetSuite’s leading Solution Providers. This provides Shiftboard customers with the ability to deploy an integrated scheduling and financials systems that maximizes the financial and operational benefits of the Cloud.
Summary
In this Cloud scheduling white paper, we have explained where the term Cloud comes from and defined Cloud scheduling. The white paper has outlined the critical benefits to any service business of moving from a manual or spreadsheet-based scheduling process at local offices to a real-time, online scheduling paradigm where any distributed workforce (W2, hourly, contractor, part-time, volunteer) can access the schedule for status, printing, or to self-schedule some of their own shifts. The key benefits include:
• Quality – more consistent and predictable quality of service to your clients
• Flexibility and Agility – respond to schedule changes in real-time
• Productivity – increase the productivity of schedulers and operations personnel by up to 3 times
• Add-Value - get local managers refocused on customers not administration
• Insight – get real-time reporting and control of forward-looking operations
• Competitive Edge - a competitive advantage in recruiting and retention of employees
This white paper also identified the benefits of integrating scheduling with your financial and reporting systems in the Cloud. We discussed approaches to addressing common integration scenarios as well as the role and benefits of working with
experts to help you understand how these issues are best approached in your specific circumstances.
Lastly, we noted how your business can save money by moving to a Cloud-based infrastructure, taking the costs associated with developing and maintaining an IT
infrastructure and redeploying these to fund strategic initiatives and activities that will help you to grow your business and achieve a competitive advantage in your market.
About DSG - there is a perfect storm driving Cloud-based solutions as organizations focus on their core competencies and on ways to manage their operations more efficiently and at lower cost. Recognizing the frustration that many companies feel with overly complicated software and delivery methods, DSG has partnered with leading Cloud vendors like NetSuite,
Salesforce.com, and Shiftboard to implement and support their solutions. Using our proven Launch and Optimize methodologies, DSG has enabled hundreds of organizations, ranging from start-ups through Fortune 1000 companies to leading Non-Profits, get the best possible return on their Cloud investment. To find out how we can help you, please visit:
www.demandsolutionsgroup.com.
About Shiftboard - Shiftboard provides online scheduling software (SaaS) to a broad range of
security firms in event management and hospitality; staffing agencies; healthcare and home services; the retail/food and beverage industry, as well as municipal governments,
educational institutions, and companies. Shiftboard’s customers range from 25 to 10,000 users and conduct scheduling and people management operations around the globe. Shiftboard’s software is web-based, can be launched on short timelines, and is easy for workers to use. Please find out more at: www.shiftboard.com.
