You may realize your current system isn’t cutting it anymore, but fully automating time and attendance for the first time can seem overwhelming. There’s also the possibility of a tight budget and limited resources weighing you down, causing you to put off making a decision. When companies shop for a new timekeeping system, they often look for a complete solution. But how can you feel confident that you’re making the right decision to fully automate the core areas of your business? How do you know which software to choose or which vendor you can trust to successfully automate time and attendance?
Outdated processes, manual workarounds, lack of visibility and an inability to view key data like hours worked, schedules or PTO requests are all things that can create a negative experience for managers and employees. You want to be sure that your next vendor is your best vendor. But what metrics do you need to properly evaluate?
Your Experience Should Go Beyond Automation
In today’s competitive and evolving business environment, effective time and attendance management is critical for managing costs, improving operational efficiencies, processing payroll and remaining compliant. It’s also a key component of delivering a great experience for your employees.
Without an updated time and attendance solution, manual processes and workarounds can drain productivity from your managers and result in slow or inaccurate payroll. A lack of visibility and transparency into employee performance can impede real-time decision making and create an opportunity for favoritism or managerial bias. Inaccurate or outdated payroll procedures can create a negative employee experience (not being paid on time or accurately) and add costs to your bottom line.
So how can you create a culture of trust, inclusion, transparency and purpose? By not allowing manual processes and outdated technology to hold you back from achieving that goal. And by evaluating vendors in terms of care for your business and your people.
Implement Technology That Improves the Employee Experience
An easy-to-use, intuitive interface creates a reliable environment that instills a value of trust in your employees. One of the biggest reasons many projects don’t get funded or organizations don’t move forward with the decision to automate time and attendance is because they don’t believe their employees will use the software, or that implementing it will be a cumbersome process.
When evaluating HCM vendors, you want to pinpoint operational benefits and ROI as soon as possible. Make sure you dig deep into the vendor’s philosophy; making your business successful is critical. Here are a few factors you should consider when comparing potential vendors:
- Do the vendor take a one-size-fits all approach or do they offer a custom-tailored approach based on the following:
- The needs of your business
- Best practices gained from implementing time and attendance in your industry
- Prior experience with businesses your size
- Does the project plan include specific goals and milestones? Does the vendor formally ask for feedback at each milestone to assess progress and ensure your success is on track?
- Will the vendor’s team be there to guide you through every step in a strategically directed experience designed to get you up and running quickly?
- How is the implementation team’s success measured by the vendor? Are they measured on the quantity of go-lives or are they measured on the quality of the service they deliver?
Identifying a solution that completely automates all of your pay and workforce policies should be at the top of the list when evaluating vendors. Providing self-service technology that is accessible to all employees from mobile devices gives managers real-time visibility into employee performance and eliminates bias.
Follow the Roadmap to Long-Term Success
Another key consideration when evaluating technology is how the vendor can help provide a roadmap for your long-term success. The reality is that you may not have the budget or time to tackle everything you want now, including the following:
To achieve real success, you need to make sure you select a solution that can address the critical business issues you have today, while also laying a foundation for future success. Selecting an all-in-one HCM solution that offers everything in one unified system ensures that even as your business grows or your needs expand, you maintain one database, one employee record and one single source of truth.
More Than Just Another Vendor
So what if you feel you didn’t get it right the first time around? Maybe you went for the lowest cost vendor to automate time and attendance or the one that promised the fastest go-live. Fast forward a few years and now you’ve outgrown the solution, or that fast go-live left you hanging with no real ongoing support. You’re being bounced around to different people with different numbers to call when there is a problem, you have no guidance or training and there is zero focus on your success from anyone on the vendor side. How can you tell you’re getting more than just another vendor this next time around? A few key questions to ask:
- Is there an onboarding process for new customers to help with change management and drive adoption of the solution?
- Does the vendor offer a variety of learning tools and methods? Tutorials, user guides, product and technical educational training?
- Do they have a formal customer success program or team in place?
- Can they provide best practices for your specific industry?
While each organization has different requirements when it comes to managing their people, they’re all looking to achieve better business outcomes by controlling labor costs, increasing workforce productivity, minimizing compliance risk and creating an exceptional employee experience. Automating time and attendance is the first step toward removing hassles to make work easier for you and your employees and creating a culture of transparency and trust with your technology.
Get HR Peace of Mind
Automate time and attendance, streamline HR and payroll, retain and attract top talent and feel fully supported every step of the way with Quanta’s all-in-one HCM solution. No longer will you need to worry about having your finger on the pulse of your workforce. Contact us today to talk about a better way to run your small to mid-sized business.
