Implementing a time and attendance solution can at times be fraught with hesitation for some companies because of the unknown and investment costs. Sometimes, the hesitation is borne out of not understanding the benefits of the solution and as such, the deployment is deferred until a later date. The digital revolution has permeated every country and industry and thus, implementation of a time and attendance system no longer requires dedicated servers, IT experts and other infrastructure costs to realize its return on investment. In fact, companies are deploying cloud-based solutions in record numbers, because, they have come to realize that the absence of a system to manage employee attendance their growth aspirations and increase in profits are being held back. Why? Because while they have resisted deploying a time and attendance solution, their competitors, studied its advantages, when ahead and deployed it and are now reaping the very benefits.
Listed below are three steps businesses should ponder prior to the deployment of a time and attendance system:
Objectives
Stakeholders get excited, and with good reason, about the prospect of a system that’s going to streamline business operations, stop buddy punching and help them achieve operational excellence. Who wouldn’t be excited about this? However, its important to focus on the robustness of the solution and how it will blend in with your company’s objective to reduce the amount of time your HR Specialist spends each week processing payroll.
Implementation
Implementation of a time and attendance system should not take on a made dash to the finish line. View your implementation a marathon and not a sprint. Once you have determined your work-rules and pay policies which will be incorporated into the system go through a couple of trial runs. It’s better to implement your time and attendance right the first time. That being said, companies should have a realistic and flexible plan during implementation. Sure expectations can be set in advance but it’s also realistic to expect some slight hiccups in any software deployment. And, when these happen, if you are getting appropriate response from your vendor, that’s when you will know you have selected the right vendor.
Create a Business Strategy
Now that you have invested time and resources in deploying your time and attendance system, you should explore the solution and its other features. Make use of; employee-self-service for time-off requests, opt for job costing if your company bills by projects or utilize the benefits of business intelligence to give you up-to-the-minute updates, that’s valuable to your business operations. Last but not least, make full use of your time and attendance system and its many benefits including, access anywhere, anytime. Use its agility and integrate into your other systems and create a business process flow chart that provides data and information on demand.
To learn about more about ATS time and attendance system register for one of our live webinars. You can also contact us at 1.866.294.2467.