Operations Investigation
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Exevion was brought in to support the Workforce Management implementation at a global retailer with 550 sites across the UK and Northern Ireland.
Workforce Management is the process of ensuring the correct people are in the correct place at the correct times. Effective implementation can save on average between 10-25% of a company's payroll. This is low-hanging fruit for any business without a purpose-built solution that links their HR, payroll and operations together.
Our client wanted to phase out a legacy system and process that didn’t give visibility of what was required on the ground to run the operation effectively.
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Exevion spent time on-site and at head office to understand the most challenging locations, identifying key pain points and opportunities for the business. This was used to build a list of requirements for the procurement of a new Workforce Management Solution.
Site Visits – we ran site visits to the most complex and busiest locations to gather on-the-ground feedback on the existing process and the requirements for a new solution.
These were run across the retail estate covering locations with different:
Complexities – to understand the requirements for managers who might be responsible for running 30 sites at a single location;
Headcount – to understand the challenges managers were facing at locations with hundreds of people working across them;
Geography – to understand if there were differences across the regions that the business operates in.
Head Office Interviews – we conducted a series of interviews to gather feedback on the current process and requirements for a new solution. The interviews focused on:
HR – who need to ensure employees are being paid for the hours they work and the schedules are fair and legal;
Operations – who need to ensure they have visibility over resources and that the process used is time efficient and accurate for employees.
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The Investigation identified 3 key benefits alongside a list of 20 opportunities from using a new solution:
Cost Saving – having visibility over who worked and for how long allows the business to reduce overtime and manage resources effectively across the estate;
Consistent Process – introducing a consistent process will reduce payroll errors and give employees the flexibility to work across different locations;
Time Saving – having the functionality to automate generating schedules will save managers up to 75% of the time they spend scheduling each day.
We also created two documents to support procurement:
Vendor Requirements – the requirements for a new Workforce Management solution were documented, and a list of questions to ask potential vendors was created. This would be used in the second phase of the project to procure a new vendor;
Report – the potential benefits were documented, and a business case was built around them. This allowed the client to justify the investment into a solution.
The team at Exevion then stayed on to manage the successful vendor implementation.
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Moving from a legacy system gives an opportunity to make significant improvements to outdated processes and introduce new capabilities.
There is no one-size-fits-all, so it is important to understand how different areas of the business can benefit and identify the requirements for a solution. In retail, this means spending time on-site and with head office teams to understand their specific challenges and translating that into a list of requirements that potential vendors can be scored against.
Our experience across the end-to-end operational improvement process means we can support businesses to ensure their strategy is delivered and they can see the benefits.
