Digital Business Automation

What to automate ?

A large retailer uses intelligent automation to better manage schedule creation

Before (Manual)

After (Intelligent)

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Steps:

  1. Every week, the branch manager enters the schedule requirements and employee availabilities.
  2. A draft of the schedule is built based on hardcoded business rules based on the work agreement.
  3. The district supervisor reviews the draft schedule and approves it. He also enters the schedule in the payroll system.
  4. The final schedule is published and distributed to the branch managers who communicate it to the employees.
  5. At the end of the week, the branch manager enter timesheet based on the real schedule.
  6. The payroll is calculated and transmitted to the bank for payment.

Challenges and issues

  • The schedule creation requires a lot of manual steps and data entry.
  • The collection of the timesheets also requires manual data entry.
  • Any change to the work agreement would require months of programming.

The intelligent automation innovations

  • Create a role-based mobile application allowing both branch managers and employees to prepare the schedule and enter their time sheet.
  • Replace the schedule validator program by an operational decision management system allowing dynamic calculation of the business rules required to create the schedule.

Technological toolbox

The benefits

  • The automatic schedule calculation reduces the weekly effort of the branch manager as well as the regional manager the preparation of the schedule.
  • The mobile application allows the employees to communicate their availability even if they are not at the branches.
  • The mobile application allows an employee to report absence which allows automatic schedule switch.
  • The work agreement rules could be entered in natural language in the business rules engine allowing changes to the work agreement to be in production after a few days instead of a few months.

The ROI

The new schedule process allows them to reduce the overall effort by more than 30% and the number of complaints to almost none allowing them to save hundred of thousands of dollars a year in penalties

Contact our
Digital Business Automation Expert

Alexandre Lanoue