What to automate ?
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Steps:
- Every week, the branch manager enters the schedule requirements and employee availabilities.
- A draft of the schedule is built based on hardcoded business rules based on the work agreement.
- The district supervisor reviews the draft schedule and approves it. He also enters the schedule in the payroll system.
- The final schedule is published and distributed to the branch managers who communicate it to the employees.
- At the end of the week, the branch manager enter timesheet based on the real schedule.
- 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