At ShopWorks, we are regularly welcomed by PE houses and institutional investors who seek to optimise their financial commitment to a retail, hospitality, or leisure venture. Since the National Living Wage came into effect, this has risen dramatically. The triggers for these investors to opt for cloud-based workforce management solutions deviate from each other; with that in mind, we have enumerated the essential reasons that were shared with us. We hope you find them useful. Moreover, we would be pleased to offer an obligation-free tutorial of our software for those investors and advisors that want to recognize the advantages of a current, customized workforce management system.
Increased revenue: Matching staffing levels with demand and avoiding understaffing at key times drives up revenues. Whether it is a casino operator ensuring they have enough table dealers to optimise spins per customer per hour on a roulette table or a coffee franchise ensuring that customers don’t turn around and walk out the door when they see the size of the queue, having too few staff reduces customer spend. A sophisticated workforce management ssolution such as ShopWorks allows operators to match staff levels to predicted demand. We build bespoke integrations into EPOS and other revenue systems, as well as analytic tools to ensure accurate predictions of demand.
Lower costs: ShopWorks customers have seen an average reduction of 7% in their yearly staffing bill due to our platform. Pre-authorizing each outlay and crosschecking against the budget prior to approval, as well as using biometric time and attendance tracking, are the primary contributors to these savings. Yet there’s more; we’d gladly provide details on additional methods of cutting costs.
Improved Compliance: In an increasingly complex compliance environment, operators need to automate the checking of their staff rota’s against multiple criteria. For instance, ShopWorks will prevent a manager from scheduling a non-compliant member of staff into a shift. If a non-EU citizen has already worked 20 hours that week or their visa has expired, the system will not allow them to be scheduled (saving your management a potential £20,000 fine), if a lifeguard at one of our fitness centre customers is not up to date with their training, then that person will not get scheduled in. We agree to bespoke rules for each customer to ensure that only compliant staff are rostered.
ShopWorks’s integrated e-learning suite enables staff to stay abreast of required training and policies prior to each shift. In addition, ShopWorks tracks ‘Working Time Directive’ adherence as well as the upkeep of overtime/holiday pay entitlements for employees. What’s more, ShopWorks can even make certain that someone receives the National Living Wage increment on their birthday. With these features, investors are assured peace of mind knowing that ShopWorks takes care of the complexities in guaranteeing that staffing rosters 100% conforms to numerous regulations.
Higher Staff morale: It is pretty obvious, but staff like to be paid accurately and on time with all their allowances and benefits taken into account. In our experience, companies using spreadsheets and older systems are pretty poor at achieving this basic staff hygiene factor. ShopWorks users can expect 100% accurate payroll runs, 100% accurate holiday management and zero pay queries. When added to clear communications about when and where they are expected to work, it’s no wonder that staff who work for ShopWorks customers are happier.
Freed up Management time: With a reduction in the amount of effort spent on organising shifts, wages, and regulations, supervisors can concentrate on activities which offer greater value to the company.
Faster growth: Installing a workforce management system as soon as possible during the rollout process ensures that all new business units opened or acquired comply with corporate guidelines from the onset. This helps to facilitate quicker normalisation of staff costs and demand levels, enabling faster development of these new units. As a result, businesses are able to introduce new components at an earlier stage.
Central view: Some of our customers value the ability to have a broader view of staffing data with ShopWorks. This provides them with the opportunity to assess staffing levels and costs between various venues and compare different methods.
Improved operational efficiency: There should be no reason to have too few or too many staff turn up for a given shift, let alone failing to open a business unit because a staff member hasn’t been scheduled. ShopWorks has inbuilt safeguards against all of these risks and the staff portal allows staff to check when and where they are meant to be against a live version of the rota.
Creating value from data: Companies that use spreadsheets aren’t collecting any data on staffing and demand levels. Having a large history of staffing data in the cloud and allowing it to build with time generates an increasing level of value. The data can be used to predict everything from the likelihood of someone resigning to the optimum incentive package to encourage Sunday working. The value of a large data store will only increase as Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent because AI requires lots of data to work well, so collecting it in a digital format makes good commercial sense.
Higher exit valuation: I suppose you could argue that this is the only reason investors press management to implement a workforce management solution. It increases the value of the investment through a combination of the other nine reasons mentioned earlier. These, plus a slick due diligence process brought about by the knowledge of an investor’s, that payroll rules are being correctly applied and compliance requirements are met, makes for a better exit.
About ShopWorks: At ShopWorks, we have been providing cloud-based workforce management solutions since 2009. Our debt-free and profitable company has a sales and development office in London. Plus, we are more than happy to provide a no-obligation demonstration of our system to professional investors, analysts or advisors who wish to learn about the advantages of contemporary bespoke workforce management. Furthermore, we would be delighted to discuss the future of the market, AI’s effect on staff scheduling and share our expertise in modern cloud-based staff management systems.
Customers: We supply hospitality, retail and leisure operators with between 20 and 2,000 units. We supply furniture retailers, petrol forecourts, casinos, gyms, coffee shops, betting shops and bingo halls plus of other business types – if you have invested in a business which employs staff who are paid by the hour we believe we can add value to that investment.
Commercials: We operate a SAAS model where we charge “per shop per week” and our costs are a fraction of what we save our customers. We are happy to give a three month, no obligation free trial and once a customer has committed, they can of course give 30 days notice to terminate our contract. We don’t charge up front fees, and we customize each system specifically for the needs of our customer.
Find out more about how our Workforce Management Solutions will help you to effectively optimise your workforce to meet your demand. Request a demo here.
