When managing a large-scale business with dozens of departments and offices, you must have proper analytics that will show you every day how close you are to reaching your business goals. If you have hundreds of people working for you, you need to monitor their activities in a way that is quick and efficient. You need to know how much money you have made, how your salary expenses are growing, and what department is the most effective. All of that is achievable with real-time reports for business.
A common downfall of businesses with a large number of employees is a lack of real-time reports. The implementation of real-time reports in your business may seem complicated, which often leads businesses to not include them in their financial and workforce planning processes. However, real-time reporting is not as difficult as it seems if you choose an appropriate solution and implement it correctly.
Why It’s Important
- Real-time data calculation and strategic workforce planning as a whole are healthy additions to any business, but larger businesses with many employees and a variety of shifts will profit the most. Hotel chains, restaurant chains, cruise liners, and other businesses that require a lot of planning will see the following advantages of strategic planning and real-time data calculation:
- Easily manageable data that can give you a fairly dependable insight into the future of your business and ensure correct sales and expense forecasting.
- Fast reports generated in a matter of minutes with no human involvement.
- Full control of your business plans and their current state.
- Easy adjustment of your finances since you can see the current, factual information for your income and expenses.
Critical Aspects of Real-Time Planning
When implementing real-time reporting in your business or looking for an appropriate solution, you should pay special attention to several critical aspects.
Gather the Data
To determine which departments are effective and which ones can use a little more motivation, you need all available data on your income and expenses. In distributed systems, this data is stored in various sources, so implementing a user scenario when data is retrieved simultaneously from multiple sources is relevant for the time of inquiry. There can be data sources that change every second (e.g., sales) or sources that are updated several times per day, such as salary expenses and when people start and end their shifts each day.
Present the Data
All data retrieved is presented in a single format that is defined by a set of analytics. Then the information is presented in graphs and tables for an easy-to-read report. This process allows you to monitor the state of your business plans in real time—from sales and expenses to budget planning. This is a crucial step in implementing a quality workforce management system into your business.
How to Implement Real-Time Management
Choose a System
A custom system for processing all incoming data in real time can be developed for your specific business needs. It gathers all necessary metrics and data and applies analytical algorithms to flesh out a comprehensive report. We have had an amazing experience developing a staff and wages system for our client from the Faroe Islands that owns a hotel and restaurant chain.
Use Pre-Calculation
You don’t need to calculate values that stay immutable in real time. To lower the workload on your servers, you can calculate these values once and store them until they need to be recalculated according to schedule. For example, salary data for today can be calculated in real time and then for the following days, once every 24 hours. Actual data that does not need to be calculated is taken straight out of the table in runtime.
Multi-Platform Approach
In the staff and wages system (link staff and wages) that we developed, there are several apps that cater to various types of users and are optimized for their specific needs and conditions that apply when they interact with the system. The system offers an API for all authorized users.
Staff App and Its Functions
- Shift registration
- Shift and plan management
- Access to salary and payment documents
- Vacation management
- Internal module for communication with co-workers
- Internal module for receiving system notifications
Manager App and Its Additional Functions
- Shift planning for department employees
- Department reports
- Shift approval
- Employee profile management
- New employee additions
- Employee vacation management
Administrator App – A Full-Functioning Desktop Application
- Employee authorization and profiles
- Access and management of all departments of the company
- Salary management
- Historical employee data access and management
- Data export to Excel
- Access to salary calculation for overtime hours
- Wages, unions, and tax management
All these apps and sub-systems combined comprise a full-fledged custom workforce management system that is used for budget planning and micro-management of income and expenses. They provide all analytics you might need in a convenient form of graphs and tables.
Benefits of Real-Time Tracking
Below are the benefits our clients have gained from using this system:
- Improved workforce management process with the custom shift planner
- Accurate budget analytics and forecasting due to a lot of data gathered
- Reduced salary expenses due to better overtime and wage calculations
- Detailed employee data collection that ensures successful compliance audits