Industry Insight: Integration Empowers Shift Planning

Thanks to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and automation, employee scheduling and shift planning has become easier than ever. Managers no longer need to stare at empty spreadsheets, wondering where to copy and paste employee names to schedule piece of work shifts. Fortunately, shift automation has given managers and business owners the freedom to explore the many ways in which tying scheduling tools to other SaaS tools could ameliorate operations across the board. Think well-nigh it: What if the information from your collaboration and file sharing platform was pushed and pulled with data from your scheduling tool? You lot'd be able to tie employees to shifts, open access to documents necessary for each shift, and conversation about what needs to be done during shift changes.

I spoke with Ashik Ahmed, co-founder, CTO, and CEO of Deputy, whose software is our Editors' pick in the shift planning and homo resource (HR) management category. Ahmed and I discussed the many ways in which shift planning is impacting other business concern areas, and how new technologies are revolutionizing the ways in which shift planning software is existence used.

The Best Employee Scheduling & Shift Planning Software of 2022

PCMag: Deputy is a scheduling tool, a fourth dimension and attendance tool, as well as a communications tool. Every bit IFTTT and Zapier create opportunities for businesses to build out diversified toolsets, what can already-diverse companies do to gain an advantage over piecemeal systems?

Ashik Ahmed (AA): We think about this as tech vendors deciding to go deep versus wide. A company like BambooHR comes in every mean solar day thinking nigh how to be the most amazing applicant tracking (AT) system. If you're an HR organisation and you lot're trying to compete with BambooHR, you have an uphill battle. That atypical focus on your core strength is what we believe the industry is moving towards: having amazing products that are deep in their respective functions but that integrate and play prissy with other systems.

PCM: As social media and collaboration tools begin to connect employees in fun, engaging, and instantaneous ways, how has your industry been adjusting its in-platform communications tools?

AA: It's no longer enough to only provide alphanumeric advice tools. Being able to share pictures, files, and videos are now expected by employees. When you're remote or managing employees across regions, the communication tools have an equal objective of unifying and building relationships as they do of transmission of business communications. It's why you see Slack integrating video chat and massive emoji banks. All all of a sudden, words are elevated to expressions and sentiments that are just hard to do in short-form writing.

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PCM: Speaking of remote workers, now that remote working has go more common, how has the shift scheduling software industry had to evolve?

AA: The percentage of hourly workers who are issued visitor email addresses continues to be very low. The effect is fragmented or cleaved communication channels with their employees. We've seen a massive amount of focus in communication tools that either integrate or are native to scheduling apps every bit a result. If you're a scheduler, you demand the best communication channels to make sure call-outs are handled chop-chop. The other functions of the business organisation are finding the same communications channels that the scheduler is using are more than effective than email, and are now enervating these integrated tools to support the unabridged business, non just the scheduler.

PCM: Then, what does a visitor have to exercise to ensure they're enabling cross-geography functionality for clients that run global operations?

AA: The solution for global companies is less almost the software and more about language back up and customer service. Nigh apps that are global demand at to the lowest degree five standard languages on all platforms (desktop, Android, iOS apps) to be appealing to a global brand. 24x7x365 back up is likewise becoming a mandate past brands that face the dominicus never setting.

PCM: Seems like I enquire this of everyone I speak to these days: What role tin can and will artificial intelligence (AI) play in driving the scheduling and HR management industry forward? How will it work and how will it benefit clients?

AA: What we've observed is that, for many brands, specially retail brands, the brick-and-mortar store is condign a touchpoint of the shopping experience, not the cease destination for a purchase. For example, Timbuk2 has a store in Hayes Valley, San Francisco that is slammed with traffic every open hour. That store handles business accounts, custom orders via in-store displays, returns, online club pickup, and direct purchases. AI can assist link in these demand signals and ensure that the right people are scheduled at the right time, downwardly to 15-minute increments.