Practical IT Research that Drives Measurable Results
Vendor Landscape Plus: Workforce Management
Introduction
Workforce Management Solutions (WFMS) enable organizations to automate and optimize the
planning, scheduling, and tracking of employees. This results in reduced inefficiencies, errors,
and labor costs, which ultimately leads to optimal organizational performance and profitability.
To realize these benefits, the selection and implementation of a solution that meets
organizational needs and requirements is essential.
This research will help those who are selecting a vendor, though will also provide insight for
those who do not yet understand the business requirements
and those who are ready to implement.
Who should read this:
 HR decision-makers
involved in a WFMS
adoption process.
 IT staff involved in a
WFMS adoption process.
 Those evaluating WFMS
adoption for the first
time or as part of a
refresh.
At the end, you will:




Understand the value of a WFMS and whether your organization’s requirements necessitate a WFMS.
Prepare an RFP and a demo script to guide vendor evaluations.
Create a shortlist of WFMS vendors and select which is the best fit for your organization.
Develop implementation plans to ensure effective WFMS deployment and address common pitfalls.
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Executive Summary
Understand the value of a WFMS
• A Workforce Management Solution (WFMS) is an application that covers all the processes needed to forecast labor needs,
schedule and deploy the workforce, track the nature and amount of time worked, and manage the total cost of labor.
• Solutions offer cost savings, operational efficiencies, and better management of human capital. It’s estimated that a WFMS
saves between 2 and 9% of payroll.
Determine WFMS need and set a strategy
• A WFMS is most valuable for companies that have a lot of complex rules and regulations that influence work processes and
must be complied with, and that need current, accurate data and information accessible for various people.
• Implementation success begins before you select a vendor. Form a project team to represent all end-users and business units
in contact with the WFMS to gather all viewpoints throughout the whole WFMS selection and implementation process. This
group should clearly define where and how a WFMS could benefit the business in order to find a solution that has the
requirements to remedy problem areas. Clearly defining needs also helps determine what features to look for in a solution.
Compare different WFMS options
• There are many vendors on the market to choose from, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and areas of expertise.
The market champion is Kronos; however, there are innovative competitors who have the potential to become leaders in this
market.
• Current technologies facilitate cutting edge user interfaces and fuel the need for increased mobile functionality in solutions.
These are key differentiators between vendors.
Select the right WFMS for your enterprise
• Selecting the right vendor comes down to determining your needs and finding a vendor with your industry experience who
has the features to meet your needs.
• Info-Tech Tools and Templates can guide you through the process and lessen the work associated with vendor selection.
Implement the WFMS
• Implementation can be a nightmare, but doesn’t have to be. The key to implementation success is in having good
processes and plans laid out, and involving end-users at all points of the implementation process.
Next Section in Brief
Define
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This section looks at defining WFM
and the WFM market by:
• Defining what a WFMS is.
Strategize
• Clarifying the difference
between a WFMS and an HRMS.
• Describing the modules
available in a WFMS and their
functionality.
Evaluate
Select
• The hard and soft benefits of a
WFMS
• Providing an overview of the
WFMS market and key trends.
Implement
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A WFMS gets the right people, with the right skills, in the right
place, at the right time, for the right cost
A Workforce Management Solution (WFMS) is an application that covers all the processes needed
to forecast labor needs, schedule and deploy the workforce, track the nature and amount of time
worked, and manage the total cost of labor.
Historically, WFM consisted of highly disparate processes that were not well automated.
Today’s WFM Solutions are highly sophisticated and integrated systems capable of automating
entire processes while controlling and optimizing labor costs and productivity.
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Don’t confuse WFMS with HRMS: WFMS are sophisticated systems
that exceed HRMS capabilities in select areas
Performance
Management
Expense
Management
Succession
Planning
Payroll Administration
Talent Management
HR Management System (HRMS)
Enterprise application that combines many HR
functions into a single, highly-integrated solution.
Learning
Development
Recruiting
Absence Management
Time & Attendance (T&A)
Benefits Administration
Although an HRMS has these modules,
they tend to have basic functionality documenting and tracking labor hours,
attendance data, and absences.
Workforce Management Solutions have much more complex functionality.
A WFMS goes beyond an HRMS by optimizing and fully automating not just T&A and absence
management, but also leave and overtime management and forecasting.
HRMS or WFMS?
If you’re only concerned with managing T&A and absences at a basic level, then an HRMS with these modules is
a good bet. But if you want to optimize your workforce management tasks, a WFMS is a better bet. The WFMS
will integrate with an organization’s HR and Payroll systems.
 See the next section for more on determining if a WFMS is right for you.
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A WFMS is common in shift-work prone blue-collar type verticals,
and is increasingly appearing in various industries of all sizes
WFMS are common in the verticals listed below as these industries usually have a high percentage
of shift workers and unionized environments. This means there are a lot of employees to schedule, a
lot of shift and schedule changes than can occur and complex work rules that impact the scheduling
of employees. In these settings, a WFMS helps automate and optimize workforce management.
The historical focus of WFMS is large enterprises (2,500+ employees), but more and more midmarket (1,000 – 2,500 employees) and smaller organizations are realizing that a WFMS can
improve processes and impact the bottom line.
Manufacturing
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Automotive
Chemicals
Consumer products
Fabricated metal
High tech
Construction
Life sciences
Oil and gas
Paper and plastic
Raw materials
Retail/Hospitality/Service
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Department stores
Food/drug stores
Specialty stores
Dining
Gaming
Lodging
Contact centers
Utilities
Telecom
Distribution and Logistics
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Aviation
Distribution
Financial
General business
Media & software
Transportation
Warehousing
Public Sector
• Government
(federal, state/
provincial, local)
• Education (higher;
K-12)
• Social services
Healthcare
•
•
•
•
Health services
Hospitals
Long-term care
Specialty care
Many vendors have solutions that apply to a range of verticals while others cater only to specific verticals
such as call centers and health-care. This report does not cover vertical-specific vendors.
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Scheduling, T&A, and management of absences, leaves and
overtime are core modules of WFMS.
Scheduling
Time &
Attendance
Leave Mgmt
& Accruals
Absence
Management
Overtime
Management
• Build shifts and shift patterns based on start and stop times, breaks, and required job
classifications and skills.
• Assign work shifts to individual full or part-time employees, work teams, and contractors.
• Post schedules for employees.
• Edit or change current or future schedules.
• Accommodate split shifts and shifts that cross midnight.
• Real-time capture of time and labor.
• Automate pay rules (e.g., grace periods, late/left early, breaks, overtime, and statutory
holidays) and payroll calculations.
• Automatically ensure compliance with corporate policies, collective bargaining agreements,
labor laws and regulations (e.g., state/provincial, local, federal, FLSA, FMLA, and SOX)*.
• Automatically populate and enforce vacation allowance, accruals rules, and leave banks
(e.g., sick and personal time off).
• Calculate vacation eligibility based on available vacation banks and scheduling rules.
• Automate requests and approvals for vacation and leave.
•
•
•
•
Track exceptions such as late arrivals and early departures.
Automatically calculates leave balances/accruals and associated eligibility criteria.
Enforce attendance policies.
Notify managers and HR of warning thresholds.
•
•
•
•
Enforce overtime rules.
Calculate overtime based pay.
Ensure compliance with overtime equalization policies.
Provide alerts when time thresholds are met to minimize overtime payouts.
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Note: Throughout the rest of the report an * is used to
identify terms defined in the glossary in the Appendix
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Advanced modules automate and optimize forecasting and labor
demand, and complex scheduling tasks.
$
Forecasting &
Budgeting
Advanced
Scheduling
• Forecast staff requirements for long-range planning and budgeting purposes.
• Use historical growth rates and actual data to forecast and re-forecast time-of-day-needs.
• Account for fluctuations in labor demand by season or time of day (e.g., morning versus
evening).
• View intra-day data at different levels such as across sites, departments, or activity types.
• Create graphical representations of forecast data.
• Indicate when employee scheduling data falls outside the forecast range.
• Handles shift bidding scenarios.
• Accommodates shift trades between employees, including automatic updates to
schedules and processing of associated pay rules.
• Optimizes schedule-based variables such as projected store traffic or sales, employee
skills, employee availability, and budget constraints. Uses linear programming models to
derive optimal scheduling solutions.
• Ability to view “what-if” scenarios for various scheduling options.
The use of WFMS modules varies by industry and often by organization.
For instance, while T&A and Scheduling are commonly used across industries, Forecasting is likely
more appropriate in retail than it is in manufacturing.
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Fortunately, WFMS vendors provide module-based solutions,
so organizations only have to pay for what they need.
To determine which modules are needed, a key step in the
selection process is identifying organizational requirements. This
will ensure the solution provides the needed functionality. More
on this later…
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Why a WFMS? It saves money, minimizes compliance risk,
and increases productivity by reducing inefficiencies.
 Reduce payroll overpayments and overtime
spend via automated schedule
optimization.
 Reduce over-scheduling.
 Lower operational costs.
 Contain legal costs.
 Make data measurable and usable.
 Reduce administrative time and ensure upto-date data through employee and
manager self-service
Reduce and
Control
Labor Costs
Enhance
Productivity
 Enforce of all policies, pay rules,
regulations, and laws in one centralized
location.
 Automate tracking of leave time and
accruals to ensure compliance.
 Support audits with detailed tracking and
documentation.
 Automate productivity-killing, inefficient processes
(workarounds, rework, manual work).
 Data is entered once and automatically shared
with other systems (Payroll, HRMS).
 Provide consistent, up-to-date data for everyone
to analyze.
 Match labor to volume to ensure adequate staffing.
 Reduce supervisor time spent scheduling and doing
other WFM tasks.
Minimize
Compliance
Risk
The goal of a WFMS is not to give HR and management bells and whistles to use;
it’s to get them to manage the business more effectively, actively, and strategically. A WFMS achieves
this by reducing inefficiencies and ‘administrivia’ through automation and optimization.
A WFMS is critical for reaching strategic, operational, and financial goals and building
a high-performance organization.
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A WFMS can also reduce absenteeism & turnover: Self-service +
automation = current data = accurate schedules & pay.
Self-service…
 Can be accessed via a computer at work, a home Internet connection, or a mobile device.
 Allows employees to update and view their schedule, time card, availability, and leave requests.
 Gives managers access to up-to-date employee information, complete WFM tasks at their convenience, and
send alerts to employees via mobile device.
It means…
 Employees can update their availability and view
their schedule whenever and often wherever.
 Availability is updated in the WFMS automatically
eliminating lost paper and lags in managers
having current information to build schedules.
 Employees have easy access their schedule.
 T&A data is easily input by employees, tracked by
managers, and compiled in the payroll system.
 Employees get paid on-time for the right number
of hours they worked. They also complain less to
managers and HR about errors.
As a result…
Absenteeism & Turnover is reduced.
Why?
 Because employees don’t get scheduled when
they can’t work causing them to call in sick.
 Because employees don’t get fed up with
scheduling and pay errors and quit.
 Because employees don’t make commitments
that conflict with work or lose their schedule.
 Because employees don’t miss chances to pick up
extra hours and leave for a job that does.
 Because it reduces supervisor favoritism as key employee
process are guaranteed to be consistent and transparent to all.
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