The benefits of fully automatic registration of all working hours of our field staff started to dawn on the members of the MT.
“If we know the location of the employees in real time at any time, we can also map the route they are taking if we want, right?” asked our CEO Bjorn.
“Yes, you can”, I confirmed to him.
“Can we also use this for the dozens of freelancers and subcontractors we use on our projects?”
"Secure. It's a matter of installing the app on their smartphone, registering their phone number and it works.”
“How much work is it to create such a geofence around a project site?”
“That's really only one minute's work. You can create such a geofence with a few mouse clicks on your screen.”
“Can we also bring the vans and cars in here?”
"Yes that is possible. You even get insight into which employee drives which vehicle. And the employees will then also see their journeys in the timeline of the app.”
“If we are going to scale up or expand our organization through, for example, an acquisition of a competitor, then this is a method that actually scales automatically, do I understand that correctly?”
"Yes that's right. Otherwise you would need three Jokes in the long run. And the larger the organization, the greater the cost savings, of course, because the system is already running.”
“Speaking of Joke, what will he be doing all day if we start using this system?”
"Haha, don't worry, I still have plenty, much more meaningful work for her."
“I foresee some resistance from staff to install a company app on their private smartphone. I don't know if they are waiting for that. And I wonder if we can enforce that…”
“Good point. That is why I have already assumed in my calculations that we make a company smartphone available for each employee. The said cost savings therefore remain in place. And we can also determine what they can and cannot use during working hours. Besides, those things aren't that expensive anymore.”
“Can we test this with about five people first?”
“I think so.”
Bjorn spoke.
“Michel, thank you for this presentation. We now have a pretty good picture of it, even if not all questions have been answered yet. Can you briefly summarize it for us?”
"Secure. Registering hours with paper or digital forms takes too much time and therefore too much money. And the registration of the hours is still done by our not particularly administratively savvy people. Entering manually in the time portal afterwards also costs time and therefore money and is also prone to errors.
By registering the hours fully automatically, we save time and money. The data is 100% correct and complete. The employees are given the space to add nuances, so that we have the perfect combination between the hard and soft data.
All data is transferred in real time to our existing systems, which we can therefore keep. It therefore fits seamlessly with our current processes and systems.
In real time, we can see who is working where at all times. The staff will have to get used to this change, but will soon be happy that they are freed from the daily manual filling and submission of forms. And I think they're going to be happy with a company smartphone.
If we set this up in this way, we will be future-proof, because it is scalable and works in the cloud. So, future improvements to the system will be rolled out automatically. So we can take advantage of that.
We comply with the GDPR privacy law. And it helps me enormously when making subsequent calculations and quotations.
The company that can provide this for us and integrate it with our existing systems is called Salvo.”
“Salvo?”
"Yes. That means I save in Latin.”
Sjaak from the IT department had been quiet for a while. You could tell he'd been thinking.
“People, we should not underestimate this. Implementing something like this is quite a challenge. Both technically and humanly. Before we can make a decision, we need a lot more information. We don't know yet what we don't know. And that is an issue.”
“That's true,” said Bjorn. “Michel, I think it's good to invite Salvo for an interview. Do you want to pick that up and start arranging it?”
"Okay. I will call Salvo first and discuss how we can best approach this.”
"Top. Plan on that conversation!”