Managing Volatility

The optimization of working environments and the associated process worlds takes on an entirely new significance...

Andreas F.J. Obereder | CEO and Founder, ATOSS

How does ATOSS address the issues? 

The rising market volatility with dramatic shifts that we have experienced with increasing frequency in the past years forces companies to constantly change their processes and adapt to new situations and business models short term. Metaphorically speaking, today’s processes must be elastic. This is the only way that companies can secure their competitive edge over the long term. It is decisive here that personnel processes do not put the brakes on, but enable the implementation of necessary change, in short periods of time. Ultimately, managing complexity is also a personnel issue. The optimization of working environments and the associated process worlds takes on an entirely new significance – and offers tremendous potential for greater value creation.

Can you cite a few examples? 

Sales gains of 11 percent, personnel costs down by 15 percent in connection with stable employee levels, 20 percent lower provisions on the balance sheet – these are results from current ATOSS projects that speak for themselves. Our annual report features a number of these cases.

Do you perceive focus points in certain sectors?

Naturally, different sectors are faced with different challenges. Take the manufacturing industry: following the cost reduction phases by offshoring production locations abroad, the industry is now engaged in improving value creation in high wage countries such as Germany. We are experiencing rising demand for planning tools geared to ensuring far more detailed, demand optimized workforce management than in the past. It is surprising to see that even in renowned major corporations planning is only conducted on team level and not company-wide. Here, comprehensive, holistic strategies are called for instead of fragmented approaches.

Can you elaborate a bit more on this?

Let me cite an example from an area that was a major issue in 2011. In connection with Germany’s major energy policy turnaround the problem emerged that renewable energies such as wind or solar energy cannot provide for the same amount of electricity everywhere and are subject to strong fluctuations, not to mention changing demand scenarios. Intensive work is currently in progress – incidentally, with the help of intelligent software – to enable load balancing and thereby also an optimal reconciliation between demand and production. And workforce management accomplishes precisely this by synchronizing demand and supply. The results achieved can usually be measured short-term – in most cases already within the first six to twelve months. 

How do companies approach workforce management?

Basically, three dimensions must be aligned and reconciled as best as possible. For one, the economic concerns of the given company, for example, the current order situation in the production area or customer frequency in retailing. Employee needs and wishes represent the second dimension. This is a factor that should not be underestimated, one that strongly contributes to employee motivation and retention and has an immediate effect on service quality. Thirdly, general framework conditions such as legislation, collectively bargained wages, company agreements, qualifications and skills and many other aspects must be given due consideration. All of these factors must be optimally balanced according to the company strategy, which is one of our core competencies.

Isn’t that extremely complex? 

From a technical viewpoint, the answer is yes. The differentiated requirements of demand and cost optimized planning with their many influencing variables can simply not be managed without powerful IT support. Considering the multitude of planning variants that already arise in the case of a retail store with 30 employees and three different duty starting times already amounts to incredible dimensions. Traditional methods such as spreadsheet calculations are totally out of their depth here. The degree of sophistication and complexity is comparable to the technological demands made on a powerful Internet search engine. Similar to this area, we have developed an extremely high performing algorithm in the last ten years that forms the core of our software and is continuously improved.

How does this look in practical terms?

The Ingolstadt clinical center, which has been operating with our Medical Solution since the nineties, is one of the pioneers in flexible workforce deployment. Today, the center’s management is in a position to offer such a flexible working environment that the hospital is regarded as one of the most attractive employers in the health care sector, while also enjoying a sensationally low fluctuation rate. I hardly need to explain in greater detail what this means on a labor market characterized by an extreme shortage of physicians and care personnel. And there is even more to the story here: the Ingolstadt clinical center is cooperating closely with Audi AG, the largest employer in the region, in order to achieve optimal synchronization with health care offerings and working hours, and learn interactively. I regard this orientation of a business model to market demands as almost revolutionary, especially in such a traditional sector as health care.

With regard to hospital clients 2011 also marked major progress …

In the health care sector the tremendous concentration and cost pressures are generating strong demand for solutions to rapidly and efficiently manage the increasingly sophisticated personnel processes. Indeed, we won some major accounts, for example the University Medical Centers in Mainz or in Frankfurt. The fact that we opened our software for SAP users in 2011 was one reason for our success. For the first time – with this step – we provided the option of integrating our high-end planning tools into the existing IT landscape of large-scale organizations.

This was not the only innovation in the past year …

We launched an exciting new solution for hotels on the markets. Hotels are a good example of a sector that must cope with extremely short-term demand situations and average occupancy rates of well under 80 percent. And all this without compromising on service quality or having personnel costs go through the roof. Here, the topic of load balancing also plays a major role. Our new Mobile Workforce Management App that caters to the needs of mobile working worlds – a genuine future topic – was also very well received.