The Human Factor

Companies in sectors entailing high staffing levels have a particular need for intelligent solutions in order to remain competitive.

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

In personnel recruitment? 

Today, individuals want to be more flexible and self-determined in their decisions on how they are deployed at work, just as they conduct their banking transactions or make their purchases from home. They want a say in the process, greater transparency and a harmonious work-life balance. Six out of ten millennials expect more flexible duty plans and a high degree of self-determination in the workplace. Thanks to workforce management solutions, this is precisely what companies are able to offer their employees.

Can you cite examples of greater staff integration?

Take our customer Lufthansa, where we set up systems under the motto of "democratizing working processes" which enable employees to have their requests included in the monthly 
working time planning process. Our solution reflects these requests in the best possible manner. You can imagine the complexity involved in the case of a global player with ten thousands of employees, strong unions, highly diverse legal framework conditions and collective wage agreements. 

And what happens if it is not possible to accommodate employees' requests?

Once the personnel planning has been completed for the month, Lufthansa employees can swap their working time via the ATOSS Shift Exchange platform. And that can even be done by smartphone – which is very important these days, of course. The system automatically checks whether all the statutory, contractual and operational conditions for a swap have been met. Employee feedback is eminently positive, which in turn raises the attractiveness of Lufthansa as an employer.

Can you tell us more about cloud topics at ATOSS?

Our solutions have also been available in the cloud for a number of years. Initially, this was only a peripheral subject. In the meantime, however, demand is trending upwards in all segments, and we are experiencing massive growth rates. Last year alone, we achieved sales gains in excess of 100 percent. Cloud solutions are high on the ATOSS agenda, although we are still giving our customers the option of running their systems on premise. 

Can ATOSS solutions also help smaller businesses?

Absolutely! Workforce management is an issue for any company on today’s markets. At the beginning of the decade, we laid the foundations which enable us today to serve companies from 2 to 200,000 employees with different solutions. From the smartphone-based time recording app for small businesses – available and installable for free trial runs – to complete solutions for SMEs, and all the way through to highly complex, demand-driven workforce scheduling software for global players. We have around 3,500 customers today in the range of 50 to 1,000 employees alone, in other words classic SMEs – companies such as HEINE Optotechnik, Niederegger in Lübeck or the Akzente perfumery – who are managing their staff with ATOSS solutions. 

What challenges are companies still facing today in the field of workforce management?

In the past, companies streamlined massively and achieved savings. As a result, today’s staffing levels are usually very low. There are quite simply no surplus employees to offset the effects of the lack of specialists. And this problem is naturally heightened in any economic boom. Here are two striking examples: At the beginning of October 2016, Postbank closed branches for hours or days at a time due to staff shortages, while the private railway Metronom had to cancel several train journeys. Glitches of this nature have direct effects on customer satisfaction, sales and profits. If they occur more frequently, the company will sustain lasting damage. Companies in sectors entailing high staffing levels have a particular need for intelligent solutions in order to remain competitive.

And workforce management provides the answers here?

We can at least make a significant contribution to solving the problem. For example, based on historical data, our algorithms offer very precise forecasts of footfall and retail sales curves.  Aided by such data, personnel requirements can be very accurately calculated both for individual branches and certain periods, and the precise number of staff required can be scheduled with pinpoint precision. At Kastner & Öhler, Austria's exclusive department store, our solution allows customer expectations in terms of high service quality and short waiting times at the check-out to be met, while lowering personnel costs at the same time. 

Retail and the service industries are sectors with high staffing levels. Is ATOSS having the same success with companies in the manufacturing industry?

Absolutely. The main growth topic in manufacturing goes by the buzzword Industry 4.0. The aim here is to network production and logistics processes as comprehensively as possible in order to make them highly flexible. The objective is to achieve manufacturing capabilities that can adapt dynamically to the demands of the market such as shorter lead times or personalized manufacturing down to a batch size of 1. This will only work on the basis of extremely agile personnel infrastructures. Today, managing this infrastructure intelligently represents a strategic challenge and is an essential component of modern workforce management. For example, we were able to help RITTER SPORT find the best possible match between its staff deployment and the seasonal demand fluctuations so typical of its business. This led to a drastic reduction in working time of more than 10,000 hours per year and sustained productivity gains of flexibly deployed staff in the order of 4 percent. 

What effect does this have on your customers' profits?

I’ll show you a simple calculation by way of an example. Let's assume sales of 100, personnel costs of 50 and a profit of 10. If we can succeed in reducing personnel costs by 3 percent, profits will rise by 15 percent. Moreover, if I am also able to increase sales by 3 percent by improving service levels – while keeping personnel costs constant – profits will rise by 37.5 percent. As you can see, workforce management acts on dual leverage points. Most of our projects reach their return on investment within 12 months. And this takes no account of the positive long-term competitive advantages gained in personnel recruitment, the effects on employee motivation and the strengthening of the company's image as a result of better services or a faster time-to-market.

You serve customers all around the world who are involved in very complex projects and make the most stringent demands. Where do you tap the relevant know-how?

In the course of an almost 30 year journey – and particularly in the last decade – we have helped shape the transformation of working environments in thousands of companies. With this first-hand experience and collective best practice knowledge, we enable our customers to achieve their goals in the area of workforce management in a highly efficient manner.