Staff Planning System for Field Offices

Overview

This national client wanted a way for its individual store managers to plan their staff and equipment needs using their own local knowledge of seasonal trends, coupled with in-depth statistics provided at the corporate level. The client had previously handled this via the loose collection of Excel documents in various formats using data that wasn't current enough to be useful.

Challenge

PDS would have to integrate the data from corporate to keep it current, account for store closures/openings/mergers, account for employees leaving the company or moving to a new location, and provide real-time management view of the activity from the field.

Importantly, the customers that transacted with a company rep or with a specific company location had to remain with that rep or company location (or not) based on a highly complex set of business rules. In order to help maintain a consistent customer experience, our client did not want its customers being jockeyed around to different reps/locations needlessly.

Result/Summary

PDS worked with corporate's IT department to design secure, automated daily feeds of the statistical data and store activity.

Working closely with both corporate management and field managers to design the right user experience, PDS created a secure web application that provided an easy-to-use method for its users to try different scenarios and immediately see the impacts before committing to a staffing plan. Corporate management was now able to see new trends in time to make better decisions, store managers were able to right-size their resources, and both were able to leverage the local knowledge and instincts that can only come from people working in the field.