Top seven things to do before buying a time and attendance system
When your company purchases any new system there are dangers and pitfalls to avoid. Mission-critical systems are especially problematic, and new time tracking software is no exception. A company can lose thousands of hours to usability issues or badly-thought-out functionality, damaging employee productivity. Training and maintenance costs increase with every badly planned software module. But there’s hope: if you follow these seven simple steps, you can get a wonderful product from a quality vendor, and streamline your HR and time tracking business processes.
1) First, find out what your absence management business processes are currently. Do a thorough audit of your tech capabilities and systems. Record all hardware and software systems that you current run or plan to acquire in the near future. Record your current attendance system and scheduling procedures. Make sure to consider the folks who interact with the system the most. Review your company’s hours-of-work policy and pay procedures, and the step-by-step time tracking admin details.
2) Draw up your requirements document. First and foremost, what are your technical needs – and limitations? What do you actually need the time and attendance software and hardware to do? Seriously, this sounds simple, but it’s the most neglected step in this process. Separate essential from nice to have, and don’t consider of any nice-to-haves unless there is the need for a tie-breaker. Weight your requirements by how operationally essential they are – if the system was unavailable for a day, what processes would simply fail? Rank those first!
3) Send out a Request for Proposal to at least five attendance system software vendors. Request a response that addresses each of your itemized requirements. Specify that if they can’t meet the requirement they should tell you what it would take (in time and money) to implement it. Ask about new developments in the industry. As the experts, the vendors should be in much better touch with what’s out there. If you can, retain a consultant who can’t bid to review the technical offerings with you. Vendors will use acronyms and fancy graphics – get somebody who understands the attendance system industry and can cut through the cruft.
4) Call your shortlist and ask them to present. Ask for high-level overviews and a general budget proposal. Pay close attention to the company’s philosophy and dynamics – do they present as a team, or is each function presented separately? This is – seriously! – an important indicator of how well the system’s components will integrate too. Specify that you would really love to see both a software engineer and workflow management expert on the presentation team, not just the sales group.
5) Select your vendor like you’d choose an employee – look for a good personality and great references. Send the winning vendor a letter of intent – subject to reference checking. Then make sure their references check out in the specific areas that are most important to you.
6) If none of the vendors are an exact match, see if your top choice will agree to a trial period for a nominal fee. This will let you assess the system and analyze the results. If the attendance tracking software does most things, ask for quotes on just the specific functions or additions that you still require.
7) Enjoy! Keep in mind that new attendance tracking systems (and their sales teams) always bring huge expectations, and the tendancy is to compare it directly with the old system (which is getting replaced for a reason…) Learning curves often bring disappointment as expectations meet reality and users discover that each attendance and time management system functions differently from what they used before. This soon turns into relief, however, as the system is fully learnt, begins to shows its unique strengths, and proves its worth!
