Kronos Incorporated has announced improvements to Kronos Workforce Ready, its cloud solution for small to medium businesses (SMBs). To date, Kronos Workforce Ready offers functionality for the following SMB human capital management (HCM) requirements: Read the rest of this entry »

Kronos Incorporated and SuccessFactors, an SAP company, have partnered to combine SuccessFactors’ cloud and talent management technologies with Kronos’ workforce management capabilities.

Together Kronos and SuccessFactors will be able to support labor rules and pay policies stemming from Kronos Workforce Central, which focuses on time and labor tracking, advanced scheduling, analytics, and complex absence management. Also, talent management will be ensured by SuccessFactors’ extended capabilities for compensation, learning, onboarding, and performance and goals. Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to help organizations tackle the new requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), ADP has launched a Health Care Reform section on ADP.com while Kronos has released an eBook, Navigating the Affordable Care Act: An Employer’s Guide to Managing Costs and Compliance in an ACA World.

New challenges presented by the ACA may affect the following: Read the rest of this entry »

One of the lesser talked about business divisions of Kronos Inc. is Montreal, Canada–based AD OPT, a provider of crew planning optimization solutions for the airline industry, which Kronos acquired in 2004. The company has been in this space for more than 25 years and its core focus is to deliver customized solutions for the tricky task of flight crew planning and scheduling for airlines whose aim is to increase operational efficiency.

Most recently, transavia.com, a Netherlands-based airline with services to leisure destinations as an independent part of the Air France-KLM group, selected the Altitude Rostering Footprint Generator application from Kronos AD OPT. The solution is expected to more fairly distribute work based on pre-defined equalization criteria and creating optimal monthly schedules for cockpit crew members.

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At the NRF BIG Retail Show 2013, a new relationship was announced between Kronos and Manhattan Associates to help retailers profitably integrate their physical stores into their digital selling strategy. The idea is to allow retailers to increase customer satisfaction and drive sales by freeing up trapped inventory in the store and elsewhere in the upstream supply chain, while managing labor costs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kronos, the global leader in delivering workforce management (WFM) solutions in the cloud, is preparing for its KronosWorks 2012 conference early next week, and continues to fire on all cylinders. Tens of thousands of organizations in more than 100 countries—including more than half of the Fortune 1000—use Kronos to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve workforce productivity. During the recently held 15th annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition in Chicago, Kronos announced a series of enhancements to its fast-selling cloud WFM suite for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), dubbed Kronos Workforce Ready. Read the rest of this entry »

High-level enhancements in TeleStaff 2.8 were announced by Kronos last week—Microsoft database compatibility, bidding, reporting, and data consolidation. It is worth pointing out the performance of Kronos TeleStaff and the (less talked about) public sector workforce management suite since Kronos’ May 2011 acquisition of PDSI and the TeleStaff product. Read the rest of this entry »

Kronos seems to be reaping the benefits from its geographic expansion into India and China. Reportedly, Renault-Nissan Automotive India evaluated lots of local time and attendance (T&A) vendors, but none of them fit the automaker’s automation requirements. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series started by expressing the “New Infor” sentiments (backed up with concrete examples and rationale) following my recent attendance of Inforum 2012. Then the article provided some historical background and described the lineage of the products that currently form the Infor10 HCM portfolio.

The article also detailed some technical and organizational issues on both the former heritage Infor and Lawson Software’s human resource (HR) and talent management products’ side. In light of these issues, which were discussed in Part 1, it is small wonder that some market observers have wondered whether Infor can make sense out of this daunting inheritance of a portfolio. Read the rest of this entry »

Kronos is one of the most important players in the human resources (HR) software market, with a global presence (serving 100+ countries), $820 million (USD) in annual revenue, more than 3,500 employees, and 30+ million users worldwide.

Until recently, the vendor had mostly focused on large enterprises, with its flagship product, the Kronos Workforce Central suite. This changed with the recent acquisition of SaaShr, a software-as-a-service provider specializing in workforce management for small to medium businesses (SMBs).

The solution has been rebranded as Kronos Workforce Ready, and I had the opportunity to learn more about it from Bob DelPonte, product line director for Workforce Ready. Here’s what I found out, along with my commentary on the new solution. Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

Jeanswest selects Manhattan Associates
Industry tags: Fashion/retail
“Manhattan Associates once again shows the strength of its SCALE platform; Jeanswest was in much need of a supply chain solution that could help them streamline logistics across and between three continents. Jeanswest will now be able to better manage its operations across its branded stores and distribution center, while establishing a more efficient framework to support its extended supply chain.”—Philippe Reney, TEC Research Analyst

• Manhattan Associates: TEC profile

Another instance of UNIT4-based ERP shared service goes live for several UK local authorities
Industry tags: Public administration and defense
“Since I am already a bit familiar with UNIT4’s shared-services projects and have spoken to few key people from client’s side, I realize how challenging they can be. The issues have less to do with the technology (which is impressive), or the hardware, than with challenges that are internal to the clients themselves, whether it be political/economic hurdles, or even end users’ and top management’s psychological readiness to use shared back-office software. In view of all this, my congratulations to UNIT4’s team and, certainly, to the local authorities in the UK that made this project a reality.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

• UNIT4: TEC profile

Standby Screw Machine Products Co. replaces five old systems with IQMS ERP
Industry tags: Manufacturing
This contract parts company, which owns two manufacturing facilities in the US and China, will replace its five disparate and aged applications with a single modern system that should help it consolidate all company data and eliminate difficulties caused by multiple systems. Another consideration was that the company wanted to acquire industry-specific ERP software that included industry best practices. Among eight vendors, IQMS was judged by Standby Screw Machine as offering the best fit for its needs.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

• IQMS: TEC profile
• Compare IQMS to leading competitors

Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS & DEPLOYMENTS

European manufacturer of construction chemicals selects IFS Applications
Industry tags: Process manufacturing, mining
“Polish corporation Atlas Group, which operates 18 business entities and 5 mines in Poland and internationally, has selected IFS Applications as its corporate-level ERP system. The first areas slated for implementation will be financials, distribution, manufacturing, maintenance, controlling elements, consolidation, trade management-commerce portals, WMS, and document and quality management. Atlas Group is a typical “sweet spot” IFS client, as the product provides good functional support, particularly in process manufacturing and mining.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

• TEC profile for IFS Applications
• Compare process ERP software now!
• Compare mining software now!
• Press release

Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

The SuperYacht Group selects NetSuite
Industry tags: services industry
“The holding that includes magazine and Web site publishing, event hosting, marketing consultancy, and creative services has consolidated and centralized all its activities on cloud-based NetSuite ERP. The company has replaced its point solutions—solutions that had obviously become too tiny for them. The group has reported increased productivity, compared to operations under old systems, and quicker business processes.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Analyst

• TEC profile for NetSuite
• Press release

Read the rest of this entry »

My recent in-depth report from the KronosWorks 2011 conference entitled KronosWorks 2011: Beyond Time Clocks for Modern Workforce Management asserted that vertically-oriented tuck-in acquisitions were likely in store for Kronos in 2012. Lo and behold, in mid-January 2012, Kronos announced that it has acquired the assets of OptiLink from The Advisory Board Company in an undisclosed cash transaction.

As a result of the acquisition, Kronos has added one of the industry’s leading acuity-based staffing solutions to its health care workforce management (WFM) suite. Kronos now offers possibly the most advanced clinically-focused WFM suite designed to help healthcare organizations deliver high-quality patient care. More than 3,000 hospitals and 4,000 long-term care organizations use Kronos Workforce Central solutions every day. Other notable competitors in the space are API Healthcare, McKesson, and Lawson Software (part of Infor).

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced Reflexis Systems, whose task execution solutions have helped over 110 retailers and their suppliers worldwide execute their strategies and increase profits. The article analyzed Reflexis’ genesis and evolution from a task management specialist to an integrated retail workforce management (WFM) platform provider.

Reflexis’ Retail Execution Management platform features labor budgeting/forecasting/scheduling, time and attendance (T&A), task management, and key performance indicator (KPI)/compliance solutions to enable retailers to align their store labor/activities to corporate goals and institutionalize best-practice responses to real-time metrics. As mentioned in Part 1, Reflexis’ customers, many of which are Top 250 global retailers, have reported improvements in store-level compliance with corporate strategies; higher productivity of merchandising, field, and store management; and increased sales and profitability. Read the rest of this entry »