At SAPPHIRE, the SAP company, SuccessFactors, announced a series of new upgrades as part of its human capital management (HCM) offering. Aiming at businesses that want to go beyond basic human resources (HR) functionality, SuccessFactors also enhanced its talent management tools. 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 »

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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In an analyst webinar, Workday announced Update 18 of its Workday solution, which proposes enhancements for financial management, workforce engagement, performance management, and flexibility. In 2012, Workday had three significant updates demonstrating sustained efforts to advance its product at a fast pace. Furthermore, the update contains more than 100 new items, 60 of which address client feedback that was collected through the Workday’s Brainstorm online customer community. Read the rest of this entry »

My blog series in 2009 entitled “A Tale of a Few Good SCM Players” talked at great length about RedPrairie Corporation, JDA Software, and Manhattan Associates, including their corporate history and acquisitions. The general feeling at the time was that hardly any of these three great supply chain management (SCM) software companies would remain independent in the long term.

It took a few years for two of these companies to decide to merge, but on November 1, 2012, RedPrairie and JDA announced their merger agreement, under the terms of which the entities affiliated with RedPrairie will effect a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of JDA common stock for $45 per share. Read the rest of this entry »

Workforce Software, provider of enterprise workforce management solutions, announced that Adventist Health System has selected its EmpCenter Suite. Adventist Health Systems is a large health care provider with 43 campuses spanning 10 states in the United States. Adventist needed a solution to automate its time and attendance and absence and leave processes a majority of its 55,000+ employees. “System flexibility and functional depth were critical factors in our extensive market evaluation,” commented Brent Snyder, CIO of Adventist Health System in the company’s press release. Along with common workforce management functionality, EmpCenter also supports fatigue management by automating all facets of fatigue risk mitigation to ensure employee work-hour limits are enforced and that employees are fit for duty. These types of features along with ease of use and configuration made WorkForce stand out from its competitors.

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

Mid-sized refractory products manufacturer selects EnterpriseIQ ERP from IQMS
Industry tags: manufacturing
“The reasons why Riverside Refractories Inc. decided to replace its existing ERP system aren’t unique—the old legacy system’s inflexibility and inability to support manufacturing needs in the changing business environment had started impeding the company’s operations. The company selected an ERP solution from IQMS—its EnterpriseIQ ERP package designed for medium-sized businesses. This software was preferred over others for a few major reasons: ease of use and a ‘comfortable’ user interface; flexibility and capability to run on multiple hardware types; and a reasonable cost. And the last reason the company mentions is pretty interesting: lack of the usual sales pressure. This example clearly shows the importance of intangible and subjective factors during the software selection process.” — Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Analyst

Overview: IQMS EnterpriseIQ
Compare IQMS EnterpriseIQ head-to-head with other leading ERP solutions.

SYSPRO ERP selected by Hardy Machine and Design
Industry tags: manufacturing
“This company, which engineers, designs, and fabricates precise machine metal parts for clients in various industries, decided to replace its existing software because it lacked processes for cost tracking and had poor scheduling capabilities. After evaluating multiple systems, Hardy concluded that SYSPRO ERP was the best choice. Among other selection factors it cites three major ones: underlying cutting-edge Microsoft technology, a full range of functionality focusing on the metal machining industry, and a local software reseller to provide back-up and support.” — Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Analyst

“SYSPRO ERP replaced the Exact JobBOSS and Sage Peachtree combination at Hardy, specialists in oil and gas, aerospace, and health care industries, as the combined software was not providing good job cost data for individual jobs and had weak job scheduling capabilities. SYSPRO ERP outcompeted four ERP products for the new contract, one of which was SAP Business One by SAP Americas Inc. Hardy reported selected SYSPRO ERP because SYSPRO seems to be on the ‘cutting edge’ of Microsoft offerings; the software offers a full suite of capabilities focused on Hardy’s industries, and the local SYSPRO reseller offers excellent backup and support.” — P.J. Jakovljevic, Principal TEC Analyst Read the rest of this entry »

What TEC’s recent in-depth article Waking Up to a “New Day” at Infor hinted, my attendance of Inforum 2012 in late April confirmed. Namely, Infor started out as a traditional acquirer and market consolidator, but that is old news now.

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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 »

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 »

My recent post (Software and Human) Help Wanted in Overwhelmed Retail Stores talked about how much attention (and IT investment) retailers pay to their merchandize planning and supply chain optimization processes as compared to their store-level task execution, even though this is where “the rubber meets the road.” I concluded my post with the fact that there are dozens of retail workforce management (WFM) vendors and solutions, but not many have the required store-level task management capabilities.

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My recent series on Quantum Retail presented the many difficult merchandise range and assortment planning issues that retailers face, and the ensuing tough decisions that they have to continually make in that regard. But a lesser-known fact is that even though retailers spend multiple billions of dollars on planning activities and supporting tools to bring customers to their stores, they only execute at about 60 percent efficiency in their stores at best, thus leaving trillions of dollars in merchandise at risk. Read the rest of this entry »

My recent article entitled “Workforce Scheduling & Optimization: The Missing Link on the Shop Floor?” analyzed the importance of manufacturing workforce scheduling & optimization solutions and stated that many manufacturing enterprises still use rudimentary tools and practices (if that) to manage their labor. The article stated that most manufacturing organizations do not yet understand the strategic value that workforce scheduling could provide to them.

Often, manufacturing companies (complacently or ignorantly) think that the existing practices and tools that they have in place for labor scheduling are “good enough” or that workforce scheduling for their environment is so unique and complex that it cannot be properly automated. Until recently, a few percentiles of improvement in labor utilization or productivity hasn’t been much of an incentive for manufacturing executives to invest in sophisticated workforce management (WFM) systems. Labor has been customarily viewed as a constraint (or even a necessary evil) to the successful movement of goods through the supply chain.

What a difference in attitude a protracted economic downturn can make. Because labor represents a large percentage of any organization’s controllable costs, many manufacturing companies have lately realized that the benefits of implementing automated workforce scheduling can be significant.

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My 2009 series on a few good supply chain management (SCM) players portrayed Manhattan Associates (NASDAQ: MANH) and RedPrairie Corporation as fierce competitors. Indeed, these two vendors continue to duke it out at almost every large-scale selection deal for a warehouse management system (WMS), distribution labor management system (LMS), or transportation management system (TMS) solution.

Curiously, both vendors are now headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, US, after RedPrairie’s mid-2010 HQ move from Waukesha, Wisconsin, US (which remains a major office that is undergoing a major renovation). Atlanta is also the base for Infor, Logility, CDC Software, Servigistics, and many other enterprise software companies, but I digress.

Over a last few years these two vendors have also pursued somewhat different expansion routes from their traditional supply chain execution (SCE) realms, where they will likely face different competitors. Recently, at the National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Retail Show 2011, I had a chance to meet with both vendors to discuss their strategies. 

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Given our shared presence in the Boston metro area, I’ve had numerous contacts and interactions with Kronos Incorporated in the past, but this fall was my very first attendance of the vendor’s annual user conference: KronosWorks 2010. That attendance was a worthwhile use of my time and a great learning experience about the company and its customers. As some background, here is Ventana Research’s report from the previous conference, KronosWorks 2009.

Kronos is the global leader in workforce management (WFM) solutions that enable organizations to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve workforce productivity. Tens of thousands of organizations in 60 countries — including more than half of the Fortune 1000 — use some or all of the following modules of the Kronos Workforce Central suite: time and attendance (T&A), scheduling, absence management, human resources (HR) and payroll, hiring, and labor analytics.

The conference’s official program started with an intriguing animated video with some startling statistics about what our working days and weeks have begun to look like. For example, 15 percent of people admit that they are addicted to e-mail – some confessed to checking their e-mail at the beach, weddings, and even at funerals. 

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