CHELMSFORD, Mass., May 27, 2015 – Kronos Incorporated, the global leader in delivering workforce management solutions in the cloud, today unveiled a major new version of its flagship product suite, Workforce Central. Workforce Central 8 combines a reimagined user experience with unmatched industry-specific functionality, powerful analytics, comprehensive global capabilities, and proven cloud delivery for a complete, uncompromised solution that allows organizations to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, improve workforce productivity, and increase employee engagement – regardless of their industry or where they do business.
News Facts
- Reimagined user experience – Designed for the needs and expectations of an increasingly diverse, multi-generational global workforce, Workforce Central 8 sets a new standard for ease of use with:
- An engaging and innovative look and feel that leverages HTML5 technology for efficient and intuitive navigation;
- An enhanced timecard that is both configurable and actionable, simplifying completion of routine tasks and access to critical employee information;
- A reimagined schedule planner that delivers exceptional visibility to staffing and coverage with many new features, including employee photos, color coding of jobs, and flexible multi-week calendar views;
- New Workforce Genies that allow managers to easily access, group, filter, and summarize operational data;
- Simplified historical correction capabilities that provide a seamless and secure process for viewing and editing missed punches, pay codes, and other details from previous periods;
- Enhanced mobile capabilities that enable offline punching, hourly and project timecard editing, notification alerts, and management of time-off requests; and
- Flexible open-shift management that enables managers to easily and automatically create and notify employees of open shifts on approval of time-off requests.
- Exceptional features for every industry – Organizations should not have to compromise on functionality, integration, or performance when meeting the demanding needs of their specific industries. In addition to innovative features such as Leaderboards and Grant and Project Tracking, Workforce Central 8 enables enhanced business outcomes with features designed to increase productivity, improve employee engagement, and deliver a better customer experience:
- Enhanced employee self-service scheduling provides visibility into location schedules and coverage. Employees can now review assigned shifts, check coverage by job role, and request open shifts in a familiar weekly or monthly calendar view;
- New fatigue management capabilities enable managers to track, alert, and adjust schedules to avoid the use of over-worked employees and the safety hazards, employee dissatisfaction, and reduced productivity associated with work fatigue;
- Managers can make more efficient scheduling and staffing decisions using predictive on-screen reporting of projected overtime and alerts to related rule violations;
- Retailers and hospitality providers can improve productivity and customer satisfaction with:
- New task management features that provide a more granular view of labor required for customer-facing, non-customer-facing, and program-oriented tasks, allowing store managers to make better staffing decisions; and
- Current week re-forecasting analyzes actual sales and customer traffic data to suggest midweek adjustments to sales projections and staffing levels due to unforeseen influences such as weather, local events, or other unusual activity.
- Advanced staffing and predictive scheduling capabilities enable healthcare organizations to improve staff satisfaction and deliver quality patient care all while managing labor costs:
- Predictive volume forecasting measures historical performance and current patient flow to determine optimal staffing requirements; and
- Workload management considers the demand for care with each patient’s level-of-care intensity while equitably distributing and balancing staff assignments; and
- Shift-based productivity tracking helps healthcare organizations manage in-the-moment by showing real-time variances from planned performance.
- Unparalleled business insight with reporting and analytics – Workforce Central 8 can reveal the underlying truths in an organization’s transactional workforce data to identify and help resolve complex labor cost, compliance, and productivity issues with:
- Operational reporting through convenient Excel-based scheduling and timekeeping report templates that allow user modification to meet specific business needs;
- Interactive visualization that highlights labor patterns and trends using geospatial analysis, while incorporating additional data sources, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) or point-of-sale (POS) systems;
- Actionable insight to reveal trends in employee attendance, unplanned absence, and related actions, with ability to segment by multiple dimensions, such as labor account, job, and tenure;
- Industry-specific insight that provides greater visibility into how effectively organizations plan, schedule, and manage labor spend against customer demand, patient needs, and client requirements; and
- Workforce Analytics Plug-ins developed by Kronos and select partners using Workforce Central and third-party data to deliver better insight into critical business needs. Plug-ins include Affordable Care Act (ACA); Store Performance; Workforce to Workload; Labor Cost Variance; and Retail IQ.
- Enhanced global capabilities – Kronos continues to extend competencies to meet the stringent requirements of organizations worldwide including:
- Compliance support at the country-, regional-, county-, union- and city-level to help organizations manage the myriad of ever-changing compliance requirements related to working time, reporting, and other regulations; and
- New international scheduling rules and alerts that enable organizations to comply with country-specific legislation, collective agreements, and company policies that specify limits for total hours worked over variable periods of time.
- Proven cloud delivery – Kronos continues to add thousands of customers to the Kronos Cloud, with more than 80 percent of new customer bookings leveraging an array of Kronos Cloud offerings. Additionally, built upon deep expertise gained from migrating hundreds of existing on-premise customers to the cloud, Kronos recently launched a Cloud Readiness assessment service to help new and existing customers maximize the value of implementing their Workforce Central solution in the Kronos Cloud.
Supporting Quotes
- Aron Ain, chief executive officer, Kronos
“I am really proud of our interaction design, product, and cloud development teams for delivering the most user-friendly and powerful workforce management solution in the world. Not only have we capitalized on our expertise gained from thousands of successful Workforce Central implementations, but we also engaged our largest-ever group of customer advisory board members. Their suggestions, guidance, and feedback were instrumental to this effort and continue to inspire us to deliver the best workforce management solutions – without compromise.”
- Mark Smith, chief executive officer and executive vice president of research, Ventana Research
“Workforce management is not just about time and attendance – as many ERP and HCM application vendors would like for you to believe – but is a collection of applications that help organizations manage and optimize the hourly workforce to its fullest potential. Workforce management requires many capabilities but also includes self-service access for employees and managers, digital timecards, dynamic scheduling, geo-fenced check-in, work collaboration, task management, and many other areas that are all part of Kronos Workforce Central 8.”
- John Meersman, director of IT, National Frozen Foods
“We couldn’t imagine going back in time to before we used Workforce Central. It has made us so much more efficient and productive as an entire organization. Regardless of our needs or goals, Kronos and Workforce Central come through. The synergy between the new features and engaging user interface provides even more insight and helps our employees do their jobs better. Each release grows stronger with age thanks to Kronos’ experience, innovative thinking, and customer collaboration, so we’re eagerly looking forward to implementing Workforce Central 8.”
- Nakoa Graff, human resources manager, Shooting Star Casino
“We’re excited about Workforce Central 8 for several reasons. The reimagined user interface is so clean and intuitive that power users and technology novices alike can gain access to vast amounts of information with just one click of the mouse. Kronos also fosters effective and consistent communication across our entire organization to help efficiently manage and reward our employees. And, lastly, Workforce Central helps us deliver the finest guest services standards and stay one step ahead of our competition through better hiring and retention, sophisticated business insight, and putting the right person in the right place to do the best job possible.”
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