Oracle NetSuite has revealed SuitePeople Workforce Management, a new solution for optimising work shifts and improving profitability.
Through heavy use of automation, SuitePeople Workforce Management aims to improve the overall system of shift scheduling, attendance monitoring, and wage calculations for employers. It integrates shift forecasts, payroll and financial systems, alongside employee attendance to provide each company with end-to-end oversight of its workforce.
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With the solution, users can automatically produce visual shift schedules, as informed by information such as forecasts and staffing needs to provide detailed plans. This includes the option to generate recommendations for users, to optimise staff scheduling according to individual business needs.
SuitePeople Workforce Management also uses a ‘wage rule engine’ to improve the process of calculating time worked, utilising integration with SuitePeople Payroll to automatically use data on approved hours to inform accurate payrolls for employee hours, overtime and holiday pay.
The new tool, announced at NetSuite's annual SuiteWorld conference, is part of a larger package of announcements all designed to make it easier to deploy automation across a company, including accounting tools to make it easier to pay bills.
In addition to generating employee rotas, the solution is integrated to track and analyse employee attendance. SuitePeople Time Clock enables shifts to be logged using a mobile app as well as through the use of photo capture and biometric fingerprint scans. This has the stated benefit of ensuring that employees are themselves clocking into work, rather than having it been done on their behalf by coworkers, and thus provides a better idea of workforce engagement and punctuality.
Through the app, employees can also swap or pick up shifts and direct message managers. It also provides a unified channel through which managers can contact employees with attendance discrepancies, focusing engagement between managers and employees and simplifying professional channels.
“With SuitePeople Workforce Management, scheduling shifts and tracking employees’ time is more efficient than ever. I make all approvals directly in NetSuite and create a payroll batch with one click,” said Urban Legacy product and platform director, Kristi Miller.
“This helps put Urban Legacy in a position to plan intelligently and change operations quickly.”
Managers are additionally able to use SuitePeople Workforce Management’s real-time dashboard to view metrics such as wages, sales and operational forecasts, and compare these to live results. With this data in hand, firms are able to make more informed, up-to-date decisions regarding workforces, and leverage greater insight into the costs of their existing employees.
With the skills gap affecting the majority of firms, and hiring skilled IT workers harder than ever, many organisations are looking inwards to address the problem through reskilling. With the right insight, chief information officers (CIOs) can address the problem, and this is an area where the oversight into metrics and profit provided by SuitePeople Workforce Management could be instrumental.
Many companies are responding to the cost of living crisis and international economic headwinds by reducing employee numbers, such as Twilio’s recent 11% workforce cut, and SuitePeople Workforce Management can also assist companies to best identify the areas within their workforces where such cuts can be made.
Workforce Management forms part of the wider NetSuite SuitePeople, the company’s HR management system that works across departments to improve efficiency in company decision-making. This is key to the centralisation of human resources and financial operations for NetSuite customers, marrying oversight with business insight.
Evan Goldberg, founder and EVP, Oracle NetSuite, highlighted the important role that SuitePeople Workforce Management can play in optimising access to workers in the current economy.
“In a tight labour market, organisations need to elevate the management of their workforce to be competitive,” said Evan Goldberg, founder and EVP, Oracle NetSuite.
“With SuitePeople Workforce Management, organisations can quickly adjust staffing to align with changing business conditions. They can also ensure they accurately pay their employees and meet compliance requirements.
“This addition to SuitePeople reinforces our commitment to helping our customers increase employee engagement, which in turn positively impacts the bottom line.”
NetSuite SuitePeople Workforce Management will be available in early 2023, within the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Its release in the UK and Ireland is expected in the summer of 2023.
