Arthur David,

Bristol

Arthur David started life as a fruit and vegetable wholesale business in Bristol over 60 years ago, and has since developed into a successful food service delivery business. Customers include 5-star fine dining restaurants, hotels, cafes, pub chains and schools. The company employs almost 400 employees working 7 days a week on a site that includes their head office, warehouse and delivery fleet.

"As Arthur David has continued to grow, our old paper-based time and attendance system was becoming hard to manage and the information recorded was inaccurate, so we approached Chronologic for a new software solution.

We wanted a system that wasn't prone to human error. We also wanted to more accurately record things like overtime, sickness and holidays. Overall, we needed to modernise the way we looked after this side of the business. We chose WFM by Chronologic because it can be precisely tailored to each individual organisation's shift patterns, pay rules and reporting requirements. The biometric hand scanning terminals were also an important factor in ensuring ease of use and accuracy.

The initial set up was straightforward enough and we received very good support. One issue that did arise initially was getting our staff to fully buy-in to the new system. Make sure someone in the organisation is assigned to be the person responsible for the setting up of the system and is fully trained in how to use it.

The system is very good for a medium-sized business like ours. If I was going to start the process again, I think you must be 100% clear how you want to set up daily and weekly rules and schedules because changing it all later causes confusion. There were HR implications as well and I would make sure staff contracts have been reviewed before the system is set up.

WFM delivered what we were looking for at the outset; the transparency gained from having an automated system. Staff must be present to clock in which is not the case with some swipe card or pin number systems. There are also a number of reports that we run monthly that are monitored as part of department manager KPIs. We also use the system to record training, issuing PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and for many more in-house HR related issues.

The system is ideal because it's adaptable and can be changed by us with little input from technical support at Chronologic. But when support is needed, they are able to respond quickly."