According to Jon Lawrence, RedPrairie vice president product marketing, “The demands on managers today, particularly those in the retail industry, are significant because they receive requests and inquiries from many sources. By creating a user-friendly portal that is integrated with our workforce management scheduling application, we help improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of communication between managers and employees. No longer will managers have to answer potentially disruptive phone calls to confirm an employee’s work schedule or worked hours. Instead, they stay focused on the customer, and the employees become more self-sufficient.”
The efficiencies extend beyond manager/employee communications. When a manager approves a request for time off, the employee is notified, and the integrated workforce management application does not schedule the employee for that time. Moreover, a growing percentage of the available labor pool is using WAP-enabled devices as a popular method of communication. By enabling employees to access schedule information via a mobile phone, RedPrairie helps to redefine “self-service” in the industry.
“To optimize store performance, you need to optimize the activities of the local manager,” Lawrence says. “This enhanced capability is one more way that we streamline efficiency and enable managers to be in the right place at the right time–helping both their customers and their company’s bottom line.”
The enhanced employee self-service capabilities are available in the current release of RedPrairie Workforce Management.
