How do you choose the right Time and Activity management software for your business?
Choosing the right Time and Activity management software for your business is no easy task. There is a plethora of time management tools available, and it's natural to feel overwhelmed by the multitude of offerings on the market.
To choose the software best suited to your activity, you need to define your expectations in terms of functionalities, so as to opt for the solution best aligned with your needs.
In this article, Stafiz offers you a complete guide to choosing the right tool your objectives.
How does time management software work?
Time and Activity management software works by collecting data on employees' working hours, the activities on which they work, and the costs that correspond to projects.
This enables better project planningmore accurate tracking of any overtime.
The data collected is then integrated into a database where it can be analyzed. Employers can access it at any time, and use the information to make decisions.
CEOs, PMOs or project managers can focus more on their employees, their availability, but also the hard skills they can allocate according to the business issues faced by the company.
With the right capacity planning, you can optimize the management of your teams' working hours and intervention times.
Software Time and Activity management : defining your company's specific needs
To avoid the risk of choosing the wrong tool for your business, you need to study the benefits your company is looking for beforehand.
Optimizing productivity by tracking time
If employee time tracking is to help you analyze your productivity, you need software that recognizes the different activities you perform automatically.
This type of software recognizes the software or documents you're working on, to simplify the categorization of your time.
By consolidating this information, you can take a step back from your organization and your productivity to improve.
Time management software that meets this need : Toggl, Memtime, RescueTime.
Monitoring financial profitability
To compare data on time spent on a project in order toanalyze its profitability, choose software with more advanced financial features.
It should enable you to track activities billed on a fixed-price basis, and analyze the costs of internal and external collaborators on the project.
Time management software that meets this need : Stafiz, Quickbooks Time.
Visibility on time allocated to R&D
When tracking research and development time, make sure that the granularity of the input granularity meets the administration's reporting needs.
This functionality is required because time spent can be audited for tax credits and/or subsidies that are awarded and linked to the workload spent on these projects.
Time management software that meets this need : Harvest, Timely.
What criteria should you take into account when choosing Time and Activity management software?
Prioritize GTA issues to be resolved
Solve all of the HR challenges facing your business simply through the adoption of software Time and Activity management is impossible.
Therefore, choosing software by prioritizing by functional requirements may be an option.
Even if most tools offer a global solution, some players have a more pronounced positioning on a particular aspect:
- For resource planning and financial project management: Stafiz
- To prioritize scoring and tracking : Combo or Skello
- For accurate absence tracking : KiwiRH
- To prioritize compliance with legal and contractual obligations : Kelio
- To optimize work organization : Lucca
Stafiz also offers a global solution for managing your business, organized into modules pre-sales, resource planning and planning, time tracking, project management, invoicing and reporting...
This organization into modules makes it possible toselect the priority bricksto be implemented. You can thereforegradually integrate a Time and Activity management solution into your business .
The user experience
When making your choice, focus on theemployee experience: a simple, flexible way of tracking employees' time should be made as easy as possible for them to approach.
When the tool is complex, employees are put off by it. As a result, monitoring is likely to be delayed at best, or not carried out at all.
To avoid this situation of rejectionTo avoid this rejection situation, we recommend checking that the time entry experience is simple, and that the software is also accessible from the employee's smartphone.
Associated services
Change can be frightening. The rule is no exception in the corporate world, when it comes to adopting or changing software. This is why the services offered by Time and Activity management software suppliers can become an integral part of your final decision.
Is integration planned by the publisher, a partner integrator or is it to be carried out in-house? If so, what type of documentation is required?
Is support provided when the software is installed? For how long? Is training provided?
These are all questions that need to be answered to ensure a smooth transition. If possible, choose a supplier with a team of Account Manager team who will be able to support and advise you as you use the software.
At Stafiz, an account manager will be with you every step of the way.
Our team of consultants can help you get the most out of our time management and project management solution. Contact us to find out how we can help.
Which time management software is right for your business?
- By industry
Some business sectors, such as healthcare or construction, are particularly specific. Indeed, they sometimes have to take into account a number of variables.
The hospital sector needs to anticipate the tracking of multi-site working hours.
The building and civil engineering sector has to deal with time tracking using mobile teams.
Therefore, companies operating in specific industries must carefully identify their needs. This will allow them to choose a relevant tool that will respond to their issues.
- Depending on company size
Needs vary according to the size of the company.
SMEs and multinationals will obviously not face the same difficulties. For example, the number of employees but also the organization of the structure will largely influence the choice of Time and Activity management software.
Note that the more complex the company structure with a large number of departments, the more likely it is to need a high level of customization .
On the other hand, small businesses will rather favor easy-to-use Time and Activity management software, focused on an optimal user experience.
What features can you expect from Time and Activity management ?
To help you choose the right software, you first need to confirm the main objective of your in-house time tracking strategy.
Following this first step, you can put together your checklist of requirements to help you better target the features you're looking for in a time management tool, and thus achieve a better return on investment.
The functional scope of our Stafiz time management software
Functional aspects
- Real-time recording of time worked
To make it easier to keep track of time, the software should provide a stopwatch, so that you can record the time worked in real time, and pause or stop it just as easily.
This feature lets you categorize time into missions or tasks for easier analysis.
- Time recording granularity
Not all activities have the same needs.
Some software packages are better suited to tracking in hours (or even minutes), while others are better suited to tracking in portions of a day (quarter, half or full day).
If your business relies on different time granularities, make sure your time management tool offers this degree of customization.
Discover flexible and granular time management in Stafiz
- Granularity of task entry
Most software programs allow you to track time spent on tasks.
Check the details of the task planning and sub-tasks, if you consider this to be an important criterion for evaluating the activity.
- Legal compliance
To ensure that this time tracking respect employees' labor rights it is often necessary to define rules in the tool.
You can configure them to impose a limit of hours per day, or the impossibility of entering more hours per year than the legal limit.
Make sure HR constraints are taken into account in your time management software!
Organization and collaboration
- Data export
Time tracking is frequently used for different types of reporting.
Your time management software must be able to export data with the information required for reporting. Make sure you have a data export module.
- Add comments
When an activity report has to be validated a posteriori by a manager or a customer, adding comments to detail the work carried out can be an asset to better appreciate the time spent on the task.
- External access
If you work for a customer and bill them for their time, it may be worthwhile to give them access to information in order to facilitate communication with the customerand even speed up validation before invoicing.
If this customer transparency feature is important to you, you should look for a tool that manages activity reports.
Customer billing
If your time tracking is designed to help you bill your customers more easily, choose a tool that enables you to go beyond simple time tracking by customer or by activity.
This tool should enable you to create projects, or even tasks, so that you can precisely track the time spent on each of them. Ideally, you'll manage your quotations and invoicing in the same tool, to save time and increase reliability through automation, and thus reduce the risk of errors induced by manual information transfers.
Stafiz automates your billing
When a deliverable is ready, you can automatically generate invoices for your projects. Entry is automatic, using the time data recorded by your employees.
Anticipating software implementation Time and Activity management
As with any change within a company, theinstallation of Time and Activity management software is likely to disrupt the entire organization. This is a project that needs to be anticipated.
Communicate with teams
First, communicate with your teams to clearly identify their friction points and needs .
This will help you choose a relevant Time and Activity management tool that meets real needs. In addition, you increase the probability that the tool will be easily adopted by your employees.
Evangelize software use Time and Activity management
Throughout the integration process, it remains necessary to inform your teams.
You need to communicate clearly with them, highlighting the benefits of using GTA software. Include them in your discussions wherever possible, so that they feel involved.
Train your teams
Once the Time and Activity management software is finally chosen, prepare for itsadoption. This requirestransparent, regular communication, but also theimplementation of training.These must include getting to grips with the tool, while emphasizing evangelization. Indeed, it is essential that each team understands the advantages brought by this new software, even if the learning curve may require a few weeks.
You can also get support from partners , both for integration within the company and for team training.
Integrations between time recording software and your other tools
Many companies use different tools to manage different aspects of their business before moving on to an all-in-one all-in-one solution.
As a result, manual synchronization oversights and trips from one application to another multiply, and this has an impact on your bottom line.
To compensate for these manual adjustments, it's essential to anticipate the connection needs of your new time scheduling software, so as to make data entry and synchronization more fluid.
Leave and absence management
Closely linked to time management, leave and absence management must communicate with the dedicated software. Ideally, when an employee applies for leave and it is validated, theinformation should be passed on to the time management software. This avoids double entry, which wastes employee time and leads to dissatisfaction.
By automating the transmission of information, data is also more reliable, as it is not possible to mistakenly enter time spent on an activity during a day of absence.
If your time management tool integrates a native leave management component, it is even more practical because the connection is automatic and will be maintained over time.
Export module
Time tracking can be used for various purposes in other software (HRIS or payroll software for HR tracking, activity management software for margin tracking). It is possible to send this information at a certain frequency by transmitting flat files.
To do this, you need to export the data from the time management software before importing it into the other software. This is a manual operation, but can be automated with Excel spreadsheets.
PLC connectors
To facilitate the transfer of information and data between different software programs, the API transmission option remains the most automated. However, the APIs of the two programs must be able to communicate with each other. This is something that needs to be verified.
There are also standard connectors between the various software packages. If this isn't the case, you'll have to develop it. It's a more automated solution, but it can also be more expensive.
Expense management
Expense tracking often goes hand in hand with time tracking. You may need to connect time and expenses for, for example, fixed-price invoicing in man-days, or margin analysis (taking into account time spent and expenses on a project).
For all these reasons, it's a good idea to connect the software together, or to choose time management software that also has a native expense management module.
In conclusion, before choosing time management software, it is important to ask yourself the right questions:
- What is the priority objective?
- What are the essential criteria to include in your search?
- How will the software interconnect with other software used in the business?
Once all these answers are fixed, it will be much easier to sort through the different software!
