How to choose software Time and Activity management adapted to its activity?
Choosing Software Time and Activity management adapted to the needs of your company cannot be improvised. There are a plethora of time management tools out there, and it's natural to feel overwhelmed by the multitude of offerings on the market.
To choose the most suitable software for your business, it is necessary to define your expectations in terms of features in order to opt for the solution that is most aligned with your needs.
In this article, Stafiz offers you a complete guide to choosing the perfect tool for your goals.
How does time management software work?
Software Time and Activity management Works by collecting data on employees' working hours, the activities they work on, the costs that correspond to the projects.
This enables better project planning and more accurate tracking of any overtime.
The data collected is then integrated into a database where it can be analysed. Employers can access it at any time, and use the information to make decisions.
CEOs, PMOs or project directors can focus more on employees, their availability, but also the hard skills they can allocate according to the business problems encountered by the company.
With the right resource capacity planning, you can optimize the management of your teams' working hours and intervention times.
What are the benefits of software Time and Activity management ?
Time and activity management (GTA) can address a wide range of issues. Recording and tracking working hours and absences, drawing up schedules and allocating tasks are all time-consuming tasks with little added value.
Time and activity management software allows for a variety of tasks to be accomplished, helping to create a clear view of resource and skill needs.
More efficient planning
The data collected is structured and organized in the Time and Activity management software in order to draw up a strategic plan that is not only effective but also legal.
It contributes to greater flexibility. Schedules can be easily adapted to accommodate last-minute changes or changes in regulations.
For example, Stafiz helps you easily find the most qualified profiles through the search engine. Indicate your skills needs, experience and/or availability, and let the algorithm cross-reference the information.
The software Time and Activity management centralises, categorises, monitors and plans all information relating to absences, taking into account:
- paid leave;
- maternity and paternity leave;
- RTT;
- sick leave;
- training;
- internal projects.
In this way, information about the availability of employees can be taken into account when assigning tasks, thus limiting the risk of planning errors.
A Time and Activity management Promotes productivity
Thanks to a precise view of resources and manpower, you are then perfectly equipped to implement optimal planning.
You have information such as workloads, skills required, and deadlines, all of which serve as a solid foundation for anticipating needs. This limits understaffing and work overload.
It then becomes possible to distribute tasks strategically. You then take advantage of the different skills of each person and the overall performance of the company is improved.
Real-time visibility into schedules and load
More reliable payroll management thanks to software Time and Activity management
Time processing makes it possible to gain in efficiency and reliability in payroll management.
Once combined with your payroll manager, through integration or by using an integrated solution such as Stafiz, the data is continuously updated, leaving little room for possible human errors during entry.
Your employees' payslips are then calculated taking into account their salary or ADR, and directly pre-filled.
Software Time and Activity management : Define your company's specific needs
In order not to risk choosing a tool that is not suitable for your business, it is necessary to study the benefits your company is looking for beforehand.
Maximize productivity through time tracking
If tracking employee time helps 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 are working on to simplify the categorization of your time.
By consolidating this information, you can take a step back from your organization and productivity to improve.
Time management software that meets this need: Toggl, Memtime, RescueTime.
Monitoring of financial profitability
To compare data on time spent on a project in order to analyze its profitability, choose software with more advanced financial features.
It must make it possible to monitor activities invoiced at a fixed price, and to analyze the costs of internal and external collaborators on the project.
Time management software that meets this need: Stafiz, Quickbooks Time.
Visibility on the time allocated to R&D
When tracking research and development time, ensure that the granularity of the data entry meets the administration's reporting needs.
This feature is required because the time spent can be audited as part of the tax credits and/or grants that are awarded and linked to the workload spent on these projects.
Time management software that meets this need: Harvest, Timely.
What criteria to choose a software Time and Activity management ?
Prioritize GTA issues to be resolved
Solve all the HR challenges your company is going through simply through software adoption Time and Activity management is impossible.
As a result, choosing software by prioritizing by functional needs may be an option.
Even if most tools offer a global solution, some players have a more marked positioning on one aspect in particular:
- For the resource planning and the financial monitoring of the project: Stafiz
- To prioritize clocking and tracking: Combo or Skello
- For accurate absence tracking: KiwiRH
- To prioritize compliance with legal and contractual obligations: Kelio
- To optimize the organization of work: Lucca
Stafiz also offers a global solution for the management of your business, all organized into modules :Sales resource planning and planning, time tracking, project management, invoicing and reporting...
This organization into modules makes it possible to select the priority bricks to be implemented. You can therefore gradually integrate a Time and Activity management solution into your business .
User experience
When making your choice, focus on the employee 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, it puts off employees. It is therefore a safe bet that the follow-up will be carried out at best with a lot of delay, and at worst, it will not be at all.
To avoid this situation of rejection, 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 scary. The rule is no exception in companies, in the context of software adoption or change. Services offered by software providers Time and Activity management can become a criterion in its own right in your final decision.
Is the integration planned by the publisher, a partner integrator or should it be done internally? If so, what type of documentation is provided?
Is support put in place during the implementation of the software ? 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 Managers who will be able to support and advise you as you use the software.
At Stafiz, an account manager accompanies you throughout your experience
Our team of consultants will help you get the most out of our time management and project management solution. Contact us to find out more about our support.
Which time management software according to the activity?
- Depending on the industry
Some sectors of activity, such as health or construction for example, are particularly specific. Indeed, they sometimes have to integrate a certain number of variables.
The hospital sector must anticipate the monitoring of multi-site working hours.
The construction industry must handle the monitoring of hours with mobile teams.
As a result, companies operating in specific industries must identify their needs. This will allow them to choose a relevant tool that will respond to their problems.
- Depending on the size of the company
Needs are likely to vary depending on the size of the company.
An SME and a multinational will obviously not go through the same difficulties. Thus, the number of employees but also the organization of the structure will greatly influence the choice of software Time and Activity management.
It should be noted that the more complex the company has a 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 to expect from software Time and Activity management ?
To orient yourself on the right software, you must first confirm the main objective of your internal time tracking strategy.
Following this first step, you can build your needs checklist to help you better target the features you are looking for in a time planning 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 facilitate time tracking, the software must provide a stopwatch to be able to record the time worked in real time and to pause or stop it just as easily.
This feature allows you to categorize time in assignment or task for easy analysis.
- Granularity of time recording
Not all activities have the same needs.
Some software is more suitable for monitoring in hours (or even minutes) while others are more suitable for monitoring in portions of the day (quarter, half or full day).
If your business is based on different time granularities, make sure that the time management tool offers this degree of customization.
Discover flexible and granular time management in Stafiz
- Task Input Granularity
Most software allows you to track the time spent on tasks.
Check the details of the depth of scheduling of tasks and subtasks and subtasks if this is an important criterion for you to evaluate the activity.
- Legal compliance
In order for this time tracking to respect the labor rights of employees, it is often necessary to define rules in the tool.
You can configure them by imposing a limit of hours per day, or the inability to enter more hours per year than the legal limit.
Make sure that HR constraints are taken into account in the time management software!
Organization and collaboration
- Data export
Time tracking is frequently used for different types of reporting.
Your time management software must allow you to export the data with the information expected by the reporting. So make sure that there is a module for exporting the data.
- Adding comments
When an activity statement needs to be validated a posteriori by a manager or a client, the addition of comments to detail the work done 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 customer and even speed up validation before invoicing.
If this transparency feature with the customer is important to you, you need to look for a tool that manages activity reports.
Customer invoicing
If your time tracking solution is all about making it easier to invoice your customers, choose a tool that allows you to go beyond just tracking time by customer or activity.
This tool should allow you to create projects, or even tasks in order to accurately track the time spent on each of them. Ideally, you will manage your quotes and invoicing in the same tool to save time and reliability through automation, and thus reduce the risk of errors induced by manual transfers of information.
Stafiz automates your invoicing
When a deliverable is ready, you can automatically generate invoices related to your projects. The entry is automatic, taking over the time data recorded by your employees.
Anticipating the implementation of software Time and Activity management
As with any change within a company, the installation of Time and Activity management software is likely to disrupt the entire organization. This is a project that needs to be anticipated.
Communicate with the teams
First, communicate with your teams to clearly identify their friction points and needs.
This will help you choose a tool Time and Activity management that responds to real needs. In addition, you increase the likelihood that the tool will be easily adopted by your employees.
Once the software Time and Activity management Once chosen, prepare for its adoption by your teams.
This requires transparent, regular communication, as well as training throughout the integration process. These should include getting to grips with the tool, while emphasizing the benefits of using the Time and Activity management software.
You can also be accompanied by partners, both for integration within the company and for team training.
Think about the possibilities of integrations
Many companies use different tools to drive different aspects of their business before moving to an integrated, all-in-one solution.
As a result, you will have to forget to sync by hand and go back and forth from one application to another, and this has an impact on your profitability.
To compensate for these manual adjustments, it is essential to anticipate the connection needs of your new time planning software in order to streamline the entry and synchronization of information.
- 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, the information 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, the data is also more reliable, because 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 brick, 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 uses in other software (HRIS or payroll software for HR monitoring, activity management software for margin monitoring). 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 it can be automated with Excel spreadsheets.
- API Connectors
To facilitate the transfer of information and data between different software, the API transmission option remains the most automated. However, the APIs of the two software must be able to communicate with each other. This is something that needs to be checked.
There are also standard connectors between the different software. If not, it will have to be developed It is therefore a more automated solution, but it can also have a higher cost.
- Expense management
Expense tracking often goes hand in hand with time tracking. You may need to connect time and expenses for, for example, billing at a fixed rate in man-days, or margin analysis (taking into account the time spent and expenses on a project).
For all these reasons, it is interesting to connect the software to each other or to choose a time management software that also has a native expense management module.
In conclusion, before choosing a time management software, it is therefore necessary to ask yourself the right questions:
- What is the priority objective?
- What are the essential criteria to be integrated into research?
- How will the software interconnect with the other software used in the activity?
Once all these answers have been fixed, it will be much easier to sort through the different software!
