Putting Time on the Scheduler’s Side : Software: Program developed by Adaptive Inc. of Newport Beach automates the time-consuming task of configuring work shifts.
There is a special kind of torture for America’s managers and administrators who face the thankless task of creating a work schedule for their employees.
As companies hire more part-timers, flex-timers and free-lance workers to supplement full-time salaried employees, the job of scheduling them all--and balancing employee preferences against company needs--is likened to juggling dozens of swords.
To schedulers, comments like “you scheduled me to work on my birthday,” or requests such as “can I switch from Friday shifts to Thursdays?” are enough to make an intricately crafted timetable fall like a house of cards.
Ken Forbes, president and founder of Adaptive Software Inc. in Newport Beach, believes he has a solution: a computer program called PeopleScheduler. Forbes wants to liberate schedulers by automating the process with graphics and making timetables easily customized and updated.
“Scheduling is more intense now because the work force is changing and people want flexibility,” he said. “Businesses need to pay attention to efficiency now. It makes a real difference to a business in having the right person in the right place at the right time. This gives managers control over their schedules again.”
The program, which operates under Microsoft Corp.’s Windows or DOS formats, allows managers to instantly balance the requirements of the workplace with the personal schedule needs of employees.
For instance, if Mary wants to work weekends but the company does not want to pay more overtime, the program automatically adjusts for those factors to work out a schedule. When a conflict occurs, the program notifies the manager.
In the program, workers appear as bars on a timeline. The time period can be tweaked in increments of five minutes or eight hours for any number of workers. On the lower part of the screen, the displays show the names of employees, their work group, scheduled start and end times, breaks and type of shift such as overtime or normal.
*
To replace a sick worker, for example, the manager can automatically look up another worker’s personal preferences and determine whether that person should be called in as a replacement. Once a substitution is made, the program automatically updates the rest of the schedule.
The PeopleScheduler program is a timesaver, or maybe a lifesaver, for people like Janet O’Donnell, who manages 120 telemarketing representatives who take phone orders for baby products seller Right Start Catalog Inc. in Westlake Village.
O’Donnell once spent 80% of her day creating work schedules on a crude computer spreadsheet. She constantly had to update it because the company depends on having 40 or 50 phone representatives available at peak times.
“Now I spend maybe half an hour a day on it and delegate it to others,” she said. “We even kept our schedule together after the earthquake.”
PeopleScheduler is the first of a series of such programs to be released by Adaptive.
“People see this program and slap their heads and say ‘Why didn’t I think of that before?’ ” said Forbes, a former United Parcel Service executive. “I got the head-slapping idea about four years ago. It’s a new category, like a spreadsheet or database.”
*
Forbes figured that, as the recession thinned the ranks of middle managers, accurate scheduling became a bottom-line issue. Companies had to decide the optimum balance of full- and part-time workers and those working flexible shifts.
A recent White House economic report said that part-time jobs grew three times faster than full-time jobs over the last three years. And contingent workers, people who work day to day as needed, account for 3% of all jobs, the report said.
Such trends make scheduling even more difficult. To fully understand the challenges of creating a scheduling program, Forbes and his team spent 18 months of field work to determine what managers needed.
This provided subtle insights, said Rob Frankel, vice president of marketing. For instance, managers wanted to include birthdays as part of the computer data on each employee, because many workers take those days off. But policies against age discrimination require that the year of birth be kept private to protect the employee.
PeopleScheduler tracks vacation and sick days, overtime, availability of employees, special skills, education, attendance, notes on any disciplinary actions, shifts traded between employees, break times, and other pertinent information. All this data can actually be used, the company says, to produce a kinder and gentler schedule.
“The program will warn you of schedule conflicts that occur if you change one person’s schedule,” Forbes said. “It allows you to call up a list of possible replacements and immediately say if a change can be made.”
*
It took Adaptive Software two years to take these principles of scheduling and build them into a program. The company launched the program last month at Demo ‘94, a trade show for industry insiders. PC Letter, an industry trade journal, gave its top show award to the company. Hundreds of calls for orders for the $495 program have come in, Frankel said.
One television news station, KGO-TV in San Francisco, called up to arrange an interview with the company and instead placed an order for the program, according to a company spokeswoman.
Jim Louderback, director of PC Week Labs, which reviews computer products, and a columnist for the industry trade journal PC Week, said he was impressed with PeopleScheduler and expects it will be useful for numerous industries.
But unlike basic office software, such as spreadsheets and word processing programs, the market will be limited because PeopleScheduler would be used only by a scheduling manager, not every person in an office.
“Typically, a manager sits down with a lot of yellow sticky notes and labors to come up with a schedule,” he said. “Every manager is under the gun and with things like part-time and flex-time on the rise, employee scheduling becomes even more important. This is the first kind of new software category I’ve seen in years.”
Louderback said there are alternatives to PeopleScheduler, but they are expensive--one company wanted to sell one to O’Donnell for $8,000--and often limited to a specific industry. Because Adaptive thinks its program can be sold to numerous industries, the company has priced its product at $495, a common price for productivity software.
Though O’Donnell said she is thrilled with the PeopleScheduler, she says some employees have mixed feelings. Some less-than-ambitious workers, for instance, don’t like the idea that the company can easily keep attendance and mark who leaves early.
Frankel at Adaptive says the software is not meant to be used as a “Big Brother” monitoring tool. Managers can use it as they wish, but its main benefit is to allow managers to quickly approve schedule changes that are more convenient for the worker, Forbes said.
Robert Leff, co-chairman of computer distributor Merisel Inc. in El Segundo, said he expects his company to distribute the PeopleScheduler software. The product is now available via direct mail through an 800 number.
“There hasn’t been much software specifically to address this,” he said. “I see it as creating a new category just like Aldus PageMaker created desktop publishing. I believe a very large number of people will need this.” Says manager O’Donnell: “I still don’t have any time, but at least I don’t spend it working on the schedule.”
Adaptive Software at a Glance
* Founded: 1989
* Headquarters: Newport Beach
* President and founder: Kenneth Forbes III
* Employees: Fewer than 50
* Business: Software development
* Product: PeopleScheduler, a software program for scheduling employees available in DOS or Windows format, was introduced in January. Users include CompUSA and Right Start Catalog.
Source: Adaptive Software Inc.;
Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times
