WORKING HOUR PROCESSING TOOL YIELDS CORRECT WAGE SLIPS

Group Victor Peeters specializes in industrial cleaning in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, and is mainly active in the chemical sector. In addition, the group also provides painting and sewer inspection and renovation, as well as innovative hands-free cleaning. The 900 employees perform about 300 cleaning assignments every day.

For the first time, a software supplier triggered me into meeting the deadlines. Usually the roles are reversed.

STANDARD SOFTWARE THWARTS FLEXIBILITY

Group Victor Peeters was also looking for a system to provide smoother processing of its employees’ performances, taking into account the various applicable collective labour agreements. This would yield more accurate wage input for social secretariats. “Suppliers tried to convince us that our complicated planning and performance processing could be done with standard software. But additional programming always proved necessary, and every time the result hampered our flexibility towards our clients. Software developer 4D vision on the other hand proved that they understood the complexity of our business processes,and managed to convince our key users and management that an automated planning and working hour processing system was indeed possible for us.”

We now also generate planning at the job site level, allowing us to provide quicker and more flexible service to our clients.

THE LIMITS OF A PLANNING BOARD

“For years our planning was done entirely manually. Employees and vehicles were assigned to a work order using magnet strips. The strips featured codes with information on the qualifications of the workers and the collective labour agreement that applied to them. Granted, the system was highly ingenious. But at the same time it was often faced with its own limitations, especially when our company expanded internationally. To give an example: today our workers feature a combined total of 87 types of qualifications. Eventually it will become impossible to summarize this on a magnet strip.

The manual planning was also particularly laborious: planners were working late into the evenings to transfer a work schedule from an excel file into the ERP system and then onto the magnet board. Then they called the workers to tell them where to go a few hours later. We wanted to speed up this process flow and make it more efficient.”

A SOFTWARE SUPPLIER THAT CHALLENGES YOU

“Once the specifications were analysed, 4D vision interviewed the employees involved in our planning. What followed was a Project plan and a price quote. During the kick-off meeting, steering and working groups were created, and a phased timeframe was generated for development, testing, and final delivery. During the project, I was for the first time in my career triggered by a software supplier to meet the deadlines! Usually the roles are reversed, and you are left putting the pressure on your software supplier. Thanks to the regular contacts and the professional contribution of 4D vision, the milestones were successfully delivered. Our software partner also proved flexible when faced with our feedback regarding test reports, and thoroughly explained changes to our staff. 4D vision employees were present at the start-up of the new software to offer guidance.”

FLEXIBLE AND QUICK PLANNING

“As pertains to functionality, efficiency, and ease of use, our new, visual planning tool certainly matches all of our expectations. We now also generate planning at the job site level, allowing us to provide quicker and more flexible service to our clients. The cleaning teams receive their assignment for the next day automatically via text message, and therefore no longer need to be called in the evening. The planning staff in turn respond positively to the ease of use of the tool.”

MORE ACCURATE WORKING HOUR PROCESSING

“During a second phase, 4D vision developed a tool with which we process our working hour registrations. In the past this was a cumbersome process that was prone to error: whenever new employees were introduced or a CBA was changed, the administrators had to be very vigilant, and needed to make many corrections. Thanks to our new working hour processing tool, the process flow is now sped up, and much easier to adjust in case of CBA changes. This has made wage input for our social secretariats more accurate, much to the satisfaction of our staff as they discover fewer errors on their wage slips.”