There was a day, not so long ago, when most business software was bought from the likes of SAP or Oracle or Siebel Systems.  It came on a disk that needed to be installed on a server with a whole lot of customization by some very high priced consultants.  Sit back, take a deep breath, relax, and take a walk down memory lane with me.

Let’s just say, for example, a CIO of a big manufacturing or services business led a committee that decided to buy SAP as an ERP system.  He and his team commit the company to a 7 figure purchase price and 2-3x that again in consulting fees.  Something like a year passes, and this company is rolling out SAP.  Finally going live.

What do you think that CIO says to a couple of operations-types from the warehouse or manufacturing floor who knock on his door and complain that the screens are quite busy and complex, that the work-flows are unintuitive, that they can’t figure out what to do even with the user manual (roughly the size of phone book) right in front of them?  He tells them to pack sand, only not so nicely.  He says, “Suck it up and figure it out.  We just spent $7 million on this package.  Either that, or try not to let the door slam your gluteus maximus on the way out.”

The times they are a changin’

I remember as a CRM sales guy in the late 1990s Siebel Systems touting 135 screens in their marketing literature.

Oh, what a great software concept – confuse the crap out of your user community.  Can you imagine any software-as-a-service (SaaS) company marketing like that today? It wouldn’t just be slitting the company’s throat.  It would be the VP of Marketing filling entire office building with jet fuel and then grabbing a smoke.

What has changed?  Seven million handcuffs were removed, that’s what.  The massive upfront lock-in costs are gone in SaaS.  The business buyers pay as they go, a month at a time.  The software has to perform its function well, very quickly, and it has to be extremely intuitive.  If it’s not, the user community really does hit the road.  They vote with their feet, and fast.

Online scheduling driven by the user base

A couple of years ago, I was preparing to meet Shiftboard’s founder, Bryan, for the first time.  I was doing my homework on the online scheduling market which was new to me.  I have studied a fair number of markets in my day, and I figured I had the big picture of this one.

Somewhere in the first 15 minutes of that meeting, Bryan says, “Most scheduling software is built from the scheduler out.  But Shiftboard was built first and foremost for the users, the workers checking schedules and picking up shifts, in other words designed from the worker in.  Because in online scheduling software over the next decade, the users will ultimately have the biggest collective say in what software is used.”  I was off my game.  That nugget of information got under my skin.  I thought about it a lot over the next couple of days.  I met him a couple of more times, talked to some customers, laid awake at night chewing on it.

Here was the product manager of the future, not the past.  Here was a guy who designed the product around ease of use above all things.  It didn’t take me too long.  I decided to get on the train . . . pushed all my chips to the middle of the table . . . because I knew from more than a decade in the business that his kind of software product design was where the whole software industry was going.

See what you think about our online scheduling software – literally tens of thousands of users who have logged in for the very first time and figured out what to do without a lick of training.  There ain’t no 135 screens, I can promise you that.

– Rob E

At the Give-a-Shift blog,  we focus on the positive.  We look at the cool things that our customers are doing.  We glance at the things are competitors are doing (although we don’t write about that…).  We watch the HR, staffing, scheduling, managing people worlds out there on blogs, Twitter, social networks.

The recent popularity and usefulness of the new book:  I Hate People by authors Jonathan Littman & Marc Hershon has become an oasis for workers everywhere who are stifled, put down, weary, or looking for a way out of the corporate craziness.  It offers some funny and creative ways to process the corporate life.  I’ll admit I’ve struggled with the title.  I don’t prefer the word hate.  Don’t like the way it sounds.  But these guys don’t mean it that way:  They mean to give workers a place to find solutions.

This post caught my eye and made me laugh: 

Cubicle Exit Strategy

“On those days when it seems the entire rest of the office is focused on sawing away at the last frayed nerve you have left, the best thing to do is just bail for awhile. Get out. Go for a walk. Grab a cup of coffee. Take a nap in a park.”

We all have days where we need to escape.  The great thing about online scheduling is I can do it from anywhere.  Manage my day remotely.

Part of their book explores the concept of Flying Solo.  Of working for yourself, or as I frequently see — being part of a remote team of contractors.  That’s a growing trend and Littman and Hershon capture the reasons why people are seeking greater flexibility and autonomy.  Some of it is economy-induced, but just as much of it is people seeking a way to manage their work life in a new way.  In a way that reflects the opportunity that new web-based technologies make possible. We see volunteers, nurses, workers of all types leveraging Shiftboard in these new ways to make managing their schedules easier, online.

Here’s to a healthy and profitable cubicle exit, if you need it.  Let us know what you think of their blog.

-TJ M

Jim Ware at the Future of Work blog frequently talks about flexible work, distributed work, and how the 21st century workplace is changing. In 2007, I downloaded a report from them entitled: How Come Distributed Work is Still the Next Big Thing?  It is a great report that makes the case for distributed remote work (the whole resource section is filled with good reports), looks at the common factors of corporate resistance, and then, in the Part Three of the report they offer suggestions and guidelines for increasing the adoption of distributed work patterns. There are a lot more remote and distributed workers today than there were even a few years ago. I’m listening to a recent webinar by Jim Ware about how to keep a team connected in a distributed workplace.

How does this impact the Shiftboard customer who manages scheduling?

Online scheduling is one way to manage each of the six benefits that Ware points out below.  If I look for themes in our customer case studies, with the exception of number five, these are the reasons scheduling managers share for why they use Shiftboard.

The Future of Work report highlighted six benefits of distributed work:
1. Reducing basic workforce support costs;
2. Increasing workforce productivity;
3. Attracting and retaining talent;
4. Increasing organizational agility;
5. Reducing the business risk of disruption from terrorism or a natural disaster; and
6. Reducing traffic congestion, air pollution, and environmental impact more generally

“When you think about it, there’s your basic business case – just take those six factors and apply them to your own organization,” states Ware.

Managing remote employee teams

Lots of cities and states in the United States have looked at #6 from their report and created “Telecommuting Day.”  Virginia recently created the Telework Day initiative and did a terrific job of showing the results at their website. Virginia teleworkers saved approximately $113,000 and avoided driving 140,000 miles.

If you deal with remote workers or are trying to determine how to incorporate scheduling distributed workers, you’ll want to read the report: “What We Saved; What We Learned” compiled for the State of Virginia by the public-private partnership Telework Exchange. It also reveals an increase in productivity by participants and reports satisfaction with their teleworking experience. The future of work is indeed changing.

-TJ M

Links in this Post:

http://www.thefutureofwork.net/resources_whitepapers.html

http://www.thefutureofwork.net/assets/WP-20061-Distributed_Work_Next_Big_Thing.pdf

http://www.shiftboard.com/web-based-scheduling-case-studies.html

http://www.teleworkexchange.com/teleworkday/

Last week, one of the blogs I read regularly (and one we liked enough to put on our blogroll),  Gruntled Employees by Jay Shepherd, posted:

Five reasons Twitterers make better employees

In this post, Jay outlines why banning Twitter from the workplace is not a good idea and how it can, in fact, be better for your company to hire workers who “get” Twitter than not.

From Jay Shepherd’s post about Twitter and Workers:

“Tworkers are interested in being part of a community, one they help build. They care about people, and they’re sharing and compassionate.”

The comments that follow the post are equally interesting and illuminating. The big question I hear a lot seems to be should we ban Twitter and social media from the workplace and many seem to think yes, that it is only a waste of time. While that can be argued, Jay’s post at least makes some good points about the positive qualities of an active Twitter personality.

No doubt, there are Shiftboard customers who use Twitter and many who don’t. But that isn’t the point, really, of this post.

The point is how do you create a workplace that uses the enthusiasm and energy people have for social media (which is increasingly part of the fabric of our digital, and not-so-digital, lives). If you run a business that has customers or volunteers, how do you connect with them? I’ve seen quiet little case studies from SaaS companies like Shiftboard to bakeries that are successfully using Twitter to stay in contact with their customer base, to drive traffic to their website, and to spread the word about what they are doing.

Who does all that? Employees and Volunteers…

–TJ M.

http://www.shiftboard.com

http://blog.shiftboard.com

Twitter ID to follow…

The Future of Work is one of my favorite blogs around the trends of work, contingent work, flexible work and how it is impacting employers and employees. The team here recently completed a study with a big title:  Flexible Work Arrangements for Nonexempt Employees.

It is part of a large study conducted to understand the rapid change taking place in today’s workforce. The report is aimed at the people who manage or lead employees who work outside of traditional office facilities and who may be a distributed workforce — that is, hourly workers, temp workers, full timers who telecommute from  home. It could be that you have different locations and people clocking in at all different shifts and times and you are trying to find ways to let people share shifts or come in at non-rush hour times. This report (I only read the summary) covers some of the critical information you likely need to decide how to implement a plan of your own.

A number of factors are cited for this remote work/telecommute/flexible trend:

1. Fuel prices
2. A proliferation of connectivity devices
3. Employee demand for work-life balance

Here is the summary on flexible work program trends.  Look to the right for the 2009 Survey Briefs section and the above title and click, “Read It.”

If you want simply to read the summary about this survey, click to the Future of Work blog post on the same topic.

This is a blog and site worth bookmarking.

We appreciate that Cameron Chapman sees us as one of the mission critical web-based applications that business owners need to schedule their staff and workers.

With over 2 million readers a month, it is an honor to be included at Mashable.

We are eager to see the next updated edition of the Online Business Toolbox, too.

One Minute Animation Explaining: What Is Shiftboard?

Distilling an idea into words is sometimes easy. Using images, audio, or video is often better.

We felt that one of the best ways would be one mixed with fun and enthusiasm: Animation.

You can go direct to our “Online Scheduling” channel at YouTube. (it is the same video):

Online Scheduling by Shiftboard on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/onlinescheduling

In case you don’t prefer YouTube, we also have the Online Scheduling video hosted at Vimeo.

http://www.vimeo.com/onlinescheduling

Kudos to Lilipip Studios for bringing it all together and making it shine.

Wayne Turmel over at the Cranky Middle Manager podcast (quite popular on iTunes and elsewhere). In this show, he interviews Mike Cook, author of Thrive: Standing on Your Own Two Feet in a Borderless World.

“4:35 Welcome Mike Cook. It’s time to reexamine our relationship to work. Becoming independent and understanding your personal value is critical to working relationships. In a century we’ve gone from mostly self-employed to employed and heading back to self-employment with an education system that teaches us to shut up and do as we’re told.“

This podcast and the trend it highlights are of great interest to me, as well as to Shiftboard, because we’re in the business of helping busy scheduling managers figure out how to manage, how to lead, how to inspire their work teams by making picking up a shift an easy thing. In my mind, that is the crux of Mike Cook’s message — the workplace is changing rapidly and we have an outsourced economy.

I am not implying that all of outsourcing is overseas, far from it. Outsourcing is within our borders here in the US. The question is not about whether it will continue, but how will you manage, or more accurately, interact with this trend. You can’t really manage it in the traditional sense.  I’ll let you listen to the podcast with Wayne Turmel and Mike Cook and make your own decisions, but I will suggest you take a close look at Chapter 5: What’s Your Deal? which has a section called “Doing business as your own agent in the borderless world.” If you interact with remote workers and want to retain them, this book offers some good insights. You can find the book at Amazon and fine booksellers everywhere, of course.

Oh, and here’s the link to Wayne’s Cranky Middle Manager site (not the podcast).

-TJ M

Recessions are often the best time to grow. You have a bit more time for planning and certainly a larger pool of qualified candidates. If you can get past the fear factor in the media reports, there’s opportunity in the market.

I’m a frequent reader of John Hollon’s blog over at Workforce.com. He recently posted about a Veritude survey that found “’the current recession has impacted the manner in which HR professionals operate, as 38 percent shared that their staffing models will not revert to what was used in the past.  In fact, in seeking more flexibility in cutting staff when necessary, 33 percent of respondents are considering increased reliance on contingent staff’ instead of permanent workers.”

The Veritude survey shared five recommendations:

1.  Create and communicate a re-imagined plan for your post-recovery workforce.

2.  Scrutinize and improve your hiring and staffing processes.

3.  Reassess your staffing partners in light of your new goals.

4.  Look at how to use contingent workers most effectively.

5.  Investigate effective ways to manage your new workforce.

There’s opportunity in those survey results, however sobering the tone. We certainly see this at Shiftboard with our customers and prospects. They are relying more and more on flexible and contingent staff. Why? Because some of them are directly in the staffing business, but many of them are departments that have staff needs they need to fill on a short term basis, or hospitals, or event managers, or sports stadiums that have a regular need and want to make it easier on their managers and workers to schedule their shifts.

If you are looking for data on how to grow your staffing agency or your department’s future hiring plans, take a look at John’s post and the Veritude survey. The eight-page report gives post-recession strategies for managing your workforce, both flexible (temporary), or permanent. Yes, the report is written by a managed services provider, but there’s good stuff in the report for HR and Staffing managers.

–TJ

Recently, I participated in a real-time Twitter event conducted by BusinessWeek.

I thought we might make it into an article at that famous and well-respected publication, but alas, we didn’t. But the process they went through to crowdsource ideas and experts was telling and interesting. Perhaps a sign of the times. The media is increasingly under fire trying to generate meaningful and profitable traffic.

The result of the Twitter discussion was they then turned the discussion into a special report that included more in-depth discussion with some of the participants, into video interviews, and into a couple of traditional articles. If you deal with remote workers or virtual workforces, the BusinessWeek special report may be worth a read for you. We’re not mentioned in the report, so feel free to come back later and learn more about how we help companies manage their virtual and remote workforces.  Or check out the Shiftboard case study section to learn more.

-TJ