SMART SOLUTION: Interview with Matthew Prosser, Director of Business Development at Verteda Ltd

Matthew Prosser (MP), Director of Business Development at Verteda Ltd, unveils the Company’s Vantage workforce management solution.

 

 

What does Verteda’s Vantage Workforce Management solution deliver? And what are the main benefits to the end-users?

 

MP: In recent years, I’ve seen a noticeable increase in existing and potential clients asking for help in addressing their workforce needs. Some enquiries are driven by legislative changes, others acknowledge that labour is the one controllable cost they have the power to influence when managing hundreds, if not thousands of staff.

 

Vantage immediately removes the pain and ensures the right staff are scheduled in the right places at the right time, optimising your people investments. You gain the ability to report quickly and easily against forecast or budget to really shine a light on labour costs, alongside end-to-end intelligent forecasting and scheduling from your employee database.

 

Other critical benefits come in time savings and reducing the scope for human error through automated processes. It’s also a fully-integrated mobile solution for staff to submit their own availability, pick up shifts, drop shifts they can’t work, and so on.

 

Vantage covers all aspects of people management but without any time-consuming and resource-intensive manual processes. And it’s all completely customisable: for large-scale scheduling of hundreds of employees, for managing multi-site operations and creating bespoke individualised schedules.

 

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How are clubs/stadia taking advantage of the solution to deliver an improved fan experience?

MP: The end product of effective workforce management is delivering an exceptional fan experience at all times, wherever it’s needed, as well as helping optimise your stadia operations and control costs. That’s what Vantage enables. Venues need a way to handle mass scheduling, to cope effectively with massive fluctuations in staffing requirements, and to engage with employees in smarter ways.

 

The challenge addressed by Vantage, is combining a fully featured HR system for your full-time permanent teams with a powerful scheduling and people management system to handle a large database of casual staff. Importantly, the MyVantage app means employees can manage their own availability and schedules, using the system at their own convenience. Employees can message managers and include details about requested shifts and scheduling preferences, allowing for better workplace relationships and improved employee engagement – a common struggle with casual workforces – while simultaneously enabling improved scheduling and more flexible workforce management to meet demand. It’s a win/win situation.

 

Can you give us a brief overview of 1-2 key Vantage clients and explain how they’re implementing the solution, and the kind of feedback that they’re reporting?

MP:  Employing up to 1,200 matchday staff, the biggest gains at Manchester City FC’s 55,000-capacity Etihad Stadium were in visibility, efficiency and productivity: “We know the exact amount of time people work on-shift: who’s done what and when,” it reported and added: “With the visibility to respond very quickly to changing needs… There’s a whole efficiency gain around time, attendance and payrolls”.

 

Southampton FC also makes full use of Vantage at its 32,500-capacity St. Mary’s Stadium: from HR database to scheduling, pay record management, employee app and clock-in system. Automated processes led to a 70% reduction in matchday scheduling for 450 employees: from a manual process taking 2-3 days to full schedules produced in a couple of hours. 1,000 employees manage their own availability and schedules, with accurate real-time availability maintained. And payroll errors also reduced from an average 70 per pay run to less than five. We’ve seen similar gains at all Vantage user sites. It’s remarkable.

 

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How does Verteda’s Vantage solution differ from what else is available on the market?

MP: What makes it different, is that it’s specifically designed for and completely focused on the needs of stadia and arenas, and hospitality in particular.

 

Vantage was actually developed in partnership with high-profile UK venues, which makes it special.

 

The Head of HR at a stadia hospitality provider said, “It was important we were involved in developing Vantage, so we could say ‘this is what it needs to do in various departments and across different locations’.”

 

It’s built for the environment it serves, empowering managers in real-time and helping stadia get the most from workforce investments. You know something, it not only integrates powerful tools for Time & Attendance, Automated Scheduling, Pay Record Management, Compliance, Dynamic Labour Forecasting, Intelligent Reporting and Management Alerts, it’s also very easy to deploy and completely customisable. There’s nothing else like it on the market.

 

It can be used in large multi-operation venue chains, and works for restaurants, including multiple site chains of varying sizes, as well as in large-scale multifunctional venues.

 

What kind of ROI does the platform offer?

MP: As I’ve already indicated, measurable ROI is delivered by Vantage through efficiency gains and time savings: schedules are built in minutes, including employee’s real-time availability and notifications sent automatically, compared to manual processes taking a team of people hours or days to request availability, manually build large schedules, and extract/confirm schedule details across a workforce.

 

Push notifications save you money on SMS: in that one area, Southampton FC estimates savings of GBP£4,000 per year and Manchester City GBP£7,000 per year.

 

Meanwhile, customisable reports mean in-depth analysis of budget/scheduled against actual costs – and that’s just one of many ways you can control and reduce costs, improve accuracy and enable consistently efficient staffing, to reduce money spent per shift per employee.

 

One Event Staff Manager commented that their stadia had achieved average savings of GBP£2.50 per shift: “Last year we scheduled 24,000 shifts, equating to a considerable saving of about GBP£60,000 from scheduled start times alone.” So Vantage delivers a proper ROI.

 

In which regions is the solution available?

MP: I’m please to say that Vantage is already widely deployed across the UK and is now delivering a workforce advantage in almost 300 venues. It’s also been localised for use in Europe, the USA and Australian markets.

 

When stadiums and arenas see what it can do, they grasp its potential immediately: what Vantage can deliver for their own operations, whatever they need it to do. It’s a very exciting solution.

 

 

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About Verteda

Verteda offers innovative SaaS, both Hosted and on-premise IT solutions, which enable hotels & resorts, Sports & Entertainment venues, restaurant chains and foodservice partners to streamline operations to enhance customer satisfaction, increase workforce productivity and maximise revenue and profitability.

World-class solutions combine award-winning software, hardware and services to increase reliability, performance and control across Retail, Food & Beverage operational management and include point-of-sale (POS), mobility, eCommerce, property management, procurement, inventory, workforce scheduling & forecasting and Business Intelligence reporting.

Headquartered in Warrington, UK, Verteda distribute Agilysys products directly and through a trusted partner network internationally. Verteda Ltd acquired the shares of Agilysys Europe Ltd from former US parent company Agilysys, Inc., on 31st March 2014.

As one of the UK’s biggest providers of hospitality software solutions, Verteda was recently acquired by leading Australian technology firm MSL Solutions (MSL). The deal creates a wider portfolio of complementary products and services benefitting both business in the UK and international markets.

The acquisition means Brisbane-based MSL now owns a foothold in the UK market as it continues to grow market share internationally.

 

For further information, visit: www.verteda.com

 

 

NB: This interview was first published on PanStadia & Arena Management’s website, at: http://www.psam.uk.com/special-qa-with-matthew-prosser-director-of-business-development-at-verteda-ltd

 

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