From the wheel and the calculator to the telephone and the Internet, technology has been redefining business and spurring its evolution since the dawn of humanity. Traditionalists can resist digitalization all they want, but there’s no way to subvert the lure of efficiency, especially in a world where time equals money.
Scheduling software is quickly emerging as the best way to create and manage schedules for businesses of every size, regardless of industry. If you haven’t switched to an online scheduling tool yet, keep reading to find out why you should.
Scheduling Software: An Overview
So, what is scheduling software? Well, to put it simply, scheduling software is a platform through which you can build, publish, and edit schedules online and share them with other users—employees, clients, suppliers, or whomever else you might need to.
Scheduling software is made possible through cloud technology, which allows users to create, store, sync, and share files from any Internet-connected device. This is part of the reason why scheduling software is so convenient: Because it operates using the cloud, you don’t have to buy and install any new equipment.
Promoting Efficiency in the Workplace
Scheduling might be part of what keeps your business running, but that doesn’t mean it’s entertaining—or gratifying. And yet, like all other administrative task-work, it’s a logistical necessity. You might not be able to get rid of it, but you can make scheduling a lot easier, not to mention much more efficient.
Organization
Scheduling software is extremely conducive to organization, allowing you to create clean, straightforward schedules with features like drag-and-drop functionality and color-coded blocking. You can also use templates to reduce the time it takes to put together each week’s schedule, and if you make a mistake, you can always go back and edit a schedule, even once it’s been published.
Notifications
Make sure that your employees have the most up-to-date version of every schedule by notifying them once a new schedule has been published or if changes have been made to an existing one. And because scheduling software operates using the cloud, employees can check the schedule from any Internet-connected device.
Specification
You can create schedules that are more specific than ever by using customization features to assign locations, departments, projects, and jobs. This means that you’ll not only be telling an employee when they’re working but also clarifying where they’ll be—if you have multiple locations or job sites—and what they’ll be doing. More direction in the schedule results in less downtime and more productivity.
Integration
An online tool on its own might be a timesaver, but an online tool that works in coordination with other tools is a gamechanger. Most scheduling software platforms can be integrated with other types of software and web-based tools like the ones you use for payroll, billing clients, tracking time, and more. This incorporates the efficiency that you get with scheduling software into the other administrative work that you do as well.
Time Off
You can process, manage, and keep track of employees’ time-off requests—as well as their overall availability—using scheduling software. This makes it easy for employees to request off or change their availability and will cut down on scheduling mistakes that leave you scrambling to fill a shift at the last minute.
Don’t forget that you aren’t the only one who will benefit from scheduling software—your employees will, too! Image courtesy of GetApp.
Save Time and Money
Finding the right scheduling software means saving time—which when it comes to business, we know also means saving money. You might not know exactly how much time is being wasted on scheduling each week, but odds are it’s too much. Scheduling software can help you simplify the scheduling process as a whole by making it more intuitive and less of a headache.
The days of making schedules by hand on paper are over. Scheduling software is the new-and-improved way of scheduling and managing company time. Image courtesy of Pexels.
If scheduling is eating up a large chunk of time every week, that means that your company is also sacrificing some of its valuable human resources on work that, while necessary, isn’t moving your business forward. In addition to minimizing time spent on scheduling, scheduling software can limit costly errors, not only with scheduling but also in other areas, thanks to easy integration.
Why Fight Innovation?
Traditional values can be part of what makes a business work, but not when they’re holding your company back. After all, continuing to use an outdated scheduling system isn’t going to gain you more customers or create a better workplace for your employees. Plus, most scheduling software services are pretty user-friendly, which means that it won’t take long for you—or anyone else—to master using one.
Like we said before, there’s not much use in fighting change, especially when that change is making your life easier. Scheduling software is among the latest tools in business-management technology, and it’s becoming the norm for a reason—it works. Though you can find some scheduling software for free, the platforms that you pay for offer better features and are more versatile, making them worth the relatively inexpensive price. In other words, scheduling software is one business trend that lives up to the hype.
I completely agree! Business has to evolve along with technology.