How do you judge quality of the roster for next month in your company? When do you consider this year’s summer holiday plan good, or even great? Are you happy when all demand is covered or when the shift preferences of your employees are all satisfied? How exactly do you measure that? What is the step by step decision making process that leads to the published work schedule for your team?
When you ask the above questions to ten different companies you will likely receive ten different answers. That holds true even if that survey is conducted among firms in the same industry, and within the same country. And for larger organizations, with multiple departments, it is likely that answers will vary within the company as well.
One of the reasons that each organization uses its own criteria to judge the quality of its planning, and its own process for arriving at the final plan, is that each company’s approach to planning reflects that company’s unique culture and values: how you plan shows a lot about who you are. For example, a company in which employee empowerment is highly valued is likely to consider employee input for the schedule (preferences, suggestions, feedback) important, and will have the required communication steps embedded in its processes. A company striving for world class performance in terms of customer satisfaction is likely to make covering customer demand the top priority when putting together a schedule. And the interesting thing is that these approaches don’t have to be conflicting, as long as the right planning process is in place, including a translation of the company’s strategic choices to planning objectives.
The observation that a company’s approach to planning reflects its culture is one of the reasons why I enjoy it so much when a customer comes to us with a clear objective and philosophy, and asks us whether we can support the planning processes that he has in mind. This is exactly how I see it: the right planning software solution is the one that can support your envisioned process and philosophy in practice. It is the software that should be shaped according to your vision instead of the other way around. And yes, I have to confess there is a second reason why I enjoy the ‘can your software support my vision?’ type of question: because the flexible nature of our solution enables me to almost always answer this question with a resounding ‘yes’.
Feel free to challenge that claim by sharing your planning challenge and envisioned approach with us.
