Business Intelligence: Employee Scheduling

This software, as its name suggests, is primarily used for the track and scheduling of employee work times and tasks.
Managing employee schedules is a complicated and time-consuming endeavor. With the advent of IT in practically every field, it was common sense to design a system to handle this task for a firm as well. The latest generation of employee scheduling software provides strong tools and assists a manager in planning and scheduling time tables of tasks for employees under him. Although primarily done by a human resource manager, these systems can be used by supervisors as well to schedule work shifts and allot tasks within their own departments.
The right employee scheduling software depends greatly on the specific needs of a manager. Needs include the number of employees it can handle, whether it offers scheduling for employees in multiple locations or whether multiple shifts for an employee on the same day need to be scheduled.

Such scheduling programs offer a wide-variety of reports and the data to make fast and informative decisions regarding efficient human capital use. Some of these reports include time-off summaries, traded-shift summaries and daily, weekly and monthly employee schedule reports. Further capabilities include reporting of overtime and extra shifts which adds as an extra support to the payroll system.
The user of such systems is assumed to have a basic working knowledge of computers. As these systems are largely graphical based, they are not difficult to use and provide ease of use in all aspects. A manager using one is assumed to have knowledge of the business requirements in terms of shifts and tasks to be done alongside prior knowledge of number of employees at hand and which employees are capable of completing which tasks.
These applications allow a manager to a lot tasks to an employee and then analyze through reports what remains to be done and how best to allot these tasks to the remainder of employees. Moreover, deadline maintenance and reporting allow for tracking of which employee falls behind in completing tasks.
For this system, one has to have a standard computer system which is internet enabled as the system is available online. For systems that one wishes to install on their own PC, the same standard system configurations will do. This include a standard PC with an OS like Windows 98, fax modem, a dialup connection, keyboard, mouse, monitor, 2 GB of hard disk space and 64 MB RAM (minimum requirements stated).
These business applications are very strong in terms of reducing the work load of managers and effectively scheduling tasks of a firm. Considering how cheap a minimum requirements system is these days, the benefits of using such a system are huge in terms of time saving and efficiency. Good scheduling means the time of every employee is utilized effectively and this software helps accomplish that effectively.

References:
Employee Scheduling Software Review. When To Work. 21 Jan. 2007
<http://employee-scheduling-software-review.toptenreviews.com/whentowork-review.html>
Tope ten reviews. Software Review. When To Work. 21 Jan. 2007 <http://employee-scheduling-software-review.toptenreviews.com/>
Windows SharePoint Services Applications Template: Employee Scheduling
21 Jan. 2007 <http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8FB33404-13E0-424B-A75E-DD517E85263B&displaylang=en>
Employee Scheduling Online. Work Schedule dot net. 21 Jan. 2007 <http://www.workschedule.net/>
Small Businesses. Yahoo. 21 Jan. 2007 <http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Computers/Software/Business_Applications>