Single Platform vs. Integrated Platform – What does that mean?

Throughout our experience as a company, we have learned how cautiously vendors tend to phrase how their solutions are “integrated” with each other or with other vendors. The way it’s marketed can look fantastic on a piece of collateral or on a website, but when it comes down to actually using the solution, it can be far different.

With the success of our last blog post “3 Reasons Why Employers Are Requiring Single Platform Workforce Management Solutions,” we thought it would be prudent to continue to elaborate on the difference between integrated and single systems. 

It is very evident that the market is moving away from the integration of disparate systems to “play nice” with each other and towards the use of single systems that are architected and designed as a cohesive suite of applications.  If you ask five different people what integration means, you’ll likely get five different answers. Instead of trying to come up with a single definition of what integration means, we want to help you navigate through the marketing fluff and show you two of the ways you can expect your solutions to work with each other.

Single Platform – This is the most ideal scenario for your company. A single platform for multiple applications SHOULD mean that this is a platform built from the ground up on one database. In saying this, there would be only one database for the data housed within all of these applications.

What does that mean and why does that matter to you?

This kind of solution enables you to have a single record for:

• An employee in the case of workforce management or human capital management
• A prospect in the case of sales and marketing, or more specifically CRM and marketing automation
• A customer in the case of a support platform and CRM

All of these would result in only one field throughout all your solutions for a last name. The biggest benefit to this is really that there is no exchange of data that needs to take place – essentially all of these solutions can act as a single application. This kind of solution essentially goes beyond any formal definition of integration where separate applications or software solutions are connected together.

Beware, though! Vendors using this phrase may be talking about an integrated platform…

Integrated Platform – An integrated platform may be branded as a “single platform” or vice versa, but these are usually yesterday’s applications cobbled together with a common or similar interface that makes it seem like a single platform. We like to call this lipstick on a pig. One way to uncover this is by asking whether or not all these solutions were built on a single database from the ground up. If they were developed separately, that should be a red flag, as what you’re evaluating is likely just an integrated platform.

It’s not bad… but it’s not the best. And with all the consumer software technology we use today, we expect the best. There has to be an exchange of data with an integrated platform between applications. The main difference between this and the single platform mentioned above is that changes made in one application likely won’t flow over to the other application simultaneously, or in ‘real-time’.

What does that mean and why does that matter to you?

• Without a single database:
  • There are multiple employee, prospect, or customer records that need to be maintained. And as a result, this could mean having to enter the same data more than once.
  • Additionally, with these separate records, this would require separate implementations, and therefore, a longer time before you’re actually up and running with your solution.
• Also, if data isn’t exchanged in real-time, it impacts the integrity of the data and you may not necessarily be able to make your decisions in real-time because you’re waiting for a scheduled data exchange between Application A and Application B.

Integration can be overwhelming when we start uncovering the level at which the integration takes place, whether it’s simply a single sign-on or a tighter, more seamless integration, a one way integration vs. a two way integration, etc.

What does this all mean??? Your best bet is to just find a single platform of applications that all reside on a single database. It’s what we’ve all come to expect from software. The only problem is one vendor can’t specialize in all of these different areas… unless we’re talking about workforce management.

Click here to learn more about how Mosaic can help your business thrive with our single-platform, single interface, and single employee record workforce management solution.

You can also visit us at www.mosaices.com and call us at 303-645-4270. We look forward to an opportunity to speak with you. 

3 Reasons Why Employers Are Requiring Single Platform Workforce Management Solutions

You’re almost guaranteed to hear on any software demonstration the word “integration”, but what does that mean? Put simply, integration means having Software A and Software B exchange data between the two, though integrations do not have to be limited to just two systems.

Companies using multiple software solutions, such as HR, payroll, and time and attendance, are now demanding that these technologies be integrated. This has forced the software developers with disparate solutions to cobble together connections between their products, while developers with solutions on a single platform are already offering real time data integration. Integration sounds nice, but wouldn’t it be even better if all of your applications existed on a single platform that has been created to work together seamlessly? The great news is that this capability already exists!

In this blog article, we thought that it would be important to talk with employers to discuss exactly why having a single system is so important for their businesses and how they have experienced the power of a single-platform solution.

1. They now know that a single-platform solution is not only available, it is affordable.

A single system suite of all the needed workforce management solutions is not a new concept in the marketplace today. In fact, they’ve been utilized for years now by the enterprise corporations that saw the benefits and could afford the high price tag that came with them. But as technology has evolved, this deeper level of functionality has been made available to small and midsized businesses (SMBs) at a price they can actually afford.

Now that these SMBs are “seeing the light” on the benefits of multiple applications on a single platform, they’re beginning to demand these fully embodied solutions as a prerequisite. Service providers without the ability to offer this are simply unable to compete with those that can, and service providers offering single-platform solutions are in a unique position to grow market share and mind share within their space.

2. Drives easier and more efficient decision making with reliable data.

Data integrity is everything. You have data for a reason; it’s going to inform decisions that you’re making in your business. If you have the same data residing in multiple places, there’s always an opportunity for data to get out of sync and for it to be wrong in one or multiple of those places. When that’s the case, and you’re consulting one of those systems, you’re pulling the wrong data and making decisions based on the wrong information.

When data takes time to flow between disparate solutions, businesses are unable to get an instant snapshot of their workforce and make decisions on the fly. Having all of your information on a single platform also helps with efficiency by removing the need for data exporting, importing, duplicate data entry, as well as separate resources, software, and multiple logins. Clients simply access one solution sharing data across all of their applications.

3. Creates a competitive advantage and helps with compliance.

Through a more efficient system with reliable data, businesses with single-platform solutions are simply able to operate at a higher level than those with disparate solutions. If you had the choice between being able to proactively manage your business on the fly as changes and obstacles occur, or having to wait a day or two in order to make reactionary changes, which would you want to use? This example shows exactly how businesses with a single workforce management solution can easily gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Are you concerned about managing your Affordable Care Act (ACA) compliance? A single suit of solutions enables businesses to analyze real-time labor data and make the necessary changes to ensure they remain compliant before issues arise. Workforce management solutions such as these are the best way to manage your workforce in today’s world of employment, and we’re seeing that the ACA is especially responsible for driving the demand for single-platform solutions on the workforce management front.

Are you in need for a single-platform workforce management solution? What are some of the issues that you could see yourself living without by moving away from disparate solutions?

Please share your experiences and learn more about how Mosaic can help your business thrive with our single-platform, single database, and single user-interface.

Visit us at www.mosaices.com and call us at 303-645-4270 today!

Time and Attendance – What’s the ROI?

As we continue to hear questions regarding time and attendance return on investment (ROI), we started to think to ourselves “What is the ROI of time and attendance – Does everyone really know?

With payroll typically taking up 50-60 percent of businesses’ operating expenses, companies want to ensure that payroll dollars aren’t being wasted and that the highest return possible is achieved from that investment. This is where automated time and attendance applications, also known as time and labor management applications, come into play… But how do companies quantify the ROI of their on-premise or SaaS-based software purchase?

That’s a great question – thanks to all of you who have brought that up!

There are three core areas in which time and attendance applications return much more than what is paid for them:

1. Control and reduce labor costs

In order to achieve this, the first step is getting insight into exactly where payroll dollars are being invested. Companies need to see which employees are in and out of work – they need visibility into who’s coming or leaving early and late, or who’s absent entirely.

There are several areas of workforce management that can be improved in order to manage labor costs accordingly – here are a few big ones:

• Absence – According to Mercer, the direct and indirect costs of absence alone can make up 34.2 percent of payroll expenses. From planned absences like vacation to unplanned absences like sick time, managing absence in an automated fashion allows companies to track accrued time off accurately and make staffing adjustments to cover for absent employees.
• Overtime – Unplanned overtime can be a huge, and often unforeseen, payroll cost. By keeping tabs on employees’ timesheets and getting alerts for employees who approach overtime, companies can easily reduce this cost by finding alternative coverage for the position.
• Accuracy – There are tons of companies out there that simply pay employees for the time they’re scheduled to work. However, what if they’re continuously coming in late and/or leaving early? How about if they continuously take long lunches? They’re still being paid for that time they are not working, which is a cost that’s easily controlled. By simply automating the collection of time worked, companies can ensure employees are getting paid accurately for the time they actually work – no more, no less.
• Demand – By having the ability to manage a workforce in real-time, companies gain the ability to make staffing adjustments based on the external factors of that business – either proactively or as they happen. For example, companies should be able to plan for historically slow or extremely busy shopping days in retail. And if the forecast calls for inclement weather, and shopping is typically reduced in these instances, schedules can be adjusted accordingly.

2. Improve productivity

Another area companies can track where payroll dollars are being invested is what employees actually work on, and how much work they do. By tracking the departments, jobs, and tasks of employees, companies can get a great understanding of what’s actually being invested in with their payroll dollars. Perhaps they’ll gain insight that sales people are spending more time on administrative functions then they are on actual sales, and be able to address it accordingly from there.

Alternatively, in a manufacturing business, management should be able to track the piece work of each employee (i.e. how many widgets they can produce), which will give them insight into the most effective and productive employees they have. On the flipside, they’ll also see who the least effective employees are and can invest in training for these employees and/or open up new job requisitions to find better talent.

Time and attendance solutions also provide a great avenue to make management and administrators more productive, allowing them to spend less time on manual processes like creating schedules, approving time off, monitoring employee time, etc.

3. Minimize risk of noncompliance

There are virtually endless pieces of legislation that companies must comply with from the FLSA to the FMLA to the ACA. And if there’s one thing that can be said about non-compliance, it’s that non-compliance costs big bucks! The Department of Labor (DOL) has people employed in the agency that are solely responsible for finding non-compliant companies. If accused of non-compliance for the FMLA, for instance, the cost for a company can range from $78,000 to $150,000, and that’s just to get to trial! And then let’s say that company loses the trial, additional fees can include:

• Employee reimbursement for any monetary loss incurred
• Equitable relief
• Attorney’s fees
• Expert witness fees
• Court costs
• Liquid damages

When you think about the cost for automated time and attendance, it seems pretty nominal when you start thinking about the potential ROI. At Mosaic, we also provide an automated system that helps our clients comply with ACA requirements and reporting. Check out our video highlighting all of the capabilities that our ACA Manager can do for your business here. 

Looking for more details on this topic? Hear it from the experts and give Mosaic a call at 303-645-4270 or visit our website at www.mosaices.com