Christmas-proof your business with apps

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At the risk of sounding like a TV ad for a supermarket, the holiday season is almost here.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for more than a few industries: construction slows down, giving tradies a well-earned rest; big businesses shut down giving their staff time to spend with family; even some of our tireless Xero partners disappear off the radar while they’re free of BAS and client obligations!

For those in the retail and hospitality space, the festive season is by far their busiest time of year. And with temperatures ready to soar in the southern hemisphere, a long hot summer will keep cafes, restaurants, and bars roaring into the long hours. With that comes a huge requirement for extra staffing, rostering and training, with new hires and casual workers picking up slack across the sector.

Traditionally this also involves:

hastily drawn up rosters pinned to the wall
a flurry of text messages and rapid phone calls every day as staff try to swap shifts
hectic, understaffed periods
a handful of new casual staff all without their TFN forms, super info, and bank details
overworked staff, irritated management, and unhappy customers waiting around to be served

But the good news: Xero connected apps can solve these problems!

Xero app partner Tanda provides specialist rostering software with recently released features which allow managers to ensure that they have the right staff, for the right shift, every time. If hiring staff is a tedious job resulting in a huge stack of paperwork in the run up to the busy season each year, Tanda can help. Their paperless onboarding tool cuts the process down to a minute or two of work for each new employee.

Once the new staff are onboard and trained, Cognitive Rosters is Tanda’s offering to the future of intelligent workforce planning. Simply connect Cognitive Rosters to your existing roster templates for predictive suggestions as to your staffing requirements. The power of cloud computing is then put to work to run through multiple scenarios, testing them against existing data, and suggesting an optimal roster.

“Smart algorithms and proprietary logic weigh up employment types, pay rates, age, skill level of staff and much more, to fulfil workforce requirements.”

As a result of machine learning, the process becomes smarter over time, building a more robust database and better understanding of what works for your business. The objective of Cognitive Rosters is to generate major productivity gains for your business, using artificial intelligence, cloud delivery, and app integrations that optimise labour allocations.

And those integrations are another major part of Tanda’s offering: through integrations with your POS system – whether it’s Redcat, Kounta, or one of the many other integrated systems – you can get live insights to your staffing needs. You can remotely see current sales data and staff count across multiple locations and multiple teams, and contrast this with wage costs and predicted sales, helping you to make smart crew choices.

Here at Xero we’re always looking for ways to help your business run smarter. Whether it’s through data automation or through payment services that help you maintain a healthy cash flow, there are many apps and avenues to better business practice.

Your staff are most often your biggest capital outlay, but they’re also your best investment. Making sure that your business and your employees are prepared for the busy period is the way to ensure that things run much more smoothly. The right software here can make the difference between lines at the bar because there’s nobody serving; and lines at the door because your place is the best around.

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