Loomis Consolidates Multiple Time and Attendance Systems in the US Using NOVAtime Workforce Management Solution

Loomis Armored USA (formerly Loomis Fargo) is an international leader in the cash handling services industry. Their international network covers over 400 operating locations in the US and eleven western European countries.

“NOVatime was not only one of the most cost-effective solutions, but our users found its interface and functionality very intuitive and easy to use”
-Wayne Sadin, CIO, Loomis Armored USA

In the US, Loomis operates an electronically linked service network of nearly 200 operating locations, employs over 10,000 teammates and utilizes a fleet of approximately 3,000 armored and other vehicles to provide secure armored transport, automated teller machine (ATM) services, cash processing and outsourced vault services for banks, other financial institutions, commercial and retail businesses. These services provide the backbone of the largest integrated cash distribution network in the US.

Workforce Challenges and Legacy Issues
Like many large Enterprise companies, Loomis has grown through acquisition and steady internal growth. Because of this style growth, there were many legacy processes to support a single function – Time and Attendance. These legacy processes resulted in many issues within the Loomis environment, most arising from manual and time-consuming processes. Other challenges included the ability to provide a single labor costing engine to efficiently understand costs and labor trends across the country. Often times, it was realized that efficiencies leveraged in one portion of the country were not realized in others because there was not one tool that could provide the labor costing and detailed reporting needed to identify these efficiencies. Manual processes, including interfaces to outdated applications, caused delays and increased the potential for payroll errors within the Loomis environment. In order to stay competitive and remain a leader in the Cash Management industry, it was important for Loomis to implement a system that would address these issues and provide the framework for future growth and company vision.

Selecting NOVAtime 3000 for the Enterprise Environment
Loomis underwent an extensive search for the solution to help consolidate management, reporting, and automation of its time collection and pay rule enforcement. As Loomis has a presence in all 50 states, it was important to be able to quickly deploy and support the selected application. It was also a requirement that the product had the flexibility to accommodate pay rules for all 50 states as well as the unions and workforces unique to the Loomis environment. Secondary requirements required the software to integrate easily with Loomis’ HR and Payroll systems – Ceridian. The import of employee data from Ceridian ensures master data integrity and eliminates the need for duplicate data entry into the NOVAtime system, and subsequent possible errors.

NOVAtime’s 3000 Enterprise product was selected because of the use of web services to provide the primary user interface to all Loomis users. Web services meant that deployment to its employee and user base only meant that Loomis IT only had to ensure Internet Explorer, or compliant browser, was installed on all workstations accessing the NOVAtime application. NOVAtime 3000 also provided the ability to easily configure the multiple pay rules and shift combinations that their field branches utilized. Upon selection, plans were quickly made to begin installation, configuration, and pilot testing within the legacy environment.

Implementation and Culture Change
The NOVAtime teams quickly engaged and developed a thorough implementation plan based on its SurePath™ methodology. This plan accounted for infrastructure configuration, application install, core configuration, secondary configuration, branch interviews, scheduling requirements, testing, and deployment. More importantly, this plan included comprehensive training plans for its users and administrators. This training helped overcome much of the fear and uncertainty of an automated time tracking system. The training also addressed how this application is just another piece of the technology puzzle that helps Loomis remain a leader in its industry.

Interfaces to legacy HR and Payroll systems were quickly mapped and implemented to provide the base data loads and payroll testing required to move forward. Loomis’ complex job and pay rate profiles, where employees get different hourly rates based on position worked, were imported through the Ceridian interface. The use of the Ceridian interface provided the needed data integrity for over 12,000 employees, but more importantly, expedited the data load into the NOVAtime application. Automated routines were setup so that changes to the employee records were updated from Ceridian to NOVAtime once HR and Payroll internal processes were completed. Use of eight labor groups also provided the precise labor and General Ledger reporting to cross-check employee pay against the master source – Ceridian.

Deployment of badge terminals and full-featured color kiosks provided the interface for capturing employee data. Employees could also use these terminals to provide self-service features such as viewing punches to-date, view schedule, view timesheet, and more. These terminals also were able to support Loomis’ internal badge, meaning no further investment needed in new badges or technology. NOVAtime offers a wide selection of hardware options to meet each customer’s needs and requirements.

Testing plans and data review helped ease the reservations of payroll clerks and managers by showing that the data did in-fact match parallel data and that the new processes took a fraction of the time to complete compared to legacy processes. Use of unit and user testing plans provided a complete review from both a technical perspective as well as the end-user’s point of view and usage patterns.

Data Access and Real-time Reporting
Because the focus was on controlling labor costs and standardizing operations, reporting was critical to the success of the overall implementation. Reports must be accessible, with the ability to create custom reports easily and quickly being crucial. NOVatime worked with Loomis’ Enterprise Support Team to create the most commonly used wage and labor distribution reports. Supervisor Web Services also was deployed to field management, which provided the intuitive Report Generator interface. The Report Generator allowed Loomis supervisors and managers to access and analyze labor data quickly and easily. Questions such as the following were answered immediately without the need for complex report training and allowed Loomis to focus on delivery of service to their customers:

• Am I staffed correctly to properly serve my customer needs?
• Are there scheduling conflicts within my managed area?
• Are there exceptions or labor data that I need to quickly resolve?
• Is my branch or department tracking on budget in-terms of labor hours?
• Am I paying my employees fairly and accurately?
• Am I compliant with current labor agreements?

Managing Exceptions and Controlling Costs While Running the Business
The approach to the Loomis implementation followed the philosophy of how the NOVAtime application suite is intended to be used – get in, get out, and get back to managing your business. NOVAtime’s application is designed to quickly and clearly identify exceptions and what needs to be done within the application. Loomis developed reports and alerts that notified users and management of items they needed to resolve on a daily, weekly, and pay period basis.

Dynamic shifts were created within the NOVAtime system that automatically assigned the employee to the correct shift based on start time, job, and customer route. This dramatically reduced the need to proactively schedule employees and ‘tell’ the system what times the employees were supposed to be working. These same dynamic shifts were used to control early punching and ‘lock out’ employees from the system until that actual starts of shifts. This approach to managing employee shifts and positions saves branches tens of thousands of dollars annually and allows Loomis to pass these savings onto its customers while also investing in other areas of technology to improve performance and efficiency.

Other items put in place to identify exceptions were daily reports that were generated each morning highlighting:

• Missed Punches
• Absences
• Daily Wage Reports
• User Activity
• Overtime Costs

Results – Standardization, Ease of Use, and Increased Focus on Delivering Quality Service
All of the listed factors in this case study have allowed Loomis to no longer have to spend inordinate amount of times preparing time and attendance data for payroll. No longer do Loomis field users and management have to compile manual reports to analyze costs and service delivery. Users of the NOVAtime system at Loomis can now focus on the metrics of their business and how to continue providing best-of-breed service in their industry. As a forward-looking technology company, Loomis and its users have embraced the NOVAtime application as a part of their core application suite and continually look at integration options with other applications to provide  true 360 degree reporting options. The intuitive web interface used by NOVAtime increased the early adoption rates during implementation and now simplifies the rollout to new users without the need for extensive training.

Standardization, elimination of manual errors, ease of use, high adoption rates, automated policy enforcement, exception notification, and more have provided Loomis the framework to continue building controls and reporting around their number one expense – labor. This, in turn with their focus on service delivery, will keep Loomis positioned to provide exceptional, cost-effective customer service solutions well into the future.

”We have many hardware and software vendors, but we treat the NOVAtime relationship as a true partnership. We feel we are both leaders in our industries and their continued development of technology and service offerings fits perfectly with our long-term visions.” – Wayne Sadin, CIO Loomis Armored USA