Kronos Meets the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre’s Unique Time and Attendance Needs

The Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre (BCEC) is one of Australia’s largest fully-integrated convention, exhibition, and meeting facilities, boasting 20 meeting rooms of various capacities, a 4,000-seat auditorium, and four exhibition halls totaling 20,000 square meters of space. In fact, BCEC’s entire floor area is the equivalent of 462 regulation tennis courts. It should come as no surprise, then, that a facility of this size requires a large, flexible, and versatile staff to successfully host an average of 800 events and 750,000 attendees each year.

There are 180 full-time employees and 500 casual or per-diem employees that make up BCEC’s dedicated staff. Because the centre’s staff is so critical to maintaining its international reputation as one of the world’s leading purpose-built convention centres, BCEC’s management team recognised from the beginning that it would need a sophisticated time and attendance system in order to maximise the workforce and deliver to high standards for quality and customer service. BCEC needed a solution that would help manage a diverse staff of multiple trades — security, housekeeping, food service, and more — at multiple pay levels, with the added complication that many employees could serve in more than one trade. To meet these requirements, BCEC chose Kronos’ Timekeeper Central® system.

Building a case for time and attendance

Kronos’ time and attendance systems have been in place at the centre since it opened for business in June of 1995. However, according to Estelle Lane, payroll manager for BCEC, Kronos wasn’t a part of the original plan. "When the Queensland government commissioned the centre to be built, the building contractors for the project were required to identify and install a time and attendance system very quickly," recalls Lane. "When it came time for our staff to be trained on the application prior to the centre’s opening, it became readily apparent that the system would not provide the necessary management tools, particularly for our unique rostering needs."

After extensive discussions with the government, Julie O’Keeffe, the finance director for BCEC, received permission to look at other time and attendance systems. Kronos was recommended by Micropay, BCEC’s payroll processing software vendor. "In hindsight we chose very wisely," says O’Keeffe. "Initially we were concerned that Kronos’ help desk support was located in the U.S., but we have received excellent service from the Kronos teams in Brisbane and Sydney. And we now have a centralised rostering system that is fully integrated with our payroll and finance software."

Kronos sets the stage for rostering and payroll

In 2002, BCEC upgraded to version 4.2 of Kronos’ Timekeeper Central application, particularly for its potential to help them streamline operations. "We’ve always taken advantage of Kronos’ expertise for implementation and upgrades," says Lane. "The quality of Kronos’ training and implementation services have made it easy for us to expand our use of the application and extend its benefits to other departments and functions, such as rostering and payroll." In fact, the addition of Workforce Connect™, Kronos’ integration module, enables BCEC to leverage the Timekeeper Central software with other key business applications, most notably Microsoft Excel and Micropay.

For rostering, BCEC set up a standard Excel spreadsheet template for department managers to use as their roster. When filled out, the spreadsheets are sent via email to a centralised rostering department. The spreadsheets are imported directly into Timekeeper Central Scheduler. From there, the centralised rostering staff is able to create staff lists for individual events, export to Excel, and use it for staff to sign off on after shifts. Timekeeper Central enables event managers to draw their schedules from a list of available casual staff, confident that the system will govern rules on such restrictions as required skills and work hours allowed per shift.

For payroll, BCEC establishes pay classes in Micropay, which uses simple adhoc reports to interface with Kronos when pay increases occur. This integration eliminates the need to manually edit each employee profile in Kronos, which already tracks wages for all departments, when pay classes change. Moreover, BCEC is unique in that a majority of its employees are multi-skilled, and are often employed across multiple departments. Thus, labour costing is done in Timekeeper Central before importing the payroll file to Micropay. As a result, it only takes four hours for Lane to accurately process payroll on payday — by herself.

Beyond rostering and payroll, Timekeeper Central delivers many other key benefits for the centre. Its labour tracking feature, for example, provides critical labour costing information to the finance department, enabling them to associate expenses with an event or department and provide more concise and accurate revenue reports. And its integration with a wide range of interactive devices has enabled BCEC to consolidate data collection and security access into one "smart card" for employees.

"Thanks to the integration of Timekeeper Central and Micropay, we were able to significantly streamline our operations," says Lane. "Also, Timekeeper Central provides us with a detailed view of the entire organisation, which is essential to maintaining a centralised rostering system for multiple departments. The system can tell us at any given time who can do what jobs, when they are available, and how many hours they can work, all from one centrally managed system."

Satisfaction isn’t just about products

According to Lane, BCEC is very excited about the cost savings and benefits delivered by Timekeeper Central. But they are also pleased with the relationship they have with Kronos. "Our satisfaction with Kronos is more than just products, we are very happy with the service," says Lane. "Kronos is always responsive, and we would recommend them to any organisation with similar challenges. We especially like the fact that Kronos is so committed to research and development. We always look forward to new technology that helps us run our business more efficiently, and we trust Kronos to provide that technology today and in the future."