PMP Print

As a leader in the production of high-quality magazines, retail catalogues, newspapers, directories, and commercial printing, PMP Print (PMP) is Australia's largest printing business, and services a broad number of market segments.

PMP Limited operates in the areas of digital pre-media, database marketing services, printing, letterbox distribution, and magazine distribution. With over 2,000 weekly and monthly employees across 13 sites, and annual revenues exceeding $1.4 billion, PMP is always looking for better ways to work more efficiently.

So when it came time to automate critical time and labour processes, including data collection and payroll processing, PMP Print turned to Kronos and its industry-leading solutions. Implementing these powerful systems helped PMP Print eliminate time-consuming, error-prone procedures and led to reduced labour costs and greater insight into shop-floor activities. As a result, the Kronos solution helped ensure that production staff are paid more accurately, on time, without any queries, and with significantly reduced administrative effort.

Growing pains

PMP Print's acquisition strategy to purchase several smaller print companies in a short amount of time was not without its challenges. Julie Kennedy, project manager at PMP, remembers some of the obstacles that PMP Print faced in trying to create standardised systems for all of these companies. "They all had different systems and processes in place," Kennedy recalls. "None of them worked together, which made them very inefficient and expensive to maintain."

Specifically, one area of concern was the way the organisations collected, processed, and stored employees' time and attendance data. "A number used different types of forms — with or without manager approvals — and some used bundy cards," she says, referring to old-fashioned punch cards. "There was absolutely no consistency across the entire organisation." As a result, PMP Print was wasting a significant amount of time, effort, and money in its time and labour processes.

The problem really surfaced when PMP Print needed to renegotiate its union contracts, a process that forced the company to document and standardise enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) across all 13 of its sites. "To make sure we were in compliance with union contracts, and ensure proper payment to employees, we had to create several fairly complex EBAs," explains Kennedy. "There was just no way we could do this with a manual, decentralised approach." That was when PMP Print decided it needed an automated time and labour solution and turned to Kronos for help.

Implementing an effective time and labour solution

PMP Print had experience with Kronos because one of the print companies PMP Print acquired was using an older Kronos product. But once PMP Print saw a demonstration of the Workforce Timekeeper™ application, which offered a true Web-based solution, it knew it was on to something. "It was great," says Kennedy. "It was so appealing because we could deploy it to all 13 sites over a wide area network, and managers could access employee data from anywhere in the enterprise."

The next step: the actual implementation. PMP Print selected a pilot site in Victoria, which was in close proximity to both the Kronos project team and the PMP Print implementation team. Kennedy and two other project managers worked closely with Kronos to configure their specific EBAs, install the two data collection terminals, and prepare the site to go live.

One service that really helped her team get up to speed was Kronos' train-the-trainer program, part of Kronos Educational Services. "It was so much more cost-effective than for us to fly Kronos consultants all over Australia to conduct the training," explains Kennedy. "This course was brilliant, and it gave us all the information we needed to configure EBAs, conduct acceptance testing, and train other PMP Print employees." Armed with this information, Kennedy and her team continued the implementation process and completed the installation at all 13 sites within six months.

Generating positive results

Now, with the Kronos solution in place, PMP Print employees and contractors just swipe a bar-coded ID badge through a terminal, and their time and attendance data is collected immediately. The software then applies PMP-specific pay rules and EBAs to this data and processes it for payroll. No more paper timesheets or manual processes — and no more headaches related to payroll.

But perhaps most importantly, PMP Print has gained better control over labour expenses and increased visibility over its entire workforce, improvements that contributed to other significant benefits. Kennedy explains, "Our department managers were very excited when they saw what they could do with Workforce Timekeeper. With real-time access to employees' time and labour data, managers can monitor and even forecast overtime use. As a result, we've been able to keep a close eye on overtime usage and manage our workforce more effectively in the process."

Kennedy gives a specific example about Workforce Genie® shortcuts, which are special features within Workforce Timekeeper that streamline key management tasks. "One department manager wanted to know which employees were arriving 1-7 minutes late or leaving 1-7 minutes early, which meant they were taking advantage of our rounding rules. Access to this information provided the manager with accurate and reliable information that would allow him to address issues such as this. In turn, this has enabled us to monitor our workforce more effectively, and contributed to savings."

All these improvements have had a positive impact on PMP Print's bottom line. "The Kronos system reduced our total labour costs and paid for itself in just 15 months," says Kennedy.

What does the future hold?

Now, as PMP looks down the road, it can already envision a number of Kronos projects it would like to implement.

"I'd like to upgrade to the Kronos 4500™ badge terminals to take advantage of the messaging functionality they offer," she says. "Managers could use this feature to send messages to any employee — or even groups of employees — using the terminal. For example, this would help us tell casual (temporary) employees what area of the building they are needed that day. This would give us an extremely effective way to communicate with employees, especially in an environment where we don't have email."

Kennedy also mentions that PMP Print would be interested in expanding the use of Workforce Timekeeper to explore job costing. "It would help us track the movement of employees between departments," she says. "As a result, we would gain a better understanding of job and labour costs for all employees, which would help us to manage our job costings more effectively."

Automating critical time and labour processes — and eliminating inefficient, error-prone systems — helped PMP Print significantly reduce pay office administrative costs, manage its workforce more effectively, and ensure that staff are paid ontime without any queries. Or as Kennedy likes to say, "The difference is like night and day. We're at the point where we can't imagine life without Kronos!"

"With real-time access to employees' time and labour data, managers can monitor and even forecast overtime use. As a result, we've been able to keep a close eye on overtime usage and manage our workforce more effectively in the process. The Kronos system reduced our labour costs and paid for itself in just 15 months."
—Julie Kennedy, Project Manager, PMP Limited