Kronos® Simplifies the Challenge of Workforce Management

Announces Workforce Central® 6.1

ORLANDO, Oct. 20, 2008 — Today, thousands of customers around the world are controlling labor costs, improving productivity, and ensuring compliance by using the Workforce Central® suite from Kronos® Incorporated. During opening remarks at KronosWorks™, the industry's largest conference dedicated to exchanging ideas on how to effectively manage the workforce, Peter George, Kronos senior vice president of products and technology, provided a preview of the next version of Workforce Central, which is scheduled for availability in the first quarter of 2009.

"Managing a global workforce doesn't have to be so hard," said Peter George. "With version 6.1, we are making it easier than ever for our customers to optimize their global workforce, integrate with other business applications, and achieve operational excellence."

Optimize a global workforce

Workforce Central 6.1 provides a centralized view of the entire workforce, enabling organizations to monitor workforce performance across diverse geographies. During George's remarks, international customers applauded the latest enhancements designed to simplify the complexities of managing a global workforce, including:

Expanded language support to include Dutch, European French, and German
New alerts and overtime review and approval features which give managers more visibility to overtime before it happens
New configurable overtime reprocessing and allocation options which improve the accuracy of overtime calculations with less oversight and fewer manual adjustments
Expanded pay rules and hours reporting to enhance compliance with government regulations
New functionality to manage multiple currencies, providing visibility to monitor and compare workforce performance across geographies

Simplify integration

Workforce Central 6.1 introduces Workforce Integration Manager, a new integration tool which makes it easier than ever for an organization to link any Kronos application with other existing key business systems without the need for additional servers.

"We consistently hear from prospects that their existing ERP solutions fail to meet expectations because, unlike Kronos, they require costly customization; automate only a fraction of an organization's workforce management processes; provide limited and out-of-date access to labor data; and rely on an impractical approach to the challenge of managing compliance," continued George. "Consequently, these organizations are turning to Kronos for their workforce management needs."

Workforce Central 6.1 makes it easier than ever for organizations to share data with their existing ERP, payroll, and human resources applications. Workforce Central now offers predefined interfaces to leading ERP payroll packages, thus simplifying integration between the applications.

Achieve operational excellence

Workforce Central 6.1 contains nearly 200 new features and enhancements which allow organizations to control labor expenses, improve productivity, and achieve compliance. The newest features and enhancements include:

Enhanced Microsoft Excel integration, enabling users to easily and securely bring Kronos data into the Excel environment. There they can format, summarize, chart, and analyze Kronos labor data using the familiar Excel user interface.
Industry-specific innovations such as resource tracking for the manufacturing industry. By tracking all types of resources from labor to machines, bottlenecks can be identified and resolved in real-time, resulting in higher levels of productivity.
Advanced employee scheduling which gives employees a simple way to see and request open shifts, and for managers to review and approve those shift changes.
A new decision-support tool, providing managers with a real-time view of staffing needs and the ability to quickly redeploy skilled labor as necessary.

"Kronos is renowned for delivering depth and breadth in product functionality, with Workforce Central 6.1 proving to be our most functionally rich and reliable product yet," concluded George. "When our customers combine the strength of our functionality with the ease-of-use advancements in the latest version, we expect the result to be an even faster payback and lower total cost of ownership."

Availability

Workforce Central 6.1 will be available in the first calendar quarter of 2009. For more information regarding Kronos solutions call (800) 225-1561.

Kronos made this announcement from KronosWorks™, the industry's largest conference dedicated to exchanging ideas on how to effectively manage the workforce. KronosWorks is taking place this week in Orlando.

About Kronos Incorporated

Kronos Incorporated empowers organizations around the world to effectively manage their workforce. At Kronos, we are experts who are solely focused on delivering software and services that enable organizations to reduce costs, increase productivity, improve employee satisfaction, and ultimately enhance the level of service they provide. Kronos serves customers in more than 60 countries through its network of offices, subsidiaries, and distributors. Widely recognized as a market and thought leader in managing the workforce, Kronos has unrivaled reach with more than 30 million people using a Kronos solution every day. Learn more about Kronos at www.kronos.com.