Time and Labor is in Fashion at Fossil Thanks to the Workforce Central® Suite
Fossil is a design, development, marketing, and distribution company that specializes in consumer products predicated on fashion and value. While they are perhaps best known for their sleek and stylish watches, Fossil also offers small leather goods, belts, handbags, jewelry, and sunglasses under brands including Fossil, Relic, and Zodiac. That's not to mention the licensed brands for some of the most prestigious companies in the world, including Emporio Armani, DKNY, Diesel, and Burberry.
With products sold in over 90 countries through department stores, specialty retail shops, and the company's own e-commerce website, Fossil relies on a diverse workforce made up of store managers and their staff, distribution center employees, field merchandisers, and seasonal employees. No two groups are managed alike, which presents many challenges when tracking employee time and attendance and productivity.
"Our distribution center outgrew its legacy time and attendance system, and we had a limited system for tracking employee time and attendance in our stores," explains Alan Staples, business process engineer for Fossil. "Also, we had no way of tracking our field merchandisers and seasonal employees working behind the counter at department stores."
It was time for a change, which led Fossil to implement Workforce Timekeeper™ software from Kronos. Part of Kronos' Workforce Central suite, Workforce Timekeeper has enabled Fossil to accurately track time and attendance for all its hourly employees using Kronos' integrated time and labor system. The Web-based Workforce Employee™ application (formerly Workforce Professional™) makes it easy to manage employee time and attendance at the stores, while Workforce TeleTime® provides an ideal and reliable method for field merchandisers to report their hours while on location. Fossil also uses the Kronos 4500 Touch ID™ biometric terminals to collect data from employees in the distribution center. "Kronos allows us to leverage multiple data collection methods and feed all the information into a single shared database," says Staples. It's made a big difference in our ability to manage not just the employees, but all the data that's generated, as well."
Biometrics proves to be the magic touch
Fossil's time and labor challenges began at the company's new distribution center, which was built after they outgrew the old one. "We tried to use our legacy time and attendance system in the new distribution center, only to find that it wasn't supported on a wide area network," says Staples. "The biggest problems would occur when managers tried to run reports because it would frequently corrupt the database."
For the new system, Fossil identified biometric terminals as a preference because their previous system required badges, which employees were constantly forgetting or misplacing. After trying a biometric palm-reading system from another vendor, Fossil settled on the Kronos 4500 Touch ID terminal, a finger-scanning verification solution that enables the system to verify employees' identities.
"It's night and day between Kronos and the other vendor's biometric solutions," says Staples. "The Kronos 4500 Touch ID terminals produce far fewer errors, and they've been very effective at preventing buddy punching and time and attendance fraud."
But the most important benefit, says Staples, has been overcoming the technical limitations. "The Kronos terminals solved our networking challenges at the distribution center. But we also like the fact that we can send programming data to the terminals. It makes them so much easier to maintain because we can do it centrally rather than having to go to each terminal to address a problem."
Phoning it in from the field
Fossil products are sold at hundreds of department stores nationwide, where the company's field merchandisers can be found promoting the brand and selling styles from behind the counters. Field merchandisers are always on the go, making sure the Fossil brand is represented properly. It's a job that makes employee hours difficult to track.
"Before we implemented Kronos, time and attendance for field merchandisers was done very much on an honor system. They would fill out timesheets and mail them in, which of course meant a lot of extra manual effort for our payroll staff and high overnight shipping costs."
By implementing Workforce TeleTime as part of the solution, Fossil gives its field employees the ability to report their time via telephone. Workforce TeleTime is an interactive voice response application that allows employees to access the time and labor system via the telephone. They can perform time stamps or report hours by the day or by the week, and even have pay codes they can use to capture mileage or report the number of watches sold for seasonal bonuses. "We've saved $50,000 a year just by eliminating the need to ship manual timesheets," says Staples, "plus less data entry means fewer payroll errors."
Staples says that Fossil can also plan better when it comes to payroll processing. "Before Kronos, some field managers would stockpile their timesheets and send in several months' worth at a time. Now we can plan our time and our budgets more efficiently."
Kronos pays off at the point of sale
At Fossil's stores, a very limited system for time and attendance forced employees to clock in and out using the point-of-sale system. This was a problem on site because employees were often juggling one available register. It was a much bigger problem for Fossil's payroll staff, however, because the system could not accommodate pay rules.
"There was too much manual effort required to calculate pay rules for the stores," recalls Staples.
Fossil implemented the Web-based Workforce Employee application at the company's store locations, which provides employees with a convenient and user-friendly method for clocking their time. Staples says that the store managers like it, too, because it provides them with detailed daily views and reporting functionality they never had.
"Our data integrity is 100 percent better, which helps store managers with resource planning and scheduling. The daily snapshots have proved to be a valuable management tool. It doesn't matter how someone enters the data, managers can see it all together. They feel empowered by the system."
The payroll department, however, has seen the biggest gain since implementing Kronos at Fossil's stores. Says Staples, "We can configure the Kronos system to handle complex pay rules and calculations. What used to be a lot of work for payroll is now automated. Plus we can easily monitor payroll compliance, especially in locations where employees should receive daily as well as weekly overtime (i.e., California and Ohio)."
Better times are ahead for Fossil
Fossil is growing, and the Kronos system has helped them expand groups to handle peak periods without incurring overtime or adding additional staff in the payroll or human resources department. "The company grew 17 percent last year," says Staples, "and we still have one person processing payroll for our stores and one person processing payroll for the field. They are even able to process faster and more efficiently, with far fewer errors."
Today, all of Fossil's hourly employees in the U.S. are using Kronos. Soon the system will be rolled out to Fossil's store employees in Canada. Also, Staples says the company plans to integrate Kronos with their ERP solution for human resources. It is this kind of flexibility that convinced Fossil that Kronos' solution was the right choice.
"Only Kronos had the solution and the integration approach we were looking for," says Staples. "We wanted one solution that could meet the needs of all the employees in all three environments, and only Kronos was able to provide it."
"Kronos allows us to leverage multiple data collection methods [web, telephone, and biometric data collection terminals] and feed all the information into a single shared database. It's made a big difference in our ability to manage not just the employees, but all the data that's generated, as well."
–Alan Staples
Business process engineer
Fossil
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