Cendant Earns a Best Practices Award to Go with a Big Return on Its Kronos® Investment

 Download Printable Version

Cendant Corporation is one of the world's foremost providers of travel and real estate services. Following a 12-year period of steady growth and acquisitions, Cendant's workforce doubled in size. Today the company employs 80,000 people across its 45-plus individual businesses and 2,600 locations. The name brands under the Cendant umbrella include Century 21, Avis, and Orbitz.com — just to name a few.

Of course, that kind of growth can lead to many challenges, including managing employee time and labor. Cendant found itself using three very different methods for capturing time and labor data: paper timesheets, mainframe-linked terminals, and a LAN-based Kronos Timekeeper Central® system. It didn't take long to realize that none of these methods were sufficient to meet their current needs.

"Our business requirements have changed dramatically, and we needed a more sophisticated system for time and labor," explains Steve Grem, HRTS senior director of operations at Cendant. "We wanted a system that gives us a single repository for time and labor information, but also helps us manage some related business challenges."

According to Grem, those related business challenges became key drivers for the project, and included compliance, payroll process improvement, union pay-rule automation, and real-time accrual balances. It didn't take long to identify one system that could do it all: Kronos' Workforce Central® suite.

The Workforce Central suite meets all the criteria

Cendant was eager to find the right system. But it was equally important to find a vendor willing to partner with Cendant on continuous improvement and the development of a world-class solution. The company evaluated 15 different systems based on a number of criteria, including web-based deployment, a centralized database, enterprise configuration and scalability, and the ability to integrate with various front-end systems without the need for costly customization.

"Only Kronos offers a comprehensive workforce management system that's advanced enough to meet all of our requirements," says Grem. "We're excited about the possibilities the Workforce Central suite presents. Also, we feel strongly about Kronos' commitment to excellence. We knew they were the kind of partner we were looking for."

A Best Practices kind of implementation

Cendant chose a three-phase approach to implementing the Workforce Central suite — an approach so successful it earned them a Kronos Best Practices Award. These awards are presented annually to customers who have achieved excellence through the implementation of their Kronos solution.

Dubbed "MyTime" by Cendant's internal project team, the strategy enables the company to first transition its paper timesheet employees, next the Timekeeper Central system employees, and finally the mainframe terminal employees. Each of the 45-plus businesses requires a distinct implementation plan. As a result, each phase consists of anywhere between 12 and 25 implementations.

Furthermore, each implementation had a set of deliverables that Cendant knew would be critical to their success, including business requirements interviews, configuration and project plans approved by the client, "train-the-trainer" courses, and user acceptance training.

In order to meet these deliverables and aggressive deadlines with limited resources, Cendant assembled an implementation team made up of business and technical analysts, developers, a project manager, and a project director. The team received technical and configuration training from Kronos, and worked with Kronos consultants to help ensure the project's success.

A sound plan delivers a rapid return on investment

After the first "go-live" group of Cendant employees began using Kronos, others groups followed on a weekly and biweekly schedule. By the time phase II of the project was completed, a large number of Cendant's targeted returns on investment had already been achieved. For example, the company has saved $245,000 a year by eliminating paper timesheets and $98,000 a year by eliminating multiple interfaces for transferring data.

However, even more impressive are some of the savings Cendant estimates in payroll and productivity. "We expect to save $4.2 million a year by eliminating discrepancies in delayed employee paid time off balances," says Grem. "We also estimate a savings of $929,000 a year in employee and manager productivity, stemming from the automation of time and labor management."

New ways of thinking and doing

According to Grem, one of the most convincing benefits from implementing Kronos' Workforce Central suite is the ability to manage labor data in a centralized database. "Never underestimate the importance of employees and managers having real-time access to labor data, especially when it's data that drives to payroll."

The Workforce Central suite also provides Cendant with a solution for manager and employee self-service. Managers are now expected to own their employees' paid time and paid time off, and the system provides them with the right tools and information, at their fingertips. In fact, the Workforce Central suite makes it easy for employees and managers to access each business unit's policies for time off, holidays, shift premiums, and overtime. The information and balances are now available online.

As a component of Cendant's MyTime project, the Workforce Central suite was also instrumental to the company's primary goal: achieving operational excellence and efficiency. Cendant now plans to implement a web-based human resources and payroll system, and the Workforce Central suite has paved the way for many of the new applications, including more manager self-service.

"With the Workforce Central suite and the MyTime project, we now have a reliable communication and implementation strategy," says Grem. "We now know how to effectively integrate technology by business unit and throughout the enterprise. That will be a key to achieving our goals in operational excellence."