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When you’re a virtual company, monitoring time is not always easy. Employees aren’t clocking in at 9 and clocking out at 5.
Instead, employees are located in many different time zones and most create their own working schedules. Unlike a brick and mortar office, it’s impossible to walk by your colleague’s desk to make sure they’re working their promised hours, and completing their assigned tasks.
The Struggle
At Scopic, we have 200 employees busy working on multiple projects at once.
We typically have up to 150 active projects running simultaneously, making organization essential. Given the complex nature of running a virtual business, the tracking of time did not come easily. We had to overcome some trial and error before we found the right solution.
The Solution
Eventually, in a fitting turn of events, we created our own custom solution: the Scopic Time System, or STS.
STS is a custom software solution, used to track the time a Scopic employee works on a client’s project.
STS collects all time-related data and uses it for auditing, billing, and statistics. Basically, STS is our personal timekeeper, making sure clients are being billed accurately, and making certain Scopic employees are on track with their original time estimates.
As a custom solutions provider, we had the ability to truly customize our STS.
First, we made sure the system integrated with our Bamboo HR system, to send alerts of employee vacation times. STS also offers automatic time counters, to help employees accurately track how much time is spent on their tasks. If a client has strict hourly limits, administrators have the option of setting maximum and minimum time amounts for individual employees.
STS has also allowed our employees to track their idle time. This feature has been especially helpful to ensure that employees are receiving a balanced workload. Before assigning an abundance of work, supervisors can review an employee’s percentage of idleness. When managing many different projects and clients, knowledge of an employee’s idleness becomes essential.
In STS, in addition to adding real-time idleness, employees can also track their expected idleness in weeks to come, allowing supervisors to be proactive rather than reactive.
Our Project Managers and Operations team take the lead in monitoring the time tracked for each project. They assure each project’s time is secure, transparent, and taken seriously. Before approving time, they check that there are no gaps or delays which could affect invoicing.
Why does Time Tracking Matter?
As important as the finished technology is, the hours it takes to get there are also incredibly important. Keeping track of work done, hours spent, and progress are critical for project success.
Being an effective virtual company wouldn’t be possible without transparency, both within our company and with our clients. Most of the time, our clients don’t get to meet Scopic team members in person, so they need to trust in our virtual system. Entrusting a company with the monitoring of project time tracking is a big deal. That’s why we love STS. It makes our time management a bit easier. After all, timing is everything.
