Kronos Simplifies the Challenge of Workforce Management

Kronos (News - Alert), a provider of workforce management solutions, announced today plans for launch of its new version of Workforce Central. Workforce Central 6.1 provides a centralized view of the entire workforce, enabling organizations to monitor workforce performance across diverse geographies.

“Managing a global workforce doesn't have to be so hard,” said Peter George, senior vice president of products and technology at Kronos. “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.”

The latest version features expanded language support (Dutch, European French, and German); overtime review and approval features that give managers more visibility to overtime before it happens; overtime reprocessing and allocation options that improve the accuracy of overtime calculations; expanded pay rules and hours reporting to enhance compliance with government regulations; and new functionality to manage multiple currencies, providing visibility to monitor and compare workforce performance across geographies.

Workforce Central 6.1 introduces Workforce Integration Manager, a new integration tool which makes it easier for an organization to link any Kronos application with other existing key business systems – such as an existing ERP, payroll or human resources applications -- without the need for additional servers. Workforce Central now offers predefined interfaces to leading ERP payroll packages, thus simplifying integration between the applications.

“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costly customization; automate only a fraction of an organization's workforce management processes; provide limited and out-of-date access to labor data; and rely on an impractical approach to the challenge of managing compliance,” continued George.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.”

New features and enhancements that allow organizations to control labor expenses, improve productivity, and achieve compliance include: enhanced Microsoft (News - Alert) Excel integration - which enables users to format, summarize, chart, and analyze Kronos labor data using the familiar Excel user interface; resource tracking for the manufacturing industry to help identify bottlenecks in real time; advanced employee scheduling which allows employees to request open shifts, and managers to review and approve those shift changes; and a new decision-support tool that provides 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.”

Workforce Central 6.1 is expected to be available in the first calendar quarter of 2009.