Case Study

Global food service company boosts manager productivity and efficiency with automated workforce management solution

Together, UST and GHK Management Consulting AG defined and designed an automation solution using Microsoft Power Platform to help a global food service company streamline processes for managing temporary workers and achieving transparency of total workforce deployment ahead of time. The intuitive business process optimizations eliminated cumbersome manual processes that required managers to navigate between multiple screens in two applications. The solution boosted productivity and cost a fraction of other options.
Style
Post-info

OUR CLIENT

This European multinational company provides contract food service for offices, schools, healthcare facilities, cultural venues, and other similar commercial locations. With more than 500,000 employees, it generates approximately €25 billion in revenue annually.

THE CHALLENGE

Reducing operating costs with an efficient workforce management solution for temporary workers

The company wanted to streamline processes to manage temporary workers from requisition to payment. Canteen catering managers had to toggle between multiple screens in two loosely integrated applications, a customized enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and a workforce management application, completely lacking in transparency over the total workforce. This cumbersome process was time-consuming, expensive, and didn’t provide the workforce visibility the company needed to efficiently manage workers. However, adding functionality to one or both systems or more fully integrating the two applications was not cost-effective at an estimated effort of more than 1,000-man days with all costs totaling more than €2.5 million. The food service company needed a more cost-effective temporary workforce management solution.

THE TRANSFORMATION

Improving workforce management with automations and integrations

UST and GHK Management Consulting AG tackled the project together. After GHK analyzed the challenges and defined requirements, UST designed and implemented a streamlined process automation workflow using Microsoft Power Platform to help the company efficiently manage end-to-end processes to hire, schedule, and pay temporary workers. The solution consumes ERP data for requisitioning, approving, and ordering workers and automatically prompts ordered temporary employees to visit the workforce management application for scheduling, like any other employees. Once the work is complete, the workforce management system uses an existing integration to relay the incurred expenses to the ERP system where the associated invoice is validated and posted according to standard three-way-match processes.

THE IMPACT

Optimizing business processes at a tenth of the cost of other solutions

More than 550 users can work more productively thanks to the intuitive solution that eliminated redundant tasks, streamlined approvals, and automated three-way invoice matching. The cost-effective solution was a tenth of the estimated cost of the more expensive application integration approach. The company is also able to streamline 12 more workflows using the robust, low-code development capabilities of Microsoft Power Platform, maximizing the platform's value.

If your company needs help maximizing the value of existing Microsoft technologies, or you’re considering a net-new Microsoft implementation, like the customer in this story, learn more about our partnership and deep domain expertise with Microsoft.