Jose Gaona, Vice President of Product Strategy at Replicon, was a recent guest on the TechnologyAdvice Expert Interview Series. The series, which is hosted by TechnologyAdvice’s Josh Bland, explores a variety of business and technology landscapes through conversations with industry leaders.
In this episode, we discuss everything from viewing time as an enterprise asset to the challenges of global compliance and the Replicon platform.
Below are Jose’s six biggest insights from the conversation.
1. Most organizations out there today are actually wasting resources on employee time tracking software.
Time is something you can never regain. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Companies who track time for payroll often don’t consider all the other divisions or departments that are also tracking time — whether it’s for projects, billing clients, or to look at costing within your organization.
So all these different pods within organizations purchase systems that only deal with what that department needs. If you just need project costing or project tracking, then you’ll find a project tracking software and deal with it. But guess what? Those same employees have to fill out a timesheet. So not only are they entering time into a project timecard, but they also have to enter time so that they can get paid.
2. Replicon is different because it treats time as an asset.
Time is an enterprise asset because you have to capture it, manage it, and use it to optimize your business. Replicon eliminates having multiple systems siloed and then pulling data together into spreadsheets just to get an overall view of your company and how it’s doing. With Replicon, we take all the different needs that you have and put it on one system, one timesheet that can feed any of these systems. So if you have projects that you need to look at, you have the data right there because your employees are entering them — but that same data is there for paying them as well.
3. Time tracking issues cost businesses millions every year.
Just last year, LinkedIn paid out over $6 million in back wages and damages. This is an ongoing trend. In the last seven years, companies have paid out over $3 billion in back wages. All because they just capture time to use as payroll — but they’re not looking at all the new legislation. It changes constantly, not just from a federal perspective, but from a state and even city view, as well. Companies need to be up to par and understand all these different rules.
4. The right software ensures that businesses handle wage and hour rules for their employee accurately.
For example, Replicon has a library of rules within our system that businesses can pick and choose as they go through the system configuration. Then we continuously update that library — and not just for North America, we’re doing this globally.
5. One of the biggest challenges out there is a diversified and global workforce.
You have multi- generations working in the workforce today. You need systems that are easy to use and that the younger generations will adopt because they’re used to apps like Facebook and Instagram. They don’t want some archaic system in the workplace.
You also have people globally. It’s a real challenge to get those people to enter time or to capture it. You need 24/7 accessibility. You need a mobile device they can have and carry with them, whether it’s a tablet or their smart phones. All that is a necessity now. In the future, it’s going to become even more.
The other problem is the more and more we expand globally, the more complex the calculations and how you pay employees is going to get. You have employees in the United States, you have employees that travel from the US to Germany. You have employees within the US that travel from one state to another — and each has their taxes. The diversified workforce is really going to be a challenge for businesses.
6. Businesses need the ability to personalize their time tracking.
You need the ability to configure different types of employees within your organization, so you need a system with flexibility to handle variances. If you have exempt employees, you want to have a timecard that can be configured to address exempt employees. Same for the non-exempt. Sometimes you’ll need different classes or different types of non-exempt employees with a lot of details on their timecards. For others less. You want a timesheet that’s configurable to the needs of each employee.
This podcast was created and published by TechnologyAdvice. Interview conducted by Josh Bland.
