Overview

Excelcare is a leading social care company which has been providing high quality social care services for over twenty three years. They own and operate 33 homes with a further 5 custom designed homes currently under construction. There are currently around 2,500 employees and much of the success of Excelcare has been down to the excellent relationships that have been fostered with the staff over the years. Although there has been dramatic growth of the company, staff retention has been remarkably high.

The Problem
Initially Excelcare operated a manual time and attendance system which relied on staff signing time-sheets on arrival and departure.  Management then collated the hours accrued for payroll, manually creating work rotas and managing the shift changes, holidays, absences and anomalies that arise in any such business. This was time consuming, costly and far from accurate.
It was decided to automate this procedure and a commercial packaged solution was found and installed as a pilot. Although there were some benefits to be gained from the trial, it became clear that a level of customisation was needed to meet the demands of Excelcare and the staff had to be completely comfortable with the operation for it to be a success. That was not the case. The clocking in terminals were unreliable and were not liked by the staff and the system did not mirror the Excelcare way of doing things.
So they came to Isys…   

The ISYS Solution
After an exhaustive search Isys was selected for a 6 month trial. A full system specification was provided based on the particular requirements of Excelcare.  The system was then configured by Isys to reflect those demands and a full time Project Manager with the responsibility of overseeing the complete project was provided. The results were so dramatic that agreement was made to have a phased roll-out across all 33 homes within 18 months.

• Benefits
  Payroll processing times have been reduced by 7 days with 10 days anticipated in the near future
• The Time and Attendance system automatically links to Sage Payroll and SAP for financial reporting. 
• Isys created bespoke management reports that enable Excelcare Holdings management to have access to up to the minute information to assist decision making.
• The rota management system provides early warnings of any potential staffing shortages or other shift anomalies
• The system has reduced the need to use agency staff and reduced operating inefficiencies due to errors on rotas.
• Clear copies of all records for CQC inspection are retained by the system.
• Excelcare Holdings decided to include the Isys integrated HR module also which has greatly improved the ease with which staff records are stored and accessed.
• Finger geometry terminals are used for staff clocking in and out. These are reliable, easy to use and have been happily accepted by the staff. 
  

Statements by Osa (Excel care holdings Project Manager)

“Adoption by staff with little previous computing experience has been very successful”

“This system provides a more consistent approach for all staff. One advantage is that they can now book holidays much further into the future.”

“The beauty of the Isys Intelligent-Time product is that it can mimic the manual operating procedures in an electronic format. It is a very flexible system which can be configured to our specific requirements, is user friendly towards non IT professionals and has the ability to adapt to the changing needs of the business as we grow”.