August 2008
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Border Express chooses Empower-HR for the long haul
Strong regional freight and logistics company Border Express has chosen Empower-HR for efficient management of its more than 600 employees during a period of strong growth.
The family-owned business, based in Albury, NSW, operates nine freight depots throughout the country. As well as its head office, the company has depots at Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Darwin, Newcastle and on the Gold Coast.
Key reasons for choosing Empower-HR included the rich functionality of the software and the strong and positive support offered by Empower Masterpay.
Border Express HR Manager Anne McLeish said Empower-HR would contribute significantly to the efficiency of Border Express’ people management system. “We haven’t had an HR system, so we had a great diversity in our ways to capture payroll data and people management information, which led to a lot of incorrect and inconsistent information,” she said.
“A lot of our systems are paper-based, which made it very time-consuming. Empower will give us a lot more visibility and conformity in what we are doing. It will provide us with an integrated system going forward. We expect enormous growth in the next two or three years and nearly doubling in the next four years.”
Border Express www.borderexpress.com.au has grown since 1981 to become one of Australia's largest privately owned transport companies. Originating in Albury, the company has constructed, acquired and developed the necessary infrastructure to become a leading independent national carrier with multiple warehouse and distribution facilities in all of the major capital cities.
Ms. McLeish said choosing Empower-HR had been a long and carefully considered process. “We put together a project team with six people and used an external consultant to look at our business processes to work out what we needed from a system,” she said. “We produced a requirements document, and then went through a selective tender that included a detailed evaluation with site visits.
“Empower gave us great support during our evaluation process. They had very open communication and people got back to us straight away. During site visits, people said that Empower’s help desk facilities were quite good. We wanted to be sure we had ongoing support with the system, not just at the start. Obviously, we were reassured because Empower has been in the industry for more than 20 years with a lot of clients nationally.”
Ms. McLeish said Empower-HR was replacing an older software program that was difficult to manage and difficult to report with. “We are moving from a period-based system to a date-driven system, which gives us access to more information with greater flexibility,” she said.
“We had a very limited computer system which could only pay people weekly. There was no salary packaging and we were limited in the history we could keep. There was no facility to automatically update pay rates and we couldn’t report on historical year-to-date figures. A lot of our processes were very manual. “By contrast, Empower-HR offers integration with systems we have here, including General Ledger, training ledger and self-insurance software.
“From the CEO down, the people at Empower are very good to deal with. When Jade took over, we had a courtesy call that morning to let us know what was happening. People get back to us promptly, so it was a comfortable relationship from the very beginning.”
Border Express expects to have Empower-HR deployed before the end of this year. For more information about Empower-HR Version 9, call Daryl Rasheed on 08 8332 6988 or email daryl.rasheed@empower.com.au.
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Empower-HR offers keys to solve skills shortage
Empower-HR offers organisations easy access to powerful Learning and Development tools that can help to solve the skills shortages that are hurting many industries.
Within Version 9, Empower provides a Training and Skills capability toolset which includes an advanced skills and competency search within the Manager Portal of Self Service.
This advanced skills and competency search enables managers, HR consultants and other authorised personnel to manage the training and learning capabilities of their staff.
They can do this by determining the skill sets of those staff and the skill sets of position, jobs etc and planning a development path that will increase skill sets throughout the business.
Empower Director Customer Services Daryl Rasheed said the Learning and Development function could play an important role in succession planning within a business area. “Empower-HR V9 offers managers the ability to compare profiles of available employees in relation to vacant positions,” he said.
“By allowing companies to audit the skills of their existing employees, Empower-HR lets them identify who has the closest fit to the particular skills they are looking for, measure the skill gap and then potentially apply for training to close that gap all within manager self service”.
“Based on conversations with our customers, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is a requirement for organisations that are struggling to obtain the skills they need.”
As well as Learning and Development, Version 9 contains improvements in areas of eRecruitment, leave processing and additional flexibility within workflow.
Daryl said Empower-HR Version 9 offered managers with access to more information through Manager Self-Service. “It also empowers employees with more information about vacancies and more information to do with the area of payroll,” he said.
Key Employee Self-Service enhancements focus on an easy-to-use toolkit to empower staff with
:
- Skill and Competency Search: For professional development or career planning, employees can proactively examine their own degree of fit/gap to a position, job or competency
- Training: Employees can view their training history, current bookings, waitlisted requests and pending requests. A click of the information button for the course displays a course summary screen and a selected course can be requested and submitted for workflow approval
- Leave Requests: This now displays the number of hours absent, taking into account the employee’s work pattern and public holiday calendar as well as a built in tolerance level for managers, providing the employee and the manager with more information.
For more information about Empower-HR Version 9, call Daryl Rasheed on 08 8332 6988 or email daryl.rasheed@empower.com.au.
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Campbell set to score big with Empower
Empower has boosted the strength of its eastern seaboard team by appointing part-time AFL statistician Campbell Ross as its new business development manager.
Campbell, whose previous sales experience includes roles with retail software company Retail Directions, computer hardware firm BenQ and ADT Security, also holds a weekend hobby job tracking football stats for Adelaide radio station 5AA.
As business development manager, Campbell’s role is to identify new business for Empower, especially in strong sectors of the Victorian economy such as finance, retail and manufacturing. His brief also gives him responsibility for pursuing business in Tasmania, NSW and Queensland.
Campbell’s appointment brings Empower’s Melbourne team to nine, bolstered by the resources of its parent company, Jade Software, with which it is collocated at Level 12, 468 St Kilda Road.
Campbell said the eastern seaboard was a major opportunity for Empower. “One of Empower-HR’s strengths is its integrated Time and Attendance and Rostering modules, which means it can fit well into manufacturing and retail environments,” he said. "Both of these sectors have large workforces with time-based pay requirements, retailing through its reliance on part-time employees and manufacturing with a shift-based workforce.
“Many companies are struggling with systems that are not integrated, using either paper-based systems or multiple systems that don’t talk to each other. For example, I spoke with one business that has 20,000 faxes a month sent to its pay office.
“The great opportunity for Empower is to offer an integrated HR and payroll system to companies that have previously struggled along with an inefficient manual system.”
Campbell, 39, a bachelor of engineering, worked in engineering jobs for the first part of his career, before moving into sales about 10 years ago. His most recent job gave him extensive experience selling software into corporate organisations.
Empower CEO Alan Greig said Campbell brought a broad range of sales skills to the office. “Campbell understands clearly how Empower-HR can meet the needs of the enterprise market,” he said.
Campbell, a keen football fan, picked up the radio statistician role about four years ago after serving his apprenticeship in the lower leagues. “I was in the right place at the right time,” he said.
“5AA needed someone to give them a hand when the Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide play in Melbourne. I help them by tracking stats, setting up player interviews and attending press conferences. Although I do it for fun, I’ve met some amazing people such as Russell Ebert, Josh Francou and Chris McDermott. It’s awe-inspiring to deal with them and to see the game at ground level.”
If you want to learn more about Empower HR’s advanced functionality, contact Campbell Ross on (03) 8517 2215 or email campbell.ross@empower.com.au.
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