Accurate forecasting

The Difference Between Guessing and Knowing

An effective schedule begins with a precise forecast.  With a simple click, TMx captures deep volumes of data compiled from numerous systems to accurately predict your fluctuating customer activity throughout the flow of each meal period, day, week, and season.  Superior precision is the key to the TMx Workforce Positioning System: putting the right number of people, with the right skills, in the right places, at the right times.


TMx ANTICIPATES CUSTOMER ACTIVITY

TMx forecast algorithms accurately anticipate spikes in sales by comparing repetitive historical trends with current customer patterns associated by day-of-the-week and time-of-day.  A demand forecast is generated that dynamically adjusts to seasonal and year-to-year trends and to holidays.  The forecast automatically incorporates promotions and menu changes set by corporate headquarters.  If appropriate, the manager can adjust the forecast to reflect knowledge of those events that the automatic forecast would not have anticipated such as community events, construction or local promotions.

USER CONTROL

Power users can easily view the historical data used in each forecast and the applicable year-to-year growth comps, then apply what-ifs to the forecast.  Comparisons of forecast to actual data help all users easily learn how to remove outlier events to develop even more accurate demand predictions.  TMx automatically creates a log of person, time, and reason for any adjustments to actual data for easy future reference.  This log easily answers why an adjustment was made last year to data now used in a current forecast.

AUTOPILOT FORECASTING 

What about those managers who lack the time, interest, or experience to anticipate the "exceptions"?  In those cases, TMx forecast logic covers the bases and provides your manager the guidance needed for positioning your team.  You will be pleasantly surprised by its consistent accuracy of predicting how much business you'll have and when it will occur.

BEST PRACTICES

TMx is that simple and that easy.  The power comes in the dynamic logic of our intelligence engines and the range of performance measures that can be predicted based on the "best practices" appropriate to any particular operator.  For some operators, gross sales effectively track the level of customer activity that should drive a schedule.  For other operators, schedule effectiveness is improved by using different performance measures for different jobs.  For example, table arrivals for the host job, occupied tables for servers, and entrée count for line cooks.  For still other operators, labor requirements vary based on forecasted menu mix.


FOCUS ON KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Pinpoint accuracy for a labor forecast is achieved by identifying the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that track and measure the activities required to service the flow of customers through your operation.  The range of possibilities here is quite large and varies by job.  Sales can be used, but physical activity counts are often more accurate because they are better at measuring the required work effort.  The principal limitation of sales data is threefold: (1) price level distortions from one operation to another; (2) conversion between sales and labor hours based on fixed ratios is often misleading (wrong); and (3) budget-based labor ratios can help in determining “how much” labor is needed for periods of a week or more but provide little help in deployment of labor hours for shorter periods such as day or week or time of day.  Nonetheless, a forecast of sales is much better than nothing.

KPIs that better track required labor effort include: check count, guest count, occupied tables, table arrivals, plates, entrées, and similar metrics of actual activity that are not expressed as currency.  For the host job, table arrivals per 15 minute interval might reflect activity level during a meal period.  For the server job, occupied tables during a 15 minute interval might best track work activity.  Entrées or plates might best track back of the house line cook activity through the meal period.  Plates might best track dishwasher activity.  The TMx Gold Standard is a mix of KPIs that also include menu mix.


MENU MIX: THE GOLD STANDARD OF FORECASTING

Different menu items require different labor efforts and knowing what products your customers will order each day will greatly inform the amount and specific kinds of service needed.  For example, it might take 8 seconds to serve a fountain soft drink but 134 seconds to serve a smoothie.  Serving a salad takes less time and effort than a hot sandwich.  Some salads are more complicated than others requiring different amounts of serving time.  One can go through a menu and find lots of examples in almost every category where the labor effort will differ by item.

Menu mix varies by meal period, day of the week, season, holiday and weather.  For example, unseasonably hot weather generally results in more salads and cold sandwiches and fewer soups and hot sandwiches.  Holidays like Valentine's Day require more wine and dessert purchases.

A DILEMMA RESOLVED

For most operators today, the KPI of choice is sales.  There are a couple of reasons: (1) Limitations in workforce management software are unable to support a large number of KPIs; (2) Knowledge gaps in creating labor standards at the job level.  The dilemma has been: which comes first, the software or the best practice analytics to use it.

Like GPS, smart-technology now makes it easy to deliver powerful solutions to users with the push of a button.  The real-time intelligence of the TMx Forecast, Guide, and Schedule engines has now resolved the workforce positioning dilemma for food service operators.  There is no practical limit to the number of key performance indicators (KPIs) incorporated into a TMx forecast.  As appropriate, unique algorithms can be applied to each KPI which are particularly useful in generating forecast patterns that differ by dine-in, catering, drive-thru, and events.

Optimal Scheduling

Smart-Scheduling Greatly Improves Efficiency and Performance

Scheduling a multi-faceted workforce can be complex, time-consuming, and full of errors that lead to lower productivity, poorer performance, and wasted expenses.  TMx offers a spectrum of intelligence features that automatically create schedules to align to future customer demands, regulatory scheduling policies, local laws, employee availabilities, skill levels, and budget.  Two dimensions frame any schedule: (1) how many hours are in the weekly budget and (2) how to best deploy the weekly budget by day and time of day.


THE BEST LEVEL OF ALGORITHMIC SCHEDULING IS YOUR CHOICE

There is a natural migration to capture the many benefits of automated scheduling.  Scheduling power is your choice as TMx provides the path for your organization to move at the right pace beginning with the intuitive simplicity of a spreadsheet with built-in restaurant logic.  Our advanced level generates activity-driven schedules tailored to location-specific or enterprise-wide labor standards.  And ultimately, our state-of-the-art Gold Standard uses menu-mix intelligence to pin-point optimal labor deployment putting all the right people in all the right places at all the right times.

It is important to know that your choice today will meet future needs providing you with the agility to improve operations as technology and knowledge progress throughout the life of your business.  What you need for best practice labor deployment is knowledge of what you want your labor standards to be by job.  But if you don't have all the knowledge and data feeds in place to calibrate precise labor models, TMx can get you started to simplify life for your managers and associates.   Whatever your entry point and destination, TMx analytics will grow with you.


BASIC SCHEDULING IS AS INTUITIVE AS A SPREAD SHEET BUT A LOT BETTER

TMx provides two grid-based scheduling formats:  (1) a weekly grid by day of week and employee and (2) a daily grid by job and organization structure.  Both have easy visual layouts to simplify and add power above and beyond a spread sheet.


Weekly Scheduling Grid:

  • Simplify data entry with intelligent shortcuts for entry of shift start/finish times, jobs, tasks, and stations
  • Create, copy, drag, drop, and swap schedules with the ease of a mouse
  • Assign stations to specific shifts with a simple drag and drop
  • Employee preferences and non-availability are part of the grid
  • Alert user of any labor rule conflicts in real-time as shifts are created or adjusted
  • Prevent assignment of shifts to employees lacking appropriate job qualifications
  • View all of an employee's shifts for the week or day across all jobs and remote locations (other operations)
  • Track premium pay for each employee triggered by overtime and other rules
  • Track total weekly hours and cost by employee
  • Group daily operation totals by user-selected jobs in real-time
  • View and act on pending employee requests
  • Post schedules to time-clock, printed schedule reports, and MyTMx employee messaging service
  • Create schedule templates for copying shifts to other days or weeks
  • Flag non-availability and other conflicts in schedule copied to future week

Daily Scheduling Grid:


  • Create shifts in a simple grid made easy with shortcut intelligence designed into the grid
  • Create shift times with easy entry shortcuts: 915 = 9:15am; 2p=2:00pm, 1545=3:45pm
  • Filter employee selection to only employees qualified to work a selected job
  • Filter employee selection list to only available employees with no shift overlaps at local or sharing location
  • Filter job selection to only jobs the selected employee is qualified to work
  • Know instantly when employee goes into over-time or other premium pay status
  • Sort employee list by seniority or skill
  • Display user selected calculations such as shift length and break duration
  • Create shifts graphically with the click and drag of the mouse
  • Visually and intuitively paint a schedule showing total employees scheduled by time interval and job
  • Display break guides showing shifts requiring breaks along with earliest start and finish times
  • Display by time interval throughout the day, a variety of user selected values pertaining to scheduled hours, employee count, sales, and much more

ADVANCED SCHEDULING ENABLES ACTIVITY DRIVEN LABOR GUIDES

Advanced Scheduling implements all the features of Basic Scheduling, plus a range of extensions to incorporate activity-based scheduling associated by job with key performance indicators (KPI’s).  TMx supports a continuum of activity driven labor scheduling that begins with sales, becomes even more accurate with physical activity counts (checks, guests, entrées, etc.) and achieves a Gold Standard with the addition of menu mix.  The continuum of advanced scheduling best practices parallels the continuum of your scheduling goals and knowledge regarding appropriate labor standards applicable to your business.  

LABOR BUDGET GUIDES 

The starting point is budget labor hours based on financial goals expressed as a ratio: either Sales Per Labor Hour (SPLH) or labor cost as a percent of sales.  SPLH has the advantage compared with a labor cost ratio of removing wage rate from the ratio.  A budget-based labor guide answers the question of “how much labor” can I use over the period of a week or more.  However, a budget-based labor guide provides little effective help in the deployment of labor by job, day of the week, or time of day.

Putting aside deployment considerations, financially based labor budgets have a second shortcoming.  A financial ratio often implies the incorrect amount of labor relative to the labor required to fulfill service standards.  “How much labor I can use” is not always the same as “how much I need” for my desired service level.  If all menu items have the same labor-price ratio, budget ratios provide an accurate basis for estimating the “size of the bucket” of labor to fulfill financial goals.  But for most food service operators the labor-price ratio per menu item varies greatly.  For this reason, there is room for improvement.  Nonetheless, labor budget guides are a lot better than nothing and a good place to start.

ADVANCED LABOR GUIDES 

Activity drivers associated with physical metrics that reflect actual work requirements are the next step in the continuum of best practice labor goals and practices.  The first principal is that there are two general categories of labor activity: (1) service labor and (2) task labor. 

Service labor is all work activity provided in direct support of serving the customer from the time they enter a food service establishment, placean order, is seated (wait for take-out), receive their food, eat (if dine-in), pay, leave the facility, and immediate bussing of the table.  Task labor refers to all work activity undertaken in preparation of a customer entering the facility and the clean-up after a customer departs.  These activities can be activity-driven, fixed, or a combination.  Activity-driven tasks include food prep in anticipation of the meal period.  Fixed tasks include cleaning, opening, set-up, side-work, closing, provisioning, and administrative.  Service labor is sometimes described as “direct” labor and task labor as “indirect” or “non-service” labor. 

TMx provides powerful analytics that automatically create, shape, and adjust shifts to deploy the right number of people, in the right places, at the right times to fulfill service labor throughout food service periods.  Service labor is the core of the typical shift.  TMx algorithms then automatically assign tasks such as opening and closing duties to the shoulders of the service portion of appropriate shifts.  TMx analytics create and shifts, shape them into more equal segments, and assign tasks to further shape shifts in accordance with a variety of labor and scheduling rules.  This is the power of TMx.

GOLD STANDARD IS ADVANCED SCHEDULING WITH A MENU MIX BOOSTER

The Gold Standard for Advanced Labor Scheduling is the most powerful analytics tool on the market to provide pinpoint accuracy with mouse-click simplicity.  Using all the Basic and Advanced Scheduling methods above, the Gold Standard also auto-dynamically adjusts to fluctuating menu mixes of forecasted customer sales.  In other words, TMx not only predicts how many customers will walk in your door every five minutes, it will also tell you what your guests will most likely order on any given day.  Based on the time it takes to prepare each specific item on the menu, TMx calculates exactly how much service coverage labor will be required to meet these needs.

Different items on your menu require distinct preparation tasks and can drastically change the demands on your workforce.  TMx tells you how much and what kind of business you can expect every five minutes to safely guide your managers through the erratic loading, rush hour, and unloading of each meal period every day.  The result is recommended labor that provides pinpoint accuracy for positioning the right levels of skill, in the right numbers, in the right places, at the right times.

Mobile Employee Self-Service

Convenience and Flexibility for Your Employees Increases Job Satisfaction

TMx introduces an interactive web-based scheduling system for all people across your enterprise.  Information is automatically pushed to managers and employees at unprecedented rates for quick decision making.  MyTMx, smartphone apps, text-message alerts, and email notifications are not only a convenience tool but also an incentive to stay with an employer.  And a satisfied worker will drastically improve your guest experience.  This real-time communication will give you a more flexible, well-informed, and nimble workforce.

REAL-TIME INTERACTIVITY BETWEEN MANAGERS AND WORKFORCE

MyTMx is our online mobile media that automatically pushes important messages to all employees to achieve unprecedented communication between your team.

Employees enjoy real-time access to conveniently view their work schedules and manage availability requests from a remote computer, smartphone, or on-site kiosk.  Employees can request to drop shifts, allowing their manager to re-assign the shifts or other employees to bid for the shifts.  Shift swap requests are sent to the other employee involved in the trade to sign off before being sent to the manager for final approval.  Employees can also enter personal availability needs such as vacations or family leave and hour preferences on a one-time or recurring basis before future schedules are made.  All employee-facing MyTMx applications support multi-lingual functionality.

Managers can receive alerts to handle on-the-ground emergencies and respond to employee requests for future schedule changes.

MyTMxTake me to MyTMx


FULL-SERVICE EMPLOYEE PORTAL

With the MyTMx employee browser, employees can:

  • View posted shifts
  • Request shift changes (drop, pick-up, and swap)
  • Request changes to both one-time and recurring availability
  • View status of pending requests and manager responses to answered requests
  • View and approve manger edits to time records and hours earned
  • Control user settings (change user name or password and language preference)
  • Select how to receive alerts (email, text message)
  • Update HR profile information such as changes in name, address, phone number, email, and W4 information (these changes then get synchronized across enterprise HR, POS, Clock, Scheduling, and Pay Record Maintenance)
MyTMx web is browser agnostic and is optimized for both personal computers and tablets.  It can be used in English, Spanish, and other languages upon request.

EMPLOYEE APPS: ANYWHERE, ANYTIME

The MyTMx smartphone apps provide immediate employee interaction.  They are  available in English and Spanish for the following smartphones and tablets: iPhone, Android and Windows 7 (future).

Employees can:

  • View posted shifts
  • Request shift changes (drop, pick-up, and swap)
  • Request time-off and extra time-on
  • View status of pending requests and manager responses to answered requests
  • Receive alerts of relevant shift changes


MANAGERS ARE INSTANTLY INFORMED TO RESPOND TO THEIR WORKFORCE'S NEEDS


The MyTMx smartphone apps provide managers immediate access to alerts that are time-critical to each day’s success.  The MyTMx manager app is synchronized with Core TMx engines to provide a complete real-time environment for responding to operational exceptions needing real-time attention.  Manager routing can be configured to assure that alerts are sent to the correct manager and that other managers are not nuisanced with extra alerts.  The MyTMx manager app is available for the following smartphones and tablets: iPhone, Android, and Windows 7 (future).

Managers can:

  • View posted shifts
  • Review and respond to employee shift requests
  • Receive alerts for a variety of operational exceptions such as: breaks due, starting overtime, and many others

Automated time & attendance

Track, Manage & Enforce Shedules with Ease and Pinpoint Accuracy

The innovative TMx system for tracking, managing, and enforcing employee work schedules reduces labor waste both at the time of clock punch and before going to payroll.  TMx minimizes manual errors and compliance risks while freeing your managers to focus on higher level duties.  Our many hardware and software options give you choice with seamless integration into your existing system.

ALL KINDS OF CLOCK OPTIONS

TMx supports a wide variety of the leading POS solutions and their native time clocks.  But for greater functionality, operators can use the TMx Clock, our own software clock that can reside independently and interface with the POS or reside on the POS to share its touch screen terminal.

The TMx Clock has rich functionality to automate many schedule enforcement responsibilities.  Floor manager functions include: rules and schedule enforcement, employee break alerts, overtime alerts, employee messaging, electronic time-sheet verification, and real-time labor analysis.  High system reliability is assured using a client (Java) server (Windows database) architecture.  The server supports remote communications to the hosted TMx application server via real-time web service.  All clock options verify employee identity through a variety of employee ID entry modes including biometric.

Our clock solutions come in all forms:

  • Pre-existing Point-of-Sale (POS) Clock

    TMx supports the clock in your existing point-of-sale terminal.  With over 27 years of experience in leveraging the existing time clocks provided by leading POS vendors, TMx is as powerful as the functionality of your POS system.  TMx seamlessly exports schedules and imports clock punches and employee collectibles such as tips and employee sales.

  • TMx Clock

    For operators who want more, the TMx Clock is a cost-effective and highly intelligent software clock application that can live on your standard office workstations or multi-purpose terminals throughout your enterprise.

  • TMx Clock on your Point-of-Sale

    A variety of point-of-sale system partners support TMx Clock on their touch screen POS terminals.  The architecture utilizes state of the art client/server technology, maintaining a single Microsoft Windows database for all client terminals hosting the TMx Clock Java client.

  • TMx Clock on TMx Hardware

    The TMx Clock can also come in the form of an industrial-grade self-contained TMx Employee Self Service Kiosk (ESSK) with a built-in Epson printer.  Touch-screen terminals enable manager reporting and employee messaging.

  • Power of the Printed Receipt

    Unlike any other time clock in the industry, the TMx Clock prints employee receipts with clock-in and clock-out times, future work schedules, tips and special pay.  This is both a convenience for your employees and a very powerful verification of work rule compliance.  TMx Clock supports printers on all platforms, including the TMx free-standing wall-mounted kiosk solution.

PAY RECORD MAINTAINANCE SAVES TIME AND ELIMINATES ERROR

Employee time records are imported into TMx from clocks, point-of-sale, enterprise data warehouses, or are entered manually by a manager.  The graphical user interface of the Pay Record Maintenance module promotes high usability for easy user access to relevant information that performs in a real-time environment for all selected records.  Our Pay Record Maintenance (PRM) system allows managers to manage, analyze, and edit employee time records for incorrect/forgotten time clock punches and special pay changes.  The final records are then exported to your third-party payroll application.

Features:

  • Verify, approve, and edit time records
  • Create special pay records including vacation time, holiday time, and bonus pay
  • Audit every change to every field in every record with: who, where, when, and why
  • Review time records for compliance with a wide variety of customer specific business rules
  • Filter records based on user criteria to search, analyze and answer questions quickly
  • Set user preferences to select from a broad range of information (e.g. calculated values, tips, conflicts, etc.) for display in the PRM grid
  • Display a consolidated view of all the time records associated with a shared employee working at multiple locations
  • Display and publish alerts:  within the application, to enterprise reporting applications, and to real-time media including email and mobile services
  • Automatically create accruals for work rule violations
  • Simplify and enforce standard enterprise wide operating procedures for approving pay records and closing pay periods

Streamlined Human Resources

Simplify, Consolidate & Integrate

TMx Human Resource Module streamlines the entire employment life cycle from new-hire through pay and job changes, transfers, termination and rehiring.  TMx acts a hub to assure that all employee updates are provided in a timely fashion to all collaborative applications.  Timely and instant synchronicity is particularly valuable for new hires whose information is needed at the time clock and POS to begin work.  Accuracy and data validity are critical for all collaborative applications.

SYNCHRONIZE EMPLOYEE INFORMATION ACROSS YOUR ENTERPRISE

A single data entry point consolidates employee information throughout your entire enterprise, eliminating mountains of paperwork and faxes. Employees and their work history can be shared across your many locations and brands.  Employee skills and certifications are tracked for intelligent scheduling and compliance with statutory employee and food safety standards. Your employees can easily update their personal changes such as address or withholding status via their mobile devices.

TMx can also import employee info from other applications and, if appropriate, relay the information to yet other applications (most commonly the POS).  TMx can collaborate on a field-by-field basis serving as the source of data entry on some, exporting some, and importing other fields. Save managers time and make it easy for employees to update their personal information (name, address, phone, email, W4 withholdings, and more) using MyTMx.

Choose from one of two TMx HR versions: (1) Standard HR module works much like a spreadsheet, but is easier and smarter for managing HR information; (2) Advanced HR module that does more and is even easier.  In both cases you will eliminate paperwork and post-it-notes; eliminate invalid, late, and incomplete employee data; greatly reduce the frustrations of entering the same data into multiple applications; and therefore save precious time for your managers and corporate HR/payroll staff.  The choice is yours.

SIMPLE & EASY

TMx Standard HR is as simple as a 2-column spreadsheet, only a whole lot faster easier.  Because of the built-in intelligence, TMx anticipates the type of data that is needed, helps with data entry, and prevents data entry errors.

      Features:

  • View and change employee status with assurance that all changes are shared with all collaborating applications. Status changes include: hire, terminate, rehire, and more
  • Assign jobs using with drag and drop simplicity
  • Track, and change job assignment(s) and pay rate(s)
  • Assure that all required information is entered and welcome optional information; either can include customer defined fields
  • Track all data entry to prevent out-of-bounds data entry errors
  • Auto-fill city, county, state information with zip code database
  • Assign labor rules automatically by default and enable easy drop list selection of eligible options
  • Assign and manage employee IDs for payroll, POS, and HR
  • Control access to view pay rates based on role based security (RBS) privileges
  • Lend employees to borrowing sites
  • Export new hires and employee changes to point of sale as part of an automatic scheduled end-of-day or in real-time by a manager action


    MORE POWERFUL & EVEN EASIER

Advanced HR implements all the features of Standard HR plus extensions to provide a more complete set of on-boarding and off-boarding functionality coupled with workflow-driven data entry.  Workflows make it easy for a busy manager to understand the HR information requirements and to provide the correct information.  Automatic workflow suspensions recognize the real world of constant interruptions and frustration of losing what has been entered and restarting.  Let our workflow “wizards” guide your way!

Features:

  • Select from a set of available workflows those that you want to implement as components in your on-boarding and off-boarding process
  • TMx workflows include recruiting, hiring, performance reviews, pay adjustments, termination, rehire, leave of absence/disability, tax information, deposit information, and lending and transferring employees to other operations
  • Automatically integrate your company forms with government forms
  • Auto-fill state level tax withholding requirements
  • Assign skill levels, certifications, and licenses
  • Assure complete data by preventing final database save until all required information has been entered
  • Suspend and return to an incomplete workflow without losing information that has already been entered
  • Track the status, submission date & time, and user of each employee status change
  • Provide an employment history throughout the employment life cycle, including transfers, terminations, rehires, jobs, pay rates, performance reviews, and pay rate changes
  • Managers can coordinate the details of an employee transfer with built-in messaging

Intelligent Business Reports

TMx Brings You the Key Information to Improve your Evolving Business Model

TMx brings intelligence reports to a higher level by extracting deep and broad data from throughout your enterprise and organizing it for workforce performance analysis.  Understanding who, what, when, where, why, and how will cause a fundamental shift in how you can monitor, measure, and coach your team.  Convenient and flexible filtering options allow you and your managers to configure specific statistics needed to make better decisions and drive your business goals.  Managers from the front line to senior executives gain clearer visibility into performance, greater accountability for results, and powerful tools to meet strategic initiatives and financial results.

DETAILS, PERSPECTIVE, TIMELINESS, AND MOBILITY

The TMx reporting engine offers three dimensions of functionality: (1) Site-Level Reports built into the core TMx application framework; (2) Enterprise Reports portal that provides multi-unit reports across operations; and (3) Alerts that provide real-time notification of actions that need immediate attention.

Site-Level Reports are built within the core TMx manager application using Internet Explorer browser access.  Site-Level Reports provide data to inform the manager about all aspects of their operation.  All levels of operation level detail are available, including real-time data from the point-of-sale and TMx Clock.  The Site-Level Report Manager is built upon Crystal Report Engine.  Report templates make it easy for each company to configure reports for their particular needs.  Crystal Development tools enable further customer report customization.  Site-Level Reports provide easy user options to filter information for pinpoint precision.




The TMx Enterprise Report Portal is web browser and operating system agnostic.  Enterprise Reports provide multi-unit and unit-level managers comparative performance information.  Comparative performance across operations identifies for the multi-unit manager those operations that need attention and those that have exceeded expectations.  Each unit-level manager knows exactly how their operation’s performance compares with all peers, whether at the district, regional, or corporate roll-up level.  The TMx Enterprise Report Portal uses Microsoft SQL Server Report Services technology.  High performance data cube Analysis Services technology provides fast response time for organization roll-ups and comparisons of recent results to cumulative period, quarter, year to date and previous year performance.



TMx Alert Reporting is the third dimension and provides real-time information on events and actionable operating parameters that warrant immediate attention. Alert reporting is built within the core TMx application to monitor and communicate alerts for a broad variety of TMx application events. These include employee requests, schedule changes, TMx clock events, pay record events, operating parameter thresholds, and system IT events (system errors). Alerts are displayed with the TMx manager module as well as distributed with pinpoint precision by email, SMS text, and smart phone apps. Pinpoint precision is achieved by enterprise-level and user-level configuration preference settings that intelligently control who, what, when, how, and where of alert distribution.


The planning, tracking, and precise analytics of TMx provide all levels of management information on how best to deploy resources and to execute the company’s business model. Real-time information enables timely information for smart execution while time remains to act. TMx analytics provide after-the-fact actionable information for coaching, refining, and perfecting the business model.

SUMMARY & DRILL DOWN DETAIL FOR UNIT MANAGERS

Site-Level Reports communicate to team members the game plan, the score along the way, the final score, errors that can be corrected, and coaching insights to improve team performance.  Some of the benefits include eliminating paper work, assuring labor rule compliance, and saving administrative time by providing an electronic repository and audit trail for personnel and pay record data.  Focus is provided by making it easy for users to filter data by employee, job, date, and other filters appropriate to the report.

       Features:

  • Weekly Posted Schedule by day-of-week, day-part, employee, job, shift times, and station.  Includes employee contact & availability information to facilitate swaps.  All are configurable to the preferences of each operation.
  • Daily Staff Deployment Plan of employee by day-part, job, position, task, and station.  Provided in both tabular and graphical format.
  • Weekly Labor Plan includes daily forecast sales and scheduled hours by work center, job, and meal-period.
  • Intra-Day Real-Time Comparisons of forecasted sales, scheduled hours, guide hours based on forecast, guide hours based on actual sales, actual hours, and running variances.
  • Weekly Labor Tracking compares (1) actual sales in total and by revenue center, and (2) actual labor hours based on forecast, scheduled hours, and guide based on actual sales.  Analytics pinpoint critical variances to provide coaching insights for performance improvement.
  • Shift Details of punch, break, labor rule violations, premium hours, tips, and employee sales.
  • Shift Variance Details of schedule vs. actual shift details, labor rule violations, early/late clock punches, absentees, and more.
  • Tip Reporting of Employee Collectibles for sales, received, and distributed tips (cash and credit) and tip report compliance. 
  • Payroll Details of labor hours, regular hours, premium hours, penalties, and special pay.  Includes associated labor costs by employee, job, and work center.
  • Audit Reports of all pay record edits including who, what, when, where, and why.  Includes electronic employee verification of manager changes.
  • Personnel Data for the range of job, pay rate, contact, tax withholding, work status, and a wide range of other human resource information. 

COMPARE, FOCUS, AND COACH

Enterprise reports track, compare, and analyze performance across operations and trends through time.  Accountability and recognition are the baseline benefit.  Analytics built throughout the TMx application engines take TMx enterprise reporting to a higher level.  Pinpoint analytics provide insights into not only the “what”, but also the explanatory “why” and actionable “how” that are the keys to successful coaching.

Features:

  • TMx compares and aggregates performance metrics by geographical management territory from district, to market, to region, to business line, to enterprise, and anywhere in between.
  • Compare the most recent week's performance with cumulative period (month), quarter, or year-to-date for current or previous years.
  • Drill down to explanatory metrics that provide both insight for success and opportunities for improvement.
  • Focus time and energy using exception-providing dashboards that quickly identify those operations that need attention.
  • The TMx "Coach" automatically guides your analysis from bottom line result to underlying explanatory and actionable metrics.
  • View data in both tabular and graphic-rich formats.
  • Data visualizations focus attention, save time, and provide intuitive analysis of trends and exceptions.
  • Visualize time trends to provide perspective and context for performance metric exceptions.
  • Define your business line, geographic business structure, and easily reorganize as needed.
  • Define your fiscal year for consistent reporting.  TMx handles your needs whether your fiscal year structure is: 4-5-4, 5-4-4, or 4-4-5.

REAL-TIME INFORMATION FOR TIMELY ACTION

The core TMx applications generate alerts regarding labor and scheduling rule violations and display them in real-time to users within the TMx applications.  TMx instantly pushes alerts to: email, SMS text, and smartphone apps.  The alerts generate: (1) mobile connectivity to add convenience and work flexibility for all team members; (2) opportunities to correct and adjust team activity “while there is still time to make a difference”; and (3) monitoring of “what’s going on” by those with a need and interest.  In today’s connected world, a balance is needed between “too much” and “too little” timely information.  TMx achieves this balance using practical and easy methods to filter, route, and publish alerts satisfing both the organization's needs and individual user preferences.

Features:

  • Flag schedule conflicts, labor rule violations, and pay record discrepancies in each TMx application as they occur
  • Highlight and display alerts within the TMx application to facilitate easy context-sensitive corrective action
  • Alert employees regarding posted shifts, shift changes, and manager responses to employee shifts
  • Alert managers of employe requests, approaching employee labor rule violations, and material variances in real-time performance metrics
  • Alert payroll staff of critical events or over-due situations
  • Alert IT staff of critical application errors
  • Filter and route alerts to appropriate individuals based on pre-configured organization rules and user preferences
  • Publish alerts based on organization and user-configured options using email, SMS text, and/or smartphone apps