The Ascent WorkZone workforce management system increases efficiency, lowers labor costs, and enhances operating margins

Workforce optimization is having the right workers in the right places at the right times to meet your customer needs and expectations at the lowest possible cost. When you optimize your workforce, you use your workforce to greatest advantage.

While the description may be simple, the computations are complicated. Workforce optimization requires powerful, highly sophisticated mathematical optimization and scheduling algorithms that automatically generate and analyze millions of possible ways to connect your workforce with the work that needs to be done. Workforce optimization also requires an intelligent, carefully engineered system that selects the most advantageous ways to connect your workforce with the work that needs to be done and creates practicable work plans.

The Ascent WorkZone workforce management system makes workforce optimization easy because it is intelligent, carefully engineered, and contains the mathematical optimization and scheduling algorithms you need. Better yet, the system does the heavy lifting for you at the push of a button.

The graphical interface is modern, clean, and intuitive; each screen takes you from one step to the next quickly and without confusion. If you forget how to do something, you can display brief advice right on the screen. You can also display a tutorial with detailed explanations and step-by-step instructions in a moveable pop-up window superimposed on the screen; you can view the screen you are working on as you follow the tutorial. When you ask the Ascent WorkZone workforce management system to do something it cannot do or if you do not give it all the information it needs, the system tells you what you need to do to recover from or avoid the problem. Intelligent wizards guide you through more complicated actions, such as entering reference information and creating the business rules that drive the system, automatically ensuring you enter information correctly and consistently.

The Ascent WorkZone workforce management system:

• Forecasts your workload based on business rules and event schedules that conform to the way your organization prefers to operate
• Determines the best way to meet your forecasted workload based on customizable criteria, such as expected demand, required production level, and quality of service
• Determines how many full-time, part-time, seasonal, and on-call workers you need to cover your forecasted workload, the best times for work periods to start and end, and the best work-period durations
• Determines how many workers of each worker type and hire type you need for each work period
• Creates work plans that cover your forecasted workload at the lowest cost
• Identifies the best ways to achieve service goals
• Calculates and compares the costs of what-if scenarios
• Revises near-term plans based on changes to forecasted demand and event schedules
• Adjusts active work schedules in response to actual conditions in real time
• Deploys workers to locations and tasks in real time
• Follows your organization’s policies and guidelines consistently
• Complies with labor-agreement requirements and statutory regulations
• Interfaces with payroll, human resources, time and attendance, accounting, compliance, and other external systems
• Provides valuable plan and active schedule information, cost comparisons, and analyses using displays, charts, and plots
• Produces comprehensive web-accessible management reports.
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The Ascent WorkZone workforce management system:

• Plans and schedules work assignments and locations following your business rules, labor agreements, and statutory and compliance regulations
• Creates general, relief, and leapfrog work-schedule bids and vacation-period bids
• Manages bid-and-award processes for work schedules and vacation periods
• Awards work schedules and vacations to workers automatically or through an equitable worker-centric bid-and-award process
• Manages vacation and other leave
• Ensures work coverage
• Identifies worker shortfalls and overages automatically
• Suggests work reassignments and early-outs to handle worker shortfalls and overages
• Tracks worker qualifications and qualification expiration dates
• Matches worker qualifications with the work to be done
• Handles multiple-rate, cross-department, and shared workers
• Assigns and reassigns tasks, locations, break times, and meal times to workers in real time in response to actual conditions, such as fluctuating workloads, unanticipated workloads, and unexpected worker absences
• Enables supervisors to adjust assignments, work-period types, locations, breaks, overtime, leave, and days off in active schedules to handle actual conditions
• Optimizes task assignments in real time
• Reduces unproductive travel time between work assignments by modelling travel times, routes, and modes of transportation between locations
• Considers travel time between locations when making assignments
• Rotates tip-reliant workers to provide equitable earning opportunities
• Handles leave, overtime, compensatory time, relief, restricted duty, on-the-job training, and similar assignments
• Updates, tracks, and stores worker information, such as worker type, hire type, hours worked, overtime, compensatory time, and leave balances
• Identifies workers available to work additional and overtime hours
• Communicates work schedules; work assignments; work locations; opportunities for additional work, overtime, and early-out; and management messages to workers
• Enables workers to clock in, clock out, and record task completion information
• Tracks time-and-attendance, location, task, and task-completion data using PCs, monitors, touch screens, kiosks, and wireless devices
• Uses access-control devices, such as badge readers and biometric scanners, to ensure the right workers are in the right locations at the right times.

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The Ascent WorkZone workforce management system:

• Enables workers to preview and choose future work schedules and vacations
• Displays daily, weekly, and monthly work schedules, with start times, end times, availability periods, locations, tasks, and days off
• Displays periods when workers can expect to work
• Displays workers' leave balances
• Displays leave availability
• Enables workers to request time off
• Enables workers to express preferences for workdays, additional work, and additional and overtime work
• Enables workers to trade work periods with co-workers
• Displays qualifications and qualification expiration dates
• Displays work history
• Communicates work schedules; work assignments; work locations; opportunities for additional work, overtime, and early out; and management messages to workers
• Enables workers to gain access to the system at the work location and remotely.

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The Ascent WorkZone workforce management system stores all information in a secure, scalable, and robust Oracle database. You enter information into the system only once; information is then available throughout your organization for viewing, reporting, analysis, and forecasting so you can identify and align your workforce with customer demand and workers know when, where, and what work to perform. Access requires credential validation, which ensures authorized users can view the information they need and hides sensitive information from unauthorized users. Multiple user roles provide additional security.

You can install the Ascent WorkZone workforce management system at your location or in your hosting center, or you can gain access through a web-based hosted services subscription from Ascent Technology's hosting center.

The Ascent WorkZone workforce management system is modular and flexible. You can start with one product and add other products if and when you need them. You can start with a free-standing system and connect it to your payroll, human resources, time and attendance, accounting, and other systems later. Or, you can install the complete, fully integrated solution all at once.

In any case, Ascent Technology provides comprehensive support services to implement the solution quickly and to maintain it over time. Our goal is to provide the right solution for you—one that you will use confidently and productively round the clock, day in and day out. We are passionate about helping you to optimize your resources, and we are dedicated to ensuring your success.

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