Why Considering Value in a timekeeping system is Better than considering Price
You’ll find a wide variety in pricing for time clocks and timekeeping system. In part, this variety is explained by the scope of components included in one solution and their individual costs. For instance, does the time clock also come with time clock software? What is the full scope of the “time clock solution”?
To determine how much you should be paying, assess the value you would be receiving in the time clock. Only then can you determine whether the price is fair and a better choice than selecting a low-price option that ultimately costs more in dollars and reputation over time.
Why Considering Value in a timekeeping system is Better than considering Price
Look for value in every area of the resell partnership, from hardware to software to vendor services. The cost per time clock or software license has no meaning without clear understanding of what you and your customers are getting in return. There are three hallmarks of value that you should see across all spheres of the time clock solution: flexibility, scalability, and reliability.
Why Accurate Employee Time Tracking is Critical for Accurate Payroll
The starting point for every time clock system of any value is its ability to capture and deliver accurate data to the payroll department. It must also have the ability to maintain that reliability as the business grows and gets more sophisticated with its payroll and scheduling business rules. And it needs to accommodate this growth without costs growing at the same rate.
Reliable, scalable, and flexible time clock solutions are critical to the financial well-being of the business and the health of its employee relations. Accurate employee time tracking data helps the company manage its labor costs and improve its productivity. Management will also find it difficult to keep employees happy if they aren’t receiving accurate paychecks.
The Cost of Choosing the Wrong Time Clock Partner
A time clock solution reseller can incur a number of hidden costs if they choose the wrong provider. Here are a few of the most significant hidden costs:
- High turnover of low quality time clocks. Constantly having to resell time clocks to your customers is short term thinking on how to provide value to your customers. They won’t appreciate constantly having to pay for new time clocks.
- Poor vendor support results in long resolution times for your IT team and your customers. There are direct and indirect costs to this. Deploying time clocks to customers that experience high down time means they have to collect employee attendance information via manual reporting as a work around. Any degree of manual time tracking brings risks and disadvantages your customers want to avoid by implementing an automated time tracking system. Customer frustration will fall back on your solution since your system is the one in front of the customer.
- Vendors that nickel– and– dime you. Nobody likes feeling surprised by their monthly bill or being charged for every question or contact. A nickel– and– dime pricing method cuts into your profitability unless you pass all those costs to your customers, who also won’t appreciate unpredictable monthly bills. It also makes it difficult for you to forecast the profitability of your resale program. A high-value provider will have a clear, mutually advantageous pricing model that makes it easy for you to set your own fair resale pricing.
A vendor with hardware, software, and a partner support system that supplies significant benefits, adds to the value of your offering. It helps you keep customers happy while improving their ROI on your offering. Your customers will be less interested in looking for workforce management alternatives.
Assessing Time Clock Hardware
Time clocks are a large part of the price for all complete employee time data collection solutions. Manage your costs by reselling time clocks with a proven longer usable life.
Timekeeping System Durability
A low quality time clock will only last two to three years. In contrast, a high-quality time clock can last up to a decade. The physical design of the time clock, plus the materials and construction are critical to building a durable time clock.
The vendor’s time clock selection should include options made for difficult environments that require higher durability standards. Construction sites and factories running a lot of machinery have time clock needs that an office time clock doesn’t, such as its ability to operate in high and low temperature environments and how well the clock encasing protects from dirt and debris getting inside.
A Time Clock with High Value Features
The features added to the time clock defines how flexible it can be over time. Look for time clock hardware features that:
- Can serve multiple functions. For example, a high-definition, wide touch screen provides employees with a great user experience for daily punches. The screen can also be used to deliver additional services at the time clock, such as company messages or the ability to view employee worked hours or upcoming schedule.
- Are powerful enough to handle more functionality than your customer needs right now. The time clock should have fast processing power and good memory storage so it can accommodate employee growth without degrading the quality of the user experience. It should also be ready to handle new hardware and software technologies that expand its functionality, like being able to handle a biometric reader.
- Makes life better for your customers.The time clocks should be easy to install and connect to the network . Look for energy efficient time clocks, like one that has a sleeper, power saver mode it goes into when not being used. This type of functionality helps your customers keep their energy consumption and bills low.
Assessing Time Clock Software Solutions
The value keys to look for in time clock software are its flexibility, ease of integration and updates, and support.
Sophisticated Employee Time and Attendance Tracking Software
The time clock software must be configurable in a variety of ways to meet various customer business rules and priorities. It also must be easy to deploy configurations to new time clocks and to reconfigure as business rules change.
As a business grows and wants to improve its workforce management, it often has employees who wear a number of hats. The time clock software should be easily configurable to allow employees to select which department or role they’re clocking in to work. This is especially valuable when their different roles have different pay rates and the business wants to track labor costs by department.
Using the time clock software to enforce meal and break time is another common evolution for businesses that want to get more sophisticated with their employee time tracking system. When break time is enforced at the time clock, the software will automatically record the unpaid break time required by law, even if an employee clocks in early. More advanced software will deliver a notice to the employee at the clock screen, reminding them that they will not be paid for the break time, even if they clock in early. Going one step further, a sophisticated time clock system will collect an employee attestation, at the clock, that they’re not clocking in early from break at the behest of their manager to work during break time.
Seamless, Reliable, Secure Data Integration
The vendor should have an extensive collection of tools along with substantial support to build integration easily to your system. The integration should enable two-way data flow. Both the time clock and your solution should share information and provide maximum benefits to customers as a genuinely integrated employee management solution.
The two-way data integration could allow displaying scheduling or payroll that employees can see on the clock. Delivering actual hours worked from the time clock software and sharing that with your workforce solution can improve your customers’ ability to manage employees. The real work hours data can improve the accuracy of your solution’s predictive analysis that helps your customers staff appropriately.
The Timekeeping System That Easily Manages Updates
Upgrading a fleet of time clocks with an operating system or software update, or security patch should not be a time consuming chore. An over the air (OTA) model that pushes updates out to the time clocks is the most cost efficient and scalable solution.
Furthermore, there are high costs in time and resource effort to managing hardware across an enterprise when the devices aren’t running with the same software version and updates.
Likewise, it should be easy to deploy existing time clock updates to new time clocks. An advanced time clock software system will include a middleware layer that handles many of these tasks. For example, a software that allows for a clock to be put into multiple logical groups can easily deploy the right clock configurations to a subset of time clocks. Grouping time clocks by location ensures that the time zone and language settings are right no matter where the time clock is installed.
Perks of Having an Accessible Support System From Your Time Clock Vendor
The vendor should provide multiple access channels for your IT team to contact its support team quickly. Email and phone contact is the bare minimum. Additional communication channels such as chatbots and dedicated account managers from the provider add more value.
services, such as 24-hour time clock customer support in the instance of when a time clock errors occurs, the vendor will have a professional trained team that will be ready to find a solution.
A time clock provider that delivers high value support will handle all aspects of provisioning for you. From managing inventory and configuration, so a clock can be quickly deployed, to handling returns and replacements, your clock resale partner should take responsibility for it all. Being partners with a high-quality time clock vendor means your reselling journey will be equipped to meet the needs of your clients.
Create the Pricing Strategy in Your Business
You also want the flexibility to package how you resale the hardware, software, and services you’re reselling. A time clock system vendor that ties you down into fixed resale packages isn’t thinking about how you want to manage your business. A vendor that provides flexible pricing lets you decide whether you want to resell time clocks outright or lease the clocks you buy from ATS to your customers. It lets you bundle the vendor’s value-added services into a single monthly license fee or resell as optional packages. It lets you change your mind on how you package billing for the system along the way.
Finding the Time Clock Vendor that Improves the Profitability of Your Workforce Management Solution
With reliability, flexibility and scalability across the entire solution – you get a high-value time clock system that helps you avoid hidden costs of reselling time clocks. A low price time clock system short on quality in even one of these three areas will skyrocket your costs and make the option an expensive one.
Choosing a time clock system filled with added benefits makes it almost inevitable that reselling it will be a profitable revenue channel for your company. Set up a call with an ATS consultant today and we can explore your high-value time clock system options.