CASE STUDY
Cloughjordan House
A CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
hospitality
INDUSTRY
50+
EMPLOYEES
1
Location
July 2016
USER SINCE
Down to Earth Charm Meets State-of-the-Art Management
Cloughjordan House dates all the way back to Medieval times. The year 1214, to be precise. And Irish history is everywhere you look. In 1922, during the Civil War, Free State soldiers were billeted here. Evidence of their target practice can even be seen on an ancient tree in the grounds!
Built in the style of a French chateau, covered in colourful Virginia creeper and set in the lush countryside of North Tipperary, today it’s the ideal location for weddings, relaxing weekends and corporate meetings and retreats, or for attending the establishment’s renowned cookery courses. Cloughjordan House has won many awards and accolades for the quality of its service.
Whatever the occasion, fifty members of staff see to it that guests and visitors are always delighted with the offering. And that takes a lot of careful management and planning, not least with respect to staff scheduling, attendance and payroll.
The Challenge
For many years these processes were all handled manually, as is the case in many similar hospitality businesses. Staff scheduling was done on a basic spreadsheet, without any costings. The management then emailed the spreadsheet to all the staff. At the end of the week the staff would then send back a record of the hours they had actually worked back to management by email. This of course left plenty of scope for error.
“There was no clock-in and clock-out. We had to add everything up on a calculator. It was definitely a hassle,” says Sarah Baker, Director, Cloughjordan House.
Doing the weekly payroll was therefore quite a chore. For a staff of fifty, that involves a lot of effort.
The Solution
Then, in July 2016 Cloughjordan House heard about Bizimply. Since then, everything runs much more smoothly and with a lot less effort.
“Just from a scheduling point of view, it was easier to drag and drop shifts onto the roster. It’s much quicker, particularly when you are copying weeks you did previously,” comments Sarah.
But the benefits go much further.
Bizimply enables Cloughjordan House to get an immediate visual impression on key indicators for the business. These include real-time indicators: “We get a very good visual on where people are, and what the costs are. When I’m not at work, I can see who’s working, who’s clocked in – it gives me great peace of mind,” says Sarah.
In addition, managers can see trends over time, giving them greater insight that allows them to manage the business more effectively: “I love the graph between scheduled versus actual hours and the bottom-line figure for costs. We weren’t getting that before,” adds Sarah.
Finally, Bizimply has simplified payroll accounting. “Not having to add up the hours at the end of the week manually is a great time-saver, and it means staff get the wages they are actually due. This increases satisfaction all round,” concludes Sarah.