Online vs desktop employee scheduling software
Why would you choose an online (web application) to do employee scheduling? There are a number of different scheduling software packages available. They fall into one of two different categories, online or desktop applications. Online employee scheduling programs (like Web Work Schedules) have several benefits over desktop applications.
If you choose a desktop application, you have to decide where you will install it. Do you install it at your computer at work, your personal computer? Can you install it on both, or do you need to buy two copies to use it on two computers? If more than one person creates schedules, do they both have access to the same computer to create schedules. If it is only installed on a computer at work, then you have to be at work to make any change, no matter how small it is. How do your employees view the schedule? Do you print it out and post it at work? Hopefully you would be able to email it out to your employees. Access to the software is not an issue with Web Work Schedules. As long as you have an internet connection, you, and all of your employees, can access the software.
How often do you backup your computer? There are two kinds of people who use computers, those who have lost data and those who will lose data. With a desktop solution, you are responsible for backing up your data. If your hard drive crashes, and you don't have a back up, you will lose all of your data. With Web Work Schedules we back up your data every day so you will never lose any data.
With a desktop solution, you still have the same amount of paperwork to deal with. You will still have a bulletin board full of time off requests, notes about changes to availability, etc. You will have to take these requests and enter them into the desktop application. This is avoided in Web Work Schedules by allowing your employees to make these requests directly in the application. This saves you time by reducing the amount of work you have to do.
Desktop applications are typically updated once a year. To get the bug fixes or new features, you have to buy the new version of the software. One of the reasons for this is that a lot of testing should be done to ensure that it works on every possible combination of computers available. Not all software companies test as well as they should and some software just will not work on your machine because of a conflict with some other program. With Web Work Schedules we can publish our updates much faster. Our users will get immediate access to the new features and bug fixes as soon as they are finished. Part of that is due to the nature of web applications. The software is installed on our servers which we have full control over. We don't have to worry about it conflicting with any other software since it is installed on our servers. We have to make sure it works with your web browser, but this is a much smaller set of tests to perform compared to desktop applications.
Web Work Schedules is a better solution for your employee scheduling needs than a desktop application.
Posted at 12:50PM Oct 02, 2007 by Chris in General |