Member Article

NOW Consultancy Helps Hotel Group Clock Onto Benefits Of Cloud-Based Staff Scheduling System

A Leeds leisure and retail change management expert has completed the roll out of a cloud-based, staffing scheduling software system for Nidd Hall Hotel owners, Warner Leisure Hotels.

The project, which was delivered on time and on budget, saw Olga Wormald’s NOW Consultancy installing “Rotaready” in the group’s 13 hotels, as well as designing and implementing an in-house training programme.

Warner’s IT director Andy Maynard said: “Following a successful trial of Rotaready, which is a workforce scheduling system, NOW Consultancy was asked to project manage the Warner rollout.

“Following time spent in the trial location to understand our business drivers, Sarah identified a number of areas of improvement and worked with all stakeholders to produce and implement a rollout plan.

“In addition to this, NOW Consultancy took on the responsibility of sourcing external trainers to support all inhouse training of the system. The roll-out was delivered on time and to budget.

“We now have better visibility of shift control enabling digital reporting against forecasting, better management of budgets and it gives us better governance for compliance.”

NOW Consultancy chief executive Olga Wormald said: “Having worked successfully with Warner Leisure Hotels parent company, Bourne Leisure, on a number of previous change management projects, we were tasked with implementing this latest one.

“The project presented a number of challenges, with the primary one being the geographical locations of the hotels from the Isle of Wight in the south, to Harrogate in the north, Chard in Somerset to the west and Lowestoft in Suffolk to the east.

“The first step was to map out the whole process and establish the existing capabilities of the individual hotels, which had to be adapted accordingly.

“We devised the sequencing of which hotels would go first, and worked hand-in-hand with the Rotaready team to develop the software roadmap for performance monitoring and delivered training programmes for all stakeholders.

“This was a major project for Rotaready and Warner Leisure Hotels, and I’m delighted to say it was delivered on time and on budget and is now living up to its expectations.”

Rotaready founder Jamie Cullen said: “NOW Consultancy had a large part to play in the successful implementation of Rotaready at Warner Leisure Hotels.

“Their support expedited the roll-out across all of Warner Leisure’s 14 properties, and the additional facilitation and support ensured the teams on the ground had full confidence from day one.

“NOW Consultancy were influential in collating and streamlining the additional changes to Warner Leisure’s business processes and with bringing together the stakeholders for the integration with payroll.

“Throughout the implementation, NOW Consultancy have been consistently effective, timely and professional and we very much hope to have the chance to work together in the near future.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mark Watts .