to let people trade and sign‐up for shifts on their own. Even if we had compromised on this point and went with a desktop solution, we’d still be left with our schedule available in only one place, on a single computer. We then considered the possibility of running our own server and building some type of custom online database application. It quickly became appar‐ ent, however, that even if we could do this it would be expensive and difficult to maintain.
So we started looking into some of the newer SaaS (software as a service) systems that were on the market.
These systems use an online ‘cloud‐ computing’ model that would allow our people to access and use a com‐
puter program just the way they would use a website. By having our schedule online we could achieve our goal of having only one unique schedule. This meant that the only information some‐ one could look at would be the right information, and not some print out or PDF of an older schedule. With an online system all changes made to the schedule would be automatically updated in real‐time and made view‐ able 24 hours a day from any computer or Smartphone connected to the Internet.
The idea of not having our schedule only on a single computer at the station gave us incredible peace of mind. Even our “work‐in‐progress” schedule could be online. I recall one time when our IT guys wiped out our station computers for system maintenance and inadver‐ tently trashed our schedule. Had our schedule been online that would have never been an issue.
were for dates several months out. We first considered a desktop sched‐ uling application. Although it seemed that this would work better than our current spreadsheet system, it would still require a lot of man‐hours to enter availability and manage the various scheduling changes. This kind of work‐ load was yet another headache we wanted to get away from. We wanted
Deciding to go online with our sched‐ ule and getting away from a paper sys‐ tem was an easy one; deciding which online scheduling system to go with was another task altogether. As part of our research and due diligence, and with cost being a factor, we narrowed down our options to three different online scheduling systems.
We then did something that I strong‐ ly suggest for everyone; we set up fully working demos of each product with our own schedule and members and really gave each one a thorough test‐
drive. While some systems took longer to set up than others, the process of getting these online schedules to look like our existing schedule really helped us learn a lot about each product and each vendor.
We wanted a true web‐based sys‐ tem. We didn’t want to worry about the technical aspects of needing to download and install some kind of client‐end software on each of our member’s computers. On the same vein, we wanted a system with a focus on user‐friendliness. We had some members who were not very computer savvy and they were not excited about learning a new computer‐based sched‐ uling system. So we needed to make sure we found a system that was not only easy to learn but also easy to teach. I wasn’t looking to transition from being a full‐time scheduling guy to a full‐time tech support guy. It took me two months to test drive each of the competing systems and talk to their various references. In hind‐ sight I’m very glad that I put this much effort into the evaluation process because when I made the decision to
go with Aladtec’s EMS Manager (
www.aladtec.com), I was absolutely certain that I had chosen a system that would meet our needs. The last thing I wanted was to train all the employees in on a new system and then six months down the road realize it would‐ n’t work for us.
Once we had chosen EMS Manager, we began working on our implementa‐ tion and rollout plan. We estimated that it would take two months to train our staff and migrate over completely to the new system.
As soon as we started training our staff, we were blown away with how fast and easy the transition was. Throughout the entire process the EMS Manager customer service and tech support was excellent. Their peo‐ ple really helped make the transition much easier than I expected. In the first four days, 90% of our staff was already trained‐in. We actually had all our data entered and everyone up to speed and switched over in only two weeks. We couldn’t believe it, in only two weeks we had gone entirely digital and paper‐
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