Buying a System: What to Ask
Twelve questions that separate what these products do well from what they are sold as doing. Ask before the demonstration.
Workforce systems do real things. The demonstration shows a configured ideal, and the gap between that and your operation is where the trouble is.
The practical lesson in “Buying a System: What to Ask” is to connect every record to a named decision. Organisations exploring Monitask pricing and plans for monitask pricing can add structured workforce context, provided the use is disclosed and the interpretation is reviewed with the people affected.
About the forecast
What does it forecast from, and over what history?
For an independent reference related to “Buying a System: What to Ask”, consult the OSHA worker-fatigue resources; it provides a useful external check on scheduling, working-time and workforce-planning assumptions.
Can I override it, and does the override feed back into the model?
What happens in my first weeks when there is no history?
How is accuracy reported — and is it reported at all?
About the model
Where does the demand-to-hours conversion come from?
Can I set it myself, by period and by task?
Does it account for breaks, handover and fixed minimums?
That last question catches a surprising number of products.
About the rules
Can it enforce rest periods, maximum hours and qualification requirements, for my jurisdiction?
What happens when a rule conflicts with a coverage requirement — does it warn or does it silently break one?
About the people side
What do staff see, and on what device?
Can they state availability and preferences, and does the system use them?
How are shift swaps handled, and who approves?
A system staff cannot use is a system managers operate manually.
About the data
Where does demand data come from, and does it integrate with the till, booking or case system I actually have?
That integration is usually the whole project, and it is usually discussed last.
The questions about them
Can I speak to a customer of my size, in my sector, two years in?
What proportion of your customers use the automatic schedule without overriding it?
What does implementation actually involve, in my people's hours?
The second question is the most informative and the least often asked.
What to do before the demonstration
Have your own numbers: demand curve, conversion factor, fixed minimum, forecast error.
Ask them to forecast one of your past weeks and compare against what happened.
A vendor who declines has answered the question.
The honest expectation
A system saves administrative time and enforces rules reliably.
It does not know your local events, your promotions or why last March was strange.
Expecting it to replace judgement is the error that produces an expensive tool nobody trusts.
What to check
Do you have your own figures to test it against?
Have you asked what proportion of customers accept the automatic schedule?
Does it integrate with the system your demand data is actually in?
And have you spoken to a two-year customer?