printer friendly version

Mobile workforce management integrated with payroll

Towards the end of 2021, Econz Wireless, a provider of mobile workforce management solutions, announced the integration of the company’s mobile workforce management solution with PaySpace, a human resources information systems (HRIS) and payroll company with operations throughout Africa.

The partnership will allow mutual customers to take advantage of a bidirectional integration between the Econz Wireless Timecard mobile applications and PaySpace’s payroll platform. “This will provide a true ‘mobile punch to payroll’ offering for remote field staff across multiple verticals throughout Africa,” says Chantelle Maartens, Econz director of sales. “Regardless of size of the business or vertical, it takes a lot of effort to efficiently manage field employees’ time, attendance, activities and GPS locations; to accurately collect remote timesheets for payroll approvals.

“The relationship between Econz and PaySpace streamlines company workflow, paper and payroll processes for the field staff, supervisors, payroll managers and other office staff, allowing them to work on other productive activities. This sustains optimal company growth while ensuring cost savings for the business.”

The seamless integration built by the Econz development team also owes its success to PaySpace having published web service APIs to allow for bidirection data within the PaySpace platform including employee on-boarding, payrate transfer, time and attendance information, leave, holidays and more.

Econz offers a cloud service where its data is securely stored and PaySpace offers the same option, providing secure APIs (application programming interfaces) to its cloud-based servers that allow for uploading and payment based on each worker’s data (after the company has approved the payment, of course).

Save more than the cost

Speaking to Hi-Tech Security Solutions, Maartens and Harry A. Lane, VP for global sales at Econz, said the company is continually improving its apps to reduce the manual time required to manage workforces while increasing its efficiency as well as the accuracy of billing for hours worked. The money saved will easily cover the cost of the subscription and more.

One of the enhancements has been to lower the entry level of devices that can be used by the workforce, while also reducing the data required by remote operators. They estimate the app uses less than 20 MB per month in data and it works in offline mode so that in areas where there is no cellular coverage (or if electricity blackouts bring communications down), the data is stored on the device and synchronised once connected.

Depending on the customer requirements, the apps can use photo verification for checking in as well as GPS tracking. One customer in southern Africa has saved money on its guarding component (it employs over 3500&Nbsp;guards), because supervisors can cut travel costs to check up on remote workers. They can know where anyone is at all times and generate reports showing who worked for how many hours and where they were etc.

Technicians can take before and after photos to show they have completed their remote work while drivers can be tracked via GPS to make sure they don’t make any detours. Even government workers can log issues or canvass people and fill in forms on their devices immediately with full reporting available to their departments.

The app can also be used to capture Covid information from workers, with alerts being sent to the relevant party should a health issue be detected.

Layers of approval and security

While the data captured by the Econz app can be immediately synchronised with the PaySpace servers. Maartens notes that companies can set up to five layers of approvals before any payments are made. For example, the immediate supervisor can examine the reports with all time, photographic and GPS data on their laptop or tablet and approve it before it goes to the next person for approval and so on.

In addition, Lane says verticals with specific needs can have the interfaces and functionality customised to meet specific needs. The company works with customers from the pre-sales stage to the rollout to ensure there is no disruption to the business by switching to digital time and workforce management.

Share this article:

Further reading: