Staff scheduling… it’s easy, right? How hard can it possibly be to schedule a few staff members for your business? Well, it depends on the business. Staff scheduling is as unique as the person doing it, and blanket features rarely truly meet the needs of a business – and its people. Offering limited features to our customers was never an option, no matter what Erik and Anthony thought in the beginning…
The calls were from business owners all over the place – from many different backgrounds, and many different businesses. I can remember compiling a list on my desk of the people using our software after just a few days:
- A fine dining restaurant in Maryland
- A quick service restaurant in Oklahoma
- A bar in northern Canada
- A retail shop in eastern Germany
- A diner in Maine
- A YMCA in California
- An ice cream parlor in North Dakota
So, I did what any sane business owner should do… I called them. I asked a simple question, “What can TimeForge do better for you?” The answers were all over the place. I had no inkling that our simple scheduling software was about to blow up. Simple scheduling was the start, not the end, of what our customers needed.
Erik and I had discussed how we were going to launch TimeForge. I remember it very vividly. Running TimeForge was going to be easy – we were going to hire mostly developers. No sales reps were needed (the software would sell itself), and customer service would be handled via email and support forums. After all, why do you need customer service personnel on a product that’s dead easy to use, and only does scheduling? Wow, were we wrong!
TimeForge has evolved, and will continue to evolve to encompass the needs of our users. We live and breath our three tenants of software development for our labor management software package:
- Make sure staff members stay in the loop on everything the business does.
- Keep managers happy and on the floor – keep them out of the back office.
- Be flexible, so that the software can change as needed for our customers.
Have you tried TimeForge recently? Sign up for a free trial to see how our amazing software can help run your restaurant, retail, or hospitality business!
Read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three! Part Five is coming…
