Product Description

SOPRANO StaffMatch harnesses the power of SMS to automate a costly and time-consuming business process – the allocation of shifts to shifts to a rostered, casual or part-time workforce.

With SOPRANO StaffMatch there are no more costly, time-consuming ring-arounds. You simply define your shift (date, time, location, duration), set the type and number of positions you need to fill (eg 2 chefs, 3 bar staff, 1 security person) and press send. SOPRANO StaffMatch will send an SMS message to all staff in your pool that meet the criteria you have selected. Your staff simply reply with a ‘y’ or a ‘n’ and SOPRANO StaffMatch allocates the shift to the first ‘y’ response(s) received and sends an acknowledgement to the successful bidder(s). SOPRANO StaffMatch also advises unsuccessful bidders accordingly.

The orderer has full visibility (real time) of the staff who answered ‘y’, ‘n’ or who provided no response at all.

Features

• Ability to create and update employee profiles including qualifications and preferences

• Create an ‘order’ based on role, qualifications or employee cost 

• Shift allocation based on first to reply

• Customise responses to successful employees

• Customise response to unsuccessful employees

• Sophisticated reporting features

Benefits

• Fairer for your staff as all eligible employees are offered a shift rather than just the ones that can be contacted by phone in the time available. Thereby avoiding the ‘usual suspects’ or ‘favourites’ syndrome.

• More productivity from your managers. A job that could take hours doing the traditional ‘phone-around’ can now be done in minutes thereby freeing up your management time for other duties.

• More cost effective because the cost of the SMS message is cheaper than a call to a mobile phone that may last several minutes (a typical call-to-mobile cost is a 25c flagfall plus 27c/min whereas the SMS message cost can be as little as 15c)

• More motivated staff. Staff that want to work are accepting the shifts.

• Our sophisticated reporting functions will allow you to determine your most responsive and least responsive employees

• SMS is discreet. This is important especially for night shift employees

SOPRANO Staff Match sample screen shots

This screen is used to create a new shift order. It captures key information such as:

• Date and time of shift 

• Workplace location

• Number of positions required to fill the shift

• The role to be filled

Innovation

SOPRANO StaffMatch demonstrates innovation by streamlining a tedious business process using communication technology (SMS) that is pervasive. In Australia in 2006 over 7 billion SMS messages were sent yet it remains under-utilised as a business tool.

SOPRANO StaffMatch goes beyond broadcast SMS (for marketing and notifications) by offering the only fully featured application that disseminates offers, interprets responses, allocates shifts and confirms shifts automatically using SMS messaging. SOPRANO StaffMatch manages a multi-session 2 way SMS interaction to achieve this innovative automation.

SOPRANO had to overcome some significant technical hurdles in order to achieve the desired application performance outcomes and also to separate StaffMatch from any potential competitor. These technical innovations include:

1) Response Matching:

The problem: How to match responses from an individual who is offered multiple shifts with overlapping validity.
 Soprano Solution: Implemented a server based persistent session tracking technology to resolve responses from a non-session based bearer (SMS, MMS, Email) to resolve to the correct shift.

2) Profiling

The problem: How to identify which staff are available for a particular shift.
Soprano solution: Implemented a profiling algorithm to identify from the shift details those employees that are available based on a series of parameters including but not limited to role, qualifications, preferred work times, cost, priority, accumulated work hours, accumulated overtime.

3). Offer Control

The problem: When there are large numbers of available staff it is not always appropriate to offer shifts to all of them.
Soprano Solution: SOPRANO StaffMatch allows the user to control the number of offers to be sent by setting a batch size. If the offer remains unfilled then further batches will continue to be sent, at user defined time intervals, until all positions are filled.

Performance

SOPRANO StaffMatch is an enterprise quality application that is deployed using the Software as a Service model. That is, it is delivered over the Internet and accessed via a web browser. The end user does not need to download any software or install any hardware. As such the user always has access to the latest version of the software. The application is served from a Tier 1, carrier-grade data centre with a 99.9% service uptime guarantee.

SOPRANO StaffMatch has been written in Java and complies with Sun Microsystems’ 100% Pure Java standard.

Staff Match generates real benefits to users as exemplified by the following quotes from customers.

“SOPRANO StaffMatch means we get our shifts filled with a couple of mouse clicks. No more spending hours ringing around chasing people to staff our promotional activities!" David Smith, Promotions Manager, Australian Radio Network

“We have been using SOPRANO Staff Match for the past two months. During this time Staff Match has reduced the number of phone calls and has streamlined the shift replacement process. Recently I had four shifts requested I had replaced all four shifts within 3 minutes of sending out the first SMS. This would normally have taken at least 15 minutes. Staff Match has allowed me more time to spend on other projects where before this was not possible.” Mandy Belfrage, OTC Relief Coordinator, National Pharmacies

Potential

SOPRANO StaffMatch is a productivity tool with benefits for both small and large organisations. The ability to offer this sophisticated software to customers via a “Software as a Service” model allows the product to be adopted widely and across borders without the need for multiple installations.

We estimate that there are more than 10,000 employers in Australia with more than 50 staff and they represent the addressable market. The pervasiveness of SMS ensures that all employees can access the offers that are made via SMS. 

The SOPRANO StaffMatch interfaces are simple and intuitive to use and therefore, users require only a minimal amount of training.

The potential for Staff Match is very high especially in those industries where there is a large, shift-based, casual workforce. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 21% of all employees are now employed on a casual basis and this figure is rising. Likely target industries would include:

It is SOPRANO’s intention to commence marketing SOPRANO StaffMatch internationally in the second half of 2007. To minimise localisation issues and also to contain support costs the initial focus will be on English speaking countries only.