Issue 6 2019

84 Acquisition International - Issue 6 2019 Nov18395 Time Management in the workplace is becoming increasingly difficult as more and more companies offer flexible hours and remote working opportunities. However, innovative company Elf Productivity Ltd may very well have the answer, as we found out when we spoke to Managing Director, Paul O’Brien. LF Productivity is a specialist provider of high quality attendance tracking and time attendance recording systems for the workplace. Established in 1982 the firm has been offering workforce management solutions for more than 35 years, using cutting-edge technology. With more than 400 customers with the very highest level of support, ELF Productivity is now one of the fastest growing time management organisations in the UK. Paul O’Brien is the Managing Director and is responsible for overall leadership and management, including account management, partnership and customer business development, customer success, and technology innovation. He tells us a little more about the rationale behind ELF Productivity’s offering. “Whilst clock cards remain a viable way of keeping track of employees there’s no question that they make great demands on your time,” he begins. “They need writing out weekly, collecting and replacing daily and of course, there’s the added hassle of the manual calculation of attended hours. All this data has to be transferred by hand to personnel records. In fact, it’s been estimated that this laborious task mounts up to a staggering 18 minutes per employee per week, and that’s time your business just doesn’t have to waste.” ELF’s Productivity’s hero product, Ceequel Time and Attendance, excels at reducing the time taken to just two minutes per employee. As authors of the world-renowned Ceequel ® Time and Attendance system, the Lancashire-based firm understands that such programmes need to fit seamlessly into a company’s already-existent management systems, which is why this revolutionary product utilises the power of the Microsoft SQL database, meaning it can be fully integrated into existing systems, ensuring that a true client-server solution can be delivered. “Even companies that no longer use time clocks can benefit from our software; many older systems are slow and clumsy and often didn’t deliver promised results even in their heyday,” continues Paul. “Ceequel promises to meet and exceed your expectations by granting you access to cutting-edge time management tools.” The Ceequel system also has another trick up its sleeve, with the added bonus of the Ceequel Access Control Software, which has also revolutionised the way in which hundreds of companies also keep their sites secure. “Ceequel Access Control systems offer a fully integrated solution for all access control needs by utilising the same ID cards and hardware as our Time and Attendance system. The data collected can be used exclusively for Access Control or in conjunction with Time and Company: Elf Productivity Ltd Time for Change E Attendance, Fire Register and Employee Tracking, thus removing the need for duplicate swipes.” Such integration means that employee data is stored once in one database for all systems, making for a robust, secure database, where everything is connected to a single source. Once a leave date is entered into any one of the modules, the employee’s card will prohibit access as of that date. Every Ceequel access point can be given a list of personnel who are allowed access and each of these individuals can have their access limited to a specific time of day, days of the week or even days within the year. “Where required, access times can be linked to the employees’ shift patterns themselves and access can be restricted when an employee returns to work after a particular type of absence, something of particular use within the food industry.” Access tables are controlled from a central point, so clients can add and remove persons with a minimum amount of clerical effort. All access permissions can be set up within time and attendance and these can be based on an individual, group or shift pattern basis making our access control system a truly unique and fully integrated solution. “Since you’re benefiting from the very latest technology it will run efficiently over your Local or Wide Area Network. Our extensive industry experience means that we can provide the very best support to our loyal client base, many of whom have been with us since the very first incarnations of Ceequel.”