About LS Retail
LS Retail is a world-leading provider of business software solutions for retail and hospitality companies of all sizes, including Dunkin Donuts, Hershey's, Victoria Secret, and Radio Shack.
For over two decades, LS Retail has been developing market leading software solutions that are currently used by 62,000 retailers and restaurateurs across 130 countries, with support that exceeds 260 certified Microsoft and LS Retail partners in over 75 countries.
Their solutions manage complex operational requirements of organizations within diverse areas, for instance fashion, electronics, furniture, and duty free.
Today, LS Retail has around 220 employees working in their offices. The company is based in Kópavogur, Iceland, but they also have offices in the USA, Dubai, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Background
Sigurjón Atli Sigurðsson is a development manager in the LS Nav department at LS Retail. He is responsible for facilitating his team's daily work—around 40 team members—and for supporting his team so they can build and release great products.
Around three years ago, LS Retail started using JIRA for their software teams. Soon after, the team implemented Tempo Timesheets, which his team discovered internally from a consulting team within the company, which was using Tempo Timesheets to track time in JIRA and report on it.
Sigurjón uses Tempo Timesheets to track and report on his team's activities and work in JIRA, and to manage the timesheet approval process. He uses this information to compare estimated versus actual time spent on projects and releases and to make better estimations when planning.
Challenges
Before implementing Tempo Timesheets, Sigurjón said that their previous tool was a legacy system, which was unnecessarily complex and difficult to use. The company received a lot of negative feedback on this system, which carried a steep learning curve. Time tracking is not their favorite task, so they needed a solution that was easy to use and that would encourage their team to use daily.
After discovering Tempo Timesheets' seamless integration with JIRA and its benefits, Sigurjón and his team have been using the solution for more than two years.
With Tempo Timesheets, the barrier is very low so we don’t have any problems. Users just log their hours without any difficulties.
Solutions
Sigurjón's department implemented Tempo Timesheets for payroll, tracking the progress of work inside JIRA, monitoring team workload, tracking internal time, such as sick days and time off, and for vacation planning. Tempo supports the simplicity that he likes. By having a direct connection in Tempo with the JIRA issues that his team is working on, time registration is frequent, which provides accurate, real-time data, and the increased efficiency saves them time and cost.
His team uses JIRA Software extensively, as their work is based on Scrum, which Tempo supports. In addition, their team is now using JIRA Service Desk.
Sigurjón's team specifically and frequently uses the following in Tempo Timesheets:
- Tempo scheduler - His team closes time registration after each week. It helps them to ensure that team members do not fall behind on their registration, and it minimizes the work for team leads.
- Timesheet approval process - They have implemented monthly timesheet approvals. It provides their team leads with a good overview of their team's workload, and enables them to make adjustments if needed.
- Vacation planning - They use the planned time approval process for vacation planning, so team leads are notified when a team member requests vacation, which helps to ensure that teams are properly staffed during vacation seasons.
Benefits
According to Sigurjón, the main benefits of using Tempo Timesheets relate to its simplicity and the reduction in time spent using the product as compared to the previous product they used, as well as in time saved in training new employees. Also, Tempo Timesheets has increased employee satisfaction after its implementation.
On using JIRA and Tempo together, Sigurjón said:
Tempo's main strength is its simplicity when using it, which makes life easier for myemployees. I like systems that employees simply use without problems. For companies using JIRA, as we are, Tempo is an obvious choice.
“Tempo’s main strength is its simplicity. For companies using JIRA, Tempo is an obvious choice” - Sigurjón, LS Retail
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