LPP Deutschland is part of LPP S.A., one of the fastest growing clothing companies in the Central and Eastern Europe region. LPP S.A. employs more than 20,000 people, is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, and has a network of over 1,700 stores in 29 countries.
The Challenge
With its modern fashion for women, men, and children, LPP Deutschland GmbH has its finger on the pulse of the times, inspiring millions of shoppers. Its Polish parent company, the LPP S.A. textile group, is one of the fastest growing fashion chain stores in the world. The company is primarily active in Eastern Europe and Asia. LPP has been successfully expanding into the important German market since 2014 with a network of 19 stores. At the start, the successful fashion brand still lacked the ideal tool for workforce scheduling and time recording.
»The managers were laboriously planning the deployment of staff in Excel«, says Funda Canal, Head of HR Management at Reserved. »They only documented deviations from the plan with negative time recording. At some point, there was paper chaos.« Four managers look after around 40 employees per store in an area of more than 2,000 square meters. Due to this size, but also because of the rapid growth, electronic time recording was urgently needed.
The Almato Solution
The fashion company therefore opted for ARGOS as an innovative workforce management system. It is used in all German Reserved stores on the PCs of the checkout system. As it is web-based and securely hosted by Almato, updates and back-ups run in the background. Employees can use the employee self-service to view their planned and actual times, record activities and submit absence requests. The application is characterized by an intuitive user interface. LPP is connected to the Almato service desk. It can be used to open support messages as tickets. The processing of these tickets is coordinated by a service manager.
The Success
With ARGOS, employees can be sure that their time data is always correctly evaluated. This increases transparency and satisfaction. Managers, in turn, have a tool that allows them to plan duty and shift schedules more clearly, quickly, and reliably. They save important time consumption and are better able to ensure that sufficient colleagues are available despite the high volume of customers.
»Of course, it took a little while to get used to a new electronic system at the beginning. But the store managers quickly understood how much ARGOS takes the pressure off them«, says Funda Canal. »Thanks to electronic time recording, errors are noticed more quickly. All changes to the process are clearly logged.«
ARGOS also reminds LPP when probationary periods or fixed-term employment contracts expire. With several hundred employees working for the company, this is very helpful.
On the company side, ARGOS makes it easier to evaluate reports on vacation and working hours at the Hamburg headquarters. Reserved avoids expensive overtime and unproductive idle time.
»We can analyze internal processes in depth and receive detailed quotas on absences due to illness, for example, or know how many hours our colleagues spend on training. We also have a clear overview of the number of remaining vacation days. We didn't have this type of analysis and control mechanism to optimize productivity in this form before. « In this way, ARGOS always provides a complete overview of resources and improves the basis for management decisions.
