LS Retail say Timesheets is the obvious choice for teams working in Jira
Tempo Team
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. While they are based in Kópavogur, Iceland, LS Retail also have offices in the USA, Dubai, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Discover how one software implementation, Timesheets by Tempo, helped LS Retail to save time, speed up their training processes, and make their customers happier.
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 Timesheets by Tempo, which his team discovered internally from a consulting team within the company, which was using Timesheets to track time in Jira and report on it.
Sigurðsson 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 Timesheets, Sigurðsson 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.
No-one wants to spend their days on the thrilling task of manually entering in their hours for every project – so Sigurðsson and the team were happy to discover Timesheets and how it can seamlessly integrate into Jira to automatically create timesheets based on their issues. Since implementing Timesheets, they have been using it continously for more two years.
Sigurðsson said: “With Tempo Timesheets, the barrier is very low so we don’t have any problems. Users just log their hours without any difficulties.”
Solutions
Sigurðsson’s department implemented 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.
Timesheets by Tempo supports the simplicity that he likes. By having a direct connection in Timesheets 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 Timesheets supports. In addition, their team is now using Jira Service Desk.
Sigurðsson’s team specifically and frequently uses the following in 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.
Results
According to Sigurðsson, the main benefits of using Timesheets relates 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, Timesheets has increased employee satisfaction after its implementation.
On using Jira and Tempo together, Sigurðsson said: “Tempo's main strength is its simplicity when using it, which makes life easier for my employees. I like systems that employees simply use without problems. For companies using Jira, as we are, Tempo is an obvious choice.
Interested in reading more? Find more of Tempo's success stories here