CASE STUDY
Workforce Analytics: Scaling in-house expertise and ML into digital products for workforce management
Bringing innovative ideas to life with product design, UX and software engineering.
At a glance
DiUS was engaged by Workforce Analytics to support the software development, strategic planning and MVP execution of two new products. The first product, Roster Right, is able to construct the best mathematical roster possible for a client based on their business rules at the lowest legal cost. The second, Pay Review, is a SaaS product that automates the manual review of payroll audits and compliance checking.
Our services:
Meet Workforce Analytics
Workforce Analytics is a suite of products designed to use factual insights from business data to improve profitability and productivity. Using sophisticated maths and data science as well as cutting-edge tech such as AI and Machine Learning, Workforce Analytics partners with its clients to solve complex workforce problems and achieve higher engagement levels.
The challenge
Turning ideas and algorithms into interactive tools
With never-before-seen algorithms that could solve the problems of roster compliance and wage theft for Australian businesses, Workforce Analytics already had fully developed product concepts. However, it needed to find a way in which to bring these innovative ideas to life using best practice software design and development.
DiUS was brought in to act as Workforce Analytics’ technical advisor to deliver capability uplift, establish agile ways of working and share subject matter expertise, as this was the customer’s first experience of software engineering and digital product development.
Workforce Analytics - Roster Right
Maximise productivity and profitability whilst delivering 100% legally compliant rosters that meet all business requirements
What we did
Unpack the problem, build the right thing
DiUS collaborated with Workforce Analytics to unpack the complex nature of both Roster Right and Pay Review in order to visualise how they could work as digital products. Roster Right was a mathematical equation that could create compliant yet optimised rosters based on a set of variables. Pay Review was a framework that could revolutionise the way companies looked at payroll data. Both products and mathematical algorithms already existed; DiUS was engaged to support the software development part of the business and facilitate scale in terms of number of clients, Awards and complexity of the data management.
For Roster Right, DiUS kicked off with an inception workshop to understand the business model and the problems Workforce Analytics wanted to solve. This helped define the need to design and build a user interface that could generate optimised rosters, which were not only legally compliant but would also provide a cost saving for Workforce Analytics’ customers.
There was additional complexity in codifying Awards, which contain some clauses that are open to legal interpretation and require a lot of flexibility in the data collection. A significant amount of time and consideration went into determining the input fields that captured clauses from both the Awards and business rules that are attributable to rostering.
Pay Review was an equally unique opportunity. Workforce Analytics’ existing solution was managed internally and relied predominantly on mathematical code that was only able to be accessed and updated by certain consultants within the business. So in order for it to scale and grow, DiUS helped Workforce Analytics reimagine the solution into a cloud-based SaaS product, where customers could input payroll data into a series of templates. The automated nature of Pay Review then reviews this payroll data and identifies any over or under payments, mitigating the problems that come with manual processes completed by humans.
Thanks to DiUS’ experience in end-to-end product development as well as the subject matter expertise of Workforce Analytics, a backlog of essential features and functionality was established, which could then be reviewed and prioritised accordingly.
“I have worked with DiUS for over six years now and would highly recommend them to any business who is looking for strategic support on planning and executing new software or to a business wanting to scale its product.”
– Lisa Spiden, CEO and Founder, Workforce Analytics
Workforce Analytics - Pay Review
Quantify the impact of non-compliance and correct if it's occurred
Results for Workforce Analytics
Imparting long-term capability and capacity
Roster Right started off life as an internal tool that Workforce Analytics used to produce rosters for its customers. But by showcasing an easy-to-use layout and interface around this simple solution, DiUS has allowed Workforce Analytics to scale its operation and provide a better service to customers.
The development of Roster Right and the value of the project also enabled Workforce Analytics to build other solutions in its suite of products. For example, DiUS helped Workforce Analytics to reimagine and recalibrate another one of its in-house algorithms into a SaaS product – Pay Review.
Following the success of both engagements, Workforce Analytics now has the skills, knowhow and capacity to pursue a digital-focused vision, where world-leading technologies and methodologies can help improve its customers’ business performance. DiUS is proud to have taken the customer on its first software development journey, empowering Workforce Analytics to build its own products with uplifted internal capability and new ways of working.
When DiUS first partnered with Workforce Analytics, it was very much in the start-up phase of business. However, forecasts for FY22 predict turnover will be 700% higher since our initial engagement, with Workforce Analytics aiming to become an eight-figure company by FY24.
“They have been wonderful to work with, very knowledgeable, reliable and helped us build some awesome software. We genuinely felt like DiUS was a part of our own internal team for the time they worked with us. We will continue to use DiUS as we need additional resources to support our own internal software development team.”
– Lisa Spiden, CEO and Founder, Workforce Analytics