Ask pretty much anyone what they think of Kronos, and you will probably hear something to the effect of “time clocks”. And it’s true – for the past 32 years, Kronos has been diligently carving its place in our country’s HR software market as the pre-eminent provider of time clocks, steadily amassing a customer base of some 30,000 “sticky” clients who have bought software licenses, installed in-house systems, and now continue to purchase or lease those celebrated time clocks. Despite the truth of this “time clock” calling card, however, there is still one important detail to Kronos which most people tend to overlook, and that is this: Kronos is pushing the frontier of Workforce Management.
Now, granted, the phrase “Workforce Management” isn’t quite one to strike a thrill into the hearts of Human Resources the globe over. The though of WFM tends to remind us of tedious and perfunctory HR tasks such as time and attendance, absence management, workforce scheduling, and workforce optimization. You may have noticed, however, that these mundane labor cost details, once grudgingly fulfilled, have now, with our current state of economy, become points of pivotal importance to a company’s success. Organizations everywhere are suddenly hastening to lower labor costs, ideally by utilizing workers more efficiently rather than giving them the boot. And what can best accomplish that? Workforce Management.
Throughout its career, Kronos has kept its customers hooked by progressively devising new things to sell them. In 1981, Kronos whipped out “The Totalizer” software, which learned pay rules, filtered hours in from the clocks, and ran payroll calculations; four years later, Kronos introduced a PC-based product. Scheduling capabilities appeared on the scene at the end of the ’80s. By the mid-’90s, Kronos added “activities”, which not only tracked a worker’s time, but the ways in which it was being spent and for what project. Absence management popped up in 2004. And let’s not forget the analytics.
Back around 2003, Kronos bought Motiv! from Best Software, a midmarket HRIS and Payroll software system. Kronos has since pumped out a quick handful of new versions, and the software has been installed in-house at upwards of 550 companies, each with an average of 1,500 employees, and, according to Kronos, half of which hadn’t been previous time clock customers. Then Kronos took a bigger step: adding software for hourly recruiting. After scoping out most every hourly recruiting vendor in the business, Kronos bought front-runner Unicru at the close of 2006, and then added Deploy in late 2007 when Unicru’s technical platform proved unsatisfactory. The two products were integrated to allow for assessments from Unicru and back-end ATS functionality from Deploy, and thereafter known as “Workforce Acquisition”.
These additions, both delivered as Software as a Service, really pushed Kronos into the spotlight of the hosting business spotlight first time. The products have left Kronos with two separate and unintegrated marketing lines: Workforce Central and Hiring, each with its own platform, interface, and means of execution.
Kronos will be reaping definite rewards from this new venture; the benefits of such an integration between WFM and hiring can be tremendous, and companies will be eager to buy in. Unicru’s traditional pull among customers was the ability to predict successful applicants based on a data comparison of assessment answers from previously successful employees – yet among many companies such as supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, and large retail chains, a winner was often just anyone who stuck out the job for an extended period of time. With Kronos’s new strategies of integration, a manager can now hire someone based on their “employee potential” (from Unicru) and the way they fit into the puzzle of which shifts are going uncovered (from WFM). It seems straightforward enough, but as anyone who’s done this kind of scheduling can tell you, it is a complex beast in its own right.
Furthermore, the new loyalties of both installed and subscription customers is spurring Kronos towards offering clients a greater variety of choices on how to pay, license, and implement their software, with options such as letting the vendor host the application remotely, or merely manage upgrades and maintenance. CEO Aron Ain is excited about the opportunities this opens up, not only to earn more consulting revenue but also to keep Kronos involved with its customers so that they will become well-versed in the products.
So again – Kronos. Time clocks aside, this company is an HR force to be reckoned with.