Our client is a leading multi-unit restaurant company that has been consistently recognized by FORTUNE magazine as one of America 's most admired companies. It operates and manages a portfolio of 1,500 restaurants across the United States.

Fluctuating customer turnout at our clients outlets forced managers to schedule their workforce to fit the ebb and flow of business on a daily, weekly and seasonal basis. The managers used an -in-house application to schedule labor. This application achieved around 85% efficiency, requiring manual intervention to complete unfulfilled tasks. The manual process was painstaking and time-consuming for both managers and staff. Additionally, increasing overtime and recruitment costs became a cause of concern for corporate executives.

Cognizant developed a robust scheduling application that allows managers to plan ahead and attain near-perfect efficiency in schedule generation. A wizard-based user interface was developed to guide the user intuitively through the application and reduce the number of input points.

The application allows managers to easily capture the parameters of each employee. The algorithm developed by Cognizant matches the staff's skills and availability and prioritized weekdays to projected needs, producing an optimum schedule. This allows managers to model various scenarios and compare the actual to the expected labor costs.

The application was integrated with POS allowing managers to enforce schedules to clock-in screens. As exceptions required managerial approval, overtime costs were reduced.

The reporting tool allows managers to create a variety of custom reports, such as schedule postings, overtime analysis and schedule and cost variances.

Today, Cognizant features in our clients "most preferred vendor" list and continues to maintain the progressive trend of delivering cutting edge solutions. Benefits to our client included:

• Improved operational efficiency
• Reduced labor and overtime costs
• Achieved efficiencies up to 99% in schedule generation process
• Reduced administrative and recruitment costs
• Improved guest service
• Greater employee satisfaction
• Access to labor-cost metrics
• Strict compliance with labor laws
• Rapid ROI projected