A large independent firm
PKF Arsilon advises and supports organizations and their managers in managing all stages of their structuring, development and transformation.
Formerly PwC pour les Entrepreneurs, PKF Arsilon became independent within the PKF International network (150 countries, 22,000 employees) on 1 July 2021. The firm brings together 71 partners and 730 employees dedicated to consulting, audit, accounting, payroll, legal and tax in 26 offices in France. PKF Arsilon generates sales of €84 M.
Scheduling, a contentious issue
"In large and medium-sized firms, for audit, accounting and consulting assignments, scheduling is sometimes a subject of tension requiring arbitration. This can lead to some tense moments between managers! summarizes Jean-Gabriel Boulic, managing partner and CPA at PKF Arsilon. Everyone would like to have the most experienced employees to ensure the success of their missions and offer the best service to their clients, even if it means depriving other teams of them". A hunt for talent that can go as far as overbooking, this process by which a manager reserves an auditor all year long without necessarily having the missions to employ him or her... just to make sure that he or she has the resources he or she considers to be the most reliable. Are they the best fit from a firm resource allocation perspective? That is less certain.
In particular, there are two main organizational systems, he continues:
- Build teams that each include a partner and two or three (junior and senior) team leaders. This model, called "dedicated teams", works. But when you have a hundred or so employees in an office, you can end up with 4 or 5 teams side by side, with little or no communication nor mutual support between the teams...
The risk with this model is that an overloaded team A does not have the idea or the opportunity to call on team B, which would be less busy at the same time. The B team, focused on its own work, would not necessarily realize the importance of helping the A team with potentially much more urgent and involving work, in the general and collective interest of the firm and its clients. - Or, organize the firm in such a way that all the partners and project managers share the human resources so that the right people are always employed on the right tasks, according to their experience and their respective specialties. This model is more suitable for creating real synergy opportunities, which are possible when you bring together professionals with complementary profiles and skills, for example on high value-added assignments.
Neither of these two models can be considered ideal, with advantages and disadvantages for both in terms of optimizing resource allocation and contributing to the personal development of employees.
However, the Beeye scheduling tool removes the organizational constraints of the second model by facilitating communication between the members of the management and with the employees.
To achieve this, some firms employ full-time staffers who manage scheduling and staffing. But this is not an easy position! Firstly, because they do not necessarily have sufficient knowledge of the needs of the missions, the required skills, and the professional assets of all the firm's employees. Secondly, because they need to be very good listeners in order to get to know everyone, avoid jealousies, and... centralize complaints.
Sometimes, it is an operational employee who is in charge of the whole team's scheduling. This situation can also lead to all sorts of criticism.
"A few years ago we were using a simple scheduling tool developed in-house, but we were not really satisfied with the solution, says Jean-Gabriel Boulic. We couldn't leave it at that.”
Objectives: quality, management, steering
What objectives can be set for scheduling in a firm? They are essentially threefold:
Quality. The first objective of scheduling is the quality of the service provided. The main goal must remain to allocate the best possible professional to the most appropriate assignment. "Scheduling must become a quality player".
Management. Scheduling is also a management tool, which should, for example, enable staff to work with different partners and team leaders so as to broaden their experience and improve their employability, while smoothing out conflicts between colleagues.
Steering. Finally, scheduling must be far-sighted in order to deploy its human resources better, while remaining flexible enough to adapt to the firm's structural requirements as well as to the tensions of the moment. "Customer emergencies are not necessarily on the schedule!”
Start-up and initial findings
Initiated by the audit division of the Paris office, the use of Beeye quickly spread to other activities, and eventually to all the metropolitan offices. Luxembourg, New Caledonia, Tahiti followed, and other offices are interested.
“To begin with, Beeye is not confusing," explains Jean-Gabriel Boulic. “It's easy to use for everyone - employees are aware of their schedule and then regularly enter their actual time spent on different tasks. Managers analyze activity reports designed for them (or whose format they design themselves), and, needless to say, for the person in charge of scheduling, for whom it is a daily tool.”
For offices that have not taken the option of using a staffer, managers review their emergencies with the partner every week during a one-hour arbitration meeting. These meetings, in person or remotely, lead to display the Beeye schedule on the screen (by business or in global office), and the application immediately indicates the problems to be broached. We can see the employees whose planned time exceeds the normal duration, or those who seem to have availability. We focus the meeting on these conflicts, spending less time on what appears to be correctly scheduled.
Beeye thus softens a discussion that would have otherwise been stormy, by making it possible to base the reflection on "neutral" facts and forecasts rather than on subjective elements only.
“The editor was able to adapt its tool to our specific needs, in co-creation with us," underscores the CPA. “Beeye is a company of engineers, always listening to possible new developments. They also helped us to build our own repository, both for auditing and for public accounting.”
Ever so real benefits
Visibility. Today, everyone knows what they have to do during the week, whether they are in the office, at customer's premises or working from home. The most experienced have the right to adapt their schedule themselves. Beeye also provides a traceability of the changes made, which allows to know on which date such a person has been booked for such a job - which can help to clarify possible misunderstandings.
Operational performance. Optimizing operational performance is key for a firm like ours. Beeye helps us to use scarce skills and resources better, and to forecast our short- and medium-term needs. But also to provide us with the necessary elements for our invoicing by identifying precisely the work done, thanks to the information and comments that go directly from the employee to the person who prepares the invoice.
A managerial tool. Scheduling was a source of conflicts - and it remains so in many firms! Beeye creates the groundwork for a polite and reasoned discussion, for a peaceful management of human resources. Something that makes the difference with our major competitors? It is in any case a hiring facilitator - one of the first points we discuss with candidates. It gives them the opportunity to work with several partners and project managers and thus benefit from their respective qualities to enrich their experience and training.
Keen to go forward?
PKF Arsilon started implementing a new stage in the deployment of Beeye in July 2022, relying in particular on the features of its new version "Beeye Qasar".
" We will be able to compare, at any time and on each assignment, the budgeted hours (considered as a kind of internal and realistic contract between partners, managers and employees) and the actual hours. For monthly or quarterly invoicing, the Beeye tool allows you to export each month the completed hours including the comments indicated by the collaborator on the work done, plus any additional points and specific work he/she entered into the application. We will be able to compare at any time the hours budgeted (from the contract) for each mission and those achieved. If we invoice by time spent, we will export each month the hours put in, we will add specific points related to comments made on the application by employees, and the vouchers will be in place to bill immediately. And if we work on a fixed price basis, we will have a direct reading of the consumed vs. the forecast, and a projection of the landing, so that we can intervene in time if necessary.”
The Beeye tool also allows the management to have in direct reading a point of comparison between the hours realized vs. the forecast and the fees agreed with the customer, as well as a projection on the end of year landing, to be able to intervene in time, if needed or if the mission required a renegotiation of the agreed budget.
In the longer term, Jean-Gabriel Boulic would like to delve further into the notions of employee specialization (for those who wish to do so and according to their tastes, wishes for professional development and specific training), also in connection with the annual professional evaluation interviews, for an even more precise allocation of resources to the missions and a quicker and more efficient identification of the most suitable talents for each mission. But the field of possibilities remains wide open!
For all these reasons, the use of an ad hoc software has its place in the attractiveness and loyalty policy of firms. To find out more about this tool, you can:
⁂