Delivering intelligent transport and road management systems across the African continent demands a pioneering approach. In road and related infrastructure management, structured, strategic decision making is crucial to success – having a marked impact on the state of the nations’ roads, and those who use them.
Since 1984, InstaToll Africa (Pty) Ltd has employed a forward-thinking approach to Africa’s road infrastructure management. With a dedication to quality assurance, InstaToll relies on its 1000+ employees to deliver on its vision to develop sound, lasting, cost-effective solutions. With this headcount, situated in various locations across the continent, an innovative Workforce Management (WFM) solution is critical to daily operations.
From compliance to fair labour practices, financial management, time and attendance tracking, and every element associated to the InstaToll workforce, manual interventions simply were not making the grade. Prior to breaking away from Group 5, InstaToll had been on Kronos WFM, and experienced the efficiencies this solution had to offer. As it established its independent footprint across Africa, the team realised this was not a task that could be undertaken without technological intervention.
“Without a reliable WFM system, managing payroll and timesheets across the plazas would be time consuming, a far greater number of human resources would be required, and both the business and its employees would suffer the brunt of inevitable human error,” confirms Ayanda Zwelibanzi, Payroll Officer at InstaToll.
With this insight in mind, InstaToll management leaned on the expertise of its long-term solutions implementation specialists, LabourGenie.Net to find the best fit for the business. Having had experience with the Kronos system, the cloud-based UKG Dimensions® (now UKG Pro Workforce Management™ under the UKG Pro® product suite) was a natural – yet considered – choice.
According to InstaToll HR/IR Manager, Thuli Madikiza, the UKG implementation was prefaced with in-depth assessment, planning, and training. “This resulted in a seamless implementation. The team at LabourGenie.net provided invaluable support in all phases of the project, with particular focus on secure data cleansing and migration to the new system, configuration, and training.”
UKG values its partnerships and customers in South Africa. “As a channel team we are dedicated to providing support to our team in region. Onboarding InstaToll and supporting LabourGenie.Net has been a priority in the territory,” confirms Wendy Wood Sr. Director, EMEA Alliances, UKG. “UKG’s latest SaaS solution – UKG Pro Workforce Management – was the perfect fit for Instatoll and the outcomes they wished to achieve. Deploying UKG Pro Time and Absence Management gives Instatoll the workforce information to drive Labour decisions and strategies.”
What InstaToll needed was a robust time and attendance solution that can grow with the business, scale up as it expands further into Africa, and which offered sound absence management as a module. “For these reasons, we chose UKG. It is the best fit for our business, and the ‘plug and play’ modules it offers give us the flexibility we desperately,” states Sipho Thamane, Financial Director at InstaToll.
From a risk perspective, the solution not only increases productivity and efficiencies – correct schedules, limited overtime, less absenteeism – but also mitigates the risk of CCMA cases, as human error is eliminated. “In instances where a CCMA case does occur, irrefutable time and attendance records often offer vital submissible evidence. This is another benefit of data driven business management,” adds Madikiza.
While the WFM solution offers several marked benefits, to InstaToll the most critical are unform pay polices across the organisation and fair remuneration labour. “With the solution, we ensure we have the right person, at the right place, at the right time, and with the right skills… all while also accurately monitoring and assessing labour budgets and payroll, proactively tackling absence management, and effectively tracking employee leave” Madikiza says.
In the highly regulated labour space, sound HR management and compliance are critical business success factors. Now InstaToll adds leave balances to payslips with certainty, and biometric clock-in solutions ensure hours are correct and staff are paid accordingly. As the business seeks to expand into more African countries, eliminating manual processes has also stood out as a key driver for investment, confidence, and auditability.
“Labour costs make up 40 to 50 percent of our financials; if these figures are manual, it is seen as a huge red flag – even the smallest of errors can have disastrous knock-on effects,” recalls Thamane. “The ability to make data-driven decisions also ensures sound business strategy, accurate and timeous reporting to the board, a deep understanding of risks and how to mitigate them, and empowers us to overcome reactive management.”
With data analytics at its core, reporting is of utmost importance in InstaToll’s sector – driving critical information to EXCOs and to the board in line with social ethics, audit and risk, and KPA requirements and metrics. “Of course, ease of use is critical. Our users are able to complete tasks on the system with confidence, which has driven up user adoption,” adds Zwelibanzi.
Now the business is streamlined, scheduling capabilities are enhanced, data is transformed into meaningful insights, and all facets of workforce management are integrated into one solution. “The result is a future-proofed organisation, leaning on a highly configurable, cost-effective tool,” says Dereck Sigamoney, Managing Director at LabourGenie.net. “As a cloud-based solution, InstaToll further benefits from no need for on-premises servers and associated maintenance costs, automatic updates, access to the latest features and security patches, easy scalability, seamless remote access, and improved data security measures with full compliance to GDPR and POPIA.”
The team at InstaToll certainly experienced the value of forging strong relationships with a service provider. “At InstaToll we place a large emphasis on building partnerships. To us, the Dereck is a partner in our business, supporting InstaToll as it found its feet in independence, with total reliability and trust,” believes Thamane. “Operating with a deep understanding of our business, we know we can rely on his advice – our goals are aligned, so when we win, we win together.”