As 2023 approaches, we’re taking stock of the past 12 months at tamigo.
It’s a year which has been far from plain sailing for our customers. A confluence of factors, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Covid’s lasting effects, came together in a major economic downturn.
Retail and hospitality businesses needed to choose a course of action. And we could look to the not-so-distant past for some pointers; specifically, the 2008 financial crisis.
Consultancy giant McKinsey recently examined European retailers’ performance during this period. They found that those who adopted a “through-cycle mindset” (i.e., investing in operations for the long term) fared significantly better than those who chose to “batten down the hatches”.
Resilient retailers built operational and financial optionality during the downturn cycle. Specifically, they moved faster and pushed harder on productivity, which lowered costs while preserving capacity for growth.
McKinsey & Company
At tamigo, we did our best to support our customers in this approach in 2022 — launching new features and partnerships to streamline processes and uncover new opportunities.
Looking for even fresher updates? Check out our 2023 product highlights here.
Accurate, highly automated employee scheduling with the aid of AI.
Through this integration, AI-powered workload forecasts from RELEX Solutions feed into tamigo’s shift generation tools. Planners can then generate optimal shifts for the weeks ahead in the click of a button.
AI performs calculations at a scale and speed which is impossible for humans. For our enterprise customers, this offered the chance to dramatically improve the scheduling of hourly workforces.
The choice of integration partner was obvious. RELEX is the market leader in supply chain and retail planning. Just this year, they raised €500 million in funding — the largest funding round in Finnish history.
You might be interested in: How Salomon modernised its operations in France and internationally.
An instant messaging tool for retail and hospitality businesses. It’s available as a paid add-on to the tamigo app.
tamigo Chat fills a specific need for retail and hospitality: to have a centralised internal communication tool across every location.
Unlike other instant messaging services, it features two distinct message types. One-to-one chats, perfect for conversations between staff and managers. And no-reply company announcements, letting admins send information to groups of employees, departments or the whole company.
We developed it in dialogue with one of our larger retail customers, to make sure it fitted the needs of daily operations.
Learn more: tamigo Chat: Engage staff with fast and secure internal communication
We introduced geofencing as an option for tamigo’s mobile time clock, tamigo Touch.
Geofencing establishes a virtual perimeter around a real-world location. When enabled in tamigo, employees can only clock in/out via Touch a certain distance from their workplace.
If they haven’t already, businesses across Europe need to start recording worked time with an “objective, reliable and accessible system”.
Time clocks on smartphones are the obvious tools for the job, but they also raise a concern. Can’t staff then clock in and out anywhere and anytime — even if they’re not actually at work?
Geofencing negates the risk of these ‘false logins’; in essence, turning Touch into an on-site time clock, minus the set-up and maintenance costs.
Learn more: Track employee hours more accurately with geofencing
Users have long been able to bid for available shifts in tamigo. Now they can add a price to their bid, so planners can see rates for offered hours.
This feature was developed primarily for our healthcare customers but has promise for retail and hospitality too — especially with regards to consultants or temp workers.
In healthcare, caregivers are often asked to do extra work (such as making a special house call) outside regular hours. Traditionally, the planner needs to phone around to ask their rates. But now, they can simply make the hours available and request caregivers bid on them.
Once all the bids are in, the planner can make the most cost-effective choice.
With Single Sign-On (SSO), you log into different sites or apps with the same credentials. This means your employees can log into tamigo using their existing company account.
Our enterprise customers employ dozens of different software. SSO consolidates all those logins in one place. It means every employee’s credentials are backed by your trusted directory service (such as Azure AD).
Learn more: New in tamigo: Updated SSO staff login for enterprises.
Want to experience these features for yourself? Get in touch to talk to one of our specialists today.