Case Study
DigitalCustom Group Inc.
Small business time and attendance solution
With just 15 employees—most of who fill customer service positions—the last thing DigitalCustom needed was an expensive and complicated time and attendance solution.
“We were really looking for two things,” said Ellen Fenichel, one of the company’s founders and its General Counsel.
“We wanted something that would integrate seamlessly with our payroll system, and we didn’t want to make the entire payroll process more cumbersome.”
DigitalCustom is a Delaware corporation with its U.S. corporate and customer service facilities located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The company provides premium custom image editing, layout and art printing services to specialty retailers, corporate marketing departments, creative professionals and fine artists in North America, Europe and Japan. While most of its employees work out of its Cincinnati of ices, the company also employs remote workers, including Ms. Fenichel, who works from Northern California.
DigitalCustom’s prior time and attendance process consisted of employees e-mailing their time to the Cincinnati manager twice a month. The manager then would forward the information to Ms. Fenichel, who would enter the information using their web-based payroll system. There came a time, however, when things needed to change.
“We were growing relatively quickly—adding more employees, many with different work schedules,” said Ms. Fenichel. “It just became too difficult to keep track of everyone.”
The first place Ms. Fenichel turned was to CompuPay, the company’s payroll service. “We really like using online environments, and wanted to find a time and attendance option that dovetailed well with what we were already doing,” she said. CompuPay recommended one of their preferred vendors, Qqest’s TimeForce Time and Attendance. Ms. Fenichel contacted Qqest to discuss her options. “Even though we were growing, we’re not a huge company, and I did not believe that we had complicated needs,” she said.
“ I wanted to find a time and attendance solution that could grow with us, but I didn’t want to pay for features we would probably never use. I also did not want to invest in hardware and software, which may or may not meet the company’s needs in the future.”After evaluating Qqest, Ms. Fenichel was satisfied that the TimeForce ASP product was the right choice, and the implementation process began.
“The first thing Qqest did was evaluate how our company worked and how TimeForce would best work with our business model,” said Ms. Fenichel. During initial testing, she discovered a glitch, which affected how hourly employees’ time was calculated. “Qqest helped us find and address the problem quickly. By the next payroll, the problem was fixed.”
Ms. Fenichel identified another hiccup when she first tried to import the TimeForce files into CompuPay’s system. “Integrating the time and attendance feature with our current payroll system was such an important requirement for us,” she said. “The issue was resolved through conference call between me, our TimeForce implementation representative, and a CompuPay customer service representative.”
Now that TimeForce is up and running, Ms. Fenichel has identified even more benefits than she expected. “Our time, attendance and payroll process feels more professional now, more official. Our employees know what is expected of them and there is definitely more of a sense of accountability and fairness,” she said.
As DigitalCustom continues to grow, Ms. Fenichel sees even more possible benefits. “I can definitely see us adding departments, different types of employees, and different payroll rules. It’s great to have a scalable program that will be able to serve these needs, but also works wonderfully with where we are now.”
