DigitalCustom Group Inc.
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.
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.”
