A case study by Danielle Fernbach, CEO of Danielle Software
For many years I have worked for medium-sized enterprises, in a team of three to four people, in Human Resources departments. We covered everything: hiring, employee interviews, pay slips, expenses, further training and all topics related to personnel management.
And we knew we had to go digital at some point. Just managing, sending back and forth, checking and filing the huge amounts of paperwork for leave requests, sick leave and special working hours was a lengthy and error-prone process.
Furthermore, I always worked in the border region between Germany and Luxembourg (although the company is based in Frankfurt, my office is in Grevenmacher). Nearly all companies in the border region have to deal with legislation from two, if not three countries. This complicates things even further.
The problem, however, was: We simply didn’t have time to install software or explain to some specialists what we did. Besides, on the part of the management, there always were more important projects in production, warehousing or sales, and no one took the time to digitalise HR work. For this reason, I always wanted a software that could be immediately used “as is”, and then, step by step, be fine-tuned to our company by putting additional features into operation, when our everyday business routines allowed it.
Not having found anything on the market, we developed such a software ourselves, based on our experiences. Today, using the new software, just one part time employee manages all the HR work for 60 employees in three countries and at four locations. First and foremost, paper-heavy routine activities are reduced. In our digital world, we book a holiday within five minutes, reserve a table for lunch within two minutes or order products on Amazon within seconds. But a leave request takes days to get across all desks.
Today, 80% of our leave requests are approved within just a second. The software checks for compliance with all rules, for example availability of a stand-in, and can then automatically approve the leave request – at any given time. This comes in very handy for example when planning vacations with your partner during the weekend. You can easily send the leave request via a chat platform such as Telegram or Skype using your smartphone. On the other side, our software robot “Danielle Talk” immediately checks the request and then approves or rejects it.
If employees are ill, they can just send “I am ill” to Danielle Talk, then take a photo of the sick note and send it via the chat as well. Our chat robot offers employees an extensive self-service platform that works 24/7 – for less than three Euros a month.