This project was developed whilst working on behalf of HRO'C, a Midlands based marketing agency. HRO'C already had a history with this client and won the contract to develop an intranet for their UK IT & HR Departments.

The core functionality of the system was to automate a number of regular tasks from each department. One of those tasks was the management of staff holidays. The system developed allowed staff to request dates and submit for approval. This request was then logged as a task that their supervisor had to complete. The supervisor could accept or deny the request and was given the option to provide additional info, at this time. ie 'Denied, not enough cover'. This was then fed back to the original member of staff. If the request was accepted, it then escalated to the next level of authentication, which was HR. The request could again be accepted or denied and appropriate responses were sent to the member of staff and also their supervisor. At all points, anyone involved in the process could look into the history of the application, ie date applied, responses, etc. Finally, once approved by both supervisor and HR, the master database for holiday records was updated in the HR system and everyone concerned was notified, including any relevant colleagues.

The system was introduced across their UK site and was hugely popular, mainly due to the speed at which answers to requests were answered. This is a perfect example of how IT can improve on current systems. A request could previously have taken several days, but with the new system, in some cases this was reduced to a few hours.

A number of similar systems were written to help improve other areas of each department, such as ordering IT kit for new members of staff, handling absenteeism and many more. All of which helped reduced paper work, speed up processes and allow for a complete audit of any transaction, should the need arise.

Images are not available, as this site was restricted to Bridgestone employees.