Redwave has been active as a secondment agency for technical professionals since 1989. As a result, they have been growing and advancing for more than 30 years in a sector that is currently undergoing rapid change. Current changes bring both new challenges and new opportunities. For example, in the fields of sustainability and the environment and the expansion of the services sector. Redwave’s focus has shifted from mostly oil and gas to technology. But also from mainly offshore to work in both offshore and onshore industries. They are able to offer their customers, as well as their employees, many new possibilities as a result.
As Redwave CFO, Rob Laan is closely involved with the implementation and rollout of TimeChimp. Additionally, Roel Janssen of Inbition, as external project leader, shares the responsibility for the rollout of TimeChimp. They tell us below about the important role TimeChimp plays in Redwave’s automated processes.
What was your situation like before TimeChimp?
“Redwave has a lot of people working in the oil and gas sectors on the Dutch North Sea. In the past, timesheets were always printed on paper (also because there wasn’t any internet on the drilling platforms), filled out by hand by employees and then sent by WhatsApp, fax, photo or email to the account and/or field manager. Sales department employees then typed these timesheets into the system, sometimes several times over for different systems. As a result, hundreds of timesheets were sent to the office every week, a time-consuming process that kept several people busy. Dealing with these timesheets was really an unfortunate necessity.”
What do you get out of TimeChimp ?
“Redwave used to lag somewhat behind in its deployment of technology. We started to automate more processes two years ago as a result, including time tracking. We wanted to get a better grasp of time tracking, and also make the process easier for employees, both internally and operationally. We also wanted to increase the efficiency of our administrative processes significantly, beyond time tracking, to include invoicing and remuneration. Ultimately, we ended up with TimeChimp because this tool has a wider application than some other systems. What I mostly mean by this is time tracking on evenings and weekends, which is, of course, important to us since many of our employees work 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off. In addition, we also use TimeChimp’s mileage logging and declaration modules. This way we have all our records in a single system.”
Connection with API
“We have connected TimeChimp to our planning system, Plato, via API. This has allowed us to create an ideal workflow where employees are scheduled in Plato and these hours are visible to the employee in TimeChimp. Therefore, employees no longer have to track their time because this comes from Pluto, which fills out TimeChimp directly. The only thing that employees have to do is to check their scheduled hours, potentially correct them when necessary, and then send the hours to their account or field manager. These scheduled hours can also be adjusted if required, for example, when working overtime. Then our sales department carries out a final check after which the time is sent through for invoicing and remuneration by our payroll administration. As well as more insight, this provides a huge time savings, because time no longer has to be input by hand. Time is now entered only once in the entire flow from planning to invoicing and finally salary payment.”
“Our employees consider TimeChimp a useful, informative and user-friendly system. Additionally, the Customer Portal allows us to give our customers insight into time worked and they can then give their approval to this easily.”
What are TimeChimp’s greatest plus points?
“For us, it’s the compatibility with other software and the API possibilities. We can easily use data generated in TimeChimp in other systems thanks to existing connections (like with Exact) or via API (like with Plato). In particular, the flexibility with which the API has been set up and is being further developed makes TimeChimp an ideal partner for us in the field of time tracking. As a result, we have been able to set up an ideal workflow which is mostly automated. By doing this, we save a lot of time that we used to spend on phone calls about planning and checking in for example. By saving so much time, we need fewer people for these processes which has reduced our costs. The entire automation process that we have implemented, of which TimeChimp forms a part, has saved us at least 150,000 euros on a yearly basis.”
Working with TimeChimp
“Furthermore, we are definitely pleased with our collaboration with TimeChimp. We are in close contact which has shifted over the course of the project. In the beginning, we were mostly in contact with sales about TimeChimp’s possibilities. Later we had more contact with developers about technical matters, and now contact is mostly about what wishes we still have. It is nice to have a single point of contact for this in the form of the TimeChimp Product Owner. All contact goes through her and this means we have a great partnership.
All in all, we are very satisfied with TimeChimp and the way we work together and we look forward to the future and to new developments.”
