Automation accelerates HR and payroll processes at Cottage Delight

A speciality food supplier keeps pace with business growth by simplifying HR and payroll complexity.

Based in the heart of the Staffordshire Moorlands, Cottage Delight supplies farm shops, delicatessens, fine food festivals and other customers with hundreds of speciality foods made on its own premises, or sourced from other artisan producers.

Owing to sustained growth, Cottage Delight now employs more than 200 people, supplemented by casual workers at Christmas and other peak retail periods. As a result, the firm must meet the challenge of managing complex staff rotas, varying departmental hours and multiple pay bands.

“Our previous HR, payroll and time and attendance system, installed over ten years ago, no longer met our needs,” says Gary Bowcock, IT Manager at Cottage Delight. “It wasn’t user friendly, it restricted what we could do, and only one person could use it at a time. We needed something completely different.”

A project team of Cottage Delight payroll and IT staff, and departmental managers, evaluated a number of potential replacement systems for HR, payroll and time and attendance management. Civica came out on top.

Outcomes:

• Payroll admin cut from five days to 10 hours a month 
• Just 10 minutes to set up a new employee record
• Enthusiastic adoption of biometric clocking-in options 
• Increased employee confidence in the accuracy of time and attendance data; more control for managers
• Reporting that supports departmental planning and forecasting.

Civica’s integrated HR, Payroll and Time & Attendance solutions do everything we want. The look and feel is modern and they’re easy and intuitive to operate. 
Gary Bowcock, IT Manager, Cottage Delight

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