Managing a business is quite like a roller-coaster ride; you have to make sure everything is in the right place at the right time. When it comes to managing employees, regardless of the business type, you need an app that helps you in utilizing each employee’s potential to make the shift productive and, ultimately, the business.
Staff scheduling apps help businesses in effectively managing their workforce and enhancing overall productivity. Big enterprises can handle their workforce easily as they have a strategic approach, but small or medium-level businesses struggle to utilize the full potential of their employees to enhance their growth. These apps for scheduling shifts help them a lot in making the most out of their investments. Apps like HotSchedules are a big help to big businesses as well, as they can effectively manage the scheduling task.
The market is brimming with employee scheduling apps for businesses, but there is still a lot of room for a new app of the same category with advanced features and technology. If your app can fulfill the user’s expectations, it can easily make it to the top list. In this blog, we will discuss the development of an employee work schedule app like HotSchedules.
About HotSchedules App
HotSchedules can be explained as a web-based shift management solution, especially for the hospitality sector. It can manage the shifts, assign tasks, manage labor, and more. The app helps to optimize time and labor costs while improving communication and simplifying staff scheduling. With the help of HotSchedules, businesses can easily optimize workforce management practices and can ensure compliance with applicable laws, and increase the overall experience of employees.
Businesses can use this app to schedule shifts more efficiently and save a majority of their time. It delivers features like efficient communication with team members, updating schedule changes, exchange shifts, and more directly from the platform to stay up-to-date on all critical and urgent schedule changes. Enterprises can easily generate in-store reports on labor costs and sales and evaluate the overall approach to help prepare future budgets.
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What is the Market Scenario of Employee Scheduling App Development?
The Employee Scheduling Software development market is projected to cross the valuation of 530.87 million USD by the year 2023. The USA has the largest market share of employee scheduling software, and it will continue to grow. A large percentage of small and medium businesses are adopting these solutions to make their business productive and successful.
Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, the majority of the world’s workforce is working from home, which is not at all easy to manage. With the help of employee scheduling apps like HotSchedules, businesses are effectively managing their workforce and able to maintain feasible connections with their employees.
Despite making an effective schedule, companies reveal that employees waste fifty percent of their time at work, but after implementing an employee scheduling app, those numbers have come down to a bare minimum. If you are thinking of developing a staff scheduling app, this might be the right time; all you have to do is follow a strategic process and hire a reliable mobile app development company.
How to Develop an App like HotSchedules?
The first step towards developing an effective staff scheduling app like HotSchedules is finding a reliable development partner. Finding a reliable mobile app development partner is kind of a complicated task as not everyone can give you the right value for your investment. When it comes to finding the right development partner, you have three options.
The first option includes setting up your own app development department; however, setting up a department comes with a lot of expenses, and it is not considered a feasible option. Making your new team aware of your expectations can also be a difficult task.
The second option consists of hiring freelance developers. Freelance developers have a lot on their plate and often end up delivering a limited standard quality that may or may not be as per your business standards. They often charge less as compared to the other two options but often end up with a sub-standard app.
The third and final option is hiring a full-fledged mobile app development company with all the resources and a marvelous track record in mobile app development, such as Matellio. Our developers have hands-on experience with the next-gen technologies and use them to deliver you a flawlessly engineered employee scheduling app. These companies deliver options of various hiring models that fit perfectly with your budget.
Now that we have finalized which option to choose for a reliable, let’s start with the process.
Start with Scanning the Market
Do careful market research to find out your competitors, their strategies, their application features, and more. Understanding competitors’ market strategies are beneficial in the long run. Keep track of the market trends that users want or expect from the new employee scheduling app, explore points where other apps aren’t meeting user expectations. Together with all the relevant information in your notes, create a roadmap that shows your vision of the app.
Plan a Perfect Roadmap
Now that you have all the information in one place, create an action plan for the development process. With user expectations in mind, you can continue to refine important application components, such as platforms, features, etc.
Determining the number of platforms on which your application will run is an important decision. Developing a mobile application on a single platform can cost less than developing a cross-platform app.
Features to Consider
The next important component of any application is its features, which are responsible for the feasibility and user interest in the application. The number of features depends entirely on your business needs. Some features are common to all mobile applications, such as subscription, user profile, and more. Here are some of the features that are considered mandatory for a staff scheduling application.
Since the application will be accessible to employees, managers, and admins, let’s start with the employee panel features.
| Employee Panel Features | |
|---|---|
| Login/Signup | Allow employees to get registered on the app with their work credentials or personal credentials, depending on their companies. |
| Navigate Schedule | Allow employees to know their schedule and go to their assigned stations and start their work. |
| Attendance | Allow employees to manage their attendance and mark timestamps for an assigned task. |
| Reporting Dashboard | Allow employees to update their task status, among other updates for the seniors or other team members to see. |
| Calendar | Allow employees to mark their meetings and other tasks/events on the calendar for easy accessibility. |
| Inbox | Allow users to get the instructions from their management or the admins about their tasks and send updates. |
| Swap Shifts | Allow employees to request a shift swap as per their feasibility to their superiors. |
| Manager Panel Features | |
|---|---|
| Navigate Schedule | Allow managers to get the details of each employee’s task in the business. |
| Attendance Management | Allow managers to approve the leaves or reject them easily through this feature. |
| Accept/Reject Swap Shifts | Allow managers to accept or reject the request of their employees for shift swapping. |
| Time Management | Allow managers to assign tasks to employees easily and manage their time effectively to produce maximum results. |
| Calendar | Allow managers to mark their schedules and other tasks related to the business on their calendar to stay prepared. |
| Inbox | Allow managers to give instructions to employees about a task or any shift-related details on the app. |
| Admin Panel Features | |
|---|---|
| Dashboard | Allow admins to see all the data related to the work time of the employees and other important parameters. |
| Manage Employees | Allow admins to set the week offs of employees to create a productive shift and make the most out of the process. |
| Manage Roles | Allow admins to assign different roles to the employees depending on their capabilities and attendance. |
| Logbook Management | Allow admins to get an overview of the logbook of employees and managers. It also allows them to correct any mistakes. |
| Account Settings | Allow admins to manage the issues with accounts of the employees and managers. |
Tech Stack to Consider
The technology stack is the most important part of any mobile application. The functionality of your employee scheduling app’s features will totally depend on the tech stack. Either you can design your tech stack as per the features, or you can just ask your app development company to integrate one for you. Here’s a generic tech stack for employee scheduling software like HotSchedules.
| Application and Data | jQuery, React, NGINX, Java, CloudFlare, Apache HTTP Server, Bootstrap, jQuery UI, ASP.NET, Microsoft IIS, Apache Tomcat, Slick, Handlebars.js, Moment.js, MooTools, Fastly |
| Utilities | Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Maps, Amazon SES |
| DevOps | New Relic |
| Business Tools | Gmail, WordPress, Google Fonts, Font Awesome, G Suite, AddThis, Zendesk, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Unbounce Design, Development, and Testing |
Design, Development, and Testing
Now that we’ve completed the stack of features, platforms, and technology, we can continue to design and test the employee scheduling application. The design of the user interface is the first thing a customer encounters when using your application. Make sure the design meets industry standards and awes customers. Before you continue developing the design, draw an approximate sketch of the app’s interface so that the developer understands your vision. For better results, test different color schemes, fonts, shapes, animations, etc.
The next level of development on the timeline is prototyping. This is a mandatory step in the application development process. Creating an MVP gives you a real idea of the application and its functionality. The time to build an effective MVP or final application depends on the capabilities of your application development team. The overall custom application development team consists of a project manager, developers, quality control, test engineers, and a business analyst. It depends entirely on what team structure you want to use for the application.
After completing the development process, testing the overall functionality of the application is mandatory. You can’t compromise the reputation of your business by launching the app without testing it. Full testing of the application ensures that there are no errors in the code or design. To ensure exceptional results, it is recommended that you test your application through several steps, such as functional testing, memory testing, performance testing, security testing, and more.
Ready to Develop Your Employee Scheduling App with Matellio?
If you are thinking of starting the development of your employee scheduling app, Matello can help you with its team of qualified and experienced developers. We have delivered a number of efficient mobile applications with optimal functionality and advanced features. With more than ten years of experience and learning, we have earned the reputation of a leading mobile application development company.
Our high customer retention rate describes the quality of our products and services. We offer you a selection of executable recruitment models that meet your different business needs. Even after the successful delivery of your app, we offer you a 30-day free maintenance period. Discuss your idea of creating an employee scheduling app with our experts over a 30-minute free consultation call.
