“We’ve had such great success since we implemented Dovetail. It's completely changed the way my team works and made us much more efficient and improved the employee experience. It’s just been great.”
Contractor Resource Center Manager
This case study explains how one of Dovetail Software’s customers, a Mutual Insurance Company, streamlined its Contractor Resource Center (CRC) and enhanced the employee experience by implementing Dovetail HR Case Management software. The CRC manages 2,000 contractors and an annual spend of $100 to $150 million, but its shared email mailbox led to inefficiency and confusion. Dovetail HR Case Management Software improved their productivity by enabling the CRC to track and manage its workload better. Dovetail also made it easier to onboard contractors efficiently. The implementation process was straightforward, and the software enabled the team to focus on being more strategic.
Learn how Dovetail helped the CRC manager and team become more productive, streamline its communications, and provide clear workload visibility.
Challenges
The team faced a number of challenges due to using an Outlook shared inbox for case management:
- The Outlook shared email mailbox was proving to be highly inefficient, leading to a significant build-up of unread emails - often reaching up to 150 at any given time. As a result, the CRC team were struggling to track requests effectively.
- Managing cases through Outlook was prone to human errors, causing cases to slip through the cracks and unintentional mistakes around the hiring contractors.
- Due to the lack of visibility into individual workloads, the Contractor Resource Center Manager found it challenging to manage and optimize resources, resulting in inefficient resource allocation.
- The team was consumed by day-to-day tactical workloads, leaving no time for the Contractor Resource Center Manager and his team to focus on higher-value, strategic goals.
Faced with these challenges, the Contractor Resource Center Manager sought a solution to address them. To do so, he reached out to his colleague, the HR Shared Services Manager, who’s team was known for delivering responsive HR Service Management. Inquiring about the system used by HR Services, the CRC Manager learned that the HR Shared Services team were using Dovetail HR Case Management. After seeing a product demo from his colleague, the Contractor Resource Center Manager was so impressed that he made the decision to acquire Dovetail HR Case Management for the CRC department.
Dovetail HR Case Management Solution
Dovetail Software's HR Case Management solution is a powerful tool that enables organizations to manage employee cases and HR requests in a streamlined, efficient manner. The software is designed to provide HR teams with a single, centralized platform for tracking, managing, and resolving employee issues, including inquiries, complaints, and other types of requests. It is also known for being easy and fast to implement.
Dovetail Implementation
Commenting on implementation, the Contractor Resource Center Manager said:
“What I liked most about the implementation was how easy it was. I had come from a spot where I don't want to say I was jaded, but we had had a really bad system implementation right before doing this. They said it was supposed to take 14 weeks and it took over a year. So when we heard that this was going to take 8 to 10 weeks, in my mind, that was already like ‘All right. It will probably take 6 to 8 months. But it actually took around 6 weeks to implement Dovetail! Overall, Dovetail was one of the easiest system implementations I've been a part of."
Results & Benefits
The adoption of Dovetail HR Case Management has resulted in a number of benefits to the Mutual Insurance company and its Contractor Resource Center department:
Improved Team Productivity and Workflow Efficiency
The decision to migrate to Dovetail proved to be a significant step in improving the team's productivity. A number of changes were made to the way they managed their workload, resulting in a more efficient and streamlined workflow. Key new capabilities included:
- Dovetail’s Queue feature - A notable improvement from adopting Dovetail was the implementation of individual queue profiles for each team member. Prior to the upgrade, they were accessing a shared email box that led to confusion and duplication of work. However, with Dovetail, they could now use the queue feature to assign their names to specific cases and easily track who was working on what. This has improved communication within the team and made it easier to manage cases.
- Email analysis - The team's ability to analyze their emails was another new factor that boosted their productivity. By doing so, they realized that a significant number of notifications they were receiving were redundant and did not contribute much to their tasks, allowing them to remove them.
Commenting on improvements to productivity, the Contractor Resource Center Manager said:
"Since switching to Dovetail, our productivity has greatly improved. Each team member now has their own queue profile, streamlining communication and making our workflow more efficient. We filtered out unnecessary notifications, saving about 500 messages per month and reclaiming 1,000 minutes of productivity. We are now able to resolve cases in under a day. It was a gradual increase, as we had to work through a backlog of cases during the first few months. However, now we have gone from taking between 4 and 5 days to close a case to resolving issues in under a day. These changes have allowed us to shift from being purely tactical to being more strategic and have meaningful conversations with business areas to guide their decision-making and save costs in the long run."
Shifting Team Focus from Tactical to Strategic
With a more efficient workflow, the CRC team is now able to have more meaningful conversations with the business areas they support, helping to guide their decision-making and ultimately save costs in the long run. The Contractor Resource Center Manager said:
“In terms of team focus, prior to Dovetail, we had mostly been occupied with day-to-day tasks, leaving little time for strategic planning. Ideally, I would like my team to engage more with business areas, to understand their future contracting needs and upcoming projects that will require contractor support. Our goal is to shift our value proposition from being merely tactical to being more strategic, where we can provide guidance and help teams save money long-term. Dovetail has given us this capability to meet this goal. We now work with our vendors and labor providers to get ahead of the curve. For example, if we know that we'll need 15 developers in the next 6 months, we can determine the cost and time required for onboarding and start preparing in advance. This way, we can help them avoid last-minute hiring, which often comes at a higher cost. Just like planning ahead for a flight can save money, planning ahead for hiring can lead to cheaper hourly rates.”
Improved Workload Visibility
Dovetail has significantly improved the company's ability to track and categorize incoming cases, enabling them to generate monthly reports and gain insights into the most common types of requests and their frequency.
Discussing how these improvements have helped workload management, the Contractor Resource Manager said:
"Dovetail has provided us with clear workload visibility, which is one of its top benefits. With this visibility, we can accurately track and categorize the number of cases that come in, including onboarding (most common), change, and off-boarding requests. Additionally, we can identify a few miscellaneous requests, such as report requests and billing questions. This information helps us to determine the most common types of requests and their frequency, which was previously difficult to do without manually counting emails. With Dovetail, we can now generate monthly reports to analyze the most common types of cases and their frequency over a certain period."
Dovetail Reporting Enables Improved Workload Management
The reporting tool enables the team to keep track of the number and types of cases received, as well as the workload of each team member. This ensures that the workload is distributed evenly among the team members, preventing one person from being overworked while others are underutilized. The tool also helps the team to understand the seasonal patterns of their workload, enabling them to plan and prepare for periods of high volume.
According to the Contractor Resource Center Manager:
"Dovetail reporting is really easy to use. Initially, I worked with Dovetail to create a report, but I have also made some of my own. I use Dovetail to pull the report during the first week of each month for the previous month's data. I analyze the report to see how many cases we received, the types of cases, and how much work each team member is doing. It's important to me that the workload is fairly split between team members. I don't want to see one person doing 80% of the work and the other doing only 20%. After analyzing the report, I keep a running total in Excel. This helps me see patterns in our work volume, such as an increase in offboarding requests in December and more onboarding requests during a certain quarter. By understanding the seasonality of our workload, I can plan and inform my manager when to expect high volumes of work. Before using the reporting tool, I couldn't predict our work volume, but now I can."
Using Data to Optimize Resource Allocation in Enterprise Procurement
The Contractor Resource Center Manager reports to the Director of Enterprise Procurement and provides essential information to aid in decision-making. The reports contain five critical metrics related to open and closed cases and case types handled by the team. This information is useful in efficiently allocating personnel and resources for projects and cross-training opportunities.
The Contractor Resource Center Manager notes:
"If our vendor management team falls behind, I can offer a person from my team to cross-train and help the vendor management team, especially when my team is temporarily slow. This strategy optimizes resources, saving my department from having to hire a new person and providing cross-training opportunities for my team members."
By using data and resources effectively, the team has streamlined operations and created cost savings for the company.
Reduced Stress and Improved Work-Life Balance by Streamlining Weekly Reporting
The weekly report that the Director of Enterprise Procurement required from the Contractor Resource Center Manager was a source of stress for the CRC Manager. Despite the CRC team’s best efforts, errors were inevitable due to the limitations of the system they were using prior to Dovetail. Commenting on how he felt about the working environment prior to Dovetail, the Contractor Resource Center Manager said:
"Preparing the weekly report for my director used to be a source of stress and made me feel micromanaged. Even with our best efforts, human error would cause us to miss things. Since switching to Dovetail, tracking and reporting on our work is much easier. It has reduced my stress and increased my happiness, even when I'm with my family. The team is also more productive and fulfilled, creating a more positive and harmonious work environment."
Overcoming Contractor Onboarding Delays and Enhancing the Employee Experience
One of the challenges faced by the team was the delay in receiving notice of the start date for new contractors. This often resulted in emails being missed, with the team not being aware of a contractor's start date until several days later. Therefore, the onboarding process would often be delayed by a few days, causing frustration and dissatisfaction for the contractor's manager.
Commenting on the improvements Dovetail has made, the Contractor Resource Center Manager said:
“Now, with the new system in place, we're able to receive and process these requests promptly, often on the same day. This has significantly improved the employee experience, as they now have greater confidence that we'll onboard their contractors in time for their start date.”
Easy to Use System Administration
According to the Contractor Resource Center Manager, the Dovetail system administration component is very user-friendly. "I was impressed by how simple it was to make changes as a system admin," he said. Continuing:
"Usually with new systems, making changes to the user interface or automated emails can be complicated and prone to mistakes, but the process was surprisingly intuitive and error-free. Even on my first attempt, I thought I might have messed up because it was so easy, but everything worked as intended. Overall, the system administration component is very user-friendly. We received training during hypercare for creating dashboards and system administration, which was helpful, but using the tool on our own was straightforward."
This positive feedback demonstrates how the new system is easy to use and can help streamline tasks for administrators.
Conclusion
The Mutual Insurance Company's Contractor Resource Center (CRC) experienced great success after implementing Dovetail HR Case Management software. The previous shared email mailbox system led to inefficiencies, communication gaps, and human errors, resulting in a significant build-up of unread emails and difficulty in managing workloads. However, Dovetail HR Case Management software streamlined communications, providing clear workload visibility and allowing the team to track and manage their workload better. The implementation was straightforward and enabled the team to focus on more strategic tasks. With Dovetail, the CRC team achieved better results, improved productivity, and reduced stress, leading to an enhanced employee experience. Overall, Dovetail enabled the Contractor Resource Center team to shift their focus from purely tactical workloads to more meaningful conversations with business areas, which guided their decision-making and saved costs.
