PDSI (Principal Decision Systems International), a leading provider of automated workforce management solutions for public serving industries including public safety and utilities, is introducing a new client implementation process for TeleStaff. The new process, developed by PDSI's Business Solutions Group, is aimed at implementing features and functionality in a logical, yet accelerated sequence helping new customers to more strategically and quickly maximize TeleStaff's time and cost-savings benefits organizationwide.

"The TeleStaff implementation process is a vital part of how PDSI guides customers to using the solution. PDSI has made subtle changes to the TeleStaff implementation process since its inception, but the overall process has remained the same," says Martha Strittmater, director of customer services for PDSI. "As with any enterprise-level solution, implementation challenges can be daunting for an organization. Though our implementation was highly effective, it was lengthy and required resources to stay dedicated for six or more months. 

"To date, hundreds of customers have successfully completed a TeleStaff implementation process and the overwhelming feedback was a desire to see a return on investment earlier in the process. In response to this feedback, we revamped the implementation process completely. This latest change is exciting as it is in direct response to our customers' needs. With the new process, a new TeleStaff customer can enjoy the benefits associated with centralized staffing, processing requests, reporting, conducting emergency recall, and data feeds to downstream systems in 60 days or less," Strittmater adds. 

The new and improved implementation process focuses on deployment of the roster and calendar first, then advanced configuration to add intelligent staffing functionality. The first part of the implementation, Deployment, focuses on rolling out a uniquely tailored TeleStaff solution to a client organization's workforce within 60 days from project kick-off. Once deployed, end users will be able to accomplish many routine work tasks more easily, including the ability to check their schedules through the Internet or touch-tone phone; they can sign up to work special events or off-duty details, request time-off; and receive and respond to emergency notifications. Additionally, personnel responsible for employee scheduling will have the ability to access rosters, automate routine supervisory tasks, identify and contact employees meeting specific needs, run management reports, and conduct emergency recall. 

The second part of the implementation, Advanced Configuration, focuses on building upon the functionality initially rolled out and will add more of TeleStaff's intelligent staffing capabilities for the organization's group of scheduling personnel. TeleStaff offers some sophisticated features that require dynamic rules technology generally used by a much smaller group of staffing or management-level personnel within an entire organization.  Focusing on these more sophisticated features after the initial deployment of core, organization-wide features, helps an entire organization ease into scheduling automation and increase employee buy-in while allowing scheduling personnel to configure the solution, with the help of PDSI, in more logical, step-by-step manner that better matches overall business objectives.

The new client implementation process leverages many of the proven methods developed by PDSI. These proven processes include a dedicated project team, and project manager, working in partnership with the client organization's project team, as well as detailed project plans and extensive training and technical support services. In addition, under the new implementation process, PDSI now partners with its new clients to determine marketing initiatives to assist in helping drive meaningful awareness of TeleStaff to the organizational workforce. The new implementation processes were developed from direct customer feedback, and are designed to be used for all new client implementations.