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Municipality Westland

Up to 2004 the Zuid Hollandish cities Monster, 's-Gravenzande, De Lier, Wateringen and Naaldwijk were separate municipalities with each their own management and facilities. Now they are part of Municipality Westland. ‘The glass municipality' say Jan Kardol and his colleague Rinske Pool. The municipality owes this nickname to her large amount of greenhouses. Wesland decided to implement TimEnterprise during the merge. As the application administrators for TimEnterprise, Jan and Rinske were responsible for the implementation within the organization.

Gathering details

The management of TimEnterprise is done by the department Public Area Configuration (IOR). This is somewhat unusual, since this is usually done by a department that covers the entire organization. Jan explains: “The leading executive of the department IOR took the initiative when deciding to start using a time entry system within the municipality. Previous experiences with similar systems in other municipalities had already familiarized him with such applications. Four departments were very much interested in a time application, but still the question remained who would take responsibility." Jan was employed as a project planner, but initially organized the implementation of TimEnterprise. Jan: “The planning covered one month, but experience with other employers had taught me that we would need more time. It wasn’t the software that caused any problems; we were still recovering from the merge. In order to determine the structure in TimEnterprise it is necessary to know who works at which department, who has which tasks and how the hierarchy is formed. It has taken lots of effort to gather all those details together.”

The ‘pilot’

Thankfully, Rinske was familiar with the ins and outs of the municipality. She knew whom to approach for the data.”  Rinske: “We started by requesting the various departments for lists with the necessary data, but we soon found out that many of these lists were incomplete. The advice from Aenova's consultant proved very helpful. She told us what details we needed to find, and when she was present we could enter the data into TimEnterprise. We began with four departments that work on project-base. The data the employees entered during the 'pilot' was not yet read into the financial system. After the 'pilot' the system was also taken in use by other departments.”

Skeptical

Not everybody immediately waxed enthusiastic over TimEnterprise. Jan: “People are often skeptical when a time entry system is installed. They think they'll have to waste a lot of time entering data, while that really is not the case at all. If you try to implement such a system while its organization is not clear yet, you run the risk people will protest against the system. At one point I've shown the executives how much time it took on a daily base to complete the time entry. Which was 20 seconds a day. By then they were convinced of its benefits”.

Powerful

The Municipality Westland used TimEnterprise mainly as a steering aid for internal projects. Rinske: “Within our organization, one department is given projects by other departments. The amount of time and resources required to finish the project is determined in advance. It is easy to plan ahead with TimEnterprise, because the program shows at first glance how much time and budget is available. Such a plan is meant both for the contractor and the client. If it looks as if a project won't be finished within the planned time span, a revised proposal can be handed in. On a monthly bases we export the data from TimEnterprise to the financial system in order to check the total budget for discrepancies. It is this interface with the financial application that makes TimEnterprise such a powerful tool.”

‘It is growing on us’

Jan: “You can see that TimEnterprise is growing on the organization. A growing number of departments have indicated they want to start working with the application in order to see how much time they spend on exactly which tasks. After all, to measure is to know. It turns out that this can also lead to shifts in working tasks if it becomes clear that an employee spends a lot of time on another employee's task. So, while TimEnterprise was initially met with reluctance, the advantages are now becoming clear to the employees, and as a result the interest to work with the system is growing daily.”

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