Amadeus implement new management system

The savings have been reinvested back into the business and allowed more time for staff training and development to further enhance the customer experience.

Amadeus, the catering arm of the NEC Group worked with Reflexis to develop their system – which was originally designed for retail purposes – to be able to work with the demands of the event industry such as multisite operations and longer service hours.

Reflexis has initially launched the service at the Group’s home venues – the NEC, ICC, Vox, Genting Arena, and Barclaycard Arena.

Operations Director for Amadeus, Tony Baldock, said: “Amadeus is a complex business with huge fluctuations in staffing requirements across all the venues, and each venue had their own way of forecasting and producing staffing rotas. This meant there was no central database for our workforce detailing their skills and availability, and our ways of working were very onerous and paper based, rotas were communicated in the main via post.”

“With Reflexis we now have that central view and can make sure that our teams are offered work that suits their skill set and availability, maximising the opportunity for work. Through the self service module, staff are able to access their rotas at any time. All of this has been fantastic for our customer service as we have the right people in the right place at the right time. The more individuals work with us, the more familiar they get with our ways of working and the more we can invest in them to offer training and development opportunities through the savings made as a result of this project.”

Business Relationship Manager for Amadeus, Sarah Nelson, lead on the IT requirements for this project, said: “We needed a system that would manage one of our biggest costs, labour, in the most effective and efficient way, freeing up time for managers. Working with Reflexis we were able to deliver a system that is fully integrated with the Group’s HR, payroll, event management and epos system so we are pulling all the data we need to forecast and schedule from source systems, reducing the number of times the same data is re-keyed. For example, if someone books a holiday on the HR system it is fed into Reflexis to automatically update that person’s availability for scheduling.”

Sarah added: “This has been a great project to be involved in as it has delivered true transformation of the Amadeus operation resulting in efficiencies in business processes relating to the management of employees, forecasting and scheduling as well as making the most effective use of the Amadeus workforce. We now have a system that will support and continue to grow with our business.”

OP Choudary, Head of European Operations for Reflexis, said: “Working with Amadeus on this project has allowed us to open up more opportunities for Reflexis. We worked previously with retail businesses, so developing our system to cope with the complexity of the events industry has been fantastic for us. We are delighted to have supported Amadeus and deliver a solution that enables them to consistently execute their labour operations and customer service strategies, while ensuring compliance with labour laws and business rules for all categories of employees.”

Following the success of the Reflexis implementation with the NEC Group venues, Amadeus is looking at implementing the service for other UK venues they provide catering solutions for such as Belfast Waterfront and Ulster Hall, Delapre Abbey, Dudley Zoological Gardens, the Library of Birmingham and Cadbury’s World.