Abiant Holding supports various labels within the Abiant Group, including the Abiant cooperative and Abiant Agro. They also manage HR, administrative, and planning processes for the employment agencies Abiant, MF Horeca, and @Work.
With diverse functions and schedules that are sometimes made months to a year in advance, the Cooperative had a great need for a system that can adapt quickly, stably and flexibly.
We spoke with Marc Bodewes, Application Manager responsible for the selection, setup, and implementation of Timewax. He explains how the transition went and the daily benefits.
“Our old custom software package worked perfectly for years, but it wasn’t being further developed,” says Marc. “As a result, we kept experiencing outages. With multiple shifts, multiple employee types, and long-term planning, that’s simply not feasible.”
We needed something stable, technically up-to-date, and secure, something that could scale with our processes and accommodate the variety of employees and contract types. When you’re planning a year ahead, you need to be able to rely on your system. We wanted a vendor that focuses on workforce planning software.
“During the user test, we quickly saw that Timewax was a good fit for how we work,” says Marc. “The AFAS integration simply had to be perfect. That was essential for us.”
“We needed additional logic for our cooperative processes. They built it. No ‘yes, but,’ but rather: ‘Let’s figure out how to solve this.’ That really instilled confidence.”
“I value the transparency the most,” says Marc. “You’re immediately told what’s possible and what’s not, and why. That prevents frustration. And recently, we’ve been able to rerun the synchronization with AFAS Profit ourselves; we no longer have to contact support for minor issues. That shows they’re genuinely thinking along with you and continuing to develop.”
“We deliberately approached the implementation thoroughly,” says Marc. “We started in a test environment, linked to an AFAS test environment. There, we tested our entire process, including a shadow schedule. Because we plan so far ahead, the transition had to be perfect the first time.”
“We involved five key users from the start. This ensured the setup was sound from the start, and we easily involved planners in the change.”
“We were able to export our long-term planning from the old system and import it back into Timewax. That saved a huge amount of work.”
“When I create a plan item in Timewax, it’s instantly available in AFAS Profit and AFAS Pocket. In AFAS Pocket, employees can see which clients they need to visit and log their hours there,” says Marc.
When a client calls for an appointment, scrolling forward is so much faster than we used to. That really makes our work easier. And now we can email a client a list of all their recurring appointments.
