Improving organisational processes
The well-deserved fame of the Costa del Sol as one of the most attractive and important tourist resorts in Spain and Europe is not only due to the excellence of its beaches, the beauty of its landscapes or the hospitality of its people.
The challenge
Behind this powerful brand is also the hard work of a public company, Turismo y Planificación Costa del Sol, whose purpose is, precisely, to promote the province of Málaga as a tourist destination and support the growth of its economy through various projects with public entities and private companies. Dependent on the Provincial Council of Malaga, the company is the result of the merger in 2015 of two entities: the Society for Planning and Development, SOPDE, and the Costa del Sol Tourist Board.
A union that meant integrating under the same name a joint staff of almost 70 people with different methodologies and lines of work. It was an organisational challenge that forced those in charge to seek solutions that would help them to better manage these professionals and obtain reliable data on their activity.
The solution
The solution came three years ago thanks to WorkMeter’s project management software.
“Above all, we needed to know the workload of the teams in the different departments. The implementation of WorkMeter’s tool has provided us with this analysis based on real data,” sums up Juan Carlos Rojas, its Director of Operations and Management Control.
Rojas had already had a positive first contact with the application in its early stages, shortly after it was launched on the market. But it was not until after the integration of the two entities that it became clear that they needed a more professional tool that would bring order to their way of working. “We had the problem that one part of the company was using a project manager to which the time spent on projects was allocated, and another part of the company was not. With WorkMeter’s project management software we have managed to homogenise the allocation of hours through a single application”.
That tool, says the manager, has been a turning point, overcoming the old control systems used by the company. “Previously, the supervision of data uploading was based on the opinion of the management of each department. As for time allocation, it was based on the employee’s own notes, which lent itself to all kinds of inaccuracies and human error,” explains Juan Carlos Rojas.
The solution came three years ago thanks to WorkMeter’s project management software. It was precisely the need to objectify this process, to be able to make better decisions based on data rather than subjective impressions, that led the company to implement WorkMeter’s tool. “Now time allocation is done on the basis of rules and automated processes, which makes the system much more reliable,” concludes the Operations and Management Control Director of the Malaga public company.
Result
The change brought about by the use of WorkMeter’s project management software in Costa del Sol Tourism and Planning has been gradual. “Technology has to be introduced in small spoonfuls,” Rojas recalls. Especially because, apart from the complexity involved in an implementation of this nature, anything new generates certain misgivings at the beginning that need to be overcome.
There is a process of adaptation. “There was some resistance to change, but this has gradually been minimised. In addition, the application has the advantage that it is quite easy to install and configure. In that sense, we were and continue to be helped a lot by the excellent availability of the WorkMeter team to help us with the implementation of the application,” he says.
One of the aspects of the tool that Tourism and Planning Costa del Sol values the most is being able to analyse the time employees spend on different applications on their PCs. This real-time, accurate information is enabling the company to improve its organisational processes.
The comprehensive monthly reports and the support received by the WorkMeter team are other of the most valued service points. “I would say that the application has met our needs by 90%. And we are already working with WorkMeter on some improvements that we believe can be implemented to reach 100%,” he says.
Rojas says that some people are surprised that a public company would use such a unique and comprehensive tool. But, he points out, the pursuit of excellence and organisational improvement is not the preserve of either the public or private sector. “I would recommend WorkMeter’s project management software to all companies that want to have a clear and unbiased view of what their teams are doing with regard to time allocation to projects and the applications used for that purpose,” he says.
Would you say they have improved with implementation?
“We have a lot of data to show that improvement,” he says. Although, perhaps the main one is the paradigm shift that involves incorporating the very concept of measurement into the daily operations of a workforce. “Because,” concludes Juan Carlos Rojas, “nowadays an application that allows you to analyse data objectively should be categorised as a great improvement.
