CeX Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight: CeX

Planday had the opportunity to catch up with Gabriel Moreno, regional manager of CeX, an international chain of franchise shops specialising in secondhand and refurbished electronics. CeX has a total of 366 locations throughout the UK and Gabriel managers 16 of these.

Searching for a Scalable Solution

We started searching for a better solution to help manage our rapid expansion some time ago. Being a small company at the time, we managed to do everything ourselves. Once we expanded and had to add about 150 employees in the space of 12 to 13 months, it became a real challenge to keep control of employee data and scheduling, and to control time and attendance, so we were out in the market looking for a solution that allowed us to enhance all these processes.

After implementing Planday, we did a takeover of another company that wasn’t on the system. I thought it was going to be very painful because we were onboarding 60 to 70 employees, a process that could have taken weeks with our old systems. Planday supported us with a custom-designed platform for this onboarding process, which it from weeks down to just two days.

Saving Costs and Improving Customer Experience

We use Planday throughout the 16-store CeX franchise. It saves so much time and hassle from a management perspective. Payroll and management can access the punch clocks and related software to help keep costs on target, and the historical data helps us better plan schedules in the future.

For example, if we’re never busy on a Tuesday afternoon, it makes sense to have fewer employees working. They can be moved to Saturday, when everyone is out shopping. In this way, Planday saves the company money and makes those employees more productive. And, if you’re a customer, you’ll appreciate that there are more than enough knowledgeable people around to answer your questions even when the store is busy.

Making Management Easier

We use Planday to manage the wage cost day by day and week by week, according to targets. Weekly timetables and schedules are no longer an issue, because Planday allows management to take employee requests for time slots to work without having to gather that information from multiple sources or methods.

In the back-office, we use it to enhance our HR and payroll processes. Payroll and HR departments can download the information they need to do their jobs directly from Planday.

Enabling Employee Flexibility

Planday streamlines and simplifies processes for employees, too. They use Planday’s app to check their schedule and to communicate between themselves and the management team. At each store, employees to punch in and out every day to keep track of their hours worked. Management can approve time sheets, input revenue for the day and manage who’s on the schedule, giving employees and management near-instant access to updated information.

We’ve been able to serve our employees’ flexibility much better than we used to, as well as monitor that flexibility. Today, everyone needs a mobile workforce and people want to work and they can work — and Planday caters to that need.

Aiding Expansion and Retention

One of our main goals behind implementing Planday was to keep growing the company. We couldn’t continue to expand at our current rate without having systems that allowed us to do that. Planday allowed us to have a system for onboarding and offboarding employees effectively and easily.

A lot of onboarding is now done by the employees themselves, which reduces management involvement, saves time and avoids frustration and wasted time for everyone. Planday helps us engage our employees better by enabling us to keep all communications in one place, which in turn has proven to increase retention across our stores.

With Planday onboard, we have systems and processes in place to onboard people in large numbers and to also manage them effectively. This is essential for the future of CeX, as we have plans to continue expanding both the brand and our portfolio of stores across the UK.