About Carwood
Carwood Motor Units Ltd started as a local automotive parts business in Coventry in August 1966, and since then, it has developed steadily, both by organic growth and by strategic acquisition, into a European leader in its specialised fields. The Company’s main areas of expertise are in engineering (remanufacturing), technical vehicle services (Diesel, electrical, HVAC, EV) and logistics (parts procurement, storage, and distribution)
Today, the business has over 250 employees across five sites in the UK. It emphasises a People First approach, demonstrated by over 10% of the workforce clocking up over 20 years of loyal service.
The Problem
Across the five sites, staff relied heavily on human intervention and manual spreadsheets. Each site maintained separate spreadsheets for holidays, sickness, payroll, and absence reporting. After completing them, managers reviewed and approved the records before sending them to Head Office.
At Head Office, the team validated the data again. Then, they manually entered the information to process pay. As a result, the process became time-consuming and prone to error. Moreover, the lack of automation made it difficult to ensure consistency across all sites. Not only was it time-consuming and error-prone, but it meant Central Group Management could not quickly identify what was happening at a site level on a daily and weekly basis.
With Carwood encountering their predicted growth, they turned their attention to procuring a Cloud-Based application to help provide a single source of data across all their UK sites.
“Excel Spreadsheets were used across 5 sites to monitor attendance. At each pay period, a spreadsheet would be sent to Payroll, who had to manipulate this data and manually input the hours recorded and lost into Sage”
Harjit Uppal – Group HR Manager
The Solution
Carwood’s Diesel System facility in Birmingham was the first site to adopt Chronicle Online. Because the site follows ISO 14644 standards, the team needed to choose an appropriate method of data capture. After consulting with Chronicle, they decided that facial recognition would be the most suitable technology. As a result, the site could ensure both compliance and efficiency in its processes.
Working together, the teams quickly configured Chronicle Online and trained key system users. Soon after, 90 staff members began clocking in and out through the Contactless Facial Recognition Clocking Terminal. After successful parallel pay runs, the project’s next phase witnessed linking Chronicle Online directly into the Sage Payroll system that Carwood was using to process monthly payroll.
Transferring employees working hours (including overtime, holiday and sick) directly into Payroll via a CSV file allowed Carwood to remove their historical dependence on spreadsheets and fully automate their Time and Attendance practices at the Birmingham site.
Roll Out
Witnessing the benefits and improved ways of working Chronicle Online brought to the Birmingham Factory, Chronicle worked with Carwood to start planning the rollout of the Workforce Management system to the remaining 200 staff and four sites (Nottingham, Yeovil, Telford, and the Coventry Head Office).
Chronicle Online was configured on a site-by-site basis to meet the specific needs of each new Carwood location. The configuration included setting up new shifts, rotas, and employee holiday balances. Using the knowledge gained from the original product training, Carwood then ran internal training sessions for new system users. As a result, each new site was quickly and efficiently mobilized.
Maintaining consistency, all the remaining sites adopted the Contactless Facial Recognition Clocking Terminals, allowing any employee across the business to clock in at any site from one enrolment.
Further system security measures were implemented with the whole group now clocking in and out via Chronicle Online. To maximise employee data security, Carwood deployed Chronicle’s 2 Factor Authentication log-in process, which sees system users entering a username and password combination, followed by submitting a randomly generated code by Google at the log-in page.
“There is no inputting onto Excel spreadsheets, as this is now done by employees clocking in and out. Holidays entitlements can be easily accessed without errors, and you can even download a Holiday Audit Report”.
Harjit Uppal – Group HR Manager
Conclusion
Addressing initial business challenges whilst working towards a wider group requirement is a difficult task that many software vendors struggle to provide. Chronicle believe that this case study demonstrates how a strong client/vendor partnership delivers ongoing business benefits of Cloud-Based Workforce Management software. We take great pride in our software’s results and look forward to our continued work with the Carwood Motor Group.
“The system has everything we needed, its great value for money and we would recommend Chronicle”
Harjit Uppal – Group HR Manager
About Chronicle Computing
Chronicle Computing was established to provide small, medium, and large companies across the UK with a functional, robust, and affordable cloud-based Workforce Management System.
Specialising in Time and Attendance, Access Control, HR and Scheduling Solutions. Chronicle Computing has extensive experience in managing, implementing, configuring, installing and training users on WFM systems.
Mission Statement – ‘To provide an affordable, simple and robust web-based workforce management system that users can prepare a payroll run with and extract management information, critical to a successful organisation.’
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