Johnston Sweepers Achieves a Clean Sweep in Time & Attendance with Tensor
Founded in 1904, Johnston Sweepers is a world leading manufacturer of outdoor surface cleansing equipment. With two factories in the UK, and over 200 distributors worldwide, Johnston Sweepers is a major global business, which provides the company with unique insight and knowledge, as well as experience gained in a range of international environments that can be used to provide even better sweeping solutions for customers.
Johnston Sweepers’ production sites in the UK manufacture a wide range of municipal and contractor cleansing vehicles from the 4 tonnes GVM Compact series to chassis mounted units in excess of 18 tonnes GVM. State of the art engineering design facilities and manufacturing techniques ensure that the product range continues to be an industry quality leader, the company claims.
A few years ago , the company’s growth and pressing personnel administration requirements prompted the management to start searching for a modern, automated solution to replace their very old punch card – based clocking system.
Mr. John Hoad, Senior Cost Accountant for Johnston Sweepers, was actively involved in the purchase process and recalls that, at that time, “4 different access control/time and attendance systems were short-listed”.
Nevertheless, the Tensor complete Time and Attendance, Access Control and Personnel Management solution was ultimately chosen. And that’s because “it did exactly what we wanted it to do and the Tensor representative managed to convey the information regarding its major features in very good, straightforward manner. Plus, the price was right as well, although that wasn’t necessarily the decisive factor.”
Given the size of Johnston Sweepers, the fact that they’re operating on multiple sites, as well as the sheer number of staff (over 400 employees), the company decided to implement the most comprehensive Time and Attendance and Access Control solution available from Tensor.
Their Tensor solution features numerous T32xx clocking stations and T1481G scanners, designed to meet the specific demands of each particular site. In terms of software, the company runs the Tensor WinTA.NET, WinHR.NET and WinAC.NET software suites, which means that it relies solely on Tensor for complete access control, personnel management and time & attendance supervision.
It’s also interesting to mention that Johnston Sweepers also worked closely with Tensor in order to tweak the WinTA.NET system, allowing it to export employee attendance data to their own electronic payroll system.
Mr. Hoad and his colleagues were trained on using the Tensor systems and its various components, and he describes the quality of the training process as “very good” and “informative”.
Despite the extensive training and the fact that they’ve been using the Tensor system for so long, Mr. Hoad acknowledged that there are probably some features they’re still not accustomed to after all this time. However, “it works very well for what we need it for, so we’re very happy with it.”
In fact, this is what Mr. Hoad and his colleagues from Johnston Sweepers like most about the Tensor system. Plus, the fact that the Tensor solution is “very easy to use” also plays an important part in the customer’s level of satisfaction, and the same applies to the smart cards and fobs, both of which are also “extremely easy to setup and use”.
Although quite aware of the available Fire Roll Call functionality, Mr. Hoad told our reporter that this is a feature they thankfully never had to use.
Mr. Hoad is no stranger to the Tensor help desk service. “The help desk analysts are very helpful. Even though we haven’t really called them lately, since we haven’t had any problems with the systems for quite a while, I recall that they were able to help me solve any issue quite rapidly”, the Johnston Sweepers Senior Cost Accountant recalls.
Additionally, while Mr. Hoad managed to solve most of the functionality problems by himself, with help from the help desk, the Tensor engineers were also called in on a few occasions.
“We have a very good maintenance contract with Tensor, and we really appreciate it. We had to call in the Tensor Operations Department on 2 or 3 occasions, in order to sort out a few issues involving the clocking units or other parts of the systems. However, the whole service and maintenance process was quite smooth and fast. I particularly appreciated the fact that they’ve loaned us a replacement clocking unit while ours was being repaired, thus minimizing the disruption to our day-to-day operation” John told the Tensor reporter.
Summing up, Mr. John Hoad said that “The Tensor systems are very reliable, secure and user friendly, while the staff – engineers, help desk, after sales – are very helpful as well. I would certainly recommend Tensor to other companies searching for a solid time and attendance system.”
Johnston Sweepers Limited
Unit 5
Curtis Road
Dorking
Surrey
RH4 1XF
Tel: 01306 884722
