Waterside Garden Centre Implements Secure and Reliable Tensor Time and Attendance System
Waterside Garden Centre, Peterborough is not a Garden Centre in the traditional sense but a destination in itself. It allows customers to stroll around the centre’s scenic plant area, walk on the adjacent Fenland Nature Trail and peruse their wide ranging selection of products for the home and garden, pets and fish.
The centre has always tried to be at the forefront of current trends in horticulture and home & garden living, as their aim is to deliver an exceptional experience for all customers and provide a rewarding and fulfilling environment.
Depending on the time of the year, the Waterside Garden Centre can employ up to 90 workers, most of which are on fixed-term, seasonal contracts. Quite obviously, managing a fairly large number of temporary employees is no easy task and that is why, around a few years ago, the company started looking for a system that would streamline the workforce management process and in the same time provide a superior level of security for the Centre’s premises.
Mr. Richard Wilkinson is in charge of the Waterside Garden Centre’s ICT department and was directly involved in the purchase process. He revealed that, after careful consideration, the company decided to go for a self-install Tensor solution.
The system features multiple electromagnetic locks protecting the main access doors, plus several T1418G networked scanners for access control and time and attendance. It also comprises the WinTA Lite software, Tensor’s Smart Card based Time & Attendance and Integrated Security Management System for single site companies that combines the requirements of Time and Attendance, Access Control, Visitor Monitoring, and Identification Pass production, with our fast Smart Card and Biometrics electronics, to create the ultimate Time Management and Security system.
The hardware installation process was quite straightforward and simple, but a few issues were encountered while installing the software and getting it to work. However, “Tensor stepped in at that time and sorted everything out”, Mr. Wilkinson commented.
The staff at Waterside Garden Centre received on-site training on using the Tensor system and Mr. Wilkinson describes the quality of the process as “quite good”.
When questioned by the Tensor reporter whether the Tensor system is being used at its full potential right now, Mr. Wilkinson answered: “Probably not. However, it does exactly what we want it to do and we haven’t had any major problems, so we’re happy with it.”
Opinions are divided at the Waterside Garden Centre as far as the staff’s favourite part of the Tensor system is concerned. “For me, the Access Control side of it is the favourite bit, by far.” said Mr Wilkinson. He added “For my colleagues in accounts, though, it’s the Clocking and Reporting part of the system that’s a huge benefit, since it saves them hours on doing the timesheets.”
Mr. Wilkinson believes that, in terms of ease of use and accessibility, “the Access Control side of it couldn’t really get any easier than this. The clocking and attendance side is also relatively easy, and the reporting part of it is also quite simple and straightforward.” He also believes that the Tensor Smart Cards are very easy to use.
Ever since the Tensor solution was installed at the Waterside Garden Centre, Mr. Wilkinson contacted our dedicated helpdesk support line on a few occasions in order to sort our various functionality issues, and enjoyed ”a very good quality of the service all the time.” Hence, everything was ”solved over the phone”, so there was no point for Tensor’s engineers to visit the company’s site.
When asked whether he would recommend Tensor’s Time and Attendance and Access Control solutions to other companies, Mr. Wilkinson answered: “Oh yes, definitely”.
Summing up, Mr. Wilkinson commented: “The Tensor system is user-friendly, reliable and, more importantly, it has made life a lot easier for our admin department. Plus, we haven’t called you guys in a very long time, which means that everything’s running smoothly.”
Customer Information
Waterside Garden Centre
King Street, Baston
Peterborough, PE6 9NY
Phone: 01778 560000
E-mail: customer.services@watersidegardencentre.co.uk
