Sue Ward

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Reviews by Sue Ward

• Cezanne HR· Jun 25, 2014

  ★★★★★

  We sought a system to replace our paper files and various Excel spreadsheets. It had to be secure, affordable, easy to use and beneficial to both the company and our staff. Villages Housing has been using Cezanne since mid January 2014. We have all our 95 staff details on the system. Staff request leave and managers approve or decline the request in a seamless process - and HR are alerted to any requests awaiting attention for too long. Managers get a daily email to let them know who is off today. Staff and managers have access to Android and Apple apps – to see / request leave or see who’s off today, even when they are out of the office. When I work between offices or from home, I can access Cezanne from the Internet. Staff can easily submit changes to address, telephone numbers, emergency contacts, bank details etc. for approval. Very soon we will manage our staff appraisals and record our training needs and activities on Cezanne. Until I contacted Cezanne, the cost of accessing suitable HR systems was proving prohibitive with high upfront fees and additional costs. Value for money is essential in all organisations and we needed to avoid hidden charges and extra ‘Development Days’ which can be extremely expensive. I questioned the cost at every stage of the procurement process and the answer at every stage was – ‘No – that’s included.’ Jo must have thought me very cynical indeed! Cezanne charges a very reasonable standard rate per employee per month. That’s it. I have used the Help Desk and numerous Webinar meetings whenever I needed help – and no extra costs were incurred. What’s more, every person I have spoken with at Cezanne has been the consummate professional; responsive, helpful and friendly – and nothing is too much trouble. They have a suggestions page where customers are encouraged to submit ideas to enhance the system - and other users can support the ideas. It is an exceptionally intuitive system for the Administrator and the staff really like using it too. Implemented with Cezanne’s help, it needed virtually no input from our IT team. When you start with nothing – the whole implementation process can seem daunting. But it is just fear of the unknown really. Indeed, the process itself has had numerous benefits. You need to think through your policies and procedures to remove all ambiguity. Cezanne has brought clarity, discipline and consistency to absence management. Holiday entitlement is calculated automatically using our entitlement rules, contracted hours, and start dates and even those pesky Bank Holiday entitlements for part timers are now automatically calculated – once we had set up our entitlement criteria. Adjustments can be made easily too. If there is data in a field I can extract it to a spreadsheet. Each time I get a request for data - I save my report so that next time it will take just a matter of seconds. You can pin down who in your company can see what and send alerts to groups of users or named people. I really enjoy using Cezanne – it makes life easier for the whole company: Responding to staff enquiries regarding holiday entitlement is a thing of the past - they can see for themselves. Helping staff complete Tenders and Board reports with HR data is easy. Our Newsletter lets customers know of the new members of staff who have joined us - it take just a few seconds to find their details. When is a first aid certificate due to expire? Who’s got keys to the office? Someone is leaving – what skills and responsibilities will we miss? Who's celebrating a birthday or reaching a service milestone?… None of these is easy if your data is buried in a filing cabinet or on a spreadsheet somewhere. With Cezanne it is all there at my fingertips and I get a real buzz out of being able to respond positively, accurately and quickly. Oh - and so far - I have not experienced any system 'down time'. All in all I'm feeling pretty chuffed with our decision.