TimeTracker: An HR Tech Solution by SPD Group

This is the new case study by SPD Group, the first in 2021! Learn how the software development company managed to build a solution that helped to manage their internal processes and optimized the operation. If your company has a similar structure, TimeTracker might be a perfect fit!

Overview
SPD Group is a custom software development company that was founded in 2006. Eight years later the number of employees increased from 7 to 90, making it hard to control the performance and monitor the statuses and progress of each individual. The first attempt to create an automated solution that replaced spreadsheets happened in 2014. The basic software called TimeTracker 1.0 was created from scratch but covered only the essential functions including the user profile, project profile, and the time tracking function. However, in 2018 the number of SPD Group’s employees exceeded 300 experts, with some of them working on multiple projects with different budgets at the same time. It became apparent that a more powerful solution was required. SPD Labs, an internal development team, took over the project to redesign the TimeTracker, add more features, bring maximum transparency for the organization, and make the tool scalable for future growth by implementing the microservice architecture.

Business Goals
The main reason for a new version of the TimeTracker was the request from the Finance department. The initial version allowed users to edit the information they put in forms earlier and the system didn’t save data on these changes. Any user could edit its data anytime making it impossible to figure out what exactly happened in case financial statements do not converge. As a result, the same reports generated on different days could differ in numbers, and we couldn’t find out exactly why.

Additionally, with this update, it was decided to enable the solution to provide detailed statistics on each user, have a calendar for the entire company for tracking and requesting day statuses, send personal notifications via email, and generate reports.

This above-mentioned functionality would allow SPD Group to become a more people-oriented company, enabling the Finance department to correctly calculate salaries and enabling HR experts to predict burnout of employees based on reported overtime. From a client’s perspective, TimeTracker 2.0 would provide the most transparent monitoring of each expert working remotely via outsourcing or outstaffing models of cooperation, improving the reputation of SPD Group as a trusted software development partner.

Technical Challenges
Seamless transition from version 1.0. It was planned to perform the transition gradually, in three stages: synchronization of both versions, parallel functioning, and complete switch to the new version.
Transitioning the solution from monolith to microservice architecture to enable scaling and addition of the new, more sophisticated functions to the system compared to the relatively simple features that already existed.
Storing large amounts of historical data to meet the initial requirement from the Finance department for creating a system that prevents any unnoticed changes in the system by the users.
Integrating TimeTracker with G-Suite and introducing two-factor authentication to improve security, as a requirement from the IT department.

Read the full case study here: https://spd.group/cases/timetracker-an-hr-tech-solution/