Iowa State University Book Store - Education Scheduling - Case Study

Case Study: Iowa State University Book Store Iowa City, Iowa, United States

Business Overview

The Iowa State University Book Store is owned and operated by Iowa State University. The University Book Store has been serving the faculty, staff, students, and community for over 130 years.

The University Book Store began in the 1800's in a small room in Beardshear Hall. In 1892, the Hub was completed to satisfy the need for a new bookstore, Post Office, and waiting room for the Dinkey, the Ames-to-campus steam motor line. The Book Store continued its counter service operation for 66 years. In 1958, it was moved to the Memorial Union to expand the facilities, become self-serve, and add new services. To satisfy the campus' growing needs, the Book Store quickly doubled its space in the Memorial Union. In 2007 the University Book Store was completely renovated in 2007 to nearly double the space of the previous store.

The Iowa State University Book Store is a vital part of our diverse academic community. UBS is a unique University department, in that we have the opportunity and responsibility to serve every student, faculty and staff member at ISU. Our services are essential to every college of the University through support of projects, activities and programs. UBS is a window into the University, greeting visitors with sincerity, and reflecting the image and true mission of ISU. Our business is people, and we strive every day to meet the far reaching needs of our academic community.

Scheduling Overview

We have 26 full-time, approximately 85 part-time employees and approximately 25 additional part-time seasonal employees for the back-to-school rush. Since we hire students, we can't really schedule in shifts because their schedules vary so greatly. Some of the recent enhancements to the work scheduler ShiftPlanning user interface have helped with this, though. We also have a lot of employee turn around - students quit, get fired for not coming to work, or simply move on to bigger and better things.

Previous Scheduling Method

We previously used the work schedule maker Scheduling Employees 2000 by Guia International 3.1. It worked alright but we had to print out schedules for student employees and with the changes made to our schedules weekly, we used a LOT of paper. Each employee had to be scheduled for their work times, rather than creating shifts with multiple people assigned. The main issue we had with this software is that only one scheduler could be logged on and making changes at a time, so we had to schedule our scheduling - ridiculous!

Since ShiftPlanning

Our schedulers had to change the way they thought about scheduling employees because of how the employee schedule maker ShiftPlanning uses shifts rather than just scheduling employees. Because we are on a college campus we have to hire students for part time positions, so we don't really use shifts. The new version of ShiftPlanning has helped with this because the employee view allows us to schedule employees rather than create shifts and assign employees to it.

I would definitely recommend the work scheduler ShiftPlanning to others. Plus, many of the enhancement requests I have made have already been put into production so I know you actually listen to what your customers are saying about your product to constantly improve it!

The best support I've seen for a software / technology company. - Lisa Goeres - Iowa State University Book Store

The ShiftPlanning team is always kind, pleasant, and willing to help. Again, some of the best support I've ever seen.

Further

Our employees really like the fact that they can check their work scheduler from anywhere. They also like that they can see who they are working with and get notifications. Our schedulers and supervisors look at the schedules more often and they love that they can access from anywhere and all of them can be making changes at the same time.