First the question was asked what the advantages of planning software would be for Philipp Kunz's company, a timber construction business. Important points here were costs, customer satisfaction, utilisation planning, planning in the absence of managers, and the flow of information to employees and the resulting employee satisfaction. The current planning process involves a physical appointment calendar in the office, in which, however, the planned duration of jobs and construction sites already under way are not visible. Deployment planning is therefore often done at short notice and utilisation planning is barely possible. The existing industry software for order processing does not allow an adequate representation of a weekly deployment plan.
While low financial outlay and flexibility speak in favour of the previous system, the negative aspects of the system outweigh them. These include: inconsistent processes, the lack of an overview for the employees carrying out the work, and the missing flow of information.
From a comparison of the target and actual planning processes, a list of requirement criteria for the planning software was drawn up. Starting with 15 different software options, the search was finally narrowed down to four different options for closer examination: an Excel solution, a chargeable extension of the industry software already in use in the business, an American project management tool, and Vanillaplan.
In Philipp Kunz's work the choice of staff and work planning tool fell on Vanillaplan. He was particularly impressed by its simplicity and presentation. The option of capacity planning and the scheduling of both staff and non-staff resources also led him to issue a recommendation for our software.
For us at Vanillaplan this work offers a great overview of the advantages of software for deployment and capacity planning and a fascinating insight into the decision-making and selection processes of our prospective customers. A warm thank you to Philipp Kunz for writing this thesis, and congratulations on passing his diploma.
At the beginning of the year Philipp Kunz, a student at the Swiss Construction School in Aarau, approached us to get more information about Vanillaplan. As part of his diploma thesis for the timber construction technician HF qualification, Philipp Kunz chose a software comparison for the company where he was doing his placement, because at work he had encountered various problems in work and staff planning.
