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ReThink Productivity Podcast
The Evolution of Advanced Scheduling: How ModusForce Is Changing the WFM Game
Theo Gott and Mark Stacey from ModusForce discuss the evolving landscape of workforce management and how their Dayforce implementation expertise helps organisations maximise efficiency and employee satisfaction.
• The WFM market is experiencing 20% growth globally with key trends including AI automation, flexible working arrangements, and legislative changes
• Advanced scheduling combines WFM capabilities with automated scheduling and budgeting to deliver significant operational efficiencies
• The "perfect schedule" is a myth – successful implementations aim for 80-90% automation while preserving the crucial human element
• Modus Force offers a Minimum Viable Product approach that delivers advanced WFM capabilities in under five days, providing immediate benefits
• Unified HCM solutions like Dayforce eliminate the need for complex integrations between separate HR, scheduling and payroll systems
• Successful WFM implementations require managing change impact effectively, developing a clear roadmap, and prioritising data management
Reach Theo at theo@modusforce.com and Mark at mark@modusforce.com
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Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. I'm delighted today to be joined by Theo Gott and Mark Stacey from Modus Force. Hi, theo, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:Hi, simon, doing great thanks. How are you? Yeah?
Speaker 1:good thanks, hi Mark.
Speaker 3:Hi, simon, good to speak to you. I'm doing well, thanks, hope you are too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all good thanks. So we're going to find out a bit more about Modus Force in a second. But, theo, let's start with you. Tell us a bit about about modus force in a second. But, theo, let's start with you. Tell us a bit about yourself, career background, what you've done today and how you ended up being, I think, one of the first employees at motors force.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. So, yeah, my, my background started mostly in retail, pos, uh support and managed services, but I I had an opportunity for to work for the old ceridian, became a developer on their vFM product. Back then it was mostly dealing with time and attendance. And then an opportunity came up to work with product called Dayforce when that first came to the UK and I started implementing that around 2014, 15. I think I was the second UK consultant. Back then we were known as Dayforce Consultants. We were in HR, WFM payroll and then through the years just kind of picked up more knowledge of the general solution.
Speaker 2:Spent a couple of years at Axiom Group working on a few larger WFM strategy, vendor selections and some time-retended scheduling presentations for UKG and WorkBrain. Yeah, came back to the Dayforce mothership in 2020. And last year I saw an opportunity on LinkedIn just out of the blue. Basically, it shouted to me it's a new company called Motorsforce Dayforce exclusive partner. I saw he was involved in the startup of the company and I just jumped at the opportunity. So that's where I am now.
Speaker 1:Amazing, good, nice story. Mark, can you follow that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can Thanks Simon, so, yeah. So, mark Stacey, I guess just kind of to set this up brilliantly, one of the things that we're most proud of and one of our core values at Motorsport is our background and our experience, and we really believe it helps us deliver an exceptional service, having walked in the same shoes and the same spaces as our customers, and that's really important to us. And that kind of leads me quite nicely onto this. I've worked in retail for over 20 years, from the shop floor to store and area management. I've been involved in the fascinating analytics of space planning and the cost of all of the products.
Speaker 3:I've been involved in store design, so all the legalities and the fundamentals of how you build a brand new store and how you design it, from the fun of being on the refit team and understanding how teams work to pull around those stores quite quickly in tight timelines to delivering WFM roles out for Kronos and A-Force. I've been the head of labor for Wix Simon, which is where obviously I met yourself and Matt Brown, where together we all collectively built a operating and Excel model from the bottle up, and kind of meeting you guys was where I got the bug for consultancy. So I ended up at Accenture for three years, kind of working on many large projects, and then exactly the same with Theo. I was aware of many of the founders of Motorsforce and I was very excited to join them and see what I could bring to the table. So yeah, that's me.
Speaker 1:Brilliant and Theo. We've talked about Motorsforce a couple of times, mentioned cryptically some of the founders. Do you want to fill in some of those gaps for people on what Modus Force does? Maybe a bit about going on, chris, love and Emma, the kind of driving forces.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. So Modus Force was first incorporated in 2024 at the start. They are a Dayforce exclusive implementation partner. They are a Dayforce exclusive implementation partner and they were started by, as you said, emma Armitage and Chris Love, joined by Thomas Quinton and Neil McGregor. So those guys and Emma all were part of our EPL group which sold to Accenture, I think, in 2020. They've got a very longstanding and and excellent background in wfm delivery, amongst other things, but the the main focus of modus force is delivering excellence in not just wfm but across all dayforce modules. So we spend a lot of time both with existing Dayforce customers and with new Dayforce customers. Part of our customer base is the existing Dayforce customers in the optimization sphere, so customers that want to add in new modules, especially around WFM, where across the other partner practices there isn't the best knowledge base, and we've got people like Mark and our team and myself and other people that we've selected from around the WF landscape to kind of bolster and join that real center excellence.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Yeah, great people that founded it that we know well and clearly got you guys on board, and some of your colleagues as well that we've known from other organizations and industries. So really good team forming there doing some great work, Mark. Let's talk about WFM. I know you kind of you guys specialize in day force, but give us a kind of appraisal of the WFM market at the moment and then we'll start to dig into some of the more advanced scheduling and AI-related pieces.
Speaker 3:Yeah, brilliant. Thanks, simon. I mean anybody that knows me I'm always super passionate about this subject. It's something that I live and breathe and I really enjoy it, and I just think it's going to go from strength to strength the marketplace. At the moment, I think we all understand the traditional benefits from WFM projects, such as time tracking, attendance management free to scheduling and compliance, and all the costs and time benefits associated with that. This is something that I've been seeing for a long time now, but, however, I think we're going to see a shift in trend and focus around those areas. So the introduction AI and its automation and efficiencies is just going to be incredible for the area. Some of the analysis that it's going to be able to provide and you know further accuracy is going to be stunning.
Speaker 3:Something I really like to champion as well, especially when I'm working with customers, is all around flexible working, not just around the traditional flexible working, but also colleague well-being as well. So the use of those tools and how they promote flexibility, like the day force, functionality of shift bids and shift swapping and you know, for me that's what people want now. But also it's not just that. It's the introduction of kind of like gig working or contract or temporary working, if you prefer, where we're really seeing a shift in the dynamic of that, where actually you know people at the workforce, they are looking for that, they want that flexibility of shifts, they want to pick them up when they want, rather than the traditional. You know, nine to five that you know many of us are used to in the past. And then probably just getting a little bit more serious really is like some of the legislative changes that are coming in, especially, for example, like in April 2026, where we will see, you know, the right from day one of the request for flexible working.
Speaker 3:And obviously there's, you know there's lots of pieces in and out around that. But it's kind of like, you know, my question for organisation and customers is, you know, do you want to wait for that change to come in or do you want to start to look at what's right and what you know what's best for your workforce and your business now? And just those three points really for me so I'm just highlighting and picking them out just shows why the WFM market is so strong, why it's tracking. You know we can all hit Google and see some of the trends, but you know I think we're talking like 20% increases in global markets, with the likes of Australia and America really standing out. So it's just a super exciting time in the WFM space and, yeah, just looking forward to seeing what can come.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the possibilities of endless is. I think inevitably we end up with probably more people in customer-facing environments because of cost challenges, the need to schedule more accurately becomes even more paramount. And back to some of the stuff we did at Wix have the right demand and all that kind of stuff. So advanced scheduling then and forgive me if I'm wrong in my mind that's, you know, using all the computing power in these solutions, feeding it with demand data, shape data. So how, how, how many hours have I got and when do those hours need to be spent? Match with some of the stuff you talked about in terms of flexibility. Is that something you've been working on and you kind of see helping supporting clients?
Speaker 3:yeah, absolutely, and you're absolutely spot on, by the way. So advanced scheduling is exactly that. It's the pure WFM, with the automated scheduling on top of that or the budgeting process in the background. And we are one of the very few Dayforce implementation partners that are experts in deploying the advanced WFM model. We have experience across America, australia and EMEA delivering it across the retail, service and manufacturing space, and it's often the most overlooked day force model module.
Speaker 3:Yet, you know, in the day force toolkit. Yet for me you know, simon, as you all know, you know these types of WFM and budgeting models. They release the biggest benefits and operational efficiencies and some of the MI that can come out of it can not just reshape your budget allocation but, you know, can completely shape. It, really give you some highlights of opportunities. It can start to help you to plan your recruitment and I think what excites me the most, as I think it does for for most customers as well, is that time it frees up for our managers, it supports them in being able to produce that great schedule, but it just takes the pain and and the effort away. It still allows for the human element. We'd absolutely never replace that human element. We still need that final 10 percent of say so, but yeah it. It just allows so much data and so much information to be able to come through us in in real times.
Speaker 1:Really I'll just pause you there and probably question for both of you. We'll start with theo. This I'll call it mythical because it it it is. Cast your mind back years ago. It was around setting up a system that you fed all this data into. You pressed a button, you got this perfect schedule. Everybody worked it with no qualms. Somebody might come in a bit late, somebody might be early, and you repeat that each week. Personally, I've never seen that. I still, ironically, see people trying to sell it. But, as mark described there, getting to that 80, 85, 90 percent is that the sweet spot?
Speaker 2:I think if what you described there, simon, is the, the utopia that we always refer to when we do client discoveries. And back when I got involved with dayforce for the first time, the, you know the primary selling point was being able to schedule people in the right place at the right time and ultimately, you know, if all the contracts were beneficial enough towards the company, that you would be able to achieve a 90%. I think the reality is that in most organizations, the 80-90% isn't actually that realistic when a company opts to take in or implement advanced WFM. I think if they set their eyes a little bit lower, set the bar a little bit lower in terms of what they're looking to achieve from their current wage model and their current contractual base, then they'll be less likely to be disappointed with the end result.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Mark again, have you ever seen the mythical press the button, spit out the perfect schedule, everybody works it and we carry on week in, week out with this. You know, utopia.
Speaker 3:No, definitely not, and for me I don't think I'd ever want it to either. I think, if we're going to talk about the three most exciting trend areas in WFM, and one of those is still flexibility and that human factor, I don't think we want to lose that and I also don't believe in all the hype around that's what AI is going to replace and take away that human factor. It won't. It will just deliver that sweet spot element. And just kind of leading on from what fio said as well, about just kind of like taking you know, kind of like where you are right now, like one of the biggest challenges that I come across from advanced wfm is is that wonder and and that again, like you say something that mythical piece of how long is it going to take to deliver? Are we talking weeks and months? Do we need to rebuild our model? Do we need to understand all of the elements? And actually we don't.
Speaker 3:Uh motorsforce, we currently offer an mvp, so a minimal, viable product where within less than five days and we've already just achieved this with a, a global retailer in australia where we can deliver and the advanced wfm suite in in under five days and we're talking taking your current budget model, putting that into day force with an element of forecasting or without, you know it can be completely decided.
Speaker 3:But what we can start to do is release some of those benefits immediately.
Speaker 3:When we talk about from our you know, our schedulers having a demand graph, so something visual so, rather than just a budgeted number on an Excel spreadsheet somewhere, a visual demand in 15 minute increments telling them where they need their colleagues or certainly where they should expire, to have those colleagues to then having the metrics that come outside of that.
Speaker 3:So, again, one of the things that we've just done with our current MVP is a client inputted their budgeted data. They then had all of their stores schedule it and then the reporting and the MI that we were able to pull out of that was kind of game changing for them because it was just a view of their current you know scheduling, their current workforce and that establishment and what their operating efficiency is. And that's just another reason why I love the advanced WFm space. Yes, it's been around for a while, yes, it's been done, but in terms of day force, it's something that at motorsports we're able to really bring to life and do it quite quickly just to help you get on your journey amazing, good, good, good mvp in five days to kind of prove the future.
Speaker 1:And how's ai going to change that? What do you see coming in the world of wfm specifically?
Speaker 3:to be honest, I think the world is. I'm super excited about what it's going to bring and I think the efficient, I think it's just going to drive efficiencies, time savings, further level of accuracy with machine learning.
Speaker 3:I'm I'm like, beyond excited about machine learning and you know dayforce have been looking at this for quite a while and undoubtedly will see an improvement in that historic data analysis and then the predictive analysis that will come on from that in terms of the workforce demands, but I think ultimately what we will see is that age-old gap between forecast and actuals reducing further. So, yeah, really, really excited about what that will bring.
Speaker 1:Theo, have you got any thoughts on where you see AI above and beyond what Mark's talked about?
Speaker 2:Just on the machine learning point, I think it's been around 10 years that I've been hearing in lots of conference rooms and meetings the appetite to use weather data, traffic data, to help influence the level of demand that's being generated. I think in traditional systems where machine learning might not be available, the general technology trend is moving towards being able to consume that data and make sense of it and also to not necessarily over-egg what that influence might be, but at least help make the right decisions when it comes to planning and budgeting on good weather days, for example.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think all those things again sound great in theory. There's practicalities of if you're running a schedule in a closed retailer three, four weeks out, understanding the weather tomorrow is going to be really sunny or snowy or whatever. There's only so much you can react to that within your current contract confinement. So if you, if someone's full-time, you've still got to give them full-time hours and you probably can't send them home tomorrow and ask them to come in the weekend. So there's again. There's a there's some nice marketing stuff in there, isn't there. But also there's a pragmatism for all of those of us that have run stores of short term. Some of that actually really I can't do anything with, if that makes sense yeah, it does.
Speaker 2:And the point you touch on there is the compliance as well. I mean that there's been an ever-growing trend of organizations being more and more compliant and systemized and compliant to some degree, where advanced wfm really kind of comes into its own. He's been able to layer in those, those business rules with the legislation and to make sure that managers, when they're scheduling their staff, they're you know, they're not breaking the law, they're not bringing people in without the minimum rest, etc.
Speaker 1:Yeah, critical, and I think, like you, historically, when organisations have been starting to implement WFM, some of those are the biggest push backs where people inadvertently have not understood they're breaking the rules, and customer practice gets into that. So, all good, and, theo, just tell me, we've talked before and we've done some podcasts with with day force, but just remind us of, I suppose, the power of having a unified solution and from that you know, I think they call it, or I've referred to, as cradle to grave, almost, which is the most gracious of explanations. But from hr through to scheduling, through to payroll, through to leaving, yeah, from higher to fire, I think is the the slightly less it's the end of it.
Speaker 1:That's challenging.
Speaker 2:Anyway, tell us why that's important so one of the trends that we see mostly when organizations are coming from fragmented systems and this is this is often where you might have a separate WFM system to your payroll system or you might have a completely separate HR WFM payroll system In a single consolidated database, you can follow the end-to-end impact of bringing a new employee into a team, forecasting and building out your your schedule and seeing immediately the cost implication that those schedules can have.
Speaker 2:It's helping a lot of organizations to manage their headcount budgets. When it comes to managing how many people sit within a particular location or a particular team. Using some of the metrics that Mark's been able to pull out and the MI data, organizations are able to make longer-term decisions over how many people that they need to bring in for future seasons. And when it comes to just simplifying your processes, having more time to calculate your payroll, you know, not having to wait for a time sheet cut off at the either the end of the week or the end of the month organizations can can really make absolute efficiencies when it comes to processing that data all in one place that's yeah, and yeah, fully reportable as well.
Speaker 2:So in terms of where we see organizations taking the false HCM suite so that might be from recruitment all the way to payroll and benefits and pensions etc they're really able to reduce the amount of segregated systems and it just simplifies their entire implementation when they're not having to create complex integrations from system to system, they're not having to use manual processes to key in new starters into their payroll system and the reporting that's available from a single consolidated database and having that data readily available to consume into a data lake to produce further BI, it's just so powerful that you can't merit it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in terms of final thoughts, then we'll come to you, mark. Any kind of advice for people listening if they're getting ready for the WFM or the day force journey and what they should look out for around implementation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely Just number one. For me, this is nothing new, right, but do not underestimate the change impact, the wfm especially not an advanced wfm project, so they are very different. When we're talking about budgets and, ultimately, people, we're not just recording time. Now we're talking about, you know, our people and our teams being scheduled, but also don't don't you know, don't forget the impact to our central functions.
Speaker 3:I I would always say best practice, develop your, your roadmap early on. Again, I know this sounds basic, but set realistic goals and approach them for a winning hearts and minds mindset. That's something that really works well for me Understanding what your decisions, what those impacts of those decisions are going to be on those real people and, most importantly, those adoption rates. And I guess you know not to harp on about it but use an MVP approach. It's kind of only the second time that we've done it, or certainly I've done it, rather, and I can really see the benefits of that now.
Speaker 3:So, having a platform where you're able to go back to your leadership teams and say, look, this is what we've achieved. This is where we currently are, how does this affect our roadmap? You know, what does this really make us think? We're piloting it immediately, so straight away. We're going to have MI that's going to show us recruiting patterns or forecasting gaps or gaps within our budgeting process, and it can even then start to show you areas around your adoption rates. If you do have teams that aren't already doing the basics, before you're getting down the line of full implementation, you're already starting to see the fruits of those labours. So I think they would be the three big ones for me. I don't know if you've got any with all your experience.
Speaker 2:I think that the key area when it comes to an implementation whether it's Dayforce, ukg or any other platform is don't underestimate the importance of data, both pre-implementation and post-implementation. Having a key data stakeholder and SME on a project that has the skills to both extract, transform and organize your data and your ETL processes it really is one of the most important roles in a project and organize your data and your ETL processes it really is one of the most important roles for the project. When it comes to post-implementation, having your data, your BI teams, your MI teams involved in the project from not necessarily the start of the project but at the very least being involved and having knowledge transfer delivered to them from mid-project, where data is available and can be queried from the system, really really sets them up to make the best use of the outputs that are available once you go live.
Speaker 1:Excellent Sound words, good advice, good advice. So we'll pause there. Really appreciate your time, theo and Mark. We'll put some links in the show notes to your LinkedIn profiles. If people want to get in touch with you via LinkedIn, they can click through. Is there anywhere else, theo, that people should look if they want to find out more about Motorsforce?
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. Thank you, Simon. Our URL is wwwmotorsforcecom. Url is wwwmodusforcecom. If you want to reach out to me directly, you can reach me on LinkedIn or my email address is theo at modusforcecom.
Speaker 1:Do you want to add your email address for completeness?
Speaker 3:Yeah, lovely, thank you. Yeah, so it'd be mark at modusforcecom. So nice and simple. And yeah, absolutely, on LinkedIn or email, just drop me a message, as many of you out there already do.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. We'll pause there, thanks Mark, thanks Theo for your time and we'll catch up soon. Thanks, simon.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Simon Cheers.
