Cloud-Based Centralized Attendance Capturing

Field-Force-scaled

From early life, our ATTENDANCE is recorded at every formal or informal gathering – Class Rooms, Assembly, Annual Day, Departments in a College, Offices, Factories, Seminars, Workshops, Trainings, etc. Have you noticed, each time, some finite time is wasted on taking attendance? Not only that, more time is wasted compiling the attendance. And this time spent in taking and compiling attendance is simply a waste of time. Nothing productive comes out of it.

Now imagine the multiple occasions and locations that this activity is performed and the resultant loss of time and efforts of the people involved. Once calculated in monetary terms this runs into lacs of rupees!

Can we save this time and money? Definitely by using technology.

Today we have machines, based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Fingerprint and Face Recognition, which can be deployed to identify the person from and capture the event.

A common misconception is that these machines capture attendance. These machines capture the event only. The data from these machines has to be downloaded into a Computer; the data has to be processed against a set of rules and then the Attendance Report would be generated. Brain behind getting Timely, Accurate and Proper attendance is the processing software and not the event capturing machine.

So, the answer to saving time spent on taking attendance is to have both a good event capturing machine and a good software to process the data.

Today the machines are PUSH TECHNOLOGY based. That means that as soon as the event takes place i.e. attendance is marked, the machine send the data to the PC instantly. The software are powerful enough to capture the incoming data, process it and generate reports on-line i.e. as soon as the person shows his face to the Face Machine his supervisor would be able to see his attendance.

The software are powerful to capture the data from multiple machines at the same time. So in any organization having multiple branches, multiple factories, multiple class rooms, etc. the

data can flow on-line and it would be processed instantly. All branches can see the Attendance Report of their branch in real time and at the same time the Head Office can see the Attendance Reports of all the branches cumulatively.

This Centralized Attendance Tracking System (CATS) can help increase productivity in many ways. For example in a chain retail store if the store does not open on time the business might be lost. With CATS the Head Office can actually monitor opening of all the stores on-line and take action if required. Similar examples could be opening of Path Lab outlets; Monitoring absent class teacher and allocation of substitute teachers, absent workers in a factory can lead to downtime of an assembly line. If absenteeism is known on-line an alternate worker of the similar skill set can be found as replacement in a short time, minimizing the Assembly Downtime.

CATS also monitors the attendance of those employees who have Field Tasks – Their Attendance is captured as soon as they Punch in the Mobile App. Their Geo-Location is also captured along with date and Time.

CATS also takes care of Multiple Shifts, Multiple Units, Multiple Divisions, Multiple Departments, Daily and Monthly attendance, Leaves, Overtime, etc.

Sanjive Mehta

Sanjive Mehta is the director at RS Barcoders Pvt. Ltd., a multiple award-winning HRIS & Automated Technology company. He is an IIT Delhi Alumni and Pioneer in providing Biometrics solutions in India.