Labor Management Solutions

There may once have been a time when only the human resources department monitored employee performance, but those days are over. Logistics managers in particular are beginning to realize that achieving their corporate goals requires a focus on measuring, managing and optimizing the performance of their workforce. After all, even an incremental improvement in labor productivity can make a significant contribution to a company’s profitability.

Labor management solutions — also known as human capital management solutions — function as “the platform to manage the intersection of the work that needs to be done, as defined by corporate objectives, and the workers that are available to complete it,” explains Monica Barron, an analyst with AMR Research Inc. (www.amrresearch.com).

Every manager within an organization should be using these applications, Barron says, because of their ability to help companies align workers with work (see table below). “Employee performance management is the corporate lifeline between enterprise-level strategy and individual performance,” she says.

According to Barron, these labor management applications simulate and model desired individual outcomes based on the unique metrics for each company, and then monitor and measure achievements within the context of the overall corporate strategy.

How big is this marketplace, and to what extent are shipper companies involved? Consider: In 2002, manufacturing, retail, wholesale, transportation and warehousing companies combined spent $674 million on solutions, according to AMR. The market is expected to grow slowly but steadily, at a rate of 6% per year through 2007.

On the following pages you’ll find Logistics Today’s exclusive Supplier Selector — a vendor and product evaluation matrix designed to help you determine what solutions best match up with your company’s needs. All of the information contained in the Supplier Selector was supplied by the vendors, and you’ll find more than a dozen other logistics-oriented matrices at our website, www.logisticstoday.com. The online matrix is updated constantly throughout the year to reflect product launches and upgrades that occur subsequent to the publication of this printed edition. LT

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