All Points North operate several high-volume bars and nightclubs in the Leeds nighttime economy. They run some of Leeds' most renowned nightlife events such as Courtyard parties and the Made in Leeds festival, making Fibre and Mission the most popular hot spots in the city.

The challenge

“Prior to RotaCloud, we used an Excel spreadsheet to plan rotas, printing them out and pinning them on the staff noticeboard,” General Manager Matt Black told us.

With such a rapidly expanding company to manage, however, Matt quickly found that this was no longer a practical solution, and frequently encountered problems.

“We were unable to update the rota when we were away from the office, which led to an endless backlog of text messages and phone calls,” he told us.

“Staff had to wait until a manager was on duty and come into work to fill out a holiday request form — this was impractical and sorting and storing the requests used up space and time.”

Matt would also have to contact his staff individually whenever an amendment was made to their rotas, which was both time-consuming and often caused confusion.

“Staff weren’t able to see the rota from home, which would increase the number of ‘when am I working this week?’ messages.”

The solution

RotaCloud’s intuitive interface was something that appealed to Matt right from the start, who told us that he’d tried a number of other rota-planning solutions but came away disappointed.

“We’ve found that RotaCloud is a highly sophisticated but incredibly simple system to use. Its ease of use, from the layout, colour scheme and dashboard, make access to a lot of useful information quick and easy — I’ve used other online rota systems which didn’t even come close.”

“An area manager can check within seconds that all their venues are hitting the right targets and see which staff are where in real-time,” he continued. “This has allowed us to review costs and really tighten and improve efficiency, which in turn makes us a more profitable business.”

It’s not just the rota-planning element that has helped turn things around for Matt; RotaCloud’s varied reports have made it easy for him to see where else he can save.

“RotaCloud has an extensive reporting system that saves many hours of management time each week. Where we would usually manually work out costs, holidays, and attendance, RotaCloud already has all this information ready within seconds and allows a much deeper and better understanding of our costs.”

His team, too, has also seen the benefits of using a cloud-based rota.

“The mobile app means each staff member has access to the rota 24/7. They are kept up-to-date with push notifications, and the facility to set a shift reminder means they can never have an excuse for being late.”

Finally, Matt is able to focus actually running his business rather than attending to rota-related requests and problems.

“Before using RotaCloud, my mobile phone would be a constant source of stress and endless messages. Now my phone is almost always silent and the staff are always kept informed and up to date. Bliss!”