Team members like being able to see their schedules and available shifts to pick up via their mobile devices. Also the ability to submit time off to their managers and receive notification when approved. Being a multifacility healthcare system, this allows us the ability to see staffing at all facilities for best decisions for deployment of our enterprise float pool resources.

The tool provides ability to have a predictive model for nursing unit census, a staffing plan built within the system to vary staff appropriately to the volume and a interface capability to load daily actual worked hours to volume to monitor closer to real time how you are tracking to budgeted targets. We also have an Open Shift tool to post vacant shift needs for team members to see and pick up to fill the vacancies.

You still have use of the majority of tools within Smart Square for other clinical areas such as Surgery, Imaging, etc but we have not implemented any predictive modeling for these areas. Schedules are a little more complicated in these areas, but the tool still works for them as well.

Team productivity went up with the implementation of smart square. All of the automated features in the solution make it so easy to use.

Smart Square has reporting features that are hard to find in another software solution. Our old scheduling system was a ton of manual work and we could not get the reports we needed. Our company needed a solution that could minimize the workload of our team but increase the capabilities of the solution. Smart Square provided that for us.

New ideas can take some time to implement because they have to go through product development. When changes are made (like to the modern view), those changes were put in place for 1 or 2 features but not all. Example: as a manager once the new modern platform was put in place, certain user types had to go back the classic view to manager the schedule. It would be better for big changes like that to have it all available at the same time instead of piece mealing it together.

As an SAA, learning SS was a challenge being as though it is a robust software capable of almost anything. That said, my experience has been great and I continue learning and growing with and through our support team at Avantas and the software.

As a SAA, the more capable the end user is with having control of their schedule is beneficial to us. The open shift program is one of those that allows the employee freedom of scheduling and the leader and us SAA benefit from not having that responsibility, plus it works great in real time.

SS can do all necessary functions and then some as a whole, and great for the end user, but I must say is not intuitive for the leaders managing it. Simplicity has been lost in the development of the new UI in my opinion. Along with it a lot more bugs. With technology ever changing in the efforts to make software more user friendly, the new Schedule Builder has created more clicks and hidden panels to work with. It is not to say that users don't use and like many of the new features but overall do not prefer the Schedule Builder over classic, unfortunately. Of course this may not have been an issue had we had an integrated HRIS feed taking all the shift updates off of the leaders plates.

We are able to see from a global view to the shift few staffing needs. We know that openings are being seen by team members. We are also able to make staffing decisions quickly with tools such as cancellation list when we need to downsize.

Smart Square is very easy to use and is helpful to manager to see their needs. It posts openings to team members as soon as staffing changes. It has business intelligence that helps the managers to make corrections to staffing and improve budget issues such as incidental Overtime. The monthly scheduling process is easy to follow and gives team members several ways to pick up extra time. The support is excellent. We meet with our support team biweekly to review issues which helps us stay on top any issues.

The one feature that could be improved on is the report writer. We are able to write basic reports. At times, adding a field to a report is difficult.

Over the past several years of working with Avantas on Smart Square, there have been times when we have had some concerns about functionality, ease of use, and response to issue/enhancement tickets. That being said over the past year Avantas has made a point to improve their product by listening to their customers and actually taking the feedback and implementing it into the product.

I like the more modernized approach Smart Square is taking with the tool. I also like the involvement we have as customers in improvements being made within the tool.

Sometimes it seems as if the enthusiasm to release new/updated features causes an oversight in some areas which in turn causes functionality issues for the users.