It was during the work week that Melanie Geldhauser was once again reminded of the very limits of Excel. The HR development manager for the cheese manufacturer, Jermi, was trying to keep track of the mandatory training courses for their 420 employees, which was becoming more and more difficult with each employee and each further course. "It's just not possible anymore," she concluded. And precisely that very week, a flyer from Easysoft – specialist for seminar organization and human resources development – appeared in the mail. The business studies graduate with a focus on human resources took advantage of the opportunity and contacted the software developer as well as some of their competitors for more information. After considerable research and numerous presentations, she came to the conclusion, "By comparison, Easysoft has proven to be the best."

A decision that she has not regretted. "The program is much more accurate and transparent." For example, she receives advance warning when an employee's mandatory training qualification is about to expire. By means of a traffic-light system, the data record turns orange 90 days before the qualification expires. That is how she set up the workflow, after taking into consideration that employees require lots of lead time due to shift work, vacation time and other more labor-intensive activities.

Melanie Geldhauser then sends a note with several dates for the necessary course or seminar to the concerned person. Hygiene training and work safety affect all employees. HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) training must be completed by almost all production workers.  In addition, selected employees must regularly refresh and update their knowledge on fire protection, cleaning agents and energy management.

The HR department offers a total of 120 seminars per year. Approximately 85 percent of these can be carried out by the 16 in-house instructors. External instructors are in demand for special topics such as trainer certificates, boiler maintenance or sprinkler systems. Transparency leads to higher pressure. Missing qualifications would immediately catch the eye of a customer or would be caught at the latest at one of about five annual audits carried out by the IFS inspection service, which sets uniform food and product standards. The 29-year-old HR manager, for her part, is certain that nothing will slip through her fingers, "Actually a simple tool that increases safety and improves our quality."

She has been working with the system since December. Together with Easysoft Consultant, André Fälker, they installed the system in three days and adapted it to the needs of the company. Many processes had to be carefully thought through in order to ease her daily workload. "For me, this is the ideal software because it can be adapted to our processes and not the other way around," says Melanie Geldhauser. After grasping the basic functions, she found it very easy to use.

She then went on another two-day training course and delved into the reporting system in great detail. She returned with new ideas. For instance, every production worker has a knife that has to be registered and checked. She can now record this using the new software. She would also like to use Easysoft one day to manage the small fleet of seven company vehicles.

But that's a vision for the future. For the time being, she is focused on structuring the work processes for mandatory training in the company in a clear and manageable manner. In the near future, the departments will be responsible for entering the successfully-acquired qualifications themselves. To accomplish this, she has to teach her colleagues the most important functions of the software. She hopes that this will provide additional time-savings, which is important for the HR manager.

However, the key factor is that she now has a high degree of transparency and clarity about the level of training for all 420 employees and that the software can be used to organize much more than just mandatory training.