Payroll Costs Drives Workforce Management Strategy

BOSTON, MA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- May 10, 2007 -- Employee turnover and the pressure to reduce payroll costs are the top factors driving retailers to focus their resources on workforce management (WFM) solutions, says a new report by Aberdeen -- a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS) -- on Retail Store Operations, "Automated Workforce Management Means Better Performance." In response to these pressures, 65% of Best-in-Class are adopting a more proactive strategy towards staffing plans by balancing tasks, customer service, and selling procedures.

An outstanding 80% of Best-in-Class retailers have either improved or met their labor turnover rate goals as a result of improved WFM processes in retail. Best-in-Class lead with better store associate empowerment, workforce analytics, and optimum staffing. In order to meet their WFM goals, Best-in-Class are 72% more likely than Industry Average and Laggards to assess staff needs, skills, and talent development, and are 40% more likely to have established guidelines for workforce process and product training.

On the other hand, Laggards assign and manage 90% of tasks at the retail store with little or no task completion reporting and compliance. Interestingly, 63% of all respondents plan to spend money on workforce management solutions in the next 12-24 months, indicating that retailers see a need to improve the way their current workforce management and are making future plans.

"Average and Laggard performance is not matching up to the standards of Best-in-Class companies due to manual workforce procedures, lack of WFM analytics, and fragmented WFM solutions," said Sahir Anand, Retail Research Analyst, Aberdeen. "This fragmentation is essentially due to several non-integrated WFM solutions deployed within the enterprise that lead to flawed interaction of labor, sales volume and customer traffic data for long-term labor forecasting and planning purposes."

In the end, having workforce management capabilities has enabled Best-in-Class to improve scheduling, labor management, employee training, and task management over all other retailers. As workforce management pressures will continue to persist among all retailers as long as there are employees to be managed, having future plans and training to alleviate these pressures are important initial steps, but integrating solutions should also be evalutated to derive further benefits.

The research, underwritten by Microsoft and WorkPlace Systems shows readers the Best-in-Class practices, advantages of WFM, and the factors impacting the adoption, use and the effectiveness of this technology.

To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=3979

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

Contact Information: Media Contact: Sahir Anand Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5271 Sahir.Anand@aberdeen.com