Elly Yates-Roberts |
T-Mobile has created a mobile application – the Covid-19 Employee Roster Mobile App – using Microsoft Power Apps to provide its teams with staff availability information via handheld devices.
According to Microsoft, T-Mobile needed “to prioritise the health of its employees, pare itself down to about 20 per cent of its retail operation, communicate extensive changes to a nationwide workforce, and create a safer, more-informed, properly staffed retail environment”. To do this, the company built the Power BI-based app, enabling it to quickly aggregate detailed information, dashboards and reports that provided T-Mobile team members with constant staffing insights.
“From the first piece of code to a rough draft, it all took about 24 hours,” said Greg Soto, business analysis manager at T-Mobile. “From there, it took one more day to iron out requests and notes, and then we took it live.”
Microsoft says that the app helped T-Mobile to maintain income for its hourly employees as “their paychecks were dependent on constant, accurate updates regarding who was working in a store, who was ‘on the bench’ (aka willing to work, but without a physical location) and who had been assigned to a virtual retail location”.
“We could suddenly see where everyone was at a glance, and share a single resource tool – I can’t say enough about how useful that was,” said Douglas Allbright, a T-Mobile retail store manager in New York.
T-Mobile will now recycle the code in the app, using it to create other apps to organise store re-openings, address safety concerns and as a contingency against events similar to Covid-19 which could require emergency measures. According to Microsoft, “T-Mobile believes it is better prepared with nimble, adaptable technology that can be activated and deployed in a matter of hours”.
“T-Mobile’s focus on protecting the health and safety of its employees and customers through technology is a powerful example of what it means to accelerate digital transformation at speed and scale,” says Jean-Philippe Courtois, Microsoft sales, marketing and operations lead. “These early innovations are now informing how we think about agility and resilience as we emerge from crisis mode into reimagining businesses and inspiring economic reset.”