PeopleMatter: Voice Driven Services
The first increment of the solution is a smart phone based tool for managing shifts, time off, shift swaps and so on.
Nate DaPore is a natural showman. The founder of PeopleMatter, fresh from a significant funding moment, is rapidly building market momentum for his integrated talent suite for the Restaurant, retail and hospitality industries. The offering breaks new ground in a number of areas.
Last week, the lanky entrepreneur hosted the Charleston, SC version of a Steve Jobs product launch. Complete with stage drama, talk show like interviews and a high end demo, Dapore was in his element.
DaPore has managed to build a Talent Management Suite that you can get excited about. For the most part, the vendors in our industry offer dull gray stories about their technical products. In this very orchestrated launch, Nate found the sweet spot.
Let’s start with the most marketable part of the process.
PeopleMatter’s new release includes a voice driven scheduling and training system that actually seems to work. Scheduling is the biggest bugaboo in the industries they serve. Every increment of schedule management s a hassle for everyone involved. Unlike white collar environments, every hole in a schedule has to be filled (or the manager gets to work more shifts).
The first increment of the solution is a smart phone based tool for managing shifts, time off, shift swaps and so on. Understanding that it will be a while before the blue collar segment is fully armed with iPhones, the company wrestled with how to reach the standard (non-smart phone) user. Ultimately, they figured out how to build a voice driven tool that accomplishes the same end.
Managers in the segments that PeopleMatter serves spend inordinate amounts of time developing, managing, revising and improving their schedules. The PeopleMatter toolkit acts kind of like Tungle for shifts. Employees interact with the system to solve their own problems and/or pick up more shifts. The manager is freed to manage. Scheduling decisions are accompanied by cost estimates based on the individual employee.
It’s a part of an overall system that begins with candidates and ends with schedule management (currently). The SaaS tools are accessible by phone and desktop. By integrating training, training management, hiring and scheduling into one single package, the PeopleMatter software streamlines most of the HR functions a restaurant, retail store or hotel would need to attend to.
Charleston, SC is an unlikely place for a software startup. It’s a fantastic place for a service driven startup. Expect to hear more from the company and its founder.
