Managing workforce scheduling is a real challenge. Especially for businesses that run on shifts. It represents the kind of manual tasks that can be a drain on management resources while also negatively impacting the employee experience, which makes it an area ripe for automation. Voila! is a Montreal-based firm that just raised a seed round to address this challenge. While the challenge is real, it hasn’t been over-looked by the market. Most HCM/HRIS/payroll providers offer workforce management/scheduling capabilities and all of them are incorporating some kind of artificial intelligence, machine learning, or automation to assist. From voice-assistants to chat-bots or messaging apps, the ability to manage shifts is an area getting lots of attention. Charging into a crowded space isn’t unusual for the founders here. We noticed that the CEO and several members of the founding leadership team were part of the team that brought the market Taleo (originally Recruitsoft) which sold to Oracle in 2012.
From its press release: “Voilà! is an employee-centric platform that streamlines scheduling and workforce optimization. Launched in 2018 by the team behind the talent management software Taleo, acquired by Oracle for $1.9 billion in 2012, the platform is now used daily by thousands of employees across North America.”
Source: The Voilà! platform obtains $3M of financing to help address the manpower shortage