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About Artisan Roastery

is the first specialty coffee roaster in Malaysia, starting from humble beginnings in Ampang back in 2010 before settling down in their current home at Taman Tun Dr Ismail. After nearly 15 years, they have cafes, a coffee roastery and a chocolate factory in Kuala Lumpur, having hooked Malaysian hearts and palates onto the flavours of syrupy espresso.

Artisan Roastery’s founder and director, Michael Wilson first started his Malaysian coffee journey when he discovered that there was no specialty coffee available locally. Being a coffee addict, Michael wanted to contribute to the existing coffee culture and community by bringing in a style of coffee different to the kopitiam kopi, which is traditionally roasted with margarine or butter and sugar.

The love for their community is also emphasised in their approach – while they pride themselves on delivering excellent coffee and chocolate, they also prioritise inclusivity by involving and engaging customers whenever possible. Both the coffee roastery and chocolate factory sit behind glass walls so interested visitors can take a look at the manufacturing process in an accessible and approachable way, all without compromising on hygiene standards.

In 2014, Artisan Roastery upgraded their coffee roasting facilities to include the Loring Smart Roaster, now housed in their Sentul outlet. They also launched Seniman Kakao, a bean-to-bar chocolate factory featuring homegrown cacao.

With so much going on, Artisan Roastery was evolving fast. They knew it was time to improve company processes to support their growth and transform their manual HR and rostering processes. That’s where 91���� came in. We spoke with Michael about Artisan Roastery’s experience with 91���� and how it has supported them thus far.

The challenge

As a food and beverage business with shift-based and rotating work schedules, managing employee shift schedules requires quick adjustments and adapting to change. In addition, their workforce includes a combination of sales personnel without fixed locations, office-based employees and shift-based cafe staff, and managing all these different employees together was a challenge.

Artisan Roastery previously used paper and Google Sheets to manage their payroll, and coordinated employee shifts through WhatsApp. Not only was this cumbersome and time-consuming for both administrators and employees, important aspects of HR and payroll like compliance were also falling through the cracks.

They wanted to digitise rostering, as well as consolidate and streamline their HR and payroll processes. This would help them reduce the amount of paper, administrative hours and confusion that would inevitably come about during each step of the employee management cycle.

Solutions

Streamlined processes

Artisan Roastery used 91����’s HR management tools for record keeping and paperwork, evolving from previously distributed sheets and papers to digital employee files and keeping them centrally in one easily accessible location.

They also used 91����’s automated payroll platform to help them consolidate the payroll process. This helped them simplify and reduce the steps needed to track hours worked, calculate employees’ pay and distribute payments.

“The time to process payroll has been cut down by about a day each month. So that’s a whole day saved, which can be spent doing something else. Also, it’s much more accurate. In the past it was just people sending WhatsApp messages to the payroll admin, but now it’s all in the system and needs to be approved by the managers. It’s all seamless and goes straight through to the payroll manager.”

Simplified employee shift management

Artisan Roastery handled employee rostering with 91����’s time and attendance software – any scheduling developments would automatically update across the system so nobody would be left out of the loop.

91����’s mobile app, , also made it easy for employees to clock in and out, check their leave allowances, manage their time off and organise their shifts all via their phone.

A central source of truth

Artisan Roastery’s previous HR, payroll and rostering systems meant that all processes and data requests had to be done manually across multiple channels, leading to more work and higher chances of error. But after implementing 91����, employees, managers and HR alike can now easily access the information they need through the all-in-one platform.

Michael sums it up perfectly — “Why would you use multiple systems when you can have just one system that does everything? It means that you’ve got peace of mind that everything is under control and there’s just one place to go instead of having your brain split in several different directions.” 

Better recruitment and onboarding

Previously, recruitment for Artisan Roastery was a pretty manual process, reliant on word of mouth and network recommendations. However, having an applicant tracking system (ATS) has transformed that process and provided Michael with the confidence to hire the right people and expand his management team.

“Having 91���� on the recruiting side of things means I’m more confident in getting managers into the business. Whereas in the past, it was all sort of just friends talking amongst one another. It gives me the time to track applicants coming in and get managers in for positions that I wouldn’t have filled otherwise, and that in the long run is gonna help the growth of the business. It means I can employ the right people.”

The ability to standardise the onboarding process through the ATS has also helped newcomers better understand what Artisan Roastery is all about and make them feel welcome.

Internal development opportunities

The also enables employees to be the first to hear about open roles from Artisan Roastery, facilitating internal development opportunities. As outlined by Michael, “When we put up the jobs, they can see that on their Swag app and apply for those jobs, which gives them the opportunity to promote within the company and keeps everything open and transparent.”

Performance reports

One of the unexpected benefits that Michael noted was the ability to make more data-driven decisions with all the reporting features and take his business to the next level.

“There are certain functions in the business that I’m starting to introduce now which 91���� is helping with. There are things like performance reports, the platform gives templates for how to run those and that’s really helpful in best practices. So instead of going out to the internet and getting a deluge of information, we’ve got curated templates that we can work with which saves heaps of time and sets us up well for those processes in the future.” 

Effortless compliance

With 91����’s HR, payroll and rostering solutions, Michael can rest easy, knowing that they will be compliant with statutory and regulatory requirements.

“The great thing about 91���� is the fact that I’m not having to think about a lot of the things I was in the past with payroll, about compliance, about leave, etc. It allows me to focus on other parts of the business that are more important for growth.”

Artisan Roastery is ready to continue growing with 91����

“Since we’ve been working with 91����, we’ve noticed constant iterations, changes and more features coming in, and we’ve been able to incorporate some of those new features into the way we run things. And that’s great because as we are evolving as a company, 91���� is also evolving to support us.”

Now that they’ve invested in the tools they needed, Artisan Roastery is keen to further engage their people and develop their business. With 91���� as their trusted partner, they can now work easier and more effectively, and use their time savings on more strategic initiatives.

If you’d like to learn more about how 91���� can help transform your organisation, speak to one of our business specialists today.

In addition, take a look at our return on investment (ROI) report to check out how much time and money you can save with 91����.