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Resume Pic of Bryan deSilvaMusician & Yin Style Bagua practitioner. Over twenty years of software implementations and upgrades, project management, systems and applications development experience with a current focus on ADP eTime & Kronos Timekeeper/HR systems implementation. 

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Update your Kronos Time Clock

Posted by Jeff Millard on Mon, Jan 16, 2012
  
  
  
  
  

OldTimeClock resized 600

I’m sorry.  Did anyone else have to check their calendars at the release of Kronos’s InTouch touch screen time clock?  For a second I though it might have been 10 years ago. Are we really supposed to consider a 7” touchscreen with a 3 color LED that costs $2,200 to be innovative? This on the eve of Apple releasing its third iPad?!?  And $600 for a fingerprint reader?  I paid $450 for my last fingerprint reader and it came with a laptop, a webcam, and 15” screen wrapped around it.

For many years, people who had telephones in their homes bought them from the phone company. There were many manufacturers but they didn’t sell to public directly.  As a result, the phone company could charge whatever they wanted for what was essentially a very low tech device if you wanted their service.  As pulse type rotary phones gave way to more and more TouchTone™ enabled lines and phones (with a Touch PAD instead of a dial) everyone got in the game of making phones and selling them direct to the public. Inexpensive phones.  And they should have been… with cheaper components and a growing market the customers saved lots of money and innovation in handsets skyrocketed compared to what the phone company had been offering.  The phone company did, as they should have done, got out of the terminal device market and focused on their core competency—the routing of voice and data (its all pretty much just data now) traffic.

We don’t expect Kronos to build the hardware their application software runs on so why do we expect them to build the terminal devices?  Like the telephone handset, touch screen devices are not their core competency and, in my opinion is seriously holding back innovation (and cost effectiveness) in this segment of the ‘time clock’ space.

Am I missing something or is Kronos?

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Comments

Your comments make me re-think the whole "one vendor" approach I have advocated when it comes to TLM and time clocks. Good thought-provoking comments. Thanks.
Posted @ Tuesday, January 17, 2012 4:23 PM by Kim Wennerberg
LMFAO !!  
 
I absolutely love this article. Truer words were never written. Kronos needs to give up the (attempted) HW business already - hell, they've had 34 years to get it right. Open that pumpkin-orange kimono, and allow the folks that make SUPER GREAT FIELD-PROVEN hardware (ahem, CMI...) build equipment worthy of being paired to an upper-tier software solution like Kronos WFC. HW that works and lasts like a time clock needs to. Focus on what you do best Kronos - software. 
 
Without question, the last worthy clock that Kronos built was the TK55. I won't mention let alone go into detail about the seriously sad models (ok, 5, 10, 20, 35, 45, 50, and the infamous flaming System 70).  
 
The 55 was tight-to-the-wall (ADA anyone), had a strong steel case, a bright VFD display, and a keypad that you had to beat with a machete to kill. Add to that the full functionality it offered (thank you, time-tested TKC) and it was THE MOST awesome T&A combo in those days. OK - so you had to literally carry around a 400 page BOOK to program all those cool features, but once that puppy was setup you just knew it would keep on ticking. In fact, the only way a disgruntled ee could disable a 55 was with a .22 ! The 55 was later discovered in the parking lot. 
 
Alas, all GOOD things must come to an end and the 55 graciously made way for the flimsy plastic 400 series. Oh, but wait -- unlike father 55, the 400 was available in ECRU - another Kronos first that no one actually wanted, especially given the added 4-8 week delivery not to mention the substantial EXTRA $$. Perhaps it's just me, but seeing a picture of a Kronos Engineer park his SUV on top of a 400 just didn't win me over from the the 55 camp. And if we didn't get our fill of the 400's and their rubbery keys that eventually faded and then disintegrated at our finger tips, the 4500 was born. Bigger, uglier, and a hinge that only an MIT graduate could OVER-ENGINEER. 
 
But I digress - HAIL to the new In-Touch !! May you quickly overcome the pundits that are comparing you to a real computer and are already calling you overpriced.  
Posted @ Friday, January 20, 2012 4:44 PM by Commandant Kronos
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