About Istana Group
Istana Group is a real estate company and a developer with its head office located in Bandung. With a total of hundreds of projects spread throughout Indonesia, both ongoing and completed, Istana Group oversees various PTs that work on housing, apartments, hotels, trade centers, malls, and even coal mines. Perumahan Setra Duta, Villa Istana Bunga, Gateway Pasteur, Dago Suites, Bandung Electronic Center (BEC), Balubur Town Square (Baltos), are some of the many properties owned by Istana Group.
Tantangan bisnis dalam pengelolaan HRÂ
As a large-scale real estate company with up to 42 PTs and ~20 active projects (by July 2024), Istana Group faced challenges in managing all of its employees that spread across various regions in Indonesia. With up to 300 internal employees of many different shifts, as well as the need to work mobile for several employee positions, Istana Group needed to find a system that can accommodate all of its company’s unique needs to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes.
In addition, Istana Group was also one of the many companies affected by government regulations to work remotely when COVID-19 broke out in 2020. This regulation pushed Istana Group even further to immediately adopt a system that can meet the remote working situation by giving employees the solution to record their attendance without having to physically come to the office.
Istana Group has many projects, located everywhere. Our office is not only one, (and) our employees are (also) quite a lot. If all employees are (working) in one building, it might be easier. But that is not the case, the (working) locations can be different. Of course it became a challenge in itself. (That is why) an adequate system is needed.
Mekari Talenta as a solution
To answer its business challenges, Istana Group once tried to create its own system in 2017. However, the increasing problems along with the growth of the company made the system creation process very rigorous and complicated. Istana Group started looking for alternatives and met Mekari Talenta based on recommendations from one of the projects under it. After conducting a comparative test, it was assessed that Mekari Talenta could be the solution to Istana Group’s unique challenges, before finally adopting Mekari Talenta in 2020.
With several customizations, Istana Group used Mekari Talenta to revolutionize the employee attendance process. Previously, Istana Group used a manual process in the form of fingerprints to record the attendance of its employees. Now, employees can take attendance simply by taking selfies using the Mekari Talenta application on their cellphones from anywhere without having to come to the office. This feature answers one of Istana Group’s main problems, which is to accommodate the COVID-19 remote working arrangement and also to accommodate employees who have to work mobile.
While Mekari Talenta is cloud-based and easily accessible online, the attendance process can also run smoothly even when the employee’s mobile reception or internet network is unstable. This is an additional benefit for Istana Group, because attendance data can be updated in real-time without any worries about obstacles that can affect the accuracy and validity of the data.
In addition, employee attendance from various shifts can also be monitored accurately and in real-time with clear categorization. This also helps the payroll process time, with a significantly shorter attendance data retrieval time. The accuracy and validity of the data from the Mekari Talenta system automation helps improve the overall efficiency of the business process, so that Istana Group HR staff can focus on doing more strategic work.
With Mekari Talenta, we are greatly helped. There are options of using fingerprints or clocking-in/clocking-out anywhere with selfies via app like what we are using now. And it is very accommodating, because there are several employees who need to work mobile. This way, (employees) don’t have to go to the office; they can do their attendance wherever they are.
Results
Istana Group, which faced difficulty managing its employees across various projects with different shifts, is greatly helped by the adoption of Mekari Talenta in its business processes. Mekari Talenta especially supports mobile attendance so employees can do their attendance anywhere without having to come to the office.
Mekari Talenta boosts Istana Group’s efficiency by up to 80%
Mekari Talenta helps Istana Group to improve the efficiency of its business processes, especially in the employee attendance process. Before using Mekari Talenta, Istana Group required its employees to do fingerprint attendance manually in the office. However, this system could not accommodate the needs of several Istana Group employees who work mobile, and it was difficult to follow government regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, with Mekari Talenta, the entire business process has become more efficient by up to 80%. Employees can report their attendance from anywhere, and attendance data is updated and can be accessed in real-time and accurately.
Mekari Talenta supports Istana Group’s attendance recap to be 3x faster
Before using Mekari Talenta, projects under Istana Group took up to 3 days from the cut-off date just to recap employee attendance data. This attendance data recap is needed for the payroll process and employee KPI assessment, which has a significant impact if there was any error. With Mekari Talenta, the attendance data recap process has increased to be 3x faster; completed in just one day and can be submitted directly to the payroll team. In addition to saving time and energy, Mekari Talenta also ensures the accuracy of attendance data, thus minimizing errors in employee salary calculations.
Istana Group on Mekari
Tristiani recommends Mekari Talenta as an HRIS application that greatly helps streamline her workload and that of the HR team. She also stated that many other companies in Bandung use Mekari Talenta as their trusted HRIS software for accurate and automated employee management.
Mekari Talenta is greatly helpful for us, a real estate company with widespread office and project locations. It’s amazing.