How Can a Firm Optimize its Hours of Operation and Employee Scheduling?

If your organization is simply basing its hours of operations on what its competitors are doing, it could be missing out on some big opportunities to close down when it’s not actually profitable to be open or to open at opportunistic times customers are in-market but competitors are closed. While competitor hours could be a good start, their customers, profit model, and optimal hours may not always be the same as yours; and, even if they were, your competitors’ hours could be sub-optimal and there could be an opportunity to do things differently. To ensure your hours of operation are optimized, we would recommend performing an analysis on historical customer volume and sales by day/hour and determine when the incremental ROI (return on investment) of staying open is positive v. negative. We’d recommend considering opening at times when the ROI of staying open is positive and closing when it’s negative. If you would like help performing this kind of analysis, please contact us.