Customer story

How Kronus turned 1,455 administrative hours back into productive time

A Latvian manufacturer. ~600 employees. One platform, paper retired.

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At a glance

HR, payroll and scheduling at Kronus before and after moving off paper and Excel.

€145K

Net annual saving on absence management

1455 hrs

Administrative hours reclaimed per year

~600

Employees

5h

Saved weekly across HR

Company overview

  • Industry: Wooden packaging, DIY garden products, timber & steel goods

  • Region: Latvia · international markets

  • Scale: Nearly 600 employees, ~450 in production

  • Implementation:
Kickoff 2023 · Three parallel workstreams · Delivered on time

What changed

  • Paper-based absence and business-trip requests fully digitised

  • Excel production schedules for 450 employees replaced by integrated scheduling

  • Three accountants no longer re-key working hours into AXAPTA by hand

  • Working time and absence data flow directly into payroll

  • Payslips moved off email into a secure portal
Chapter 1 · Before

Paper requests, Excel schedules, and three accountants re-keying hours.

Uldis Vilks, Head of IT, on the business case that paid for itself in the first year.

A fully operational ISMS is in place, with regular risk assessments, asset classification, and internal and external audits.

Kronus is a Latvian manufacturer of wooden packaging, DIY garden products, and timber and steel goods, with nearly 600 employees and customers across international markets. In a manufacturing business, the time an HR specialist spends explaining an absence balance and the time a production manager spends rebuilding next month's schedule are not separate from operating margin. They are the same cost, recorded against different cost centres.

By 2023, that cost had become visible enough to count. Absence and business trip requests were paper-based, signed in bulk by top management, and routed to line managers separately. Absence balances were not fully trusted. HR staff verified balances and explained discrepancies — repeatedly, to the same people, every cycle.

Production was worse. Schedules for 450 employees were prepared in Excel, printed, and filled in by hand on paper worksheets. Three accountants then typed those hours into AXAPTA one entry at a time. Late absence information meant payroll recalculations and manual correction across Production, Accounting and HR.

Frame 351

Uldis Vilks

Head of IT, Kronus

Chapter 2 · The decision

Five objectives, set explicitly. A business case built on internal math.

Kronus did not buy a system to digitise existing processes. It bought a system because the existing processes had a cost it was no longer willing to absorb.

Current costs of absence management, working time and payroll were evaluated against first-year Hermetis investment — and the annual administrative cost exceeded it. The project paid for itself in the first year on absence management alone.

The objectives

  • One trustworthy system for all HR data
  • Less manual administrative work
  • Clear, visible, consistent workflows
  • Reliable data for decision making
  • A scalable platform for digitalisation

Non-functional requirements

  • Cloud-based SaaS
  • ISO 27001 compliance
  • NIS-2 compliance
  • Active Directory integration
  • Single Sign-On

The business case

  • Processing absences: 1,200 hours / year
  • ~85,000 EUR admin cost
  • ~60,000 EUR profit lost
  • Payback in year one

Non-functional requirements were stated upfront — standard for an IT lead, critical to confirm before signing.

Chapter 3 · The build

Three workstreams in parallel. One harder than the rest.

The implementation was structured into three workstreams that mapped onto the three problem areas the review had identified.

Absence and business trips moved first. Digital requests replaced paper. Structured approval workflows replaced bulk signing. Real-time balances replaced verification calls. Integration with payroll closed the loop.

Working time and scheduling was the harder part — not technically, but culturally. Production managers had built their scheduling craft around Excel: the shortcuts, the colour-coding, the muscle memory accumulated over years. They preferred Excel. They were reluctant to change. The Hermetis team did not argue — they asked what specifically would have to be true for the new system to be worth switching to, and they made the changes.

“The scheduling interface was refined until it could do everything Excel could, faster, with the absence data already integrated. Cyclic shifts were introduced. Monthly scheduling effort decreased. Payroll recalculations decreased because the data feeding payroll now came from one place instead of three.”

Frame 351

Uldis Vilks

Head of IT, Kronus

The three workstreams

01

Workstream

Absence and business trips — paper retired, approvals structured, balances real-time

02

Workstream

Working time and scheduling — Excel replaced, cyclic shifts, integrated with payroll

03

Workstream

Organisational structure and reporting — structure centralised, position changes trigger automated updates, government reporting integrated.

The cultural test

In every workstream the question was the same: would the people doing the work prefer the new flow once inside it. For absence and structure, the answer came fast. For production scheduling, it took refinement.

Delivered on time

In every case, the project was delivered on time.

Chapter 4 · The Day-to-Day Now

What changed for production, accounting, HR and employees.

Three accountants no longer re-key hours. A production manager sees the vacation conflicts before approving a schedule for 108 employees — instead of finding out the morning of the shift.

Employees see their own data without asking HR.

For Production Managers

Schedule with the full picture, not after the fact

Before

A manager built next month's schedule in Excel, printed it, distributed it.

Vacation conflicts surfaced when somebody didn't show up. Coverage was coordinated at short notice — often the morning of the shift.

After

Before approving a schedule for 108 employees, the manager sees planned vacations, absence balances and timesheet status in one view.

Adjustments happen at planning time, not at shift time. The single biggest work-saving the project produced for production.

For Accounting & Payroll

Rework replaced with calculation

Before

Three accountants typed working hours from paper worksheets into AXAPTA. Late absence notifications triggered payroll recalculations.

Manual coordination across Production, Accounting and HR absorbed the cost of every error introduced upstream.

After

Working time and absence data flow directly into payroll. Manual timesheet entry has decreased.

Payroll recalculations decreased because the data feeding payroll comes from one integrated source. The work that remains is calculation; the work that disappeared was rework.

For HR

Structured workload, reliable balances

Before

HR spent measurable time verifying absence balances that employees did not trust.

The same discrepancies explained to the same people, every cycle.

After

Absence balances are reliable and visible in real time. Manual corrections and repeated explanations have decreased.

Administrative workload in HR is more structured and predictable — internal feedback already shows around five hours saved per week.

For Employees

Their own data, in their own hands

Before

An employee who wanted to check a schedule, track an absence, or look at a payslip went to HR. Payslips arrived by email.

The routine lived with HR, not with the person who needed the answer.

After

The portal carries the routine. Everyone sees their schedules, tracks absences, and accesses payslips without relying on HR.

Payslip distribution is handled securely inside the system instead of by email. Tasks that used to take hours take minutes.

Evidence

Kronus measured the cost of the old way and the saving from the new one. The numbers are the numbers.

The reclaimed

  • 1,455 hours/year on absence management.

  • 260 hours/year on org structure and reporting.

  • 5 hours/week saved across HR teams.

Money

  • 145,000 EUR net annual saving on absence management.

  • Annual administrative cost exceeds the implementation investment.

  • Marginal profit recovered as profit-centre employees return to customers.

Risk reduced

  • Absence balances reliable and transparent — manual corrections and repeated explanations decreased.

  • Government reporting integrated; payslip distribution moved off email.

  • Payroll recalculations decreased through working time and absence integration.

Chapter 5 · The Frame for the Future

The foundation, not the project

Kronus did not buy Hermetis to fix one process. It bought a foundation it could keep building on.
With absence, scheduling and structure stabilised, the organisation can systematically identify the next area to bring into the system — guided by what the data shows, not by which crisis fires next. Across the company, manual administrative work has stopped being treated as the cost of doing business. It is treated as a variable that can be measured, attacked, and reduced.

What’s next

  • Full integration with AXAPTA
  • Mandatory training for every employee · salary reviews in Hermetis
  • SharePoint + Copilot: org structure as queryable knowledge

“Implementing Hermetis at Kronus generated significant cost savings from one process already and brought a lasting impact, driving the culture of constant efficiency. Eliminating paper, moving from Excel and email, and centralising data in one system was just the starting point. From a pure project management perspective, every process was delivered on time.”

Frame 351

Uldis Vilks

Head of IT, Kronus

Möller Case Study

See how Hermetis turns manual administrative work into a measurable, reducible cost

If your organisation still runs HR, scheduling or payroll on paper and Excel, Hermetis was built to put a number on that cost — and reduce it.

Download the full study (PDF)
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Tasks that used to take hours take minutes. — Kronus, after launch

One meeting is enough to walk through what controlled, measurable administrative cost would look like for your organisation, and what it would take to get there.

Learn more about HR & Payroll

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Frequently asked questions

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Are these savings guaranteed?

The figures on this page are based on documented outcomes at Kronus, a Latvian manufacturer of 600 employees. Your outcome will depend on your company size, current processes, and implementation scope. We can work through the calculation together before you make any decision.

How is the implementation investment recouped?

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What is included in the administrative cost calculation?

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Does this apply to companies smaller or larger than 600 employees?

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We operate in only two of the four countries. Does the cost argument still apply?

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