Replacing Manual Leave Tracking Across Global Teams with a Microsoft-Integrated HR Tool in Under a Week

The challenge

Territorium, a global educational technology company serving over 12 million users, struggled to manage employee leave manually across multiple countries using spreadsheets

Our solution

Adopted absentify, a Microsoft-integrated and user-friendly leave management platform

The result

Reduced their administrative workload by 70%, enhanced visibility across teams, and eliminated spreadsheet errors

Overview

Imagine managing employee leaves and absences on an Excel sheet. It's nothing short of HR's worst nightmare. Now, apply this imagination to a company with a presence in multiple countries serving millions of people. Sounds hectic, right? That's what Territorium was dealing with before absentify came into the picture. We sat down with Mariela Flores, Talent Acquisition & Development Leader at Territorium, to talk about how her team transitioned from spreadsheets to absentify and why the move changed the game for her organization.

About the Client

Territorium is a global company with over 12 million consumers. It helps learners around the world track their education and skills while connecting them to careers. Since educational institutions, learners, and workforce organizations use the company's solutions, it needs a sizable team to manage its operations.

The internal HR processes needed to match this level of complexity, especially in terms of leave management. However, that wasn't the case with Territorium.

“[absentify] helps us avoid having mistakes or miscommunication with all the colleagues or the people that should be involved whenever someone asks for a vacation because they are all involved in the approver's notification. We love it, to be honest.”

Mariela Flores

Talent Acquisition & Development Leader

The Challenge

The primary challenge Territorium faced in leave management was their manual process. Mariela told us, "We used Excel where we have all the employees, and we did manually the number of days that they have because we have people based on all the countries globally. It was just like, so this person is going to have, I don't know, 20 days on vacation on July 20th. So we need to put a reminder on the calendar, then add the days to the Excel spreadsheet and just register."

If an employee in Mexico requested time off, that might be tracked in one file. If a colleague in Colombia did the same, it went to another. The process involved checking calendars, reviewing emails, updating multiple spreadsheets, and doing it over and over again.

"It was taking us a lot of time, to be honest, because we have many sheets," Mariela added.

The issue with manual leave management at Territorium wasn't just the sheer amount of time it took. Multiple people also had to be involved in the process, the same people who could have been doing other, more important tasks.

Mariela recalled that they had four to five people involved at one point. She said, "Yeah, it was some people who sent their email to me or maybe to my manager or maybe to my colleague. So it was just like, OK, did he send you an email, or was it sent to me? Let's register."

Then, there was a lot of confusion around communication. An employee might message one manager, email another, and leave HR scrambling to find the original request.

What did this lead to? "There were many opportunities to make a human mistake." Mariela shared.

The Solution

Mariela told us that her company's search for a better solution started on Google. They were looking for a solution that worked with Teams, and absentify fit the criteria. In her words, "It was super easy. It was cheap and acceptable for the money that we had. So we love that."

From the first meeting, the decision felt obvious. Territorium did not need to look for more options since absentify was simple to understand and easy to start with.

Despite the complexity of their previous setup, Territorium found it easy to switch to absentify. Mariela told us that it was "easy, fast, and very friendly."

She added, "It was quite easy because we put the holidays and days of vacation. It could be a half day, a complete day, paternity, or maternity leave. So basically, all the information was already uploaded to absentify, and it was really friendly and very easy."

The company also had no trouble onboarding its staff onto the platform. We provided them with an onboarding video to share with their employees, which Mariela reported "made it super easy" for everyone to set up and start using absentify.

Change can be hard, but it really wasn't in this case. The HR team uploaded all necessary information, and employees could start submitting leave requests without extra training or setup.

One of the factors Territorium was considering in leave management software selection was integration. The tool of choice has to integrate with Microsoft or Outlook. Good for them, absentify supports Microsoft Suite integration.

As a result, "it was just easy to just carry the information; just upload it, and everything was running," Mariela shared.

Regardless of the platform, customer support can make or break the experience users have with it. Lucky for Territorium, absentify's support team has always been there to assist the company with every question and query.

Mariela shared, "They don't take too much time to respond, and they're always willing to hear feedback." Even better, the support team is available through the platform and email. So, the company can choose the preferred method of communication.

The best part is that everything Territorium needs is already on the platform. They can simply look it up and find a readily available resource. In Mariela's words, "Even though customer service is always there to help, chances to contact them are quite low."

The Results

Since switching to absentify, Territorium has seen clear improvements across its HR operations. What once took multiple people and hours of manual work has become a streamlined, two-person task with complete visibility and automation.

One of the biggest improvements for Territorium came in the form of reduced workload. Before absentify, four or five people were managing leaves. Now, it's just Mariela and another colleague. That shift had a big impact.

With only two administrators, leave requests are centralized, the context behind extra or fewer vacation days is easy to access, and everyone's calendar stays up-to-date. There's no more asking around or digging through emails since everything is in one place.

absentify also made it possible for everyone to see who was on leave. As Mariela shared, "Whenever you put the vacation on absentify, and it's registered, it automatically links to Outlook. So, that made everyone know who is on vacation, who is in, and who is out of the office."

Even if someone forgets to tell their team about their leave, everyone can still stay informed through absentify. The feature improved internal communication and made planning easier for the company's employees.

Other key outcomes include: 70% reduction in administrative workload — leave tracking is now managed by just two people instead of five. Full integration with Microsoft Outlook and Teams. Improved visibility across teams. Higher adoption rates among employees. Fewer errors with no more spreadsheet mistakes or missed updates.

For Territorium, absentify didn't just replace spreadsheets but also gave them a smarter, easier way to manage leaves across a global team.

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