Background

CoWorx Staffing, established in 1974, is a well-known recruitment agency with over 90 locations across the U.S. It connects workers with employers in areas like accounting, customer service, administration, manufacturing, packaging, and warehouse roles.

Use Case

CoWorx Staffing receives worker timesheets from clients in various formats like PDF, CSV, or Excel, sent via email or FTP. Although the formats vary, the core data remains the same: worker timesheets. This data is extracted, uploaded to a SQL database, and used for payroll processing, calculating wages based on weekly work hours.

CoWorx required clients to format their data a certain way. If clients couldn’t do this, staff had to manually enter timesheet data, a time-consuming process prone to errors. Some files had hundreds of pages, making the task even more challenging, requiring double-checking before final payroll processing.

“Before Astera, we had to ask clients to format their data into a specific format, if they were unable to do this, we would have to hand key the information.”
– Robert Jobkar, Vice President of Technology at CoWorx Staffing

The goal was to automate data entry and movement for faster, error-free payroll processing.

Enter Astera

CoWorx Staffing selected Astera for its ability to seamlessly extract data from PDFs and automate the entire data integration process. Astera’s workflow automation simplifies the flow, from receiving files to extracting data, populating SQL tables, and generating payroll import files.

“Our two most favorite components are the PDF mapping tool, and the array of connectors. This allows us to connect to a multitude of data sources resulting in limitless reporting capabilities. By using Astera, we can map any incoming file to a destination format that our systems will consume in an automated fashion.”
– Robert Jobkar, Vice President of Technology at CoWorx Staffing

The automated PDF data extraction with field auto-mapping was a game-changer, eliminating the need for manual data mapping. Astera now manages the entire process from extraction to SQL integration without user intervention, reducing processing time by 95%. Tasks that once took 4 hours are now completed in just 10 minutes, transforming CoWorx’s payroll operations.

“Let’s say we had a PDF with about 200-300 people on it, we are talking about several hours that a user will spend hand keying the data in and then proofing that to verify the information accuracy. As opposed to that, we now have a system that pulling the data off automatically, and you don’t necessarily have to worry about proofing it. In short, if the whole process took 4 hours before, it now just takes 10 minutes to complete.”
– Robert Jobkar, Vice President of Technology at CoWorx Staffing

Astera’s intelligent algorithms also identified missing details in pre-audit reports, allowing CoWorx to resolve timesheet issues before payroll processing, ensuring accurate payments. Additionally, Astera consolidates data from back-office and payroll systems for efficient in-house reporting.

CoWorx also replaced SSIS with Astera’s no-code, drag-and-drop interface, making job creation and queries faster and more efficient.

“We are replacing, to some extent, what we used to do using SSIS. There are jobs we are slowly starting to move over from SSIS to Astera. They both can do the job, but Astera does it easier and faster.”
– Robert Jobkar, Vice President of Technology at CoWorx Staffing

Lastly, CoWorx praised Astera for its fast response times and quick ticket resolution, acknowledging the support team’s help in finding new ways to optimize the product for better data processing efficiency.

“Astera has impacted our business in a very positive way. We’ve been using the product for a year, and still have a lot to learn, but we are always thinking of new ways that Astera can help automate processes for us.”
– Robert Jobkar, Vice President of Technology at CoWorx Staffing