How JemX helped Phangela Security unlock 100+ hours per month
Customer
Phangela Security
Industry
Security services
Size
c.5,000 employees
CEO
Chris Thornhill
The challenge
Phangela Security is one of South Africa's largest security firms, with over 5,000 employees. Like many businesses of this scale, they faced a common but costly problem: discrepancies between hours worked and hours invoiced. Tracking, reconciling, and reporting on this took significant time and effort, often without a clear, real-time view. Key issues included:
Limited visibility across three disconnected systems: EasyRoster (planning), Roll Call (internal system for actuals), and Xero (invoicing).
Mismatch between planned and actual hours, with posting creating up to 6,000 hours/month of paid reliever time for no work performed.
Manual exceptions management: 100+ daily discrepancies (e.g. sick leave, AWOL, family responsibility) with no means of tracking emergent patterns & manual reporting causing inaccuracy.
Revenue leakage from non-invoiced hours and inconsistent logging of absences and recoveries.
Invoicing accuracy gaps: No line of sight for ad hoc services & ensuring that all services have been billed.
The result was messy data, subjective logging by controllers, and lost time and money every month.
The solution
Jem's AI services division partnered directly with Phangela's CEO, Chris Thornhill, and his team.
Jem deployed a 5-day AI-powered consulting sprint with Phangela's leadership team. The approach included:
Data integration
Automated connections between EasyRoster and Xero to create a single view of hours planned, worked, and invoiced.
Exception reporting
Daily dashboards showing mismatches by site and by person, offering visibility and requiring clear intervention.
Pattern detection
Automated analysis to flag non-invoiced hours and over-posting early, before payroll is finalised and commencement of the next rostering cycle.
Process mapping
Identified key points of failure (controllers and EasyRoster) and clarified the 16th-15th roster cycle, including week tracking to ensure invoicing accuracy — critical as hours vary by month though the retainer stays fixed.
Within just five days, we built a custom dashboard that automatically:
- Pulled together data from their existing systems.
- Highlighted discrepancies between hours worked and hours invoiced.
- Provided leadership with clear visibility to track metrics in a more effective way, and identify patterns to react accordingly.
This wasn't about lengthy IT projects or costly development work. Instead, we used AI-powered automation to rapidly design, test, and deploy a custom solution that fit seamlessly into their operations. If you would like us to demo this to you, we'd be happy to do so.
The impact
The results were immediate and measurable:
R100k in monthly cost savings identified
Within 20 minutes of first use, the Phangela team identified three revenue-impacting issues and took immediate action.
50+ administrative hours saved
Every month across three employees, who no longer manually reconcile reports.
More accurate invoicing
Reducing the risk of under- or over-billing.
Faster decision-making
Within 20 minutes of first use, the Phangela team were able to identify three revenue-impacting issues and react accordingly.
Eliminated double payments
At isolated sites, creating c.R30k in monthly savings.
Reusable model
The solution can now be quickly adapted for other companies using EasyRoster and Xero.
According to Chris Thornhill, Phangela's CEO:
"Jem's work has saved us over 50 hours every single month and helped us to identify over R100k in monthly cost savings. What impressed me most was that they delivered it in less than five days."
Following this success, Phangela is continuing to work with Jem's services division to identify and automate other repetitive workflows across HR, finance, and operations.
Ready to solve your operational challenges?
See how JemX can deliver rapid results for your business in just 5 days.