The starting point
Availability, cancellations and sick notes were coordinated at short notice via WhatsApp. Personnel documents sat in folders, their processing status in Excel lists. Applications arrived through several channels and were not consistently transferred into personnel administration. Timesheets, travel records and lists for invoicing were produced by hand.
Added to this is a structural turnover in the team: internships last only a few months. New people therefore have to be onboarded regularly and submit the required documents. An early shared overview of staffing for upcoming test days was missing.
From individual tasks to a shared workflow
Ulrich Reuther at Reuther Media developed a dedicated web app for management, team leads and staff. Decisions on procedures and responsibilities were recorded together with the client. The application was then developed further based on practical feedback. In a simulation, the workflow was run through from several roles – from planning to the work of the people involved.
For clarity: Ulrich Reuther is also responsible for staff planning within the club. The app therefore grew out of his own day-to-day work and is used by him in operation – this is a practice report, not an independent customer review.
Applications now arrive in one shared inbox. Onboarding has two strands: the online course on the learning campus and the required documents. Reuther Media also built the learning campus: a Moodle platform with the online course for the German Motor Skills Test – a short explanatory video and a quiz for each test station, an 80 per cent pass mark and a certificate at the end. It replaces a learning system that had not been used for years. The app creates the campus account, reads the course completion and supports checking and reminders for documents. Readiness for deployment is shown only when both strands are complete.
The staff view on the phone
The learning campus: onboarding as an online course
New team members work through the course on a computer or phone: organisation, addressing the children, setting up the stations, then each of the eight test stations with a video and a quiz. The documents for the day are ready to download. Completion appears automatically in the team app, with no lists to reconcile.
Planning with transparent rules
School dates are taken from the lists received. For team allocation, the planning considers, among other things, public transport travel times, weekly hours and the required team lead. A proposal only changes the published plan after approval.
Staff can confirm assignments or report that they are unavailable. After the test day, the team lead records attendance, classes and kilometres driven. These entries form the basis for records and draft invoices. Management also sees where upcoming assignments are not yet sufficiently staffed.
The scheduling rules are deliberately programmed to be transparent. AI supports, among other things, the transcription of voice notes on an in-house server. AI tools were also used in developing the application. Not every automation needs a language model.
What is already in operation
The app has been live since late August 2026; since the season started in September, assignments have been planned and confirmed through it. Application intake, onboarding status and scheduling are linked in one application. How many working hours this saves and how the absence rate changes has not yet been measured. Status: 27 September 2026.