HR and Payroll Challenges of a growing city
The population of the City of St. John's, NL has been
growing. As the city grows, so does its
need for increased staffing within government and a more sophisticated HRIS
software that can deal with payroll complexities. Every two years, St. John’s
conducts a needs analysis for their information technology needs. . The
2005-2007 strategic plan indicated that the city needed new financial software.
They selected Great Plains (now Microsoft Dynamics GP) and hoped that their
vendor would be able to give them the payroll upgrade they were looking for.
Microsoft Dynamics GP however has a standard payroll module that was not able
to handle their complex payroll calculations. Bonnie Arns, the HRIS manager
undertook a review of 22 software systems that were compatible with Great
Plains.
Life before StarGarden:
-
·
Payroll was a time consuming and frustrating
exercise as they used spreadsheets to determine calculations
·
Tracking schedule and costs by employee was
difficult
·
Lacked visibility in reports for financial
planning and budgeting
·
Errors caused due to duplicate entries in
different systems were prevalent