Salvation Army consolidation pays off for 3,300 staff

MEDIA RELEASE: Salvation Army consolidation pays off for 3,300 staff

5 April 2011 - The Salvation Army New Zealand, Fiji & Tonga Territory today announced it has implemented a new human resource and payroll system, consolidating its 70 existing systems into a single state-of-the-art payroll system to manage payments to its 3,300 staff.

The payroll system, from international software vendor TechnologyOne, consolidates The Salvation Army’s 70 incumbent payroll offices – running across three different computer systems – into a single system that meets all of the Army’s financial, legal and reporting requirements.

According to The Salvation Army’s Human Resources Manager Paul Geoghegan, the new system interacts more efficiently with the Sallies’ human resources database at a number of levels, better managing the highly complex requirements of the Army’s diverse workforce.

“TechnologyOne’s Human Resource & Payroll solution provided the most versatile solution and was flexible enough to be configured to meet our particular needs,” he said.

“It was clearly leading-edge technology and was fully integrated with our existing financial management solution, TechnologyOne Financials.

“We chose TechnologyOne’s Human Resource & Payroll solution from a field of seven vendors, following a competitive tender.

“With 70 independent payrolls running three different payroll systems, there was a complete lack of integration which meant some systems were paying only one or two people and others more than 950 people. Some pay cycles were weekly and others fortnightly so it was a challenging to manage, especially considering leave, taxation, superannuation and other payments.”

Coupled with the complexities of the statutory and administrative requirements, the organisation was incurring costs associated with the need for constant training for the many payroll operators.

Tired of the cumbersome, time-consuming systems, Mr Geoghegan had a vision which followed a simple way of thinking; ‘ensure that those who care for others were in turn cared for’, which led him to centralise The Salvation Army’s payroll system.

“I wanted a payroll system that would address our immediate needs, but also provide managers with effective, user-friendly pay processes and personnel records at the click of a mouse,” he said.

“I wanted to collect reliable, user friendly statistics of our staff, remuneration costs, labour turnover, health and safety, training and superannuation.

”The system also needed to be sufficiently adaptable to cater for the present and future changes to local payroll legislation.”

According to TechnologyOne Executive Chairman, Adrian Di Marco, this successful implementation is a reflection of the international software provider’s commitment to providing its customers with a compelling experience.

“Major IT projects are massive undertakings, so we know it’s important to work closely with our customers to ensure a smooth transition to the new solution,” Mr Di Marco said.

“In this instance, it was helpful to have a dedicated third party project manager on board to protect the best interests of our customer and ensure accountability while the project was underway.”

TechnologyOne works with The Salvation Army across its Australian and New Zealand territories, providing a range of software solutions to automate business processes.

ENDS

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