RE: HR/Payroll Systems

A company that I used to work for went through a couple of iterations of
trying to get away from the payroll/HR package that we were using.
The first attempt came not to long after I started with the company. We
went to a Intel/network based system on April 1. System support went from
being a small part of my job to occupying the entire network admins time.
In addition, our payroll clerk went from being able to do all of the
payroll related work in about 4 days a week to working 70+ hours each
week, just to get payroll out, not to mention the additional reporting,
etc that is required. In addition to the added labor-the system was very
error prone. After 6 months the clerk told her boss we go back to
"iSeries" (it's proper name at the time), or find a new payroll clerk. So
Jan 1 we took payroll back to iSeries. HR didn't like the iSeries
solution, it didn't contain information that they wanted to track. (I
later got a list of the information they claimed that they wanted--the
system could track it, IF someone entered the data (garbage in-garbage
out). So HR purchased another system for HR needs. They then complained
that information in HR and payroll might not be the same (because they
didn't update the data in the PR system.
The second attempt, HR says, "We don't like the DOS (green screens)
system, we want a GUI system" after reviewing a few GUI systems "Why do
they take so much mouse work, I don't want to use a mouse all the time for
data entry". Go figure.