RE: HR/Payroll Systems

We used to be on MAPICS which had a Payroll module but no HR.
When we traveled to Chicago as part of the conversion to BPCS, I brought with me a list of our mods, stating as briefly as possible the business justification for each mod, sorted by application area. I asked SSA to indicate which of these mods were already solved in BPCS, and which we would have to modify BPCS to get the same functionality.

There were over 200 mods in the Payroll / HR area, which I had done over period of maybe five years.

I was told that not only would we have to modify BPCS for ALL the enhancements we had made to MAPCS Payroll, BPCS Payroll not as good as MAPICS, we would also have to do some mods to bring BPCS Payroll up to MAPICS basic payroll features.

My boss was standing right there when I got this news. I asked him if he heard what was just said. Yes he did.

Later, speaking with him and the folks in charge of HR & Payroll, I told them that these ERP packages, like MAPICS BPCS are designed and managed primarily to do a great job with manufacturing, and the immediate related applications like supply chain. In ERP, Accounting is a second banana, second priority; Payroll is third; and HR fourth.

I suggest we shop around for a stand alone package, where Payroll is first banana, the reason for the vendor existance, and if neccessary pass some work file if either ERP or HR/Payroll need to share some info by employee #. Also you can do this on PCs not connected to everything else, if you want tighter security.

We ended up on ABRA which is a PC based package, has Payroll application, and HR application, they talk to each other, and have a lot of other features they do not talk to. Their tech support is not very good. They say things can be done, but we never get those things done, or we do the things they tell us to do, and it breaks something else.
Some things we want to do, it takes maybe 6+ months for them to figure out how to get us there. However we have been on ABRA now for several years, and the Payroll HR people cope.

They only have to spend four days a week on this stuff, can spend rest of week on other duties. That is two persons one day each on Payroll, and one person two days on HR. Increase in time over time is due to more government regulations, not the system. Years ago when we were a union shop, HR needed four times the personnel that we need today, to manage same size work force, because at that time HR was drowning in complaints and arbitrations. The work force is under 100 people.

We have another system that captures time clock data and feeds it into ABRA.
Before we got that system, it was almost another day of clerical work to figure and input how many hours various people worked on what days, because of overtime rules if someone works 10 hours one day, but only 40 for whole week.
Whatever packages you get, it is extremely important that they can talk to each other.
It helps to have two time clocks, so you can capture the data, without a big hassle, when one is broke down.
Watch out for change in Daylight Savings time also affects this hardware.
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Al Mac