Re: MAPICS Payroll

"We are currently doing our Payroll in-house with the MAPICS Payroll
module on release 6.  We are considering outsourcing this function.
Does anyone have some experience going from in-house to outsourcing that
can share their experience, watch fors..etc?  Who is your Payroll
vendor?  How satisfied are you with your decision?   Where did you
realize your savings?  If you would prefer, contact me off-line.  TIA

Carol L. Limegrover"

Carol, we converted from an in-house (non-MAPICS) payroll to ADP in 1989,
then when we were purchased, we switched immediately back to our new
owner's in-house payroll.   We recently converted again from our in-house
to ADP (interesting how history repeats itself).

On our 1st conversion, when I was responsible for payroll (in addition to
IT), I decided to let ADP manage the project.    After all, I figured they
had converted many companies to their systems already, they should know
what needs to be done.  It went quite smoothly - their project manager knew
what needed done, set reasonable target dates for all steps, and we did the
required programming to interface MAPICS data collection to them.  We had
PC&C/PM&C, through our in-house union-mandated efficiency calcs to
determine "earned hours" vs "worked hours" (it would have been REALLY easy
if we would have this incentive payroll system that no one has ever seen
the likes of), and the upload to them.  We decided to maintain both
employee masters separately - MAPICS only needed minimal data, all the
complicated stuff like taxes and deductions were handled by ADP.  3 months
total project time from the decision to go with ADP until the 1st live run,
including several parallel runs.  For as important a project as it was, it
went quite easily.   ADP knew what they were doing (which makes sense,
that's what they do!)    I probably should mention that we actually aborted
3 days before our first live run, we were purchased that day, and our new
owners aborted the project to have us go to their in-house payroll.

Our 2nd conversion was from our in-house payroll to Corporate's in-house
payroll - as I said, 3 days prior to our 1st live run.  In my opinion, we
were successfully done with the initial ADP conversion, we had 2 successful
parallel runs that matched identically.  That one took 6 months, as our
Corporate owners had never seen an incentive payroll system, and couldn't
seem to grasp that we had to preprocess the data prior to sending it to
them.

On our 3rd conversion (2005), our Corporate IT department decided that THEY
wanted to manage the conversion and the entire project, going from their
in-house payroll (a modified Cyborg payroll system) to ADP.  14 months
total, lots of confusion, still on-going.

The moral of this story is - if I were you, I would let ADP tell you how to
do it.  They know what they need, they know their systems, you know what
you've got.   There IS a cost associated with them managing it, but I think
it's worth it.

Dale Gindlesperger
IT Manager/Special Projects Leader
Fleetwood Folding Trailers, Inc.
258 Beacon Street
Somerset, PA  15501