The
new Banner Payroll and Personal Data Enquiry System
By
Kitty Mui (ESU)
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With
the recent implementation of the new Banner Payroll and Personal
Data Enquiry System, we have reached a major milestone in
enhancing the user experience in accessing payroll and personal
information as well as improving the inter-departmental workflow
efficiency, such as the Human Resources Office (HRO) and Finance
Office (FO), among others.
Prior to the implementation of this system, the HRO and FO
were using separate standalone systems to satisfy their daily
operation requirements. Some of the shortfalls of this approach
were:
- Data redundancy:
Same employee information was entered twice into two separate
systems, which are not linked.
- Data integrity:
Due to double data entry, it was difficult to maintain data integrity
between different systems.
- Comprehensiveness
of the data:
Each department was maintaining the necessary employee data for
their respective processing only. Holistic view on the employee
information was therefore not available.
-
Manual
process:
Paper records were required to flow from one office to another,
creating unnecessary delay and at times even confusion.
The HR
Banner System is a purchased package developed by SunGard-SCT,
which is targeted at all major universities and colleges in
US as well as internationally. As such, it is an integrated,
features-rich system providing unmatched functionalities which
are not available in most other standalone systems. Specifically,
some of the major benefits that we are able to realize are:
- Real time
processing:
Information is made available much faster.
- Minimal
paper flow:
Inter-departmental workflow efficiency is much improved since
most of the paperwork is eliminated.
- User oriented:
The whole implementation is focused on making information such
as personal data, job, pay and budget information available to
end users directly through the Web. Users are able to make changes
regarding personal information directly through the on-line Administrative
Information Management System (AIMS).
- Data security:
Information is made readily available on-line to the target users
with the appropriate security control.
The project
was kicked off back in August 2003 with the first visit of
the consultant from SCT. The first phase of the project is
to replace the old Full Time Payroll System, plus several
other major productivity enhancements. The target is to develop
and set up the system for a three-month parallel run starting
April 2004 such that it can be cut-over to production in July
2004, coinciding with the new financial year. In order to
rollout a system of this magnitude in such an aggressive timeframe,
significant amount of effort has been dedicated to its successful
implementation by the HRO, FO and Enterprise Solutions Unit
(ESU), under the guidance of the Chief Information Officer
(CIO). Since Banner is a purchased system, it imposes certain
limitations on how we can adopt the system for our use. We
have encountered quite a number of challenges during the course
of implementation, most of which have been overcome by great
teamwork and close collaboration among the three offices.
Below are some of the issues / challenges that we have faced
and addressed:
-
Banner's undesirable feature such as limiting deduction
to full month deduction amount only.
-
Inadequate
field width, mostly in reporting, since the system was targeted
at USD currency.
-
MPF
handling is very complicated and heavily governed by regulations,
hence cannot be easily supported with customisations.
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Multiple
charging and abnormal charging of employee expenses to multiple
cost centres.
-
External interfaces, such as bank file, IRD, trustee, ledger
system, have to be customised due to their uniqueness.
-
Retroactive payroll processing / adjustment.
In order to
address some of the areas which are not well-covered by the Banner
System, we have also developed some additional modules supplementing
Banner's functionalities. They are:
-
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Budget
Information Web-page replacing the old Executive Information
System (EIS)
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Staff
Enquiry via AIMS, enabling all employees to view and verify
information such as personal particulars, family data, employment
history, benefits and pay information.
We have
also streamlined the workflow between the offices, which was
originally based on the old systems and paper flow, using
the functionalities of the new system as well as our in-house
customisation and development.
During
the later stage of the implementation, we have spent a lot
of effort in the synchronization and cleaning up of the HRO
and FO data. Adding to its complexity, we have also included
the newly setup "Community College of City University"
into our scope, which was unforeseen at the beginning of the
project. Fortunately, our good teamwork pays off and we are
able to rollout the system on time. Now that the first phase
is behind us, we are now concentrating on the hourly rate
payroll and research modules. With the experience gained in
the first phase of the project, we are confident that the
implementation of the remaining project, although equally
challenging, will be smooth and on time.
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