Datacom Group has committed to a major multi year investment in modern payroll products and services.
The resulting applications, continually evolving, are a quantum shift in both technology and concept from the systems they replace. The core payroll is a modern rules based engine, date aware, flexible and efficient. This “plug in” architecture ensures that the system caters easily to the ever changing payments and tax rules so prevalent in the industry.
The Solution
The decision to use Microsoft tools as the base technology for the core development platform continues to provide dividends. With the combination of the industry leading .NET framework coupled with the enterprise grade SQL Server database at the core of the product, these tools enable product features to be rapidly built and deployed. Additionally, their use assists in attracting and retaining the highest calibre of IT professionals eager to be working on technology that is at the forefront of their field.
Complementing the core, the online applications have utilised both Microsoft and other technologies such as Adobe’s Flash / Flex product to ensure the richest possible user experience and speed to market. The result is a suite of applications that represent New Zealand’s most fully featured and modern payroll system, free of any legacy systems integration, and focused on the future.
Ongoing software development work, including the completion of the Employee Self Service online application and the next phase being the release of functionality for remote clients, is being developed by an extended team including leading practitioners from the Datacom Systems & Integration teams working on ASB, Air New Zealand and other awards winning assignments as well as the core application team. Datacom have done this to both accelerate the pace of development and bring experience of new IT tools, the agile development methodology and a quality client experience to the payroll development. Datacom’s remote site clients that have viewed the development in EasiPay have been excited by the look and feel of the new product set.
The Benefits
As at 31 March 2009 over 800 EasiPay clients had been migrated to our new product. The migration has been completely painless for clients as Datacom payroll consultants have shielded the clients from the normally turbulent process of moving from one payroll to another.
The client experience is one of first finding that improved reports appear, second they are introduced to new tools such as web entry of timesheet data replacing spreadsheets, and finally the use of the new Executive Dashboard with an initial set of seven online HR reports generated directly from the payroll data. Clients have been delighted with this process, the new tools and these outcomes. Pleasingly, all this has been achieved with an increase in overall EasiPay service productivity with payroll consultants now able to service a higher number of payees than before. The remaining 100 clients are currently being readied for migration to the new product.
Employee Self Service was released to the clients in October 2008. Sixty clients are now using Employee Self Service.
The migration has been completely painless for clients as Datacom payroll consultants have shielded the clients from the normally turbulent process of moving from one payroll to another.
Key Attributes of DataPay include:
Unlimited payment types.
Group employees by payment conditions.
Calculation / Rules based system.
Date effective allowing future and retrospective payments.
Customised calculation setups.
Flexible use of work patterns.