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The 'Ultimate' Way to Unify and Streamline HR Processes
This special supplement features case studies in technology.
CORT Business Services, a Berkshire Hathaway Co., based in Fairfax, Va., is a leading provider of business and residential rental furniture, apartment locating and relocation services. With 2,500 employees, the company was using an enterprise-resource-planning vendor for HR, a service bureau for payroll and an in-house manual process for time and attendance. In order to achieve efficiencies and improve reporting, the company sought a single provider that could deliver the needed functionality without requiring dedicated IT support at its company headquarters. CORT selected Ultimate Software's UltiPro to handle its core HR processes; including payroll, benefits administration with online enrollment, and time and labor management. Acquiring this broad scope of HR feature sets through Intersourcing -- the company's Software-as-a-Service offering -- has resulted in greater gains than expected. Since going live on UltiPro in July 2006, CORT redirected its IT resources to core-competency business projects because Ultimate Software has the responsibility for hardware, system software and ongoing maintenance. "To accommodate our industry's specific needs, we developed our own software for activities critical to running our business, like inventory management. When considering potential providers, we wanted to ensure that our IT team would not have to support our new human resource management system and could focus on our core business applications," says Debbie Lansford, CORT's chief financial officer. "With my financial background and understanding of the rental industry, I see the value in leasing software. Selecting UltiPro as SaaS, we did not have to make a large capital investment in a software license. It really makes good business sense to let Ultimate Software handle the upgrades, maintenance and the hardware."
Managing Time Management Another decision-driver in selecting UltiPro was time-management tools. Before UltiPro Time and Attendance, employee hours were collected manually. After obtaining necessary approvals, the hours and rates were entered onto spreadsheets and funneled to a six offices, then compiled. Because information was passed from person to person, the process was time-consuming, confusing and prone to error. "The most important benefit of UltiPro Time and Attendance is how it has made processes easier on our field managers, who spend much less effort managing employee time records than before. They can log in and see their team's year-at-a-glance attendance or drill down to study specific data. Since sick and vacation time are submitted online, managers give approvals in seconds and can cross-reference requests against paid-time-off balances," says Eileen Buckley, payroll manager for CORT. "We used to have 12 people working on the payroll, but with core UltiPro for HR and payroll processing, UltiPro Time and Attendance and restructuring of our internal processes, we have been able to cut that number in half." Another detail-intensive challenge many companies must tackle is streamlining benefits enrollment. Before using UltiPro, CORT's HR team traveled to each location, distributed information, answered employee questions and collected and returned the handwritten forms to the main office. Field staff would then fly to the Fairfax, Va., headquarters to help input benefits changes and complete the cumbersome project. "With UltiPro, benefits enrollment is easy for our employees and efficient," says Buckley. "There is no need for anyone to travel or try to interpret handwritten forms. Open enrollment is like night-and-day in comparison to our old approach."Unifying core employee-management processes in one solution maximized CORT's business efficiencies and gave its leadership access to better reporting. Many businesses today, like CORT, are committed to leveraging the latest in technology to improve business performance -- and to doing it quickly by depending upon Software-as-a-Service as a delivery model. The most strategic HR leaders align their department initiatives with C-level financial objectives and contribute tangible results.
HIGHLIGHTS Organization: CORT Business Services Headquarters: Fairfax, Va. Employees: 2,500 Primary Business: Business and residential rental furniture, apartment locating and relocation services. HR Technology Challenge: To consolidate multiple systems into one solution without tapping into IT resources.
May 16, 2008 Copyright 2008© LRP Publications |
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