Large Organization with Complicated Pay and Benefit Rules

Government Fire Services. Over 5000 employees.

The Challenge

Fire Services had spent years customizing a very early release (installed in the early 1990s) of the StarGarden system. This work had been done without the input or assistance from StarGarden.

The system had become overly complicated and the customizations had not always been installed in the most efficient way possible. Users were frustrated with the complexities of the system and the StarGarden system administrator was finding it more and more difficult to support the users. The system was entirely dependent on one or two technical resources to keep it running and produce the weekly payroll. Before the system broke down entirely or these key technical people left with their knowledge, management decided to solve the problem once and for all.

The Solution

StarGarden was called to find a way back to simplicity. Fire Services needed to get back as closely to the standard product version as possible. StarGarden reassured the team that any needed customizations could then be layered in. By upgrading to the latest release of the StarGarden product, Fire Services would be able to reinstate support and therefore have redundancy for their critical resources needed to execute the payrolls. Fire Services would be able to take advantage of regular updates as well as the functionality improvements that had occurred in the years since they originally installed the system. Users would play a key role in the upgrade and their input would be used to make the system work better for them.

Result

StarGarden consultants were able to create lists of the old customizations that Fire Services could then use to verify whether they were still needed or not. Those that were required were upgraded to the latest standards and implemented into the new release of StarGarden. From the lists of customizations, StarGarden consultants were able to create testing plans for Fire Services to use to verify that the system and its customizations worked as expected and as required. All of the complicated pay and benefit requirements were also mapped out and reviewed in the system to make sure the result was as intended. The users were able to simultaneously test and learn their new payroll system that they had participated in customizing with StarGarden. User input was reviewed and changes made to accommodate internal procedures. Internal users became much more effective using the system and management was relieved to have support redundancy for such a critical application.