Joel Hauff
Associate Vice President, Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, University of Arizona
Supernova Award Category
The Problem
The University of Arizona was using a mix of different human resources (HR) products to address its human capital management (HCM) automation needs and suffered consequently from integration and data consistency challenges.
Several student service units at the university had been independent, long-term Kronos customers for timekeeping. The change to an electronic workflow in the 90’s overwhelmed supervisory staff, leading to great dissatisfaction and a low user adoption rate. At a point, the University abandoned the electronic workflow completely and used punch cards that had to be faxed to payroll admins. Finally, the university worked with a service bureau that forced rigid schedules on payroll and timekeeping operations, which created significant challenges.
The University needed an integrated solution to address the needs of these service with a single timekeeping system. Three primary goals were established.
- Eliminate all paper processing of timekeeping records. Electronic timekeeping and supervisor approval.
- Transmit payroll data directly to the university’s core payroll product and be adaptable if the core payroll product changed. The product needed generate customizable files without the assistance of the vendor for transmission to the university’s legacy payroll system.
- Serve all existing DOS-based Kronos customers in one instance, instead of multiple, independent instances as in the then existing configuration.
The Solution
The solution was to consolidate all automation in student service areas with Kronos 5.0, ensuring overall success with a number of smart implementation decisions. The 3 goals were deemed to be handled best by Kronos:
- The Web-based interface required no IT management at the user’s desktop level. The user interface was clear and intuitive, and a number of new features, including Workforce Genies and reporting, meant that data could be customized and displayed for managers in more relevant ways.
- The Kronos Connect tool gave local unit system administrators the ability to take the delivered file transfers and modify them based on ongoing changes to the university’s expectations.
- The expansion of configuration groups for Display, Functional Access, and Workforce Genies enabled customization across all service units.
The results
All timekeeping records are transmitted directly to the University’s core Payroll system. The customized trainings for managers and supervisors have been delivered more than 150 times and user adoption continues to run at 98 percent to 100 percent. On every level, the Kronos Workforce Central product has met and exceeded all of the goals established by the university for its reimplementation of the product.
Metrics
“The users used to call us with questions on how to use the system – now they are just using it.” - Joel Hauff, Associate Vice President, University of Arizona
When the new solution went live with Kronos it was well received, with nearly 100 percent user adoption and immediate time savings for users.
The university had not established a formal ROI metric to track the implementation and system usage, but a very high acceptance rate and the ability to go live with the system after only one parallel payroll test run make executives comfortable about the positive ROI of their Kronos system.
And success attracts interest: The university sees more and more departments gravitating toward the Kronos solution, which will further improve the system’s ROI.
The Technology
Kronos Versions 5.2 and 7.0
Disruptive Factor
The university took an innovative approach to training by creating and maintaining its own training database for managers and supervisors. Relevant, localized training specific to the University of Arizona translates to a much higher adoption rate and more effective use of the system by staff.
Furthermore, the university brought the training to the end users. It built a portable training lab that brought the training to end users so they could be trained at their job location. Trainings usually take about two hours and, during periods of implementation, the university manages to hold up to three trainings per day. Thanks to the extra investment in training, the university sees a system acceptance rate of well over 90 percent.
Shining Moment
As a result of the success of this implementation, the University of Arizona decided to expand the scope of this solution to other departments. The solution is now being used across the University Libraries as well as with student government.