Historically, payroll and personnel support operated in separate units. In 2003, the two units were combined as part of an overall efficiency drive. Payroll and HR staff members were cross-trained to develop a team that was fully accomplished across all aspects of payroll and transactional human resources. Oracle E-Business Suite brought together the separate HR and finance systems and eliminated double-keying of data.

The new team, however, was handling an unsustainable volume of paper; therefore a prototype electronic pay-claim form was developed to vastly improve the process. Following the success of the prototype, Oracle Forms was used to develop the form, which was then successfully rolled out.

“We wanted to bring as much work as possible online,” Davies said. “Previously, the team was handling approximately 30,000 pieces of paper per month, including expense forms, overtime forms, and sick leave records. With the implementation of the electronic pay-claim form, we have reduced paper volume by 95%.”

With local government reorganization, the Cheshire West and Chester and Cheshire East Councils were created through merging seven existing councils. ESC, hosted by Cheshire West and Chester Council and located in Chester, now provides transactional HR and payroll on a shared service basis for Cheshire West and Chester Council and Cheshire East Council. Both councils fund the shared services center.

Prior to implementing the electronic pay-claim form, the manual process for payroll functions were long and drawn out, costly, error-ridden, and time-consuming, with a significantly high error rate. After deploying the new electronic pay-claim process, the error rate dropped to less than 0.25% (attributable to local input), significantly enhancing ESC’s reputation.

“Using manual processes, the deadline for pay claims was the 25th of each month, which resulted in costs being spread across two financial periods,” Davies said. “Now, with the electronic pay-claim forms in place, the deadline is the 5th or 6th of each month, and pay claims run from the 1st to 31st. Not only do administrators have an extra 10 days to submit the pay claims, but the finance department now deals with full-month costing and full-month claiming to simplify the month-end close and enhance financial reporting efficiency.”

Payroll employees previously spent a significant amount of time verifying, validating, and interpreting the manual pay-claim forms before making payments. Variable pay rates were complex for temporary teachers and for council staff claiming overtime work after 10:00 p.m. or overnight rates. The validation process was time consuming and prone to errors.

“Pay-claim entries are now validated at the source,” said Mike Lally, system support and development manager, HR and Finance Shared Services, Cheshire Shared Services. “Because the pay-claim form integrates directly with Oracle Payroll, the system processes checks and flags errors for the front-end administrator as the data is keyed. This saves Cheshire Shared Services a tremendous amount of time validating and amending incorrect data, allowing it to meet payroll requirements quickly, and ensuring that employees are paid correctly the first time.”

“The impact on our staff has been very positive,” Davies said. “The process has enriched and empowered staff and has given individuals the opportunity to grow their own knowledge by fully training all employees in both HR and payroll processes. The team is more responsive and has a much better relationship with internal customers.”

An administrator in each school, library, social care establishment, and office is tasked with keying pay variance data onto the pay-claim form each month, as opposed to filling in paper forms and posting them to a central team for keying. That individual can only see data concerning those employed in his or her establishment, resulting in a very secure environment for uploading data. This also takes into account the nature of the council’s business, where most of the staff are front-line and customer facing and do not have direct access to business technology, for examples: teachers and social care workers.

In addition, administrators at the front end can enter pay-claim data throughout the month, whenever it is convenient with their work loads. With a later deadline to input claims, administrators have extra time to complete a particular month’s pay-claim forms, removing monthly time pressures and enabling them to work on other priority tasks.