Strengthening systems to strengthen software   (Sun Nov 25 2007)

It's been a gruelling 3 days as we ran the November payroll for my construction client on existing software systems. With nearly 300 new employees this month and over 10,000 overtime records, the entire process must have taken me and the team at least 10 man-days. And too many times we had to go back to make corrections after an item of information went missing or was missed. The team's talented enough - but there's just too much opportunity for error, too much data to enter.

And that's what Accelerate HR has to address. The objective is to reduce the time spent on producing the payroll to not more than 2 man-days per 1000 people - less if possible. And to have zero tolerance for error.

We're looking at the areas where we do most of the heavy lifting right now. There are three. First we need to track the progress of new-hire staff as we make all the preparations for them to arrive - we've counted 29 separate processes - legal and administrative - that need to be completed before each expatriate employee can arrive. And most construction workers in the Gulf are expatriates.

Secondly, we need to reduce the amount of data we need to enter for each person who starts work - and automate as much of the process as possible. If we know the person's job then we know the grade, and if we know the grade then we also know the likely benefits - vacation, entitlement to overtime, etc. Accelerate HR needs to make all those entries for us (and in fact it already does).

The heaviest load of all in the construction business is recording attendance records, especially overtime. Staff are spread across a site several square kilometres large, and, except for mobile phones, there are no communications links back to the head office 5 kilometres away. We need to use attendance readers to automate as much of the attendance recording as possible, but it'll need to be a pretty special system. We can't hook up to head office with the internet and we can't do it using cables - not on a construction site. And when people are so widely dispersed, where do we place our attendance readers? It's not just when people arrive or leave. We also need to know when they move from site location to location, partly so that we can track whether time is being used productively, but also because management wants to know the manpower costs of each project element. We're researching attendance reading systems. I'd be grateful for input if anyone's had success facing similar problems.

So Accelerate HR is not just about building good software. It's about putting good systems into place too, making sure that we optimize all our people-related activities to the maximum. And then designing software that supports the activities and helps all those involved to be accurate, efficient and effective.

Can I be ready with the payroll module by December? It would be a big achievement - but it'll be tough, even with the development speed that Rails brings me.

Filed under: Implementation