Eliminating 90 Siloed Applications

• Industry: K-12 Education
• Location: Columbus, Ohio
• Number of Employees: 9,000+
• Student Enrollment: 48,000
• Tyler Client Since: 2007
• Tyler Products Used: Enterprise ERP, Data & Insights, Content Manager, Versatrans

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Challenge

Columbus City Schools (CCS), in Ohio, needed a way to integrate its human resources, purchasing, and finance processes. It faced intimidating risks with its current programs, finding it difficult to complete transactions in a timely manner.

One of the district’s biggest challenges was decreased efficiency with paper processes. Its productivity suffered as a result of working with systems that lacked integration. The approvals workflow regularly took up to 45 days — utilizing interoffice mail to transition the documentation from department to department for signatures, and the real possibility of papers getting lost and having to restart a transaction.

“Our HRI system actually resided on a personal computer, which was on its last leg,” said IT Business Solutions & E-Rate Manager Shawntel Lewis-Smith. “There was no backup, therefore the risk of losing data was very high.”

Additionally, the district’s HR and payroll departments were both manually entering data — often resulting in duplicate entry because departmental systems did not communicate. CCS had a multitude of files stored in various locations, which made tracking and locating documents very difficult. With more than 9,000 employees, the district needed a comprehensive and connected solution to solve these problems.

Solution

CCS chose Enterprise ERP, Tyler Technologies’ fully integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solution, to consolidate its finance, purchasing, and HR operations. The solution was essential for the district to solve issues affecting multiple departments, as it offered a total solution to unify independent systems and workflows.

Additionally, Content Manager allowed the district’s systems to talk to each other. It enabled automated workflow setups which streamlined multi-departmental processes, a reduction in the district’s paper footprint, more efficient use of time, and immediate access to documents for all staff.

Early in 2020, CCS maximized its Enterprise ERP solution by participating in Tyler’s Planned Annual Continuing Education (PACE) program to assess its ERP usage and discover areas that could be improved with additional features.

After experiencing the success of Enterprise ERP in its HR and finance processes, CCS is now focusing on consolidating even more functions — employee onboarding, training, recruiting, electronic signatures, and staff evaluations.

Results

Enterprise ERP has drastically changed the operations of CCS’s HR, finance, and purchasing departments. Most notably, the improved efficiency made possible by Enterprise ERP means employees no longer sorting through endless paper files or storing them offsite in a warehouse. They have the ability to search in Enterprise ERP to find information quickly, which has increased customer service response time.

CCS can also set permissions through Content Manager’s security settings and customize roles so that teams only see information necessary to their job functions. Said LewisSmith: “When you’re looking in a paper file or folders, all of the information is available to everyone. With Content Manager we were able to create security roles that were specific to our HR department team. There are several teams within our HR department, and not everyone needs to see everything in an employee file. We were able to create permissions granularly so that teams only see the documents they need to see.”

Other conveniences CCS has gained include Employee Access, which allows employees to log in securely and self-serve everything from paychecks, W-2’s, online open enrollment, and the ability for former employees to log in to the portal for increased transparency. The district is also utilizing Vendor Access, which allows the purchasing department to streamline paper processes and vendors to access and manage their portal. With so much consolidation behind it, CCS anticipates improvements through Tyler’s integrated solutions.