ERP for Staff and Budget Reporting
Challenges
Position control helps school districts prevent common budget problems like overhiring. After hiring for nearly 100 unapproved positions in one year, Everett School District in Massachusetts realized it needed to streamline and update its approach to human resources management. The school district began looking for a single software solution that would provide data in a more informative and transparent format.
Staff at the Everett School District knew their financial and human resources solutions were outdated. After all, they were suffering the consequences — unapproved hires, budget overages, and time-consuming, manual processes.
Said Chief Financial Officer Anu Medappa Jayanth, “We were almost in the Ice Age. Approximately 80% of our budget was allocated to personnel, but we had no position control capabilities. We were not in a place to make sound budget decisions because we had no visibility into the line items that mattered most to us.”
In fact, most HR processes began and ended with a series of Microsoft® Excel™ spreadsheets, introducing a high potential for human error. Additionally, employees didn’t have access to their own information; they relied on staff to print their W-9 forms and pay stubs, as well as tracking their vacation and sick time.
“Our goal is to take our systems digital, to help them all talk to each other,” said Jayanth.
Solution
The Everett School District decided to invest in Enterprise ERP, Tyler Technologies’ integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solution, to help with its financial and human capital management (HCM) goals.
“We’re planning to kick off with the HCM solution, then move to financials in a few years,” said Jayanth. This is in-line with many public sector organizations in Massachusetts — nearly 70% of municipalities using Tyler Technologies’ ERP software have also invested in the solution for their school district.
Notably, the Everett School District is looking forward to implementing position control with Enterprise ERP. According to Jayanth, “It’s been difficult to budget because there’s a disconnect between open positions and advertisements for them. Once we’re able to build out the financial piece of our solution, we’ll be able to better streamline processes between position and budget.”
Results
The Everett School District is counting on Tyler Technologies’ ability to help automate processes. “Reducing the piles of paper on everyone’s desk will be a measure of our success,” said Jayanth. “We no longer want one piece of paper being manually passed to six different people to ensure its accuracy — there’s too much room for human error there.”
Position control will also be key to Everett’s success. With Enterprise ERP, the district is looking to track information based on positions rather than employees — creating a framework of positions for all jobs without regard to whether there is an incumbent in a specific job or not. This will provide greater accountability and control of expenditures for personnel.
With a solid position control model in place, Everett will be able to:
- Accurately report position vacancy information for each budget cost center in the district
- Run position reports by funding source, functional area, or other key descriptive fields
- Stop hiring for unapproved positions
- Easily identify positions being paid out of incorrect account codes
- Audit position information for state reporting requirements
- Make more informed decisions when adding and reducing staff
Access to information will empower Everett School District staff to make better decisions, and, according to Jayanth, “We are looking forward to using Enterprise ERP to empower all of our employees to access and verify their own information.”