TEA Winner, 2019: City of Surprise, AZ

Industry: Municipal
Location: City of Surprise, Arizona
Number of Employees: 800 full time; 1,200 total
Population: 130,000
Tyler Client Since: 2016
Tyler Products: Enterprise ERP, Cashiering, Content Manager

Challenge

The city of Surprise, Arizona, is saving time and focusing on strategic projects thanks to automated processes in Enterprise ERP [powered by Munis^®]. Paper-based processes tend to slow down any organization, but for a city as large as Surprise, the volume of timesheets, requests, and approvals, as well as the distance between employees, was making manual processing extremely time-consuming and creating a lot of room for error — all of which were costly.

Before Enterprise ERP, employees at the city were submitting hundreds of paper time cards each pay period that were then hand keyed into the system by payroll staff. Personnel Action Forms (PAF) were generated in a Microsoft Word document by human resources staff and then used for data entry. Staff members couldn’t enter pending actions without disrupting live legacy system data. Since there wasn’t a digital workflow approval process that held changes in a pending area, data entry mistakes were extremely problematic.

Open enrollment was a hectic time for the city’s HR staff, and many had to drop all other priorities. Making changes to employee benefits was a particularly arduous task. An employee would complete paperwork, and then an HR staff member would enter the requested changes into the previous system and then into the carrier website.

When something like an address changed occurred, HR staff would have to manually enter the change into multiple carrier website portals for FSA, dental, vision, and medical to ensure the change was reflected across the employee’s full collection of benefits.

Solution

The city implemented Enterprise ERP in 2016. Collaborating with the implementation team from Tyler Technologies, key employees from the city’s finance, HR, and payroll teams led the city toward digital processes. The city immediately began using Employee Access for time entry, and to allow employees to make changes to their federal and state tax elections and direct deposit information. They also used Tyler’s employee selfservice functionality to bring their open enrollment processes online, making it easier for HR staff and employees to manage benefit changes.

To eliminate duplicate data entry inherent in the previous process for qualifying events, the city’s HR team invested the time upfront to set up an 834 Enrollment File, which automatically sends employee changes to the insurance carriers and eliminates the need to manually update their systems. “It took some training and time to set up the 834 files, but it was totally worth it,” said Christine Edwards, human resources information systems analyst. “We learned all of the components of the 834 files, where the data pulls from (Enterprise ERP), and how to successfully run the files.”

Results

With time entry happening online, the city’s payroll team is free from managing paper timesheets, which has resulted in improved efficiency, auditing abilities, and a more accurate payroll. “It’s great because now our payroll team has more time to perform other project work that advances the city’s goals,” said Edwards.

By leveraging new functionality for open enrollment, the city has seen higher participation rates, less paperwork, and has spent far less time tracking people down to complete the benefits enrollment process. “In the first year with Enterprise ERP benefits open enrollment, the city had a record participation rate of 94 percent,” commented Edwards.

Edwards described further, “Open enrollment used to require 10 HR employees, half of our team, focused exclusively on that process. Now, with Enterprise ERP, we need only three staff members to manage the process from beginning to end.”

Along the same lines, the 834 files have saved the city significant staff time. Over the course of a year, the HR team processes roughly 200 new hire benefits onboarding or qualifying life events (QLEs). What used to take nearly 3,500 hours of staff time now takes around 1,700 hours. And, there is no longer a need to duplicate data entry into carrier websites; the 834 file takes care of that automatically.

The time savings realized from Enterprise ERP has allowed the city to more appropriately delegate work tasks. It has also helped the city’s HR team reinforce its role as strategic partners to the executive team by showing investments in technology have a positive impact on achieving the organization’s overall goals and moving the city into the future. “Enterprise ERP has offered functionality that has improved our processes, reduced errors, and saved staff time,” said Edwards.