Do you get two definitive answers to every personnel question? Do you find yourself waiting days for management reports, which, when they arrive, are out-of-date? Do your HR and payroll staff tell you that they know everything is being done twice? Do you have no way of tracking employee time, absences, holidays etc and linking it to payroll? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” then it’s time to integrate your T&A, HR and payroll systems.

However, while taking the decision to integrate might be straightforward, actually getting there can be a minefield. The key is preparation, preparation and preparation and nowhere is that more important than in the first, pre-implementation phase.

The first task is to sit down to discuss not software functionality but people processes. It’s vital to recognise you’re not just replacing a computer or software system you’re changing the way you do things and the way your two departments will work together. The two departments need to look at the best way of doing things, not just replicating what they do at the moment.

Who does best?

In practice, that means assessing exactly what tasks HR, your T&A Administrator and payroll perform – everything from who enters a new starter onto the system to who enters training data. It means deciding on how you would like to view the data (whether a flat payroll or pyramid HR structure, or both). Lastly, it means working out in detail who should have access to what data – what security you will need, and who will have permissions.

It is vital the systems you choose enable you to amend your processes should they need to be changed after integration. The software is the simple side – it’s been tried and tested by hundreds of companies. But for you it will be the first time and it’s the people side you will have to make sure is absolutely right. Administrators, Payroll and HR need to know exactly what’s going on to ensure there aren’t any nasty surprises.

Getting the team in place

Luckily, team work can keep those nasty surprises to a minimum. Appointing a project team that represents not just T&A, Payroll and HR, but also IT, audit, finance and anyone else potentially affected by the change is essential. People often forget to take account of satellite systems – things like car leasing, deductions, accountants and audits. Often you find interfaces that were written years ago by someone who has since left, and no one knows that that was how the data was generated or indeed if it was calculated!

We recommend getting the IT team on board from the very beginning. There are a lot of questions that only the IT team can answer – do you have the infrastructure and hardware to support the new system? Do you have the bandwidth? How will it affect flexible working arrangements for people working off site? Will it overload the networks? You can ask the questions, but you will need the whole team’s involvement to get the answers.

Of course, one of the most difficult and time consuming tasks that has to be completed pre-implementation is agreeing one set of data that can be inputted to the new system. Some people underestimate the resources needed for data cleansing and are surprised by just how many areas of the business has an input.

Implementation

Once you have done your preparation, just one question remains: should you go for a “big bang” or a “staged approach”? The experts disagree, some pointing out that “big bang” is too much for most companies to cope with, and others saying that a staged approach can leave the legacy system exposed. Ultimately it depends on the size of your company, and, crucially, how many resources you are able to devote to the task, but for most companies the decision is dictated by the success of the parallel run.

Whatever you choose, expects teething trouble. Doug Bird, Payroll Manager at housing charity Shelter had done his preparation well, but even he couldn’t’ have planned for the anomalies that the new system threw up. “We allowed 3 months for data cleansing and it took two, but testing revealed loads of errors in the legacy system,” he explains. “For audit we had to go back and correct everything even though we were about to switch over.”

“Go live” day is usually exhilarating – but it doesn’t stop there. In fact, post-implementation is crucial to the success of the implementation. Most people tend to put in the basics and then stop, but the system will have a lot of other functions that you could be using. As a result, auditing your new processes – finding out if employees have really changed the way they work – is essential. It’s not just about ensuring the system that you have works as well as possible. Ensuring that you have allocated sufficient resources to training and to evaluating and implementing the bi-annual software updates is key.

All in all, integration is a huge, but a very worthwhile task. Nowadays from recruitment to employment a single piece of data travels through the system – without generating thousands of pieces of paper – its brilliant!