Small, tech-savvy firm finds payroll bliss – in the cloud

"I said, ‘Well, what’s the budget?’ And they said, ‘I don’t know. Just do what you have to do. Go out there and find out what some of the costs are," she says.

Agro conducted a formal request for proposal with a number of vendors. She compared the responses to a wish list she created.

"I had a list of how all of those vendors measured up against that ultimate wish list," she says. "I was able to go out and pick and choose what I wanted, so it was great."

The system Ariad had been using until this point was strictly for administering payroll duties, so Agro wanted to implement something that would incorporate both human resources and payroll functions.

"We did have a payroll system, but the offering for another piece of personnel management wasn’t available through that vendor, so ultimately we were in the market for an HR system and that evolved into getting a new payroll system, as well," she says.

Agro decided on Toronto-based ADP’s latest offering, Workforce Now, a cloud-based human capital resource management system designed for organizations with a staff of 50 or more. Workforce Now launched about one year ago and currently has 100 users. There are an additional 100 organizations currently implementing the product, according to Greg Rowe, ADP division vice-president business engineering solutions and implementation.

"Workforce Now enables employees to be more productive through mobile applications that provide them access to things like pay statements, company news, company directories and tracking time and attendance," Rowe says.

The convenience of Workforce Now is something that really appealed to Agro.

"It was easily accessible and it was a cloud-based system — that was really important for me because I’m the only HR person in a 100-person organization," she says. "There’s only so much that I’m able to do... (unless I’m) in the physical office. So, if I’m sick for a day, there’s no one there to take my place."

Workforce Now also brings many different functions together, she says.

"The fact that it connected all in one place was great," she says. "With some of the other vendors that we were looking at, it was all separate — there was no offering for one system that had payroll and HR in one place."

"It gives them areas to think about, whether it’s pay structures or organizational structures for their HR department," he says. "It’s probably the key document used by the client."

Agro knew she would have a lot of work ahead of the implementation, so the guide was a helpful tool.

"I went back and did an audit of all of the employee data and made sure all of it was all right. I anticipated any employee changes — who was going to be on the books for that year, who wasn’t, who was on mat leave, who was reporting to who — every piece of data that goes into something like this that is behind the scenes," she says.

ADP has a "very defined implementation methodology" that can be applied to nearly any organization regardless of size, according to Rowe.

The first step is a project kick off where both the organization and ADP establish goals and timelines to make sure the client’s objectives are met and that there is an understanding of any business problems.

After this, ADP conducts online interviews with the organization.

"Typically, a lot of organizations will go through a process where they write things down on paper or they take notes, but with Workforce Now it’s really an online interview process and that way clients can look back at decisions that they’ve made," says Rowe.

After assessing the business’ needs and making recommendations, both parties come to an agreement about how the setup with be performed.

"We perform the data conversations, we take any of their existing data — whether it’s provider or in-house — and we take that and convert that then import it into Workforce Now," he says. "We do our testing and then we go live."

Agro was pleased with the experience she had with ADP.

"They had a clear indication of what my business was, who my employment group was," she says. "It was more of a partnership from a holistic business experience."

Ariad’s implementation took approximately 12 weeks to complete, but the timeline changes, depending on the organization’s needs, says Rowe.

"It’s really dependent on whether there are other client initiatives that the project’s schedule has to include," he says. "For example, they might be acquiring a company and as part of that acquisition we might need to align our implementation with that."

The staff at Ariad has responded positively to Workforce Now, says Agro. On more than one occasion, her colleagues have mentioned they are happy they no longer "have to bug her" for payroll items.

"They can pull out their phone and they can do a bit of back pedalling to determine when they were last paid, or when their last bonus was or their last increase," she says, adding that it has allowed her to be more productive in her role because she spends less time answering questions.

Agro is most pleased with Workforce Now because it better reflects they type of business Ariad wants to run.

"We work for a technology company so it’s only obvious that we would have a piece of technology that improves the employee relationship, too," she says. "My demographic is tech-savvy, so they expect to have a system that’s reliable and capable of allowing access from anywhere."