By: Philippe Buteau/Staff Writer 
philippe.buteau@fiusm.com
The University has chosen not to renew its five-year-old contract with Automatic Data Processing, Inc. and instead take advantage of a license it had for about 10 years.
The divisions of Human Resources and Information Technology worked together to combine the capabilities of PantherSoft with the University’s Human Resources services to manage its $13 million payroll budget.
The phasing-in of the new system, called PantherSoft HR, started in April 2010. It officially launched on Dec. 24, 2011 and caused the University small headaches when the first payday arrived about three weeks later on Jan. 13.
When the University was updating employee records, the system defaulted them to their standard hours which led to $53,000 in overpay being dolled out. This amounts to less than 0.5 percent in the University’s total payroll and affected 217 employees, 3 percent of the University’s roughly 8,500 employees.
“We found the root cause [and] it’s not related to people approving hours, time and labor, or managers,” said Carlos Flores, director of Operations and Systems for HR.
Jaffus Hardrick, vice president of HR was unavailable for comment as of press time.
The average amount that went out was about $213. The amounts varied on the number of standard hours, the number of hours reported and the hourly rates for the employee’s specific job.
The overpay came from the department’s budget. Flores said HR will work with the departments over the next two pay periods to get their money back. They will deduct from the employees’ pay for the next two pay periods.
“We’d only try to get that money back right now if the employee was terminated,” Flores said.
The University has been working to get the system up and running for the past four months.
“We were faced with a compelling event when the ADP contract ended,” Flores said.
The end of the contract, which was $10 million over five years, left the University with three options: renew with ADP, start using what it already has or find a new solution.
The second option made the most sense, according to Flores.
After the state ordered all of its public universities to manage their own payroll about five years ago, the University chose ADP because it’s a known vendor of payroll services. Flores, a 1996 alumnus of the University, returned around that time and was tasked with implementing ADP.
“[They] committed to a lot of things they were not able to deliver,” Flores said of the company.
He said they are more geared towards cutting payroll checks than supporting research. Other issues the University had with ADP include its managing of contracts of people such as overload faculty, graduate assistants, adjuncts, etc. and it was not able to support the switching of semesters.
On the other hand, the benefits of PantherSoft HR are its single sign-on system with MyAccount credentials, it “significantly improves” HR’s ability to respond – from months to weeks – and it allows the division to process open enrollment changes.
The single sign-on system eliminated the number one reason HR received 1,000 calls per month: resetting passwords.
“That went away day one,” Flores said.
Another benefit to the University is having access to its own data center, which is on the Modesto Maidique Campus, compared to ADP’s center in Georgia.
The University has been using HR liaisons to pass on information of the new system to its employees, 4,000 of which are temporary.
“Instead of having 8,000 people coming to us, we only have 125,” Flores said on why liaisons are used.
The liaisons also make sure hours are approved and HR has submitted hours for people who failed to do so.
For the first three pay periods under the new system, HR is working with the University community to make sure it’s learned.
Flores said HR invited the University’s Office of Internal Audit to have an objective set of eyes to look at the results of their comparisons of the new and old system.
So far HR has had 99.7 percent accuracy when comparing the two systems.
Another part of the new system, according to Flores, is improving how the hours of hourly employees are approved.
The University wants to make direct supervisors, people who should have direct knowledge of the number of hours employees work, more involved and be the ones who approve hours.
“We’re trying to change the culture of FIU,” Flores said.
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